you rang?

eulogy isn't player soldier he's playing demo yo. its fine though he sucks at both ;p

http://teamfortress.tv/articles/view/41-esea-im-season-12-preview - did it for free

Yes it is hard knowing all the teams and what classes everybody is playing. However, he wrote about ten teams (not the 60 you mention). All you need to do is add people from the teams and ask them what classes they are playing. While you have them on steam you can also ask about who they think is good considering who they have scrimmed and what not. Everybody can appreciate the difficulty in writing articles, but there shouldn't be a page of corrections. With that said, I only did one because it is a shitload of work. He deserves some respect for doing one every week.

Horrible, as usually. Not to bust his chops or anything but for the last 2-3 seasons I've read these articles by him, it just seems as though he has been doing the predictions very last minute in order to try and meet deadlines. Meaning, he doesn't have the time to send the article to somebody and have them proof read it. I maybe wrong, which I hope I am seeing as that is very unprofessional, but lets hope we don't have to read predictions like this each week until week 5-6 when it's pretty obvious what teams are the power ranked teams.

With that said, please get better at your articles. We as a community do not like to read something and say to ourselves "WTF ARE YOU KIDDING ME?" or "Wow this isn't even close to being correct" - the IM power rankings seem pretty spot on and I understand there isn't as many teams but you need to do a little more research before posting these on ESEA's website.

rocutan is a drug that our pocket soldier used the last year (its just for a medical issue)

I wasn't trying to bash him by the way by posting this thread and the article,

it's just that anyone who's scrimmed against us generally acknowledges our Scouts+Demo as the stronger suit of our team.

Asking him to recognize the nuance of 60 teams in the division and then rank them accordingly before the season has even started is absurd for a pre-season article.

How about instead of 1 person doing everything, you get 2 (or more) people to do these articles? Twice the leg work done, mistakes corrected, overall more in-depth.

No but he only wrote about 10 specific teams and got an annoying amount of certain facts wrong on most of those teams.

If he was unsure about certain facts all he had to do was add anyone from those 10 teams he wrote about it and get a little more in-depth info and he would have a much better and accurate article to post on ESEA news.

Deathanchor only talked about 10 teams in this article so please stop pointing to how many people there are in open. People aren't really bashing him for any of his actual opinions that he wrote about, they're bashing him for publishing an article riddled with grammar/spelling mistakes and easily verified misinformations. You don't even need to add people on steam to find out what class they're playing. When somebody is getting paid to write this stuff it's completely fair to expect them to take an extra second to check tf2logs and see what classes people play.

Yeah, that is a problem absolutely. Especially when he had all of pre-season to figure that stuff out.

Doesn't explain why you are peeved about your own team, and in particular your own scout play, being underrated.

??? I never said I was peeved just pointing out inaccuracies in the article as is everyone else.

hibachi I love you though lets not fight like this. </3

That's fair. All of that stuff should be fixed, especially considering he had all offseason to prepare and research that stuff.

Not trying to pick on testify in particular. But expecting him to know that for any given team, the scouts are better than the demoman who is better than the soldiers is unrealistic.

Well, since he might read this and everyone else seems to be doing it.

rave didn't want to play this season so we moved typhus to roamer and we got preston back to play pocket.

no one cares about open except butt hurt open players.

I believe in GETTIN COZY

:(

ilu bby <3

#steelred forlyfe

My question is who would be more qualified to write these? I don't really have a huge problem with it since if someone else could write a better one, why not just write it and post it here?

esea should get mustard "tf2_busybody" overlord to write their articles

I was going to be the IM writer, but the spot that was supposed to be vacant turned out not to be so

esea and I have plans in the works though

it aint like you gotta keep it a secret that youre gonna do nerdy feature articles all season long, mustard

I don't think you understand how people are on the edge of their seats waiting for the great Mustardoverlord to grace us with his opinions of who is good and bad.

i think it's prudent to point out that all of these top 10 teams (and really the majority of open teams) have been scrimming regularly in the past few weeks. we've (playground tactics)tried to play as many high open teams (and a few IM teams) to see what the competition was like, as well as a few mid open teams because that was all we could find at the time. i would say we have a generally good idea of what to expect for our schedule and those of our competitors.

the point being, if the writer was playing at a level of mid+ open, then it would go to show his familiarity with this top ten (and really top 20) and the players on those teams. the criticism in the past is that he will look at match pages and roster pages and draw conclusions from stats. in some cases, it seems like the matches being discussed weren't actually watched at all.

and then this:

i appreciate that deathanchor is putting time into something that he is passionate about, and that facing a community of 60 teams full of "butthurt open players" can garner a lot of criticism, but it would be a mistake to ignore all that criticism and continue writing sub par articles.

