I'm not sure I disagree, but you also have to consider that this isn't, like, a failed fundraiser or anything. They decided they didn't want to ask for help. I'd like to know why exactly they were uncomfortable with that, but either way, at least we've got one cohesive NA team going this year.

looking again, add me for tryouts

yep

all i want for christmas is for this cup to happen

Used this for ascent vs new god flow last night, and after a long pause the index system seemed to get stuck. So, for example, a scout with index 0 during the pause would switch to engi for a last fight, meaning that his index should change to 4. Instead it would stay at 0, and 4 would still be assigned to the demo.

This eventually fixed itself, presumably after however much time the pause had lasted passed, though I didn't actually time it. In the meantime, it was extremely confusing. Is there some way I can refresh the index system after pauses?

mostly a myth unless you've got some bad vitamin a deficiencies, unfortunately. fun fact, that idea supposedly got popular during ww2, as the british started spreading some weird stories around to cover up the existence of the newly invented radar, which had been allowing for massive british air superiority under cover of night.

heres hoping new god flow can make a splash with this game

honestly pretty crazy that a f2p game is followed that closely by counterstrike, and not by another f2p.

Could use a bit of polish, but for the most part I think the map is pretty dang fun to play. My major gripe with it is the lobby area in front of last. It's like badlands lobby, but with even more ground to cover, making it extremely difficult to push out of last without a major advantage. Even full uber ads are too easy for the team holding 2nd to kite. Either you uber in, fail to catch anything significant, and then wind up fighting a 4v6 at best while your flank is struggling to clear all the ground in lobby, or you get backcapped. Or I guess you could just sit and hope your sniper or sac manages to grab like 3 kills. It doesn't help that the most reliable way for the defenders to push out and get close is through bats, which also like badlands, sets you up totally even with the point, making you an easy spam target.

I feel that lobby would hugely benefit from just being cut down, or maybe making some surfaces transparent. Whatever makes it faster to transition through lobby. It would also be good to give the defenders pushing out an advantage in the fight over 2nd. It's nice to be able to jump from point to bats, but raising bats up to be a stronger position over the point would be nice as well.

also forgot to mention how difficult it is to sac out of last. the demo can lock off every worthwhile entrance by just standing in upper lobby

How did the Beater cup that get more than double the minimum that Essentials needs? Sure, people are still gonna be busy some weekends, but the way this has been going, it's more like there's a straight up boycott on Essentials. If you're a team that plays 5 days a week, cancelling a day or two of scrims around the cup shouldn't be a big deal. Most of the maps in the ETF2L rotation are in the Essentials pool as well.

I hear about money in TF2 constantly. In NA it's "oh, we only play ESEA because they're the only league that offers a prize pool." In EU it's "oh, EU players don't try hard because there hasn't been a prize pool for a few seasons." I don't know that those are your personal opinions, but they're definitely common, so I don't know how you can claim that TF2 is never about money. It's unfortunate that the payments are late, too, but they do come, and it should be exciting to see sponsor money from places like Twitch come into TF2.

In any sport, in any e-sport, it's always more prestigious to win the season over a small tournament, but these cups are treated like absolute dirt. Issues like late payments and weird whitelists are not enough to spit on a group of people that are only trying to help TF2 sustain itself. As for practicing against mix teams, I assume that was the point of putting together an invite bracket this month, but no one cared.

Fair. I haven't seen any space for players to offer feedback on the whitelists or rulesets, and I'm not sure why. I also don't think these are very big issues. I haven't seen any of the new unlocks used to any great extent in any of the cups I've played. Stuff like the pocket pistol is overpowered. But broken? It's no soda popper or crit a cola.

^
Low turnout has been a pattern for months, though. I don't think any of the cups besides the ones in January have broken past 20.

didn't beater's cup get 40 teams on a saturday

people who play tf2

how is letting yet another paid cup die NOT pathetic

no one can ever bitch about "ded game" ever again if we can't even keep basic shit like this alive

pretty pathetic, guys.

If people just can't play saturdays, that's one thing, but being burned out by scrimming seems like it should easily be avoidable. These cups are announced weeks in advance. Just don't schedule scrims for a few days leading up to the cup? And not playing "cuz 7 wins" also doesn't make sense. If that's the case, why is anyone playing ETF2L at all? Just play, do your best, and keep the damn cup alive for future teams that will actually make the cup a good contest. And, again, the prem teams have their own bracket now, so weak teams shouldn't be up in arms about 7 anymore either.

Might be interesting to try to put out some kind of promotion on YouTube. I think a big part of the problem is that people don't read, and aren't informed on how the tournament has changed since January. So long as there's an attempt to make it entertaining I think it'd work out; even those weird ass STN commercials have a unique tone to them.