I've been able to hold off over the last few steam sales (mostly because I already owned the stuff), but this Autumn sale has cut into my wallet yet again.

Just bought Amnesia, the AoE 3 package and the Walking Dead. I might even play 2/3 of those.

Wow.

Long post coming.

I think Killing would have an aneurysm at some of the facts thrown out in this thread that are actually false, lol. There is pre-game DM, there is a mumble hub ("Voice" tab on your client), and the advantage of ESEA pugs is the same advantage of playing in the ESEA league - integrated stats, stv demo, etc. Yes, other places (tf2logs) offer the same thing, but there are also other leagues... we choose to praise ESEA the league for the things it offers, but shrug off the ESEA pugs for offering the same thing... *shrug* the logic there is a bit fuzzy. I do get the point about CS kids ruining the fun, but let's be honest... what if 1 out of every 10 CS kids who randomly joined a pug started actually playing competitive TF2? Isn't growth like that a good thing?

As far as the scrim mod goes, I overheard someone (I think Tyrone?) asking Craig about it this past weekend - his answer was very direct and to the point:

"I'm totally down to push for a scrim mod, I want to continue to support TF2, we've made a commitment to the community. The problem is, if I go push for the man hours for an engineer to code a scrim mod and then no one uses it, it looks bad on me, looks bad on TF2, I lose internal leverage to help TF2 in the future, and the TF2 community loses leverage when it asks for things in the future."

Say what you will about Eric, his reasoning is pretty solid - they spent man hours (ie. resources) on building a pug system no one uses. Why go spend more man hours to build a scrim mod that also may go unused? As a gesture of good faith? I don't want to put words in Eric's mouth, but I would think a business guy like him has little time for such gestures.

We as a community, on the other hand, would be wise to consider our own "gesture of good faith" by starting to use the ESEA pug system, because it leads to other things. I guarantee you if the ESEA pugs were an active program, Craig would have more leverage to push for a scrim mod. If ESEA then had an active pug and scrim mod program, there would be more leverage for greater prize pots (assuming there's some growth in the user base).

Don't get me wrong, I totally understand the preference to IRC pugs, but there are no long-term benefits to that system whatsoever, aside from players getting a bit better and the odd new player maybe getting into TF2. With the ESEA pug system, as least there's the possibility of a long term benefit, right? Can someone on the other side of this debate at least acknowledge that point?

EDIT: Oh, and if someone throws out the "because we pay for it" argument, I may have to donkeypunch you - half of the TF2 community signed up for ESEA gets freemium anyway, and the league fees go directly to the prize pots, sooo...

Whoops, missed a zip file - incoming :)

Done:

https://d1fj4sro0cm5nu.cloudfront.net/global/images/events_images/7056.JPG

That process is in the works :)

Boo, playing hockey - will have to catch the vod.

The ESEAnews polling system is being commandeered for some reason, so I have to do it this way. We'll keep it simple - just post who you think was the overall LAN MVP. I won't be taking a straight vote count to decide who gets it in the S12 RK Awards (yes, I'll also release the S11 ones), but the feelings of the community will definitely play a role.

I should note, when I talked to Classic Mixup post-LAN about this process, they specifically requested to be listed in the poll as "Classic Mixup" - obviously now I can't do an actual ESEAnews poll, but thought that should be known for this more informal poll.

Keep post simple - just a name, please.

And there it is. Probably should have zoomed in a bit more, but it's a 5kx3k photo, so you should be able to crop it fine.

#24 No love for carnage, lol

The prodigal so returns!

(...it seemed appropriate for some reason)

Welcome back!

Uploading the last of the LAN photos I took, including the Demo Jesus ones. Will go in and remove the CS photos afterwards - gg random cs intern

I don't think there will be POVs, they didn't play with the client all weekend. The TF2 update late Friday night meant the client had to be updated as well, which obviously wasn't going to happen. While no one actually logs into the client, having it open in the background auto-records POVs I think, soo... unless players recorded them manually... yeah, no POVs.

But hey, I might be wrong *shrug*

The tradition of me not being able to make it all the way through that video continues, lol.

Also, welcome back Nick :)

enigma on Medic. Calling it.

It exists. Oh my how it exists.