Go ESEA open!!

I wouldn't necessarily count on it. In the past 5 seasons, we've only extended twice. If you're waiting on the extension, you might be out of luck.

They'll both be in invite.

Fucking Duwatna, best demo in invite

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mdeo7Q2E5cE

10:42 AM - ♔Quindali: Killing in the Name #esea: there's no revenue
Killing in the Name #esea: esea loses money
♔Quindali: but if ESEA may drop tf2, then we should know soon before CEVO registration closes
♔Quindali: alright, so then is there a chance tf2 will not be a part of esea s16?
Killing in the Name #esea: if there's not enough open teams yes
Killing in the Name #esea: you can't expect us to run a season with2 teams in open

what a twist~

I think that if you truly enjoy TF2 and you'd like to see the competition stay at least where it is, you should opt to play in both leagues. Ignoring CEVO and playing in ESEA only at this point seems silly--why not help out the league that has made countless changes and brought on people like Lange to ensure smooth operation?

On the other hand, playing in CEVO only will do little more than ensure that the one league that has been here over the past 4 years will drop TF2. It seems ludicrous to put all our eggs in the proverbial CEVO basket this early. Play in both leagues. Give CEVO a few seasons' time to prove themselves and to get any extras (LAN, etc.) in place before you decide that's the one league for you. It'd be a shame to lose ESEA and then for CEVO to be unable to deliver.

Also, for those of you who really believe that LAN is unimportant and it doesn't matter if it disappears, consider the progression of a person who is brand new to competitive TF2 (and enjoy my 3 minute non-centered clip-art doodlegram!)

http://i.imgur.com/u2DJgpz.jpg

The point of that is just that once you're in the higher divisions and you get to meet your teammates and hang out at LAN, that becomes what you play for as much as anything else. Without LAN, TF2 won't die. Without LAN, many upper invite players will still be around. But many of them will leave, and, at least for a while, the upper-level competition of TF2 will suffer.

I started reading it at the top. I think I ruined the experience.

i skimmed that post and couldn't find the #cutyourwaytothetop part

It's under the arrows. Part of the invite illuminati experience.

I'm confused how this could be the case.
Prize pots are guaranteed by LAST season's revenue, correct?

If that's the case, you're looking at 50 teams currently signed up over 4 divisions. At $35 per person, that's a conservative estimate of $10,500 gross revenue for this season.

Now this might mean a smaller prize pot for s17, but there's no way tf2's overhead comes close to 10,5 for a season. For Tf2, ESEA employs Killing and Tri part time, and a portion of the client developer, and presumably a webmaster.

If I'm right, it kinda seems like a threat. "we will drop tf2"

because prize pots are announced ~halfway through the season, I assume they're determined by the current season's registration

torbull/killing/other esea people have said that esea doesn't make money off of tf2 for a while now

http://teamfortress.tv/forum/thread/15339-esea-season-starting-soon-lets-talk/4#post-99

this is kind of what I'm talking about when it comes to transparency. I can recall a few times where we have all heard this song and dance before, and every time it breeds a sense of uncertainty that you'll be able to get everyone paid up and your starters transferred to the roster. I wish the messages that were being conveyed to the community were more direct and forthcoming.

Are you going to extend the registration or not? If ESEA doesn't get the desired amount of open teams by the end of the registration period (roughly 11 days from now) will they extend the registration date or just drop the game? I know you probably can't answer these questions directly and have little influence on what actually happens if there aren't enough teams, so its not really fair to ask them of you. Which makes it even more funny that Quindali keeps posting chat logs with you as if it means anything.

EDIT: I just want to make it clear that I would like to keep playing in ESEA and i recognize the plight that season 16 is in right now. But panicking and shitposting isn't going to make more open teams join faster.

Essentially what Smaka's doodlegram illustrates, is that its in the interest of a lower level player to only play cevo because then there would be less competition at the top to get in their way, once they get there. Which fundamentally means that those at the bottom will receive more e-pussy, glory, and memes once they ascend.

Was this the season that the prize pot was doubled because of the Bitcoin incident?
I would expect ESEA to take a loss across the board that season in order to save face.

Also; don't forget that they have ancillary revenue streams through ads, product partnering, etc.

However, it does seem like they make less profit than I expected, as with these numbers. It seems strange that their biggest expense (prize pot) is misaligned with their biggest income (open).

I hope to God you're not serious...

the tf2 prize pot was never influenced by the bitcoin stuff

this is a complaint that's been brought up over and over again but it's a fundamental consequence of a tiered league system

you can't simultaneously incentivize high level play (climbing a league/ladder) while proportioning the prize purse such that the largest paying group receives the largest portion of the money

Except for the fact that Open, IM, and probably half of Main would be put into CEVO's open division.

Just wondering, what happens if someone is paid up for TF2 and then ESEA drops it? Do they get a refund for the league fee?

i think worst case scenario everything gets reduced to open before a game gets dropped

im not sure exactly how source went out

Real talk.
Infinite's dick is huge because of the low level of registration for ESEA. Like, he thinks he's reasonably intelligent, and that weapon bans aren't the saving grace of this god awfully imbalanced game.

