good question, i didn't mention it
what we did during the last event was to let people in for free, however as all other participants the must wear an event wristband so the venue owners know that these people are invited
due to a fact we will just a lot of people in the venue i don't know how we'll do it yet but very likely we'll allow onsite spectators, my only real fear is someone ending up having their belongings stolen although there is a surveillance in operation in the venue
from venue's perspective it's a closed event, meaning all people without and invite cannot come in and you will be able to get an invite simply by registering through our or the venue owner's site + getting our approval
> from venue's perspective it's a closed event
on daily basis you are free to come to this place anytime it's opened when events aren't organised, it kinda works like an internet café but in 2023 with gaming rigs
wristbands looked more or less like this: https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/562893014457122816/1126821056066355240/20230707_122421.jpg

tl;dr most likely you will be able to come, we'll confirm that after we get the deal secured entirely with the venue owner together with byoc zone and "other" things we want to be done in the event like production

we hit the 100 player mark in the interest poll, also 23-25.02.2024 is a confirmed date and this LAN will 100% happen
we have 90 (92 to be precise but 2 seats may be unused as a backup) seats available and we are checking with the venue owner if there is a possibility of getting byoc spots on the floor below the venue (which is big enough to cover way more people in)

we were asked if we plan to do team signups and we don't know yet, we'll keep you updated

signups will open somewhere in october, more details soon

if you have any questions about the LAN feel free to join TF2 Polska Discord https://discord.poland.tf

+ pls if you are willing to go pls fill the interest form asap, we must know how many people we are supposed to expect realistically

it's something i will have to think about
not an easy topic tbh
what we did last year was to handle casting to tftv over a VPN
i am pretty sure that if we are going to do something serious in that direction, you will know about it ;)

considering i know how do you look like you have no reason to be afraid of anything, also such type of behaviour is something i could see way more on the far east of Poland, so basically lands close to Ukrainian/Belarusian border
it shouldn't be a problem at all

when ur on this topic, English fluency level throughout Poles varies a lot, so if you speak with an older person (45+), chances that they speak English are almost 0
a handful advice from me is to use Google Translator with a TTS option, it was super useful for me in France where almost nobody speaks English
you can expect younger people (15+) to speak English on a very basic level if not fluent
in most cases even if you start speaking English people will try their best to understand you and provide some help if needed because we have a very good understanding that our language is one of the hardest of all, a good opener overall is to say "przepraszam" (excuse me/i'm sorry) at the beginning of the sentence and continue in English as people will have a feeling that you at least try polish

also people from slavic-based countries can even try in their native language as we partially understand them where we have the biggest lingual commodity with Slovaks

overall people are more used to foreigners because we have a lot of migrants(even before 2014)/refugees from Ukraine, especially in bigger cities like Łódź

also polish ppl + alcohol isn't a stereotype, it's a sad reality

less than a day have passed and i already have 73 submissions in the forms, i gotta say i am really excited how good the reception is so far, because honestly my expectation would be to get idk 40 and now i am a bit of afraid that we'll run out of seats very quickly
i mean that's good because it shows a very high demand on stuff we do but the problem is that potentially not everybody will be able to participate
if we run out of seats, we'll see if we can extend it by some extra unused space in the venue with byoc zone

16-18.02 is 99% not the event date because the venue organises their own cs:go event at that time, most likely the date will be 23-25.02 (which the venue owner reserved for us)

i would like to follow up on questions which i got on DMs already:

