these are very good points. good post, b4nny.

this is why etf2l and ozfortress will always be better than esea for everyone who doesn't regularly win invite. Not going to say sandbagging doesn't happen in ozfort, but if a team of ex-prem players signs up for a season and they are considered among the top 8 teams at the time they'll be put in prem, no matter how little they claim they're going to practice. eg tommunist's meme team with bulk permanently demoknighting or offclassing last season (which still won some matches iirc)

ya but their open is way better than ours even without the sandbagging

prize pools are neat, its too bad its unrealistic to have them in AU

ETF2L Open is always won by a team with mid/high players, only reason it isnt worse is because of anti-sandbag rules.

Also I'd prefer etf2l open with a prizepool and a higher skill level over not having to pay at all

invite players in open is ok
invite players forming a team with other invite players is ok

i feel like whoever is sandbagging should at least provide fair practice to the lower level teams by not running fulltime offclasses and whatever possible bm

in a sense when bm is involved that usually shows disrespect. if both sides exhibit sportsmanship its a win-win imo

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/258659336245608458/279230849327824898/image.png

No it's not ok, it's like mike tyson fighting little kids. It's pathetic and there should be rules against it. Nobody should win without even trying. That is very bad for competitive tf2 imo.

because we have less players because we live on a couple of rocks in the middle of nowhere with a total population about a 12th of america's alone, let alone canada and other nearby countries

I mean it's not like it's a new thing that only started recently

fuck u. this was a thing since the singit digit open seasons. invite circlejerks were also in the mix back then

these complaints started happening after ugc kids decided to play open

this is why the "open" became such a derogatory term now. open back then used to have promising players

there's no benefit to watching STVs of people that aren't even trying smashing your team with their better dm, you can watch till your eyes bleed- the best you can possibly do is be as good gamesense-wise (this will never happen) and still be much worse mechanically and get smashed every 1v1 and every mid

if you're having close games with open teams and you're actually trying then you're not sandbagging

there's plenty of valid reasons why a team or person would not want to play invite but acting as if the actual open teams that try should be happy about it is retarded, it could be better

x

This discussion has branched off into so many unrelated topics that nobody has noticed the few posts that actually explained the real issue.

The real issue and solution to sandbagging is 100% related to ESEA being a "pay-to-play" league. Obviously that is not going to change so you should stop complaining about sandbagging. If you can't turn playing against higher level teams into a positive then you are just going to seem like a whiny little bitch every time you lose a match.

If money was not an issue, there would be no reason for sandbagging players to play 1 or 2 divisions lower than their actual skill level. Since money will always be an issue with ESEA, you cannot fault any player or team that pays the required league fees for an "open" division.

I'm not that familiar with UGC but don't plenty of their players complain about teams sandbagging there? In a F2P league? I don't think ESEA being P2P is the reason sandbagging exists, I think it exists just because it's enjoyable for them honestly, and regardless of the circumstances, there will always be at least a few teams sandbagging just because.

I can see how you can learn from higher skilled players, but most of the teams you are talking about are just running full time pyro and hunstman sniper and stupid shit like that. It isn't enjoyable for anyone except for the team doing that, so I don't know why you think complaining about that makes you "a whiny little bitch." It's perfectly fine to complain about, I just don't think it will ever change.

I am not saying I agree with playing like an asshole just because you can. Obviously an open team full of invite rejects that goes around ruining matches against legit open teams is an asshole thing to do. It is annoying and doesn't help you improve.

What I am saying is that if they want to play in "open" and pay the required fees, there isn't a damn thing you can do about them acting like assholes during a match. Instead of crying about it, just put the bad experience behind you and continue working on your improvement.

u hear that aeira ur invite now xD

idk maybe this its just me but i feel like if you cant put up a single round against a team thats running "a full time pyro and huntsman sniper" then your team clearly has issues that go beyond the division that your opponent played in 5 seasons ago. if youre playing proper 6v6 and the other team is running a huntsman sniper, pyro and engie you should be able to at least come close to beating them even if its fucking froyotech. I dont understand how it can be so difficult for people to beat a team thats running classing that are objectively worse at combat than scouts and soldiers. if you cant put up at least one round against them then its clear that you dont understand basic concepts of 6's like how to push, and should learn how to play before you go complain about how life is unfair because someone is more skilled than you.

This is, quite literally, my biggest :thinking:. I've painstakingly hand-drawn it on 8.5x11 papers, scanning each into the computer upon completion. It has taken me the full 6 hours from the time you posted until now for me to finish this project.
I went through four (4) golden Magic Markers™, one (1) black Magic Markers™, two (2) brown Magic Markers™ and probably more paper than trees in New York City (they don't have many because they had to make room for their sewer smoke stacks).
Lining them up in Photoshop, was likely the most difficult part, but after getting the images aligned: it was smooth sailing.
The digitization of the image to give it a smoother look is what took the longest, but I'm happy with the end result:

WARNING: This image is big, really big. It's bigger than even your big brain that was able to formulate such a big-brained opinion. But only big brains will understand and relate to what I have titled "The _B_I_G_ Think".
I hope you enjoy it, fellow connoisseur of higher scholarly intelligence, knowledge, and philosophy.

http://puu.sh/tVpHM/ea92102d62.png

That's the issue, new teams want to learn how to play proper 6s better but you can't really learn fundamentals by getting destroyed by a team dicking around with fulltime offclasses and trying their best to go against the core concepts of 6s.

