IT'S ALL ABOUT THE FOREPLAY, BOYS.

The states part uses radio buttons instead of check boxes, so it only lets you pick one answer. :(

Saloon wouldn't need to be shut down. You could have it so games from certain leagues would no longer be added. CSGL does that when it starts to get out of hand, or if the league asks them not to put up their games.

Nine Inch Nails - The Fragile

Nine Inch Nails - The Downward Spiral

Cursive - The Ugly Organ

iamamiwhoami - Bounty

Bazooie - The Path of Least Resistance

Bring Me The Horizon - Suicide Season

Explosions in the Sky - The Earth Is Not a Cold Dead Place

The Flashbulb - Red Extensions of Me

Have A Nice Life - Deathconsciousness

I think you're getting your numbers mixed up. There are nine teams in Invite and the season is eight weeks.

edit: whoops, there are nine weeks (and still nine teams), but I don't know why that's necessary. Pretty sure the seasons were eight weeks a while ago. Everything would make sense with eight weeks, as all teams would play each map twice and play each other twice. Oh well, pretty off-topic but whatever, haha.

I typed out a bunch of stuff, but it was really just me shitting on CEVO and saying "well, ESEA does this fine for the most part, but it could improve."

If I had to directly compare it to ESEA? Hm, I'll name a few things really quick.

Take what ESEA has, and then have better servers, either no client or a client that actually works / catches cheaters / doesn't run as a process in the background, more TF2 content on the website itself or at least direct itself to TFTV for the content, having the maps played in the season actually consistent (ie: I think my team has to play Metalworks once this season and Process four times? Why?), more diverse stats like sizzlingstats, and a few other reasons I probably can think of later but can't think of now.

I had the new CEVO season become a front page article with a banner, while constantly making and bumping threads regarding the new season and maps. While I did tell b4nny and ma3la (and maybe other streamers) to advertise it, it's not their job to. How much they wish to mention the new season is up to them, so if they only mentioned it once or twice, that's still cool for the ~200-300 people that were tuned in, but I'm not going to badger them to mention it every five minutes if someone missed it.

I also asked enigma for assistance in further promoting the new CEVO season on TFTV, but he told me he didn't want to campaign something he didn't really want to support, as he also had an awful time in the previous CEVO season. But again, he was totally fine with having the front page article with a banner go up.

Truthfully, I hear some people tell me what you just told me about not really hearing about the new season. CEVO themselves said they could have done a bit of a better job advertising it, but at the end of the day, I think a good majority of the community genuinely did not really give a shit about the next season of CEVO. Some people didn't feel like having 3-4 matches a week (if they participated in both CEVO and ESEA), didn't like their servers, didn't like paladin, really hated navigating their website, liked ESEA better in every way, and/or weren't so hung up over despising them for the bitcoin event.

I tried to campaign it hard, I really did. I would say the only thing I could have done more is constantly bump the new season thread the moment it left recent discussion, and that would have looked really fucking annoying, because I would have bumped it 3-5 times a day for a good 4-5 weeks. That's not an exaggeration, either.

I'm not stopping anyone if they want to try to campaign for a new league. But do I think it'll fall flat on its face while ESEA still supports TF2? Yeah, I do. But do I hope that something better than ESEA will eventually come? Yeah, I do.

You guys can agree or disagree with me however much you want. I'm all for keeping this game alive. If you want to try to be a CEVO admin, please do. If you want to try to start your own league, please do. I don't say that in jest, either. I want absolutely nothing but the best for this community, which is why I poured a fucking ridiculous amount of hours and money into GXL.

edit: NO GXL NEWS YET PLS DON'T BOMBARD ME. ;_;

This has been lpkane's demeanor before TF2 even came out. I think he's grown to react this way after dealing with shitty counterstrike players for over a decade. Despite that, he is actually a ridiculously nice guy in person. I'm not saying he's an internet tough guy, but again, it's just how his demeanor has grown on those forums. Like it or not, it's how he is and this is ultimately a decision he feels like is best for a $1 million dollar league.

To be clear, I'm not necessarily thrilled that an ESEA process will be running in my background, but I'm not really shattered about it.

Also, I see a lot of people saying "omgomg fuck ESEA, let's leave and go to something or make something of our own!," but the community has not proved we are capable of that at all. We tried that with a season of CEVO while still also having ESEA. Despite all the massive backlash ESEA got, ESEA still had more signups and having two primary leagues split part of the community (which is what we don't want at all). No one took CEVO seriously, and Lange (CEVO admin at the time) said it was a massive nightmare from start to finish.

I became the CEVO admin the following season, and despite how much I tried to advertise it to the community, no one gave a shit. Everyone wanted ESEA. I tried bumping the threads on TFTV, but literally no one would post and it would fall off the recent topic list within 30-60 minutes. I posted on Twitter, mass-messaged everyone on my friends list, told b4nny and ma3la (who are unquestionably the top 2 competitive TF2 streamers, at least at the time) to advertise it on their streams, and we got little to nothing. I think we had less than 16 teams sign up in total, and about 15 players were paid.

Whether we like it or not, ESEA is here to stay. The foundation for competitive TF2, regardless if you include money, is laid out and totally there for us to stay afloat. As long as ESEA keeps TF2, that will be the primary league of choice.

If something seems to be unquestionably better in just about every way, then I'm sure everyone will entertain the idea.

$5 forfeitted.

r e l a x b o y s

It was primarily 6v6 in beta. I do know that a decent amount of teams toyed with 8v8, though. Animeman tried to settle it on Gotfrag by making a poll for 6v6, 7v7, and 8v8. 6v6 won by a fairly good margin.

I think what you're talking about the TF2 beta client which let a bunch of users beta test upcoming updates. I remember him having to do something with that. I could be wrong but I don't think he really played the game when it was actually in beta in 2007.

:3

I hope you do stuff.

https://scontent.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xap1/v/t1.0-9/11210479_475331582615719_1222884522952650300_n.jpg?oh=336922948ac4c403744cee551f989f31&oe=56088F35

My cat is wishing you a happy birthday. :3

Don't minusfrag this guy. We got nothing except jerseys, lol.

I'll probably go into full detail on a FullyCharged episode where I also talk about GXL or something. In a rather tl;dr fashion, we got a bit of LAN support when we were Exertus, but then all of that went down the drain when Exertus became eLevate. I helped my team out financially when needed, but we mostly stuck with eLevate just to keep an MGO name in TF2.

I don't want to make it seem like eLevate are a joke or something, though. The staff are friendly and chill dudes who support their teams the best they can with what they have. They just didn't see the growth in TF2 as they thought they would see over the seasons. The death of LAN this season had little to do with their decision. Yeah, we tried to tell them about Valve MM and other cool stuff, but they felt like this was the best decision. I respect their decision, and the split was amicable.

Also, whether it's obvious or not, we wanted a name synonymous with elevate, mostly as a joke (along with the logo) but it's still a fine team name.

It's a secret. :3

omfg thank you for finding that

lol, I actually really enjoy this. It reminds me a little bit of Home Movies. I don't really play this close anymore, though. :(

This. Exactly this.

I don't think the idea of spread is horrible in every scenario, but I think it shouldn't be used that much. And even when it is used, I don't think it should make the odds 50/50 (like a last place invite team getting one round against Froyo or something). Because again, I think having those low odds to bet on will really pay off if you are a knowledgeable person.

IMO, I wouldn't do spread whatsoever, maybe unless it was a top 2 team going against a bottom 2 team. Even then, I would make it so the bottom 2 team would have to get like 3 rounds or something.

Also, I'm not getting the 500 internal server error anymore. :) Thanks for fixing it.