This is what new players don't understand. We ALL started in open. We've all been there and worked our way up that's how you do it in competitive leagues. We've ALL paid to play each season. That's why our competitive scene is strong. Why risk killing it, or downgrading it for no apparent reason? You want to save $2?

If being cheaper is the only reason for you that's silly. That's not enough to convince me. CEVO is a bit cheaper but that's the only point you have. It's cheaper for reasons too, like LAN and server providing. $7 a month isn't a lot of money.

Why should you care about the top division? If you're a true competitor you want to make it to the top and beat those guys straight up. Not kill the league to get them to quit to make your road to the top easier. We've been doing this for 15 seasons why is it all of a sudden too expensive to play? Without the top division our game has no exposure. The competitive community would be a joke. You think people would pay to send top 6's UGC teams to a LAN? Not trying to take a jab at anybody just using it as a comparison.

Open players pay the same amount as everyone else in the league. Actually higher divisions pay more. It's not that open provides all the money for the inviters. It's that people are paying to compete in a league with cash prizes and MULTIPLE divisions. If that's not for you then there are thousands of public servers that are f2p.

Setsul: Go back to the original question. If the competition is already in one league, and has superior everything else, why switch in the first place? What is the point? In a perfect world lets say you get everyone to switch over even mixup. Still a worse website, and no LAN. What would we GAIN out of it? Nothing. It's going to be the same thing with less perks unless you're a brand new player with no goals of moving up the ranks.

Oops forgot to bring up one last point which is a shot at ESEA but it's still valid.

We had 3 divisions for the longest time and everything was fine and dandy. We switch to 4 and now we can't fill the bottom division. If for some reason we can't fill the open division I think they should just re-align the divisions back to 3 and keep the league going. 50+ teams is still plenty. We did it before why can't we do it again? 8 in invite, 16 in IM, 30ish in Open.

Strongsuit i'm not trying to disrespect newer players in any way. Maybe you do understand but some people invested a lot of time and money to compete in this league and move up the ranks. That could be you one day down the road if this situation ever arises again. Put yourself in someone elses shoes. If you're playing competitively you should have some kind of goals in mind. Since ESEA is the highest competition i'd think your goal would be to make it to the top and win. If you were a baseball player would you want to win the minor league trophy or the major league trophy? There's always going to be differences because people value different things. I'm not trying to take shots at anyone in particular just speaking very bluntly and honestly. In whatever it is you decide to do though, all I am saying is think about the big picture and the consequences that could result from your decisions. That's all. Nobody is a bad guy here I just really don't want to see a community fallout over something that is totally avoidable and not even needed.

Go back to the main questions:

Why switch?
What is better and how?

State the facts as of right now please.

Even for newer players ESEA is obviously the better choice. If you don't want to pay to compete in a competitive league with prizes then you shouldn't be there in the first place. I don't know many people who strive to play for years to just stick around in open. Most people have the intentions of moving up the ranks and enjoying the competition. It's like the single player game that has no ending. It's my opinion but to me competition is fun. For others it might not be fun. That's what pubs and tf2center is for.

I've said my peace I just wanted to make people aware of the very real consequences. CEVO can be a great thing in time. I'd suggest if you only have time to play in one league then play ESEA. If you have time for two, then do both. This of course is what's best for the community as a whole, not just for yourself. That's how I see it anyways. Or be selfish/cheap and go for the cheaper league with worse competition and inevitably kill the community much faster. The choice is ours.

That's the problem though. The newer players simply don't understand while all the guys who have been here for years do. This isn't "my" campaign. It's common sense for the people who have been around. You're going to be paying money in either league. It seems like competition isn't for you or KAMO so you guys should just play in some good public servers where you can sometimes win and just have fun. I already said I don't care personally which league I play in I just want to have fun and compete. It doesn't change the fact that killing ESEA-TF2 will dramatically alter the competitive community forever. Which to me, is not worth it. Most people know i'm not the biggest fan of ESEA because of the bitcoin crap but it is what it is. And it is the best league right now all around.

