Since there's a lot of time between seasons I thought this would be a good idea. You can use this one to field all your suggestions no matter what they may be. This includes maps as well so if you have any customs that we should take a look at, put them here. There's a high chance that some of your suggestions are out of our control but if they aren't and they are good, Kalkin and I will discuss them. Also, if you have questions, I'll do those too.

gogo

i'll suggest a new look at all of the currently banned weapons. with the recent changes to old items and addition of new items with a lot of focus on speed, some banned weapons aren't as strong as they once were and some unbanned weapons are now much more strong

this new look could simply mean the panel of invite players takes more time to think out their choices and/or ignores what has been banned before when making their decisions (a clean slate), or it could mean some kind of playtest. this playtest could be as simple as a quick best of 3 maps between two teams of invite players on some random night. all items allowed and a prize on the line so there's some incentive to win

whatever the procedure is, now is a really good time to re-examine what is banned, if that's what we want to do

new rules with "new teams" being formed in open, have an im poll like we have the invite poll....i know its a stretch but I think a few open teams will like the idea..... gj kalkin

Reassign matches vs dead teams to other active teams

i feel like the map rotation should be voted by all people registered to play that season

that way everyone would have a say and there wouldn't be outside influence (like cs players voting on tf2 map pools because x person said to)

i feel like allowing anyone who sets tf2 as their main game is a flawed system

also tf2 should get more servers and a better pug/scrim system that makes it more enticing for people to use

ban warmfront

I don't have room to say anything serious because I haven't participated in ESEA yet.

nixnyte wrote:

i'll suggest a new look at all of the currently banned weapons. with the recent changes to old items and addition of new items with a lot of focus on speed, some banned weapons aren't as strong as they once were and some unbanned weapons are now much more strong

this new look could simply mean the panel of invite players takes more time to think out their choices and/or ignores what has been banned before when making their decisions (a clean slate), or it could mean some kind of playtest. this playtest could be as simple as a quick best of 3 maps between two teams of invite players on some random night. all items allowed and a prize on the line so there's some incentive to win

whatever the procedure is, now is a really good time to re-examine what is banned, if that's what we want to do

That is why when I give Invite players their ban sheets, I give them a new one. They complain because they are lazy but your point is valid.

CHE wrote:

new rules with "new teams" being formed in open, have an im poll like we have the invite poll....i know its a stretch but I think a few open teams will like the idea..... gj kalkin

Kalkin says no to this idea.

Thank you based Kalkin, we praise you.

prestonlol wrote:

Reassign matches vs dead teams to other active teams

I haven't really gotten a good chance to look at this ordeal but there are two possibilities in my mind.

1. Bad Coding- I can't do anything in this case except ask that it's checked out.

2. Bad Rules- This is the only situation that we can maybe fix but in my mind, there's no better rule for determining if a team is dead. So if you have a suggestion, this would be the place.

I believe it's a combination of the two and I'm definitely gonna talk to some people to try and have a look at the code.

Fox! wrote:

i feel like the map rotation should be voted by all people registered to play that season

that way everyone would have a say and there wouldn't be outside influence (like cs players voting on tf2 map pools because x person said to)

i feel like allowing anyone who sets tf2 as their main game is a flawed system

also tf2 should get more servers and a better pug/scrim system that makes it more enticing for people to use

When you say registered, do you mean paid or not paid but on a team (or maybe I'm missing something)? I highly doubt people change their main game just vote on our maps.

We got more servers this season (a little more than mid way), if that's still not enough we'll get more. Unfortunately, "make it better" isn't advice I can just put to use. Please be a bit more precise :)

Its pretty easy to assume when a team is dead, and if you aren't sure just ask them. Not really sure why you need a rule to determine a dead team.

Killing12 wrote:

Fox! wrote:

i feel like the map rotation should be voted by all people registered to play that season

that way everyone would have a say and there wouldn't be outside influence (like cs players voting on tf2 map pools because x person said to)

i feel like allowing anyone who sets tf2 as their main game is a flawed system

also tf2 should get more servers and a better pug/scrim system that makes it more enticing for people to use

When you say registered, do you mean paid or not paid but on a team (or maybe I'm missing something)? I highly doubt people change their main game just vote on our maps.

