A Conversation About Move-Up Teams (Short Version at the Top)
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NOTE: I am writing this after I wrote everything below this, and I might have gotten a little carried away in terms of length to be completely honest, if you do not want to read around a 1300 word post about the topic, I will try to make it as short as sweet here. I think there is a problem with the current way/what teams do get moved up into Invite, which stems from both players and admins alike. I think we can better the process in terms of what teams are selected, as well as the process of moving them up. I use the most recent move up team as the prime example, being the Imposters, and talk about how I do not think they should have been the team to move up, if any team to begin with. If you do even read this part, thank you and I hope you find my ramblings at least interesting to read. I want us to have an open conversation about this topic, please leave a comment or make another thread about the topic if you’d like, even if my points are inaccurate I want to hear other people’s sides to this.
Hey there, time to put my hat in the ring again. I want to preface this post by saying this is NOT meant to put any players/admins in a negative light, I do not hold any ill will to any of the teams/players I will be talking about in this post. I think this problem is on both ends of RGL with the players and the admins.
With the disclaimer out of the way, I want to start a conversation today centered around move-up teams in invite, and why I think there can be some improvement in the process of moving up teams. This post will be centered on the latest example, but it should be noted that there are previous examples I will not be including in this post. After The Busy Bees died in invite, it was unclear on if another team would be moved up to invite, considering how there already was a move up team due to a different team in invite dying, that being Dreamybull’s Kitchen. Ultimately, it was decided that another team would be moved up, and after a few days, it was decided by the admins to move up Imposters.
This decision has confused me, considering the fact that there are multiple other advanced teams that have beaten imposters convincingly while the imposters had most if not all of their current mains. As well as the fact that Imposters where slated to play advanced quals, where at the time of them moving up were 7th out of the 12 teams currently competing, being 1-3-1 (one of their games was a tie but due to rgl not having ties both teams were given a loss and one of their wins was against Jrealm, which I’m assuming to be a forfeit due to their not being any logs of this match) I want to give a couple of examples of them losing to advanced teams, as well as the wins that they have also accrued during the time period.
To give a TLDR of what matches they have won/lost in the past 2 weeks, (all of these will be found at the bottom of this post) here’s the short version:
Lost Against:
- 4 Advanced Quals Teams (1 Team twice)
- 1 Advanced Team
- 2 Invite Teams (1 Invite Pugscrim, 1 Actual Team)
Tied Against:
- 1 Advanced Quals Team
Won Against:
- 1 Advanced Quals Team
- 1 Pugscrim (Mainly Advanced/Invite Players with 1 Main Player)
In my opinion, this isn’t a good enough recent history to qualify for Invite, especially when (I wasn’t there for this I am going off of what I heard through the grapevine, please take this with a pinch of salt) during the most recent invite meeting the majority of teams would rather have a BYE week than essentially a free/almost free win. On top of that, other teams in advanced have a better record in both advanced quals and over scrims during the same period: Examples being Mr. Warabi Corporation, CNTF2, and Jim N Nicks to give some examples) I will admit that even some of these teams mentioned would probably be in a similar boat as Imposters, but at the very least they would be the “best” available team that can move up rather than the current situation we have.
So, to try and sum up the post since this is getting way too fucking long, due to the fact that this current decision can’t really be reversed due to the Imposters (from my understanding) already being paid up and not wanting to just chuck a team out of invite that has already been put into invite. I want to come up with a couple proposals on how we can make similar situations in the future better for the teams involved and the league as a whole. I think there are 2 main factors to this happening for multiple seasons now, the players and the admins.
I feel as though as players we should try to be more willing to go up into the top division if they clearly are the best option for being moved up, I understand the opinion of not wanting to get beaten up by the top couple of invite teams, but I personally feel as though we can slowly change this perspective. I know I am personally biased due to the fact that even in low invite I like to play in the div, I just think some more willingness to try and move up would be healthy for the league and the teams that move up. On top of that, teams/players in Invite should encourage those to move up. I feel that the culture in Invite can be very toxic towards teams trying to move up into Invite, and if there is a bit more willingness to at least not put those teams metaphorically into the dirt; we would slowly see a healthier and more competitive invite, something I think the majority of people want.
