Highlander Season 10 Survey Results
-
Division Questions
A fairly close split on the skill range for the divisions. 48% of players felt the skill range was appropriate, while 52% believed it was at least a little bit too large.
Main had a 74% result that the skill range was at least a bit too large. This may be due to a couple of Advanced level offclass teams playing in the division.
Overall, players felt their division was the correct size, except for…
…Advanced, which had an almost even split on it being too big and just the right size. While I personally agree 14 team Advanced was too big, it is interesting to see that some Advanced players also thought it was an appropriate size.Admin Questions
Most players felt their interactions were positive. Nothing really of note here.
Players still felt like it was easy to get a hold of their division admin.
Overall players felt the decisions of our admins were reasonable. Again, nothing really of note here.
Interestingly, an even split of players felt we were effective in curbing sandbagging and at the same time we were too lax regarding sandbagging. 3 divisions stuck out in terms of being too lax regarding Sandbagging:Newcomer
Newcomer felt like we were too lax regarding sandbagging. This is odd to me, as Newcomer is the division with the most strict sandbagging rules. If you played in Newcomer this past season and felt we were too lax on sandbagging, please open a ticket in the RGL discord or DM me (WiLLmaTiC#0777) or Kitty (Kitty#5889) on discord, as I would love to find out more information.Amateur
Amateur also felt we were too lax on sandbagging. After reviewing the playoff teams in Amateur there was definitely 1 team that should not have been placed in Amateur, however the remaining teams all seemed fine overall.
Main
Main was the last division that felt we were too lax with sandbagging. As stated in regards to the skill range, I believe this may be due to the couple of Advanced offclass teams that made playoffs in Main. Looking at the remaining playoff teams, they all seemed to be placed appropriately.
Maps
Vigil
Vigil is the second most enjoyable map, and is still going strong with 78% of players enjoying the map. This is down very slightly from last season, by 3%.
Ashville
Ashville gets the distinction of being the highest rated map this season, with a whopping 83% of players enjoying the map. This is actually an increase of 2% from last season.
Upward
Upward was rated the 3rd most enjoyable map this season, with a rating of 76%. This is a small 4% increase in enjoyability compared to last season.
Lakeside
Lakeside was NOT enjoyed, with a rating of only 36%. Compared to Cascade last season as well as the last time Lakeside was played, this is a 6% drop in enjoyment rating. Lakeside will not be making a return for Season 11.
Swiftwater
Swiftwater had an enjoyability rating of 61%, a small 2% decrease compared to last season. This is about average for the map.
Product
Product had a tiny bump in enjoyability, up to 68% from last season’s 67%. Nothing to see here.
Steel
Steel ended the season with a rating of 73%. This is a 1% decrease from last season.
Refresh Maps
Players unanimously voted to use the “Refresh” version of maps, provided there are no major gameplay changes to the maps. We will continue to use the Steel Refresh, and may use the Upward Refresh version. You can find a full list of the Upward Refresh changes in this TFTV thread.
In addition a thread has been created to discuss if the Upward Refresh version should be used. You can find it HERE.Unban Cup Results
Unfortunately, the only weapon that had a remotely close vote to wanting to be tested was the Crit-a-Cola. Since players do not want to test out unbanning weapons the Unban Cup will not be happening.
Format Changes
Week Break
The majority of players voted to include a 1 week break between Week 7 and the start of playoffs. Originally, this was to be included in Season 11, due to originally having scheduling conflicts with Prolander it was removed. However, since the Prolander scheduling conflict has been removed, we will add this in for Season 12. Holding off until Season 12 is primarily due to the dates for Season 11 having already been announced.
1 Extra Match A Week
56% of players voted in favor of not adding an extra match on Sunday 930 EST, so it will not be added. This may be repolled in future seasons to see if opinions have changed.
Extra Weeks
An even 50% of players voted they would like to add 1-2 more weeks to the HL season. While this change will not be in effect for Season 11, we will look into if adding an extra 1-2 weeks to the HL schedule is feasible. Since HL no longer has scheduling conflicts with Prolander, the main issue preventing this is the limited map pool HL has to offer.
-
considering the seeming lack of enjoyment of cascade/lakeside, has there been any thought about replacing those two with a different koth map? maybe more map cups?
-
I see no reason why every one of those weapons can’t be at least tested in the cup.
-
make adv 8 teams and push low adv teams rn into main, make main better and prepare adv players 4 invite wow u fixed the div skill issue !!!
-
make 2 div hl newcomer and ivnite, ggezllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll
-
longer seasons mean bigger RR divisions, so less higher skilled teams in lower divs, and hopefully more competitive divs overall (in Adv., Main, & Invite) but only time will tell.
With the summer season starting at the beginning of June, that is the season to really look forward to the most in regards to growth and improvement. Just to list all the changes coming to HL based off this and previous surveys for Season 12:
-
Longer Seasons
- More maps. Which is a mixed bag with Borneo and Lakeside/Cascade being the most viable options to be added for those additional weeks.
- Theoretically we could add cp_rapids, but that would require a ton of testing from the HL community and @theatreTECHIE putting in a ton of work so it could be ready within the next 5 months.
- More maps. Which is a mixed bag with Borneo and Lakeside/Cascade being the most viable options to be added for those additional weeks.
-
Possible paid divs with prizepools below Invite
- IM prizepools and more legitimacy as a format is always welcome.
-
Break between regular season and playoffs.
- this is actually really important for planning and coordination, and can help bring hype to the playoff matches
-
Refresh maps becoming more mainstream.
- Who needs valve, when we can just do it ourselves? [insert thanos meme here]
I am very happy to see a lot of these results and optimism towards the HL team if they can properly push this format forward.
