Posting this again, in case you missed it. Please read all of this, and then pass it on to your teammates and/or anyone else you know that will be attending.
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QUESTIONS
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A very common question that I'm asked is if you need to bring anything with you to registration. You can bring the confirmation email but it's not really necessary. It might speed things up a little but I wouldn't worry about it.
Speaking of common questions, I really should have emphasized this a long time ago, but please read the FAQ in the first post (or in this post). I would say over half of the questions I receive are questions that are easily found with a ctrl+F in the FAQ.
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SEATING
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There will be a TF2 section that will start on one end of the row of tables and we will fill the row from one side to the other. CS:GO will fill in on the opposite side and eventually will meet in the middle. Everyone will space out enough so teams will sit together and not be spread apart. Just show up and sit down with your team.
At every table, there will be a quadbox. It's logical to share the quadbox with the table you're sitting across from. There should be roughly five people per two tables, so someone will need to daisy chain power strips. BRING A POWER STRIP.
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TOURNAMENT STUFF
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We have a bunch of players signed up along with a lot of teams created, but only a couple teams with all six paid. Please, have all six members of your team paid BEFORE you come to the event. If you try to give us your entry fee while at the event, we have to manually go in and edit it for you, and we will be extremely busy with numerous other things at the event. On top of that, in the scenario where the internet is really slow and you're having trouble with Paypal transactions, that would also suck. So please, do everyone (and yourself) a favor and pay before the event. Don't wait until the last second.
I know I haven't mentioned much about the CEVO rental computers, but I know I've said this before and I'll remind everyone again: The rentals are packed and should not be considered an option. You should find alternative ways to get a computer to play on. We don't have too many rentals to play with, as the rentals will mostly be used by CEVO players and the European team, and we need to get this tournament done in one day. The reason I brought up that the tournament needs to finish in one day is that if everyone is trying to use these rentals, it will put massive delays on tournament progress. CEVO mentioned there also might be a fee to use them, but I haven't heard anything about that in a while. I cannot promise the availability of rentals to literally anyone except the CEVO players and the European team. Again, one last time for emphasis, you should not consider them a reliable option.
Speaking of tournament progress, this is also something I need to be very strict about right now. As I just said in the last paragraph, this tournament needs to finish in one day. We cannot afford to deal with any kind of extended delays because people are randomly missing. PLEASE SHOW UP BEFORE 9 AM ON SATURDAY. If you want to go to your hotel quickly or go grab some food, please ask dr.shdwpuppet or me first on how much time you'll have. Everyone needs to have excellent communication here, because I will not hesitate to forfeit a team because people are missing. I will not play favorites or make any exceptions for anyone here. I really don't wanna be that guy to forfeit you, but at the same time, you shouldn't be that guy (OR GIRL) who disappears for too long and makes your team take a forfeit. Exchange phone numbers and be on the same page, and your team will (hopefully) be just fine. I want this tournament to be on schedule as much as possible, and the guys that we have to think about the most here are the casting/streaming desk. These guys will be working all day, practically nonstop. These delays make their day of work that much longer. Please be respectful to everyone, and show up to your matches on time.
Also, for the duration where you haven’t been eliminated yet in the TF2 tournament on Saturday, you cannot play in any other tournaments until you’ve been eliminated / the tournament is over. This is just a cautionary thing I’m enforcing to make sure there aren’t tournament delays.
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MAP SELECTION
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For those who haven't seen, cp_yukon_final and koth_pro_viaduct_rc4 have been added to the map pool.
This brings the final map pool to:
cp_badlands
cp_granary
cp_process_final
cp_gullywash_final1
cp_snakewater_final1
cp_yukon_final
koth_pro_viaduct_rc4
For the map selection process, the entire tournament will be map elimination between the two teams. The order is decided by a coin toss or Rock Paper Scissors. The winner picks whether they want to eliminate first or if the other team will eliminate first. The team who eliminates first also gets to choose what side they play on. In example of Team A vs Team B:
Team A wins the coin toss, and they decide to eliminate maps first.
Team A eliminates Badlands.
Team B eliminates Granary.
Team A eliminates Process.
Team B eliminates Gullywash.
Team A eliminates Snakewater.
Team B eliminates Yukon.
The map that remains is Viaduct, which will be the map in this match.
Also, because Team A eliminated the first map, they will also choose on what side they play on for the selected map (Viaduct). If any of this is confusing, please post.
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GROUP STAGE
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The teams are really starting to pile up, so here's what I'm likely going to do for group stage.
-As mentioned previously, no matter how many teams sign up, there will be a total of 16 teams after the group stage is over with to continue to the double elimination phase. The amount of groups and amount of teams in each group will be determined on the number of teams we have on October 10th (Friday night).
-We have limited resources on how many servers we can run at once. Some of your groups (and/or matches) might be delayed a little bit to make certain we don't overload our resources.
-The CEVO-qualified teams will have their seeds based on how they finished on Friday, therefore making them exempt from the group stage. Let me explain my idea behind this, with the first two reasons being of massive importance:
• Makes the group stage go quicker. It is going to be incredibly hectic with so many matches happening at once, so to have less matches going on will help alleviate the flow of the schedule.
• It frees up the rental computers when people might need them the most (but again, no one should rely on their availability). It also lets the European team hammer out their matches quicker with more available computers.
• It gives teams more of a shot at making it out of their group.
• It gives the CEVO teams a bit of rest from playing all day on the day before. Not a really relevant reason to anyone else, but I think they might appreciate that a bit.
• The insomnia LANs (namely i49 and i52) do something similar like this, with basically an "Invite" group stage where no one gets eliminated from this group, as it's used strictly for seeding.
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LAST BIT OF STUFF
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Lastly, we should have a large mumble for teams to use. You can create your own if you’d like, but the option is there.
That’s basically all I have. Again, please send this to everyone you know and make sure all of this information is common knowledge. I’m really excited to see everyone in less than a week.