On the admin side, I think at least a step in the right direction would be talking to other Invite teams to get their opinion on if/who should be moved up, I think Invite teams would have really good insight into who is at least the closest to being ready to move up, or if it wouldn’t be good for invite if another team gets moved up. As well as possibly incentivizing the teams that do get moved up, either by paying off/reducing their fees, or other avenues (I can’t think of a great system immediately to incentivize teams to move up and I don’t want to take forever making this post, however, I do think something needs to happen to make the move-up for teams easier in general).
Thank you if you have gotten to the end of this post, I am extremely passionate about RGL as a whole and hope this can lead to some productive conversations on how we can make the situation of “moving up” better for everyone. If I got anything wrong or if you disagree, please post about it! I know it can be a difficult process, especially for those who have tried to point out issues about RGL in the past and being left on deaf ears, but I believe that from the current admins’ point of view, even through the mistakes, they want the best for RGL and the players inside of it. Thanks and have a great season!
(Going from May 11th-May 20th; past 2 weeks) ALL LOGS/TEAMS WILL BE LINKED
Lost to CNTF2 (Lost on Vigil, Lost 2-3 on Product)
Tie against Pink Lips(Lost on Vigil, Won 2-0 on Product)
Lost to Jim N Nicks (Lost 2-0 on Ashville, Lost on Vigil)
Win against Polish-Dominican Commonwealth (Won on Vigil, Won 2-1 on Product)
Lost to Street Legends (Lost on Vigil, Won 2-1 on Product)
Lost to Invite Pugscrim(mix of The Duddy Dudes and others) (Lost on Vigil, Lost 3-0 on Ashville)
Lost to CNTF2 (Lost on Swiftwater, Lost 3-0 on Product)
Lost to Pink Lips (Lost on Upward, Lost 3-1 on Ashville)
Win against Pugscrim (Won on Vigil, Won 3-1 on Product)
Lost to Mr. Warabi Corporation (Lost on Swiftwater, Lost 3-0 on Ashville)
Lost to @MST (Lost on Vigil, Lost 2-1 on Ashville) -
ever taken an economics class BBL ?
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Tacking my thoughts onto this.
I feel that the decision to move imposters up over moving up one of the several teams performing far better in advanced or having a bye-week is incredibly confusing to me considering the league’s stance on team strength in invite. For s17, only 7 teams were placed in invite despite 8 (iirc) requesting to play. The argument for only 7 was, as taken directly from the Season 17 Invite and Adv quals info blog post, “This was decided due to the skill discrepancy between Invite and Advanced. Ultimately, in this case, forcing a team to move-up into Invite that is not truly Invite ready would harm both that team and the Invite division.”
I’m curious as to the reason Imposters was rejected from Invite last season but was moved up this season despite the team’s lackluster performance in quals. As BBL stated, there are at least 3 teams that would have been far more qualified to be moved up to invite. Mr. Warabi Corporation, CNTF2, and Jim N Nicks. Each of These teams has a has shown strong results in adv quals (or just scrims in the case of WarbCo) which demonstrate these teams to be overall stronger than Imposters.
My personal perspective as a player on one of the above mentioned rosters is that Imposters being moved up is an out of season April fools joke. I don’t know what discussions went on behind closed doors, but I feel that Imposters being moved up diminishes that value of qualifiers as a whole because it looks like to me that selecting invite as your preferred div is seemingly enough to get you moved up from barely making advanced(possibly main) to being in Invite.
Onto attitudes toward being moved up. I can’t speak for my team, but I would personally have been ok with being moved up from Advanced into Invite if my team was the clear best choice. I believe that playing in the highest div is something players should strive for. If a collection of league staff and current Invite teams believe that my team is at the level where we can compete in Invite, That should be taken as a badge of honor rather than the seeming punishment it is now. The skill gap in Invite is far more pronounced than in any other div and the introduction of league fees are what I believe to be the main factors in this attitude, A move-up team would be in a position to place/win in Advanced. Getting moved suddenly means they suddenly have to cough up the league fees and likely end up at the bottom of the Invite.
probably rambled a bit too much but that’s my two cents
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BBL To give my own two cents, I think it’s a really tricky situation.
