last time this came up ppl said it was because it would be like paying for an in game item

that would require actions from esea, they just don't care about tf2 enough

People pay for ingame items all the time lol that's literally what tf2 is, in addition if someone extra is willing to pay for just for the medal how's that bad for ESEA? Who does 'paying for medals' hurt, if that even ends up being an issue.

valve probably doesn’t want to add items for a paid third party program since the game is free

sigafoo's league has medals and it's paid

why? It doesn't matter, a medal shouldn't define your skill level.

Yah but what if I want to look accomplished and cute asf at the same time? I'm trying to work esea into my fit

that's not the point, most people are completely unaware of esea's existence and that's widely attributed to the fact that there's no medals for it. I personally thought ugc was the main league because I saw b4nny with a bunch of first place medals

it's true that esea doesn't care, but the actual reason is that valve will not do it because esea costs money and valve doesn't get any of it

technically, esea is integrated into steam (sure, that one's shitty but it still exists)

also ugc, etf2l, rgl, tfcl and more all have medals and are third-party

valve gets more money from esea than any of the aforementioned leagues.

The thing is that the medal need to be designed and approved by the League and Valve. Pretty sure nobody from ESEA is down to do all that unfortunately.

So, just to kinda clear up some stuff regarding medals and the "pay for medal" rumour that's been going around for years.

Anybody that's hosting any kind of tournament in TF2 is able to create a medal for their tournament, so long as that medal is given out only to those that participated in the tournament. Valve does not care whether or not the tournament has some kind of registration fee, which means leagues such as ESEA can easily give out medals if they wanted to do so. However, the main requirement is that the medals have to be earned, not bought.

So basically, a medal is a trophy. You earn it by competing.

As for why ESEA doesn't give out medals? My best guess, is that they simply don't care to do so. Managing medals for each and every season is a mostly manual task. For starters, you gotta actually design the model itself, and then you have to manually notify Valve that you want to ship a new version of it for a new season. Valve will then give you item ids to use, which you need to then enter into the tool they give you to send the medals out to the players that are supposed to get them. Except, the tool they give you is really just a very basic demonstration on how their distribution api works, so you'll need to modify the tool, or create an entirely new one using their api. Then you gotta find a way to easily gather all of the appropriate steam ids for each and every player into a simple list and input that into the tool for distribution. Repeat this every season indefinitely.

So, can ESEA do it? Yes. Will they? Hell no.

edit: for those of you curious, this is the tool they give you - http://sidular.com/promo_grant.html

It's super simple, and really just a basic html file. ESEA would need to basically create their own tool using the api. That's development time, and developers cost money. Money that ESEA would rather not spend.

You may be right that ESEA might not want to pursue a medal, but instead of assuming that's their stance with such certainty why don't we approach ESEA about it and discuss it? They've seemed pretty interested in growing the TF2 division this past season, so it might just be the kind of proposal they'd be interested in. I will contact an ESEA admin regarding this topic and see what can be done.

Good luck. Would love to see them start doing medals.

Wow, I never thought that this thread would actually get somewhere. Esea implementing medals would most definitely make their league much more popular and would earn them more money in the long run.

get ready for the invite roster riders bois

I started a converstation with TRI about this around an hour ago. He is going to talk to ESEA but NO PROMISES.

you know how experience doesnt show up on your profile unless you've played a match for a team? the same would apply for medals

Roster riding would do nothing because you'd have to play matches in order to earn the medal. Pretty sure UGC is like that too (I think it's like 8 matches or something)

etf2l roster riding exists without playing matches tho????

You can get medals by just being rostered, you don’t need to play a match, but the team has to have at least like 3 matches I think. But in esea it should Be required to play a match in order to get the medal

shit ur right i forgot

the only reason Highlander exploded back in the day after several failed attempts and had the biggest tournament TF2 ever had was because of a medal

it matters

if esea does manage to finally get medals it'd be very exciting!

id rather have working STVs for the paid service that we all pay for™ than medals..

good thing nobody pays for in-game items

https://wiki.teamfortress.com/wiki/Promotional_items

hey man i agree esea should have medals i was just parroting what happened with the last thread. hopefully esea opens up a bit and lets someone whos willing do the work for them instead of just leaving it

the people who work on their servers are incredibly unlikely to be whoever they pay to make a medal design, the guy who contact valves, and the guy who builds a (shitty) wrapper around the API to deliver the medals to players quickly.

i mean maybe esea is that understaffed but i doubt it considering UGC could do it all relatively fast after the ETF2L Highlander Challenge did years ago.

there are paid leagues with medals
(RGL, last 2 seasons of chaplaria)