1) The tournament buy-in is $20. The other 40 you are paying for the event. How else would you want it? The buy-in goes directly to the prize pool, and there wouldn't be an event if people didn't have to pay for it.

2) It was pretty clear from the start that the tournament was only on 1 day.

3) Look at WCRV for example, the event was only 1 day, and didn't even have an official tournament, yet people still spend similar amounts of money to go to it. Like you said, this is a community LAN, so why are you concerned with competition. Concern yourself with meeting the community and playing fun tf2.

? this isnt a community lan anymore, this is an extended cevo p season with spectators.

ill come back to this thread when i think there's anything that actually convinces me to bring my pc with me and pay $20 for the tournament i can't win with a team I can't play with my friends on.

basically blow $20 to play against top teams that have been playing together for a while with your newly formed on the spot pug team

yeah, no thanks

why is this all of a sudden a big deal? did everyone think that these teams weren't gonna play in the community tournament?

I think that players will still be playing in other pugs after the tourny but why even sign up for the tourny with a pug team just to play CEVO-P teams?

There was a $20 buy in for the last gxl tournament and 60% (3/5) of the teams had no real shot at winning, I don't see the big deal here

it was also only on saturday

I really don't see how spending an extra 20 dollars to play in an organized tournament with your friends, even if you only play 3-4 games and don't make it out of the group stage just crosses the line, and if you really can't afford to spend an extra 20 dollars in a position that you know you'll lose and don't want to just play for the hell of it and have fun, than you shouldn't be spending a ton of money to attend a lan in the first place.

Also if there are 20 teams, if its done with 5 groups of 4, there will likely be 1 maybe 2 at most invite caliber teams in a group, so there will still be good competition between non invite teams and fragile said there will be top 16 with a losers bracket as well. A majority of non invite teams will make it through the groups and then even if they lose to invite teams, continue to play in the lower bracket. And as dash said, there are prizes even if you come in last place.

nothing you're saying takes into the consideration the fact there's no point in coming friday to the venue, the 80 people who are going to show up and cant compete in the tournament despite having paid the 40$ to show up, and the 96 who are coming to fight for 5th place.

there are numerous solutions to this problem that will make it actually community based, and make the prizepool not go to the top 4 teams.

if you guys wanted a pubs vs pros lan, please advertise it as such

i plan on coming to the venue on friday to watch (the tournament) and/or play tf2 (pugs) with fellow tf2 gamers

I'm planning on owning those idiot 'invite' players on lan who cares if they're playing

the community tournament on saturday should be player made teams, like any other lan, having the cevo-p finals teams play then repeat the next day seems wack.. people should be able to play on their off class or with old school friends

any cevo-p team that wants to stay as 6 can, but you shouldn't be forced into playing with the same 6 the next day

also group stage + double elim is waaaay too much, if you want to do groups it has to be single elim or this shit is gonna last until monday

1

The CEVO-P teams do not need to be forced to stay together for the GXL tournament...they simply have a reserved spot in the 20 slots available until we can determine which 4 CEVO-P teams are making it to the lan in early September...after that they will need to decide whether or not to participate in the buy-in as a whole team, or split up and pug with others or not at all if they so choose.

?

so teams can either just stick with their starting 6 and get free entry to more money or spread out amongst the pugs, pay an entry fee, and then risk not gettin a spot in the tourney/finishing in the money. heh.

They aren't exempt from the buy-in

They are still required to buy-in to the Saturday tournament no matter what...as a team or as a player for another team/pug

The fact that they have to buy in is irrelevant, when he says "free entry" he means that they will use the money they won friday to win even more saturday, making it effectively free.

Do you just want to forbid these dudes from playing or what?

I thought it was going to be the CEVO finals then a separate LAN tourney.

wait lmfao cevo p teams paid 40 bucks a head to play the online portion and if they somehow make it to gxl lan we have to pay against just to play out the finals theyre guarenteed a spot in ok whatevver

ahahahAHAHAHAHAHAHA

please just make the cevo p thing a seperate comp on friday and let us pug out the rest of the weekend with friends or something god damn

im pretty confused here guys

my suggestion would be:

we do a pug draft friday night during cevo p finals, set up our pcs according to our newly formed pug teams, go out, get drunk, show up saturday, play some tf2, leave, get drunk, finish pug tourney sunday morning, go home.

oh and dodgeball, #neverforget.

bring ur 3dses i'm gonna farm streetpasses

I'm paid up.

You know how the GXL LANs used to be in the past with TF2 tournaments? There were about six teams at most. Six. Sure, there were a handful of competitive players but it was never really anything serious. Even players that got fucking rolled constantly still came up to me after the LAN and told me how much of a great time they had, sitting next to their friends and laughing. They had a good fucking time.

And you know what? I wanted to make it better. Earlier this year, I said "You know what? Fuck it. I'm gonna make this the biggest and best NA TF2 LAN yet. I want to make this awesome." I messaged Dashner and eXtine, and they instantly became interested with me. I cannot fucking express the countless hours I would spend every single day talking to Dashner and eXtine over Steam, going over the smallest details and planning out every single possible thing. I spent many hours talking to a ton of different people: from Europeans to try to bring their best to the LAN, to even players with very little competitive experience. Yeah, teams like Epsilon were incredibly interested in attending, which would have been a treat to everyone. I'm guessing that probably fell through at this point, because I haven't heard much from them lately, but we do have a full European team coming in. I wanted everyone to come and compete. I fucking cared about making this the best. For anyone who truly believes I just threw up a few posts and ignored everything about this LAN until two weeks before the LAN, you are sorely mistaken.

