besides like drheadcrab and papasmurph i dont think there have been any truly 'bad' players in invite

Are you like fucking pissed that lansky picked craig up instead of you or something?? That's typically not the norm. See: carnage. He tried to come back for 2 seasons and people DIDN'T pick him up, despite him being godlike in his prime.

It's ultimately your decision, I just think bringing in "projects" isn't something that should be done in Invite. If your entire roster survives into next season that would be wonderful. But as it stands, bringing in a player who takes the entire season to "shake off the rust" is a poor standard for invite competition. The TF2 community has tons of players that improve season after season and strive to be invite and it's disappointing that they will not be picked over players who have decided to get back into the scene on a whim after 5 seasons.

The only players that deserved to be in invite this season that weren't already were the entire xensity team.

arc in invite? the world is coming to an end

No, I'm shit. I found it incredibly confusing that your post on "players with potential" comprised solely of players who were dedicated and didn't take years off and then used it to defend a player who did exactly that.

It is the norm. The same players are recycled through invite, and lets face it, a lot of them have lost the drive to try to get to the top. I'm going to stop name dropping, but lets just say there's a lot of players in Invite who have no ambition of even making to LAN (dodge or leave if they do) and a lot who have no drive to winning LAN. These players float around as "roster fillers" and only bother playing TF2 when their scheduled scrims or matches start.

I'm sorry that I name dropped in the first place, I didn't mean to offend. I'm just really disappointed with the way this invite season is panning out.

DELETING NAMES SO NO ONE GETS EGOS.

EDITED BECAUSE I SAID I WOULD STOP NAME DROPPING AND THEN I DID

I agree that newly formed invite teams should not be allowed back on invite (to make them earn their spot, a point ruwin brought up). However it would be really fucking dumb to send them to open to trash the division. Open has been really interesting this season and pleasant to play on due to the lack of super stacked teams.

Newly formed teams with ex invite players should go into IM. They would still have to at least play one entire season and earn their invite spot.

Also, I dont want to sound super negative, but 2c is right. If you bump IM teams to invite, some of them will not be able to handle the competition and break up just like the current invite teams. What invite needs is good team leaders and selfless players.

are you kidding me?

JUST MAKE AN OFF-SEASON TOURNAMENT BETWEEN THE TEAMS THAT WANT TO PLAY IN INVITE, DOUBLE HEADER, EXTV COVERAGE, MORE VIEWERS, MORE GAMES TO WATCH, OH GOD PROBLEM SOLVED

IM FINE WITH THIS INCLUDE CAPS FOR MAXIMUM EXPOSURE GOGO

i used to like pubbing a lot better back in the day because there were a lot of players i recognized in leagues or ended up getting into leagues

ie emperor/apoc/pokey/tyranny/pangu/drgeorge/platinum/smaka/catastrophe/a lot of others

a lot of the higher division players should play in pubs if they have the chance; the only reason i took a chance playing in 6v6 was because i kept seeing these guys and hearing about them from my friends who played 6v6

it didn't feel like it would be hopeless to play against any of them, and it was a blast pubbing with them, so i figured why not try to improve so that i could play with or against them

the thing that doesn't seem cool is when people stack teams in pubs in attempt to make everyone ragequit or empty out the server, although sometimes that just ends up happening because friends want to play with friends even though it happens to be entire teams in mumble together

i just figured i'd give my view on it since ruwin was suggesting that invite players should pub more

From the convo going on in tagg's stream.

EVERY invite team looks for ex-invite players to fill up the rosters. Its been the same people going to lan, same people in invite. Same people returning to play and then after time they realize they can't put in time to play and end up leaving. Pick up people that actually want to play the game and have been putting in the time. I've been gayed out of invite because of my rep from 3 years ago, and even if I do better than any other tryout and some ex-invite player comes, you gotta pick up the guy that was in invite like a year ago. I still play this game, I might be playing in open but I still show up to every scrim and match on time because I actually like to play the game. Like ruwin said be grateful with what you have. If you're in invite don't think of it as its nothing, makes the community look like shit when not even the top teams are trying.

posting in potentially epic thread

I don't know where the arguments have led us, but I perused a bit and one thing is for certain: Leaders on high-level teams need to take chances on upcoming players. Whether the issue is that the players have poor networking or the leaders just feel more confident in older players, it really hurts the influx of top players. Ben and I were talking about this in some sense a few weeks ago. The worst mindset a top player can have is one in which he disregards a loss to someone in MGE or chooses not to realize the consistency of some players in DM just because they're in invite and these petty mods have no bearing on skill. Let's face it, MGE breeds a lot of bad egos, but in my mind DM is the first thing that can take you far in this game. With Yz50 and myself, tyrone picked us up knowing we had great DM and knowing that as far as the flow of the game went, we were pretty oblivious. It was after playing and practicing with the team that we got a firm grasp on the game.

I'm sure there are a ton of great players in MGE and DM (in fact, I've been DMing quite a bit lately and some people really surprise me) who are, for whatever reason, forgotten about. It could certainly be their fault for not trying to assert themselves and not networking well enough to become close with invite players. But something needs to be done to get good players in better positions. My recommendation is that if you feel like you've got great aim, try to befriend a top player. Work your way up, because all the recruiting is done through circle-jerking, and to be fair, it makes sense -- you want to play with friends.

mixup needs to break up. invite was boring this season imo.

what about s8 x6, weren't most of their players new to invite at the time?

