guys i'm really bad and last year i won a mousepad

it's gonna be great

tl;dr

Because I've said this is a team format since day 1. I've literally never implied that this would be a draft at any point since my original post in February. Before, we had silly draft tournament on Friday nights that meant absolutely nothing.

I don't know, flame, I'm excited to play against the top 4. There's no other way my open team right now would have any other chance to even try our best against them. It's not like they'll scrim us.

I want to get at least one frag on enigma.

If I can get a frag on Robin Walker, I can do anything

This.

I remember going to i46 and playing with some european friends of mine, we had a blast, and when it came time to play whatever team b4nny was on, I remember how fucking EXCITED my demoman was because just once, he killed b4nny at mid. It meant nothing to the pro teams, just another team to roll over to get to the real games, but those moments mean the world to anybody who has their head on straight about the game.

And any teams that are going that might be mid to high IM level? This is their opportunity to see what it would be like to play in invite, plus have a great time with the largest gathering of tf2 nerds in NA history. This whole idea of no one wanting to play because the top four teams in north america, plus a great euro team and who knows who else is going to show up is so stupid I cant even begin to understand it. The point was never that anyone could win this, its that we are all winners by putting together such a huge tournament and going to have a weekend of awesome tf2 with what is easily the best gaming community in the world.

It's not a small scale lan, and it's 'a competition for a reason

I'm confused. Nothing was planned for Friday initially. Now we have a great event on Friday that adds to the grandeur of the whole thing and people are mad?

Don't care about CEVO on Friday? Then pug it up during the games!

Mad that there's going to be really good teams in the community tournament? Well... man up, pay in, and contribute to the scene. Every LAN we've had has featured some ridiculously stacked teams. That is just the brutal honesty of how it's going to be.

We can't put together a tournament with a significant cash prize and not eXpect a large disparity in skill between the top teams and the mid-tier teams. TF2 definitely isn't the kindest game when there is a slight skill difference but we really shouldn't be shooting ourselves in the foot here by kicking up a firestorm about Invite teams stomping people.

There certainly were a few concerns voiced by the eXtv crew when it came to light that CEVO was going to be working with GXL regarding an event friday night, but I think that CEVO being there really strengthens the event overall.

Flame's concerns are valid, but really they would eXist without CEVO even being there. Why join a tournament when there is an invite team in it that's going to stomp you? That same line could be said about any event held that is open to the general public.

Compete because you want to play TF2 and be a part of what will be NA's biggest event yet.

We will do our best to produce an event that satisfies everyone. We appreciate feedback about how this can best be achieved, but please let's be realistic about this.

How about next ESEA season, we don't allow any LAN teams to participate? Because it's unfair that we always get the same LAN every season.

I am LFT scout! :3

A pug draft tournament for Friday while the cevo finals are going on sounds like a good idea. I had no idea the plan was for everyone to get prizes, and I'm looking forward to the buy-in a lot more now.

The pug draft tournament happens pretty much every LAN during Friday, so that can certainly still happen if everyone is interested.

LFT scout (or pocket/roamer if I can't get a team as scout)

Just sounds like iseries to me. i46 i paid about £100 to play three or four "official" games. I lost one of those games in 5/6 min on Granary against some team called Mix^. No drama. Just relax about it. LAN has never been about the games, it's about the people. If you've got 120 decent blokes you could sit there and play Tetris with a few beers and have a good time. Run a HL cup or a 4v4 cup or w/e for the teams that get knocked out. Vavle will probs send some stuff to put in the prize pool. It's all good.

LFT Scout

tetris is a good time regardless of the situation :)

here's from my ETS experience where we only had +30 people:

people barely even play tf2, we just all go to chill with friends and meet people so worrying about the tournament is seriously pointless

besides, fragile got this under control so just let him do his job

Though I'm not attending GXL (unfortunately), I've kept an eye on this GXL thread.

Just to clarify an earlier question from Dashner:

To the best of my knowledge, most teams have always accepted the fact that if they don't make it out of the groups, they will have no more official games to play. This will be very apparent at i52 due to the tighter scheduling deadlines we have.

At most i-events (correct me if I'm wrong people), we have had a Championship tournament which everyone is entered into. If you fail to make it out of groups, you are automatically placed into a non-prize winning cup, aka. The TF2 fun cup.

I believe Fragile has already mentioned the possibility of having this as an option, server availability permitting of course.

In regards to i52 this year, you will see that due to the earlier final start time, it is likely that some teams will be knocked out by Friday evening. This will mean that they will no longer be part of the main tournament from that point. Most teams have always seemed to accept this and either take part in the TF2 fun cup, organise some other games with friends (literally shouting across the hall) or go and mingle (see Colemans post above).

