http://teamfortress.tv/thread/20084/how-is-cevo-doing/?page=1

sums up a lot of it

CEVO needs to stop getting its server from gameservers.com. They used to be fine long ago but at some point they started slapping on tons of extra ping for some reason and for almost everyone. Chicago feels like Dallas, Dallas feels like California (I'm in Ohio). Even if they're giving CEVO a really great deal it's still going to end up hurting the league because the servers are complete turds.

Paladin never worked. This was probably a result of the CEVO website being slow and unresponsive on match nights. Every match we had to get admin approval (though I'm not even sure if we even bothered to get admin approval...) to play the match on our own server because nothing was working. My team used ringers and were never held accountable for it. Everything CEVO-P -- excluding lan -- was a joke, really. A lack of professionalism and accountability by admins really takes the wind out of your sails if you want to play seriously. I hope a league where you PAY to play can get its shit together this season.

Like why don't they take the cs:go client, add tf2 match servers into the client as an option to connect to? It shouldn't be much harder than adding the servers and designating them as TF2. Server configs shouldn't be that hard to run too.

Does cevo tell each team who they're going to play against at the start of the season? Because I was going to say why not have it pick the next team to play based on your previous match results, like ugc does.

I've been leading a team that was in CEVO for the past two seasons and ESEA last season.

I can't think of one time where we actually played all of our matches on the week they were supposed to be played. Combine the usual lethargy of teams and their leaders with reschedules from FFW's and commitments to ESEA/HL (if you're unfortunate enough to have people who play HL on your team), and pretty soon everything just turns to shit. You're trying to make up three matches with other teams who have the same burden, and contacting those leaders whose teams died anyway is just unnecessary and a waste of time. Our team was also removed due to having three FFLs on our record, which overall made the experience not only incredibly irritating, but also pointless in the end. I think that rule needs to go.

As for the issues not regarding scheduling, there's a lot to work on. The website needs some new design and a better format: it just looks old and unpolished, and is cumbersome to navigate through. CEVO servers are a joke. I have a university internet connection where I get 5 ping to pretty much any server in the Midwest. On a CEVO server I never got below 60. Doesn't sound that bad at first, but in context, it's a huge difference. My other teammates in Cali/Nebraska usually got around 120. Paladin as a client is just awkward to use and most teams, mine included, usually preferred to just play on one of our servers, and if they had a ringer, no one batted an eye.

The worst thing about CEVO though is the competition. It seems like CEVO-O is a combination of skills ranging from UGC steel to invite all in one division. My team last season was high open in ESEA. We weren't bad, but it's not like we were incredible either. We plowed through every single match that didn't have an IM player or ex/current Invite players and probably would have been top 4 if we didn't get removed. If I was the leader of a newer team that was trying to get out of UGC and into a paid league like CEVO, I honestly wouldn't think it would be worth my money. I'm sure CEVO-P is even more of a joke for those teams; I'm pretty sure I heard the term "paid scrims" being tossed around. I realize that CEVO is hurting for teams to sign up, but after the last two seasons being moderated so poorly, and with zero coverage on any matches that weren't Mixup vs Froyo, I can only assume it'll be worse this season until you are able to provide better services at a better price than ESEA can.

I really want to see CEVO succeed because I had a lot of faith in a new league bringing more teams and players into the game. I hope you guys figure a way out of this hole that CEVO is sinking deeper and deeper into. Otherwise, it'll just die again and we'll be back to where we were a year ago.