This is beyond sad

Would love to see a fucking lottery go on all remaining invite players after this season, and top IM teams and form 8 brand new teams for next season. The only reason people wouldn't want to do this is because they know they won't be "the best team"...please don't say it's because you want to play with your friends. Being the best team as of right now doesn't mean much considering there are 4 lol. Gotta do something different..anyone that's been to LAN or won a LAN has nothing to prove at this point anyway. If you really want the competitive community to keep going, change it up.

mix^ is not the reason teams are dying and i dont think they're as far ahead as everyone believes.

LG showed they can beat them on LAN. clockwork leaving hurt but hero is good and they have Dave__AC for the next one.

also clockwork makes the whales roster almost as stacked as mix^'s imo.

if mihaly's flow was forced to play from open to invite they'd feel so proud of their accomplishment they would still be together today

hey i haven't read any of the rest of the thread up until this so if someone already said it, my bad, but this is a great opportunity to change leagues. i mean, how nice would it be to have a community governed league that can weigh the community opinion in when to exercise rules and when to bend them? if this was a community driven league, this might still happen, but the whole community would have a say in how to fix it, move forward from it, and improve as a league and a community. ESEA is shitty for tf2 players; it's the general consensus. let's stop bitching about it and do something. if the community can send two teams to europe they can do this!

stultus, LOL

no esea, tf2 dies.

No oov, tf2 slowly dying

EDIT: I meant that as in "without oov, tf2 is slowly dying"

it's really, really hard for me to comprehend how idiot fucks like visitor think the game is dying

by what metric are you possibly measuring this?

Its not dieing but the skill level is DEFINITELY lowering, aside from the top 2-4 teams.

The answer is right there in your post dude
Visitor is an

tri: if i see him at lan i will kill him

I think there is a lot of emotion and theories in this thread when really people need to realize things are the way they are because of the state tf2 is in.

Let me try to break it down the way my tiny, sorry, untimely-ad encotunering mind sees it:

People want to see invite ready rosters put through the gaunlet of open to invite. That's great, but if that would happen an entire new group of players in open and im would be complaining about how asanine 6 invite players in those divisions is. The only thing you might accomplish is deterring these teams from ever forming in the first place. At face value that seems to solve the "build a team/break a team" model players follow each season.

Okay we're doing good, but what about filling invite? Well now we're happily moving the top IM teams up into invite to round off the division and whats that? Oh—such and such player on a move-up team doesn't want to go to lan/play in invite and he quits. Now the team needs a new player. Now the team finds a new player and isn't nearly as good as they were in IM. Invite treads on them like dirt. Team wants to break up. Former invite player who didn't make a new roster for the season swoops into the save the day. Team feels alive. Invite player doing well but doesnt mesh/like such and such player. Player cut. Another former invite player joins roster (i mean we cant force people to play, and what do we do once a team in invite needs a 6th? Can we really tell a team "no you can't use this talented player and give yourself a fighting shot.")

So this former team on the rise is now a shell of itself and of a passed invite team and is treading water but moving along okay. Four of the players (the IM core) are having fun but know they aren't getting anywhere. The season ends and the invite fill-ins quit. Now this team needs 2 players again, and realizing how they couldnt make it with two invite players decides maybe they arent good enough, gets frustrated with the whole process, and not having fun anymore— disbands.

Next season, repeat all of ^ only this time the two former invite players are part of the the four former IM players from this team. Meanwhile those invite fill-ins now teamless, wait for the innevitable roster problems that will happen during the new season.

All of this goes on at the bottom of invite while at the top theres trouble in paradise as the best soldier and best medic can't stand eachother. They manage to swap with another top team but also bring an invite friend (either from the former team or one waiting around) along with them. One team is significantly better now but the other much worse. Invite looks lopsided.

What can be done? TF2 is at the end of the day just a hobby, it's for fun, and if you tell the top soldier and top medic they must play together for the integrity of invite and cant try to have fun, they are likely to stop playing...and lack of players is just as bad for the scene.

So what am I getting at with all these hypothticals? Nothing can really be done, the way I see it.
I think the only way to build teams—true, strong willed teams that play as a team win or loss—is to somehow have a break or lose sight of the LAN. The catch22 being without the LAN TF2 looks as dead as ever and players likely leave.

So in the end theres just one logical conclusion: we all team-stack and move to highlander. Gorgeous gamers, commin 'atcha

Gotta agree with bloodsire here. There's not much you can do to prevent people from dropping or losing interest in a game that, most likely, will forever remain a hobby esport. Players in high-ranking teams shouldn't be jumping ship right at the end of a season, especially when LAN prospects are still possible, but there's no consequence for doing so.

What we can do, at least, is build a wonderful and far more stable community for all types of competitive play. Get new players interested, keep veteran players interested, generate more exposure for current leagues and show sponsors/Valve that many people are truly dedicated to this game. Doing so will expand and strengthen future league, and may encourage more dedication in Invite and other top divisions.

i just think that willing IM teams who have been working towards invite and are to the point where they would be a fine addition to the league should get the go ahead over a newly forming/reforming team that died the previous season, and will probably die again when said team doesnt make lan.