round robin advanced
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@Wize
Trying is all any of us can ask for, and that tends to be enough, if not you can live with yourself about it. Meaningful change tends to spread from person to person as more people carry the torch. once you have that initial momentum down you can really start to see things get better, and I’d say this is what you saw with micah’s reference to how good the 6s staff has become.one person cares and puts a lot of effort in, might not change things themselves, but then they get another person interested; who then puts their perspective in and give it some more reach, stack knowledge and come to good conclusions by bouncing all of those perspectives to form fair conclusions. all that it really takes is that sort of momentum and sense of obligation. if we want things to be better, we have to make sure we see things through so they actually get better.
i can’t convey through text how grateful i am to you for taking the initiative here and putting yourself in that spot, to middleman for the community due to more responsible figures not doing their part. it’s a lot to ask for of a moderator, but if a moderator can do that much on their OWN, i think there’s a lot of hope to be had in the community and league growing from that if they put collective effort in.
to be completely honest, you and mothership are carrying an ideal here, and that ideal on it’s own does so much good for the community, don’t let anyone tell you otherwise
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@Bliztank
Going to quote something that I posted in a different thread since it is relevant here:
For RGL, it’s a league run by players who apply to help out and want to improve the league. Plenty of recent and past admins have joined the staff team because they disliked how the league was running or even the way how admins were running things were not up-to-par with what they wanted from the league. Being an admin does require putting in the full effort to contribute to changes for the better.
On a separate note, the turnover rate for admining is extremely high. On average, both 6s and HL lose about two or three admins/mods each season, which is due to a combination of factors such as real-life obligations, being burnt out from the workload or community, etc. It can be difficult to find recruits that like admin work and want to be active. I certainly recommend players to apply for an admin position when this opens up during the offseason.
“Moderators” in RGL are not too much different than “admins” in RGL now. They fundamentally have access to the same tools and support. However, mods are there to assist the admin with match disputes, demo requests, skill placements, and answering tickets. All of these staff members are encouraged to provide their input and make meaningful strides to push for changes that they believe the league is not performing well in.
The 6s admin team is a good example of a “refresh” that occurred and has much improved public relations and trust with the community. It has to be built over time. Reno and virgil are recent additions that have made the team the way it is today.
Ever since I stepped down from the Highlander Admin team after Season 6, there were bound to be certain procedures, communication, etc., that may no longer occur. However, I strongly wanted HL to be left in hands with staff that I believed would continue to do good work even after I left. While I am not active with HL anymore, I still try to check in when I can with the staff team. This includes having conversations with the HL head admin about making sure that decisions are being made in a congruent manner. Though, the fact that this thread exists shows that there was a disconnect in communication with that goal, which should not have happened. Moving forward, the HL team understands the importance of improving communication and discussion on forum boards. Ultimately though, it has to be proven by having the results speak for themselves.
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@ckrow said in round robin advanced:
okay excuse my ignorance, but is it really that hard to just, push all the “good” main teams down a div until they comply, im sure hurt their egos n shit but idk, what is like the obstacles youre talking about?
I’m not sure why you would push high main teams down to IM, that to me just does not make sense. Also the obstacle Im referring to would be the low advanced being so much better than the high main teams from last season feel like they have a shot against them.
@Xenagos said in round robin advanced:
I think the amount of restrictions that would be required for low advanced teams playing in main would be pretty minimal. I’m talking about high advanced/invite players playing in main on specifically high impact classes. a low advanced engie main playing engie in main is fine.
It’s definitely a case by case basis. Depending on the make up of the team you may need to restrict like 4 players, or none at all.
@Xenagos said in round robin advanced:
This is going to be something that varies from season to season in HL just because there’s less players than in 6’s. While this season the number of teams wanting to play invite was low that hasn’t been true of every season.
While HL does indeed have less players than 6’s, the main point I was trying to get across is that I’m willing to change how we restrict Invite players in Advanced, but I need to see an amount of teams trying to play Invite to support it.
@Xenagos said in round robin advanced:
I think this should be true for the higher level main teams. I don’t think this should be true for the teams playing their first season in main out of IM.
I agree. I was referring to existing high Main teams that are playing in Main again.