We got more servers this season (a little more than mid way), if that's still not enough we'll get more. Unfortunately, "make it better" isn't advice I can just put to use. Please be a bit more precise :)

i mean people that paid up for season 12 (or any continuing season) already (for TF2), as that would be the most logical choice

you would be surprised what some people would do if anyone "efamous" makes a post on some random website asking that people vote for x because they said so (see: TLR)

a pug system that gave rewards like a week/month of free premium after a ton of games rather than rewards like a dumb outdated videocard/mouse/mousepad might be a bit better for rewards and would be cheaper for esea in general (i would assume)

a scrim system that automatically parsed logs like tf2logs.com would be amazing (as well as having those stats in general to matches anyways), so it would be fantastic if esea worked with the guys over at tf2logs to copy down their system (since it's already well-made) or make one that is even better by showing even more in-depth data (such as being able to replay even the custom maps of the seasons/maps not on tf2logs at the moment) to show where big things happened or just the timeline of what happened in the game

edit: i also think there should be something enticing for invite players to pug/scrim more often using ESEA, because they would not care about freemium since they already get it

that should be discussed with what players actually want over with esea

like getting some money for whoever used the system the most by the end of the season to help pay for LAN tickets :3

I agree with CHE on what he said. I think there should be a poll to move a some open teams up to IM. It's stupid when you are in open playing against players like droog, davis, pheLon, etc... Who have all played in invite/IM at some point in time.

2 matches per map, but would it be possible to not have to play the 2 matches for a certain map in the same week? I think pretty much everyone would agree that scrimming the same map for a week straight gets old really fast, not to mention it gets worse when we have to play shittier maps like warmfront etc.

look in to cp_ashville to replace warmfront please

prestonlol wrote:

Reassign matches vs dead teams to other active teams

This, please

My team got 5 FFW in a row last season

short wrote:

Its pretty easy to assume when a team is dead, and if you aren't sure just ask them. Not really sure why you need a rule to determine a dead team.

And if I can't contact them, what then? You're paying us money to play in our league, we can't be so easy to just throw it away.

Fix the.scrim servers and please add more servers and update maps. Our team tried to use it on multiple occasions to only find old maps

1) Give teams the option to declare themselves dead, or if there are less than 6 paid people on a roster do not schedule them (I think that might already be the case though IIRC). Not sure how you could account for mutiny or renewing dead teams, but this would help a LOT with new players playing half a season.

2) Open up ESEA servers for scrims. Servers are just sitting around unused on match days for pugs, and for new players/teams, it's nice to have some practice with Client and ESEA servers. In addition this would give teams a lot of time to figure out which server (locations) are best for their combination of players. You could probably find a way to get someone to make a system where a team could reserve a server like 15 minutes before a scrim (or just live) if the server isn't being used for matches for the rest of that day. I honestly think that would get use.

3) Make a steam group for PUG fill ups. This would be so easy to maintain and use IMO. I don't know that many ESEA players so I can't do it, but having a steam group where anyone could send out an announcement when they wanna fill up a pug could really help moving some players over from Pug Na to ESEA PUGs, which would help new players more since it's harder to get fatkidded there and they could play with better players to learn more about the game.

4) ESEA involvement in the newbie mixes or their own newbie mixes. I think this would be a really good use of ESEA's time honestly, and look at how many new teams this season were aided by the newbie mix (at least like 5 that lasted all season that I know of). Imagine if you held your own newbie mixes and mentoring sessions where you explain 6s to new players and why ESEA is the place to be rather than UGC. You'd get a lot of exposure to TF2, and there is definitely demand for it (I think the newbie mix group is over 1500 players now and they get like 5-6 PUGs going simultaneously when they have mixes). You want to make the comp tf2 community bigger and help the 6v6 scene? Do newbie mixes. Look at how many UGC HL teams there are. A lot of people (around 50-75%) of HL players are interested in 6v6, but other than tf2lobby, they don't really have anywhere to go other than like ringing for a Low Open team every once in a while. Just this season we had I think 3 teams in Open that came from Highlander. What if ESEA helped players get into the game? You stand to make a lot of money, make the scene bigger, and get more people involved by doing these IMO.

Fox! wrote:

Killing12 wrote:

Fox! wrote:

i feel like the map rotation should be voted by all people registered to play that season

that way everyone would have a say and there wouldn't be outside influence (like cs players voting on tf2 map pools because x person said to)

i feel like allowing anyone who sets tf2 as their main game is a flawed system

also tf2 should get more servers and a better pug/scrim system that makes it more enticing for people to use

When you say registered, do you mean paid or not paid but on a team (or maybe I'm missing something)? I highly doubt people change their main game just vote on our maps.