If a team passes out of the group stage of i52 this year, once they are knocked out there is no more 'officially organised competitions' to enter, most players will have stopped playing by mid-afternoon Saturday. This has always been the case and I don't see this changing. Again, most teams accept this and haven't had a problem in the past finding something else to do - including me and Arx.

Summary: Nobody likes to lose but as you all know, for someone to win, someone has to lose.

I slightly disagree with you here,

The whole point of these events has always been meeting friends, having fun, raise awareness and playing some games. Note that playing games is the last point.

Yes I understand that $60 is $60 but for what it's worth, surely the opportunity at having more fun and something new to do is worth it? In the bigger picture, $60 is peanuts in the UK (we pay around $170 for a weekend i-event pass + Camping costs)

Yes it's possible you may only have 3 games in the main tournament but that doesn't mean you have to stop playing. GO play some more games, hell play some free to play games with your buddies. That said though, I bet those 3 games will be the ones that stick in your memory because of the enjoyment, adrenaline and well the chase at trying to better yourself.

Finally,

From what I have learnt from Fragile and eXtine, they (et al) are working hard and this promises to be the biggest NA TF2 event ever organised.

If you're still uncertain about going, what are you waiting for? This is a TF2 forum, the game means that much to you that you read this entire thread and this post from a guy across the pond, just jump on board already. I highly doubt you will regret your decision.

I'm pretty us euros will get spanked out of the group stages fairly quickly, and we are probably paying a lot more than most to get there! Stiff upper lip and all that.

I don't really care about winning I just want to get drunk and stare at pixels for 72 hours with internet people

lft med

my issue is you've mentioned a $2k prize pool, then youre asking for the community to drop another 2400 (20 teams @ $120), bringing your prize pool to $4.4k.

The 4.4k is now just an added bonus for CEVO P's current ~ 6k prize pool.

The 'community' is now watching CEVO P finals on Friday AND Saturday night, and the concept of competition is somewhat irrelevant especially for people whose friends are all in CEVO P.

i feel like i could organize a $20 buy in per player tournament with 7 players per team then do a draft friday night and put the money toward alcohol for Saturday or just make a smaller prize pool and the feeling of friendly competition would be there.

I really dont understand what the incentive for a team showing up as 6 is to pay $120 to feed it to the CEVO P players pockets.

Especially since its essentially 1 day of playing

This is like asking what the point is in a low open team paying $30 a player to play in esea. They know they won't come close to winning, so they might as well just scrim without paying to play in matches right?

I realize the skill differential is a bit bigger in this case and the teams are guarantee more matches, but this isn't a new thing to LANs. I have to agree with everything beta said.

It's actually more asking teams to pay 120 to play a 1 day elimination season of cevo p after asking them to watch the finals the night before

Im done with this thread though, you guys wanna donate $20 on top of 2k to the 6k cevo prize pool, be my guest.

I do have to admit, paying $20 to get spanked does not sound like a good deal after I dropped $40 on the event. Gonna be opting out of the tournament, good luck to the rest of the teams.

Ding Dong Daddy LF roamer for the LAN.

Add me on steam.

rofl how is this even an issue. i'm some open level nobody and i'm going to hang out with some nerds that i talk to on the internet sometimes and do my part in eradicating any trace of an alcoholic beverage in the city. why? cause it's going to be fucking fun. am i a little disappointed that some organized invite teams are going up against a bunch of pug teams? i'm be lying if i said i wasn't. is it going to deter me in any way? nah. i'll still pay and have a great time.

do it @ lan

You said you were done with this thread two pages ago, yet an incredible majority of the posts are arguing against your negative attitude.

And don't tell people what to do with their money. You wouldn't be complaining about the $20 buy-in if the $2000 wasn't there already. So what, I'm supposed to just make everyone exempt from the buy-in because of the $2000 that came out of eXtv's/my pocket? Because let me tell you, not too many people would give a shit if this tournament had no buy-in and no prize pool. Yeah, it would still draw a crowd, but I promise you that a lot more people wouldn't give a shit if they got the same thing regardless if they finish second or dead last: nothing at all (first place has always been like a mouse or keyboard, etc). Sure, this isn't all about the prizes or money, but if you give me an unusual for finishing 7th place, I start to care a little more, and if I get a few keys and other cool things for finishing dead last, then I don't feel like my money is completely wasted.

And speaking of last place, I have something cool for people who finish in last place. But hey, my whole plan behind this is just making people donate $20 to the "haha look at the CEVO-P repeat on Saturday" tournament, right?

hope you all have rare-ass puzzle pieces