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Article after article, cast after cast people are constantly discussing the differences between North American and European TF2. The pocket demoman vs. the pocket soldier, carnage or bybben?

It really is quite fascinating to me. How do two scenes separated only by distance manage to play the same game in two contrasting ways?

The one problem that has always prevented the two scenes from almost never clashing is the distance which causes high latency. Some of you might be aware that fragga has a server located on American soil, but as close to Europe as possible, in New York, which gives him 90-100 ping. 99% of NA servers are located centrally in either Chicago or Dallas where most of you are familiar with a 130-170 ping. While 90-100 is quite playable it’s still not desirable when you take into account that most of NA TF2 scene lives in the East or Central parts of the US and still manage anywhere from 20-60 to New York.

So what do we do about it? How can the European and American play styles clash on on even grounds? Well gents; I figured it out.

As I said before most NA TF2ers live in the “central” or “east coast” areas of US or Canada. In the entire time that I have played TF2, never have has a “west” division existed for any leagues. It’s always East or Central.

But there is a small percent of TF2ers (10-20%) that live on the west coast. Us West Coasters live closer to the Japan and Russia than we do to the shores of Portugal or the UK. This results in pings of 90-120 to New York, and thus allows New York servers to serve as a fair grounds for North American and European TF2ers to play together.

I have spoken with several outlets for the community about this such as communityfortress and a NA shout casting organization and we plan to make a minor event out of this. No one has seen NA and European TF2 clash since the former pandemic played dignitas almost a year ago, and even that could have had more even pings from using west coast only players.

The second concern is skill level. It wouldn’t be very fair if we had division 3 team go against a team composed of Enigma, Seagull and Dummy. I’ll be organizing the west coast pug team and the majority of us are “high” or from top ESEA-open teams. I’m not sure what that’s equivilant to in Euro TF2 standards? Low division 1 or high division 2?

If you would like to take part in this, either with your team or with a pug team please talk to fragga about assembling a line up or simply add me on Steam

http://steamcommunity.com/id/exhaze

Looking forward to it,
vhalin

While it may be a “fair ground” in terms of ping, nobody wants to play at that sort of ping. It doesn’t make the game fair, it makes the game more random because of the latency.

To be honest, the best option for a decent server would be Japan. It is fairly central to both continents, and, as a country has a very nice upload speed.

As a whole, NA has a fairly poor upload speed, as does Europe. But, there are some places in Europe that have very good upload speeds; however, I don’t think you are likely to find many servers based in Lithuania, Latvia or Bulgaria, although, I could be mistaken.

Another possibility to even the playing field would be net_fakelag, although, it is only possible with sv_cheats.

Why not meet in some World LAN Gaming Event?

Get some sponsors , cry enough to get tf2 in wcg , profit…

Quoted from vhalin

The second concern is skill level. It wouldn’t be very fair if we had division 3 team go against a team composed of Enigma, Seagull and Dummy. I’ll be organizing the west coast pug team and the majority of us are “high” or from top ESEA-open teams. I’m not sure what that’s equivilant to in Euro TF2 standards? Low division 1 or high division 2?

I’d say something like a high UK mix would be best. Because I doubt that for example the Fins would ping 110 to New York.

Quoted from Skyride

One map on a london server, one map on an NA server?

Ive got a better idea. How about just get the best from NA and EU and play 4 maps.

badlands on a NA server
badlands on a EU server

granary on a NA server
granary on a EU server

As waster said fragga’s server in NY is quite good, was pinging about 80 on it i believe, was a while ago though. I get good conenction over there though for some reason regardless of east or west coast unlike most.

Quoted from Shintaz

didn’t dignitas already win something like this

And how many years ago wwas that ;)