Beware of ESMO (Esports Manager Online)
This game has lots of potential, to the point that I've spent almost a year subscribing to its highest tier possible just for cosmetics. I went even as far as to prioritize going online to compete in major tournaments rather than go out and make plans in real life (touch grass stuff).
But sadly the developer, who after making money off the game and experiencing a boom in users has in fact shown his true colors. I'm making this post because many people will surely fall in love with the game their first try like I did, because truly it has potential and no other game is similar to it, but I just want to give a heads up on what's happening to the game right now so you won't have your time and money spent.
1.) Dev's Attitude
This is really the number one problem why I discourage you from spending money and time in the game, it came to a point that the developer would argue with long-time players of the game who has been patient with him and giving great feedbacks if the feedbacks felt too negative. It also came to a point that the developer would ban those players in the game and the server, I myself included.
2.) Priorities
In the golden days of this game (it was around June to December last year) the community has been blessed with great QoL features and constant bug fix updates. But after the developer decided to switch the match engine for its MOBA, almost all active players have voiced their concerns, to which the developer turned a blind eye, insisting that the direction he is taking is the right one. The result? From around 50 to 60 players tuning in on a Sunday to watch the final of major tournaments, to just 5-10 people playing online and climbing the ranked ladders.
Since the match engine switched happened, it also increased his server expenses so he made a new paid tier named "Founders" where he focused more on pushing for cosmetic updates because more cosmetics = more cash instead of fixing the match engine. What more is he made an entirely new game patterned to Rocket League called "Carball" that no one asked for.
All these changes and bug fix has not been a priority for the last few months.
3.) Community Moderation
What's also weird is I get how the developers would want to interact with the community and see how their creation would be enjoyed by hundreds of players, but now even the slightest disagreement will get you a soft ban or mute, and if you pushed back hard enough you'd get an indefinite ban. This has created a culture of toxicity within the community that discourages players from making negative feedback. That's never a good sign for a game still in beta.
4.) Beta vs Early Access
This point is what I would like to ask from this community since I'm not a game developer myself but from what I understand, this is the difference between the two:
Beta is a late-stage testing phase of a mostly finished product meant to find bugs and gather feedback. It is typically free and temporary.
Early Access is a business model where consumers pay for an actively developed, incomplete product to fund its creation.
Now, the game has announced that it is in open beta for more than a year and even still it is still in that stage and major changes has been going on in the game. There's also a monthly subscription like what I told you earlier where the highest tier would reach to about 25usd per month (if i'm not mistaken since the developer has banned me in the app so I can't see xD).