- submitting your interest does not mean you are registered to the event, in fact we will open signups when we'll finalise stuff with venue owner, i expect it to be done in early-mid October, signups are per player only
- this is an event directed to 6v6 community, so everything will be done around 6v6 gamemode meaning the bball/ultiduo cup is something we do extra, it is a subject of a change for a b-tournament
- 300/220 PLN is a price for event entrance with full gaming set rental included, it's all included into one payment
- if you already look at the transport plans, your best bet is to look at flight connections to Warsaw (WAW), and then train connections to Łódź (train stations Łódź Fabryczna (closest to the venue), Łódź Widzew, Łódź Kaliska)
unfortunately Łódź airport is small and there is a handful of airports from which you can get there directly which are:
+ London - Luton (LTN)
+ London - Stansted (STN)
+ Brussels - Charleroi (CRL)
+ Nottingham - East Midlands (EMA)
+ Milano - Bergamo (BGY)
+ Dublin (DUB)
+ Malaga (AGP)
+ Alicante (ALC)
+ Crete (HER)
+ Antalya (AYT)
+ Burgas (BOJ)
+ Zakynthos (ZTH)

on a sidenote from me:
- regards the prizepool i don't really know how it will go, so far we had only physical medals as a small souvenir from the event, also all our operational costs were covered by a community fundraiser which we'll run if the event comes true
we have never had any sort of prizepool so far, but hopefully it could be changed this time
- so far most of the signups are eu players from various countries

WHERE
BaseStack Łódź
Rewolucji 1905 Roku 45
90-215 Łódź
Polska (Poland)

WHEN
23-25.02.2024, Friday-Sunday (games are in all days)

EVENT LINK
https://poland.tf
https://discord.poland.tf or https://discord.gg/C3TWmwj

SIGN-UPS
Sign-ups are invite based with a qualification system.

QUALIFICATION STAGE
All interested parties except invite teams must sign-up to the qualifications in order to participate.
Signups are open until 6.12.2023 23:59 CET.
Qualifications will take place in 9-10.2023.
ETF2L current map pool and ruleset is applied.

INVITE TEAMS
MANDEM
TLR
wer das liest ist doof
Witness Gaming
tf2easy black
HAVOC
★★★½
Varmkorv Boogie
Evil Gameing

QUALIFIED TEAMS
TOILET CLEANER MASTERS
George
NANDEM
alien workshop
3 Steps Back
Bloking Hazard
Saints

PRIZEPOOL
as of now, 128 TF2 keys
if you are interested in sponsoring this event, contact us at staff@poland.tf or @suprovsky on Discord

SCHEDULE
Day 1, 23.02.2024 (Friday)
12:15 Venue opening
14:00 Official event start
14:30 Captain meeting
15:00-16:00 Group stage, round 1
16:00-17:00 Group stage, round 2
17:00-18:00 Group stage, round 3
18:00-19:00 Group stage, round 4 for group A, lunch break for group B
19:00-20:00 Group stage, round 4 for group B, lunch break for group A
20:00-21:00 Group stage, round 5
21:00-22:00 Group stage, round 6
22:00-23:00 Group stage, round 7
Venue is closed at 2 AM on Saturday

Day 2, 24.02.2024 (Saturday)
14:00 Venue opening
15:00-17:00 Upper Bracket Round 1
17:00-19:00 Upper Bracket Semi-Final/Lower Bracket Round 1
19:00-21:00 Lower Bracket Round 2
21:00-23:00 Upper Bracket Final
Venue is closed at 2 AM on Sunday

Day 3, 25.02.2024 (Sunday)
14:00 Venue opening
**below dates are estimations; we run each match right after another before lunch**
14:30-16:30 Lower Bracket Semi-Final
16:00-18:00 Lower Bracket Final
18:00-18:30 Group photo
18:30-19:00 Lunch break
19:00-22:00 Grand Final
22:00-22:30 Award ceremony
22:30-00:00 Karaoke
Event ends on midnight

TOURNAMENT FORMAT
2x8 round robin groups for the group stage
double elimination playoffs without skipping first round (all teams start in the upper bracket) and without grand final reset in case upper bracket team wins

Map pool:
- cp_granary_pro_rc16a
- cp_gullywash_f9
- cp_process_f12
- cp_snakewater_final1
- cp_sunshine
- koth_bagel_rc7
- koth_product_final

THE OFFER
Entrance fee:
- 300 PLN (65 EUR, 56 GBP, 69 USD) for adult players
- 220 PLN (48 EUR, 41 GBP, 51 USD) for minor players
- 10 PLN (2.30 EUR, 2 GBP, 2.52 USD) for spectators
Only 6v6 team-based sign-ups for players. Team registrations are made by covering entire team costs by the captain. There are 96 seats available: 87 in the rooms, 9 on open space organized separately in the venue.

