To add to Marxist's list:

-Never allow people who identify as anime fans to join your roster - they will have an autistic meltdown and kill your team.

Dude,You are going to meet a lot of toxic people everywhere whether it be etf2l or ESEA or whatever it is you are going to meet toxic people its not even an ESEA thing,Also if they had 5 players and they had 3 offclasses and you still lost its kind of your fault

Then where do you begin?
Not all potential players will go through the hassle that Marxist described and escape the "bad" part of open. Some just give up.
I'd be very interested in seeing stats about esea players : what % plays more than 2 seasons; what % escapes bottom half of open? etc

I don't see how two of the major 3 points of his complaints (that you're paying fees just to have a broken, useless client and a complete ban on ringers) have anything to do with his own teams or him expecting to do well in the division.

say it aint so where did the time go

i've rarely had the client not work for me/teammates before in the past, the only time you mention it in your post is in point #1 (not even about your own team, but an opponent), but then claim that the client "doesn't work 1/4th of the time." also, ringers would be a massive problem in ESEA, considering the issue it is in UGC. it's not a solution, and would be a problem to the competitive integrity of the game.

as far as the worthiness of the league itself is, it's the only legitimate way to improve and become better at the game. it's the only league where teams actually want to win, and people take the game seriously. improvement isn't really rocket science, and i can give you some tips on how to get better. with that said, if you are getting rolled by mid open teams with three offclasses with 2 years of experience on UGC, you should really ask yourself if you want to get better at the game. any league is going to blow for a player who skill level is going to be near the bottom of the division, you either set realistic goals for yourself or stagnate. players around that skill level don't care/are awful teammates, which is why they usually stay there forever, so you need to work out of it.

I just kinda wished it costed less since we get far less services compared to CSGO :/ if the prize for open was smaller maybe sandbaggers could actually try and get better in IM, if we're gonna get a volatile client and less services than their other game, why should we pay the same amount?

at this point we're lucky we still have a tf2 league in esea, asking for a price reduction is being choosing beggars

you would rather have esea shut down the tf2 league and have everyone move to, what, tf2pl?

yeah, honestly ESEA sucks as a platform, and it has little to do with the playerbase who use it.

ESEA Client: somehow manages to be resource intensive, doesn't work even at an acceptable rate. I would get if it broke sometimes, but I don't think a single match on my team got played without one of the teams having to wait at least fifteen minutes for someone to get in due to client issues.

ESEA Servers:.... how do they manage to be this bad? they're incredibly choppy, and routing is terrible. I get 60 ping to chicago on average, but every time i play in an esea server it never fails to be above 80.

I just read this and thought I would reply:

I so wholly disagree with what you're saying. The only thing stopping us from having a "better" platform to play competitive TF2 on, is that ESEA is just what people use. Literally all you'd need is a spreadsheet of teams in divisions, and servers. I can't imagine it being that hard to do what ESEA is doing, just better. Also we only have like one person handling TF2 in ESEA, and nothing is Tri's fault. ESEA as an organization would have to recognize us and accommodate, which is unlikely because they are a business, and we don't bring them very much revenue. Ideally, we'd have a specialized service with plentiful active admins, which sorta negates the need for an "anti-cheat" if people submit demos and get reported to admins for cheating.

idk dude, esea sucks and it's what we have to deal with unless we make a new platform for it to exist that people are willing to play on.

Im not sure where you picked up that I played silver 6's, I have not.

you may laugh but it has a lot to do with money. At the highest level you do get a good chunk of change, especially so given that it's usually young people who dont really work that get a slice of it. Without that there is less incentive to win. Once top players stop getting competitive/quit then the game is truly dead imo.
there is also prestige, but i see that a majority of players playing dont even remember what ESEA LANs where like.

the best alternate scenario is to get a more community run league like etf2l and have a crowd funded prize pool, but this a lot worse than ESEA; having people fight over $6000+ vs. like 100 keys max or smth. No other company is going to offer a league for this game, at least one that is suitable for tf2 (tf2pl will not be)

so the long and short of it is that there is nothing else that will be as good. ESEA blows ass but honestly we're lucky we still have it at this point

Beersy's first team was my Newbie team which btw despite huge roster issues is still alive and trying hard to improve with much more stable people this season.

