For the sake of brevity, I will not address everything that was mentioned. But understand that some members of the team are working around the clock to get stuff ready for i63. In terms of Getawhale's stream, many of his grievances are ones that I have shared, and many are currently being worked on. Staff Members have all received a copy of the all the details of the event which is updated by myself and other Team Leaders.

Whilst I have been at the Organisation, we have never made any attempt to directly compete with TF.TV. That may have been the case previously, but our main focus is ensuring that this event goes as smoothly as possible and that everyone has a great experience. Motions are being made to get information out and details cemented.

If anyone has serious concerns, Staff or otherwise, you may contact me and I will try to answer any questions you may have. I won't leak details that Non-Staff should not know, however.

In order to ensure that the tournament is played, we are lowering the number of teams required to 14. With 10 in the Open Division and 4 in Invite. This is the absolute minimum amount of teams we can have without forcing teams to play duplicate matches.

To clear up any misconceptions regarding promotion, we approached ETF2L and asked if it were possible to have a news post. They declined as they wish to have their posts limited to events that are ETF2L-related which is completely understandable. I believe we are free to make a post on their forums, however.

Following on with that, I do have a query for those that criticise Essentials for lack of promotion. If what we are doing is not enough, which outlets would be beneficial and attract the most attention/signups? We currently have the promotion on TF.TV (both a Thread and Event), UGC, Twitter, Discord, TF2PL and Reddit. One or two of these haven't been done for the EU Monthly and that is entirely on me, that being Reddit and an ETF2L forum post.

That being said, where would be the first place you check if you wanted to know if an Event is on?

Quick bump to remind teams to sign up for the tournament. If you are a team that thinks that they should be in the invite division, contact me through Steam or Discord.

The NA monthly is back and it's better than ever thanks to Marketplace.TF and just like our EU Monthly announcement last week we've got lots of changes to our format including invite and open brackets, a new map-pool and the global whitelist!

We are also introducing a giveaway of $120 of Marketplace.tf credit to one lucky team from either the EU or NA monthly. All you have to do to enter is play either the NA or EU monthly and play all of your matches in full to stand a chance to win. The winners will be announced during the talk show on 22nd July.

NA Monthly sponsored by Marketplace.tf:
Play dates: 14th-15th July
Prizepool: $750 and $80 of Marketplace.tf credit
1st Place: $450
2nd Place: $225
3rd/4th Place: $37.50
5th-8th Place: $20 of Marketplace credit

Changes from last month:

• Whitelist changed to global
  
• Cardinal removed from map pool
  
• Product and Sunshine added to map pool
  
• 8 team playoffs, all matches Bo3
  
• Invite bracket introduced, 4 teams invited, 4 qualify from swiss
  
• Invited teams will play round robin on saturday from the start of round 3 to determine bracket placing for day 2
  
• Class limits: 2 for each of scout and soldier; 1 for all other classes
  
• 5CP win limit 5 with a 30min timer
  
• KOTH win limit 3
  
• Global Whitelist
  
• Server Config

More info on our news article here.

We are still planning to run test matches with top level player mixes to try out potential new weapons for the whitelist. If you are a high-level player wanting to play in these please get in contact with us via Discord.

SIGNUP HERE

That's a mistake, it will be fixed. Our NA Announcements usually go out a week after the EU announcement.

The Essentials.TF EU monthly is back for July thanks to the help of Marketplace.TF!

We have some big changes to our monthly format including the introduction of an invite and open bracket, the invite bracket will consist of four teams and play in a round robin format while the open bracket will continue to play a 5 round Swiss format, the top four open teams after the Swiss stage will join the four invite teams in our brand new 8 team single elimination playoff format, with every match being best-of-3. Our Map pool has also received a shake-up and will be the same as our planned map pool for i63. We will also be using the Global Whitelist in future monthlies in anticipation for i63. There is no better tournament to start practicing for the big event!

We are also introducing a giveaway of $120 of Marketplace.tf credit to one lucky team from either the EU or NA monthly. All you have to do to enter is play either the NA or EU monthly and play all of your matches in full to stand a chance to win. The winners will be announced during the talk show on 22nd July.

• Play dates: 7th-8th July
  
• Prizepool: €600 + $80 of Marketplace.TF credit
  
• Invite and open brackets
  
• Invite bracket will play a round robin format, open bracket continues with swiss
  
• Swiss stage continues to allow 45 minutes per round
  
• 8 Team single elimination playoffs, each match best-of-3
  
• i63 Map Pool, same as ETF2L except -Cardinal +Sunshine
  
• Class limits: 2 for each of scout and soldier; 1 for all other classes
  
• 5CP win limit 5 with a 30min timer
  
• KOTH win limit 3
  
• Global Whitelist
  
• Server Config

More info on our news article here.

We are still planning to run test matches with top level player mixes to try out potential new weapons for the whitelist. If you are a high-level player wanting to play in these please get in contact with us via Discord.

SIGNUP HERE

Just bumping the thread because I booking my Accommodation and Travel now and was wondering where people are staying for the weekend. Don't want to book a hotel that no one else is going to. I am also willing to share a room with someone to reduce costs.

Team A:
Ray
RobTheAwsm
TheMrMortensen
Zee
Rapid
BLXB
Steg
TomatoGatcha
Rydercycle

Team B:
Nebulu
Murloc Johnny
Mechawreck
CriticalFlaw
TF2Dove
Runyx
Kipcreate
CaptainCannonman
DNA

Team C:
sox.
Iceplox
SirDuck
SN
Phlogic
DrHappiness
NyanZak
IhasnoTomato
Pimskii

Team D:
Gibsy
LazyPurple
Surny
AsianPersuasion
Exany
BlazingVictini22
Genowhirl70
Mopp
Rageheavy

According to rosters listed on the Rally Call Discord

cu@

This is the recap of the Statement, full statement can be found here

In summary:

• NA Monthly was canceled due to low signups and we were not willing to host a smaller tournament with no prize pool.
  
• EU Monthly was a perfect storm of issues, confusion and inexperience with the system coupled with trouble converting to Toornament led to a bad experience. There will be a review into what happened to ensure this does not happen again.
  
• Promotion will now be done by our Social Media team, outside of a few exceptions.
  
• All player feedback is considered, but both Players and EssentialsTF will have to put in the effort. Feedback from all players will at least be considered, but not necessarily implemented. A full description/reasoning text on Whitelist may be written if interest is there.
  
• All communications with EssentialsTF is done through the Discord, although more specific channels may be added to encourage discussions.

Again, we wish to apologize to those who had a bad experience with this whole debacle and us as an organization promise to continue to improve to ensure that any experiences that you have with us are positive in the future. We will do better.

Hi, I will be making a long post about these concerns and others soon. But rest assured, your complaints are heard and will be addressed. Thanks for spending the time to air your thoughts about this.

It will be 16 teams minimum to run the monthly. This has been the same for all our monthlies so far and going forward.

Copied from the Discord
Due to the lack of signups, we will be unable to run the NA Monthly. Apologies for those that signed up and those who were expecting a Stream as well. We will work on improving signups for our tournaments in the future and would appreciate it if you were to help encourage more teams to sign up as well.

Quick bump to the post to remind players they don't have long to sign up for the Tournament. We still need at least 16 Teams to run a monthly. You don't have long to get your teams registered! Make sure you have at least 6 members in your team before you try to sign up.