Think about the current facts on the situation and not pipe dreams or assumptions. The seasons are weeks away not months.

To the newer players, for you this game is brand new, but it's not. It's 7 years old. It's a very fragile situation. You new guys will end up determining how much longer competitive TF2 lasts. 20 new guys come in and 30 old guys retire if we start messing with the leagues. Repeat every season. Bye bye competitive TF2. See you on Drippy's 2fort.

Snowy:

The question is: Why do we need to let ESEA die as long as they're not running malware on their client? Is there any logical reason? It still provides the best website, best division organization, best competition and players, prizes, and LAN.

So we goto CEVO prematurely.. Use a website that isn't fully functional yet, with 2 divisions. Play in watered down competition due to the lack of top teams participating seriously, lack of top players being present, and having unequal skilled teams participating. Prizes but not as much, and of course no LAN?

Yes CEVO could keep evolving and improve but how fast? I don't think 10 days is enough to out do ESEA just yet. So again: Why do we need to let ESEA die as long as they're not running malware on their client?

This isn't business for the players it's a league for US to play in to compete.

This remains: If we let ESEA die and CEVO turns out to not be a good replacement where does that leave competitive TF2? TF2center.com? Pubs? Think for just one minute. ESEA is far from perfect, no league is. But at least we know it's always going to be there with the best and most serious competition.

New players do determine a leagues success. As I stated in above posts I don't understand why new players would want to play anywhere but ESEA? You realize you're going to be playing ESEA-Main teams in CEVO-Open right?

CEVO is doing great things and making big strides. It's just not ready yet. I have a lot of faith in the people who stepped up to bring CEVO into the mix but there's still A LOT of work to be done.

No league is EVER perfect. STV's might be down rarely, client problems, routing issues. It happens in every game just about. It doesn't change the fact that ESEA is still hands down the premier league for many different reasons as stated above.

Why let it sink into oblivion for no good reason after 15 successful seasons? Doesn't make any sense to me. The only reason I could think of is the malware on the client. And that's gone.

Scrims don't really mean much, in case you didn't know. Lets not get off topic here though.

The question is: Why do we need to let ESEA die as long as they're not running malware on their client? Is there any logical reason? It still provides the best website, best division organization, best competition, prizes, and LAN.

So we goto CEVO prematurely.. Use a website that isn't fully functional yet, with 2 divisions. Play in watered down competition due to the lack of top teams participating seriously, lack of top players being present, and having unequal skilled teams participating. Prizes but not as much, and of course no LAN?

Yes CEVO could keep evolving and improve but how fast? I don't think 10 days is enough to out do ESEA just yet. So again: Why do we need to let ESEA die as long as they're not running malware on their client?

No offense to UGC, but Lonely Hearts won the 6's top division last season so that's irrelevent imo. They finished I think 7th or 8th in ESEA-OPEN? The competition will be extremely watered down if you split the league up into 2 divisions. And I think there will be more fallout than just mix^. For the guys who have been playing for 10+ seasons they enjoy going to LAN and use it as a goal to achieve. If you thought the open competition was unfair what do you think CEVO will bring? I'm not saying the switch to CEVO wouldn't or couldn't work. I'm saying that it's not going to make anything better, but much worse. Definitely not ready. There's no reason to switch as of right now. That's my point. I played in CEVO last season with Bob & Weave and we off classed huntsman on our way to the grand finals. It was extremely fun but it's not ESEA standard competition by a land slide. If you don't want the best competition then ESEA isn't for you and never will be so I understand why you play in UGC.

I can understand a new players pov from people like you KAMO, but to those of us who have been around for years it's a lot more complicated than what your understanding of the situation is.

