RGL HL 2023: Season Schedule Adjustments
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vorboyvo I don’t mind this in general, one thing to keep an eye out is the gap between end of summer to beginning of winter. A team that doesn’t make the playoffs would have to wait almost 25weeks until the next season.
The gap between Winter and Summer( 11 weeks ) doesn’t seem that bad but looking at a 4th week start on January would mean gap between and winter is significantly bigger( 25 weeks total with 14 week difference ).
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@Mothership said in RGL HL 2023: Season Schedule Adjustments:
because the regular seasons are what matters. you should never sacrifice the regular season so you guys can run cups, regardless of what you have planned for them.
cups are not a replacement for the regular season and not everyone will care about them. I still recall people I played cups with not making matches because they had tryouts for the regular season.Why might that be? Because they were experimental HL cups or minor format (prolander, etc.) cups? Because if we’re running a regular format cup, then a tournament is a tournament is a tournament, and we (both as an admin team and as a community) should treat it as such. If they’re eating into tryout time, then, they’re not adequately spaced from everything else. Either way, cups might not have been replacements for the regular season in the past, but I don’t think it’s a good mindset to say they will never be, especially considering part of the reason I’d like to have them is so people can play (serious) Highlander without having to commit to a season of play.
@Mothership said in RGL HL 2023: Season Schedule Adjustments:
To be 100% honest, the issue with the schedule seems to be a issue with HL, and not something that 6’s is complaining about at all.
Is there a reason why we cant just follow the same exact schedule as 6’s? They have a 9 week season three times a year including playoffs.Yes. There are three reasons:
- 6s doesn’t skip holidays because they have more of a culture of rescheduling.
- 6s doesn’t have any potential bracket reset for playoffs - playoffs can take 4 weeks for 6s, and 5 weeks for HL. The reason we can’t (in my mind) emulate this is because the replacement in 6s for double elimination is giving the upper bracket winner a map advantage and playing to 5 - meaning that up to four full maps can be played - not something I think any HL player wants to do.
- Two matches a week means that an 8 week regular season (9 weeks is Invite only, I believe) results in 16 matches - more than enough to calibrate Swiss - but cannot be done without.
Ta5K said in RGL HL 2023: Season Schedule Adjustments:
personally like how Alto’s revision of the schedule as it would give teams 2 and a half months (or even 4 and a half months of they’re knocked earlier in the playoffs from the previous season) to find players and start creating strategies for the upcoming season.
For what it’s worth, this is what I see Alto’s schedule looking like.
The reason I don’t like it, then, is because I think the second season of the year weirdly straddles summer and fall. I think, with summer vacations from school/college, that summer seasons are almost always going to be more popular than seasons elsewhere in the year - but if we put the regular season from mid-July to mid-September, it ends more than a month into most unis’ fall semesters and a few weeks into most high schools’ years. Add a month for playoffs and you’re in midterm hell. I think, like we had this fall semester, you’ll have a lot of people who just can’t commit the time to TF2 in the fall - which is why I put cups in that timeframe.
I think it’s totally possible to put the first season at a more reasonable time in the summer and then do Alto’s idea - do a mini-season or a series of cups in the spring - but as is, I don’t want to have a league season that is in between calendar seasons.
american said in RGL HL 2023: Season Schedule Adjustments:
i like the amount of tf2 that is played currently, however i really think that the problem with short offseasons would be solved if we shortened how long playoffs are. if 6s does it all in one weekend, why can’t hl do it too? everyone is already playing 4 hours of highlander on the weekend and playoff teams do more than that reviewing demos and what not. or at the very least, make it so lower bracket matches are played on a different day, like saturday or sunday, so there isn’t one week where the upper bracket team is just waiting for the lower bracket game to end.
another thing is, should a holiday coincide with a monday again, just make people play the game on saturday or sunday. we’ve shown this season that multiple teams are open to the idea (4 teams played their matches on sunday 10/30 this season 'cause of halloween)
Part of the problem is one that’s a big issue in Main and below - 7 regular season matches is not enough matches to ensure that final seeding is accurate to teams’ relative skill levels, and to ensure that the teams that deserve to make playoffs make playoffs. This is a recurring issue in Swiss divs where teams coast into playoffs with easy seasons (forfeit wins, bye weeks) far ahead of teams much better than them.
