When I started playing tf2, open wasn't the place to break into the "scene". Usually new teams and players would go through cevo, twl, or stacking lobbies before moving into ESEA to compete. If you're paying money for a league, then you have to face the challenges. I remember when I started playing and boogie was stacking open with LG and they destroyed teams. If you plan to start in a league that is pay to play then you're going to have difficulties. No matter what team you go up against you'll have to beat them at some point in your career to move up, and most of the top teams in open currently can't really compete with the top IM teams. It'd be more healthy for the league for there to be a couple top teams in open then a few and the top teams to get destroyed in IM.

we didn't want competitive tf2 to be competitive

owl you're saying this like they are a super team or something i mean like yes it is open but if I recall teamwork and chemistry over comes raw individual skill.

I understand your arguement but there is only so much teamwork and chemistry can do. For two fairly even DM teams, sure chemistry makes a huge difference, but compare open dm to invite dm and it doesnt play as big of a factor. And the other problem with it is when you factor in teams like the budsquad, they play together all the time and have great chemistry as a group so I doubt their in-game chemistry would be bad either

Its funny, a couple of invite teams stack open and people are okay with it.

An invite team sandbags in IM(Mad Men) and everyone has a problem with it.

It's because open is open

no team has ever dominated open to the extent that mad men dominated IM

it's pretty easy to tell which "invite teams" are just washed up old farts and which are actually sandbagging

Did any team of invite players dominate IM previously to the extent that Mad Men did in s13?

Because it hasn't happened yet doesn't mean it won't.

I might be wrong but i thought that one of the reasons Main exists in CS is so that recycled Invite players could start in IM/Main instead of Open? Or is that just wrong?

yup. new teams start in open unless they go straight to invite

the invite players in open are OFFCLASSING. when mad men played in im, they were not offclassing. high open teams will not have a problem with the invite player open teams.

What? are you telling me that players in Invite can only play offclasses at an open level??? Thats aside from their better gamesense and communication.

Also with the introduction of Main, the skill level of Open will go down as the better teams should be playing IM or Main. That makes the skill difference of between invite player open teams and regular open teams even larger.

The only way we can play in a different div at the moment is to hijack a dead team in a higher div. I don't think anyone on the team REALLY wants to play in Open. Hopefully ESEA will do something about it.

Edit: Wait.. can you sign up for Main/IM (not sure which is next up from Open)? If so I'll talk to WhiskerBiscuit about switching.

Although your team has some experience players on it, i still think offclassing a sniper for your roamer and having a dh pocket shouldn't go far even in open. No offense but, a good team should be able to work together to get over individual play that will come alot more from your team. Open teams shouldn't be worried, if you guys have some gamesense it shouldn't be difficult to beat a team with alot of offclasses.

It is my understanding at least in CS, that ALL new teams sign up for Open. Depending on the Player Level makeup of this new roster, the admins (in our case Killing) can leave your team in Open or move it to Main or Invite. IM is purely a move up after completing at least one season of open thing. Killing can correct me if I'm not understanding how they have done it in CS in the past with a Main Division.

i was talking with some guys about some of the seasons of the past like season 11 where there were so many good teams in open (new map thugs, ultimate killing machine, down to pound, srsly br0 aka r5 just to name a few) which happened to be my first full season of esea.

that season was interesting just because there were so many ex IM or ex Invite players with new rosters. the level of competition was high but not impossible, and teams went beyond just out DMing each other. i remember being determined -not frustrated- to try and make a good show against some of these teams. i dont remember a lot of people complaining about sandbagging, but every season after that got easier and easier as good players left open.

maybe now that level of competition will return and instead of seeing teams that won't push off of a 30% advantage or a single player that can out DM every team they play against we'll see some honest to god competition. MAYBE OPEN WILL BECOME INTERESTING AGAIN, HOLY SHIT.

To clear this up, as I'm not familiar with how cs does it, does it go open>main>im>invite or open>im>main>invite?

Open -> IM -> Main -> Invite

s11 was awesome for my first season. go 10-6 to barely make playoffs to getting shit on 5-0 by down to pound and 5-0 by chill to good lol

It's open>im>main>invite.

FUCKIN DAVEY GETTING BACKSTABBED ON LAST EVERY MAP UGH

BECAUSE THERE WEREN'T ENOUGH EX INVITES IN OPEN

http://play.esea.net/teams/77215

every new roster starts in open, ive heard what this teams roster will be and trust me it will end up in invite

Hm okay. That makes way more sense.

I played on the same team as hugh in that particular season - it really wasn't that bad. I never felt like we were just hopelessly crushed - and I know I learned a lot from playing against such teams.

Played against a pug team with those two on it last night, everyone was on their mains. It was Justin and Clockwork on scout, TLR and Blaze Soldiers, Xalox on demo, and Pure on med. If that's an actual team and it is anything but invite I will shed tears for the people to get torn up by it.

They did say it was just a pug team though. So take it with a grain of salt.

that may have been a pug team but those are the shreds of a team next season

it's only a "pug team" in that they want clockwork and blaze but by are by no means assured to get them

from what ive been told

Teams like that would just be moved into Invite. See: Laser Beams when they first debuted in S13.

Can we just wait and see who gets put in invite before complaining?

Because if that Pure/Justin/TLR/whoever team gets put in open, ESEA must all be smoking some dope shit

Yeah, that's completely my fault, I didn't realize new Invite teams are just in Open until moved up.