Just wanted to provide a quick update about this as we talked to the organisers of Insomnia about anything we could do on our end. An arranged/reserved area for TF2 is not something we or Insomnia can do officially so this will have to be led and organised by the community.

We would anticipate that details on rentals should be clearer by the time tickets are on sale again, yes. I wouldn't assume, however, as I cannot guarantee that as of right now.

Man can't see his DPM for a few hours and goes into a full existential crisis

Rentals are live, get on this ASAP. They go quite quickly!
https://twitter.com/IGFestUK/status/1537103289619304451

Discount has now ended, tickets are now at normal retail price. Watch this space for more possible discounts!

Team Fortress 2 is going to Atlanta for another DreamHack event! With a 6s BYOC tournament, as well as other activities during the weekend both for TF2 and otherwise, there are plenty of chances to meet, win prizes, and get involved.

Event Link: lan.tf/atlanta

Venue Address
Georgia World Congress Center
285 Andrew Young International Blvd NW
Atlanta
GA 30313

Start: Friday 18th November
End: Sunday 20th November

Tickets: https://dreamhack.com/atlanta/tickets/

What is the closest airport to the venue?
There are a range of airports, both domestic and international available around the Atlanta area, with public transport options downtown.

What are the available accommodation around the area?
There are various hotels in and around the venue, with plenty of AirBnB options.

Tournament Details
https://play.toornament.com/en_GB/tournaments/6150112853910372352/

The tournament can be accessed in the freeplay area in a 'Turn-up-and-play' setting (restrictions apply) as well as through the BYOC. Current signup capacity is capped at 16 although this can be expanded with high demand, so please signup ASAP. For more details see Post #54 and #58

Any updates will be posted here, on our Twitter, and over on our Discord. We aim to answer any questions as quickly as possible.

CU@

Essentials Twitter
Essentials Discord

DreamHack Website
DreamHack Discord

https://essentials.tf/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/INSOMNIA-69-Team_Fortress_2-1440_.jpg

TF2 @ Insomnia 69 (nice)

Event Link: lan.tf/i69

Venue Address
Birmingham NEC
North Ave
B40 1NT
United Kingdom
Hall Number 4

Start: Friday 26rd August
End: Monday 29th August

Tickets: https://insomnia.seetickets.com/tour/insomnia
If you wish to compete in the tournament, you will need to order a BYOC Ticket which will provide access to the BYOC area. IF YOU DO NOT HAVE THIS TICKET YOU WILL BE UNABLE TO COMPETE! If you are a spectator only, we would recommend that you get the Weekend pass which allows access to the Esports area after the main exhibition has closed.

What is the closest airport to the venue?
Birmingham Airport (BHX) with a connecting shuttle to Birmingham International Train Station and the NEC.

What are the available accommodation around the area?
There are various hotels in and around the venue and Airport. Insomnia also offers Indoor Camping where you are allocated the relevant space for a tent, airbed, camp bed, roll mat; a far cheaper alternative.

How can I sit with my team?
You can pick your seats using Insomnia's system here: https://lan.tf/seatpicker

Rentals
Rentals are only available for BYOC Ticket Holders,they can be ordered through the following link: https://insomniagamingfestival.com/rentals/

Tournament Details
All tournament details, and signups, are available here: https://play.toornament.com/en_GB/tournaments/5815294106971799552/

Please indicate in your registration whether you plan to play invite, if you have any questions ask in the Discord or DM me.

Any updates will be posted here, on our Twitter, and over on our Discord. We aim to answer any questions as quickly as possible.

CU@

Insomnia FAQ
Essentials Twitter
Essentials Discord

Insomnia Twitter
Insomnia Discord

Quick bump to remind people that signups for the Invite Qualifiers will close on the 15th May at 1am EDT. Currently we have 4 teams registered. With 6 or less registrations, teams who have signed up will automatically move into the Invite bracket for the main tournament.

https://essentials.tf/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/2022CCD-DALLASTF2.jpg

EssentialsTF is going to DreamHack Dallas. We’ll be there for the whole event (June 3rd – 5th) hosting and producing a range of content which includes some community activities for TF2. We’d love to see some of you there, and if you are or will be going there are a bunch of opportunities to win some money. Our community activities will involve Jumping, MGE, and even Dodgeball! Most of the activities will be accessible to both BYOC and General Admission attendees. Many of our activities will be accessible through the DreamHack freeplay booth so even if you don’t bring your computer, you can still take part.

If there are several people that would be going, there is a chance that we can run some competitive tournaments (Ultiduo, 4s, etc.) with prizes. If you are attending, please reach out on the Essentials Discord to let us know. We may be interested in one or more of you helping for some of our competitions. We aim to have a meetup of all the TF2 gamers so it’ll be great to hear from anyone turning up.