Note that while 6s does not in fact do LAN style playoffs except in Invite, I’d personally not mind condensing playoffs into a format like that - but players might. In that case, we could do, for example, Saturday 6pm, 9pm matches, and then Sunday 5pm, 8pm with map advantage in grand finals instead of bracket reset.
I’d push, though, for two regular season matches a week (Sunday and Monday, perhaps) - except this is a structure that has polled poorly in past surveys. This would allow us to keep three seven-week regular seasons a year AND condense playoffs into a weekend (perhaps after a break) AND have more regular cups AND have a longer offseason. I think just 7 matches doesn’t work in any case.
Also - @Mothership 6s has just in general more teams that play with each other more times a week - and so are more able to make use of a short offseason than HL teams. The greater team volume also means there’s less of a problem of the sheer proportion of teams being put together last minute throwing off balance and leading to lots of midseason team deaths.
In general I’d be happy with anything that’s not just the status quo - but some changes are better than others, and ideally my wishlist is:
- More regular HL cups a year
- Longer offseasons
- More matches in a regular season
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vorboyvo I just wanna note that rescheduling in 6s is not only a format culture thing. 6s players commit to playing more days and on more weekdays than HL players do, they commit to playing more matches than HL players do, and they commit to playing maps where the same strategy can be more easily applied to different maps. Additionally, rescheduling for 6 players is a lot easier than rescheduling for 9. It also takes more time for HL teams to get strategies down in scrims because of the increase in players per team.
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Cups
Let me ask this then in response, are you guys planning on having Playoffs for the cups? Prizepools? And if so, how are you going to solve the issue with placements with what will obviously be a super short cup to determine those playoff seedings?
To give you a direct example, UGC toyed with having the summer season be a fun season. There was no playoffs, and we played more new maps than the other two seasons. The summer season was then universally shit on because without playoffs, putting any effort into the summer season was pointless.
You can say:
vorboyvo said in RGL HL 2023: Season Schedule Adjustments:a tournament is a tournament is a tournament, and we (both as an admin team and as a community) should treat it as such.
But what does that actually mean when you are talking about cups?
what is it that you guys have planned that make these cups a suitable replacement for a full regular season of HL with playoffs?
This is what I mean by cups are not a replacement for the regular season. You can say:
vorboyvo said in RGL HL 2023: Season Schedule Adjustments:
cups might not have been replacements for the regular season in the past, but I don’t think it’s a good mindset to say they will never be,
But that means we would have to blindly trust you guys when all the evidence from past cups point to the contrary.
I agree with you that we should be taking every form of comp tf2 seriously, that is why my prolander cup team did map reviews and made team strats and completely destroyed every team we played on synthetic. But part of me knows that was also because no one we played actually ever put any effort into winning on that map. They just showed up and played.
You need to give people a reason to care about these cups. And no one so far in this thread has given me a reason to do so.
Scheduling Stuff
my point that you guys are trying to do major rebuild of the yearly schedule for issues that appear to be cultural ones for NA HL. It had nothing to do with how many matches a week, nor playoffs. hence the:
@Mothership said in RGL HL 2023: Season Schedule Adjustments:
This might be an unpopular take, but the issue this problem seems to be tackling is more of a cultural issue with the NA Highlander format itself than anything else.
In other words, instead of trying to solve the symptom of bad HL culture, fix the root of the issue.
Your three reasons you gave don’t do anything to counter the point I was making. I asked if there is a reason why we cant just do the same thing as 6’s, and what you gave was “we can’t because 6’s does things we do not”.
While I do get your point about playoffs having to be longer, that should be a something that is easier to solve than reworking the whole schedule and its literally just one extra week.