@Micahlele said in round robin advanced:
If the general skill level increases to the point that invite players are put into lower divisions because they can’t fit into invite, then lower divved teams have to suck it up that the skill ranges of divisions are shifting.
As I stated with the about 9ish teams wanting to play Invite, I do not believe the skill range has shifted a significant amount to warrant needing to force a bunch of teams down a division.
@Micahlele said in round robin advanced:
If ginyu, knd, dk, mts, ad, pyp, irene, >> (the names do not matter, but we assume they are all invite level) all came back, what happens?
Maybe Challenger comes back, if there are enough low Invite teams to support a Challenger division. In your scenario where a bunch of legacy teams return I feel Challenger returning would have significate merit.
@Roofon said in round robin advanced:
On the topic of low/mid advanced teams taking over main: I think this isn’t a bad thing, assuming advanced and invite are healthy especially.
Invite will always have priority on ensuring it is healthy. Whether that be through qualifiers, forced team move ups, or having a team sacrifice ala Imposters in Season 3. Invite is also in a way the easiest to ensure it is healthy, due to how few teams want to play in Invite. It leaves less room for an Invite team unintentionally landing in Advanced. On the flip side, due to the amount of teams that want to be in Advanced, you have to figure out how both Advanced and Main can be healthy. I’m of the belief that removing the bottom 3rd of Advanced and putting them in Main does not make Advanced healthier, and it certainly does not make Main healthier.
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I think that as @Wize said, having a forum/roundtable where representatives of the community (team leaders is a good subset) can directly bring concerns to the admins without having to reach out on their own would be an excellent thing. I think that having all the team leaders from Main to Invite would be a bit chaotic, especially in a voice chat format, but smaller meetings are definitely something I can see working. I’ll be sure to follow up with our other mods and admins and RGL leadership to see what we can do with regards to this.
Moreover, I think that the current format of admins scoping out what issues are contentious in the community and then polling them in post-season surveys works in some ways but falls short in others.
They do an excellent job of scoping out community opinion on short, easy questions. For example, should the Scorch Shot be banned. Sure, there are sophisticated arguments for and against such questions, but the end result can be boiled down to a yes/no question that almost everyone is likely to have a clear opinion on and a clear picture of what the format would look like in either world.
They also do well on confirming community opinion where the community clearly leans heavily towards a certain policy outcome, but the change is major/radical enough that it requires polling of some kind just to make sure there isn’t a silent majority/even split that opposes the outcome.
Where they fail, in my mind, is when the choice isn’t simple. When the choice is between round robin small-team-count advanced and Swiss relatively-large-team-count advanced, there are several implications for players, not all of which are encapsulated by a simple survey question.
For example, the implications of round robin Adv are:
- (+) Each team plays every other team -> Each team has a similarly strong schedule and final seedings are reasonably representative of each team’s relative strength to others in the division (I say reasonably, not totally, because team strengths vary by map).
- (~) The division structure reflects that of the top division, Invite, which Advanced sorta serves as a holding chamber for.
- (~) There is a fixed cap of 8 teams (number of weeks + 1) meaning that teams that do not, whether subjectively determined by admins or objectively determined through qualifiers, get pushed down to the division below. This has further implications for the div structure below - for example, does Main simply expand to accommodate more teams, or are some teams from what would be Main pushed down to IM, or is another RR div (Chal-Adv) introduced to hold the overflow?
- (-) RR means that team deaths affect everyone more than Swiss - either a forced bye week is added, one for every team death, or teams are pulled up from the division below, leading to possibly more team deaths (See Invite and how teams die to avoid playing it)
and the implications of Swiss adv are as follows:
- (+) Flexible division structure means you can accommodate as few or as many teams as you like, only strictly bounded on the bottom by 8 (number of weeks + 1), and team deaths do not disproportionately affect it
- (~) The opposites of 2 & 3 for RR
- (-) Small-div Swiss leads to suboptimal outcomes (See an analysis BBL did last season and I contributed to here)
Look at all those (~)! They’re neither objectively good nor bad - they can be construed as good or bad for any number of reasons, and people will always have wildly different ideas on the nuanced aspects of this. Should, for example, RR be accommodated by adding back Challenger, or should the worst teams simply be moved down to Main, having the potentially desirable, neutral, OR undesirable effect of increasing the skill gap in main (see also, arguments in this very thread about whether it is right for main to be a filtering grounds for the top divs, or if main should be a div with a more defined skill and that all teams should fit in that skill, or 15 other nuanced viewpoints that I can’t possibly list out)?
