To keep it brief I'll limit myself to 3 each.

Absolute Must Gets

• Role Queue (Pretty much a given)
  
• Hub-Centered Queues (Slightly less important, but could help make Newbie-Friendly Groups for example)
  
• Community Discussions (It should be possible to arrange and run community nights independent of Faceit's team)

Need To Change

• Balancing (If their 12v12 mode is anything to go by, balancing matches is shocking)
  
• Their confusing focus on Casual. (Comp is by far and away a more consistent audience, even if numbers are lower)
  
• In-Game Reporting should be available, possibly implementing some subbing system (Opt-in on queue)

Absolute Must Nots

• Not leaving the community to figure out the system for themselves
  
• Using bizarre community events (WTF was Clan Wars?)
  
• Listen to random content creators for legitimate advice.

The last point touches upon the second part of the question. They should be receptive to all feedback, but understand who exactly is making those points. Whilst an Invite/Prem player may have some ideas on how to organise the queue, are they the ultimate authority on how to run a matchmaking system? If there must be some 'council' or 'illuminati' it would make sense for that sort of thing to involve people who have tried this before or at least have notable experience in organising for competitive tf2. Now that comes with a caveat that even those organisers will be biased and have their own views which may be misaligned with the attitudes with the community, but by bringing enough on you should have something reflective of the competitive scene. Again, all feedback should be given weight regardless of whether its a player, professional or organiser but if you want the most robust arguments on how to manage competitive play, its best to hear from those who have been doing it for years.

Due to there being 6 teams signing up and 2 teams automatically qualifying for various reasons (nR & forfeiting euros prize money) we will be running Qualifiers over the next week. Details for these will be sent out shortly, team leaders make sure you are on the EssentialsTF Discord.

I will be upfront, this playoffs format we've chosen is very experimental and is inspired from other games. One of the most frequent complaints we get from all three parties we take feedback from (Players, Viewers, and Staff) about all our tournaments is the extended breaks between rounds leading to significant downtime both during the tournament and on the stream. This problem is much more prevalent in double elimination, as in a LAN setting we usually do some part of playoffs over all 3 days simply because it takes so much time.

The Lower Bracket being BO1 condenses the bracket into a manageable two-day setup whilst giving teams who lose early on in the bracket the opportunity to make it to Grands. Running a BO3 Lower Bracket extends the schedule by an additional 4 hours on days that are already over 6 hours a piece. Obviously this would be amended if we simply ran a single elimination bracket, but for a team to turn up for a second weekend only to lose their first BO3 and end their run there seemed somewhat unfair for people who will dedicate multiple weekends for this event.

In short, the decision to run a BO1 Lower Bracket is to maximise games played whilst minimising downtime for the players, viewers and those on production. I won't claim that this is the ideal setup nor that the reasonings I have given have any weight. But rather than running a tired, flawed format these online events have given us an opportunity to try new ways of organising competitive tournaments going forward. Things will work, some things won't. Unfortunately, changing the schedule/format dramatically (outside of moving some matches forward or back 15-30 mins) is not really possible now given parts of the event are due to start next week. I will welcome any and all feedback on this, as per usual.

We're happy to be working with TFNew on this team drive. We hope that this will be a great opportunity for people new to competitive and encourage you all to let people know and if you can to contribute to coaching were possible. This sort of thing is really useful for new players and with EU Newbie Mixes starting up soon, things are looking quite promising for them in EU.

Schedule (CEST):

Community Clash
12th June

• Round 1 - 17:00
  
• Round 2 - 18:15
  
• Round 3 - 19:30

13th June

• Round 4 - 17:00
  
• Round 5 - 18:15
  
• Open Round 6 & Invite Tiebreakers - 19:30
  
• Open Tiebreakers - 20:30

19th June - Playoffs (Double Elimination):

• UB Round 1 - 15:00
  
• UB Round 2 - 17:15
  
• LB Round 1 - 18:15
  
• UB Round 3 - 19:30
  
• LB Round 2 - 19:30
  
• LB Round 3 - 20:30

20th June

• UB Finals - 15:00
  
• LB Round 4 - 15:00
  
• LB Round 5 - 16:15
  
• LB Finals - 17:30
  
• Grand Finals - 19:30

Newcomer Clash:
12th June - Open Swiss:

