the time commitment is the problem for a lot of people i think, and this one also coincides with world cup days

of course the timing of the cup isn't ideal and some people in the higher divs might not be too interested in playing in the cup when they have little to no chances of actually winning it, but when beater's map cup got 40+ teams as opposed the essentials monthly getting 18 teams the next week, it seems like essentials is somehow not getting the attention of all the lower level teams that the etf2l cups do reach

If people just can't play saturdays, that's one thing, but being burned out by scrimming seems like it should easily be avoidable. These cups are announced weeks in advance. Just don't schedule scrims for a few days leading up to the cup? And not playing "cuz 7 wins" also doesn't make sense. If that's the case, why is anyone playing ETF2L at all? Just play, do your best, and keep the damn cup alive for future teams that will actually make the cup a good contest. And, again, the prem teams have their own bracket now, so weak teams shouldn't be up in arms about 7 anymore either.

I also dislike that people are not putting more effort into keeping these cups alive, but I don't think the right course of action is to try and shame people into playing them. If people don't want to play, they don't want to play and you should instead focus on getting the demographic of mid/low/open players that essentials is completely missing out on.

The cup is in the middle of the season so you can't really not scrim because of the officials you have that you have to scrim for. The point is people end up scrimming all week so don't want to play more tf2 at times it's not really something that can be avoided wtih a cup in the middle of the season. I think I explained the other point about seven poorly. Effectively every cup is just a battle for second place and from what I've seen the reward for that isn't worth giving up a weekend for when you give up all the other nights in the week to play tf2. ETF2L hasn't had a price pool till now for about the past 10 seasons and that's never stopped teams signing up, so I don't know what to say. I'm literally just saying what my own experiences at playing at high level have been around these cups, not necessarily whether it's good or not.

Beater's map cup was announced on ETF2L, that's probably a pretty big deal. When I started playing ETF2L I almost never looked on tftv.

Why did they have a news post for the monthly cup in May if they only want ETF2L-related posts?
http://etf2l.org/2018/05/03/essentials-tf-may-monthly-cup-announcement/

You have to consider that it's summer and that people prefer to go do other things on the weekends after work/school + scrims during the week.

currently 8 teams

In order to ensure that the tournament is played, we are lowering the number of teams required to 14. With 10 in the Open Division and 4 in Invite. This is the absolute minimum amount of teams we can have without forcing teams to play duplicate matches.

lft if someone is making a last minute team

still need 3 more teams btw

pretty pathetic, guys.

why are u calling people that don’t want to play a videogame competitively at the weekend pathetic

i'll keep saying it - hosting these on a saturday doesn't work as well because historically a lot of teams just don't play weekends.

how is letting yet another paid cup die NOT pathetic

no one can ever bitch about "ded game" ever again if we can't even keep basic shit like this alive

who is "we"

didn't beater's cup get 40 teams on a saturday

people who play tf2

stop trying to guilt trip people into signing up for a poorly designed cup, that isnt rewarding at all for anyone besides first place. One night of scrims is more productive than playing this

you're being very dumb about this. some people want to watch the football and also NOT play 6 days of tf2 a week.

it would get more sign ups if it was better advertised and wasn't hosted on a weekend when most people don't play because they just played nearly everyday of the week, you cant blame the players for a tournament being mismanaged.

I'll explain to you really fast why people are not signing up in a few key points. Keep in mind that I've played in many of these cups (and cups made by other organization in the past) and even received money from them.

First, it's been tradition especially in the higher divisions in Europe to not play friday/saturday. People generally actually have something else to do with their lives, and a lot of people are obligated to spend time with families or other hobbies during the weekend.

Second, playing 10+ hours of TF2 for money to buy one pizza is not worth it financially, so the money point is moot (just like any other point made about money in this game unless your name is b4nny). Not to mention ofc that only 24 people will reach this minimum amount of money a month, so what about the 100 others? Money is never a factor in this game. Not to mention that it takes like half a year for them to pay out most of the time.

Third, nobody is going to skip on practicing for ETF2L to play against a bunch of mix teams and low divs for hours on end. Winning/placing well in ETF2L is, and always will be more prestigious and important to Europeans than getting top4 in a monthly mix cup of mix teams and 7.

Fourth, the admins are poor at reacting to feedback in terms of rulesets: The monthlies actually allowed all sorts or broken shit like the Pretty Boy's Pocket Pistol for multiple monthlies, that just being one example. They also have an extremely small mappool and removed viaduct because having 1 point instead of 5 is apparently too confusing for new viewers, so you're not even getting practice on all the ETF2L maps you might have to play.

