This shit makes utterly no sense to me. Why should people have to pay league fees before the registration deadline ends? A lot of people don't even know what division they're gonna end up in, they would even have to pay twice.

Even aside from how short the offseason has been, thanks entirely to how strangely long the gap between the rest of the season and invite LAN was, teams are still being changed constantly. A team not being paid up yet is not a sign of a team not playing. Especially if you're expecting teams to literally have 6 players readied up by now.

make lan pay per view

WE PAID UP BOYS.

I think you are taking this the wrong way. I prefered to issue a "warning" (if you can say so) to the community about the registration happening right now. Similar to what we have done in both CS 1.6 and CS:S for S13 -> http://play.esea.net/index.php?s=news&d=comments&id=12094. I think it's fair and wouldn't have been nice to say anything like that after registration period ended and give 0 chance to the community to know what was going on.

See #64

it doesn't really inspire confidence when you post a link to what you did right before ending 1.6 and source saying it's similar to that.

seriously wtf

Forgive me if I'm ignorant here (and I'm sure you'd love to hear what another euro has to say), but what necessarily stops any of you taking that same competitive drive you have in ESEA and using it in a different, maybe free, league? I keep seeing the subject of "ESEA has the best competition" but surely it's the players that bring that competition, not the league.

I understand that UGC 6s is a joke. Teams that are in plat aren't close to the level of invite. If you put the invite competition into plat, you'd weed out the shitties in no time. Just as a disclaimer, I'm not saying you should go to UGC. It's merely the only example I have to use.

I know that you guys love the end of season lan. I get that, lans are fucking cool. But I don't think they're necessary for the end of an online season. There are surely plenty of lans you guys could attend, right? I mean, GXL looked like a blast and there's gotta be lans similar during the summer period?

However, I'm not used to having a lan 3 times a year, so I might be missing the point entirely. I always think of lans as an event everyone can play in. So again, apologies for ignorance.

Except why do you make decisions based on how many teams there are going to be BEFORE you know how many teams there are going to be? Not getting an extension isnt that big but a reduction is pretty shitty given the circumstances

I'm absolutely with you there. If everyone treats UGC 6s like a serious league, it will be a serious league. UGC has recently expanded their 6s staff and is taking steps to address a lot of the issues that have been brought up lately, such as sandbagging teams and low standards for Platinum.

Don't take this as an anti-ESEA post, as anyone can recognize the benefit of LAN, prize money, and exposure that ESEA brings. I just think UGC 6s would be in a better place if people simply respected it more.

UGC still needs to fix a shitton of issues before it could be a serious league.

Quick Fix Allowed

8 Matches a season

Pretty Awful match scheduling (9:30 Wednesday default time, other leader is free not to respond to schedule requests)

I think it's more of a warning not a decision.

I have a CSGO Open team and since me and syckness were going on vacation I made sure to make a roster and get both of us paid before registration ended. I agree that a lot of people aren't worried about being paid on ESEA during the holidays, but maybe people should have accounted for their vacation in accordance to the registration deadline.

I think its better that shooter gave us the warning, it gives the community a good shot to get paid up.

I guess I don't see any reason for the decision to be made before registration ends in a week rather than Friday morning.

thats kind of how deadlines work

ESEA keeps $0 from the League fees. Everything goes back to the players.

Unfortunately, as someone else mentionned in this thread - we cannot extend league registration this season.

We cannot push back the deadline, and we didn't do it for every season. I'm sure you've seen my other posts about it.

It's not pushing back the deadline it's sticking with the registration deadline not adding a new one where if we don't pay up 5 days early there's only one div

Fucking give me my free league so I can stop giving a fuck about survival of TF2 and just play the game I want to play.

This is ridiculous, LANs can be made without a league fee to sponsor it. People will play for no prize pool.

NOT having a league, even for a season, will heavily hinder TF2's continued existence.

EDIT: Snip, my team is paying up, sorry for my mistake on the nature of the ESEA league fee

Just paid my fees, lets go people.

I mean I think a lot of people would love it of ETF2L ran an American division, think a lot of people's problems with moving away from esea is there wouldn't be the same level of organization in other American leagues (UGC) and you are right in saying the competition lies with the players, but it's hard to move around (once again) because we don't want to keep diluting the player base more than we have to, lots of people tend to just quit the game and not bother anymore if big changes like this have to be made, it's a tough position.

