If we push it back later people are playing after midnight cest. We could potentially do that as those who make it to the grand final are far less likely to drop out at that point, but I remain unconvinced that on a weekend a large reason for lack of signups is the starting time of 5:30pm.

Tournaments normally get announced weeks before they run rather than months as sponsorship is hard to get and there are max like 3 people in the whole scene running and organising them.

Does perm shout at you enough?

Do you get sexual satisfaction from being bullied?

Why are you such a nob in rocket league?

At no point have I complained about etf2l open teams, or brand new teams. There are more than enough High/top Mid teams to make a healthy cup scene right now. Open teams in an esea context are not brand new teams tho.

I'll make a video for those people like yourself who are unable to understand the wider context of tf2's growth or how it compares to other esports models. Pointless to keep writing pages about it again and again.

Yes signups really matter in a winner-takes-all tournament, or any tournament, because that's how the sponsors get value out of their sponsorship. Razer cancelled previous cup series and thousands of pounds of prize because there were appalling signups. If we hadn't averaged around 20 for each cup this time it would have been terrible for future relationships.

As for etf2l vs esea or etf2l, you can't compare a service that does nothing except provide a framework and table, and a league that would provide a platform for sponsorship, prize pools, growth, lans etc. ETF2L is only better for very very short term community play, otherwise it's a pointless league.

Besides, your points about esl and esea are just wrong. ETF2Ls website is even worse, including a horribly stale and limiting backend and their prizepools are non-existent. Other than the laggy ac client the product is superior both short term and long term. There is 0 chance this game will ever be "big" with etf2l at the forefront of the scene as the home of the top scene or as the largest league. It's a matter of when we move and who we move to.

THANKS MRS. TOBS

Have you ever played a sport in your life? If you make it to the next stage of a tournament or win your heat to get into another round you are hyped to challenge yourself against better opponents. I've never met such a strangely pathetic attitude in competition as we have here, where as soon as you're unlikely to LITERALLY win the whole thing you give up.

There's a p good reason why these kind of teams get stuck winning open forever and never getting good, and that attitude is one aspect i.e. being content to "win" a much lower skill section. Making deep runs in a tournament like PC Master Race did this series is a huge achievement, way more than doing ok in High or winning Mid or w/e these teams normally pride themselves on. PCMR for example boosted themselves in just 2/3 tournaments from being a literal shit-tier team that nobody knew or cared about to a better than top10 team.

The teams who even made it out of the open section of these cups achieved a lot, people will notice Infamous, xTp, dd+5, top5, etc. There is no difference to playing scrims and playing etf2l for years if you're not going to actually compete and test yourselves when the opportunities arise. What do you even practise and scrim for if not to try and win things?

Also this is why the bottom of the scene is a mess with ugc/esea open etc. This retarded outlook - if these cups were 64+ teams like they easily could be, then you wouldn't face a good team in the first round! If you decide to sign up to cups or esea open en masse, then the chance of you meeting a team way above your skill level reduces massively and you have more fun. But if you are scared, and convince others that cups and esea are scary places with far better teams, then all the lower scene disappears in a negative spiral.

I am in no way upset that suave or serpents participated in these cups. Half of the enjoyment of getting real competitions in the scene rather than pointless leagues is seeing these old good players come back and seeing exciting online tournaments. These qualifiers were designed to balance the benefits of growing an online cup atmosphere alongside boosting hype and a bit of help for those interested in dhs. They fulfilled their purpose and I'm happy with the end result. Would it have been nice to see Lego and publiclir win instead for example? Of course, but you can't argue with who the best teams seem to be right now.

Teams who have "quit" tf2 (i.e. don't want to play long seasons but still pug and are good) will always reform for cups because they allow for low commitment but high reward in terms of enjoyment and potential money. This is a good thing! Imagine if we had a full cup series instead of leagues and people could pop in whenever they wanted to create a dynamic tournament every few weeks. Its exciting to play and watch.

So no, they haven't "gone against all the work I've been doing", I fully anticipated suave at least taking part and doing well, and encouraged participation from teams who couldn't make it to LAN but would like to engage in online cup play. Don't sweat it. We're not at the position in the tf2 scene where you can have everything revolve around lans. We barely have a functional online scene.

Shadowburn said to me earlier that they are discussing the visa situation with the desire to attend. Seems unlikely to me but could happen.

Epsilon: the most dominant team ever

Most recent of my Friday pieces on The Spire, covering Epsilon's run in 2013; give it a read.

thespire.tv/epsilon-the-most-dominant-team-ever

Last chance to sign up for these cups, registrations ends soon!

esea admin who cried wolf

This should be pretty ridiculous. Can't call a favourite tbh.

I don't think you can make that argument at all, and it's wishful thinking to believe it.

There are real genetic differences between people's reaction times, intelligence, logical thinking, etc. Even if you discard all of the genetic differences, your entire wealth of personal experience before you picked up TF2 already mapped out how you'll mentally approach the game and how you approach the process of learning and improving.

There is obviously innate talent in people that defines a skill ceiling - look, for example, at the people who DO train as hard in sports, or practise madly in esports, and still fail. They might even train and play better, analyse the game better, but still lose. The same can be applied to sports, where athletes train all their lives in identical conditions and can lose out to training partners or w/e who have better natural ability.

Work and the refinement you achieve hones your natural ability and brings it close to your personal ceiling, but you don't have the ability to be the next Usain Bolt if you just try hard enough. And to genuinely tell people they do is disingenuous and very hard to believe.

In terms of TF2, most people I think should be able to achieve an Invite level or w/e reasonable level you want to set. There's a small playerbase and it's not that hard even if you have little natural talent.

Also your final point is largely bull too; loads of players have not improved since 2014, or are just as good as they were, or have gotten worse, even if some are better. Also, just because some people improve over time (duh) doesn't mean everybody can improve infinitely until they're the best.