You guys pretending we were former invite players to make yourselves feel better when we were FORCED UP with a team that shouldn’t have ever been there and went 0-16 is bullshit, and the reason we got forced into invite 2 seasons was because of pussy players like your team not holding their shit down to play invite in the first place, so please spare all these people that garbage excuse. Also don’t act like me and phelon are formers we haven’t grinded or been relevant in invite since like season 4

This is a good rule. This rule needed to be enforced a long time ago because teams winning a division than staying in it is bad for the integrity of the game. If any of those sandbag teams stayed in IM and any of the top 4 invite teams wanted to do the same (for whatever dumb reason they could come up with) those teams would be the first whining (not sporadic I feel for sporadics situation). If you guys think it’s a “dumb league” for trying to get teams to play with some integrity for once I’m sure I speak for everyone when I say you can gladly fuck off and see how much tf2 you enjoy without esea.

why the double standard for sporadic?

Sporadic were our scrim partners last season and I know for a fact they had every intention of playing invite the minute they made finals. They had some unfortunate last minute bail outs and that’s why I feel for them, I didn’t say they should be the exception to the rule they should still intend to field a team as best they can.

The intention was not there for the others

sporadic had players that were actually IM level and beat both the bad sandbag teams. One of which won IM twice and the other one had former invite players. Trip was the only invite level player on sporadic and only agreed to play IM nothing else. Don't get me wrong I like the new rule but it couldn't have come at a worse time.

Omni5 stole our invite medic after season 27

I had to play medic this season for the first time

we don't have a mid invite scout on our team every season

we only picked up n3 2 seasons ago

can you honestly stop
meyy was teamless for like all but the first 4 weeks of the regular season. if he wanted to play medic for you guys he totally would have been able to and i'm pretty sure he was literally on the roster anyway

your team has sandbagged the same division 3 times in a row and i don't care what you say about technicalities, because it's the division below invite either way
man up to the facts, you're not even the real enemy in this scenario, john milter is
so i don't understand why you are defending these ideas so hard

edit: and the mid invite scout he is talking about is john milter, are you actually this dumb or are you pretending?

edit2: it's hypocritical that you accuse US of 'stealing' your invite medic when he chose to join our team in the offseason meanwhile in the MIDDLE of season 26 your team actually stole OUR invite scout n3

https://media.giphy.com/media/9AM0H2QnB2GB2/giphy.gif

i just wanted 2 play an offclass with my friends in IM after getting 6th place for a year straight in invite :(

http://logs.tf/2092321#76561198012566870

again, thank u mr. popo . . .

why dont the teams in im just try harder? wait where have i heard this before....
the real problem is esea paying the winning im team better than mid invite.

nice airshots jeremy and sideways

3rd place Invite makes less than first place IM. You could literally be a top 4 team in NA and make less money playing in the division below you. You would have to grind super hard to potentially be a top 4 team. A lot of these players spend their free time pugging, scrimming, and doing other dumb/fun stuff. They totally have enough time to be a decent team. The problem is; why even bother? It would be way easier in IM (apparently not, the most sandbaggy teams absolutely struggled come playoffs).

I'm super glad they're trying to enforce the sandbagging rule but it won't ever stop these pussies from being pussies.

Who in ESEA do we message about third place invite getting less than first place IM? I want to help fix this as do many other people I think, but I have no idea what the average joe can do about this

This community has a really bad attitude when it comes to sandbagging teams and players. Its honestly more annoying that it gets treated more like a meme than something that should be shamed. I am a relatively new player, and I have taken multiple seasonal breaks as well so I don't even know a TON of history, but the little I do know is aids.

malicious activity s22 open (bullet team with yight + aim + friends, won division)
kickflip s22 open (roster hijack that got killed by match overturns from alt accounts, this might have been a wrech team? i didnt pay too much attention)
8k s23 + s24 IM (went 7-9 in invite, kept 5 players, moved down to IM and won it for two seasons straight. while this happened invite only had 8 teams including bullet teams that died before ever playing a match)
el classico s23 + s24 open (one of the stupidest of all time open sandbagging teams)
popo s25-s28 IM (cringe)
faint s28 IM (cringer)
There is an alt account open team being made rn that approaches the level of stupidity listed above (you know who you are)