-
-
@ckrow Agreed, the problem with main’s skill gap wasn’t “advanced offclassing teams” speaking from someone on a team that pretty much rolled every single match and were definitely not an advanced offclassing team. If there were more low advanced teams in main then playoffs would likely not have had such a large disparity in skill. It WOULD increase the disparity of skill between the lowest and highest team, but that’s not really that big of a deal. Let’s be real, unless I was missing something balls was the only advanced offclassing team and they lost round one playoffs. George wasn’t offclassing afaik and was mid old advanced at best (went 3-4 in advanced s9).
-
@Roofon Slapp My Buttface (finished 3rd place) had 7 players with restrictions. Personally, I think off classing was a big part of why the skill gap felt so large. In regards to what ckrow said, I like the idea in theory but while it may fix the skill range in adv, it makes main playoffs a bottleneck of skill. Personally I’m still in favor of having a Challenger division, as I feel it more evenly separates skill.
-
@grey Ah. I forgot about Slapp My Buttface, I also don’t think there is anything wrong with main playoffs requiring a lot of skill to overcome. Adding back in challenger just makes the same thing in advanced. All it does it make main worse. I don’t think people should get out of main in one season. I think people having to spend time to make it out of a div to get into the top 16 divs in the league is a good thing, actually.
-
@Roofon Agreed.
Main should be the ‘Main’ division, with the most amount of teams and players. Players should be pushing up from the lower divs easily, while having a difficult time escaping it.
-
@grey said in Highlander Season 10 Survey Results:
I like the idea in theory
what i stated was how main-adv was played up until challenger was added lol
edit: trying to bridge the skill in divs (e.i adding challenger)just made it so the top of each div was significantly better than the bottom half of the division above them, trying to remove the skill gap from mid-high level divs was the stupidest thing rgl could of done to HL and ruined a generation of players imho
-
Bring back challenger and whole advanced issue is fixed. Longer seasons would be ideally. Why can’t they be 8 weeks like how ugc did it for years and years. 10 weeks would be awesome though.
-
@JohhnyFromCali Bringing back challenger just makes advanced main, I see very little reason why this should be done. Make advanced 8 teams again, 5 teams get in by w/e, main winners from previous season, and 2 qualifier spots. If you don’t make the cut then you have to play main. Then main would also you know, have good teams in it, which is a good thing. Adding back in challenger just makes main suffer for no good reason. It basically results in advanced/main being high main and low main but different divisions for from what I can see little to no benefit.
Edit: I just think that playing in advanced, ie, being a top 16 team in the league, should be a competitive position.
-
incredibly sad to see people shitting on lakeside and previously cascade in these polls when product is still highly rated. please take product out and replace it with rapids or literally anything else
-
@ethan nagwan
-
@Roofon that’s the point of challenger is to remove skill from the top of advanced and combine it with potential invite teams. It’s not to cuddle perma advanced players.
-
@JohhnyFromCali I think there’s a misunderstanding regarding Challenger
“Challenger” is not actually a new division. The top teams under invite(The highest division) will always be the top teams under Invite. We formerly referred to this division as “Advanced”
The top teams under Invite can be 8 teams, 12 teams, 14 teams, and so on and can have stricter sandbagging restrictions in place–but that’s independent of whether or not “Challenger” existsWhat actually happened was that a new division was created below Challenger. This was during a point where the difference between low Main and top Main was overwhelmingly different and old Advanced had consistently over 8 teams interested in playing the division. By creating the new division, low Advanced teams and high Main teams were grouped together to create their own skill-group, while decreasing the skill gap in Main, as well as keeping old Advanced round-robin. This new division adapted the name “Advanced”, and “Challenger” was to replace the division name that was formerly known as Advanced. In hindsight, it was a terrible idea to switch around the names, for sure, but in the moment we needed a good name for this new skill group, and Challenger was definitely less fitting as the third-highest division than the second-highest.
-
@Constantly challenger was also the division where bottom to low invite players can also main class if they couldn’t find a spot in invite. Advanced restricted every invite player which caused some players to be in restriction purgatory. Not good enough to play invite and too good for advanced.
Overall rgl needs to make a choice between making new divs and keep the groups small or bite the bullet and let the divisions grow larger as the league grows. Making the seasons longer does put a band aid and buy them time, which imo they should do since highlander seasons where longer before.
-
@JohhnyFromCali Yeah, I get your argument
What I’m trying to say is that sort of thing can change without challenger existing; it’s an independent variable
Low invite players could technically main class in advanced if the advanced admin allowed it.I guess I could also put it another way: How would challenger existing directly result in invite players main-classing in advanced/challenger?
-
@JohhnyFromCali said in Highlander Season 10 Survey Results:
Div-1 and Advanced are special cases for sandbagging restrictions, as they are the divisions below Invite, which is at the top and has a fixed size. In an ideal world, the restrictions here would be much lighter as Invite will be filled with the best players and those who play in the division below were unable to make Invite that season. However, the restrictions can also be much heavier. For example, in Div-1 and Advanced 6s, if Invite only has 6 teams out of an 8-10 team capacity, heavier restrictions will be applied to Div-1 and Advanced.
In RGL 6s anyway, Invite has been the healthiest that it has ever been because there are often 2-4+ teams trying to qualify for a spot in Invite. It’s also relevant that a lot of old faces are returning in 6s, and LAN is coming back so a lot more players want a chance to compete at LAN. As a result, the 6s admin team is being laxer with restrictions to accommodate for the number of players that quite simply won’t make the Invite cut.
The HL team can also apply these more lenient guidelines here assuming Invite is healthy.