I am one of those people that have been playing TF2 since the first CEVO and even TWL, I really don't remember too many problems with them. The matches ran fine and so did paladin (minus the creepy goodbye .wav) Can someone that was around back then too, explain why it was so poor? What mainly happened was that CEVO and TWL, being free, was lackluster compared to ESEA so people stopped playing in it.

Yes, CEVO fell apart and dropped TF2 after people stopped really playing in that league, but how is that ANY different than what ESEA is saying that they are going to do if more people don't join this season?

I don't mind people playing both, but I do find it odd that no one is seeing the comparisons here. Also, please stop saying that the game will die. This game is almost 100% funded from the community that plays it. If some people decided that they have to leave if there is no LAN, it makes me feel they ONLY play for that reason and not for the enjoyment of the game itself.

TLDR
Play both leagues, have fun, and make your decision(s) off how this season pans out. I am personally going to play CEVO, since it's my only choice now.

I thought you quit cuz this community is caustic.

Why is ESEA starting to sound like the big banks of America? I guess some things are too big to fail.

There's definitely a problem here that I don't think has been addressed. Players and admins from both ESEA and CEVO are saying that players can play in both leagues (and some are encouraging it), but is this even realistic?

There were three hurdles to playing in both leagues before Killing's announcement earlier:

• players had to put down $40+ to play in both leagues. $15 for the CEVO league fee, $10 for the ESEA league fee, and ~$20 for premium during the season. That's just for playing in leagues and doesn't count costs for renting servers and other necessary items to have a chance at improving.
  
• the map schedule for ESEA and CEVO will not be coordinated. Teams in both leagues will likely have to practice two different maps a week. While teams in Europe do this, they have the benefit of one map being played the last week and the other carrying over into the next week. There's no such guarantee here.
  
• each league is having two matches a week. Teams aren't going to be able to do much else besides practicing for and playing their matches, and committing to this pretty much precludes a player from playing in another league like UGC Highlander, which would add another match and even more scrims to the schedule. In addition, the chance of having to play in a doubleheader (especially one that spans across leagues and doesn't share the same map) drastically increases.

Credit is due to Killing and ESEA for cutting the first of these obligations out by giving out Premium codes to ESEA Open teams. The average cost per player in a team drops about $9, which is a decent part of these costs. While it is a desperation move, ESEA is deepening its losses to do it, and that at least should be respected. As it is, the only thing they can try to aim for is breaking even - they're not magically going to start turning a profit.

The other two things are still issues, though. Lange said in the thread linked above that ESEA was not willing to work on sharing a map schedule with CEVO. That in itself is dividing players between leagues, and the ball is in ESEA's court now, with teams now signed up for CEVO but not ESEA. With the Season 16 map list all but finalized, and both league sharing all but one map, can ESEA look at working with CEVO to increase the overlap between schedules so that teams have to practice as few maps per week as possible? If ESEA was planning to do this unilaterally by matching CEVO's schedule as best they could, could they at least announce it so that teams can decide that they can play in both leagues?

Four matches a week seems like it will be less likely to change, since one league has to back down in order to reduce that number. ESEA isn't going to change theirs because they're the established league and have done two matches per week for a while, and CEVO has said they want to do two so that it will be a better value (even though running one per week would be about the same value as ESEA has running two per week) and because they want CEVO to have more competitive play. I understand both sides, but ultimately quite a few teams are not going to want to commit to playing four serious matches a week. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem like there's any way to easily solve this issue (a pipe dream would be to have leagues share matches, but I don't see that happening).

Just my observations on the issue. Good luck to both leagues. We're counting on both of you.

Thanks for the sarcasm.

All I was trying to point out was that I was back.

I left for multiple reasons, some of which I'd rather not say

the real nails in the coffin for TF2 are the league registration dates. CEVO will live for at least another season while the fate of ESEA is up in the air. if ESEA dies, CEVO will have already started and these high level teams that haven't registered for both leagues as an insurance plan will be forced to sit out for a season right? unless Lange&Co have a plan for that...

like many other players I'm not prepared to play 4 matches per week but if ESEA died I'd be willing to play CEVO.