• Round 1 (Gullywash) - 17:00
  
• Round 2 (Metalworks) - 18:15
  
• Round 3 (Snakewater) - 19:30

13th June

• Round 4 (Sunshine) - 17:00
  
• Round 5 (Process) - 18:15
  
• Tiebreaker Round (Granary) - 19:30

19th June - Playoffs (Single Elimination):

• Semi Finals - 17:15
  
• Grand Final - 19:30

Hello again!

This is the event thread for the upcoming European Community Clash sponsored by DreamHack and organised by EssentialsTF. Details about the event will be posted here when available, so any questions should be placed here as well. 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 as well as Clash.TF for updates: https://twitter.com/TF2Essentials

All matches are played using the ETF2L Config and Whitelists.
EssentialsTF Discord:
https://essentials.tf/discord

Invite Qualifiers:

• 6 Teams will make up our invite groups. If there is enough teams (aka more than 6) that want to play Invite we will run Invite Qualifiers from 7-11th June.
  
• Structure of the qualifiers will depend on signups but will likely be small round robin groups which you can play and schedule freely.
  
• Signups for this are live!
  
• 12 Team Cap
  
• Registration ends 6th June @ 1 am CEST.

Link: https://www.toornament.com/en_GB/tournaments/4625690475143643136/information

Main Tournament:

• Signups start 22nd May and end on 11th June @ 1 am CEST
  
• 12-13th June: Invite Round Robin and Open Swiss, around 6 matches over the weekend (incl. Tiebreaker Rounds)
  
• 19-20th June: Double Elimination Bracket (Bo3 Upper Bracket & Bo1 Lower Bracket)

Prize Pool

1. $1,200
   
2. $600
   
3. $360
   
4. $240

Link: https://www.toornament.com/en_GB/tournaments/4625601159333019648/information

Newcomer Clash:

• Signups start 22nd May and end on 11th June @ 1 am CEST
  
• 12-13th June: Five rounds of Swiss, with Tiebreaker Round if needed.
  
• 19th June: 4 Team Single Elimination Playoffs
  
• No player on the team must have played in the playoffs of the Open division in ETF2L or any equivalent league, or have exceeded 15 official matches.
  
• 16 Team Cap

Prize Pool

1. $60
   
2. $30

Link: https://www.toornament.com/en_GB/tournaments/4625649045352071168/information

There is a soft region lock, no teams can have more than 3 players from a region that isn't Europe without admin approval. As we are trying a more spread out format and structure, we are open to suggestions about the format and times of matches. Please don't hesitate to let us know on Discord or within this thread.

Quickly getting this out of the way, do not believe anything that comes from WAMO. Everything that they say relating to Updates etc is largely unsubstantiated. They legitimately thought that the Jill that contacted them was either THE Jill from Valve or at least closely affiliated with them enough to know that a significant update was coming. Second, they are trying to pass off Team Comtress as some sort of secret project or that they have insider knowledge. Finally they have a repeating track record of either misinterpreting or straight up lying about things for views and engagement.

The fact that Valve are working on a solution to the bots is not new information, we knew that this was the case back in June 2020. They did a series of updates limiting what the bots could do by reducing F2P functionalities and noted that they were doing ongoing work to address the problem:

"Work is ongoing to mitigate the use of new and free accounts for abusive purposes" https://www.teamfortress.com/post.php?id=62459

Hearing radio silence as the team works on ways of combatting cheating is nothing new and is in fact one of the things developers should do when working on anti-cheat measures. The more information is out there the more that the ones developing the cheats can prepare and work on countermeasures. From what I know (which I'll be upfront is not much), there is little evidence that Team Comtress as presented publicly will be added to the game. If I was to guess, some of the changes may have been sent to Valve and are being tested/implemented but essentially porting over Comtress to the main game is not happening.

