Thoughts on RGL's Future (by me :D)
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Welp, I’m doing this shit again
To preface, I love RGL, and I love competitive TF2. This is not out of hatred for specific people within the community even if it is targeted towards them. I want to try and do my part for us, which means pointing out flaws within the system and brainstorming ideas of how to improve them, even though it feels like I’m yelling into deaf ears sometimes. This was made due to the number of people that feel like they don’t have a voice within our player base; I want to try and help bring those voices out.
Thank you in advance for reading this. I want to start a conversation on the aftermath of the most recent cup, what staff and outsiders can do for the next cup to make it as smooth as possible, and the stagnating pug system. This may be a lost cause and do nothing but fuck it I’m going to try. Some of this information might be unknown or confidential, but, considering the admins/mods have to appear unified, no member of the RGL staff team will be the first one to speak up, so I will. Anyways, let’s get into it.
First, thank you to the 84 brand-new RGL players who played in the cup! However, the lack of Youtuber support for the Cup drastically reduced the Cup’s potential for RGL growth. The main Youtubers behind the cup totaled over 1 million subscribers and receive thousands of views on their videos, yet only 84 new players entered the competitive scene. The growth was underwhelming because none of the featured YouTubers promoted the cup on their channels. The only channel that promoted the cup was the Chucklenuts podcast channel, which was released the day that teams locked. Great…
Furthermore, aside from the lack of Youtuber support, the handling of the cup was a disaster. First, RGL combined main, advanced, and invite to form a single div, so Froyotech dominated its division because nobody else signed up. Second, payload maps were valued at half of 5cp and KOTH, messing up the point system. Third, RGL did not update the NR6s config, leaving it with no time limit. These major oversights from RGL made the cup less fun and less fair for anyone who did sign up.
In the future, if we try to make cups that bring in new people to the scene, then there needs to be a clearer vision for the cup to bring in as many people as possible. We need to iron out the issues beforehand from an admin perspective to improve first impressions for fledgling competitive players. By using a format that is not largely played within RGL, using outdated configs that slow down the pace of the cup, and nonsensically deprioritizing payload matches, RGL comes off as disorganized and unapproachable.
Even though the Cup did not go as well as it could have, RGL still has other ways to retain and grow its player base, such as the new RGL PUG website. For newer players, they would no longer need to know a random player to get ushered into a discord pug group that will eventually die. A website backed by RGL would allow players from all divisions to play PUGs. RGL Pugs was rather successful and created a much more open and visible space for pugs. Unfortunately, a major figure within the community refused to share with other collaborators, fucked up the website, and has yet to fix it, killing RGL PUGs.
RGL does not own or have proper access to the PUG site. It is entirely owned and operated by Dolphin. Nobody to my knowledge is allowed to improve the site, even though multiple people have stepped up and directly asked Dolphin to join the effort. I understand the website is entirely volunteer work, and I do not want to downplay the help that this community has received from Dolphin; however, because the website took three years to get to where it is today, has frequent, abrupt stops in the updates, and is solely reliant upon Dolphin, the current system for community projects is clearly failing. RGL needs to own the website, control its development, and bring on board trusted community members to bring real progress.
In general, RGL cannot rely on any individual’s infrastructure to consistently and successfully grow. By using infrastructure from those who refuse to maintain and grow it, RGL will stagnate. RGL’s community has so many talented people, and their contribution under RGL’s supervision and ownership will help RGL grow.
SIDENOTE: Something that I originally forgot to put in the essay is the caster tool that Dolphin uses which allows him to have a kill feed of events prior to them happening in the cast, allowing for him to find out which players to spectate in the cast so high impact moments are seen more often by the viewer. If this was allowed to be used by other casters it would greatly increase the quality of casts like Fireside, which now work with RGL. This is less important than the PUG system, but I wanted to still note it as being a great way to help improve the community if we just collaborated together as a whole.
Thank you if you have gotten to this point, I really hope we can create future dialog to help make RGL the best that it can be. I love you
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first !!!
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There are some massive leaps towards assumptions in your post here. Not to mention significant misunderstandings if not actual intentional ignorance of information otherwise clearly presented to you.
Furthermore, aside from the lack of Youtuber support, the handling of the cup was a disaster. First, RGL combined main, advanced, and invite to form a single div, so Froyotech dominated its division because nobody else signed up.
From the very start of planning this Cup the intent was to not cater to players already within the RGL ecosystem.
It says that plainly in the announcement article QueeQuey and I both wrote. It says this in multiple places to make that point clear.
Did you even read it?Second, payload maps were valued at half of 5cp and KOTH, messing up the point system.