1.) You tried out for and agreed to join the newbiemix team.

2.) Roster instability was and has been a big issue for this team. Treatz despite any shortcomings as a leader (who is leading for the first time ever btw) has assured to try his best to get replacements and subs to the absolute best of his ability. He maintains an open nature and takes feedback from me when it is given and he is literally the only reason why their team is still alive. However many of the teammates stated when they would not make it and subs were found and used. Sometimes treatz just couldn't get a sub in time for the match, hence a 5v6. However I don't think you get to complain about this as you were also gone many days. whatever the reason may be. One of the matches treatz had to forfeit loss because you were missing and the team didn't want to play 5v6. Tanuki's grandmother was in the hospital and he was still willing and able to play the match despite us saying it was ok for him to miss because he knew he had a responsibility to five other people to play the match. Do not make their team out to be some bad teammates with no regard for others.

3.) The reason you were kicked and treated like shit from what ive gathered is that you complained about things that you would do and that you were very toxic and whiny during scrims and quite honestly the rest of the team was sick of it. Honestly i should've done a marxist and put you in your place, but Treatz told me to not because you would be immature about it and it would piss everyone else off. You were not above anyone on that team in terms of skill level yet you complained the most out of anyone on that team. Dont act like you were some saint and that your team shit on you or something. this was definitely not the case. I wish i could post the toxic stuff fromt he discord but treatz deletes all the toxic messages every time to keep as little toxicity in the team as possible.

4.)Ok so those players didnt show up, that isnt esea's fault.

5.)As marxist said ringers always create animosity and complaints and its better to not have ringers in general.

also my first season of open I was on 3 different teams all of which died before season end. And here I am much improved from Season 23 on an IM team enjoying playing tf2.

Slicerogue still manages to integrate himself into open drama despite not even playing in open

my drama is the only good open drama and you know it

half of ur complaints are due to you being bad, thats not ESEA's fault

There are always varying levels of skill in any competitive game, if a platform does not accomodate for a wide amount of skill it will suffer in growth, which is a problem that competitive TF2 faces already.

You can't blame a player for being low skill. They're trying to play the game and have fun, just like you, and you aren't any better or worse than them because of your skill level, despite what your ego may tell you.

it's not ESEA's fault if someone is not good enough to compete with other low level teams. there is not enough teams to warrant another division. there are ALWAYS going to be losers in a competitive league, there's no easy fix to being worse than others that a league can come up with.

ESEA was always the best place to compete in 6v6 in NA, not sure if that changed the past 2 years. LAN used to be really nice but they took that away so not sure what sets that league apart from others besides structure and prestige. All I know is that my boy Tri is the best TF2 admin in existence over any leagues so that by itself is why you should play ESEA.

You rite. Tri comin in with the last minute 200 IQ.

Man am I happy I live in eu. ETF2L master race

germans circlejerking about master race isnt a good look man

People would rather play ESEA because it has the reputation of being the "skilled" league, despite the fact that you have to pay for it, the fact that the people who run ESEA give no shits about TF2, and the fact that the client has had issues such as having a bitcoin miner placed in it in the past. UGC is for "noobs" who don't want to improve at the game, despite being run by people who are passionate about TF2, having no malware client to install, and being free. I mean, if people could get over their $30/player seasonal paycheck or whatever and move to UGC, it'd have a whole lot less issues than ESEA, but people don't want to change and UGC has a huge stigma attached. So basically play ESEA until ESEA gives up on TF2 and cuts you off like everyone else does. Don't forget to make the bi-monthly ESEA hate thread, as well.

alfa with double digit upfrags. This is the beginning of the great story arc..

