#154- You and multiple other people are missing the point of why the higher level players are arguing for a league LAN. It's not for a "vacay." Without any competitive goal of "competing at LAN," players like shrugger and squid would never have even bothered getting as good as they are, which means that the game would stagnate. The entirety of ETF2L started trying only after they got their asses kicked by NA teams at... LAN.

If CEVO was smart they would already be putting out feelers to large NA LANs. If they came forward with placing at a big LAN the only reason to stay with ESEA would be "it's the devil we know."

$

Not as high as that one thread about fat shaming though.

That's a fair point, it's true that the goal for a lot of players is to make LAN. However, I know that there are a lot of players that just enjoy playing this game because it's fun. There are also players that play this game to be the best... not to win LAN necessarily, but to win a grand finals and be the best. So sure, there will be players that quit the game or stick with ESEA because they have the determination to make it to LAN, but that's not going to be everyone (and I'd argue it would be a somewhat small population relative to the whole comp community).

As for the euros kicking it into gear after getting destroyed at i46, you are absolutely right that they raised their game because they lost to NA at a huge LAN. I'd argue that the same result would've happened regardless if they had lost that badly to NA at ANY grand finals (online or LAN) except for the fact there would be no fair way to have NA play EU online. But if you're telling me that those top EU teams (epsilon, TCM, etc) wouldn't have had the same determination to get better if they had had their asses handed to them by some new up-and-coming team at a huge ONLINE grand final, I'd disagree with you. The only reason that the LAN aspect really mattered was because it was the only way for the EU vs. NA showdown to truly happen. But had it been some unknown EU team that had kicked epsilon's ass in an online grand finals, it would've probably had a similar result.

I don't want you to read my posts as "LANs are pointless and unnecessary and we shouldn't bother with them in comp TF2" because that's not really how I feel. I think a LAN atmosphere is the ideal way to host grand finals. However I don't think it should be a priority. I'd rather get established in a new, well-run league using only online grand finals, with the goal of transitioning into LAN grand finals after the solid foundation has been built. I'd much rather do that then play in a shitty league like ESEA purely because of LAN.

I can't believe there is even debate here. ESEA installed malware/spyware on people's computers. How can you even consider them an option? What is your "competitive community" worth if you are simply being milked for money from ESEA? (both through league fees and recently Bitcoins) ESEA only benefits the LAN players, thats why you will see them advocate for ESEA until whats left of the TF2 competitive scene dies.

These people should be in jail and fined; instead you all feel its reasonable to keep paying them money.

lol

People are scared of the TF2 community fracturing and it is sad seeing them hang on to ESEA because of that. Think about it long term. Even if tons of teams go in two or three directions we will all drift over to where the competition and community pride ends up. This next season is already going to be janky. CEVO, UGC, ESEA, ETF2LNA? Don't worry about it. Play with your friends, enjoy the game, try out the competition in other leagues, and see where we end up.

And THERE ARE OTHER LAN EVENTS. i49 was not a league lan. Just because we didn't win doesn't mean it's not the most awesome thing to happen in TF2 so far. It grew naturally out of the TF2 community recognizing a good event and wanting to be there. We are not going to have an i49 of our own in NA next season but lets start working on it instead of feeding money into a company whose co-owner comes on to these forums and posts "lol" in a thread full of our grievances.

Why do people keep saying that tf2 players are holding on to esea to avoid fracturing the tf2 community? The only reason people are holding on to esea is because the quality of competitive play is going to be better using esea. If any other league would allow for an identical competitive experience then im sure most people would be on board for a switch, but it just isn't going to happen.

I don't play because I want to eventually make it to LAN. I play so I have an excuse for playing so much MGE.

It won't happen unless we give a league support. Leagues with benefits better than ESEA's don't just appear.

"Why do people keep saying that tf2 players are holding on to the bitcoin miners to avoid fracturing the tf2 community? The only reason people are holding on to the malware distributors is because the quality of competitive play is going to be better using broken anticheat clients. If any other league would allow for an identical competitive experience then im sure most people would be on board for a switch, but it just isn't going to happen."