If a sponsor can be cobbled together in time we can always run a one-off season for Invite teams only.

that's what i was going for thank you

I'm saying fuck you to the people only going for cevo because they're just mad at ESEA so they're killing the league. it hurts the community too you dingle berry.
so what if you feel that way, doesn't mean you're right does it? they probably enjoy the game, that's why they're playing it and to have a LAN let's them enjoy it more in other ways that you don't see apparently

So what you're saying is lets kill CEVO instead because you're mad at it and would rather support ESEA because that won't hurt the community because there aren't people that exist that would rather play this game for fun than give ESEA another dime?

#rationalarguement

no
im saying esea is better and necessary and you shouldn't kill it because you're mad.

That's not funny, that picture is disgusting.

I am not completely sure that you're unable to read an entire paragraph, or just unwilling, but that is not what I said at all. If you are able to read more than the last 2-3 lines of text, you would understand a lot more than what you do.

I can only assume that you drank the whole bottle of vodka in order to miss completely what I said. While I understand completely that it happens, maybe it's best you take a look at it tomorrow. I've had to do that a few times, just a few :P

lf3m for cs:go team, so far me and pharaoh-aka 1 deag master.

if you want tf2 to thrive you should play both leagues!!! ^____________^

yo if esea-tf2 dies hmu

i know people who blatantly cheated their way to a cevo-m 1st place finish and finished in the money in cevo-p in cs:s (: both leagues will have their issues. cevo is currently unproven as a "good" league, and no popular game has ever chosen cevo as their go-to league. they've dropped the ball just as many times as esea but people don't know about it because it's never been a publicized/popular league.

Yo also apparently in CS:GO and potentially TF2, valve does the same thing that the "malware" client does to check for VAC bannable offences.

I'm with you blink. I say give them a chance. See what happens.

you should have actually read the thread

Are ESEA giving away free Premium codes?

Are TF2 players who want the league to succeed offering to pay premium and league fees for team's and players?

I don't see people wanting ESEA to succeed really trying to offer any other argument than a "no ESEA competition dies" argument. It'll get worse but well, love of the game will bring most of you back, if you do truly love the game that is.

Yes to the first question. They're giving 2 3-month codes and 2 1-month codes to each team.

To the second, no. If they cared enough and could afford it, then they would have. guess this is a yes too

We still have a week until registration closes. ESEA should be fine.

your attitude is exactly why they dont give shit

hey guys i give a shit about a healthy community and i'm 2-28 in invite

no u dont

I'll pay league fees for 10 new open players (this being their first season of esea). Id rather just pay for 1-2 players per team but it's p much first come first served. Add me on steam. I'm not playing this season but I do not want to see esea die.

Looks like yes to both now.

It's not about the money for many of these teams, including mine, it's about giving CEVO a shot.

For better or worse, Open players have spoken with their wallets by not signing up their teams for ESEA and have chosen CEVO. Is it a wise choice?; We don't know, the season hasn't started yet.

But isn't that the point? The point of this CEVO experiment is that we ACTUALLY have a choice on what league to play in instead of just sticking ESEA year in and year out.

Before CEVO came back, we had two real choices in 6's: UGC and ESEA. That was pretty much it. UGC is a free league that is a great place to start, but the competition is minor. ESEA is a very competitive league where even Open can be a great challenge for even veteran teams that underestimate it, as seen in this last season's top teams having ex-invite players on the rosters.

So why can't CEVO be a middle ground? A place where the skill level is higher then UGC, but not quite up there with the upper echelons of ESEA? What's wrong with that?

What ESEA did was wrong, but I don't want them to die, but I also don't want this opportunity with CEVO to slip by the wayside so we actually have a choice where we play, and since I don't have the time to commit to playing in 3 different leagues (ESEA, my "for fun" steel team offclassing with friends, and my CEVO team playing my main) I'm going to choose something new, instead of the same old thing.

Then don't add me and stop typing useless walls of text. I'm not here to convince people to join esea, I'm here to offer my assistance to people who would like to join esea and cevo but cannot due to monetary concerns.

If you think CEVO is going to be the "middle ground" with only 2 divisions, you're in for a rude awakening.

I wasn't going to sign up for ESEA until I remembered before I went to the most recent ESEA LAN I told my dad I was going to go see the best TF2 players, and then he kept text messaging me at the venue asking when I was going to get to play. lol