That's just because there are people who bought tickets who haven't actually picked a seat. Seating picker only opened Friday evening so it's still in its infancy.

From what I can see so far they're working with less space compared to last year. I'd love to see the numbers but I bet it's a no-brainer to sustain the expo at last year's size over keeping the BYOC area the same. It's not going to be a small financial margin.

Aah there is a normal link, thanks! It doesn't look like they've done much with the colours (other than staff area to restrict picking it) so I don't know. They are apparently having a few problems with the system though so it might be fairly low on priorities.

I'm not sure there's enough seats on that right now for the tickets they have sold/will sell. I'm assuming they're going for ~3000 or so again but surely that picker only covers about 2000 (rough estimate..)

Eon will be community games I imagine as it has been for every event, Ayresford is staff, Legends Lounge will be LoL-related presumably, Lounge One for console, so that leaves LG for CS, probably stuff like dota...

There are some seats blocked out in grey on LG which could be related to ours, but there's a block of 24 and we only have 12 tickets reserved (for the NA teams).

tl:dr I haven't got a fucking clue

I can't actually see the seat picker with the system change as I don't have an allocated ticket yet. What areas are there, and is there any colour coding to indicate where they suggest us to go?

If there's an outside structure, like a temporary marquee type thing (ala i49?) I have a feeling that will be the best bet for us.

I am waiting on details and confirmation of the setup area we will get for TFTV production. The stage in the lower ground hall will not be ours this time. That will be used for the e-sports finals. Unfortunately, it doesn't sound like i'll have an answer until next week as the office is out at minecon.

I don't think any of this needs the best teams in the world. It just needs good, solid, close games for an event. We're a community about our spirit. The start of long-running prize TF2 events at insomnia started from a hyped up i37 final of shit div 3/4 teams. We're the only people that really know how good the players are or aren't, but seriously, just grab a beer and enjoy an event for an event.

I need to have this discussion with Multiplay after i55, but seriously don't start putting i58 on a pedestal as it's waaaay to early. The growing uncertainty is due to the lack of commercial viability which isn't really improving. i55 needs to be strong to have that chance, and if it isn't then it only proves what's probably on their minds. They love our community, but there's a point where upper management will rule based entirely on numbers - it's not just what it costs them for our tournament, it's also what else they could have put in its place. Making our own event is a hell of a drain on time, money, and resource. Feels like a lot more effort if teams turn around and can't commit.

People who don't follow our scene have probably heard of the lengendary iEvents - and then suddenly we're lacklustre at our flagship event? Ah, old game, must be on the way out finally. If I were looking in from the outside: you've lost ESEA, and if the general community can't support the expected event (i55) then you're not in a bargaining position to really get in anywhere else. That's what concerns me. i55 is happening whether we're in full force or not at this point, so it's probably best not to smear a downwards trend on it. We're only speculating what MM and stream lists may or may not bring, so we still need to keep up our own self motivation to achieve. As long as the will is present then we should grab it with both hands, as Valve's help is help, not an instant fix.

I understand the sentiment from iM due to the impracticalities, and I wasn't expecting your return. Keen yanks though? I'll take 'em.

The biggest argument comes down to: it's a lot of money for teams that cannot compete at the same level.

I don't pay enough attention to really know if the skill factor is true, and it's not easy to prove, but the point is there. In an ideal world things wouldn't be so expensive (i.e. flying around the world is pretty significant).

Yes, had enough classic arguments over the years with opponents saying "but he's in div 3/4/5!!!!" when they're ex-prem/div 1 players, and/or it does partly rely on teams having been placed correctly (less of an issue with the swiss system I suspect).

That looks sweet, much crisper.

Hi guys,

I was hoping to have this mentioned in the finals, although the err, short nature of it didn't leave too much room.

Thanks to Kuferl & Wiethoofd, and TF2Pickup.net & Whitelist.tf, for some additional prizes to the i52 winners - both 6v6 and highlander.

As seen here there are keys, killstreak kits, and strange weapons for the top three teams (sorry Immunity <3)

Keys have been accepted by shade on behalf of froyotech.
A trade with basH of Epsilon is pending for the second place prizes.
A trade with enigma is pending for the strange weapons.
Let me know if you want those trades cancelling/sending to someone else - I just picked the contacts I had on Steam

A very kind gesture, so once again my thanks to Wiethoofd and Kuferl.

Go forth and unbox some unusuals so we can auction them for i55 funds ;)

On the plus side, all the players will have demos (right guys, you read the rules, right???) so as long as you locate who did it then you've got a first person view.

We don't get access to the FTP or anything for the servers, so I just asked the server guy to pull off the whole day of STV demos from all the servers. He did it by a script I think now though so I wonder if it just missed one of the event boxes? No idea. Event 11, Event 12, Event 13 (probably only one game, server lag on that box), Event 14, Event 15, Event 16, Event 28 were all the boxes we had running by the knockouts. Took a couple offline after groups because of the lags.

If they're not there then there's nothing I can do anyway, because the servers get packed away after LAN. Probably could've done with someone checking when I passed them over on Sat/Sun.

The finals are missing because he did it beforehand in the morning, and I forgot to ask later, but I doubt too many people will miss that.

Everything was set to auto record with TFTrue so I dunno.

Edit: server 1 was definitely running on event 11 - and I know at least one of the Epsi games was scheduled on here, so no idea why that's missing but that would probably explain a bit of it.

We have had expo stands in the past (beat the pro style thing) with nvc/byte/whoever at the time. The expo hall really is quite full again now though, and actually it's quite loud in there so i'm not sure a casting situation would be favoured by the community (difficult to hear commentary, and probably the in-game sounds). Plus, everything mentioned by Beta about equipment..

Thing about the stage is there's also not a lot of time to ween out issues. It's pretty much turn up and play. We had setup time beforehand this time, although you don't necessarily notice things. I saw someone telling the Multiplay guys about the hud and that the large parts need removing during play, but it's not something you'd think to say as someone used to it, I suppose. The tech guys aren't familiar with our running at all.

Also fyi Multiplay don't plan THAT far in advance. I will say there won't be any TF2 at i53, and i54, but the discussion about i55 hasn't happened.

pls no more ask

TF2 has been a "fun" tournament in the past. It didn't attract what it does now. There's a variety of reasons, but i'm sure that 5k pool currently goes some way to helping this scale of competition actually happen.

The time sucked a bit, but it can't be helped. It's a pure fact - sponsors aren't interested in TF2. We take what we get. 10am final and 5k beats no stage final and no money, most likely. Multiplay have been so, so accommodating to make the last couple of years happen.

As for the hype and players - that's a community fault. We like our parties and our drink I guess. The games could, and should have ended earlier last night, but if teams don't make the effort to start games on time then it gets on late into the night. Plus, it's far easier to be hyped about a close game than what actually happened. I'd have loved a later final, but other than that, what extra do you want? The community makes our game, imo, not sure what else could be done. Open to suggestions here, if i55 happens, I need to know what to try and ask for.

It's nothing official.

It's less likely, as the business grows, purely from a commercial perspective. There are guys on our side at Multiplay though, so we'll see for next summer. I've asked for them to keep us in the loop on it so i'll try and get the news out asap either way come next year.

We have all the logs. I'm sure after the event people will start compiling things together. It's not a quick task!

I have/content team has all of the group/knockout STVs, just missing the finals (...) but again i'm sure all the VODs, STVs, stats etc. will be sorted after the event.