Can someone please fix the match servers every time my team plays we all get random connection hiccups.

While you're at it, can you tell us the secret to mids? pls&ty

I'm exactly as bad as I said I was. Maybe even more.

I didn't come into this season expecting to win a match at all, but actually getting crushed as badly as we are really saps your motivation. It doesn't help that we have a stretch of over two weeks in which we won't expect to win a single round, let alone come close to winning a match. I've been told that the second half of the season will be easier when we get matched with teams with similar records, but that doesn't exactly reassure me with how we've been doing.

Managing a team is extremely hard, and our lack of practice/play together as a team is probably going not going to end up well for us.

I do like the flexibility of being able to schedule matches at desirable days, but this week we're playing three matches in four days, and not being able to have any decent practice on Metalworks isn't going to help. Not that we weren't going to get rolled in both matches anyway, but...

Saving ESEA was great and all, but I'd be lying if I said that there weren't major issues that need to be fixed. Server hiccups are simply atrocious, and having to replay an entire match over a week later because the server crashed with 10 seconds left in the game is just terrible.

Ultimately, I'm left questioning my decision to enter Open. I don't think I was ready as either a team player or team manager, and I don't know if I'll ever be truly ready.

5-2 curse

http://play.esea.net/teams/90829

I feel like I am one of the few people who have been around for a while as far as watching and pugging but is still new to this team aspect of the game. This is my second season on a team and I can say that while CEVO was a great part of our community that I think should come back (please CEVO post things on TFTV so our small incompetent minds can remember when the season is) it just didn't provide the level of competition and drive I've seen out of some Open teams this season in ESEA. S/O to squid squad for playing games this season.

It's going pretty bad. We are getting stomped pretty consistently and our only win is from a team that died. We are improving really fast though.

Keep in mind that Ive never played in ESEA, but, from what people have been saying it seems as if, theres no competition in UGC, people want something more serious, but UGC just doesnt apply that, so when they go into Open expecting a more fair competition, and just getting stomped because the skill ceiling increases so dramatically that newer teams just get crushed, I think a reasonable way to ease this is a league, like a lower leveled ESEA where players take the game seriously, where the first half of your first season in a div is free, afterwards you pay, just to see if you can manage it and then back out if you feel like you cant make it. This will probably

With such a large division, there is bound to be a large disparity in team skill level from top to bottom. No one should be discouraged, it's likely to happen with this many teams.

http://play.esea.net/teams/92369
We've been doing ok. We have our second process match tonight, so well see how that goes. As I mentioned, -Lazy had to step down due to real life stuff, but I'm confident that indecency can deliver.
Tenda's been making great use of the loose cannon, pulling disgustingly high numbers even when we get rolled. He's also been loving defending process last with the ScoRes. It's made our last defenses much stronger and a lot of teams dont know how to react.
-Dreamboat's been sick for a few days, and hasnt been able to scrim. His DM still needs a lot of work, but hes smart and knows how to pick the right fights.
-Ulmyx has been performing very consistently, and has been riding a wave of confidence after getting the most med picks out of any player in esea for the first match. However, his target priority could be better, as he calls a lot of med picks when a demo pick wouldve been better.
-I myself have been having a bit of trouble. My dm isnt the greatest, but I consider myself a smart player, and my main calling has been getting a lot better. I like to play a very aggressive style of pocket, which conflicts heavily with Tenda's very passive style of demo. My internet's gotten better, but i still have the occasional spike at night. I got a job, so hopefully I'll be able to get my own internet in the house or something. Overall though, my decision making needs more work, and I need to review some demos.
-Conner is a very strong med, though he tends to blame himself for a lot of our team problems, when its rarely the case. His jukes are strong, but his positioning could be a bit better, though that could also be blamed on my alertness and positioning by proxy.

We've been getting better as a team, and it helped that I recently took a much more assertive pocket role, though I'm going to try and play a bit more passive to compliment tenda. Time will tell how we do, and I'd like to keep this team together next season if possible.

It's going pretty good except everyone keeps telling me to cut owl, pls help?

As long as new teams are looking to improve and STAY TOGETHER, the followup season to your debut season will always be better. Just hang in there. Use this season to build chemistry with your team, keep everyone on the same page and look to come in strong next season.

Honorable shoutouts to Disposable Heroes, who won S12 Open in their 2nd season together, and of course Disney Channel Celebs, who stuck together for the entirety of S15 after getting matched up against 8 playoff-level teams and getting 3 rounds in their first 8 matches (yes I will bring up this team every chance I get).

P.S. it's still really dumb how ESEA doesn't schedule the first 6 matches anymore. It would make for better matchups across all skill levels in Open, since you'll be getting matches based on your record much earlier than the current system is now. I hope that they'll go back to it for future seasons.

We started off rather well with our first week on Snakewater, but with some roster issues and whatnot, our team almost died completely... Luckily that wasn't the case and we're continuing on with a new roster, but because of these issues, our process week didn't go too hot. I can definitely see improvement however and we're having a lot of fun, so a few losses doesn't bother me.

Most of the teams we've played are really nice too. I've made a lot of friends just from networking w/ other teams.

Really enjoying the season so far and I can't wait to see how the rest plays out.

Just a reminder to all the open teams getting stomped: Not only will your season get easier as time goes on, as you already know, but sticking out your entire season as a team is by far one of the fastest ways to improve as player. If you are ready to give up, just know that you are going to be missing out on a lot of experience.

The second half of the season is always more fun.