We got more servers this season (a little more than mid way), if that's still not enough we'll get more. Unfortunately, "make it better" isn't advice I can just put to use. Please be a bit more precise :)

i mean people that paid up for season 12 (or any continuing season) already (for TF2), as that would be the most logical choice

you would be surprised what some people would do if anyone "efamous" makes a post on some random website asking that people vote for x because they said so (see: TLR)

a pug system that gave rewards like a week/month of free premium after a ton of games rather than rewards like a dumb outdated videocard/mouse/mousepad might be a bit better for rewards and would be cheaper for esea in general (i would assume)

a scrim system that automatically parsed logs like tf2logs.com would be amazing (as well as having those stats in general to matches anyways), so it would be fantastic if esea worked with the guys over at tf2logs to copy down their system (since it's already well-made) or make one that is even better by showing even more in-depth data (such as being able to replay even the custom maps of the seasons/maps not on tf2logs at the moment) to show where big things happened or just the timeline of what happened in the game

edit: i also think there should be something enticing for invite players to pug/scrim more often using ESEA, because they would not care about freemium since they already get it

that should be discussed with what players actually want over with esea

like getting some money for whoever used the system the most by the end of the season to help pay for LAN tickets :3

so if they've paid to play tf2 or have paid to play a previous season?

regarding your second point, we've given out freemium to top medics to help get pugs going. Didn't work.

The invite player one was done maybe seasons ago. It used to be to get the VIP (invite freemium) you need to play x amount of pugs. Didn't work either plus inviters just came in and offclassed because they didn't want to play but their sponsors didn't want to pay. (see amr huntsman)

Going back to the banned items, I would suggest expanding the voting to at least some IM teams, like those who were in IM this past season and are continuing on to participate in IM next season, too.

Right now I feel like there's too few people voting on the weapons in the first place, and it can lead to radically different results each season. The way it's set up now could result in having Bonk banned, and EQ (now the Escape Plan) + gunboats unbanned like last season, and then we could see the opposite of Bonk being allowed and EP and gunboats banned. That's just a huge shift that could happen every season and screw with everything from season to season basically forcing us to guess whether something will be banned while scrimming before the ban lists are announced.

If you're not wanting to go to IM teams, how about having each invite team have 2 voters each? I feel like you're wanting highly experienced players to be the ones voting, and having more invite players on the panel can only lead to better results.

dflame wrote:

I agree with CHE on what he said. I think there should be a poll to move a some open teams up to IM. It's stupid when you are in open playing against players like droog, davis, pheLon, etc... Who have all played in invite/IM at some point in time.

Based Kalkin is above everyone else.

FFG wrote:

2 matches per map, but would it be possible to not have to play the 2 matches for a certain map in the same week? I think pretty much everyone would agree that scrimming the same map for a week straight gets old really fast, not to mention it gets worse when we have to play shittier maps like warmfront etc.

No.........

SHITONMYMOTHERFUCKINCHEST wrote:

look in to cp_ashville to replace warmfront please

Thank you! Kalkin will check it out

FFG wrote:

2 matches per map, but would it be possible to not have to play the 2 matches for a certain map in the same week? I think pretty much everyone would agree that scrimming the same map for a week straight gets old really fast, not to mention it gets worse when we have to play shittier maps like warmfront etc.

It sucks, but it makes it a lot easier on new players (look at how big Open was this season) to learn the maps.

enoryt wrote:

Fix the.scrim servers and please add more servers and update maps. Our team tried to use it on multiple occasions to only find old maps

I'll have a look through the rotation before next seasons starts. I mean, BASED KALKIN WILL JUDGE THEM.

VickM wrote:

1) Give teams the option to declare themselves dead, or if there are less than 6 paid people on a roster do not schedule them (I think that might already be the case though IIRC). Not sure how you could account for mutiny or renewing dead teams, but this would help a LOT with new players playing half a season.

VickM wrote:

1) Give teams the option to declare themselves dead, or if there are less than 6 paid people on a roster do not schedule them (I think that might already be the case though IIRC). Not sure how you could account for mutiny or renewing dead teams, but this would help a LOT with new players playing half a season.

2) Open up ESEA servers for scrims. Servers are just sitting around unused on match days for pugs, and for new players/teams, it's nice to have some practice with Client and ESEA servers. In addition this would give teams a lot of time to figure out which server (locations) are best for their combination of players. You could probably find a way to get someone to make a system where a team could reserve a server like 15 minutes before a scrim (or just live) if the server isn't being used for matches for the rest of that day. I honestly think that would get use.

