I highly recommend playing in ESEA, even if you get 5-0'd in every match (you won't I promise that) you will learn so much over the course of the season. As long as you know the basics of the flow of the game then I wouldn't worry.

If you're getting payed to do ESEA, then you're not losing money by trying it. And by playing ESEA you play against a lot of better teams that you don't find in UGC.

he's right. ESEA is also a lot more competitive than UGC, and has a lot less teams who just quit out partway through. not really every team enters open ready to win it really, it's not a great mentality if you want to get better because you're just hyping yourself up for disappointment.

if winning is all your team cares about, stay in ugc.

if you wanna get on the fast track to improving rapidly and deciding from there if you wanna continue to try and get better @ 6's (individually and as a team) ESEA is the place to be. not to mention this season they moved up EVERY open playoff team, gonna be the best season of open for new comers in a longggggg time

ESEA is a great way to get into the game itself. I'd recommend it. You may feel overwhelmed (possibly) at first, but after your first few matches you'll have learned a great deal and will have gotten more comfortable with the type of teams.

yeah, if you dont have to pay then you should definitely do esea. it might be frustrating for awhile, but just stick with it

ESEA-Open is not the same animal it used to be about 4-5 seasons ago. You'll do fine, and your team should have a decent chance at picking up 5-8 wins if you're a dedicated "low open" team.

Well the highest legit level of ugc 6s (non-legit meaning invites getting into ugc just for fun) is pretty much low-mid open. Shouldn't play ugc for longer then one season, then you'd move onto esea.

That's usually how a lot of teams do it. That's how I was gonna get esea experience until my team broke up after its ugc season.

I don't see too many returning teams - in part with the top 16 of S13 being moved out, so there's plenty of new blood in Open this season. If you don't even have to pay league fees and have prior UGC experience I don't see why you wouldn't.

#Goin'2ESEA

I always like to share my experience in my first season in ESEA because it practically sums up how I feel.

My first season was back in S3 of ESEA. There was no IM so you basically had amazing teams in Open as well as shit ones. My team was garbage, absolutely trash. Back then, information wasn't as available to teams as it is today. There really weren't guides, no talks about strategy and hardly any casts. When there was, they were casted by leogeo which meant there was no talk about why teams did certain things so as a lower level team, we had no strategy (only pushing with uber was a foreign idea). Anyways, we got ripped in our first match.. and our second.. and our third.... We ended up not winning a 6v6 game the entire season BUT we learnt how to play the game properly. Up against opponents much better than you, it forces you to learn how to play correctly rather than picking up bad habits against worse opponents.

If getting torn to shreads in a 5-0 blowouts makes you consider quitting your team then quit now, no sense putting time into this game. The next season, we returned and made playoffs in Open. That was a pretty big deal back then when there was no IM and only 8 teams in open playoffs. Made every night of rape well worth it.

http://play.esea.net/teams/25774?tab=league&period[type]=seasons&period[season_start]=85
All wins are FFW except one that was 6v5. Back then, teams died a lot faster.

nice story:)

That was a great story. Thanks for that! Very much appreciated.

play videogames at an open level

The thing is, you are not alone. A lot of the UGC teams you played last seasons will be moving over to open with you. In a sense open is like a paid ugc 6s.

lol killing

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDOhuNVbppw

--

I played a season of UGC and a season of reddit tf2 league prior to joining an open team for season13. If you're serious about improving, then playing in open is a good idea. My only advice is make sure that you like the people you're playing with. You're going to get destroyed by some teams, but what hurts even more is losing a close match. Yet, above it all, if you guys can target ares of your play that you need to work on, and and even have fun doing so, then you'll have an enjoyable season. Plus, as Marmaduke said, a lot of the top teams from last season were moved up to intermediate, and that's going to drastically open the playing field for newer and less experienced teams.

I've got another question, how long does a season run for?

The regular season is 8 weeks. There is then a 1 week break for playoffs followed by about a month of playoff matches.

Thank you for the quick reply.

Hi everyone, I'm also going to be on the new team, and I just wanted to say thank you so much for the support! All of you were really helpful and encouraging, particularly Killing. I'm nervous, but I'm not super concerned with our record. As long as we continue growing individually and as a team, this is going to be a great experience! Thanks a lot!

I started in UGC myself.

Here is my suggestion.

If you've got yourself 6 people who always show up and don't have bed times + don't get grounded regularly, don't have angry parents d/c their internet at 10 pm eastern, and are available several nights of the week; then your previous season of UGC *may* be enough. If not, you may be better off staying in UGC and trying to find 6 people that can show up regularly + you like + won't quit when things get tough in open + won't disappear randomly. Plus with so many teams in UGC atm you'll meet other folks as dedicated as yourself that you can team up with to better take on open if your current team isn't viable.

My team of newbs (only 1 of us had ESEA experience, and he was on a gateway PC that could barely run the game) won UGC plat, then made it into Open playoffs and went to IM. We eventually died in IM (my fault mostly lol), but still, UGC *can* be a good proving ground, especially if you scrim regularly + scrim open teams.

I'll share a little bit of my story. Right before our first season in open we were playing in ugc steel. Obviously thats not that high of a level, you wont be playing teams that are amazing there. We finished the season 6-10, that may not be a good record, a few were ffw wins. We had faced some of the hardest teams right out of the gate, 4 of which made playoffs. 2 of which took 2nd and 3rd. Losing to these teams is pretty demoralizing i know, many times i was just kind of tired of the season. This however prompted us to know weaknesses of our team and it gave us things to improve on. You get away with stupid shit in ugc. Something i will say is try to keep the same roster all season. That really made it hard for us to learn and really slowed our progression. It made us more worried about getting the newer player used to us then the team improving as a whole.

I'm about to start my 2nd season of open, so here are some tips I found really helpful:

1. Killing responding to something other than the title of a thread!?!?!?
2. Your first season of open can be scary, even if you are on a good team. However Killing, despite all the shit he gets, is really helpful and will make adjusting to ESEA much easier.
3. ESEA will make you improve faster than ANYTHING else in tf2. I went from being a steel HL player to mid platinum in one season of open. Use other practice like DM, MGE, Surfing, Jumping, etc along with LOTS of scrims and pugs. Scrims and pugs are especially key to improving as players and as a team.
4. Have a good time! Pub around with your team, play other games, whatever you want. Everyone have super positive and fun comms in games, it helps!
5. Believing in yourself and your team matters. #believe

btw this isnt league related really...but you're probably gonna hear a lot of people in open talk about dm. dm is not important in open if you're a smart player. playing smart is 100x easier than never missing. train your brain, not your aim :)

The sooner you jump into esea the better. Doing so will quickly make you aware of who is and isn't serious on your roster, and exactly how high (or low) your team's skill level actually is. Not to mention what your mentor already told you which is true; you will improve at an accelerated rate. Just be aware that this is because you will get your ass kicked. Make sure when you go into esea your expectations are to learn the previously stated and nothing more; don't you dare go into the seasons with record expectations.

Good luck, have fun, discover your team.

Keeping your team alive for more than a season also does wonders. :)

Don't run the client unless you have a match...

and check to make sure your client/account actually works at least a day in advance. Nothing worse than having to plan matches 5v6 because of client issues.