Although I obviously can’t speak towards RGL’s process for this, I personally would boil it down to these factors when considering moving up teams:
-Experience
-Performance
-Recency
-Team consent
-Classes
-Team historyOne one hand, it is seemingly unfair to force a team that has spent however long assembling a roster for a certain division and moving that team to another. This would put players out of their comfort zone and probably result in a higher likelihood of said team dying, or at the very least losing members. It also ensures the stability of team counts and making sure divisions are able to fill out each spot with minimal risk of any teams dying.
On the other hand, if one team is clearly outperforming others then they should not be entitled to play in a division when they have consistently shown that they play higher level. There also may be teams that are willing to play at a higher level, even if they are arguably worse than other teams in their division. This is definitely true for Impostors, and while there are other teams that are performing better, they may not want to go up a division when they know they aren’t ready for that.
My view is going to be inherently biased because I am on Mr. Warabi Corporation, however I do want to express that experience is also an important factor to consider. Does having more experience mean a team should be more susceptible to being moved up? It’s tough to say without specifics, but I think it still factors a lot into that kind of decision-making. I don’t know all the details behind how each team feels about playing in Invite, and I don’t know the exact history of every single player in question.
I think experience is ultimately more of a valuable aspect than current performance to consider when deciding whether to move up a team. A lack of such consideration results in unfair punishment towards inexperienced players relative to their divisions for exceeding while simultaneously loosening anti-sandbagging measures. With that being said, I don’t believe Impostors should be in Invite when considering the performance and experience of them and, as you said, the several other teams that would likely be stronger contenders for that final division spot. I think you could make valid arguments both for or against any of the other advanced teams being moved up. My guess is that the main difficulty is finding a team that is willing to actually play in Invite, and so the option is to defer to whichever team is willing, which in this case is Impostors. It’s a tough dilemma, but I do want to express the opinion that the choice made here was probably not the right one.
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The league cannot force-move teams from “high” advanced into bottom invite without risking a chainkill and chunking the upper bracket of advanced
(I cannot say if these teams would or would not survive such a move, just a joke based on the teams BBL listed. However, I can say that the gap between a team like warbco and moveup team dk is, presently, rather vast)I think it would be helpful to players if the league clarified what the primary goal of the invite division is. It seems unclear if the division is meant to house:
- the 1st-8th perceived-strongest teams at season start
- a showcase of top talent, in particular for teams strong enough to warrant an official “invite”
- the 8 strongest teams that asked to be invite on registration
Highlander fun fact! Yesterday (Tues), TheS4rr considered reforming last season’s 5th place invite team, FroggieLand, instead of his other plans for the season. After looking into it, though, he discovered that the Impostors, who had been moved up the night prior (Mon), had paid up within about 15 minutes of being placed into invite. Staff committed to their decision, leaving the Impostors in invite instead of offering the moveup spot to FroggieLand instead.
Whether or not you believe this is the right decision is subjective. Any decision here has its own pros and cons. The choice, however, is reflective of goal 3 that I outlined earlier. Despite being behind 6 rival teams in the advanced qualifier standings, the Impostors were almost definitely the only team out of the top 8 that clicked “invite” when they registered for their preferred division.
If staff were pursuing goal 1 for the division, they would likely value FroggieLand’s mid- and placement-invite experience across multiple seasons enough to warrant the inconvenience and loss of trust created by pulling the rug out from under the Impostors. It’s also unlikely that they would consider this iteration of the Impostors as the region’s 8th strongest team in the face of many rival teams presently outperforming them (as BBL presented in the OP).
If staff were pursuing goal 2, it’s certainly possible that they view the Impostors as a team worthy of an invite to the division since they’ve made playoffs in that division in the past. It’s also possible that staff would think twice about “showcasing” them, however, since they have yet to “prove” that this iteration of their team is competitive with the other invite teams from this season. If this is the case, we can only speculate staff’s rationale, however it would make sense for the league not to revoke the the Impostors’ privilege to play if they had already been formally invited to do so.
I was a prime hater of 7-team invite, however, if the league is committed to goal 2 and only inviting top talent, it would also have made sense for them to choose not to extend any invite to the division, citing the skill gap between the top 7 teams and the rest of the league, as was the case last season. This also would have afforded the league the opportunity to extend an invite to FroggieLand if they so desired, since the slot would still be available.