This is nothing to be suprised or excited for. I don't think there is anyone within the tf2 community at this point who isn't aware of the bot crisis. Its ridiculous that people think that Valve are only just now acting upon it; that the delay is likely due to lack of manpower than ignorance of the problem. Hopefully it is a decent update, possibly in addressing the bots and optimisation issues, but at this point I'm keeping my expectations low.

TL;DR: YouTubers don't have a clue, an update was always going to come, don't get too hyped.
Edit: Some Grammar.

Signups for the NA Community Clash have ended. If you have signed up these are your next steps:

1) Ensure that your team captain is on the Discord;

2) Contact an admin letting them know who is your captain for your team, with their Discord Tag (Username#0000);
a) If you want a member of your team to act as a deputy captain, please let an admin know;

3) Check-in for the event starts on the 7th at 17:00. All teams must be checked in before the deadline on the 8th 1 hour before the tournament starts;

4) Keep an eye on the Discord for all updates to the event;

5) Ensure that you have read the rules on the Tournament Page.

48 Hours remaining till signups end, its your last chance to get teams together to play!

https://www.toornament.com/en_GB/tournaments/4539172956295323648/information
https://www.toornament.com/en_GB/tournaments/4539260879002624000/information

Signups for both the Newcomer and Main tournaments have been extended to Thursday 6th May at 18:00 EDT. Make sure that you are registered before then otherwise you will not make it into the tournament. We have enough signups to run the main tournament but we would love to see more teams, especially for the Newcomer tournament. If you know anyone who is new to competitive TF2 I would encourage you to get them to sign up for that.

We have accepted our first wave of participants for the open tournament. Open captains, you should have received an email confirming whether you have been accepted to play. Could you also please ensure that your discord name is the same as the one you registered with (you can change nicknames for individual servers).

EDIT: Prize Pool splits for the open tournament have been confirmed. Newcomer splits to follow promptly.

Just throwing in a quick update just so everyone is aware.

Due to lower than expected signups for Invite, the qualifiers that were planned for this weekend will not be going ahead. All 8 teams who signed up will automatically proceed to the group stages within the main tournament. As such the format of the second weekend (aka the main tournament) will be going ahead as planned.

We will be accepting any registrations to the open and newcomer tournaments from this evening onwards. I encourage teams to signup sooner rather than later as there is limited capacity of 72 teams, although if there is significant interest alternative formats may be discussed.

If there are any other places where we could communicate information about this event (RGL forums etc.) please let me know so we can get that out there. We want as many teams as you can make to turn up. As always direct any questions here or in the #contact-an-admin channel on Discord.

Thank you for your patience and hope to see you at the event!

Could the captains of the teams that did signup join the Discord and message me so I can add you to the private channels. Due to the limited signups for Invite, we will need to adjust the structure and I would like to discuss that with the captains before I make any changes. Specifically I need the captains of:

• HRTeam (Magma)
  
• Cat Posse (kura_beast)

We believe that we have promoted this frequently through multiple newsposts, threads and social media. All of which we encouraged people to keep an eye on those channels for updates. We reached out to RGL staff for support where reasonable, but at the end of the day this is a cup seperate from their organisation. It's clear though that our usual channels of communication are quieter in NA than we expected, and will do better to promote our events for NA audiences.

That being said, the main tournament next weekend is still going ahead which will be open to all teams who wish to compete. Additionally there is a Newcomer tournament for teams who do not have experience with competitive mode. All tournaments have been designed to be adjustable for signups, whether that's 16 teams total or 72 and beyond. We are committed to delivering the event as promised, and that has not changed.

Signups for the NA Invite Qualifiers have been extended! You have just over a day to get signed up, and since only 4 teams have signed up so far we're really looking for people to get a move on. Based upon signups for Invite we may adjust the structure for the event. Registered teams will be contacted by email and a post will be placed here to announce any and all changes to the event.

Just wanted to quickly bump this thread to remind teams that wish to play invite that they have less than a week to sign up to the qualifiers. All teams that want to play invite in the main tournament must signup. The structure of the qualifiers may change based upon signups, although this will be communicated to teams.

As always, direct any questions here on in the EssentialsTF discord.