REGISTER.
If you support no wrangler. Register. If you support anything remotely balanced in any manner, you should at least give it a run.

It's not like you REALLY lose anything playing in open. You get experience, the honor of being good enough to shit on most things, and you get to use "high open" for your dm and shit if you do even remotely well. That'll impress the shit out of the girl gamer medics and pyros you run into in pubs.

You don't want to spend Steak and a Blowjob Day alone at home WITHOUT an internet girlfriend, do you?

please please please dont forget how badly cevo has dropped the ball in the past. this is a grass is greener scenario folks. both leagues will have fucked up retarded shit that you hate about them, but at least with esea we have lan, amongst other things.

Absolutely. I'm not suggesting open should have a bigger prize pot than invite.
I'm saying... if they're taking a loss, why such a big prize pot at all?

They could easily weather an off season by paying less out.
I understand that this has been talked to death - and I think that LAN is certainly vital to the competitiveness of the league. But the prize pots? That's the icing, not the cake.

Olympic athletes win money, but that's never why people aspire for the gold.

To clarify, my team had also planned on playing in ESEA for S16-- I paid league fees for 3 people on my roster already. But given the current crisis with open (still only 4 total teams, one of which has said they're only doing CEVO) it is also important to realize that there is a real possibility of ESEA dropping TF2 which means that leaders need to be aware and decide what to do accordingly. The purpose of my chat log with Killing was to give weight and to quickly summarize what's wrong.

My take on the situation: upper level teams wanted to stay in ESEA, new open teams were more attracted to CEVO. Since CEVO registration closes on Monday, I wanted to inform as many leaders/players of the situation as possible so they could talk to their team and decide what to do. I didn't give any advice whether it be "you should go register in CEVO now" or "ESEA'll probably be fine". That being said, 11 new teams (5 of them IM+ including Exertus eSports) have created rosters on CEVO in less than 2 days.

I wish that too. My experience with competitive tf2 across all leagues is that a majority of players are apathetic to most things until one person highlights it on a tf.tv thread. Beyond that, just simple things like announcements, updates, and controversial Q/As are ALL centralized around threads that get filled with pages of spam and eventually get lost somewhere on tf.tv. Why? As an establishment, leagues should try to guarantee that as many people know what's going on as possible, not just those who go on forums and then spread it by word of mouth.

I loved ESEA-- definitely a lot of rough edges but at its core, it was the place for competitive tf2. But after a season plagued with client problems and delays maybe give something new a chance. CEVO's mentality of "by the community, for the community" will help to remove a lot of these 'transparency' problems we've all experienced with ESEA and as a new volunteer staff, it's my goal to move even beyond that and get to a point where players get involved and excited about what's happening in their league.

Bottom line: It's up to teams to decide. If upper division teams in ESEA wait it out and TF2 is dropped, those teams won't be playing in this spring season. Since CEVO reg closes on Monday (ESEA's official decision won't be known by then), teams have to figure out if they're gonna risk it and wait it out in ESEA or play in CEVO. While there's no way it can be as well-structured this first season with only 2 div's, more teams registering now will only guarantee a stronger league in S5. The choice is yours, all I want to do is make sure people make well-informed ones.

It's more likely they'll just drop Main as a division, lump all the ex-main and high-IM players into IM, and move everybody else down to Open. Dunno if they'll necessarily "die", you're writing as though they're already done for when there's still 50 teams floating around. Granted there were literally 50 teams in open last season but many of them died halfway through. However I do agree with you that the insane lack of showing this season is going to greatly discourage further teams from signing up, which is why I feel they'll just drop Main as previously stated. Also to your "For the community by the community thing", I do want to remind everyone that tri is now an ESEA admin, and in fact there are a lot of reasons to want to play in ESEA this season (as opposed to last one). Invite is shaping up to be tremendously fun to watch, and there are strong IM and Main teams in contention; only thing missing is the player base. I highly doubt ESEA has the smarts to fill open this season without dropping Main and while competing with CEVO. I think they just have to ride this one out until the waves of disappointed CEVO teams come crawling back lol.

someone else had made that point too, but (from another thread)--

just a heads up
if cevo is looking to make a 16team main then there's technically 1 team paid up for open with 3 days left (17teams total)

as much as you guys are panicking that ESEA has a small amount of open teams, so does CEVO currently. teams need to sign up for whatever league they want to play in pretty soon

I've looked through literally every roster on CEVO. If you count teams that have at least 1 person paid on the roster, there are 35 (last i counted) teams in CEVO in addition to the currently ready 17 teams for a total of 52 teams. this isn't even including rosters which have 6+ people who i know are definitely planning on playing. so 52 teams with committed payments

note: cevo reg closes at 11:59pm CST on Monday, Feb 17 which means 4 remaining days to register

edit: we've updated our policy! if you have an existing roster by Monday, Feb 17 then you will be given a few extra days to add players and get 6 people paid. if you're not set to "ready" in time you may not be scheduled for week 1 match 1, but you'll be able to compete in S4.