It was literally intended to work this way. Winning 1 “half” (aka Round) in Stopwatch while in an NR6s division is worth 1 Round Won point. This is explained in the announcement article as well as in the text included on Payload match pages.
Did you even read it?Third, RGL did not update the NR6s config, leaving it with no time limit. These major oversights from RGL made the cup less fun and less fair for anyone who did sign up.
Again, did you even read the announcement article and the 5cp match page texts?
It was intended to function as it did.
Did you use the NR6s configs or the ones actually specified on the match pages?
Again, did you bother to read??This Cup was a success as near 100 * brand new* players got to have an experience that their direct feedback tells us was a success. Not to mention the several dozen others that found teams in AM and higher that you are completely discounting as even participated.
The fact that higher div players (like yourself) didn’t have fun…well, the whole point of this Cup was not about you.
I will not speak on the PUG topics mentioned as I am not at all involved in those matters.
But suffice it to say, you clearly are representing opinions that are missing points of key consideration and understanding regarding the NR6s Cup. Those points being ones written in clear words that are easily understood in multiple places.
This goes to say you are likely doing the same regarding Dolphin and their efforts regarding PUGs. -
camp3r why so hostile damn
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hi
i may not be the most active of the pug admins, but i could answer some of your Burning Questions you’ve crammed into my screen.
Unfortunately, a major figure within the community refused to share with other collaborators, fucked up the website, and has yet to fix it, killing RGL PUGs.
yeah idk who told you this. DolphiN (i assume is who you’re talking about here) put out an Open Alpha build of the site. its pretty common for alpha builds to go live for a bit, then come back down out of the public state to implement feedback, bug fixes, and new features. look at battlebit for example. yes, battlebit is a much more complex thing, but it went into a public alpha state in 2021, went back into development, then dropped this year. its normal for that to happen, and Dolphin was pretty open in telling people it was an alpha build.
RGL does not own or have proper access to the PUG site. It is entirely owned and operated by Dolphin. Nobody to my knowledge is allowed to improve the site, even though multiple people have stepped up and directly asked Dolphin to join the effort.
if we didn’t own the site, why would it be called “RGL PUGs”? DolphiN is not the sole contributor to the project, and its not that we don’t appreciate people reaching out, but we dont want too many cooks in the kitchen if that metaphor works in this context.
…because the website took three years to get to where it is today…
DolphiN’s RGL PUGs website =/= the one that was teased ages ago. Its a new project. The old one died in development hell because the developers found that their main projects needed priority.
Sorry for the lack of communication on the side of the PUGs team, but there hasn’t been much to comment on really. DolphiN, and the other devs on the project, have real jobs, real lives, and being the guy who does all of our camera work alongside trying to build a website for a passion project, its not all going to come together with any semblance of speed.
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BBL said in Thoughts on RGL’s Future (by me :D):
RGL does not own or have proper access to the PUG site. It is entirely owned and operated by Dolphin. Nobody to my knowledge is allowed to improve the site, even though multiple people have stepped up and directly asked Dolphin to join the effort. I understand the website is entirely volunteer work, and I do not want to downplay the help that this community has received from Dolphin; however, because the website took three years to get to where it is today, has frequent, abrupt stops in the updates, and is solely reliant upon Dolphin, the current system for community projects is clearly failing. RGL needs to own the website, control its development, and bring on board trusted community members to bring real progress.
SIDENOTE: Something that I originally forgot to put in the essay is the caster tool that Dolphin uses which allows him to have a kill feed of events prior to them happening in the cast, allowing for him to find out which players to spectate in the cast so high impact moments are seen more often by the viewer. If this was allowed to be used by other casters it would greatly increase the quality of casts like Fireside, which now work with RGL. This is less important than the PUG system, but I wanted to still note it as being a great way to help improve the community if we just collaborated together as a whole.
I would definitely check out this announcement if you missed it: https://www.teamfortress.tv/62574/day-1-update-on-rgl-pugs
TL;DR:- RGL now actually owns and is in charge of development of the project under the “RGL PUGs brand”, instead of the initial b4nny/nicell development team announced in early 2020. That means if I disappear, RGL still has the rights to use/modify the existing code.
- While I am heading the project, anyone within the RGL development team can make and push changes to it (people can apply to the dev team here: https://rgl.gg/Players/Reporting/StaffApplication.aspx)
- The current website does not use any code from the past 3 years under the b4nny/nicell development team since they will be using it in their own project, so we had to start from scratch earlier this year.
It’s currently under maintenance to address major infrastructure issues, but should be re-released very soon.