If they were playing genuine 6s that new teams would still lose to but at least learn from, I don't think anywhere near as many people would have issues with it. But if a team does everything they can to play retarded and only wins because they're way more experienced than the competition, I can't blame anyone for complaining.

In regards to ugc theyre pretty big on enforcing their player limits (at least this season). They have caps on the number of players in lower divs thats have established exp in higher divs which is defined by having 3+ legit wins in said div.

It's competitive what do you expect? Scrim teams around your level if you want to experience a not-roll. "Open" does not imply a skill level.

lets talk about this for a moment

sidular: despite the meme i posted in the match comms, you added me to want to work out a different match time and i was willing to work with you. then you decided the set match time was fine, so fine we played. ictus doesnt show up on time (not surprised) and you start the match with a .reportffw to which you said and i quote "my team forced me" yeah so your team forced you to type reportffw on your keyboard? then we played 5v6 and after losing the first round, you or your team proceeded to type nonsense in chat about sandbagging, invite players, blah blah etc. i would say that was the first bit of "bm" that was given from either team. at that point, you were begging to be meme'd at which point ictus joined and we ran spy, pyro, huntsman, demoknight respectively. lets be honest, you and your team are shitty open players who enjoy being little dicks for no reason just because you were losing. ctrl + f replace every "sandbag" occurrence in any of your thoughtless posts with the words "better team" and this thread would be irrelevant. you posted this because you lost, horribly. you lost 5-0 to other teams in your first two matches, why didnt you make a thread about those matches? are you saying that you have no way to counter a melee only demo or a pyro? no one on my team, myself included, even really cares and we play for fun. you started the bm, dont play victim here.

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for those of you tftv drama lords (yes im looking at u saam and catface) u can download the demo here https://play.esea.net/index.php?s=servers&d=download_replay&id=7199077 and view the chat log

god bless

I disagree but your thinking is in the right place just not practical IMO.

The concept that some of these open teams want to "learn" from the experience of playing an invite sandbagging team that is playing proper TF2 on their main classes is misguided. The reason teams will have a small chance to "learn" anything from these sandbagging matches is because of the huge gap in DM they would experience if main classes were played.

The truth is that you will never learn anything of value from a 5-0 roll in under 10 minutes, which is exactly the experience most of these open teams would get if people were on their main classes and actually trying to win.

this is post of the year material lmfao

A demo review of this match should be streamed by someone for laughs

If you're new to open and really want to get better, unless you luck in to playing mostly low open teams in matches, 95% of your development comes from scrims, which you get to choose who you play. It's foolish to complain about losing a match to an off classing sandbag team since the result would be the same if they main classed or if you played a top open team. When you're lower open it's the scrims that are important.

fuckin memed on

playing against sandbaggers is fun, last time i played connor gave me free ubersaws and sandviches

Not sure exactly how to interpret this but it's already the case that the minimum prize from invite (namely, fourth place: $2100 per team, or $2590 subtracting fees, which is still around $430 a person) is bigger than any of the prizes in open or IM ($1500 and $1000 respectively, or $250 and $166.66 each). Getting fifth place or otherwise narrowly missing playoffs does suck though because you have a net loss of $510 per team (not to mention the time investment from scrimming regularly and starting matches at 11est) with nothing to show for it.
This could also be interpreted as having invite teams that don't make playoffs get a smaller cut of the prize money as an incentive to finish the season and get some sort of reimbursement for dropping $85 a piece, but I don't think that would be very wise. For example, if it were the case that everyone won money regardless of their place you could have last place teams that coast all season with no incentive to get better because they know they will already get money, even if they don't scrim and are terribad.
https://play.esea.net/index.php?s=news&d=comments&id=14846 (most recent prize breakdown I could find on google)

As others have said I doubt anybody has played strictly for the money, if you wanted money you would play overwatch or get a real job with an hourly wage. As far as I see it it's perfectly fine to have fun with your buds in open and collect a check afterwards. My first season of open (s17) ended up with dingo+5 vs hero+5 but nobody complained on the forums or got butthurt about it. The way I saw it, it was a good thing because it gave my team the opportunity to play teams better than us and give us a challenge. It's like scrimming teams that are in a division higher than you (in playoffs for example when it's harder to find scrims), sure you might get out DM'd and generally out played but if you never go out of your comfort zone and keep playing shit open teams you will never improve. The second season I played open (s19) it was being 'sandbagged' by 6cuties who were supposedly unbeatable but we took it as a challenge and didn't care that they had a bunch of 'invite players'. Since we didn't whine and moan like a bunch of babies we were able to actually play tf2 and ended up beating them in a super close golden cap (probably because paddie wasn't playing that night lol). The point is it's all about the way you look at things. If you ever go into a match thinking you're going to lose (because they have so many spooky ex low invite players :o) you're going to lose lol.

i play STRICTLY for money when i play tf2. there is no other reason to play with mr wrech, he pays me 45 dollars per match.