With just over a week to go until signups close, get your teams ready ASAP not to miss out!

We'd like to remind all players that plan on playing in the tournament to read the rules carefully to understand what's expected of them during the event.

Also, as we've had a few international signups (which is great!) we'd like to remind everyone that this is an EU focused event and by signing up to this tournament you agree to play on European servers by default, unless your opponents agree otherwise.

On the topic of servers we'd also like to remind everyone that it's your responsibility to secure servers to play on, if you need to rent a server we recommend https://serveme.tf/, where you can rent a competitive server for free. If you need any help renting a server please let an Admin know and we can assist.

Finally, if you're new to competitive and this is your first tournament we'd like to recommend the following webpages to help you get up to speed with how competitive is played and how to give yourselves the best opportunity to do well and have fun!

The webpages are:
https://etf2l.org/new/
https://competitive.tf/
and https://newbie.tf/

All info on rules, signups and a helpful FAQ can be found at http://clash.tf/! We hope to see you in the tournament, GLHF!

Really upsetting news, one of the early artists that I listened to when I was younger. Absolute legend, RIP.

This tournament would be EU focused. Doing both an NA and EU tournament simultaneously is an incredible undertaking due to the large increase in work as a result of doing two regions as well as some other logistical issues. In short, its on the cards but it really depends on engagement whether or not we would commit to something like that..

Much like other online tournaments/leagues, if teams agree you could play on servers from different regions. In addition, we could look into grouping NA teams together if there are enough NA teams signed up.

I'm not the biggest fan of HL myself, but I know there is interest in something like that. For this upcoming tournament, though, this will be purely 6s. Won't rule out HL in the future though.

TL;DR: Make Valve Competitive more accessible to Casual Players, but also interesting enough for the occasional community comp player.

1) Remove Fixed Settings
2) Class Limit 2
3) 5CP, KOTH, Payload w/ frequent map rotations
4) Medics get more MMR on win and less on loss

With any one or all of these, I think we can move Valve comp into a 'midway zone' between casual and third-party competitive. VC should never seek to replace community competitive, its way too late for that but by providing a place where casual players can get a taste for organized play as well as competitive players having a more relaxed way to play TF2 without the chaos of Pubs. It doesn't make community competitive easier to play but makes the road to get there FAR easier than it is now.

Removing Fixed Settings does risk giving people certain advantages but the benefits far outweigh that risk. It would make sense for them to do that in newer games but the game is too old and clunky for Fixed Settings to be a thing. Class Limit 2 is a happy medium between the more restrictive community competitive and the unregulated casual. Frequent map rotations of a core set of competitive maps from 5CP, to KOTH & Payload means different classes and loadouts become more effective, meaning room to experiment and develop gamesense faster than just grinding one class for hundreds of hours. Medic is a problematic class as it is necessary to win games but noone wants to play them so providing some sort of incentive such as easier climbing of the ladder or a 'Medic Bonus' that gives a small increase in MMR victories for subsequent matches may help people play Medic more often in games.

This is just my thoughts, but using Valve competitive as a natural stepping stone to more professional play then we could see more engagement in both competitors and viewership on streams. And who knows, perhaps by playing Valve comp even we may find new strategies or playstyles.

Hello, so I am having issues when running Mumble v1.3.2 when using TF2. Basically whenever I move my mouse the game seems to freeze for a very brief amount of time causing micro stutters and sometimes it is fine for 5+ mins. I've checked and it works fine when using Discord or Teamspeak which makes me think this is a problem with Mumble itself.

Running DX98, mastercomfig medium-low & flat mouse configs, using InterAccel mouse accelerator.

I've tried fiddling with most of the settings on Mumble, and nothing seemed to work (such as Overlay and Audio Input/Output). Any suggestions appreciated.

EDIT: Not a complete fix, but lowering my mouse polling rate seemed to improve things (G403 Hero)

Hello all, really excited to announce this cup as this is something we've been working on for a while. We will hopefully have more for you in the near future, but there are a few more details we need to work on. Again, much like Lockdown Throwdown this is an online tournament but as it is happening within the main ETF2L season we urge teams to avoid scheduling conflicts on that weekend.