Side Note
A lot of the time whenever these types of conversations start up and the HL & 6’s comparisons start flying around. I always have to ask why HL cant do the same things as 6’s?
And at the end of it all, it usually boils down to cultural differences and how seriously either playbase treats their format.
I have always believed that HL could be as competitive than 6’s if we put our minds to it and put in the effort to make it so.
Closing
vorboyvo said in RGL HL 2023: Season Schedule Adjustments:
Also - Mothership 6s has just in general more teams that play with each other more times a week - and so are more able to make use of a short offseason than HL teams. The greater team volume also means there’s less of a problem of the sheer proportion of teams being put together last minute throwing off balance and leading to lots of midseason team deaths.
Yeah, but like I said, why cant we do that too? This just points back to the cultural and professionalism difference between the two formats. I rather we solve that issue than solve the symptoms of it.
vorboyvo said in RGL HL 2023: Season Schedule Adjustments:
In general I’d be happy with anything that’s not just the status quo - but some changes are better than others, and ideally my wishlist is:
More regular HL cups a year
Longer offseasons
More matches in a regular seasonAnd the way you say that makes me concerned that you guys are trying to find issues for your solutions.
Quite frankly, rereading what consta put in the OP makes me think the whole reason you guys are thinking about reworking the seasonal system is that way you guys can run cups. Literally, just look at the math in the OP:
consta said in RGL HL 2023: Season Schedule Adjustments:
With %(#48f9b5)[7 weeks] in the regular season and up to %(#7a90ff)[5 weeks] (depending on playoffs structure and whether brackets reset) in playoffs, that means if we have a full 5 weeks of offseason (which works out to even less if we have an offseason cup or qualifiers), then we use up a total of %(#ff7a8e)[17 weeks per season], and with three seasons in a year, 51 out of the 52 weeks in the year are taken up by seasons.
A regular season is 12 weeks currently. which means we have a total of 36 weeks which are taken up by seasons. This means we have 16 weeks left over for everything else. Qualifiers take away another three weeks (qualifiers are 1 week, times 3 seasons) making it 13. which means we should get a month in between seasons currently.
Now the reason I did all that math is because the only way for you guys to get 51/52 weeks is if you already included cups into that equation (which I did not).
Actual closing
I honestly really appreciate the work and ideas that the new HL team is bringing to the table, as well as how willing some of you are to engage with the community. Please do not stop talking/ discussing this with us.
However, understand that just because you are not the old guys, does not mean that I will automatically trust the new HL team. I will question what you guys say/do. I will always make sure that we are doing our best for the format. I rather I be able to say I did my part to ensure growth instead of sitting on the sidelines and watching it burn to the fucking ground.
At the end of the day, it will be up to you guys to make that final call, and the rest of us will need to embrace it whether we like it or not.
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@Mothership said in RGL HL 2023: Season Schedule Adjustments:
However, understand that just because you are not the old guys, does not mean that I will automatically trust the new HL team. I will question what you guys say/do. I will always make sure that we are doing our best for the format. I rather I be able to say I did my part to ensure growth instead of sitting on the sidelines and watching it burn to the fucking ground.
This is something I want to clarify. I have been personally contacted regarding the topics and I think it’s really important to say these are not necessarily plans we have in line. The reasoning for these threads is not to inform “this is going to happen and it’s just the way it is”. These are discussions happening behind the scenes that we wanted to involve the community directly into. Constructive criticism and opposing ideas are encouraged because the whole point of this is to get a better idea of the impacts, both positive and negative, that there is involved.
Granted the threads’ reception may not always dictate what we decide, it gives us a better idea of where our community is with the subjects at hand as well as give us additional insight. While I may be the current HA, I don’t expect other staff nor the players to blindly agree with whatever is being presented. Questioning is great as long as it remains constructive–which I’m really glad it has purely been so far in these discussions
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New idea: what if we take one of the seasons and turn it into a sort of intensive season? Cut the number of weeks and do the two matches thing that has been suggested by others but only in one season. This would increase the number of off weeks, use one season as semi-experimental like UGC did, and that season would still be taken as seriously as the normal ones.