This is the kind of stuff that a post-season survey just cannot accurately capture the public’s opinions on. When you survey their opinion using disjoint questions that people respond to individually, without the whole picture in mind, the outcomes are reasonably likely to be different from what they would actually prefer.
This is the kind of stuff that staff should directly approach the community to ask about. This is, after all, as I’m sure @Mothership would appreciate me saying, the point of these forums: to have reasoned discussions about things in comp TF2 and to collect intelligent, nuanced viewpoints that cannot be represented by bar graphs and checkboxes.
Admins can then use the general consensus drawn on in these threads to make stronger, more popular decisions that are less likely to lead to disappointment and more likely to be sustainable over the long term, so we can stop reinventing the wheel of divisions (as just one example) every season.
I’m going to commit myself to working, as I said earlier, with other mods and admins and RGL leadership to see what I can do to take initiative in soliciting community feedback in a back-and-forth manner like this thread, minus the resentment/disappointment and in a more proactive manner. If anyone has any thoughts on how this can be done, feel free to drop them as well.
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Since it has been brought up a few times, and I believe is also one of the original points and reasons for the creation of this thread:
The goal of these forums exist for me in the form of the Mission Statement that you can find on the rules tab.
The idea with the forums is to create an open space where constructive conversations, discussions, feedback, and ideas can be shared.
My hope is that these forums become the main platform for people to publicly discuss anything they feel is important. Regardless if those ideas are sound.
Part of that is encouraging users to make threads like these on the forums because posting things in the discord is pointless when it gets buried a few hours later and to be quite frank, the admins basically never see them because of it.
I am also trying to ensure that these forums do not turn into an echo chamber like many private discords which are there to only push a narrative.
My last main goal of course is making sure that the RGL staff themselves are properly using the forums. Without them this platform becomes completely neutered and pointless as this is an RGL platform and anyone that comes on here has the expectation that they have a voice and are being listened to by staff.
All in all I am very happy that things are heading a positive direction, and hopefully we can continue to grow and can really start to do more interesting and positive things for this community.
TL;DR: I view myself and these forums as an Enabler. It cant do anything without you guys
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@WiLLmaTiC My reasoning behind bringing up the health of invite is more that I feel invite is somewhat unhealthy because there is a lack of people wanting to play it. I also think that trying to constantly expand advanced so that way there aren’t advanced teams in main is a losing battle. This is because hypothetically teams should just keep improving over time. Now that being said people leave and that generally does keep things at a reasonable balance, but it is something to consider. I don’t think repeatedly expanding advanced is a sustainable solution.
I think there is a pretty obvious difference between how you see main and just division splits in general between how I would at least say I see main (as well as advanced), but I would say that based off of my conversations with other people they tend to feel at least similar. That difference is that you seem to look at it from trying to minimize the skill gap between players as much as possible. I am especially basing that off of your last line
“I’m of the belief that removing the bottom 3rd of Advanced and putting them in Main does not make Advanced healthier, and it certainly does not make Main healthier.”Now the main reason it would make advanced healthier is because rr, better invite prep, etc, esp. because adding a bunch of teams to low advanced allows some teams to heavily benefit from the swiss format (see broken mice s10).
In regard to main, I think having a bigger challenge to triumph over before entering the top 16 (or currently top 20) teams is a good thing. It is an interesting dichotomy to both want an advanced that is 8 teams, which would reduce the skill gap in that div, while also wanting a larger main which would increase the skill gap, but I think these are both reasonable goals. Main should be a div that you need to work to get out of. As Bliztank pointed out main should be a place where above all else you learn how to work as a team. Not for nothing I think learning better teamwork was the primary thing I did in main and it allowed me to win. That being said once my team got our gameplan mostly down we just weren’t challenged that much. Having opponents you struggle with is good, and the fact of the matter is, if you can not beat low advanced teams, you are going to do poorly in advanced. Why should we coddle main teams so that way next season in advanced they just get rolled? I should also again mention that after week 2-3 swiss should be pretty good for main, since that will make sure that low main teams aren’t just fighting low advanced teams either.
