RGL HL 2023: Season Schedule Adjustments
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Hey everyone,
It was super neat being able to see the engagement in the Expanding the Prizepool thread, and has given us a good idea of where people are on certain aspects!
Another change we are looking into for next year and beyond is reducing the number of HL seasons per year from 3 to 2, specifically to have Winter and Summer seasons. A big part of it is to increase the flexibility of the seasons. Holidays aside, we noticed that off-seasons were becoming increasingly shorter, especially after players voted on including a break between the regular season and playoffs.
With 7 weeks in the regular season and up to 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 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.
We would like to increase the off-season to better benefit teams that hope to play in the active seasons.- Increasing off-season will give returning teams more time to have a break if needed, especially after competing in playoffs
- It gives new and returning teams more time for tryouts and recruiting players so that there isn’t a scramble for finding players last second
- Allows teams to have plenty of time to scrim potentially played maps so that they can feel more confident going into the season
- Helps prevent player and team burnout
- Longer team registration periods to allow for more potential teams
It also provides benefits for our staff to improve the tournaments for the players, since we can potentially change the season length and incorporate more cups or events throughout the year. Cups can especially help fill the off-season as a low-commitment option for players that can’t play an entire season as well.
What do you guys think about this idea? Do you view this as a potentially positive change or a waste of potential playtime? It’s still in discussion for our staff so we’d love to hear everyone’s thoughts!
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could potentially be a great idea if you extend the reg season to say 9 weeks - invite has a 10 team RR, and the increased number of weeks means there’s some kind of new map played every season, be it an actual new map like proot/eruption/rapids or bringing back an older map like borneo or gully, allowing for diversity in the map pool without needing to take out established maps
9 week regular season + 1 week break before playoffs + 5 potential weeks for playoffs = 15 weeks per season, x2 = 30 weeks taken up by seasons, leaving 22 weeks of off season, 11 per season so almost 3 months between seasons
could have the season end, wait a month, run a (potentially 2 week) cup, then have another month off and that takes you right up to the next season. or you do 3 weeks off > 1 weekend cup > 3 weeks off > 1 weekend cup > 3 weeks off > new season
i’m in favor
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consta A longer off season would be nice, having more time to get a solid roster together before the season starts would be much appreciated, not to mention just having more downtime in general between seasons. Would totally be down for this
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I wanna elaborate on a few of these things to give the benefits I personally see the most from this.
since we can potentially change the season length
Right now, the 7 week season kinda sucks. 7 weeks is not enough for Swiss to calibrate properly, so strength of schedule varies a lot, and final season seeding is also really inconsistent. Also, the season feels rushed as a result - teams die earlier maybe because they feel it’s impossible to catch up/make the necessary roster changes. Making the season longer solves for this, and now, I think we have the maps for it.
Cups can especially help fill the off-season as a low-commitment option for players that can’t play an entire season as well.
This is a big one. Lots of people can’t play HL or TF2 comp because of commitment - they don’t have the time to put two hours all of three days for seven weeks or more into TF2 - but may be able to make a few matches over a weekend for a cup. Giving them that option grows our community and makes HL more accessible to all.
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consta Just to give my own two cents on this, I personally really enjoy the current timespans for Highlander seasons. While I understand that bringing longer overall seasons could definitely be beneficial in a number of ways, I do think there are some disadvantages that should be listed.
-3 months of off-season would give teams that form earlier a decently large cohesion and coordination advantage, resulting in large skill variation per div by the time the season starts. This is especially true for a division like newcomer.
-For people who exclusively play Highlander, a 3 month break is quite a long time and I could see people forgetting it exists and moving on to other things entirely.
-I think everyone hates either proot, lakeside, cascade, or all of the above. Having to play multiple maps per season that you dislike is probably going to be draining.
-While I understand that a mid-season cup would help maintain interest, I worry that a low commitment environment is gonna result in a lot of trolling. This is somewhat standard for a cup, but there are going to be some that will take it more seriously due to the lack of current or soon-upcoming HL season.
-Considering how long the offseason lasts, it will be a lot harder to track what teams do and do not exist in divisions; this is pretty much negated by the current 1 month offseason because of the relative time that people have to join teams, and the times that teams have to scrim before the season starts.I personally prefer the current format, but if there is a switch, I do think there are valid concerns like these that need to be considered.
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grey said in RGL HL 2023: Season Schedule Adjustments:
-3 months of off-season would give teams that form earlier a decently large cohesion and coordination advantage, resulting in large skill variation per div by the time the season starts. This is especially true for a division like newcomer.
-For people who exclusively play Highlander, a 3 month break is quite a long time and I could see people forgetting it exists and moving on to other things entirely.I don’t think we’d do a 3 month break. In the original post Constantly says that the biggest potential is for Winter and Summer seasons and cups throughout the year - in particular skipping a Summer season is a big waste of when a lot of especially school/uni age players tend to be more free.
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I dont mind going to 2 seasons, so long as that comes with 9 week seasons at a minimum plus some off season cups or something
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I prefer three seasons, although I understand that the off-seasons are getting pretty short.