I AM HAVING SO MUCH FUN HOLY SHIT

yo I got this. Win mid. I have yet to master this myself as well though.

cut owl

Joined a team and then it died the next day

Honestly it's been alright other than the issues that everyone has been complaining about since before I downloaded tf2 i.e. server lag/client issues and the like. We'd be 2-2 if it weren't for one of our players running a festive wrangler, using it without knowing it was banned and the rest of the team not realizing he had a wrangler.(don't ask me how he didn't know lol) So it isn't like we are having our motivation crushed though maybe we have had an easy schedule so far I wouldn't know.

The only thing I feel I need to point out is something that someone on this site wrote a post of advice for new open teams and he said "If you haven't played in a paid league before, you as a player and your team will become better at a rate you've never imagined. I played in UGC a bit, in 4s/6s/HL, but I keep going back to a paid league because I grow as a player way more than I ever did in UGC"

The reason I bring this up is because it being a paid league has nothing to do with it at all. Wanting to win and practicing is what makes you better. I know this because I played silver last season and my team grew an incredible amount. We typically scrimmed five nights a week 2 times a night for most of the season, went over maps, and did demo reviews. It wasn't because we were paying money to play, but because we wanted to get better. Disclaimer, we had 4 pocket mains on the team playing roamer, scouts, and med, a roamer main playing pocket, and actually a demo main on demo. if that means anything.

This season there is essentially zero chance for my team to even make playoffs and that means the drive to go the extra mile to scrim another night a week, or spend another 10 minutes in dm just isn't there because it means the difference between 40th and 41st place as opposed to 1st and 2nd. Don't get me wrong, I still want to improve and am practicing often even though I am pretty sure next season I won't be on demo again.

As someone that has created a lot of teams over the last few years of playing this game, I can tell you this is a pretty normal feeling. Scheduling is going to be your biggest challenge as a team leader, and its not something that a lot of people talk about. The fact that UGC and CEVO have (had) very limited scheduling options is bullshit to me, because once you get to ESEA its a relatively new thing. getting 12 people in the same server at the same time can be trying sometimes, but even talking to your teammates before the season about their availability should be an important conversation to have before the season starts. its something you learn after awhile of managing a team.

example: We really wanted to play with Lambert but he had almost 0 time to scrim or even play matches sometimes just because of real life commitments, so eventually we just had to learn how to play without him. He is a great dude and a great player, but sometimes for the good of the team it might be better to work with someone who has better availability just so all the scrim time and practice actually matters.

and on that subject there are a few sort of "ground rules" for scrimming for teams that want to improve playing together. This has probably been said before and I'm sure there are people that are going to disagree with me, but whatever:

-4 nights a week minimum, including match days where you try to scrim at least once before the match. typically, when i was on playground tactics we would play sunday through thursday.

-make some time at the beginning of the week to do a map review with your team, talking about very generic situations, hold positions, etc. stay away from complex strategies and very situational plays, because those are usually a waste of time and there isn't a practical way to practice them.

-playing with one ringer is ok, playing with 2 ringers is probably a waste of time, and any more than that you should just not scrim.

-demo reviews/mentoring is all well and good but there aren't many people willing to take the time to do that anymore. a few invite players are pretty chill about it, but in IM I don't really think there are that many people with the capacity to teach. I have a pretty hard time with it, not everyone thinks about this game the same way. demo reviews can be good with your team, but they are very time consuming and its not always the best use of your time, contrary to popular belief. at the beginning of the season they might be more important, but as the season goes on it becomes less vital to do these kind of things.

I realize this is way longer than I intended to post. I hope this helps or reassures you with your decision making.

2 forfeit wins, and 1 match we had to play a player down.

:(

at least we actually played 1 match and won

All I know is my team needs to review some demos/stv and I need to work on my dm, lol.

Team is 3-1, and that loss is from your team mr 'been in open forever' mana. heh

if i get cut i'll be posting at least twice as much on tftv as i already am

i guess take that as you will

fun, except for the servers

a tip to any new schedulers/team leaders

-schedule your matches as soon as you can

-work with other teams as much as you can around scheduling

-have at LEAST one backup, more is better.

-if you've had client troubles, take an extra 10-15 minutes before a match to launch it and make sure it works so you don't have disasters where you're sitting in a server for 45 minutes waiting to not play

edit: once playoffs start, rosters lock. esea does not allow ringers like ugc does, so if you go into playoffs with a 6 man roster then you might find yourself in serious trouble

http://play.esea.net/teams/91775

It's tough to get more than 1 consistent scrim night a week with everyone's schedules but I learned how real life can get in the way of videojuegos from our time in UGC so having subs definitely helps. We had a sub-par finish in silver last season and we're doing better than I had expected at 2-2 so far. I still have to work on overextending and getting caught out less, but I think increased communication about where I am / where the enemy is will help me get better at not dying.

ayy add me we can be scrim buddies

To be fair, this is largely true because of who you're playing/scrimming more than it is how much you're scrimming/playing.

Scrimming and playing teams that are pretty much universally working as hard or harder than you were makes a big difference - not to mention that pretty much all of them have the experience/gamesense to capitalize on your mistakes gives you way more opportunity to grow out of bad habits (since they're punished so mercilessly).

k

http://play.esea.net/teams/92450

1-3 so far. We have major problems with pushing and don't really have a main caller. I'd say the reason we got that win was because of aim, our pocket and main caller, but he is lft and we have been switching our roster around a lot, and is still not solid. Hoping to go 3-5 by the end of the first 8 games, but looking more like 2-6 unless we get our shit together. Client wasn't too hard to figure out. Opinion on the servers about the same as everyone else's I'd say. To me winning 1 game in open is an accomplishment already lol. I'd say our schedule is pretty tough for a new open team imo also. I was sort of discouraged after getting 5-0'd both process matches but I've been looking up a bit more since then.