3) Make a steam group for PUG fill ups. This would be so easy to maintain and use IMO. I don't know that many ESEA players so I can't do it, but having a steam group where anyone could send out an announcement when they wanna fill up a pug could really help moving some players over from Pug Na to ESEA PUGs, which would help new players more since it's harder to get fatkidded there and they could play with better players to learn more about the game.

4) ESEA involvement in the newbie mixes or their own newbie mixes. I think this would be a really good use of ESEA's time honestly, and look at how many new teams this season were aided by the newbie mix (at least like 5 that lasted all season that I know of). Imagine if you held your own newbie mixes and mentoring sessions where you explain 6s to new players and why ESEA is the place to be rather than UGC. You'd get a lot of exposure to TF2, and there is definitely demand for it (I think the newbie mix group is over 1500 players now and they get like 5-6 PUGs going simultaneously when they have mixes). You want to make the comp tf2 community bigger and help the 6v6 scene? Do newbie mixes. Look at how many UGC HL teams there are. A lot of people (around 50-75%) of HL players are interested in 6v6, but other than tf2lobby, they don't really have anywhere to go other than like ringing for a Low Open team every once in a while. Just this season we had I think 3 teams in Open that came from Highlander. What if ESEA helped players get into the game? You stand to make a lot of money, make the scene bigger, and get more people involved by doing these IMO.

1) Sweater marks his team dead and then Dinosaurs cannot complete the season. "But Killing this won't happen often". TF2 is the most sane game of the 3.... by a long shot.

2)There are always scrims servers available. Nobody uses them.

3)Already exists.

4)This is the part that I've been thinking about for over 2 years now. These newbie mixes where would they take place ESEA servers or non ESEA servers? Am I forcing them to pay premium or giving them freemium? How many people am I giving freemium? If they are paying, then this becomes a service and a tough one to run. If I'm giving them freemium, pretty much every new comer will be on it, that's a lot of money lost (note: open has been growing). My question to you is, how do I convince this newbie, who just learnt about comp and got this f2p game, to give me money? Also, who runs these pugs, how do I make sure they are newbie exclusive? I'm sure I'll have more questions if your idea becomes more developed.

StingerPA wrote:

Going back to the banned items, I would suggest expanding the voting to at least some IM teams, like those who were in IM this past season and are continuing on to participate in IM next season, too.

Right now I feel like there's too few people voting on the weapons in the first place, and it can lead to radically different results each season. The way it's set up now could result in having Bonk banned, and EQ (now the Escape Plan) + gunboats unbanned like last season, and then we could see the opposite of Bonk being allowed and EP and gunboats banned. That's just a huge shift that could happen every season and screw with everything from season to season basically forcing us to guess whether something will be banned while scrimming before the ban lists are announced.

If you're not wanting to go to IM teams, how about having each invite team have 2 voters each? I feel like you're wanting highly experienced players to be the ones voting, and having more invite players on the panel can only lead to better results.

I like the point you brought up, it makes me question my methods. Let's start with your first point.

1. Bans can shift drastically

I disagree with this full heartedly. Besides the empirical evidence of the past few seasons and very few bans changing (i.e. your scenario) have not yet occurred. If I was to take the bottom 8 Open teams and poll them instead, do you think the results would shift more or less drastically? I'd assume they'd shift more due to their lack of the knowledge/ seriousness when it comes towards the game. Now take for instance the top 8 invite teams, nothing has really changed. I really couldn't put a finger on it but I'd trust my weapons on inviters rather than anyone else. Maybe I'm missing a word but I'm sure you all have the same feeling.

2) 2 Inviters per team.

First off, who do I choose? What kind of favoritism is this? I can already here the egotistical inviters yelling in my ears (no names). When I hand out the poll, I tell each invite team that this is to be a TEAM DECISION and that if I hear complaints from teammates I would void the sheet. So, I think I have this point covered for the most part.

3) IM teams

I'll have to think about that but a question back to you. Do I take all IM teams or top x?

Kirby wrote:

1. Reassign matches against dead teams to other active teams (was mentioned above)

2. Is it possible to limit map voting to ONLY TF2 players?

3. 2 weeks free prem for open players like before was a great idea. Keep it.

1. Ok.

2. Right now it's on the main game unless you're referring to a new method.

3. It was removed this season and it was our most successful season yet. I don't see it making a comeback.