Fifth, the biggest sports event that happens every 4 years is going on right now, not to mention that its the knockout stage so every football fan would rather watch that than play a dead kids game. Not to mention the game is losing players anyway because it's outdated and the current way of playing it is not fun for most of people.

You can stop posting now

Truth bomb, damn

Rip money that teams would get paid in a year

you telling me I got out of bed at 5pm for NOTHING

Razer Cups V2

How did the Beater cup that get more than double the minimum that Essentials needs? Sure, people are still gonna be busy some weekends, but the way this has been going, it's more like there's a straight up boycott on Essentials. If you're a team that plays 5 days a week, cancelling a day or two of scrims around the cup shouldn't be a big deal. Most of the maps in the ETF2L rotation are in the Essentials pool as well.

I hear about money in TF2 constantly. In NA it's "oh, we only play ESEA because they're the only league that offers a prize pool." In EU it's "oh, EU players don't try hard because there hasn't been a prize pool for a few seasons." I don't know that those are your personal opinions, but they're definitely common, so I don't know how you can claim that TF2 is never about money. It's unfortunate that the payments are late, too, but they do come, and it should be exciting to see sponsor money from places like Twitch come into TF2.

In any sport, in any e-sport, it's always more prestigious to win the season over a small tournament, but these cups are treated like absolute dirt. Issues like late payments and weird whitelists are not enough to spit on a group of people that are only trying to help TF2 sustain itself. As for practicing against mix teams, I assume that was the point of putting together an invite bracket this month, but no one cared.

Fair. I haven't seen any space for players to offer feedback on the whitelists or rulesets, and I'm not sure why. I also don't think these are very big issues. I haven't seen any of the new unlocks used to any great extent in any of the cups I've played. Stuff like the pocket pistol is overpowered. But broken? It's no soda popper or crit a cola.

^
Low turnout has been a pattern for months, though. I don't think any of the cups besides the ones in January have broken past 20.

Manachem plz

Do you even read the posts in this thread? Beater's cup was announced on ETF2L, not everyone checks tftv. especially if the announcement doesn't get stickied.

We'll see if you can make the NA cup happen next week

simple explanation, getting promotion on ETF2L got Beater's cup all the mid/low/open teams that Essentials never seems to get. Essentials only seems to get prem/div1 teams and the occasional div2/mid mixes. The most succesful Essentials monthly was the one that B4nny promoted and got a bunch of UGC and ESEA Open teams into, the only time Essentials succeeded with getting lower level teams to sign up.

[4:58 PM] Wolf Machina: we're not allowed to be pinned on tftv
[4:58 PM] Wolf Machina: at least I've asked for it and not had it
[4:58 PM] PJC: what's the reason for not being allowed?

Is this true and if so can somebody explain why this is the case? I visit this site pretty often but I still miss these announcement threads being on the sidebar because other, more interactive threads take over very quickly and as a team leader it'd be helpful if one of the sites I visit the most was the place that I find out about these cups because I've very nearly missed out on them a couple of times now if it weren't for teammates reminding me.

[4:59 PM] DrHappiness: A news post on ETF2L have been discussed but is not happening due to conflicts of interest.
[4:59 PM] PJC: what conflicts of interest?
[5:02 PM] DrHappiness: They believe that the support we give them is not sufficient enough to warrant free promotion on their site. Alongside that we are in a way competitors of the League.

If this is true I don't really see how ETF2L think they're in a position to be filtering out which competitions get promotion on their site if they actually care about supporting a small scene like this as a whole. Whilst ETF2L are primarily a league, they also happen to be probably the biggest news site for European TF2. I'd be more understanding if we were a bigger game like CS where there are so many events out there that it's probably impossible to hear & write about them all, but I can count the amount of regular TF2 competitions on my hand. Not to mention ETF2L don't seem particularly discriminatory when it comes to this stuff usually anyway as I've probably read news posts from them about 90% of other relevant events happening. They even made a post about the monthly back in May so their consistency isn't exactly solid either.

The competitor argument is a pretty weak one as well considering these cups happen on Saturday, a non-match day for ETF2L and Sunday, the first day of the ETF2L week where the vast majority of teams won't be playing their matches because they only just got their fixtures and need to be prepare for them.