That being said, I think everything will be fine if esea won't be so hastey when it comes to the fees, it is an odd time of the year for sign ups but the competition outside of invite this season looks promising.

Another thing, I'm already sponsoring a couple IM teams but if an open team is thinking about not playing because they can't make their fees, please come talk to me and I'll help you out with your expenses, MAD LUXURIOUS OPEN :)

Why? I, and others in the community would enjoy a straight-forward answer (and not a round-about as is frequently given when a matter is analyzed, and questioned) as to why ESEA cannot extend the registration period this season, and is asking for registration fees to be payed before the end of registration - having fees paid when not knowing for certain what division you shall play in makes no sense. Honestly, the pressure ESEA is applying to get teams to register and pay fees early makes no sense when it's the holiday season and people are away, and possibly unable to get this information -- it feels as if ESEA's using Lange's "TF2 is dead" bullshit as an ulterior motive for whatever.

Also, I would like to apologize for being so harsh because that's a lot of my frustration just running off. Please be honest and explain why ESEA has come to the decision to act how it has, thank you.

NA players should consider themselves very lucky that they have a league/competition like ESEA providing incentive to do well (decent cash prizes) and a LAN playoff environment. yes, the company itself has done some questionable things but at the end of the day in my opinion its the best TF2 league in the world (even if its not perfect). community leagues like etf2l/ozfortress/asiafortress, while they do a fine job hosting competitions sadly by nature are not able to offer the same types of services and reasons to keep playing that ESEA does so I would think twice before writing it off completely

You're mistaken. "Paying up" involves paying the one-time league fee. When you pay the league fee, you get "Paid" next to your name. You need 5 (or 6?) people "Paid" on your roster for your team to be registered for S18. You're confusing the league fee with Premium, which is a monthly fee, and is a separate payment that needs to be made to be able to play on ESEA servers. You could wait till your first match day to pay this if you wanted to.

There is absolutely no reason to not pay up right now if you intend on playing ESEA next season, unless of course you don't have a roster of five others ready to pay their league fees as well.

I think you should consider partially paid teams much more strongly than your original post seems to imply. Anyone on a roster paying is a vote of confidence to there being 6 paid by the 5th. And while plans interrupted by a move-up of just 3 days are poorly laid plans, considering the 31st / 1st are holidays, this doesn't give us much time to 'move the schedule up' per say.

I have a question...

If a division merge happens, why would it be Open and Intermediate and not Open and Invite? I understand that LAN expenses are a thing, but this was the system for seasons 3-6, the last 2 of which had TF2 at ESEA LAN...

Edit: This was also the solution you guys suggested in season 16, when a similar problem happened.

Pay up, friends. We don't have to have merged divisions.

ESEA IS THE BEST!

i want MORE euros to voice their opinion on stuff they don't know!

if u pay and there ends up being no esea tf2 will u get a refund

This has been the case every season (i.e. division disappears).

You can ask for a refund to your league fee before the deadline, too.

I manually checked all the teams in Open, and 5 or less have 1 or none paid (1 of those teams not a real one). All others have at least 2 or more people paid.

We're doing pretty well in terms of team count, actually, but I would pay up ASAP (i.e. don't wait until the last day, seriously), in the case that the current situation doesn't change.

I wouldnt put all this negativity on Shooter. I think it is nice at least we were informed what might happen, before it happens. I want to believe that since there will not be an extension to registration, the team has decided to impose a completely nonsensical and idiotic advanced deadline to spurn players into action. Then when that sudden, new, and moronic deadline passes, there will still be the original deadline extended past this new dumb and bogus one. It is an act of kindness really. Thank you, ESEA. I never handed in my papers on time unless my professors created artificial threatening deadlines whereby the paper wasn't due, persay, just anything handed in after or indeed in line with the original deadline might or might not be considered failing. And because the league seems to have forgot, happy holidays everyone.

Quite possibly the most on point post in this entire thread.

If you plan to play in ESEA Open this season you need to pay your league fees at this time. You don't have to buy premium.

By signing/paying up now you help to secure that we all collectively have a season ahead of us.