Summer league’s div2 got nuked and people wonder why. The rant returns…

Gummi (who apparently still can’t stop crying because babby can’t play with his favourite toy) recently created a stunning thread over on the ETF2L forums, prompting D2m to speak out on his feelings regarding the “AFS” season:

“festering shithole“

Not only does he seem to not be a fan of the season, he apparently knew this before it even started:

“It was ridiculously obvious by the polls on ETF2L and VanillaTF2 that a summer season would. not. work.“

So the question is, why did he let it go ahead, or more accurately; why did he let it go ahead in the format it did?

First let’s go over why AFS is a failure: the fact it’s a nothing league. That’s it. It’s not the summer, it’s not the holidays, it’s not the fuckin’ weather. It was a straight up failure during the decision making process of the ETF2L admins.

If they just started calling it Season 8 from the off, making sure it mattered, then things would have panned out a lot better. Sure, there are some teams that couldn’t take part, but who fuckin’ cares? They could jump right back in for some sweet Season 9 action. If these teams had players that wanted to take part in S8, they could just hop ship to a different team for 1 season, much like they have done anyway.

So what difference would it make? The people who DID enter would actually care, and more importantly there wouldn’t be all the shit talking (which frankly is totally over the top, the only abject failure was in Division 2) that has given the whole thing a sour taste.

I think there is only one REAL flaw with a summer season, and that is scheduling: It’s bad enough in the winter, it will always be worse in the summer. But again, who cares? Games are getting played in the end, my team is still motivated to win our games just like they would a “real” official, and I think those people who are taking part are having fun. Well, ignoring the little disagreement between Torden and his new best friend Coldfront.

So how is it that the head admin and unfortunately a “big deal” in the TF2 Europe scene shit talking it so much without apparently realising where the real problems were? Why is he acting like he’s some genius that “told you so”, and how will this shape the future of the competition? Why is he suddenly brushing over the fact that HE was the number 1 proponent behind Season8 starting so soon after Season7 in the first place?

Here’s a little quote:

Me: Don’t you worry that it’s going to run through exams/summer?

D2M: Most exams are finished by the start of June. Yes it is over the summer, but teams successfully completed season 5 over the summer of 2009. Additionally, I floated the idea of adding a ‘summer’ wildcard too, making 3 per season

Truly spoken like someone who already knew it would be a failure. Or maybe he’s just full of bullshit. I’m not sure.

“But no, we’ve had to run a fucking failure of a season to appease everyone that didn’t listen to us. Awesome huh?“

Well, ignoring him talking like a total prick for just a second, and looking at what he is saying – he has hit on SOME truth there, they probably had to do something. What I’m wondering is why he took the absolute worst option (season7.5) and then turns around at the end and acts like smug teacher. Here’s 3 ways they could have gone with ETF2L competitions for the summer, one of which I already covered in detail:

  • Season 8
  • AFS, but done right. Actually experiment with your so called “experimental” league.
  • Fun shit

Those were the 3 obvious choices, yet we ended up at some horrible fourth option. The point of this article is to highlight that the other 3 choices are still valid and shouldn’t just be scrubbed from our future because “D2M said so”.

The truth is that most of the admin team is a decent bunch – RaCio being one of the standouts – and the majority of the teams are probably enjoying the season because they neither see nor hear all of the drama around AFS and none of them pay much attention to D2M’s posts. That said: what a miserable fucking failure the head admin (and HIS summer season) has been.