In terms of stuff like the casting cheat feed and other tech we use, I definitely planned to release a public casting suite and even discussed it with other producers like microcheeze, but the PUG site initiative popped up and took precedent over that for my time/effort. I have used it in a couple RESUP LANs to help out, but it is VERY quickly hacked together (since the cheat feed that Arie developed and most of the TF2 casting orgs previously used was basically taken out of commission), and is not user-friendly or works in a way allowing multiple casts on a single site.
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camp3r Well before I say anything, I appreciate the comment. Again this was to start a conversation so if I was wrong about something I want it to be pointed out, but I’m really confused about your reply. (and yes I did read the post you made and followed what you said to a tee on my part, this isn’t due to me not having fun this is about RGL’s growth)
I felt that something needed to be clarified before I continue. Any growth for the RGL community is great, and I am glad that the cup at least garnered some attention that part of the essay was just trying to highlight how the cup could have gone better.
Just because the cup wasn’t made for experienced RGL players does not mean there needs to be mishandling of the “not newcomer” divisions, having all 3 divs combined into one (Main, Advanced, and Invite) just turned into a hide-and-seek game with the only 6s Invite team that was made. If there was some coordination between RGL and the 6s Invite teams to try and showcase the best of RGL, maybe it would have not come to that point.
On top of that, I truly need an explanation of why having payload be worth half of koth and 5cp be a good thing, all this does is devalue one of the 3 game modes for seemingly no reason?
I would respond to the rest of your post but I want to sleep soon, I’ll finish it off with this. Your post, unlike the other posts that I will be getting to as soon as I can seems very defensive, I am not trying to attack you. Your cup had some successes and Ill give it that, but you and I both know that it could have gone better and should be used as an example, both positively and negatively, in the future so cups can be even better than they are now. I don’t want this to be an argument, I want this to be a conversation.
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everything camp3r and DolphiN said are 100% facts.
not sure what you’re trying to say here BBL. I think any number of players joining is a success. simple as
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rigatoniashes
I stand by the projects I head and will provide harsh criticism to those who so freely admonish them while clearly understanding so little about what brings them into reality in the first place.
Detracting from the efforts of so many (most being those BBL knows nothing about) by calling the Chucklenuts Cup a disastrous failure is completely disingenuous and what drives those from this scene who actually have the vigor to bring projects from simple Discord musings to actual fruition in the first place. -
Has there been any thought about making a mod, like MGE, but for 6s or highlander? Obviously, MGE matchmaking is simpler, but in theory, it could all be done in the game with a mod, with high Elo players assigned as captains with the ability to select teammates.
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camp3r
I’m curious about the reasoning behind running a NR6s cup instead of just a 6s cup. If you want to get people into competitive tf2 then why not have them play the standard game mode?Also why not add a time limit to 5cp? I think it would help some games finish on or near on time so that the next round could start. It seems like a good idea, especially in a weekend cup.
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camp3r
Honestly dude as a former RGL admin I understand that you put a lot of time and effort into this cup for 0 pay and it seems like after all of your work no one has come to pat you on the back for doing such a great service to RGL by trying to help grow its playerbase. Instead, it feels like a lot of people are turning on you. I get it.But responding in such a hostile manner to constructive criticism isn’t a good look; it discourages people in the future from speaking up and giving honest feedback when they just get shouted down by staff. BBL is not RGL’s enemy here, but you’re treating him like one. All of us here want RGL to be successful.
You’ve spent a whole lot of words tearing into BBL and how much of an idiot you think he is, but not a whole lot of words explaining and defending your reasoning for why this NR6s cup was structured this way.
From the very start of planning this Cup the intent was to not cater to players already within the RGL ecosystem.
It says that plainly in the announcement article QueeQuey and I both wrote. It says this in multiple places to make that point clear.
Did you even read it?I read the article and that was clear, but you didn’t explain why the divisions were combined. I understand why they were combined - you said you guys wanted to have 8 team divs and the way you split the divs up meant you wouldn’t have enough teams for an IM AND an adv/inv div. But I wish you would’ve explained that rather than assuming everyone could read your mind. Could you explain why you guys insisted on 8 team divs if we were only gonna play 5 matches anyways?
It was literally intended to work this way. Winning 1 “half” (aka Round) in Stopwatch while in an NR6s division is worth 1 Round Won point. This is explained in the announcement article as well as in the text included on Payload match pages.
