That's a pretty good point, so why is our community so open to it?

Edit:

Because you keep saying nobody is answering you while you're answering everyone else, but that's not really fair.

You keep saying that CEVO shouldn't just earn blind trust, and that just because they say they'll do something doesn't mean they will. Yet they have been keeping good on their word, and that's exactly why we're having these discussions in the first place. They're delivering on their promises.

CEVO's Paladin client is an anti-cheat, it's just not as invasive as ESEA's and is a bit simpler to use.

Marmaduke, the only thing I haven't answered is "what if CEVO spikes entry fees for a LAN?". And that's a complicated question to answer.

First and foremost, CEVO hasn't made any promises of hosting a LAN. If they do, I'm sure they'll have figured out how to go about it because their primary business (which is why they didn't have entry fees until people wanted a prize pool) is coordinating events, unless I'm grossly mistaken.

As for where the money will come from: every penny of entry money this season is going into next season's prize pot. If anyone didn't know that already, then you shouldn't be participating in these discussions yet; inform yourself. Because of that, we've already been funding the next season, so at a the very least we'll have some amount of money that doesn't come from Nahanni. Beyond that, where do you expect the money to come from? Even if CEVO doubled their entry fee, it would still be less than a season of ESEA.

And when the time comes that CEVO wants to host a LAN, there are plenty of avenues they can take: crowd funding is just one of them. Sponsorship is another, and they could even piggyback off of an existing event or host a more open one that can help compensate for the costs (just like ESEA TF2 LAN is piggybacking off of CS).

That's basically what happened, which is why this "reboot" is so promising: yeah, CEVO didn't do much to help retain us back then, but they also folded before they go as big as ESEA became. Now that they're back, they've shown a lot of promise.

Also, this is like 5th thread that's been opened about this, can we just start a new CEVO vs ESEA forum category please?

The reddit post linked gives a pretty good idea of why they probably do it.

It's really hard for a program to figure out what other programs are running accurately, because it's really easy for programs to pretend to be something else. We had software on our laptops in high school that blocked access to most programs; we were able to get around it by just tricking it into thinking we were running internet explorer.

However, it's hard for a hack to mask its website; if people are looking for a cheat client, they can't be expected to find it on a different website every day, which is the only way checking the DNS wouldn't work. Otherwise, if someone goes to organner.pl, Valve now has a bit more reason to believe there's cheating software on the client's computer, and that can help them figure out how to detect it.

Also:

I answered the first part in my post above; as for why they never tried to get us back? They have.

After CEVO rebooted, people were interested in them running a league. They opened one up. They even ran a tournament(s?) to try and gain traction.

It didn't work; people didn't want to split up their time between ESEA, which at the time offered a superior service and experience, and CEVO, which kind of just turned into a dead league.

Now that people are more aggressively searching for a competing league, CEVO is trying to do more to meet players expectations.

You're sort of contradicting yourself here. CEVO was super popular for TF2, and then eventually the staff messed up, CEVO became involved in big scandal-type things, and ESEA began to offer a better service for lower level players (for a while, ESEA was considered a league for only high tier teams, because it was just open and invite.) ESEA became more desirable for lower-level players, and eventually people jumped ship on CEVO to play in ESEA full time.

If none of that sound familiar to you, you should probably quit reading and minus frag me now because this is almost the exact same situation, the roles are just reversed. Shady stuff happened in ESEA, CEVO began to step its service up and provide for the community, and suddenly CEVO is the more attractive league for the majority of the playerbase (majority does not mean High IM+ players, please keep that in mind).

If you're going to try and convince people ESEA is great, you can't do so by saying CEVO is just trying to scoop up players while they can; ESEA did the exact same thing and it worked out pretty well, so it could work out well for CEVO too.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ERXq3r1Kq0Q

http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_mbm9tfmwQI1r8a8j4o1_500.jpg

You totally didn't read my post on the previous page. We've been asking for various changes for years that still haven't happened. The only reason things might be different this time around is because CEVO has been successful.

This is exactly why monopolies are bad in "the real world": when you don't have competition, you don't have a reason to improve; people don't have a choice. As soon as there's a seemingly better option available, people will flock to it.

Like I (and a lot of others) have been saying, supporting two leagues is a good thing. If CEVO having a bigger season than ESEA happens, all it means is that ESEA needs to step up their TF2 service to win people back.

Heh, here we go again. Nerd essay incoming.

I feel like, for the last few seasons, there's been a plea at the start from Killing for people to keep playing in ESEA. For the first time ever, though, it's because of competition, and not just an ESEA fuck up.

Before I go on, I want to make something clear: if you're going to play in ESEA, by all means, do so. However, consider also playing in CEVO. At the same time, if you're in CEVO and looking for more action, these incentives to play in ESEA are a pretty good way to make the cost more reasonable.

With that out of the way, I'd like to bring up the fact that ESEA has done a lot of talking in the past; as I said above, one of these posts comes along every season. They usually only act on it when they're backed against a wall. For as long as I've been playing, we've been asking for pre-game DM. We've been asking for better server locations, since the most popular servers and times get filled up quickly. We've been asking for a usable PUG system since we're paying for it. We've been asking for better looking and more in-depth stats, or at the very least, log downloads.

These have all been either ignored or half-assed: they started working with Cinq on a better PUG system, but it's still sub-par compared to IRC (which, in my opinion, isn't great to begin with). I believe they finally added damage stats about two seasons after TF2Logs came around. We still have server locations that go largely unused while Chicago fills up in minutes, and we still don't have pre-game DM. These aren't huge things we're asking for (I suppose servers are a bit of work to switch over, but SOAP DM has been around for years).

Now, Killing has made two threads (I'm countin this once) asking for suggestions/requests for changes. He's done these before, and we've asked for the same things (I'm probably missing one or two). Lange has held two public community meetings where he and Pipher (of CEVO) have answered questions, and we've gotten plenty of things we've asked for: before the season started, CEVO had no stats, no servers, and no prize pot. They've since added all of those things, as well as the ability to easily pay for your teammates (or anybody in the league), and are looking to modify the map list to match what the community wants.

My question is, why does it take CEVO, in the span of a few short months, to accomplish all of these when ESEA has been pestered for years? I find it hard to believe that lpkane came to Killing asking to add a Main division when he's publicly put down TF2 (and we've been asking Killing for Main for way before it happened as well), essentially perma-ban players who just wanted answers, and is just an all-around shady figure. I really don't think he cares; if TF2 really doesn't make money for ESEA (I'm sure they at least make something; the spreadsheet makes a strong case to the contrary, but we don't have all of the numbers) then why are they so desperate to keep it? I just don't see "the community's best interests" in their minds when they just let one of the most disappointing Invite seasons happen because of a technicality.

tl;dr: If you're going to play in ESEA, that's cool. If you're going to play in CEVO, that's cool. If you play in both, even better.[/b] I'm not really trying to persuade anybody because I think it's great that we finally have two options for leagues, instead of one monopolizing one. Maybe this season is finally the one that lights a fire under ESEA and we get to see more improvements made; I hope that's the case. Just don't blindly go to one league or the other because that's the current popular opinion, do it because it offers the features you want.

You don't get the beta from preordering.

I got an email this morning, decided not to take off work to play though, heh.

make a level that looks like a badlands topdown

I believe Pipher said that they have no plans for OSX unless it becomes a really big request, so I think you're out of luck unless you Boot Camp or something.

Did anyone else get in?