We have a discount code for 30% off BYOC tickets so if you are going to buy a BYOC ticket use the code: DHDAL22TF2BYOC

Activities List:

• Jumping – Per day, players will have a chance to post the fastest time on a Jump map. Top 3 times will receive $100 each.
  
• MGE – Various competitions will be held throughout the event; winners of these competitions will receive $25 each.
  
• Dodgeball – Either team or solo single elim bracket, winner of the tournament will receive $50 each.

We will also be holding a clip competition for the duration of the event, where winners will be announced at the end of the event. Submit your biggest plays, jump runs, or pub tf2 moments for a chance of winning one of 5 $50 prizes.
Throughout the event we’ll be running some streams over on our EssentialsTF twitch channel. Schedules for this will be announced soon. If you have any questions, feel free to reach out.

Besides that, we hope to cu@!

Schedule (EDT) – Subject to Change

21st May
Open Round 1 – 16:00
Invite Round 1 & Open Round 2 – 17:00
Invite Round 2 & Open Round 3 – 18:00
Invite Round 3 & Open Round 4 – 19:00

22nd May
Invite Round 4 & Open Round 5 – 16:00
Invite Round 5 & Open Round 6 – 17:00
Tiebreaker Rounds – 18:00
UB Round 1 & LB Round 2 – 18:45

28th May
UB Round 2 & LB Round 2 – 16:00
LB Round 3 – 18:15
UB Finals & LB Round 4 – 20:30

29th May
LB Round 5 – 16:00
LB Finals – 18:15
Grand Finals (Bo5) – 20:30

https://essentials.tf/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/2022CCD-MAYNATF2CLASH.jpg

We are happy to announce that DreamHack Community Clash is back! On May 21-22 & 28-29th, we will be hosting an online tournament for North American teams. Signups for this tournament are now live! There is also another announcement on its way sometime soon, so stay tuned…

This is the event thread for this tournament sponsored by DreamHack and organised by EssentialsTF. Details about the event will be posted here when available, so any questions place any questions here. We will try to answer all questions promptly. I would encourage any teams interested to check out the tournament pages which contains all the relevant details about the event, but also keep an eye on our twitter page and Clash.TF for updates:

All matches are played using the Unity Cup Config (30min match/5min round timers; Winlimit 5; Continuous Overtime - +1 rule; Bo5 KOTH) and RGL Whitelists. Updated configs can be found on NA Serveme under the names unity_5cp_rgl and unity_koth_rgl (https://essentials.tf/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/unity_cup_rgl.zip).

EssentialsTF Discord

Invite Qualifiers:
Up to 6 Teams will make up our invite groups. If there are enough teams (aka more than 6) that want to play Invite we will run Invite Qualifiers from 16-20th May.

Structure of the qualifiers will be small round robin groups which you can play and schedule freely within the week prior to signups closing.

12 Team Cap

Registration ends 15th May @ 1 am EDT.

Link: https://play.toornament.com/en_GB/tournaments/5629406496420880384/

Main Tournament:
Signups start 26th April and end 20th May @ 1 am EDT
21-22nd May: Invite Round Robin and Open Swiss (Bo1), Group Tiebreakers (Bo1) and first stage of Playoffs (Bo3).
28-29th May: Double Elimination Bracket (Bo3 with Bo5 Grand Finals)

Prize Pool

1. $1,200
   
2. $600
   
3. $420
   
4. $240

Link: https://play.toornament.com/en_GB/tournaments/5623087432864137216/

There is a soft region lock, no teams can have more than 3 players from a region that is not North America without admin approval. Feel free to reach out to admins through the Essentials Discord.

TL;DR

• Timelimit 30, Winlimit 5, and Round Timer 5 should be implemented by all leagues/tournaments ASAP
  
• The impact of Continuous Overtime was not as severe on scheduling as planned, but an indefinite match time for all standard matches is very risky in time-sensitive competitions.
  
• Continuous Overtime should replace Golden Cap

I think that the viewpoints of players and spectators are very important, yet I would like to give my feedback based as an organiser/TA.

I believe that we should be playing the same game, regardless of whether its a PUG, Official, League or LAN. It's been something I've advocated for a while now and so that I why I was very keen to help admin this Unity Cup. So I'll quickly put down my thoughts about the ruleset.

Short thoughts:

• There is no reason that everyone shouldn't be using Winlimit 5, leagues and tournaments should make this change ASAP. Windifference is fine, but at the point where WD would come into play Winlimit does that far easier and much quicker.
  
