Having visited Toronto a lot I think it is an absolutely beautiful city and would be a great place to LAN in terms of things to do outside of game, nice city/not a ton of crime, places to eat, afterparty spots, etc. as well as the relative closeness to east coast gamers and the decent population of TF2 players in Ontario.

The main issue however is that the majority of TF2's NA playerbase is located in the United States, and I'd wager a guess that the majority of players simply don't have a passport (or enhanced license in the case of my fellow New Yorkers) so logistically speaking that adds another 2 months of waiting and 150 dollars of cost into many player's already tight LAN budgets.

Feel free to reach out to me if you want organizing help, just not sure if it'll have enough of a draw for US players. I know back in the day LAN ETS was a thing in Quebec that had TF2 at some point, so maybe I'm wrong or ignorant, just see that being a large road block.

I love to game.

https://s3.amazonaws.com/Clinton_Swag/kE2VqxyiRu/swag.png

can tilt relatively often and is a religious shotgun user
however fun to play with and has vocal comms & calls
overall decent epic gamer :)

really skilled and cool players :)

its happening for all games

might wanna post your roster so players have an idea of who they'd be playing with

https://i.imgur.com/5hW5OZr.png

this is the invite admin who is substanciating pretty much what mustard is saying
bring tri back delete boxcar

as someone who was putting a lot of time and effort into S2 LAN and for the first few weeks of organizing was under the impression I was going to have to go uncredited as a producer I am really curious about this. Covering any staff's hotel or travel fees was never covered at any LAN organizing meeting.

Were any other options explored to help teams financially compensate for LAN? Actively helping them seek out sponsorships? Separate, voluntary fundraisers? Helping teams build sponsor decks and providing stream viewership statistics to go with those decks from RGL's S1 coverage and TFTV's S1/ESEA S31 coverage? I didn't elaborate in my convo with boxcar but there are better options than what felt like an under the table swap up of prizepools that many didn't notice at all.

Comparing ESEA's prize numbers is kind of unfair when you remember that the community didn't really get a say from ESEA and we were basically held hostage for 10 seasons, not knowing if we were going to have a season, let alone having a say in how much money was given to divisions. ESEA should be an example for RGL to learn from if anything, not a standard to slightly deviate from. Season 1 actually did a decent job of this and I actually liked this change personally; it is the huge change from that initial season, combined with a required fee on all players to pay for the venue itself that is the troubling matter.

Okay so apperently RGL have explicitly stated that there's no LAN and that the Helix venue was paid for but ARE STILL CHARGING A LAN FEE THIS SEASON

https://i.imgur.com/SsV96Fr.png

This is the fucking worst timeline

S1 invite had 53.9% of the league prizepool (4830 of 8960 USD)
S2 invite had 82.6% of the league prizepool (7680 of 9510 USD)

I knew it was bad but this is fucking egregious ROFL

open didn't for the last few seasons. when open had no fees outside of premium (which was a requirement to use the client and connect to servers) felt a lot nicer to be able to jump back into the game

Helix was already paid for the event that was supposed to happen for Season 2 and the next LAN is basically an IOU to RGL based on the event already being payed for. This argument makes even less sense when you consider that because of the global climate S3 is confirmed not getting that LAN either.

The prizepool argument makes sense until you realize that winning most divisions has you just over breaking even, let alone a top 3 placement outside of invite. I get top heavy prizepools are really exciting for non-players and invite viewers/fans because it's really cool to say "hey our top level is playing for 5 figures we esports!" but for the rest of the league it's burdenous and feels like your money isn't really contributing to your division.

due to RGL's player restriction rules their entire team would probably have to swap classes to play down a division. It also doesnt help when the fees are still relatively high in the lower divs. I think I paid like twenty something dollars to play in RGL IM last season when it cost less in league fees than that to play in the Advanced equivalent the season before (ESEA S31 IM).

If the counter to this is "don't play this league at all then" have fun playing 100+ ping to ETF2L or OZFortress servers depending on where you live in NA, because RGL has an effective monopoly on 6s.

Thanks Alfa

https://i.imgur.com/vBMuOud.png

im printing this out and putting it on my fridge