paypal transfer expected to clear January 6th, fuck me and my shitty canadian bank

I think that they will keep your team ready to play the season if you message one of them, so you should probably tell an admin and they can keep that in consideration, Dreamboat.

I'll shoot one a message, thanks turin!

This whole idea of making it so invite teams play open teams is stupid. I mean, if it's going to happen if we don't pay, then pay the fuck up. But jesus, this is the worst idea. I don't want to pay, trying to keep things how they should be, only to have paid to play an invite team.

If it turns out like that you can refund your money.

Also I doubt tf2 would go down to 1 division, even though two divisions would still be dumb for some of the lower level teams, it's not like the worst team in open is going to be playing Froyotech.

Could still technically happen if divisions were merged, especially since the opening schedule generates the first 8 matches now instead of 6 like it used to. Again, I think back to Disney Channel Celebs S15 where they had like their first 8 matches against all playoff teams.

Still, looks like the numbers are in our favor for getting a healthy Open division. ...if only the IM teams / players would get paid up...

Seems like Shooter edited the OP to imply that there will be no Invite division this season.

No, the edit was him changing it to Friday night instead of Friday morning, which is appreciated.

I think a lot of the IM teams are waiting to see if they get moved up to invite as to whether they're paying or not

http://im.ezgif.com/tmp/ezgif-2812348267.gif

TF2s on its last leg boys

"make me pay for failing servers, a shitty client, a lan i probably don't get to go to and will lose money from travel fees if i attend and don't place top 2, and mining you bitcoins. pls esea, please don't make me play ugc tf2 for free, oh please esea me love you long time slurp slurp"

-- TF2 community

Big retard^

http://i.imgur.com/VkF2LEb.png

oh thank god UGC is still around what would we do without it

ded

Well it was basically the image above but with text instead of the league logos.

Here's another.
http://i.imgur.com/vopPPXX.png

http://i.imgur.com/0oyDoWy.png

Where's ESL?

Swear I saw Invite here before. But nice to know that the deadline is Friday night. I still think registration should be extended, but it definitely won't this season.

I dont understand why it's ok for americans to criticise esea, but as soon as a euro says anything (even repeating yanks), it's immediately invalid

I will offer the 5th/6th place finishes in Open $96 each.

http://play.esea.net/teams/93092

lets get this show on the road, boys

You are right, Invite was listed there on my original post but I removed it as it wasn't making any sense to include Invite after we delayed the announcement of the teams pending what was happening in the lower divisions.

Open has 46 rosters and will likely have about 40 paid ones by deadline day. That's a good haul - and there are a lot of new faces in there as well.

IM looks like it will have a thin season, but should recover by S19.

I think this may turn out to be a lot of panic over absolutely nothing at all. Shooter shouldn't be too worried this season like he was before last season.

I understand u love esea to death but what good is it to bash UGC? It still fuels like 90% of your scene playerbase and it's actually the entry point league in your scene. The players in open today were the players in ugc a few seasons ago, so I don't know what you're trying to accomplish with that but its probably not helping.

if UGC wasnt around then players would have to play ESEA to play 6s in NA
I (personally) don't think thats a bad thing as thats essentially what was going on before when UGC was so underground that I thought it was a rumor, CEVO died (the first time) and TWL was so bad that no one cared about it.
I might just have been ignorant back then (around season 9), but around that time the competition in all divisions seemed really good and the only league that was really DOING anything with 6s was ESEA.

I agree. We don't have to play exclusively in UGC, but we shouldn't bash it and the players in it just because the league is seen as lower quality than ESEA.

Do you actually believe if UGC wasn't around some other free league wouldn't emerge? As in, do you actually believe people would be content with their only option of competitive tf2 being pay to play?

I think that's a very naive view on things. A free league is bound to exist for a free to play game with a huge community like tf2 especially with esea having shown so many flaws and shortcomings in recent years. Might as well embrace it and accept it instead of bashing it.

I know we have many cultural differences between EU and NA but I really can't understand how someone would be ok with the only option being a paid one, no matter how good the paid one would be.

To be fair, downpour is correct, if there wasn't another league the only NA 6s league would be ESEA. However, I'd be surprised to see people actually joining into ESEA and staying in it, they'd maybe spend a season, perhaps two, and decide that spending the money to get trashed on weekly isn't a good use of their time/money. Why would new players be interested in joining a pay-to-play league for a format so completely different from what they've experienced, only to get absolutely decimated because they don't understand the intricacies of the 6s meta? With UGC at least you can understand what the classes do, why certain weapons are banned, how to play the maps, make friends, etc.

You don't really get into intricacies until IM.

Also, isn't half of the point of ESEA to get beat down early so that you can develop and get better? You're not supposed to stay at the dead bottom of the totem pole - and very very very few people ever do.

I don't mean intricacies like the things you learn in IM, maybe basic stratagies [rollouts, heal order, focus fire] was a better word.

Maybe the point is to get beat down, but when the low Iron UGC people start joining ESEA first, not understanding why we don't play Lakeside and run Engineer to mid, then the standard changes from slow improvement to a consistent beating - if they even stay in the league.

The people coming from mid-high UGC, though, have spent 3-4 seasons playing the 6s format, maybe have a taste of true competitiveness, have a few friends to form the core of a team, and know when to, say, hold by choke on Gullywash as opposed to upper, and vice versa, or when to switch to Kritz, or when to run Sniper.