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@Mothership
To give you a direct example, UGC toyed with having the summer season be a fun season. There was no playoffs, and we played more new maps than the other two seasons. The summer season was then universally shit on because without playoffs, putting any effort into the summer season was pointless.
To give some more context to those that may be not familiar with this season, this was the map pool for that UGC HL summer season which had no playoffs -
The summer seasons in UGC were traditionally meant to not be “serious”, so in these seasons you would typically see more experimental maps, whitelists, etc. It should also be noted that this UGC season was done to give the admins a break as well.
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Highlander players actually play their format challenge (IMPOSSIBLE)
Highlander comes with its own set of logistical problems, with the bigger team sizes and being ran alongside 6s- but the solution to your problems is not continuing this trend of reducing the amount of HL played per year.
The unwillingness of the community to play HL outside of rigid and pathetic timeframes means players are uncomfortable playing more than a few scrims on the weekend with a single monday match. Bc of this playoffs inevitably gets extended because lower bracket teams get pissy about playing more than once per week and grand finalists are unable to grasp the concept of starting matches early in case of a bracket reset.
Under half of the teams in the league actually make playoffs, you don’t need 5 entire weeks to run a double elimination bracket with 4 teams or single elim with 8 lmao. Quit caving in for playoff teams and make them play their lower bracket matches on time. You don’t need an entire weekend to practice for every playoff game, that was what all the time you spent in pre and regular season was for!!!
Honestly I don’t think anyone outside of playoffs feels like offseason is too short, and the playoff teams are the ones fucking themselves over by collectively holding each other hostage and refusing to play matches. If people feel like they don’t have enough time to do all of their tryouts it is mostly to do with the previous season dragging on forever and little to do with the next season starting too soon. People who make playoffs tend to be the high value players that people want to tryout and if they are tangled up for extra weeks at the end of each season then the entire tryouts process as a whole gets stunted.
Past that, I don’t really buy the whole “less seasons will reduce burnout” thing. Everyone who is playing competitive TF2 (especially highlander) is straight up just a nerd. It baffles me that I constantly hear people saying stuff like “its just too much of a time commitment, im sooo burnt out” like u aren’t fooling anybody i know ur not touching grass if u main HL
The only thing that causes me ‘burnout’ in highlander is observing a community with people unwilling to invest their time meaningfully into the game they play every day choosing to add up to pugs and drool all over their keyboards instead
6s has embraced the pattern of three regular seasons per year with 8 week regular seasons, on top of more matches/scrim days per week and massive league wide burnout has never been a concern. It is within your best interest to have league play/service be something consistently available for the playerbase- else you turn the risk of players churning temporarily into the risk that they get bored because they can’t play anymore making them quit full stop. Let your players decide for themselves how much/little tf2 they want to play, don’t decide for them and definitely stop projecting the feelings of whatever group of people are whispering these ideas into your ear because they absolutely do not speak for everyone.
Also, somebody mentioned this earlier in the thread, but cups and tournaments are not a replacement for league play nor the inverse- they have their own unique value and shouldn’t be “balanced” against regular seasons. Both should be ran as often as is reasonable because they serve different functions. You play cups and tournaments because you want to play without a multi-week sustained time commitment, you play seasonally because you want a structured plan that makes playing the game a reliable part of your schedule.
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Honestly after thinking about it some I’m 100% on board with most of this reasoning. The reason I was in favour of / pushed the original idea behind this post was to play more Highlander, not less - but I’ve seen a pretty big consensus that, on its own, this will lead to less Highlander being played and it taking more of a backseat to 6s, which is the opposite of what I want. I want more matches per season - this is, I think, a must for growth in HL because the current system of 7 matches a week is just too little to have meaningful competition.
nabla said in RGL HL 2023: Season Schedule Adjustments:
The unwillingness of the community to play HL outside of rigid and pathetic timeframes means players are uncomfortable playing more than a few scrims on the weekend with a single monday match. Bc of this playoffs inevitably gets extended because lower bracket teams get pissy about playing more than once per week and grand finalists are unable to grasp the concept of starting matches early in case of a bracket reset.