I wanted to avoid posting here, but felt that some things could use a better explanation.

I really am not only looking at 10 teams. If you go and visit your own open team's ESEA page AND your own profile page, I have been on I have been on each and every one over the last week. I might only write about 10 teams at a time, but for preseason I have to scan every roster.

Then throughout the season I do keep tabs on all of the teams outside of the top ten so I can make accurate predictions. About half way through each season I know the entire division well and am confident in my coverage of each and every team. I don't want to get into the grit of every specific here, but yes I realize I can improve my content. I have played in four seasons of open myself now and hopefully will begin to start playing against the teams I cover at the top in the future. My team this season isn't so hot once again, but am not set on playing with them for sure at the moment.

One improvement I have continued with is lowering the amount of player assessment and opinion in my writing. Keeping comparisons between the players to a minimum because people tend to get their jimmies rustled very easily. In fact I slipped up on that in this preseason article which many players pointed out. I thought this would make for a more interesting read, but have learned that if I really should keep everything I say 100% positive. My skin isn't always think enough to take criticism, so I totally understand why no one wants to hear that I think they aren't the team's strongest player.

People might think they could spend that much time, but things are different when you are actually in the position and have to put out articles every week of play knowing you will just get shit on anyway. I hate having to read attacks such as "I could write better articles", "we deserve a new writer", or just flat out "your articles suck". I take everything I work on in my life very personally including my articles and have made numerous changes and improvements to them to try and reduce this backlash. Sometimes I wish I didn't give a fuck, but I really do care about you guys and TF2 as a whole and couldn't let down ESEA. I plan on continuing my work for as long as it is needed and will make improvements each and every article. Thank you for your support and be on the lookout for a feature article over the break.

deathanchor puts a lot of time into his articles and you guys should be grateful that he is writing them. good job man keep it up

Bill is on scout btw, darkstar's our new soldier.

I was really looking forward to this preview but I must say i'm some what disapointed. I know this was probably one of the harder write ups to do given the number of teams and different names, but i know for my team our lineup is on our ESEA page, saying who is who and what they are playing. I dont believe we were the only team that you got the lineup wrong for aswell. I know this is a little issue but if it is right there on our ESEA page it should have been easily avoidable. I also believe the top ten you gave is inaccurate, but i guess we shall see!

it never ceases to amaze me the profound rustling effect that power rankings have on peoples jimmies.

What a professionally worded response!

Anyway, here's how I see it; both "sides" have valid points. Deathanchor, nobody is saying your job is easy, or claiming that you're awful and should kill yourself (if they are they suck).

The issue is that you have the problems since you first started writing for ESEA. Take the time to proof read and fact check before you post something that a) you're getting paid for and b) is supposed to be the premier coverage of the division. Plenty of people have written articles for this site for free that are of similar quality.

Yes, there are 60 teams in open; however, you were only writing about 10. If you're going to only select a few, then why would you poke around all 60? Focus 10% of your time on each team, instead of 1.6%. Do some fact checking if you're going to make claims, or just don't bother making them.

I get that it's really tough to do a preseason evaluation of a 60 team division, because it's hard to say which team will be one to watch before any matches have been played and a clear upper sub division has been established. Because of this, I would almost rather see interviews of recurring teams, interesting players that have started over in open to try and climb back up, etc. rather than just reading a bunch of guesses (nothing against your opinions, but as you yourself has mentioned, it's hard to come up with anything concrete week 0).

My point is, all of this backlash may be really harsh and unnecessarily strong, but it's still criticism. Instead of just telling people they're wrong and you don't appreciate it, maybe you should do something different to get a better response? Just a thought.