I actually thought the server my team was on for our first match was amazing. I had all kinds of problems with Illinois servers last season but in the first match at least I was pinging 8-15 for the entire match and had no stutters. Remains to be seen if that will continue, though.

It felt like the server kept coming inches away from crashing itself during the middle of my match last night. It would freeze for 2-3 seconds at a time, and then warp everyone around.

Edit: it was a Texas server, but I don't recall the number.

we were on texas 161 last night and it felt really choppy, especially during the beginning of the rounds. this isnt the first time we've had problems with this particular server. i know theres a few other texas servers that are notorious for being bad, not sure if they are consistently shitty.

This is a good way to explain it... it's how our servers felt every few minutes

Our match yesterday had a few huge hiccups where everyone on the map wouldn't be able to move for a second, but besides that there was no consistent choppiness. Shutter doors seem to always be a problem on ESEA servers and I don't know why, they take 30 years to open.

okay, sure, but problems happen and they get fixed. i could understand better if these problems were more similar to the bitcoin ordeal.

Not really. It's the same problems season after season. Not that I'm in the boycott ESEA camp, just wish they could actually fix things.

It doesn't excuse ESEA from repeating problems. We're paying actual money for these servers. I can pay not much more to get a better server from something like NFO (and I do).

Just play 1.6 pugs until they fix the STVs. The CS players will be petitioning even harder than the TF2 players in no time.

Obligatory

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/20961143/Pics/xehMXTR.jpg

lol no

Don't apologize, we all know it's Killing's fault.

Let's still acknowledge the fact that we maintained ~700 viewers even with an unwatchable stream that still ended up being a great match overall.

cl_interp 5 helps the crappy hltv look better :)

Are the casters using the same STV that is being handed out on the esea page? Shouldn't they be on a separate STV proxy to avoid it being DDOS'd or being overloaded? I know esea and possibly insomia LANs have done it before I'm just wondering if its still the case.
To illustrate from the valve dev page on sourcetv

Here is what It looks like it is now:

http://i.imgur.com/eUNYJsL.jpg

How we do it to avoid problems:

http://i.imgur.com/dgluLUN.jpg

That way even if the public STV has problems you still have the cast and the huge twitch.tv network to back it up. Excuse me if i'm completely wrong about this I just want a smooth cast :(

Do you think this is worth a try then? It seems like it would solve alot of stv problems and wouldn't be hard to start up during those big casts. I don't see why we aren't doing this.

because none of this is under our control

It wasn't directed toward you, sorry.

killing killing tf2?

We've known this forever.

Serious: If it's possible to work out a private STV for matches being casted, that would be great, but it's really not beneficial to ESEA directly.

Nor is it harmful.
TF.TV is the hub for North American (and european, to an extent) tf2. If more people see a quality cast, they get more business. It's basically free advertising for them.

If this fixes the problem, it's so beneficial to them for the cost it requires its ridiculous.(one extra server being used during cast times)

More viewers= more people interested in comp tf2=more teams=more $.
We have seen viewer count drop directly related to stv problems. It's embarrassing that we've had whole seasons with problems with the stv that they've been trying to fix and nothing to show for it. This can't be this easy to fix.

there already is a private + passworded STV for every esea match server

the problem is no one will give us the password

i bugged kalkin/killing about it before so go pressure them

I've played 2 matches on Illinois 16 so far, and both times I've had 120 ping with ~20 choke, and constant stuttering from everyone in the server(at least from my pov)

I mean I play scout so I'm okay with it but still, if I were solly or demo i'd be livid.

whaaaaaaaaaaat

come on KK, stop killing tf2

I still don't understand why people even pay for esea. Are people still so caught up in the #esports aspects of competitive games that they're willing to shell out money for STV relays spammed with ads and subpar temporary servers? (I guess if your team really doesn't want to pay for a server, but then why not use those ESEA fee's to pool up money for your own server?) I mean the stats at this point can be replaced with whatever system sizzling stats uses, or even tf2logs. I guess the main reason is just the prize pot, but I dunno, I've never won anything in the seasons I've played and even if you do it's not nearly worth it for the effort/hours you're putting into the game. Just play for fun eh? The hard part would be someone setting up a server and managing a league, but it's still very possible, with current alternatives already available like that new ladder system.

esea bs has been going on as long as the league has been around (for tf2), maybe the community needs to figure out that it needs to move on and quit being swindled? I mean the whole bitcoin debacle should've been a nice "wake the fuck up" moment, but it got glossed over pretty quickly.

That being said, I was looking forward to watching that invite match but the stuttering STV was a joke, and even if it did attract viewers there was nothing worth watching on the stream itself, as the action was so segmented and unwatchable.

ESEA is a joke, but it's formed its own little cult. I'll admit, I'm still ESEA prem, but I hate the dumbasses who run the thing.

Bolwind, as soon as you're willing to set up a league with a substantial prize pool, multiple LANs each year with computers provided by sponsors (willing to do it without ads because apparently ads in STV are a big deal to you), paid admins, an anti-cheat client, and a website with functionality on par with ESEA's, and have everything running perfectly all the time, please let us know and I'm sure people would be willing to look into switching over from ESEA.

Ya let us know when it's all set up! :)

"once again hundreds are held hostage to a shitty league because of the lan dreams of 24"

Substantial prize pool goes back to what I was mentioning about games being played mainly for fun, not profit. The whole LAN thing is the one thing ESEA def has a big advantage with, but in general FPS games are pretty dead at the moment and don't get many LAN's. There's no way a small league would be able to cover the costs realistically. I don't see why anti-cheat is required as it's mostly a waste of time for everyone involved, would rather just have suspicious players pointed out as it's pretty hard to completely conceal a wallhack/aimbot. Without a prize pool however people have no real reason to hack other than for giggles. The ads aren't a big deal, I just think it's hilarious that the STV is totally broken but are still willing to offer that 15% off gunnar optiks coupon in chat. Remember when stv was just a huge group of people spamming chat? Why do the admins need to be paid? I'm sure there's people willing to volunteer who actually care about the game in the first place. That being said if the league ended up succesful I don't see why they couldn't get paid, but in infancy obv it wouldn't be. A website with esea functionality would take a bit of time but really isn't anything that would take a titanic amount of work. Also I'm pretty sure the main reason people don't like ESEA is because of the fact it has never worked perfectly, or even up to par for what you're paying.

I mean really it's not that big of a deal to me personally as I've had a lot more fun in small community organized cups in bad games than I ever had competing in ESEA, but I can see why you'd think that ESEA is your best option atm.