If you kill someone at their request to put them out of their misery when they know they're dying of an incurable illness, it won't split your soul because it's not an evil act

source: On page 548 of ‘Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows’ (Bloomsbury first edition), Dumbledore discusses his motives for his request to Snape.

Snape asks:

Dumbledore replies:

LFT

We need another invite team since catface's team is dead, this is not a drill, invite will not proceed with 8 teams.

Contact https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198096347625/

Thanks to everyone who has played in the league over the years. I think the fact that many of us thought this would happen sooner or later says more than what I could say in a sappy post, and it just means that life will go on, as will competitive TF2 in NA.

Even though we do have one more season ahead of us I'll just share some of my random thoughts:

I'm thankful to ESEA and Aluminati for being receptive to competitive TF2 in general They were always willing to work with me and provide resources to try to improve the player experience and grow the league. In the end it wasn't enough. Also I couldn't bring back LAN so I'm sorry to everyone who wanted that.

I'm glad we changed the invite prize structure to pay out to all (living) teams. Prior to that season, we were struggling to get 9 invite teams every season which led to invite nearly being killed off multiple times. This also somewhat addressed the issue of teams playing in divisions lower than they were capable of playing, skill wise. This did lower the prizes for placing in IM and open, but we believed in a division structure that encouraged teams to want to play in the highest division.

We removed the entry fee for open in order to lower the barrier of entry for newer teams. We hoped to leverage some of the CSGO community who were already using Premium anyway and could try competing in TF2 for free.

I think the map ban system was overall a positive and the next step would have been to replace some older, outdated maps with some new maps that were being worked on. Since propaganda has been successful this past season I believe people are receptive to playing new maps if they are well designed and polished.

Oh yeah and someone reached out to me suggesting that ESEA should go with a division structure similar to RGL, with multiple divisions more closely gated by perceived skill level. I thought this sounded pretty interesting and had its merits, but wasn't in line with our philosophy of having the most competitive league possible.

If you have any feedback or anything candid you'd like to say about your experience with playing in the league feel free to message me on steam or discord: tri#9625 or just post in this thread and I'll try to read everything.

I've decided to replace cardinal with propaganda for this season (I made the decision before this thread was posted if anyone cares). I was almost about to pull the trigger and drastically alter the map pool, but I want to see how propaganda plays out this season since it received the most general approval from the testers and the community. I want to see if propaganda gets banned out as cardinal did just for being a new map, or if people actually want to adopt it as a core map.

Also while I have you all here please pay your league fees before the deadline because we won't hesitate to remove IM if there aren't enough teams. Thanks

I updated the option to add both maps. I also should've called it the map pool my b

Hi everyone, tri here. With the Invite Illuminati meeting and New Map Showcase behind us, there has been discussion about revamping the map pool by replacing at least 1 of the least popular maps with new maps currently in development. The two most popular and league-ready maps to come out of the map tournament have been propoganda and logjam so these are the ones that we will consider adding to the rotation.

Regarding how to change the map pool, what does everyone think is the best way to decide on the map pool. Should there be an on-site map vote as we have done in the past? Should we remove the maps that were statistically the most banned during the season? Please vote in this poll if you think the map pool should be adjusted and discuss whether the map pool needs to be changed and what is the best way to do so going forward I hope you enjoyed reading this essay as much as i enjoyed writing it bye

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfn-kG0Etp7NRn9pE7e2C6B3nUiMBWc71GAQ11QN4UAkeyQdg/viewform?usp=sf_link

I'll try to address a few things here

Nobody wants to go to the trouble of organizing a global whitelist meeting every season, including myself. Sorry if I'm stepping on the toes of other leagues but at this point I feel that the global whitelist initiative does not have a strong impact unless we do things like unify rulesets, maps AND make controversial and aggressive changes to the whitelist rather than just have the same perfunctory weapon bans each season with a few tweaks. I'm not exactly opposed to the above but that's a topic for another time.