If this is to be implemented right the 6s schedule and the hl schedule should be alternated so that when hl is in an off-season 6s is on, or as close to this as it can get when working around seasons and holidays. That could create more opportunities for players to do both competitive formats. I assume most prefer to choose one or the other so they don’t play scrims 6-7 days a week.
As mentioned by others, I also assume it would need more weeks per season. This would obviously create more issues since it’s clearly already difficult to get 8 invite teams, much less 10 or 12.
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yeah, more off season. I want bigger breaks between seasons. Took a year break from burnout in S9.
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Having longer time between season would be nice. I always felt like i was scrambling for time and scheduling around constant seasons is pain 0-o
sounds like a good change! :DD
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grey said in RGL HL 2023: Season Schedule Adjustments:
consta Just to give my own two cents on this, I personally really enjoy the current timespans for Highlander seasons. While I understand that bringing longer overall seasons could definitely be beneficial in a number of ways, I do think there are some disadvantages that should be listed.
-3 months of off-season would give teams that form earlier a decently large cohesion and coordination advantage, resulting in large skill variation per div by the time the season starts. This is especially true for a division like newcomer.
-For people who exclusively play Highlander, a 3 month break is quite a long time and I could see people forgetting it exists and moving on to other things entirely.
-I think everyone hates either proot, lakeside, cascade, or all of the above. Having to play multiple maps per season that you dislike is probably going to be draining.
-While I understand that a mid-season cup would help maintain interest, I worry that a low commitment environment is gonna result in a lot of trolling. This is somewhat standard for a cup, but there are going to be some that will take it more seriously due to the lack of current or soon-upcoming HL season.
-Considering how long the offseason lasts, it will be a lot harder to track what teams do and do not exist in divisions; this is pretty much negated by the current 1 month offseason because of the relative time that people have to join teams, and the times that teams have to scrim before the season starts.I personally prefer the current format, but if there is a switch, I do think there are valid concerns like these that need to be considered.
I’m sorry chief, I understand the sentiment of wanting to play more HL but some of the reasoning in this post sucks
-3 months of off-season would give teams that form earlier a decently large cohesion and coordination advantage, resulting in large skill variation per div by the time the season starts. This is especially true for a division like newcomer.
So we should just mandate that all teams are forcibly killed after one season? wouldn’t be fair if a team lost a match to a continuing roster because they had a coordination advantage!
-For people who exclusively play Highlander, a 3 month break is quite a long time and I could see people forgetting it exists and moving on to other things entirely.
the offseason is already 2 months for teams that don’t make / go far in playoffs, anyone who forgets about the HL community because of an additional month is likely an actual toddler
-I think everyone hates either proot, lakeside, cascade, or all of the above. Having to play multiple maps per season that you dislike is probably going to be draining.
fair point, but at the current pace you’re probably playing 2/3 of those maps in 3 seasons a year for 6 matches, and the new pace would be 3/3 in 2 seasons a year for 6 matches. additionally, the new format would give more opportunity for testing newer maps to cause the truly disliked maps to be replaced a lot more quickly than now
-While I understand that a mid-season cup would help maintain interest, I worry that a low commitment environment is gonna result in a lot of trolling.
Again, fair point, but these cups don’t exist right now, so it’s not really an actual loss. you’re going to expand the player base, even if only marginally, by offering lower-commitment options, both for duration and how hard people have to try. i’ve got a bunch of boomer friends that don’t have the time to main but would love to just mess around offclassing for a weekend, and it serves as a good foot in the door to keep people coming back.
-Considering how long the offseason lasts, it will be a lot harder to track what teams do and do not exist in divisions; this is pretty much negated by the current 1 month offseason because of the relative time that people have to join teams, and the times that teams have to scrim before the season starts.
Any of the div admins can contest me if i’m wrong, but I see this as a non-issue for anyone other than crusty gremlins that f5 the main team spreadsheet hourly during the offseason. it’s the offseason, you don’t need to have a finger on the pulse of all teams at all times, and giving the staff a chance to just let teams form naturally rather than needing to worry about the invite/adv team count the week after the season ends is probably a good thing for them too.
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TheS4rr said in RGL HL 2023: Season Schedule Adjustments:
As mentioned by others, I also assume it would need more weeks per season. This would obviously create more issues since it’s clearly already difficult to get 8 invite teams, much less 10 or 12.
One thing that we’ve discussed/could do is, with a 8 or 10 week season, have a 5/6 team double round robin respectively instead of a 10 team round robin with 9 weeks
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Alto said in RGL HL 2023: Season Schedule Adjustments:
rather than needing to worry about the invite/adv team count the week after the season ends
this is another thing, actually. right now like, teams form, play for 3 weeks, and then decide they don’t want to play with each other after all. oh, shucks, the registration deadline is coming up in two days. guess we’ll just roster to sub/rr on our friends’ teams
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grey said in RGL HL 2023: Season Schedule Adjustments:
-I think everyone hates either proot, lakeside, cascade, or all of the above. Having to play multiple maps per season that you dislike is probably going to be draining.
