Holy shit.

lemme in!

If you're rational enough to understand why some players hold the LAN as their sole motivation for playing, it should also be fathomable that there are at least as many who could give a shit.

If sticking with ESEA and continuing to shove money at them is an important point of value for them, and for Killing personally in particular, then why the serial contempt of the game from management, and constant reminders that the game is a department consistently in the red for them? Why should begrudging charity warrant unwavering support? A clean break sounds mutually beneficial, Killing aside.

If you can argue that x number of seasons of support is worthy of some measure of loyalty in return, you might also be able to argue that the Bitcoin fiasco, among a litany of other examples of blatant mismanagement over the years, might add up to a serious issue of trust for some players who aren't so invested in a LAN.

Because that's what this comes down to, doesn't it? I'm not sure how any argument against the CEVO movement adds up to anything greater than a massive sunk cost fallacy. Remove all the cognitive dissonance and selective arguments in this thread and you're left with 'BUT top players love the LAN' over and over. Sure, the era of top-division players playing for shits like it's CAL in 2004 is long gone, understood. That isn't justification for putting on two or three LANs a year for a scene that just doesn't have the numbers for it. Attempting to guilt the rest of the community that doesn't want to prop up that status quo with their wallets anymore is bullshit. Call it what you will, bandwagoning, abandonment, outsider/pubbers peddling their worthless opinions (as I can already see some of you warming up your keyboards for), killing the game, hivemind clusterfuck, whatever; it's just players saying 'fuck this we're out.'

So figure something else out. Move to CEVO where it's cheaper for everyone and less cognitive dissonance for many. Relieve ESEA of their terrible mistake in picking this game up in the first place. Pick an existing LAN collectively where y'all can plant your flag once a year and go from there. It will be a couple steps back for a bit, but everyone won't feel so fleeced or be angry enough to kick off 700 post essay threads anymore.

How the fuck is this thread still going

I had said when all this started that I'd be happy to sponsor a team in need for the first CEVO season's league fees, and I'm here to follow through on that. Drop me an email at keekerdc@gmail.com if you need a bit of help and want to get a conversation going.

Thanks for tuning in, all that did.

It was a fine wake-up call here, I can't nearly follow the game as well as I used to be able to. Square one kinda shit. Holy moly.

Happy to do more if people are happy to tune in. Will probably look more closely towards playoff time.

Heh, didn't see the mothership was doing this match also. Eh, we'll see how it shakes down.

This stream is a normal MP3 stream, and I know it'll work on Chrome/Android, and I'd imagine it functions on iOS as well.

ALL ABOARD THE EXPRESS TRAIN TO RETROVILLE

Two audio-only casts planned tonight, entirely for kicks. Probably two, but at least one!

If I can get my poop in a group in time I'll be watching hii open vs Build a Morin Workshop just to knock some rust off and get reacquainted with y'all. That's happening at 9:30 ET/6:30 PT, and it'll just be me, if it happens. Gonna do my best on this one.

Later on, rain or shine, I'll be joined by Lange and eXtine for WELOVEANIME vs iT. That match is goin off at 11p ET/ 8p PT, after eXtine wraps up calling some UGC action on a proper respectable stream.

Tune in at keekerdc.com/cast.

Bring yer own video, we're rolling audio only. Fly solo with the mp3 stream or rock the SrcTVs. Don't care!

Bring yer twitter accounts and get at me on #keekercast or directly at @keekerdc.

Only room for 200 right now, if you guys fill it I'll bump it up for next time. No twitch, no stupid ads.

29

Quoted for motherfucking truth. I just had to wipe a whole mess of stuff from my post after refreshing the thread and seeing this.

What I do wish to comment on directly is the concern about LANs. It's the single gripe that can be effectively taken out of the context of whether you think ESEA's track record with the game and it's future trajectory is subjectively good or bad news, for examination with less emotion attached. It's also the keystone to the entire 'stay put' argument, so it's important to take it head on.

This concern centers about moving wholesale to a competitive format that, in all likelihood, will not produce a LAN immediately if ever, and what impact that may have. In my view, such a move would reset the community to a position focused on internal growth rather than external attention grabbing, and that would be an altogether good thing as TF2 gets closer to ten years old than five.

The precursor to a successful and sustained run of offline tournaments has always been a deep entry-level competitive pool. I'm trying to remember back just how huge CAL-O 1.6 was at its height; the old CPL ops guy Moncivalles estimates it at somewhere over 1500 teams.

The debate around the LAN issue always seems to settle in chicken/egg territory, when it shouldn't. The chicken is the game's Open division, and it lays golden LAN eggs. Want eggs? Feed the damn chicken.

To torture this metaphor, you can force-feed an anemic chicken a diet consisting mostly of intra-community guilt, and it'll squeeze out an egg every once in a while. That's what this community has done for years with the LANs, justifying the collective cost on the community to keep chugging out these tiny eggs twice a year on the notion that they are somehow the catalyst that will spur open division growth and kick off the whole thing. This is backwards.

The only reasonable conclusion, given the historical trajectories of games that have seen sustained LAN activity and games that haven't, is that TF2 shouldn't be expecting two or three LANs a year given its size, and the penalty for having them is a massively inflated cost of competitive participation on the collective community, and especially on the teams participating in the LANs. If you subscribe to pyyyyour's assertion above that shooting for the same competitive status that CS continues to enjoy is a waste, which it quite frankly is as long as TF2 is the most current title in the franchise, then why even continue bothering with the LANs?

This community should refocus on growing the entry point of the competitive scene, by ditching the LAN, cutting costs for everyone, and see what happens from there. If growth is the aim, ending the semiannual dump of resources into a LAN tournament for four teams is part of the problem, and the solution alleviates the TF2 community of the primary justification for staying at ESEA.

m0lk is quite the nomad. Last year he was boppin around Portland, and made it up to Seattle to hang out a bit before he made his way back towards Georgia, if I remember right. Lost touch with him this summer, but I'll drop him a text and see if he's still kickin.

Putting money where my mouth is; I'll be happy to sponsor a team in need for the first CEVO season.

Speaking of my mouth, I'm up for calling some matches for CEVO if there's room in the booth.

Seriously, let's fuckin do this.

In brief, there was a tiered rewards progression that 'unlocked' as more and more people bought shitty pizza through the promotion, mostly having to do with the Starcraft celebrities playing showmatches or producing special bits of content. All tiers were reached, but many of these things have not been followed through on; you can still see the list up on pizza.gg.

The Cadred article focuses mostly on projects and promotional efforts targeted towards the Starcraft 2 community; most notably the 'pizza.gg' promotion that Papa John's ran in large conjunction with EG, and the few SC-related documentary projects that are either horribly behind the promised timetable or ostensibly dead.

TF2 has largely been an exception regarding this stuff.

1 outta 3 aint bad. :)

What do you feel are larger problems?