Did you even read it?I read that entire post you linked and the match comms and it was not clear that winning on stopwatch would be disincentivized compared to 5CP and KOTH. I even checked the ruleset and it never explicitly states that you will only get 2 points for winning a payload map compared to up to 4. Maybe it was obvious to you guys, but I wouldn’t have guessed it initially, and I’m sure plenty of players would’ve been confused by this, not just me, and I’m an experienced RGL player.
I think the new players being catered to in this cup would’ve been just as confused. Regardless of whether or not you agree with me, you may want to update the rules to make it clear that this is the case so there is no confusion.
Again, did you even read the announcement article and the 5cp match page texts?
It was intended to function as it did.
Did you use the NR6s configs or the ones actually specified on the match pages?
Again, did you bother to read??I read the article and it was clear there would be no timelimit. But I assumed BBL was asking why there wouldn’t be a timelimit, not if? Maybe I’m reading it wrong.
In the end, you still did not directly address several important questions that BBL had.
- Why did none of the partnered youtubers advertise the cup before sign ups?
- Why was NR6s chosen as the format for this cup instead of Highlander or 6s?
- Why was Stopwatch intentionally disincentivized compared to 5CP and KOTH? Couldn’t you have just doubled the Stopwatch points to have it be more fair?
On a final note, as I mentioned, I was an RGL Admin and hated feeling like I never got the respect I deserved for all the hard work I put in. And I never undertook anything as massive as running a cup. 84 is a good number of new players, that’s great! But there’s no saying that many of them will continue playing in RGL after this cup, either because maybe they didn’t like the format, competitive in general, or will sit twiddling their thumbs for the next NR6s competition because they still haven’t been introduced to the main competitive formats.
If the youtubers that played in the cup have over one million combined subscribers, are you really satisfied with all of your hard work only converting less than 0.0001% into RGL players? I think you’d feel more satisfied and proud of yourself if a lot more newbies played in this cup. I wouldn’t call 84 a disaster, but imagine how many more could’ve joined if you required the youtubers to advertise the cup beforehand?
At least tell us why this was the case and what you’re planning on doing differently next time to improve the numbers. 84 is a decent start, but imo RGL needs a whole lot more to combat its massive player turnover.
tl;dr - Please don’t shoot the messengers, we’re just trying to help RGL. Acknowledge that the documentation provided wasn’t clear on some things and please answer the questions above.
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camp3r said in Thoughts on RGL’s Future (by me :D):
Chucklenuts Cup a disastrous failure is completely disingenuous and what drives those from this scene who actually have the vigor to bring projects from simple Discord musings to ac…
I wouldn’t call the Cup a failure, however, to put in the effort for 2 days with a group of community figures with an audience that large and only get 84 new players, with no guarantee they will all continue to play competitively seems to me like a large waste of potential. However, I don’t blame that on RGL. The Chucklenuts is made up of 9 content-creators totalling over half a million, subscribers. None of these creators made any sort of video or community post on youtube, this is especially devastating as some channels do ave over 100k subscribers. I didn’t even know the cup was an event until the day of, and I personally follow some of those channels. New players are great but 84 is a low result. While improvement should always be looked at positively, the Chucklenuts Cup definitely wasted a large amount of its potential. Holding a traditional sixes newcomer cup (yes I understand there are different requirements so it is not the ideal comparison) would have been so much more effective in gathering new players. When working with others outside of RGL more has to be done to actively draw any large quantity of players into the scene. I hope that RGL’s future collaborative events can see more effort from its partners, maybe then can we see a new wave of players come into the scene. Not blaming everything on the youtubers, but not using their platform is a massive waste that shouldd be learned from.
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I normally do not respond to these types of posts, but after being bored while raking leaves, I put some thought into a response I might like to leave. so on that note…
I think the main issues here are the way things are being framed and how this type of discussion is being brought about.
To start off, let me fix the notion of “Admins/mods have to appear unified”. To be frank, admins/mods should not appear unified, but actual be unified in cooperation towards decisions and goals made. Its not about agreeing with every decision every other admin makes, but rather actively putting effort into making those decisions into better one. To phrase things another way, just like how spiderman has his own “great power comes great responsibility” mantra, it also works the other way around. With great responsibility comes great power. If staff are unwilling to speak up with other staff and help to provide an appropriate solution, then they have no right to speak out against anything once everything is said and done.
If you have the responsibility to do something, you in turn have the power to do something about it. Failure to utilize that power responsibility will cause you to forfeit that power and responsibility.
It is unbecoming of an RGL staff member to not actively use their role to improve the scene and league directly through their own position, and instead undermine everyone by complaining to outside members of the league in an attempt to accomplish something they are literally in the position to resolve.