Fee includes:
- one drink for spectators
- full PC rental (240 Hz/144 Hz FHD screen, PC capable of running TF2 on 240 fps, full perhiperals set) for players

LAN experience:
- 6v6 cup for all teams signing up
- tf2pickup.org system available locally for pugging
- entire event is being held in English by people with LAN organization experience since 2018
- venue sells food and beverages, most importantly beer and vodka
- February is a very good time for organizing an event because usually it's winter holidays time in many countries, people who study in college and do well are after exam session, flight tickets at that time are cheap as hell
+ low overall costs (flights to Warsaw or Łódź), sleeping costs are usually 100-150+ PLN/night, beers in shops are like 1 EUR each, in bars/event venue it's a double price :cry: but still cheap, average meal cost is 20-40 PLN (5-10 EUR)
+ previous event photos can be found on https://poland.tf

ABOUT US
We are a group of people who takes care of the Polish TF2 competitive community and our goal for this event is to meet up, play some games, have fun together with some beers and stuff and have a great time overall. The event is one of our initiative where you already know some fruits of our hard work if you have ever played on Pickups like tf2pickup.eu and like tf2pickup.pl which was the first website, where it was supposed to be an event for Poles only.

Our first events were held in Katowice as a very small BYOC event but after having successes in the process and growing up as a whole now, instead of doing it in a venue looking like a warehouse we make events in a cool looking gaming center in Łódź called BaseStack.gg. We did two successful events there, one last year in summer and another one this summer in cooperation with our lovely neighbors from Czech Republic and Slovakia, however having this experience made us aware that we already hold the event in an international manner and there is nothing stopping us from making it more public so more players could come to us and have fun together.

THE MISSION
We would like to fill the niche of having fun together and make an event which would be something comparable to RCADIA event as it's supposed to be held in a community event manner, yet to be competitive so it can provide more fun for players. We think that we can be very competitive in terms of costs which is often a decision making factor making people go/not go on events. After our previous event organisation experiences, we think we are experienced enough to be able to provide high quality experience for all people who would join us. Besides the events I mentioned, we are going to host LAN pugs (based on tf2pickup.org project, with tf2pickup.eu based skills which will be polished and well more balanced than they are now) which often was a problem on events like iseries in order get them going efficiently. We also plan to have physical medals for top places in our cups, however we will try our best to get our medal added into the game. We don't have prizepools yet, however we are always open for sponsorship :slight_smile:

cheers, supra

yo
i am looking for admins for tf2pickup.eu site, I think 4 admins aside from what we have right now
here is what admins are supposed to do: https://docs.tf2pickup.org/docs/responsibilities-and-powers
by reading this doc you can also see how the site works

definitely the biggest chore for all admins is setting up skills because there is no automatic mechanism properly balancing players and well, admins must know other players so they can balance skills properly on certain classes
before we start the website we need to prefill skills for a lot of people so we can already balance them out while we'll be in operation and it's heckin a lot cuz it's like 1,5k players playing 6v6 throughout the last year in eu region

what do i expect from admins besides clicking buttons in the interface properly and speaking nicely to people?
- you must have current 6v6 at least on mid level on ETF2L
- have a good standing in terms of behaviour on ETF2L/RGL
- you must be seen as a positive person in the community
- you must be playing systematically on the site
- you are open for resolving disputes within players, having experience in it is a + (if you have such, provide examples in application)
- know the community well as every player on this site has something like ELO we call "skill" per class and you need to know how players perform in order to balance games
- being a league admin on ETF2L/RGL or other tf2pickup.org website is a + if you haven't been kicked out from it for some jackass shit
- having experience in event organisation like LANs is another +