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@WiLLmaTiC said in round robin advanced:
I’m not sure why you would push high main teams down to IM, that to me just does not make sense. Also the obstacle Im referring to would be the low advanced being so much better than the high main teams from last season feel like they have a shot against them.
sorry i need to proof read, what i meant was pushing the low adv teams into main.
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@Roofon I wonder how much of people not wanting to play invite is that it’s the only paid div for HL, whereas people in 6’s are used to paying in IM and up (I think? idk I don’t play 6’s)
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@Xenagos
I am sure payment offers some form of barrier, but it historically has not been a large deterrent relative to other reasons. There are a host of reasons that can lead teams to not want to play in Invite, such as wanting to make a more comfortable decision to play in a lower division, offclassing in a lower division, or the potential aspect of not wanting to compete against teams that may be much above your skill level.
It fundamentally is an issue though, as Invite should be fostering the best teams in any particular format but if there are capable teams that can compete there but are actively avoiding that division – then it hurts the overall skill level of Invite.
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dude i literally cannot fucking believe you people are typing this much
round robin is an objectively better format for adv and as soon as the one single admin that keeps pushing swiss adv is gone we will have it
there is obviously no way that this one single admin will ever change his mind so might as well just wait him out unless you’re going to start a petition to replace him
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@ethan its the rgl forums do u really think people are gonna stfu lmao
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@ethan
Hi there Ethan,
If you can find a point throughout this discussion where we objectively said that we are gonna 100% keep a format, please show me cause there seems to possibly be some confusion on your end. I’d be willing to clarify for you.
I can understand if reading a mass amount of words is difficult for you but this isn’t Discord, Snapchat, or social media where individuals are used to just typing a few sentences and calling it.
If having in-depth conversations scare you, too complex for you, or aren’t your thing, that’s understandable but traditionally Forums have been a placed where people can express themselves and/or discuss their opinions.
So, with that said, appreciate you for taking the time to express your opinion and I wish you the best of luck with this upcoming season. Your comment history seems to show you’re a positive person (For the most part) so I hope your day gets better if anything is going on.
If you think this is typing too much, I wonder how you feel about books?
As always, I’m always down to chat. I appreciate everyone who’s come to me regarding this topic and once the season is underway, I’ll talk to the representatives for Invite, Advance, and Main, to see about scheduling a round table with leaders to discuss their opinions overall about the implementation of Challenger and Round Robin.
Best of luck tonight and for everyone participating this season!
-Wize
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@Wize can i have your autograph on my chest please
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@rightnow
bump to what i said about restricting people from leading teams -
@kasper
A king doesn’t ask his subjects for one.
I should be asking for yours good sir.
Hope you’re doing well!
-Wize
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hi wize! i see that you are insulting me, but you also seem to be far too much of a bitch to do it without talking like a passive aggressive middle-aged trophy wife speaking to a target customer service rep. at the risk of me being silenced and banned since mothership’s forums are for “constructive conversation” only, i will insult you without any sugarcoating.
judging from this thread alone, you are a shortsighted, powertripping tool and a willmatic lackey as opposed to a competent, likeable highlander admin. you lack the skill, high-level experience, or highlander knowledge to make a well-informed judgement for yourself and are instead doing mindless damage control for the worst highlander head admin in rgl history.
the reason i mock you and everyone else that continues to type in this thread is because the matter of swiss vs round robin advanced has been discussed to death already, and the high level highlander community has consistently been in favor of having the second highest division be locked to an 8-team round robin. of course, i don’t blame you for not knowing this… judging from your post history and 10 pages of logs, you don’t spend very much time practicing team fortress, since you’re spending so much energy trying to build up some clout in RGL.gg Official Discord #staff-discussions with Flare and Quee Quee. i’ll link a few of those threads to give you a bit of a history lesson, although some of those threads were lost to the old forums (no worries if you’ve never heard of those either!)