The ability to interchange those terms makes your last sentence null and void.

http://teamfortress.tv/forum/thread/14006-meatshot-8-vol-5/11#post-229503

blah blah you have reasons to be upset with esea. The client isnt a reason. The bitcoins isnt a reason.

please find me a single person in this community, besides myself, who was actually mined.

1 invite team dead in csgo
1 main team dead in csgo
3-4 im teams dead in csgo
that was the last ban wave. Client works. Most of these bans probs come from the kernel level detection.

Just remember guys, yurop is our true rival.

people would of been effected from the bitcoins if the tf2 community actually used the client for pugs
esea saved our computers from esea by making a shitty pugging system
thanks esea

Probably too many of these going around right now, but it might be helpful:
http://strawpoll.me/763037

Just because they didn't mine you, doesn't mean they couldn't if they wanted to. I guess you're the type of person who runs a virus scan and leaves 30 detected Trojans and other spyware on his computer because his computer is still working fine.

Cheats in csgo and tf2 are different. Why put more money into catching cheats on tf2 if it is making them less money? They have proven time and time again they hold the csgo at a different level than tf2. More coverage and much more interaction from administration.

Just wanted to make you knew that you're in a Team Fortress 2 forum and not CS-GO

the client doesn't catch anyone cheating in tf2 because nobody is cheating

it's more likely people would cheat outside of esea because outside of esea you don't have kernelmode anticheat aka the evil viruses everyone's whining about and cheats that even attempt to go that deep do not exist in tf2 afik

My 'nerd essay' seems like I'm upset, but I'm not filled with rage or anything. I'm just bringing up what we can make out about ESEA's insidious agenda and making clear that we don't know what else they have in mind for future plans. Those plans could potentially involve more tactics that manipulate their userbase without the user's consent, why would I trust this company after this ordeal? It would be a different story if there was an option to voluntarily use my computer to mine bitcoins, as I believe Lange said once before. But the fact they want to hide everything and continuously lie to their customers tells me that the company probably doesn't have any ethical business plans for the future and I don't think staying with them will be the right thing to do. Switching leagues won't kill our game, we just name our premier league to something else, sign-up and be done with it.

can confirm immunity only ever tried at i49, and the dozens of other titles they have won are not indicative to the contrary.

Grow up people. Do you idiots really think that a LAN is the reason people try? ETF2L and ozfortress have been around since TF2s inception (longer in ozf's case), and they have never once had a LAN. Do you really think that they automatically didn't put effort in because there wasn't a big spectacle at the end? Do you really think that teams that have gotten to the top of these communities, and STAYED at the top, did so because no one else tried to get as good as them? Are you really all that dense?

do you really think you have a case to present when you have one team that's remotely good

this is terrible logic. just because it may not have happened to us does not mean that is suddenly right or okay. the fact is that it was able to do that, and thats the bottom line.

that guy who shot my neighbor in the face didn't shoot me, so i'm not upset.

i haven't read much of anything relating to ESEA too closely, just glancing through these threads. has there been any actual evidence of what the anticheat is doing with your files?

When you goto your steam library and click the "Find Games on my PC" (or whatever it's called, where it lists non-steam games/applications on your PC) you could say the exact same thing. steam is accessing nearly every file on your PC because that's just how searches work (kind of how a anticheat would look for known hacks on your pc?). it's going to access all of your files getting information from it (name, checksum, ect) and comparing it to what they're looking for from their database. in the case of a antivirus or even anticheat, if it detects something malicious it will likely upload a copy of it to their system so they can further investigate.

unless there's evidence of esea doing anything malicious with the files, they aren't any worse than steam/literally any antivirus or program that looks for files on your PC in nearly any way as far as I am concerned. i'm not trying to say the bitmining was acceptable, it clearly isn't but it's been dealt with already.

this is basically a rerun of the whole Origin shenanigans from a while ago (which was proven to be completely harmless). if i'm wrong with any of this please tell me, i'd like to not spout false knowledge in the future :)

edit: a quick example of how the search could work
http://pastebin.com/Z0aycwGD (pastebin'd because these forums don't keep the formatting)

edit2: I also guarantee that CEVO's anticheat (do they have one?) will do exactly this. you can't say "Hey guys, I want a anticheat that doesn't search my files or processes! Thanks!"