To be completely honest, I think the biggest reason people didn’t enjoy maps like Proot and Lakeside was that there simply wasn’t enough time to properly learn the maps. Many mentors weren’t familiar enough with them (mostly Proot), so it made it considerably harder for players to learn them. If you don’t know a map, you probably aren’t going to enjoy it. A longer off season would give teams more time to familiarize themselves with the maps and practice them, which would give us a better idea if the map itself is the issue or if it’s a simple case of unfamiliarity.
I am aware that many teams may not want to scrim those maps in offseason, but I feel extending it would at least give them a better chance to become familiar with the maps and give them a more honest try.
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Speakers Especially about Lakeside, I think this is actually a very good point. Lakeside can be really fun to play with proper team coordination, which takes a lot of time to build. It’s super unfun with a last minute team though, and if we can reduce the proportion of last minute teams, more players will have fun on lakeside
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I’m all for more time in between seasons. It often times feels like highlander never ends and you end up falling behind as a team if you take more than a week break in between seasons assuming you played in playoffs. For example, after winning advanced last season I was somewhat burnt out, but after a week break we had to get right back in to scrimming so we’d have time to try people out, i think this shouldn’t be the case and having a longer break will make it so people have more time to not play HL while still staying on track as a team (i.e. not having to do last-minute tryouts and stuff like that).
Another thing I’d like to bring up and I think this is a really good idea, I’m someone who’d like to play HL and 6s but I have limited time, maybe if 6s and HL ran during each others breaks it’d be easier to balance the formats, I understand that you probably can’t fit a whole 6s season in between 2 HL seasons but I believe you can probably come pretty close. For example, having winter and summer HL seasons and fall and spring 6s seasons. -
vorboyvo I arise from the wrack-strewn grave immured in the heart of a sunken cave in which I’ve rested, restless, grieving; a wrong too deep to simply leave be has been invoked, and I must brave the cruel and cutting light believing it is not too lost to save.
Steel is a map which requires proper team coordination. Lakeside is a sniper-ridden hellscape dotted with desiccated corpses, crowned by a single cramped slaughterhouse. You may like it if you wish. It is not to be compared to a real team-coordination map.
I will refrain from opining on the main question, for the reasons I’ve mentioned to you, but as I’m here anyway, I will ask for the public record: Where got “no 3 month break”? If two 12-week “on-seasons” (7+5 per OP), then that’s 24 weeks on, 28 weeks off, making it 14 weeks (3.5 months) off per season. Even if the regular season is extended to 9 or 10 weeks, doesn’t that make a minimum of three months off even for finalists, and more than that for non-placement teams?
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scaredy bat said in RGL HL 2023: Season Schedule Adjustments:
Steel is a map which requires proper team coordination. Lakeside is a sniper-ridden hellscape dotted with desiccated corpses, crowned by a single cramped slaughterhouse. You may like it if you wish. It is not to be compared to a real team-coordination map.
At no point was Lakeside compared to Steel, you’re the only one who brought it up. I agree it is barely a team-coordination compared to Steel, but the point was that Lakeside would likely be much better enjoyed if players learned how to properly coordinate on the map, as minimal or as large as said coordination would be. If you watch Lakeside matches, mostly in lower divisions, many teams barely even toyed with bathhouse when they played. There is obviously a lot to be learned on the map, and I think even if it’s not enjoyable, it at least deserves a better chance.
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scaredy bat said in RGL HL 2023: Season Schedule Adjustments:
Where got “no 3 month break”? If two 12-week “on-seasons” (7+5 per OP), then that’s 24 weeks on, 28 weeks off, making it 14 weeks (3.5 months) off per season. Even if the regular season is extended to 9 or 10 weeks, doesn’t that make a minimum of three months off even for finalists, and more than that for non-placement teams?
Sure, but it won’t be all at once, and it will be dotted by cups or other events (region wars? newcomer cup? exp map mini-season? the possibilities are endless)
Let’s do the math real quick. Assume we have a 9-week regular season, though the math isn’t super different for 8 or 10 - I would want to lengthen the regular season in any case, since we have the flexibility to.
Then we have a total of 14 weeks used by each of the two seasons. This makes 28 out of 52 weeks in the year, leaving 24.
Now let’s work with those 24 weeks. Some may have to be holiday weekends (July 4 [Canadians weep in sorrow], Christmas, etc.) and so (although I don’t love the practice of delaying for holidays in general, and would rather have teams reschedule matches) we lose a few of those - let’s say we’re down to 22.
Let’s say, then, that we want six weeks in each pre-season, possibly including a cup, and including quals as necessary. Now we’re down to 10 more weeks - perfect time to have a smaller event or several!
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humphrey To be clear, I’d love this but it would really only work if 6s also went with two seasons a year. The HL admin team has no control over that, and I don’t think exclusively-6s players would be very happy with it either.
The other way it could work is if we did what ETF2L does and made the HL season shorter which is not something I’m personally interested in at all.
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