I'm probably the last person who should be bringing this up. But to me it's a pretty big deal. We all know what ESEA did with the client was horse shit. That doesn't change the fact though that for 15 season its been our bread and butter for organized competition, and LAN. We have I think 4 teams signed up for open.. If there isn't enough teams in open then ESEA-TF2 will cease to exist. I know certain top guys like Platinum for instance.. If there's no LAN, say good-bye. ESEA funds its LAN amongst other things through team count and if there isn't 20-30 teams signed up in open the league won't be able to fund itself to make it worthwhile to keep the TF2 division as is. CEVO could be a good thing but I don't think it's smart to jump the gun this early because maybe, just maybe we're making a giant mistake and going to regret it. And at some point there's no going back. CEVO is like a DayZ game in its alpha stages. There's definitely an upside but it's not there quite yet. On top of the fact that its already fallen once. Yes we have some good people manning the ship over there and I have much faith in them but it's going to take time. The last thing we want to do is divide or split the community in any way. ESEA dies and a lot of our top players stop playing. Something like this could kill the competitive side of OUR game. You slash your player count right in half and then you're going to start playing 4v4's instead of 6v6's. I personally planned to play in ESEA and CEVO. I just truly believe it's a giant mistake to let the league with 50+ teams registered still, simply die. I literally saw the exact same thing happen in TFC 10 years ago and it's very real and can happen very quick.

I PERSONALLY don't care what league I play in as long as i'm having fun with friends. But for the good of TF2 as a whole I think ESEA needs to stay for now. Just my opinion. The top teams have only stuck around this long primarily because of LAN. 10 days left to register so there's still time. Really think about the big picture and make a rational decision. Either way you're going to be playing TF2, what will change is what level of competition and how much competition will be left after the split. The money to play has never been an issue for this many years so I don't know why it should be now.

In short, before making any irrational decisions lets give ESEA a chance to clean up its act (which for all we know, it already has) and continue playing to avoid a community collapse at the highest level. Some people have been playing seasons and seasons to get to IM, Main, or Invite. Now we just let it die to go play CEVO-Main or CEVO-O and forget about what we've built up for over half a decade? Really seems like it's too early to make a really big decision like this. Let CEVO get its stuff together before we make the move as a whole. A lot of the cevo site isn't really functioning still as well.

It will definitely have a huge effect on the community and I don't think people are realizing it yet. Big picture here, think in the present and not the future. This post wasn't meant to bash either league in any way I just want whats best for our game and its competitive players. It may seem like a cool idea to go with CEVO and just let ESEA die but it really isn't as simple as that, nor is it the right time just yet. CEVO definitely needs more time to get everything together. Rushing things will only make matters worse. ESEA S15 was a successful campaign I don't understand the need for change as long as there's no longer malware involved in the client. This past season we included a main division which was a HUGE success. Four divisions now of skill level compared to CEVO's 2? There was no #1 seed playoff teams who won the championship for their division which means the competition is tightening. In my eyes it's getting better not worse. That's why I am posting this. Get the ball rolling people this is our[/i] game lets keep it together!

Future, you need to go on irc it's the best way to look for scrims. You can download mIRC pretty easily, from there connect to the GameSurge network. Then enter the channel #tf2scrim - Once there, post something like this: "6's ours/yours (<server) mapyouwant high open" ie. "6's ours granary high open+". Also the pug systems are via irc as well so it's a good thing for you to download it regardless if you want to continue improving.

Go ESEA open!!

Tic IS on the roster if you read Phasers post. He just spelt it "Tik". We're staying together as long as ESEA doesn't die. Hopefully me and tic on the combo, chriz demo, sherman and romeo scout, memphis roaming as long as his new job doesn't interfere. Tried scrims for the first time last night and went very well.

You guys realize NONE of this matters though, this thread and many others, if new open teams don't begin registering soon right? If there's not at least 25-30 open teams then it's not a profitable investment on ESEA's part to hold LAN and prizes. Therefore ESEA-TF2 will die and we'll all be forced to move to CEVO. CEVO has an upside but as of right now you can't even edit your profile without it not saving. Still needs work.

Register now!

P.S. I really think if we're struggling to fill a 4th division we should go back to 3 divisions to salvage the league. Remove Main and go back to Invite/IM/Open. And adjust the divisions accordingly.