All we have from CEVO is a bunch of promises on an online forum. Yes! We will get a LAN, or attach to a current local LAN! Or something! Prize pot? Let's charge $5 bucks! Yeah, we will get you dough!

That's a lot of blowing smoke and very little action. Everyone claims that we will manage to attract skill to CEVO, and yet invite player after invite player has made it clear they do not want to play in a reformed CEVO. My question is why, if CEVO had dreams of all this, why the fuck have they not tried to attach themselves to a local LAN before this season? Offer a paid league? They reformed what, a year ago (?) and have been slowly chugging along on their same path of free leagues and low participation ever since then. Now, suddenly the TF2 community has tossed a money bag into their lap, and they are biting. As pine-beetle has said, this is an untapped moneybag for them.

Yeah, ESEA sucks. Tell me what the fuck has changed? Also, tell me how CEVO will be any different? We never were in ESEA because we thought they were a lovely bunch of people, we always stuck with them because they offered us more then the other options. A LAN is a great way to increase our profile and grow the game, something that should not be thrown away easily. Having a CONSISTENT prize pot also gives new players something to dream of.

listen, MvM is fun.

just saying.

There is a huge difference between an anti-cheat program skimming through local files on your computer with permission to copy, edit, and upload, than doing what a proper anti-cheat does which is check to see if there is unauthorized code hooking into your game (simplified). We don't fully know what the ESEA drivers have installed on our computers. All computers running the ESEA driver could be on a botnet for all we know.

Regardless, when you install Steam you have acknowledged that Steam needs to install files on your computer because...well thats what a content distributor does. However, when ESEA secretly reserves the right to edit local files on your computer without clearly informing the user (through means other than the EULA), then that is very poor business practice to say the very least.

Finally, I don't know who wrote your code but that looks nothing like a anti-cheat program. Is that real or did you write that?

(And this doesn't even begin to address the fact that ESEA's admins knowingly mined bitcoins on their customer's computers)

Its beyond me why anyone would still consider ESEA as an option. The dream is dead kids, TF2 will never be a big name "eSport". ESEA has proven time after time that they dont really care about the 'small revenue pool' that we are a part of. LAN has been a joke for how many seasons now? If the invite community demands LAN finals Im sure we could pool the money together we spend on flights to host an event or become a part of a an event thats more practical for everyone. I also dont see the issue with having finals online. Fuck ESEA, let's stand up for ourselves and fucking move on to something that will show a little more support for the game that everyone claims to be so passionate about.

For the record, I don't think Torbull knew. He still seems like someone who cares about keeping his customers.

I have a lot more written but I think this does the job.

I don't want the community to be attached to an abusive, careless, virus injecting, half working, outdated life support system which we barely get use out of and wasn't even designed for us just because the community is afraid it might die or have a shitty couple experience for a couple of months.

On a personal level, there is a reason I skipped this season of ESEA (me being shit at the game aside) and will continue not using ESEA in any capacity until changes are made. ESEA detracted more to my competitive TF2 experience/fun than it added. So if the move to CEVO helps TF2 in the long run and make it fun again, awesome. If the move fails than that leaves me (note the word me) in the same place than if we continue with ESEA, me not caring about competitive TF2 anymore.

The arguments that Invite players are making about the levelling nature of a LAN finals mean nothing to 99% of ESEA players who are sick of paying for restricted servers, an outdated website, and a poor quality client that wastes their time by crashing their game for days on end.