• Leagues and tournaments should use Round Timer 5, theres still some debate on it but I think that it is an improvement on the game by removing 10min stalemates. In the vast majority of settings round timer has no impact (on average, rounds in the Invite Groups & Playoffs Bracket lasted around 5 minutes total) and in the cases where it does I'd imagine teams would be stalemating regardless of whether its 10 or 5 minutes, but that's just me.
  
• A combination of Winlimit 5, Timelimit 30, and Round Timer 5 should be the standard across all leagues in all regions, and this should be done soon.

Continuous Overtime
The more complicated part of this discussion from a TA/Organiser point is the use of the continuous overtime (+1 round) rule. For LAN and Weekend Cup competitions, like iSeries and Community Clash we have blocked out 1 hour for a BO1 and then a 15 minute 'break'. This is incredibly generous and in 90% of cases most matches end way before the next round is due which tends to create a fair amount of downtime, much to the dismay of players. But this is by design for 2 key reasons:

1. Health and rest for Staff & Players
   
2. Scheduling and preventing delays

We block out more time than the match is expected to take because we expect delays. Be technical issues, players being late to contact one another, pick/bans, a late start, or just a long match. Because right now under the old ruleset a match has a finite timepool from which we can confidently construct a schedule that runs pretty much on time, as its a schedule that expects things to go wrong. A continuous overtime presents a risk of a match running beyond our expectations and delaying the entire tournament, in the case of a Swiss setup.

What we found in this Unity Cup is that on average (for Invite & Playoff Matches), matches that went into continuous overtime (AKA past 30 mins) only went on for another 10 minutes with the most extreme case being NOOBPANZER vs Witness going for 50+ minutes. Under the schedule setup we've used at LAN/Weekend Cups we can likely do a BO1 within an hour, BO3 within 2 1/2 and a BO5 within 4 hours using the Unity Cup rule set as is. I was surprised that the tournament ended up running pretty much on schedule or even ahead of it, so I can say that its possible.

The other side of me though thinks that its risky to assume that it will be the case in future events. To this end, I think that the overtime should only activate at a draw or at most a 1-round deviation (1-0, 2-1, 3-2,4-3), and only in matches where there must be a Win or a Loss (things like Playoffs etc.). Basically, removing Golden Cap for a Continuous Overtime rule. Ending a match and then re-execing stuff and re-readying up actually takes quite a lot of time so in this case an overtime rule would actually probably end up saving time. If garbage time is really a problem for teams/players, then I'd recommend implementing the GG plugin again, just with tighter restrictions on when it can be used (3 mins left on match, only by losing team).

In summary, this format has promise and there are parts I definitely feel have value and should be implemented straight away, but the use of Continuous Overtime in standard matches would likely cause massive headaches from an Admin/Organiser's perspective, particularly in time-sensitive tournaments like Weekend Cups and LANs.

The toxicity in this game is as frequent as most other modern titles. What is different compared to lets say LoL or Valorant is that those games have a MUCH bigger playerbase so whilst you will encounter toxic people frequently, its incredibly rare to come against the same person twice in a single night, or even ever again. Plus these games have quick tools to mute or block them, preventing you from ever having to deal with them in the future.

TF2, comp TF2 especially so, does not have this luxury. Its very likely that you'll remember one or two individuals who really ruined your day and unless they get banned or you actively avoid them its inevitable that you'll see them again. The impact one person has on a players experience in comp play is far higher than in other games. Even worse are these circlejerks these people find which form groups big enough that you're always going to encounter someone from them at some point, which is especially bad if you are someone they've labelled as someone to target specifically.

Yet, that same system allows you to find groups or communities that are the complete opposite. Leagues or platforms have large power to prevent such individuals from competing on their sites, which by proxy can outright ban them from taking part in competitive play. So whilst each individual has more impact, they have more accountability. Ultimately its not a matter that TF2 is more toxic than other games, but rather about those you surround yourself with.

https://twitter.com/DreamHack/status/1470786849098579969

https://dreamhack.com/blog/2021/12/14/dreamhack-anaheim-2022-cancelled/

Measures should now be in place for people to get refunds if they have purchased a ticket. We will assist where possible although any queries regarding the refunding process should be directed towards DreamHack first, as we have no involvement on that side.

With that being said, we will continue to monitor the COVID situation to determine when and where it is safe to bring LAN back to the global TF2 audience. If you are aware of any events, organisers, or venues that you believe could be a place for a viable and sustainable LAN competition please don't hesitate to get in contact with one of the EssentialsTF team leads.

At this point in time we do not wish to confirm anything, but we are engaging in a dialogue with DreamHack and others to explore our options for the 2022 year. Given the recency of this cancellation, we want to assure any loose ends as a result of this decision are closed before we look to the next event.