I didn't send out invitations so I can't comment on that (or whatever happened in EU) but what I do know for sure was that in March of 2016 there were attempts in NA to start up the beta testing of the pro league, and there was a server connected to the site because I played one of the games that erynn tried to gather people for (she asked multiple times so I'm sure there were at least a handful of games, even if they weren't 100% invite players, but that's ok 'cause its just in beta and you want to make sure shit works).

I'm pretty sure the pro league never got past the beta phase mostly because the feedback that was received from the people who did participate were mostly neutral and negative towards the idea, and partly due to it never being used naturally outside of erynn trying to gather people, despite advertising on pug.champ.gg, posting in the original PugChamp thread, and whatever other invitations erynn/tsc gave out via Steam and Discord. I tried idling in it added throughout the day for a week or two to try to get it going but the most I ever saw personally added to the site was around 4 people.

Unless you mean "ready to be used" as in fully released with invite pugs ready to happen daily, which yeah it wasn't, mostly because of what happened when it was ready to be used at all for beta testing.

I wasn't the one doing the gathering so that'd be on erynn/tsc to clarify that. The good news at least is if people want it I'm sure it could try to come back purely based on how much tsc wanted it to happen back then.

I can assure you you're either remembering incorrectly or only speaking for yourself.

As someone who's been in the PugChamp slack since nearly day one, I've already seen multiple plans to make the service better, but the number 1 reason issues still exist is the development process is slow. There's only 2 developers and they can only really work on things in their free time due to school/jobs outside of TF2. You can have the best ideas in the world, but it won't matter if it can't really be implemented quickly, so developmental help would be the first thing that would have to happen if anyone wants to help make PugChamp better.

The next thing is money related. PugChamp does not operate at a profit or break even, and therefore most of our servers are donated. In NA we were at 4 servers on PugChamp and 2 servers on MixChamp for a long while, with all 4 PugChamp servers being used only a handful of times a month. We had to downscale to 3 and 1 purely from someone who was donating servers to us deciding they didn't want to anymore, and had to scramble for some replacements. Once we're able to support a larger amount of players at once on the site from the additional dev support, then we'd need the money, or even temporarily donated scrim servers if we're able to get to that point (loaning out your personal scrim server for a specific window of time for the site to use), to play on.

There's a couple things on your google doc that I don't really agree with, but there's no point in even getting deep/specific into that at the moment because nothing can really change at a faster rate until assistance is given via the two points above.

Didn't we already lose a division and try to ditch esea by switching to another league in season 15? That scenario even had a scandal as the cherry on top and it still didn't work out in the communities favor.

Like I'm sure nobody is "anti-TF2 longevity" or anything but I don't expect positive results from an attempt at a league change again; ones gonna die and the survivor will be smaller than before.

a team has to be forward about it first otherwise how is anyone supposed to know who to give donations to

there were at least 2 invite teams that asked for several hundreds of dollars combined last season and as far as I know they got every penny they needed

EDIT: it was 3 invite teams that got almost $1000 combined within the span of 1 month; 2 fundraisers received $255 each the same day they were posted to tf.tv
http://www.teamfortress.tv/38971/seeking-sponsor-for-esea-invite
http://www.teamfortress.tv/39290/please-help-my-team
http://www.teamfortress.tv/39391/we-need-your-help

Obviously money is not the issue on why invite is dying (even though having to rely on donations sucks dick)

its like 35 games or so

it was lower at earlier points but has increased over time

Snakewater
Process
Gullywash
Badlands
Viaduct
Sunshine
Metalworks
Granary

http://i.imgur.com/RErmpeV.jpg

yo it really sucks that something might have happened to froot but I gotta ask for clarification

Please tell me this sentence means "my team is already covering for me and glider so that's why we need $85 to help pay for this sub" and not "we need $85 dollars for this sub and oh by the way we need another $170 to play in general too" 'cause the latter would be pretty silly to realize you can't find a way to pay a third of your teams fees after week 1 is already over....

Don't get me wrong though, I hope everything ends up alright and you guys find a way to play.

One thing that doesn't help too much is the fact that it's a linear map. A lot of popular maps have some sort of S shape that allows you to use advantages to push through the short and cramped way to cut people off when normally it'd be difficult, compared to the large and safe way. The only map that has survived through the ESEA map pool cycle with a linear design is granary, and it's one of the least popular maps still around anyway, skating by since the choke points for the most part aren't crazy wide apart. When your map gets too wide it can become difficult to help your flank getting pushed if your most advantageous door to transition through was on the opposite side of the map. Having a linear map imo doesn't automatically make the map terrible, but it definitely doesn't help it become good.

I know the HL community complained about last being too hard to push but at first glance it kind of looks like it might be too hard to hold for 6s. The right door looks difficult to control, the capture point is pretty big, and the transitional "lobby" area that exists throughout lasts like process, snakewater, and gullywash now has to be either held by the defending team (which isolates your heals), or given away traditionally (with untraditional height disadvantage being the issue).

I also don't think the transitional lobby between 2nd and mid is that popular because with all of the doorways being so spacious it seems very easy to get behind and find a path to get to 2nd due to everything being intertwined, compared to every map in the pool we have now where people have defined chokepoints/hallways/doorways that it's their job to clear.

I don't think Vanguard becoming a good map for 6s is 100% out of the question personally, but it would definitely require a lot of reworking for that to happen.

Same things been happening to me. I haven't had the opportunity to test much yet but I'll edit my post if I find something that fixes it.

EDIT: I restarted my modem + router and I haven't noticed the issue anymore after about 4 hrs of gameplay. I'll play more and see if it comes back at all.

EDIT 2: another 3 1/2 hours and no problems. I guess that did it.

the information in the email is generalized so just ask one of your teammates to forward theirs to you and you should be fine

p sure they're already in NA so its just a question of LA/denver/chi

some people were unconvinced that they were broken and wanted first hand xp I guess

Keep in mind tri saying its gonna be banned is a result from an ESEA-I meeting and not a 3rd global whitelist meeting so its a probably decision to have all of it be banned regardless of what a 3rd global whitelist meeting would result in.