when you apply, please tell me why are you a good fit for an admin, i don't want to make it an essay context with 3k words minimum required where who writes more wins the admin spot, you just need to be reasonable and on point
if you write me that you're interested and nothing else where i know nothing about you then i guess the amount of attention you spent on writing these 3 words reflect you're potential future attention you'd spend for maintaining the site
all the work we do is voluntary, regardless if it's code development, staff organisation, hosting the site, organizing games etc so please keep that in mind

post your etf2l profile when applying so we can check who are you
applications can be made on our discord by creating a ticket: https://discord.tf2pickup.eu
we always appreciate donations: https://ko-fi.com/tf2pickuporg

i expect to start the site within a week or two, all games are going to be hosted on serveme.tf servers

cheers, supra

we got some issue within a new version of tf2pickup.org project so we had to delay start for another month :( hopefully we will start it at the end of August

most likely, we asked the venue owner numerous times (last time yesterday) if they can provide a VPN service, so it could be covered by tftv, but we are still waiting

michel platini is 99 and 6 :thinking:

we organize a LAN event with polish/czech/slovak community in Łódź (Poland) called PoLANd.tf in July 21-23 but we didn't announce ourselves publicly because we already are booked out completely atm

if the July LAN works out we may do another one in winter which could be a nice RCADIA replacement as prices are cheap as hell (300 PLN / 65 EUR for a seat with 240 hz monitor, pc, headset, keyboard and mouse + super cheap sleeping options, alcohol cheap as fuck), this time with an announcement

edit: 90 seats in the venue

that was a truly painful part of the comment, especially that part after the comma

he's just trying to get a 2nd place invite collector quality medal

it would be cool to be able to stand there
https://i.imgur.com/XzI9gfL.jpg
cool map design, we may try it on hl.tf2pickup.eu after we end testing a different map

yo that's such a good thing, honestly i'm happy to see it because it's a thing which we missed for tf2pickup.org project and i think we could just leave a link to your website in our website clients so newcomers could see it and get an easier start
there is a couple of things you could change in your project from ui/ux perspective:
for submit video view you could:
- sort maps in the "maps" section alphabetically as well as versions, because it's kinda messy atm
versions shouldn't be clickable when a map isn't chosen and instead of blank entry name you can fill it with "choose map name", then when a map is chosen you can list their versions, also sorted out alphabetically
- there is a choice between highlander and 6v6 but there are no highlander maps except the commons played in two gamemode like gullywash xD
- when choosing competitive format, you can sort out maps based on it because i believe 6v6 gamers won't have to deal with upward point 1 sentry shenenigans
- with gamemodes you can leave sixes, highlander, prolander, ultiduo and bball because these are 4 played gamemode (i've heard about some people playing ultitrio and arena gamemode but it's like 0.000000001% minority)
- in classes section you can leave all classes so there can be idk highlander spy specific map reviews
- in roles section you can leave other because for instance for highlander idk what to choose amongst the three available options
- target level can have an option for all because it can be a general thing, you can also sort it out based on leagues if you are super pedantic but i think throughout all suggestions this one is the least useful because pretty much most euros like me know what's the difference between newcomer im and adv/invite, in etf2l we have open low mid high prem
- tbh not sure if it's important for what league the video is for because we play the same game regardless of the region, right?
- there is one thing you could add and it's a resource language, because maybe in North America almost everybody speaks English, but here in Europe it is definitely not a case and some people prefer a native speaker maptalk which is a cool choice for non-English native speakers

i know this website is something you actively work on but you can use a better font than times new roman in the about section, there are many fonts you can load from google fonts which is a cool option since web browsers will be downloading them from google websites and not yours

for maplist of highlander maps you can contact me at supra#0337 on Discord cuz i dont want to spam tftv with this garbage