stop posting

Weekend cup means there's a good chance that those who would actively like to play in it (like myself) may not be able to. The past 3 months the weekend chosen for the cup has clashed with something going on. I'm nowhere near a harsh as critic as others in this thread, though I don't think their concerns are wrong I'm just less picky. But to say that it's pathetic to not sign up to a cup is just kind of insulting.

All your points just show that you don't understand the starting point of that there is no point in making arguments from the low level player pespective (in this case that would be you) because monthly tournaments are not geared for them and the low level teams dont gather attention for essentials either.

It's about attracting the good teams (me) and we are not attracted to it. Beater's map cup also failed in this department, but it got a bunch of low level ETF2L teams to sign up because it's on ETF2L. But as a map testing cup, it was a failure, just like these cups are a failure.

It's not at all about attracting good teams, the Essentials cups need lower level teams to keep the numbers up and they've been failing in that regard, of course they need to accomodate for top players as well, but the biggest problem with these cups and that they have failed to even make it to the 14/16 team threshold that is required to even make these cups happen and you're not going to fill a 16 team cup with only prem/div 1 teams.

why would you try to attract low level teams (low commitment teams) to play 6 hours on a saturday?? and what does it add for 1) essentials to get more low level players playing since every low level player thats not playing is one less viewer for the stream as well (because most tf2 players are the same people that watch the streams)
2) for the low level players when they get matched against all the high level teams for the first 2 rounds and just get 5-0 shitstomped

1)The more teams in the cup means more potential opportunities for better sponsorships since the cups are bigger and attracting more people, the viewership is a minor downside but especially when the cups are on the twitch frontpage it doesn't really matter since most of the viewers will be people that aren't active tf2 players.
Also lots of the people watching streams are people not actively playing in teams or people who no longer play the game at all.
ALSO this cup needs teams and again you're not going to populate a cup with the limited amount of "high level" teams tf2 has (only 15 if you included all current prem and div 1 teams)
2) That's why you need more low level teams to compensate for all the high level teams so only the initial rounds(or none of the rounds if there were enough teams to divide teams into divs)

Also to reiterate, the only reasons these cups aren't even making it to the threshold is the fact that the promotion doesn't reach lower level teams, if it actually reached them we would atleast hit the 14/16 team threshold that both this monthly and the last NA monthly failed to reach.

you know things are serious when muuq starts posting

It would be really cool, if for example, last months essentials was canceled, with 1000 $~ price pool, they could just add it to new months pool. Like every month, they are having same ish pools, but if it gets canceled, why not invest the same money into the next month to maybe get a bit more motivation to people?

If the first cup doesn't happen, then why would sponsors pay money towards a prizepool for a non-existent tournament? I doubt essentials.tf get the money and are able to invest it in future months.

It's mostly the time commitment that prevents people from playing anyway. Shortening to 45 mins for rounds over an hour was a good start, but it's still a 4 hour commitment of time. Most scrim sessions and post game talks are completely over within 3 hours, so this should be the target, maybe making 40 minute rounds.

Another point is the time it starts. Starting early (17:30 cest) is really fuckin early for EU players. A lot of people do things like eat dinner with their family, are out during the day, just living their lives. The second target should be to time the tournaments around standard scrim times, and people who do stuff during the day would still be able to play. Start the tournament at 19:30 instead, and try to do 4 rounds with 45 mins. Just try some new stuff each month instead of trying the same stuff for multiple months before changing it. I get that it can be confusing for players doing it like this, but tf2 doesn't have the lifespan to take time with it.

Final point is that the lack of lower level teams is actually astonishing. I personally didn't realise it, but there is as many prem teams as open teams that apply to these tournaments. Pretty weird if you consider there are 6 times as many open teams as prem teams. A lot of the time this is because "we aren't going to win anything, so why bother getting 5-0'd by prem teams" or w/e. Which is fair, so why not try offering something to players similar to how faceit does it. Like all the teams who played their matches without ffing any get put into a raffle, and at the end of the sunday stream, the winner of the raffle is called. All players on the team can win a key or something (just given over steam trade). Just a bit more of an incentive to play.

Hey, sorry for slow reply, the eutf2 killer known as the world cup took up my attention too.

We've haven't pinned for 3 reasons.

1. Too many Pinned Threads:
We had a load (8+) of pinned global threads a while back and have been trying to limit the amount we set at a time. Having too many limits the recent posts tool and dilutes other sometimes more important threads.

2. Common Pins lower activity instead of promote:
Pretty strange I know but my theory is people get used to having certain pins there for a while and won't check out the content. It also makes it harder to know if the thread has been bumped with new posts as instead of shooting up in the order to show activity, it just stays in the same place. ALSO it really hurts Essentials.TF posts most because if we did keep global pinning every new monthly cup, at a glance it will look like the old cup posts, mostly leading to people glossing over it.

3. We put them on the Event Ticker:
Dude why do you want a boring global pin when you can be on BOOM THE SICK UPCOMING EVENTS BAR, BOOM ITS HIGHER, BOOM ITS GOT A COUNTDOWN, BOOM IT COMES EQUIPPED WITH STANDARD DETAILS DATE AND TIME TEMPLATE THINGY...EPIC. behold as i showcase it's longterm promotion power by editing their latest cup 2nd date.

why wont teams play these recently? It's fun for even low level teams, basically just free scrims.

maybe use the money to run a 'essentials league' with one official per week? Ithink people might be willing to play that

That definitely sounds like a good and realistic idea tbh im down

Anything that isn't just straight up hours and hours of playing would be more healthy in my opinion. Half the time when playing the Cup (I've played about 3 of them myself), your players in the roster will get mentally fatigued or just wish to do something else, and will sub themselves out or skip a round, which isn't very optimal if you're trying to push a professional, sponsored format with the Cup and you can't get players who even wish to play the entirety of the first day.

tl;dr I like the suggestion of one or two officials a week, +1