In the end, I think the goal of the division is not clear between individual staff members, OR the staff have collectively decided to move to goal 3 after significant criticism of 7-team invite last season driving them away from goal 2. Or staff have an entirely different goal that I haven’t considered.
I get the impression that the sentiment on Discord, and especially TFTV, is that the admins are neanderthals that wouldn’t be able to put their shoe on the right foot without a community poll and input from invite players (that by and large wouldn’t offer any). I don’t feel this is the case, I think staff tend to make pretty balanced decisions well enough on their own, although communication and transparency are always pleasant to see.
For these reasons I’m personally pretty neutral on this moveup. It has pros, the most significant of which being the assurance that the team they move up won’t die, leaving the league still with an empty 8th slot and down one strong advanced team. The league has a history of erring on the side of safety when making out-of-game decisions, and this is pretty in-line. I would definitely like to hear from staff what their shared vision for invite is, and I’d also be interested to hear from other invite players what they would like invite to be.
(P.S. Please move up gortlander instead so that I can win. Thanks Lol)
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It’s important to consider the monetary aspect of invite.
Each team pays $153 and there are 7 paying teams (assuming adv winner plays). This means that in total there is usually $1071 paid to RGL
The prize pool they set in their announcement was $516 for 1st, $350 for 2nd, and $158 for 3rd. This adds up to $1024. RGL probably pockets the small difference here and puts the profits toward the site upkeep or for processing fees.
Changing the 7 paying teams to 6 paying teams would mean that only $918 is paid to RGL. This means RGL would be short $106 to the prize pool.
Something else to consider this season is that to my knowledge WCF is being forced to pay up meaning that if RGL did do a 7 team invite they would not be actively losing money, but they are more financially incentivized to make it an 8 team invite if there is an advanced quals team willing to pay and move up without dying. This is also an added layer of safety incase WCF gets enough original mains to play on their team to waive fees.
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spaghetticonfetti I agree that it’s something to consider, but to be honest, I don’t think it is a deciding factor, especially with the minimal amount of money we are considering. Maybe this is a pretentious opinion, but I would be extremely surprised if RGL administration would refuse to cough up 106$ for the sake of keeping a format alive.
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BBL said in A Conversation About Move-Up Teams (Short Version at the Top):
1 Pugscrim (Mainly Advanced/Invite Players with 1 Main Player)
do wanna sprinkle in some extra context about that 830,
it was formed 10 minutes prior at inqs request because he didn’t have an 830.our scout didn’t know how to play HL
we had no maincaller
that shit was a fresh uncletopia -
Former Admin and one of the main creators for qualifiers.
The entire process of organizing and executing a qualifier is to help the admin team decide where teams are ranked with their peers. Invite as a whole is not a right, but a privilege to play earned by essentially being good at the video game. If you are not in the top 8-10 ranked team in the entire league then you have no business being in invite.
With the large history of the imposters it’s very obvio us that they are not a invite level team currently. They never have been, truthfully. I will give them credit for taking the beatings every time and preventing the bye weeks in those seasons. It’s clear to me that for the imposters it’s extremely important to play which is why they paid up so fast. It will be a absolute injustice to the other invite teams to play a team that is not invite ready. For the imposters themselves for wasting their own time and money to play in a division they don’t belong, and lastly for the league to let a team take a spot from a more deserving team in your flagship division.
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grey said in A Conversation About Move-Up Teams (Short Version at the Top):
… with the minimal amount of money we are considering … I would be extremely surprised if RGL administration would refuse to cough up 106$ for the sake of keeping a format alive.
Yo I agree it’s not much money and I think in terms of “coughing up” dollars it shouldn’t be on random individual admins that already volunteer their time, we know the league itself has always operated in the red. The responsibility of “keeping the format alive” falls on the players imo
On the subject of money incentives, what Mr. Confetti said is pretty insightful since players like me don’t even think about that stuff. The league doesn’t seem to like the idea of adding a cost to any hl div except for inv but as they saw this season, dudes are clamoring to play in advanced too
I’d be in support of paying like a $25 team fee to register for or play in advanced. A small fee (relative to invite’s fee) would probably come down to the TL or an individual player paying it for the team since for most people that’s not enough to try and split it 9 ways. Of course not everyone has the means and that’s important to consider but I get the impression that the majority of players in advanced (really most players in general) are Serious Gamers with a pretty good computer connected to a high refresh rate monitor. Anything less than $30 is certainly worth it to me compared to other games at the price point
A small fee for advanced teams could partially go to a comparably small prizepool, or the league could lean into the “you can earn a free moveup if you win!” angle, basically offering teams the chance to turn $20ish into $153 by winning
Whether or not this particular moveup decision was money-motivated, it would probably be best in the long run for all parties if the league could operate in the black
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BBL what’s better is that I requested for FroggieLand to be moved back to invite around an hour after Imposters was moved up (offclassing ain’t what it used to be).