Just because some of these teams lost doesn't mean they weren't awful influences in their divisions. In less bad taste there are also instances of player(s) dropping down divisions while still sweating at the expense of the teams around them. This includes a multitude of HL-main teams filled with players significantly better than the average open level. (As a parallel, ugc wouldn't like a team of IM players sandbagging in steel HL) None of this is any good for anyone besides the people doing the sandbagging. I hate that its so accepted.

s22 wrech was in invite
do not ever speak bad about el classico

just beat them lul

show them how it's done and get past 6th place in invite!

that's actually such a good post vulcan

i cant

What I find hard to grasp are the decisions made by the league. They seem to change often depending on the situation. There is also no consistency with upholding rules and simply ignoring other established rules. All decisions seem to be spur-of-the-moment actions and are rarely backed-up by good reasoning.

The most recent case was this season in IM and Faint Gaming. Refer to Post #182 in the IM happenings thread below:
http://www.teamfortress.tv/47564/esea-season-28-intermediate-happenings-discussion/?page=7

That said, I find it hard to understand how and why the league is deciding to only now uphold a rule they never cared about in the past and use it to penalize players. The example above was a clear situation of the league not playing by the rules, so where is that penalty? If that can be explained, then the league has my support.

Speaking for just myself, I like the move-up rule because sandbagging is always a fucking joke and the players doing it over and over don't give a shit about anyone but themselves and their little pack of friends. That aside, what I want is the league to stop catering to these individuals/groups and just uphold the rules regardless of who it impacts. If rules are dumb, then change them to fit the times/situations and stick by them. The worst thing an admin can do is ignore a rule when it isn't convenient and then uphold a rule just because they feel like it all of a sudden.

First place IM is only 220/person, fourth place Invite is 160/person. It honestly doesn't seem like that huge an amount of money, so what's the point in sandbagging for prize money again? Do people outside of Froyotech actually play TF2 for money? You'd make more with less effort simply washing dishes, so I don't get why prize money is such an appeal.

You don't have to be that good at tf2 to win IM but you definitely need to be good to get 4th place invite. It's a lot more effort for less pay so for people who don't want to try that hard the choice makes perfect sense

in terms of FAINT playing in IM this season, they did literally nothing against the rules and in fact I was more upset about popo still playing IM after winning it with an identical roster than FAINT playing, their team had gaps and in the past teams like that have not always won (which also seemed to be true this season). as for them not being moved out for violating the roster rule, Im not sure I can speak on it because I don't know the exact details but as far as Im concerned they deserved to be there more than popo did.

regarding the enforcement of the rule, my understanding is that at the beginning of the season ESEA announced new roster move up rules for the entire league, not just TF2. Sandbagging is a problem in TF2 but its also been made clear its a problem in CSGO as well and they created more strict guidelines this season specifically for CSGO, but as we all know the state that TF2 is in, whatever happens in ESEA CSGO must also have TF2 follow suit.

Our main admin is tri and trust me when I say he more than anyone wants invite to succeed and wants the appropriate teams to move up, this is why this thread is even happening in the first place. Unfortunately he is not the end all of decisions even for TF2, he has to go through a board and other admins to get any change approved at all, and currently hes just trying to enforce the new rules put in place for him.

Identical roster? I played medic for my team last season with essentially 0 experience on medic and sparse league experience overall.

your first match of season 28: https://play.esea.net/match/13328517

finals of season 27: https://play.esea.net/match/13102672

so yes besides you continuing to miss the point, you had an identical roster besides yourself.

https://steamcommunity.com/id/mayomie-kun/
https://steamcommunity.com/id/sailor-mercury/
https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198081558744

is this the same guy that randomly added me and tried flirting with me by spamming anime emoticons and going ^/////^ LOL