Yep, 100% agreed. And after hearing yours, Mothership’s, american’s arguments I think I’m convinced that any positive change can’t skirt around this issue/accommodate it, but has to tackle it directly.
nabla said in RGL HL 2023: Season Schedule Adjustments:
If people feel like they don’t have enough time to do all of their tryouts it is mostly to do with the previous season dragging on forever and little to do with the next season starting too soon. People who make playoffs tend to be the high value players that people want to tryout and if they are tangled up for extra weeks at the end of each season then the entire tryouts process as a whole gets stunted.
But this is, in fact, the whole problem with how long playoffs takes right now.
So, then to everyone, I ask: (not on behalf of all HL admins, but personally)
How would we feel about the following:
- Two matches a week, 8 weeks in the season, and
- Either a) playoffs LAN-style in one weekend, or b) playoffs with two to three regular-timed matches a week in two weekends, or c) playoffs with two regular-timed matches a week in two weekends with map advantage bo5 for grands in DE instead of bracket reset bo3, or d) playoffs as normal, but lower bracket matches take place on, say, Saturday so they don’t hold up the bracket, and replace bracket reset with map advantage bo5?
I think this is my ideal way to keep 3 seasons, and also be able to run as many cups as we can, and also not have an extremely short offseason.
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vorboyvo said in RGL HL 2023: Season Schedule Adjustments:
How would we feel about the following:
- Two matches a week, 8 weeks in the season, and
- Either a) playoffs LAN-style in one weekend, or b) playoffs with two to three regular-timed matches a week in two weekends, or c) playoffs with two regular-timed matches a week in two weekends with map advantage bo5 for grands in DE instead of bracket reset bo3, or d) playoffs as normal, but lower bracket matches take place on, say, Saturday so they don’t hold up the bracket, and replace bracket reset with map advantage bo5?
- Friday scrims/Saturday match; Sunday scrims/Monday match
I honestly think this would be functional, despite what some might say otherwise.
- I would be fine with any of those honestly. The lan styled playoffs only need a week or two for playoff prep, which would overall still take less time than what we do now.
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@Mothership
Could also, like TheS4rr said, try these things one season and see how they work for future seasons.
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make playoffs as short as possible, play matches sunday and monday
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Personally I’d love to see Double Elimination playoffs be shorter, which is something I’d like to talk to Invite players about especially
Mainly in regards to lower brackets finalsCurrently, for all Single Elimination divisions, they last for 3 weekends:
Week 1: Quarter Finals
Week 2: Semi Finals
Week 3: Grand Finals + Bronze MatchFor Invite and Advanced, it’s:
Week 1: Round 1
Week 2: Upper Finals/Lower Bracket Round 1
Week 3: Lower Finals
Week 4: Grand Finals
Week 5: Bracket ResetI don’t want to call the consecutive seasons of Invite bracket resets that happened this year “bad luck” with scheduling just because ultimately I think our goal should be to always have bracket resets where there’s no clear winner. It’s more exciting for people trying to track/watch the maps and it’s more fun for the players that want to play a fun intense match.
Looking at it again, I think it could be possible to have comfortable off-seasons while having three seasons in a calendar year if we do the following:
- Forfeit the idea of having breaks before playoffs
- Try to have Lower Finals during an “off-day” rather than a brand new week
- Although I don’t think it’s necessary at the moment, if we can expand the pool of KOTH maps I think it would be beneficial to have a Bo5 Grand Finals for Inv/Adv eventually
Although as a community we voted for breaks in HL during a previous survey, at least as a player, I don’t think the breaks are needed and can lead to teams losing their momentum. Plus it is ultimately at the expense of shorter off-seasons for any players in playoffs.
Just my personal take on it. Not trying to represent any other admin’s thoughts or the admin team’s position on the subject.