The invite meeting was held at a time when we did not know how many invite teams were alive or reforming. I need to submit changes such as map changes and whitelist changes before the season starts (i.e before the registration deadline). I realize that this is somewhat circular reasoning as clearly there were more opportunities to get more substantiated opinions from invite players, but since a lot of invite teams died and we did not know the status of the division (like every season), I was more worried about getting the invite division together, and I really did not know that there would be a reg extension (the extension was due to some issues causing players to not be able to pay their fees).

So that's why we addressed weapon bans in that meeting. That being said I attempted to make changes that everyone present had not only universally agreed upon, but also agreed that they were fairly inoffensive choices. Regarding map bans, there was very little agreement on either which maps should be removed (except that most wanted badlands out), or which should be added. The community map vote was not very helpful as there was strong sentiment for keeping badlands in.

Rescue Ranger: it's still banned.

Cow Mangler. With respect to the original global invite whitelist meeting where we decided to ban it, IIRC it was not something that was strongly agreed upon and the reason behind banning it was that it's a straight upgrade without enough of a downside (rather than being strictly overpowered). I know that a lot of people think it's overpowered but we did discuss it during the meeting and no one felt that it was worth leaving banned. The two upgrades on the item are the infinite ammo and charged shot. Maybe someone has pushed or won a fight off of low ammo counts at some point, and there are some strategies involving the charge shot for area denial. I don't think that either of these mechanics are overpowered.

Skill expression: Ammo management is not an expression of skill or team coordination. If it is, it is not comparable to something that is an expression of coordination AND has a strong impact on gameplay, such as damage/health callouts (referring to the Solemn Vow allowing you to see enemy health).

Closing remarks: Please direct your hate towards me instead of b4nny or any of the other attendees of the invite illuminati meeting. I'd like to express some of my frustrations too. I think the best method would be a global vote among invite players/teams, but that cannot be done if I don't know what invite teams are even competing until practically the last second. anyway thanks for listening

King's crew have taken the last invite spot as no other team stepped up.

I'm just saying luc contacted me to talk about the invite situation, he didn't offer to take the invite spot or anything.

King's crew isn't playing invite, we need someone to fill the TFCrew roster.

We won't proceed with the division without 9 teams so I hope someone will take the vacated Invite roster. Thanks

https://play.esea.net/index.php?s=forums&d=topic&id=1168717&region_id=9

This season there will be a different prizing structure in our league. The exact prize amounts will be announced shortly into the season. This post has also been sent to all players on a registered team in ESEA TF2.

We will also be announcing a rule preventing rosters that should be playing in Invite from being directly seeded to IM. These rosters will include any non-relegated Invite roster and top 2 of IM. We will be looking at removing or revamping the process for all rosters applying directly to IM for future seasons.

I strongly believe that these changes will, over time, foster a greater and healthier level of competition across all divisions and promote the growth of teams that truly want to improve and play at the highest level.

Hi all, we're doing another map poll for the upcoming season of ESEA. This time I'm doing the unthinkable and removing cp_badlands (maybe; you can vote in the poll to keep it in). The map has been played since the beginning of time with relatively few changes and based on data from map vetoes and some anecdotal evidence it is the least popular map in the rotation. Please vote on which map you'd like to see added to the map pool next season. Note that this is an unofficial poll and may not ultimately decide what changes will be made.

Just to clarify, we currently have 9 maps in the rotation, but either an 8 or 9 map rotation would work. I don't think there's an argument for making the pool larger than 9, though.

ESEA S29 MAP VOTE

Hi, since we are going with the map vetoing system in S28, there is room to have a different number of maps in the rotation. I believe a 9th map will be best for testing out the vetoing system as well as the new map for this season. I realize that there are some maps that people will want to be removed, but in the past, votes to remove/replace a map have not been progressive. The new map ban system will allow us to have more empirical evidence of which maps are banned out frequently across all divisions.

I've made a google form to allow people to vote on the addition of a new map (requires google sign-in):
ESEA S28 MAP VOTE

Please think long and hard about which map you'd like to see added. I won't only take the number of votes into account as it is a public poll.

In other news, we are accepting new IM rosters but the hijack rule will be in effect for this season. For new rosters, 4/6 of the same players must play the first 3/4 matches. For existing rosters, 2/6 returning players must play the first 3/4 matches. Please create a new open roster with at least 6 players if you'd like to be moved up to IM.