Going to be interesting to see how ping plays out for the first time since season 5. I still remember coL dominating the scene for 3-4 seasons straight while having three players living in Dallas with 5 ms. I feel bad for blaze&dummy.

It's not really surprising to me though, if open players have no interest in improving and reaching the higher levels and consider the large ESEA prize pools out of their reach - then why play in it? Go play in CEVO and enjoy the lower fees. Just don't be acting like it's somehow consequence free, or its somehow for the "growth of the game". You're choosing to ditch the league that gave NA TF2's its first equal playing field. If the community at large is no longer interested in supporting high level play, then so be it.

However, I'm pretty worried about a community that is choosing to withdraw its support for high level play while simultaneously directly competing against the 10x more popular casual format + league (Highlander, and UGC). I'm not sure if CEVO will be able to hold up against UGC in the long term. Personally, I think I would rather play Highlander.

I still can't believe people give this much of a shit about a cartoony Quake mod.

Sure, it's great fun, but it's just a video game guys, seriously.

Open teams aren't working towards a LAN, they're working towards doing well in open and learning how to play the game. So many of you think that this game will "die" without LAN/invite/ESEA yet look at how many brand new names are signing up and paying to play in CEVO this season. Don't play competitive if you don't care about supporting LAN? Are we really that selfish? If anything, higher level players should be trying to foster the growth of the bottom end to ensure that the game won't die. why is it our expectation to have the brand new, largest percent of people support the experienced, seasoned top 5%? Your stance basically says that 50 open teams should sign up so that 24 people can go to Texas for a weekend. As prestigious and exciting as LAN is, try thinking of the others.

TF2 is not dead. And it won't die, as long as we facilitate good competition and experience for new open players. By this community's logic we should give all our resources to senior citizens because they've lived life and deserve it, rather than improving the lives of young kids who have their whole life (tf2 career) ahead of them.

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People freaking out and running to CEVO for no reason. People fuck up sometimes, it's fixable though. It's not the end-all. It doesn't change the fact that ESEA is still our best league and to let it die is dumb and going to really hurt the community. Stop believing in pipe dreams thinking the same top players will be around in 3 seasons hoping cevo turns into esea. ESEA is already here lets focus on ESEA improving. It IS ESEA's fault that this backlash happened but after 15 seasons I think we should give them an opportunity to rid their client of malware and continue providing top level competition. Which they've been doing. Killing has to deal with so much shit if we worked with him instead of against him, things can always get better.

http://strawpoll.me/1163303

trading killed tf2

Humans have had competitive tendencies for far longer than the existence of ESEA LAN. Stop spreading FUD.

Seriously, inviters don't give a shit about a "healtyh community," they care about the financial playerbase that keeps the lan circlejerk going.

If they only cared about the money why are they playing a game where winning first place lan barely covers the amount you spent to get there

get your head out of your ass, every post on this thread coming from you is regurgitated shit

How are you so fucking dumb?

So what you're saying is that these sweaty autists simply need to man up and get a real job?

My sentiments exactly.

I can tell you, as a forever-open-out-of-playoffs player, who has attended 3 ESEA LANs as a spectator, this is completely untrue. Make your own judgments after you've actually met them and talked with them.

I didn't say it's about the money; it's about the lan.

Take the community's dick out of your mouth, please. It makes you look retarded.

if esea does survive and has a lan this season I expect to see 2-3 LAN funding threads rip sponsors

what a bad thread...

Blink is this your attempt to join mixup? Limiting esea's transgressions to justthe malware client is laughable.

What area of your ass are you pulling this out of?

yay cevo!

i realize the way to grow the tf2 community is to encourage new players to play comp, and to create a welcoming environment for them to do so, but ugc has already been doing this for years. while cevo is a great league with very involved community leaders behind it, if trying to cater to a similar demographic as ugc will hurt the league that has been providing for the peak competitive players and encouraging the most growth in the skill of their players, i can't see how that can help the community.

I don't want to see competitive tf2 die, if that's what would happen, but it's not any of the players fault for not wanting to play in ESEA. ESEA has been a running a shady business with shady employees for a long time, which goes way past before the bitcoin scandal even happened. I don't think its fair to blame players for not wanting to support ESEA, who have been digging their own grave for a long time.

I guess it doesn't really matter because I don't play competitive tf2 either way, but I hope that it sticks around for a while.

You all need to calm down. The scare tactics about tf2 dying doesnt work on open players and only goes to stroke the ego of the players that think that they are above playing seriously in a league such as CEVO.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zsFdOWKF24M

I'm really very confused. ESEA themselves seems to be fueling speculation that their TF2 league will die or at least their admins aren't making any effort to provide assurances to the contrary.

If Cevo didn't exist would the small number of teams currently signed up in open be cause for any concern? Aren't there usually this few teams until much closer to the deadline?

I realize that ESEA has threatened to drop TF2 in the past and maybe it even worked, but at a time when many people are already leaving for another league what can this tactic do but accelerate the exodus?

I admit that I have serious doubts about Cevo, but if it is between playing in Cevo and not playing in a dead league the choice is pretty obvious (at least for non-invite players I guess).

Can we get some kind of OFFICIAL statement from the admins, because if everyone thinks ESEA TF2 is dead then it is.

whats the point of playing comp tf2 if there is no high level comp tf2

people don't try to win open to win open. they try to win it so they can make it to invite.

I don't mean to take the wind of your sails but that is not a conservative estimate, that is a hopeful estimate. A conservative estimate would be the worst case scenario. That said I wish you the best of luck and hopefully you guys can do something big over the long term.

i posted that to show how many times cevo has failed, not which league is most popular

is cevo free? i never read the results of that thread.