bowswer5kevScrewballThat 99% of the community will never see.
not a good point
if you play any competitive game you always risk a chance of getting nothing in return
the prize pool does help fuel competition and is a factor in some people's choice to play the game
I've been confused by this thinking for awhile now and I hope someone could clarify it for me.
I don't understand why our scene has to justify sticking with ESEA because it has prize pools or 'professional' organization or that it had a LAN. If you truly find TF2 competitively appealing and enjoyable the prize money that barely covers the cost of league fees and Premium should not even be a major consideration for playing.
With how obvious it is that TF2 is an after-thought to ESEA maybe it's time to consider that there's a likely possibility that the ESEA client for CS:GO is a much higher quality anti-cheat than what could very well be an anti-cheat for TF2 that hasn't actually been updated for years. At this point even the UGC admins have caught and banned more cheaters than the client has and that's a very important fact to me.
I don't have anything against ESEA, but I don't understand where this sense of dependency on them comes from. I have enough of a passion for this game and the level of teamwork it requires to play at a top level that I don't need any other incentive to continue being a part of the competition. I have a great time playing TF2 competitively in Highlander and 6's while taking it very seriously because they both boil down to the same rewarding experience for me. I don't need a pocket change prize pool or an outdated client to take this game seriously or justify my passion for playing.
We do have the capability as a community to run our own servers, hunt down cheaters, and create our own league. I'm not even going to mention CEVO at this point. I've played in UGC Highlander for two years and while the admins have definitely made mistakes and questionable decisions, they have made a lot of efforts lately catering to more competition in Platinum, more cheaters being caught, and more growth for the league. I don't see how the 6's community is incapable of achieving the same thing with some independence of their own for once.
It's nice of you to be as committed as you are, as I feel most players who are improving and are new should be. But you have to understand players like myself, most of my team, mix^, even much of elevate, have been playing this game for FUCKING AGES. The game will always be "fun" to me. It's fun to click on things and it's definitely pleasing when you get some money out of it. But for older players, to keep them around you need some real competition.
When there's no money involved, competition is generally less intense. There's less incentive to improve, and there's less aspirations to which you can start building. ESEA did a great job over the years of offering money to the winners. I'm sorry, I don't care how much money you make, but a $900 check or so is always going to look nice when you had fun doing it. And we stuck around for the small amount of money and competition it generated, hoping that at some point in the future, things would change. It seems it was a good idea to wait around and keep playing, because now matchmaking is confirmed, and it could propel TF2 and its players to new heights.
But if there was never any money? I seriously would not be still playing this game. When I first started, it was never about the money. Much like any hobby you start, you want to get better at it, and you dedicate time to it. But after a while, they get old if there's not much you can aspire to have. My friends and I used to play ultimate frisbee once or twice every week when I was 18. Do we still do it? Not really. My friends that were really serious about it started playing it in college, where there's some money involved and thus greater competition. When you look at CS, players have been playing for 15 years. Because it was fun when it started as a hobby, and because of competition, money, and leagues, they were able to keep playing by improving themselves. More money, more competition, more reason to be better.
The honeymoon period of TF2 doesn't last 7 years.