:(

Thank you for everyone for all your feedback!

Special thanks to to Brimstone, Marxist, Antimoon and Apt for actually providing some kind of advice or feedback, instead of people who just threw salt at me, completely missing the point of my post.

A special thanks to slicerouge, who, even though I didn't mention names, had to be misinformed or skew the information in his post, and try and make me look bad. Best of luck to you in IM!

Thanks again everyone, but I think ill stick in UGC until im better for ESEA, thank you for the feedback. Some of your points were good enough to get me thinking, but I think at the end of the day im just too new at 6's to bother with ESEA at this point in my "TF2 career" (Could not think of a better term so sorry for that cringe).

o.o

Yeah because people who scrim their team, people who do demo reviews for members of the team, people who can look up my newbie team in the newbie mixes drive thread/steam thread, people who can look at your own esea history aren't gonna know who you are talking about and judge those players accordingly.

You just blatantly lied about your situation on a public popular forum making your ex-teammates look bad for no reason and I called you out for it.

Thanks, Best of luck to you in UGC Steel knowing you threw away a team dedicated to improving, A free dedicated mentor that wouldve helped you improve drastically, because your toxic attitude and ego got in the way.

// Before Rant. Btw this is Treatz's account, I'm the Newbie Mix TL.

You do realize everything that Slice said was true though right? Your trying to call out a system for being imperfect on a very small scale, not to mention you tried to throw your own shade at us in the very writing of the OG post, saying that he is changing the topic is the most boneheaded thing I think i've ever heard, especially since you are the one who threw around shade at first.

You literally indirectly mention us, anyone who scrimmed us or saw our esea page knows who we are.

You complain about this despite not showing to scrims and certain matches, and on top of that when you did show up you were toxic and bitchy and complained all the time. The reason you didint improve is more your doing than anyone elses. Everyone else is constantly working to improve themselves and have improved drastically since the beginning. if you actually put you ego aside I can guarentee you wouldve improved much more than your 2 seasons of UGC.

Overall I think you need to grow up about the whole situation, you bitch about ESEA but its the only half decent fucking league for actual long term improvement, not to mention its the ONLY league that will give you a prize pot at the top end of the game, for a dying game ESEA is the only thing keeping TF2 comp alive, give it a goddamn break.

I had work and matches, so the missing scrims and matches point is moot, so try again my dude. I was not toxic and bitchy all the time, in fact the only time I was toxic was when we lost a 5v6 and you all started laughing about it. I occasionally got angry, but never at you or any of the teammates. You think I need to grow up, considering the fact that you kick and blocked me when I said "Hey, ill stay until you find a replacement", I'm sorry I expected you to do your job as TL. Also, on top of my two jobs, and I was training for one BTW, so don't act like I skipped out on scrims and matches cuz I didn't feel like playing or something, because I had a paying job to do instead of paying to play a game. Don't tell me to grow up when I didn't abandon you, you essentially forced me too by kicking me from everything minutes after I said I was leaving, and don't tell me to act like an adult when you come in here trying to start drama for no reason, and even after you said you wanted to talk ignored me when I tried to reach out to you (I would have come back with an apology, btw). Your over-reaction is ridiculous, you hold grudges and literally all your teammates (And your brother, btw), can confirm that, so maybe ask all of your 5 original teammates, who added me back after and still wanted to be my friend, even your medic (Unless she left/changed teams etc) after you played a match against me taunting every time you killed me, apologizing for BM'ing. Im glad to hear everyone else is improving, and thank you for the actual lack of advice and just drama.

Yeah, I need to grow up, have a nice day Treatz. I won't be responding to either of you anymore so go pound sand.

skipping out on ur team cuz u have a job doesnt mean u werent skipping out on ur team. u shouldnt have been committing to play if u didnt have time to do it