still to not make sal pay for it again

getting aquagirl some clothes

no epsilon super team :c

not be a lazy bastard and attend

To get the NA vs EU game that everyone's been wanting on the Grand Final.

USA to form superteam to take down European superteam.

Australia to step it up

Greatest matches in history of TF2 to follow.

from a practical point of view, is it worth doing i52? there was a small increase in viewership for the grand finals (5.5K->6.3K at peak afaik). besides the entertainment we get from watching the tournament, which is valid reasoning, is it actually worth it?

EDIT: just checked the other thread and from what a few people say between 6.5 and 6.8K

hey as long as the game grows, right?

unless the old mixup and the current epsilon are both in attendance I don't see much point in bothering to send another team, if we both just keep alternating on sending dream teams every other year it doesn't stand to prove much of anything and just soaks up an absurd amount of money.

This thread came WAAAAAAAY too early.
We should probably wait until after this season of ESEA or possibly the one after that.

wasn't there issues with the stream going down? that would affect viewer count quite a bit

The i49 matches were some of the best matches I've ever seen in tf2. Very fun to watch, I personally enjoyed it a lot. Way more fun to watch than the s14 esea lan was.

So I say its worth it idk

But the game barely grew. an increase in 1K every single year is pretty much nothing.

2 US teams to attend would be rad...and very very expensive..

the peak concurrent viewership doesn't mean anything. There's tons of other metrics that are for more important. (avg time watched per unique viewer, total unique viewers, etc)

TF2 has grown a lot more than most anyone here realizes.

+1
Great to hear

is there anywhere where we can see these statistics?

I have no idea of the costs, so I might be talking out of my ass.
With the near $20k donated each year, what would happen if we donated all the money to a TF2 prizepool, or completely ran a community driven LAN. This would probably only be possible every other year, since I'm assuming the costs are very high and would essentially take double what we donate each year.

Higher prize pools would also entice sponsors to help send teams to the LANs rather than having the community donate.

Is anyone here experienced with LANs? How expensive are they?

Basically, time watched per unique viewer for TF2 and the total uniques have skyrocketed over the last year and a half I have been obsessing over it. The content is really, REALLY sticky. This means that a lot of people are genuinely interested in competitive TF2. Conversion is the biggest issue right now, not gaining interest.

hypothetically, even if there was no growth at all

Do you or do you not love this game? Do you or do you not want to make it the best damn game we possibly can while it lasts?

I for one am all for donating to send teams to i52.

internal, sry :<

This ^

Clockwork/B4nny/Ruwin

You can fill in the rest

I'm so glad to have you with us...

I'm pretty sure tf2 must have one of the best metrics out there regarding to returning viewers and avg viewer time.

That can be easily seen just by this final, 1:30h late, more than 30 mins offline due to power outage, came back midgame with lots of issues and lags and people still stuck with it and eventually we got to 6.5k viewers, I think we have a very special and dedicated community which should definitely be commended, if only we could tackle these issues that keep messing the big events I think we would grow even more.

Hell yeah, this was one of the most exciting and entertaining weekends this year for me, the fact that my little project comp.tf became such a monster during this lan made me realize just how good our community is and how much I love this game.

Money isn't everything, yes, if we keep getting teams to the Insomnia lan series we will keep basically loosing and dumping money, but I see it more as paying for having a blast, like I did most of this weekend.

Honestly I think if there's a community capable of something like this it's us.

i52 will be AU v AU grand finals. i46 was NA v NA, i49 was EU v EU, it's bound to happen.

i52 to include AsiaFortress, i55 to be AS v AS. If only.

I would love to see it. But who knows where the NA scene will be a year from now.

send 2 NA teams so we have both spots in the grand final like we did in i46

Hopefully if I can get the money I'd go