I wanted everyone to be attracted to this event. I donated $500 out of my own pocket into the prize pool, and eXtv donated a ton of money into the prize pot themselves. Along with the buy-in money, I wanted the donated money to attract some of the best competitors, regardless if they were top NA/EU players. Perhaps even some of the lower level players would step their game up to possibly achieve a top 4 placing, or maybe even to show what they are made of on LAN, who knows. The money is definitely there to show that this LAN is serious. Don't agree with me? Well, I really apologize that our combined donation of $2000 is pointless because a few people are upset that there is a possibility that some CEVO-P teams might play on Saturday and now they feel like they stand no chance. How dare I even bother?

CEVO-P teams are in no way obligated to play together. They can do whatever they want. But I'm not going to tell them outright that they are not allowed to play together, as much as me not telling them that they can't just go ahead and make an equally-skilled invite pug. How am I actually supposed to dictate that scenario? Seriously, am I supposed to be like "No, your pug team is too good." Last GXL and last FITES LAN top 3 were compromised of plenty Invite players (some teams totally being 100% Invite players). Think about that. But hey, I guess I should make this an "Invite players are not allowed to play in this tournament," right?

Yet, you know what I did to compensate for the rest of the people who didn't place in they money? I'm rounding up Unusuals, keys, weapons, mice/keyboards, random cool shit. And by "rounding up," the idea behind that is I'd get things from sponsors and random people who felt like donating stuff to the event. And why did I do that? Because I wanted this tournament to appeal to players who weren't necessarily capable of winning. If the best 6 teams in the world were going to play, then that won't be appealing to anyone who isn't good. I wanted to have some kind of incentive to play with people you have a good time with, play as best as you can, get as far as you can, and still walk away with an Unusual or something really awesome. I even posted my email for people to email me if they were interested. Anything that wasn't covered by the time the event started were to be things I would just buy out of my own pocket, again. Guess how many items I have that were given to me from sponsors / random donations?

Zero.

So, guess what that means? Come October, I'm probably gonna have to dish out at least another $1000-$1500 out of my own pocket to cover the random prizes for all of the people who didn't place in the money. And you know what? I'm fine with that. I put my word up to the community, and I'm going to stand by it. As long as this happened to be the best possible community LAN possible, I don't give a shit how much I'd spend.

I remember a few certain individuals who decided to not go to FITES LAN because I was on a team with clockwork, even after their ticket was paid and all. I'm sorry that you no longer have a chance of winning an 8-man tournament with literally no prize but a plastic trophy. But hey, what I can tell you is that every single TF2 player had a fantastic fucking time at that LAN, and it's a real shame that you missed out. But go ahead, keep telling me that winning means nothing to you, because clearly it does.

On top of everything, people will play a ton of pickup games, scrim against each other, MGE mindlessly, and have an incredibly great time meeting tons of new people, all playing the game we love. And that's all I gave a shit about. So, if you're not cool with losing to people who are better than you, then I'm incredibly fucking sorry that I had this idea to begin with. I'll just pretend I didn't dump seven months down the drain due to the fact that someone refuses to play in a tournament because they are going to lose a few 1v1s to clockwork.

We can adjust the 20 team maximum as we'd like. I posted this previously, but I apologize that I cannot say words that is not seen by 156 people in the same 30 minutes of their day. I don't think we'll achieve more than 20 teams, but if start to, then we can certainly entertain the idea of expanding it.

Do I really need to make this a tournament where literally everyone is capable of winning? Because even if CEVO-P teams weren't in the picture, everyone knew a ton of Invite pugs were going to be made and place top 4. If you deny that, then you know that you're lying.

With all frustration on my part aside, all I can do is apologize for those that misconstrued anything I've posted. I've felt like most people knew that the community portion of the LAN was open to literally anyone, and maybe that was conveyed better in the older GXL thread than this one, but I know for a fact I posted something to that effect before.

I'm not really certain if I could explore the tournament format any differently (considering the tournament format is technically tentative). What I can tell you is that I'm not going to just tell all 24 Invite players that they aren't allowed to do anything on Saturday. If that's your expectation, then I'm sorry.

What I do remember is that everyone expressed massive interest many months before the CEVO portion of the LAN was even announced. Even when teams such as Epsilon and mix^ were expressing interest (not to mention that were Street Hoops 100% confirmed to go very early on), I didn't hear a single word of protest from anyone. Not a single word. Yet, it's an issue now?

I've played this game since its release 7 years ago, and I give a shit about every single one of you. Sorry.

Nobody is asking for invite players to not be included, nor questioning how much of a shit you give about anyone.

The point I was trying to make was you are recreating CEVO finals two nights in a row with your current setup, and there are ways to fix that and make the event a good time that don't involve excluding anyone attending.

And I really don't care at all about whether or not I go home with a paypal transaction, I care that the 300$ I spend on the hotel for a weekend involves more than me going to a noname city to watch Mixup/Froyo rematches 2 nights in a row after they go to i52 a month before.

I hope nobody cares about the "prizes"

If I told all CEVO-P teams that they cannot play on their own team, they will unquestionably make a team comprised of Invite players with an extremely comparable skill level, only to achieve top 4 all over again. There is no way I can possibly say "No! Your pug consisting of Cyzer, Xalox, Platinum, and enigma is too good!" because that's subjective in likely comparison to other Invite pugs.

I don't know what you expect me to do here, dude. I'm not gonna make the teams.