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Heres mr grts reasoning. Tbh it makes sense cuz idk me me, warabi, isaac or even bud/tlm would want to play invite and end up living. In this very rare circumstance yes inq obviously might even be a main team but no matter what happens you know their team is not going to die and if one of the adv moveups is going to go 0-7 anyways It doesn’t really matter.
Only place i see this being an issue is the s4rr comment above me
cucking a real invite team out of a spot is dumb as fuck let froggielang go inv and bring imposters back down to main i mean adv?
thinking about it tho might as well just have 7 in invite
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This is a lot of words, sorry.
Hi, I suppose I owe some more of an explanation than what I have said in the Advanced division qualifiers channel (see mk’s post).
I’d like to walk through all of these points in order to make things as linear and easy to follow as possible, so if you haven’t read the whole thread, you can get a pretty decent idea of what was said, but you should read all of the posts to ensure that I haven’t taken something and twisted it unintentionally.
First, some background on what has happened from a staffing perspective:
With this season starting out, I had a total sign up list of 12 teams for Invite. You’ll see the main 6 being returning teams like somebody help and MST, or mashups of teams from the past like The Busy Bees (TBB from now on) and The Duddy Dudes.
The remaining 6 got split into 3 groups internally (i.e. in my brain):
Teams that are likely to perform and do well in Invite
Teams that may not be ready for Invite, but could still give it a shot
Teams that got made on accidentOf those teams, I was entirely expecting Mustardoverlord’s team to die, but they had players rostered that made it such that if they did live, they would shitroll every other division to the moon. I was also assured that the team would try to live as much as possible.
What I was not expecting was TBB to die, which threw a wrench in my plans. At that point, I was still operating under the assumption that Mustardoverlord’s team was still living. This wasn’t entirely unfounded, as they had told me that they were alive and just waiting for scrims. With a team dead, and one team very obviously capable and willing to take the spot, I moved Dreamybull’s Kitchen up.
While Advanced qualifiers were running, I got word that the contact I had with the Mustardoverlord team had left, and couldn’t play. I then had to wait for a bit to confirm that team was dead, by which time, Advanced qualifiers finished their first weekend.
I then took the final remaining alive team that requested Invite at that point, pulled them into a ticket, and said they could play Invite if they wanted to, just like I had last season. Last season, all of the responses were resounding No’s, while this season, the moveups both said yes. The only difference being that instead of me going about and asking Advanced teams, who by historical records tend to die, kick, scream, and not want to pay for Invite, I asked the teams we already had signed up for that division.
I do agree a lot with what BBL has said in terms of Invite having a stigma about it, in that there’s a vast skill differential between players who barely make it and those who continually do well. And I also agree to the points about talking to the players more to have a better feel of how the players want things to be run, which is why we held a returning Invite leaders meeting in April to discuss an issue like this.
Leaders tended to favor having an 8th team, no matter who it was, over having 7 teams + a Bye Week. Bye’s lose out potential map knowledge, you lose out on a consistent schedule, and you could have to miss your favorite map.
ethanf kinda nailed why my decision making changed across 3 seasons: I don’t want to chainkill/bribe teams to move up just so they can get steamrolled for 7 weeks straight. I do think that I can provide a decent list of criteria for what the Invite division should be, but I would need to workshop it with the other admins a bit so that its not just a list of things I want to see.
As for the prize pool issue spaghetti & grey pointed out: “… I would be extremely surprised if RGL administration would refuse to cough up $106 for the sake of keeping the format alive.”
You’d be right in that sentiment, and in the past I have coughed up fees in the past for a team that didn’t want to pay to play. Which also raises some concerns about giving Advanced a fee to pay. While I think that the free moveup is a good incentive, I do think that we (RGL) are trying to get Advanced away from being a 10-mile gap to Invite.