https://forums.rgl.gg/topic/153/highlander-s7-advanced-happenings-discussion/10
https://forums.rgl.gg/topic/1844/highlander-season-9-survey-results
https://forums.rgl.gg/topic/1597/swiss-breakdown-s9-adv-vs-challenger/
https://forums.rgl.gg/topic/1822/advanced-is-a-joke/
https://forums.rgl.gg/topic/1931/s10-analysis-why-swiss-shouldn-t-be-used-next-season
https://forums.rgl.gg/topic/2079/regarding-advanced-for-this-upcoming-season
you’ll notice that this issue has not only been discussed for many seasons but has actually been fairly lopsided in favor of round robin… so why is it still an issue? well, this issue was actually more or less “solved” after season 7, when a main moveup team with two forfeit wins that had played almost exclusively low advanced teams during the season famously made advanced playoffs over a team that had played the top teams all season and been in close competition with the other playoff contenders. the “solution” was to introduce a new division above advanced that would be locked to 8 teams, to allow for much stronger competition near the top of highlander. micahlele and johhnyfromcali, the head admin and challenger admin at the time, did a great job of handling the new division, and all was well with the round robin issue.
the first season that both micahlele and johhny were gone, challenger vanished, replaced with an absolutely terrible 14 team swiss format advanced division where only the top two teams had any meaningful competition. most people believe that this decision was SOLELY brought on by willmatic’s own ego, as the advanced admin at the time had internally pushed to continue round robin, (which the community voted in a landslide victory in favor of) however, it came out that willmatic and his yes men had almost single-handedly made the decision to expand the division. if he hadn’t done this, his team (which died week 4) would have been moved down to main. why in the world would he have opted to do something so obviously against the community’s wishes unless he had 1) a strong argument in favor of swiss (such a thing does not publicly exist) or 2) another strong motive that would influence his decisionmaking (moving down after many seasons of being hardstuck)?
additionally, why has NOTHING changed after constant discussion in favor of rr season after season? why has the admin team chosen to die on this hill?
there is no reason you should be supporting your head admin’s terrible decisionmaking abilities. there is a reason that well liked and highly-skilled admins (micahlele, joey lemons, johhnyfromcali) all strongly support round robin, while less competent admins (willmatic, ire, you apparently) are comfortable plugging their ears and fighting the wishes of the players they volunteer their time for
wize: you seem to actually care about making the game and the mode better, which is admirable. my goal is not to be another detractor that whittles your passion into burnout. i care strongly about this issue as i truly see it to be a major factor in healthy competition in highlander, and it frustrates me to see more admins that back up poor decisionmaking instead of making a difference that i, and many other players, would like to see. please reconsider your viewpoint and internally push for rr, and better decisionmaking as a whole.
willmatic: consider this an open letter, because i know you’re reading this. resign.
to everyone else: discussing round robin should be considered pointless, as willmatic and his lackeys will never allow it. this season of advanced would be so competitive if it was round robin, but instead there are 3 or 4 dogshittington teams clogging up the div. it’s sad to see, but all we can do is wait the terrible leadership out. until then, we’re stuck running in circles.
feel free to respond if you want, but i won’t be replying to this thread again. not because i’m better than anyone here or too good for it (im most certainly not), but because i will practice as i preach and will only push for rr adv once hl has a competent head admin once again.
ps. my favorite book is asimov’s foundation and empire, followed by herbert’s dune. i’m nearly finished with nick bostrom’s superintelligence, and once i’m done with that i’m going to start on the copy of infinite jest that i recieved this last christmas.
pps. stop signing your posts like a gamefaqs thread. it makes you look like an even bigger tool.
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seasonal ‘RGL admin makes a fool of themselves on the forum and is too narrow-sighted to see how’
bless this thread, good work to all actors involved. DiCaprio has competition.
Edit: also wize should get his big wig removed lol
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@ethan
Appreciate you for taking the time to expresses yourself Ethan. Passionate players are what continue to keep competitive TF2 and HL going.
I still don’t see where you still get the idea I prefer swiss over round round but you’ll be more than welcome to attend the round table once we’ve figured out a date regarding that later on in the season. I’m glad you’re strongly passionate about this topic as you’re the type of people that I’m looking for. One that cares about the future of HL and wants to promote growth.