If you have any questions, please throw them in here for the meantime. We'll open a more formal thread when more details are announced. Myself and the other staff will be watching and aim to answer any questions we can do at this time.

We hear you, and welcome the feedback.

In short the large delay in the uploads of the VODs was due to an error on our part in not saving or downloading the original VODs during the production, a small oversight with a massive impact. We were lucky six months on that an individual called tayyy reached out and said that they had archived them and was willing to give them to us. In short, this was something we made sure to not happen again.

We will take extra focus on ensuring that our Twitch VODs for any and all broadcasts that we stream will be uploaded onto YouTube. Thank you for your message.

Hello, we apologise for the lack of communication on this. In short, we are still exploring options for running a major tournament to replace i67, but some of our plans have fallen through. Any tournament we would run would be unlikely to happen this summer and would occur later in the year around the autumn/winter period. I know this will disappoint some, but I hope that you understand.

Heartbreaking news, may he rest in piece and my condolences to his family and friends.

I'm gonna stop after this otherwise I will keep going, but there isn't really a stalemate. If froyo don't want to go we'll just find someone else. It doesn't effect us all too much, and whilst it would be nice to have the best teams from each region attend, sometimes this just isn't the case.

I don't wish to waste time on a team who will only attend if a specific set of demands are met when there are teams that are far more keen, but need support to come over. Ascent was a great example of this. The event always takes priority, the teams attending are a bonus. Obviously the sign-ups are extremely important for longevity but the invite teams are not as crucial as other aspects of the event. So long as we can put on an event for the community to watch & compete both at the venue & at home and my staff are happy throughout, that's all I care about.

This will never happen. b4nny has made it more than clear that going forward he will only be supporting Invite LANs which narrows the current LANs he will attend next year to only RGL which wouldn't, to my knowledge, allow european competition as that is a playoffs for the RGL season. This idea of THE LAN is not a good idea when the community doesn't even know if and when there will be a next one.

TL;DR: ETF are committed to making another international LAN, but COVID has made that a bit difficult.

Hi all, just thought that this thread would be a good opportunity to make some clarifications regarding at least some of EssentialsTF's plans for approaching LANs in the future. Unfortunately most of what we laid out for the year has been suspended because of the ongoing pandemic. We'll make official announcements when we can.

As many of you will know, the main thing ETF is known for is iSeries which we have always pushed to be an international event. At i65 we had the opportunity to bring Ascent.NA over to compete, although other teams were contacted who either declined or didn't respond. For future events we were more than interested to bring not only teams but also talent over from regions not only in NA/EU but from our friends in Australia and even Asia. In addition, we're interested in having a more global impact outside of purely European competition, both online and otherwise.

So in response to the original question, we are at least committed to having another international LAN and I know our friends in other orgs like TFTV and Phoenix Red are also. Obviously it would be nice if the community itself helped out to support that, but nevertheless we will at least try.

Now to address some points:

• Developer support at this stage in the game is unreasonable, its best if we focus on improving for our own internal benefit; not to appease someone who isn't interested.
  
• I think that people are looking at the past with rose-tinted glasses, and that will get us nowhere
  
• As much as we would like to give more notice for iSeries, it is simply impossible since planning for the Summer series only happens after the Spring event which happens at the same time as CPG, to give you an idea.
  
• Numbers going down is expected as a game's lifetime progresses, especially one that does not maintain relevance within a modern gaming market. There is consistent decrease in viewership even in Casual streamers and content creators, its just more prevalent in competitive due to the already smaller audience.
  
• Every popular caster who ever moved on from the game had to start from some degree of inexperience and irrelevance. Support your Casters (& Producers)

EDIT: Formatting

Having worked with DCS during my time in ETF2L and on external projects like the recent Lockdown Throwdown, I have a tremendous amount of respect for him and his ambitions for the scene. Thank you for all your hard work for what is a largely thankless job!

Insomnia will now be for UK players only. We don't want foreigners to take all of our invite slots, they should go to hard-working British Players!!!

Whilst I am not an basketball enthusiast, I knew the impact that he had on the game and his death is truly shocking. RIP.