As for the offers I’ve gotten for other teams to take the Impostors place, I’m not entirely sure what else I can do beyond telling them that if they wanted to play Invite, there’s a dropdown box for it when you sign up. I get that there are teams capable of beating the Impostors, I also get that there are teams who are willing to change their roster to be much, MUCH stronger than most teams in the league, and while I appreciate how much people do care about Invite’s health, I have to set a limit somewhere.
Assuming I could remove a team from Invite for “poor performance” or similar, what good would that do for the scene other than show that 2-3 people can basically tell you you’re so dogshit that we’re gonna take your $153 and give it to someone else. Even if we refunded that money, that’s still a loss in processing fees for both sides. It’s a lose-lose.
With all of that word vomit above, I want to be clear that everything written above my post is valid criticism of the league, and that I do take responsibility for an action that seems out of the blue and shortsighted. However, with the information I had at the time, and the time crunch given to me to not ruin the rest of the Advanced qualifier event, I made the only reasonable decision I could. Invite leaders mentioned wanting 8 teams, no other teams had reached out that they wanted to move up or re-form, and the clock was ticking to keep the new Advanced quali format from doing a pop shove-it into a pit of flames.
If you have more questions, please reach out to me. I may not respond instantly, but I do care a lot about the league and how its players want to play, and I will get back to you as soon as I am able.
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yogrrt said in A Conversation About Move-Up Teams (Short Version at the Top):
Leaders tended to favor having an 8th team, no matter who it was, over having 7 teams + a Bye Week. Bye’s lose out potential map knowledge, you lose out on a consistent schedule, and you could have to miss your favorite map.
Lowkey surprising to me, not sure why missing out on what is essentially a shart scrim is rlly that preferable to bye. Especially if ppl are being srs in this thread when they say impostors might be main level, u can’t convince me otherwise that 99% of invite players wouldn’t troll vs a main level team and learn nothing.
Also idk I get the desire to maintain the “prestige” of invite, but maybe it’s just me being boomer but like the scene is so small that it’s really not that hard to know most players and their true skill level so to speak irrespective of their division history. Like who are you even showing this prestige too, ppl within the league will know how good you really are (fake invite player type beat) and your matches are NOT getting casted so the randos aren’t seeing you either lol. I would of course rather not water down invite if it can be helped, but personally I don’t put too much weight on maintaining the sanctity of the div. For me personally if 8 team invite is the goal I think it’s reasonable for admins to prefer a risk-averse strat and go for a team that is weaker but will live to avoid chainkill in adv.
I think the Froggie thing though is legitimately unlucky lmao, maybe you put a delay on paying fees or something if u move up a team to avoid that situation again LOL idk. Or we just blame s4rr.
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yogrrt Thank you for your transparency on all of this. I don’t mean to shove myself into this, but one of the things you said really threw me off and I was hoping for some clarification.
yogrrt said in A Conversation About Move-Up Teams (Short Version at the Top):
Assuming I could remove a team from Invite for “poor performance” or similar, what good would that do for the scene other than show that 2-3 people can basically tell you you’re so dogshit that we’re gonna take your $153 and give it to someone else. Even if we refunded that money, that’s still a loss in processing fees for both sides. It’s a lose-lose.
I mean this in the most respectful way possible but I don’t really see what your argument is here? My blunt opinion is that refunding a team’s fees doesn’t say that they’re dogshit, it says that RGL is showing accountability towards a mistake they made. It’s objective that Impostors have a worse record than the majority of other advanced qualifier teams, so it’s not exactly controversial to say they are not invite ready. By that logic, teams could place themselves in as high of a division they like, and then defend being moved under the guise of being called “dogshit” by admins. As for funds, correct me if I’m wrong, but I would think that refunding fees would be an easy process. Processing fees for 153$ would amount to what, like 10$ max? whatever it is, the same point I made earlier that you responded to still applies. For that matter, I’d personally be happy to cover transfer fees if need be.
Especially with Froggyland wanting to move back up to Invite and main-class, I guess I don’t really understand what else could be preventing that swap from being made.
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The monkey’s paw has curled and your wishes are granted.
Frogg has been moved to invite, exactly as you wanted.