I don’t view you as mocking me or insulting. You’re frustrated and that’s alright. No harm done as my goal here isn’t to to create enemies or friends but to make sure that the community gets what they want and what they feel promotes the growth of the scene in a positive manner as my role is to hear, acknowledge, and make a devise decision on those that speak up. So, Thank you for displaying that.
I’ve gotten where I am in life by listening to people like yourself no matter the negative or positive response. So, I recommend you don’t keep silent because you have the right to express yourself in a way you feel fit.
Hopefully, as the season progresses, you’ll see how much I care about the scene and players like you.
As always,
-Wize
P.S Currently reading Foundation and Earth since I was gifted the series.
P.P.S I work within Cyber Security and within the industry we tend to use Emails a lot. So, it’s quite common for someone to sign off with their name/code name no matter the negative response. Feel free to contact me regarding this topic if you’d prefer to talk off the forums. I’ll be willing to listen.
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I think this discussion is super interesting. If you swap the words “invite” for platinum, and “advanced” for gold, we’ve been having this exact discussion with the exact same arguments as a community since the early days of UGC forums. I don’t believe any consensus was reached by the old generation over whether round robin or swiss was better, because it was thought that both systems had their merits. We even had a plat council to talk about this stuff back in the day.
I looked at every relevant season of UGC to see where our minds were at back then:
(Apologies if this was already looked at.)
First occurrence of round robin is season 12 (The only season with a cash prize).
Season 12: 10 team plat round robin, 20 team gold swiss.
Season 13: 17 team plat swiss, 18 team gold swiss.
Season 14: 16 team plat swiss, 21 team gold swiss.
Season 15: 13 team plat swiss, 23 team gold swiss.
Season 16: 9 team plat round robin, 16 team gold swiss.
Season 17: 13 team plat swiss, 16 team gold swiss.
Season 18: 9 team plat round robin, 17 team gold swiss.
Season 19: 12 team plat swiss, 8 team gold round robin.
Season 20: 6 team plat round robin, 13 team gold swiss.
Season 21: (Gold gets dropped and the second highest division is now silver) 18 team plat swiss, 25 team silver swiss.
Season 22: 12 team plat swiss, 28 team silver swiss.
Season 23: 10 team plat swiss, 23 team silver swiss.
Season 24: ~8 team plat swiss (many died), 28 team silver swiss.
Season 25: ~12 team plat swiss, 27 team silver swiss.
Ends here because platinum was dissolved as a division after this.
So some interesting stuff: Only 4 seasons of UGC ever had platinum as a round robin (out of 14), and it was never an occurrence that plat and gold were round robin at the same time.
If I remember correctly, the logic for having swiss over round robin was that it opened up the divisions to more move up teams that wanted access to better scrim partners, which created stronger teams in the long run. I hadn’t seen if anyone had already done this analysis previously.
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@Aegis I believe the consensus (at least for someone that only entered plat in s20) was that gold being swiss wasn’t an issue because gold usually had an invite sandbag team, so it would make sense that bottom gold teams wouldn’t have great practice. In RGL, this is different, as the vast majority of high advanced teams, while they’re in advanced, are no competition for even the lowest of invite teams.
An example for teams I played for - in RGL, the dojo. In advanced, we went 9-0 but couldn’t compete with any invite team really. In invite, we went 0-7 but would stomp every high advanced team. In UGC, an example I can think of is the Jammers. When they were in gold, they were excellent competition vs low and mid plat teams. In plat, it wasn’t even close against top silver teams despite the gold division being killed off and most of the teams that didn’t move to plat went to silver instead of dying.
I think in RGL, the swiss system in advanced is really, really bad. Because advanced teams don’t have good practice vs invite teams, they have to rely on competition within their division. In the swiss system, that is incredibly difficult to do when situations like what happened in season 7 arise, where a main moveup team made playoffs with 2 forfeit wins and a win over a team that got 1 or 2 wins in an entire season. A round robin system at least guarantees that every advanced team gets to compete in a fair system, and teams that are obviously not competitive with them move down a division as they should.