Pretty much all of this is EU stuff or just general growth. ESEA S18 will only be confirmed if ESEA decides that there's enough players for a season. I think we'll get there, but we have to wait 20 or more days to find out. All this negativity is really caused by the barely-even-qualifies-as-an-update. I'll only be truly worried if ESEA gets less players than the last two seasons.

It's not that most of everything here is not done by you anymore, it's that you're probably the biggest face in the TF2 community. You leaving is like if b4nny decided to quit. Huge uproar at first, but over time people would realize that other people will fill his place.

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Personally, I think we may need to look at a major restructuring of our game to keep it alive. But first we need to give up on Valve support, it's never happening. We should also reconsider whether we actually need ESEA or if we should drop them and go to/form another league. I'm not sure if GXL will happen again (we'll need sponsors), so ESEA may be needed to keep exposure up. If we do decide to drop ESEA, we could finally switch to the EU ruleset. I was thinking maybe we could either reform UGC 6s or start an NA ETF2L division. And 5v5 A:R might be worth considering.

That said, if you don't want TF2 to die and you have the time/money/motivation, then sign up for ESEA. We need to keep ESEA at least for the time being, as we have no other plans.

Some of the others who stuck with ProTF2 until the end are playing UGC now I believe. But yeah, all the randoms were shit. They were pubs though, what did you expect?

I don't think they even read their own.

Same here. Met a lot of good people there. Head admin was a joke though, and there was a bunch of drama between the other large pub communities and them (mostly with Skial).

Funnily enough, a lot of the people from there eventually started playing comp.

Here's some calculations of how many teams we had in ESEA, CEVO, and UGC, and how many combined. Keep in mind that this doesn't take into consideration overlap between leagues so there's at least some inflation here. This means the total number of teams is actually lower. Also, it does not account for dead teams, but that was an issue even when we were in better shape. I included UGC as it gives a picture of what our pool of potential new ESEA players we have.

ESEA S15 had 85 teams. CEVO S3 (just prior to the paid league) had 34 teams. UGC S14 had 264 (!) teams, so that's 383 teams total. ESEA + CEVO was 119 teams.

ESEA S16 had 62 teams, which is a pretty steep dropoff from S15. However, CEVO's paid S4 had 126 teams and UGC S15 had 306 (!!) teams, giving us a total of 494 teams. ESEA + CEVO was 188 teams.

ESEA S17 had 63 teams, CEVO S5 had 103 teams, and UGC S16 (still in playoffs) has 243 teams. This gives us a total of 409 teams. ESEA + CEVO was 166 teams.

In addition, GXL had 25 teams. Not sure how this compares to other LANs, but it's definitely the biggest NA LAN we've ever had since at least 2012.

CEVO S6 was cancelled due to a low registration rate (as Lange pointed out). ESEA S18 currently has 47 teams, and none of them ready (it's still very early in registration though); this also includes mix^ and other dead teams since there's the chance their roster is used to form a new team. UGC S16 playoffs are still going on so we won't hear about their S17 for another month or two.

If ESEA does not even reach 63 teams, then TF2 is probably on the path to a quick death. If we have even just 85 teams in ESEA, then I'd say we can at least hold on for a little longer. If we can keep the UGC team numbers up and actually get these people over to ESEA, we could end up with a new age. However, with mix^ dying and the recent update, I'm not sure if anyone outside of our community will be able to take comp TF2 seriously.

I'll stick around the community for as long as it's still around, but I don't know if I'd become active again. If I can get my schoolwork organized so I have time, then I might be able to stream matches assuming we can get the 45/5 plan from AT&T since my parents are cutting TV out to save money (our only other option for Internet is Comcast which my dad will never get again).

^ CEVO TF2 is dead. We're back to 1 paid and 1 free league. We may still see a drop in players. To be honest, if we just want to play TF2 competitively for fun, then we might as well just drop ESEA and 100% commit to UGC or ETF2L. There's no need for a LAN that only four teams can participate in unless we want exposure.

well after that update tf2 is dead so it's not like it matters now

The competitive matchmaking variables/commands have nothing to do with the ducks, right? That's a separate thing?

worst: hooky

best: everything else

Over half of those hours in the past 2 weeks...

I cannot fathom this.

Twitch deleted the VOD per their archival rules.

Also, it would be really nice if we had more things such as this. It could be happening and I just haven't noticed (pretty easy since I haven't paid much attention to TF2 for a while).

Yeah, it might end up being more outsider-friendly than 6s. Even if it's not and it fails, at least we're trying to innovate.

"Awesome, an esports paper. Finally I get a break from all these ones about recycling!"

I would love to have seen the original paper; I'm sure it made so much more sense than this one. Hopefully you can get it fixed up, and maybe even get it published.

Regarding the game dying if we don't do something: the way the paper goes about this is flawed, but it really is a fluke that comp TF2 is still going after 7 years. We should have moved on by now. However, it does feel like many top players are leaving now. Didn't like half of Prem quit this year? I also heard rumors of mix^ quitting after ESEA LAN (haven't been around enough lately to know if this is true or false). I do think we need to do more than we have just to keep TF2 going, and I think we're slowly realizing this. This year alone, we saw two major LAN events, one being our first major NA LAN. We also had a casual get-together, which we could use more of. As in previous years, we have the ESEA LANs which happen 2/3 times a year. However, this is really just one new event, excluding WCRV. Next year, we should have FITES or ETS (IDK which was chosen). We should also work on establishing a presence at more regional LANs than these, as well as organize more online tournaments. Invite players, IMO, should take at least one day every month to help out with newbie mixes (I know people do things on the weekends, but I feel like one newbie mix a month is reasonable). Everyone should be advertising comp TF2 to pub players and even people outside of TF2 completely.

Right now, I'm still trying to go through my game library, and I'm a full time student, so I don't have much time for TF2. However, I do plan on streaming my gameplay, so I'll make sure to keep TF2 mentioned on my Twitch page so the one person who will see it might consider coming here. I'll also try to mention it in other games if possible.

To be honest I don't know how much of this makes sense. I should probably get to bed though since I have class tomorrow.

ask the NSA

http://www.speedtest.net/result/3957735183.png

If only I could have this at home...