I also find it very concerning in general that you are claiming to speak on behalf of RGL Staff members.
To move on to the framing of your concerns, I can understand that there are concerns, but you have a total of 4 issues only. Its hardly fair to call any cup with only 4 issues, which half of which does not heavily affect the cup at all, any of the terms you used.
- Lack of Youtuber Support
- single combined div
- payload point values
- non-updated nr6’s config
(You could honestly just roll the Youtuber support and the single combined div complaints into one as one can be a direct causation for the other. )
So with that in mind, is there a reason you are using words like:
he handling of the cup was a disaster.
These major oversights from RGL made the cup less fun and less fair for anyone who did sign up.
RGL comes off as disorganized and unapproachable.
Not to discount your words, but if we are to believe what camp3r said:
This Cup was a success as near 100 * brand new* players got to have an experience that their direct feedback tells us was a success. Not to mention the several dozen others that found teams in AM and higher that you are completely discounting as even participated.
Then it appears that the cup achieved the goal it was designed to accomplish. It reached brand new players, introduced them to competitive tf2, they had fun, and are actively attempting to join teams. That fact in of itself, disproved the notion that the cup was less fun, a disaster, or makes RGL look disorganized or unapproachable.
Its hard for me to be critical of camp3r for reacting the way he did simply because of the way you framed your feedback. I can agree with you on some of your points, but it makes me really hard to do so when its being framed the way it is.
I will however try to contribute to a solution to all these NR6’s complaining that I have gotten tired of seeing.
Stop playing the gamemode if you do not like it.
I have gotten tired of people complaining about a gamemode they don’t like, yet continue to play in cups that use it. Quite frankly, NR6’s is only used now days for cups specially designed for new players due to it being both valve comp and the halfway point between casual and real competitive gamemodes.
Finally, back to the OP, I would like to see your ideas and solutions you are brainstormed that would help resolve or improve these issues beyond “Don’t do them”.
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Crazy how the majority of admin responses are either “it is this way cuz we said so” and “you don’t have to play the cup.” Like??? 1. You guys should be aiming for the interest of all or at least the majority of the community, nobody wanted NR6s, yet it was played anyways. Nobody wants the rules for NR6s to be the way they are, yet there are that anyways. All the admins are so severely out of touch with what people in this community want from the cups it is absurd. Let alone what anyone in this community wants in general. Also, barely below 100 is not an accomplishment for a cup that was supposed to be advertised to tens of thousands of people. Especially in a gamemode that will never officially be played again, or at least officially played and have people actually wanna play it lol. Who’s to say these 84 people will continue to play when they realize every active competitive gamemode IS COMPLETELY DIFFERENT IN ALMOST EVERY WAY.
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@Mothership said in Thoughts on RGL’s Future (by me :D):
Stop playing the gamemode if you do not like it.
idk if u noticed but Invite-main was combined into the same div lol. high div players quite literally aren’t playing it bro. I played in the cup sure, I like playing cup with friends and a lot of others do too, but nr6s is an awful format that needs to be forgotten already. I’d much rather play 7s than this shart. Give us HL and TRADITIONAL 6s cups ty
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fuzze The point is to stop supporting cups you don’t want. If literally no one signs up for a nr6’s cup, it becomes difficult to justify running them.
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@Mothership Coming from someone who played the cup, I literally just signed up to dick around with friends. Instead of just looking at pure turnout, look at what the community is saying about it. Half of us just sign up because we enjoy playing the game, and there was lots of criticism about using NR6s as a gamemode to introduce people to competitive because it is a bad representation of what the current competitive formats are actually like, as well as being a poorly designed gamemode. “Just stop signing up for it” is an awful response, because we literally just want to play Team Fortress 2 with each other at the end of the day. This is a poor excuse to justify continuing running this gamemode, if I can even say you have justified it.
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running an nr6s cup which drew a tenth of a percent of those who were supposedly going to be marketed to is a really bad turnout, 100 players is a 100 players sure, but thinking such a low turnout is fine is like a business investing $10,000 in something and getting a dollar back and then going “wow what a success!”
it wasnt advertised like it should have been, someone somewhere dropped the ball.
the cup was an objective failure, lets not kid ourselves, it came nowhere close to what it could have been.
BUT
the fact that even with little to no advertisement it drew 86 people is a good sign that there is definitely interest, its about better capturing that interest.
also highlander should probably be the mode going forward as its always been a much better transition for pubbers, since 9 people are hard to find I would even suggest automatically placing people together on teams based on classes they could choose when registering
just a thought.
rgl needs to keep doing these new player drives though, the lower divs are looking a bit sparse