these arguments are always such a pain in the ass tbh because the inherent moral high ground in “stop saying slurs” automatically makes anyone arguing against it look like a mouthbreather

The root problem, as I see it, comes from the fact that many tf2 players conflate their “RGL experience” (which is a professional/public setting and should be held to a certain standard of conduct) with their own private social lives (private setting held to a lower standard). it’s RGL’s job to ensure that all experiences necessary to reasonably partake in their league are held to that aforementioned “certain standard of conduct.” Currently, these “experiences” are defined as pretty much everything RGL-sponsored (including but not limited to RGL pugs, forums, matches, and discord servers), as well as “optional” scrims.

I think the move to punish players for offenses in scrims is a very good move, because realistically scrims are necessary for meaningful participation in RGL and thus should be held under the same rules as everything else. It’s worth noting that including scrims as an essential part of the RGL experience differs vastly from other leagues and was met with understandable backlash, but again, I personally think it’s for the better.

However, privately-run PUG groups are not essential to the RGL experience. I think RGL’s reluctance to definitively rule private pug groups as “not in our jurisdiction” makes this problem a lot worse than it could be, but that’s an off topic gripe. Private PUG groups, from RGL’s perspective, exist for social purposes first and game-related purposes second. No arguments. Regardless of the stated aims of the creators or players of these groups, they are secondary to the things already under the “RGL Umbrella”, as it were. You are willingly choosing to enter these private spaces on your own, and demanding those inside be held accountable feels like a vast, vast overreach of what a TF2 league should be doing.

If an individual is concerned about experiencing slurs/hate/etc, all experiences deemed essential and necessary to participate in RGL are (reasonably) safe spaces. Anyone can safely experience RGL, or at least have the knowledge anyone violating that safety will be punished.

If I solo Q a game of CSGO or LoL and my teammates invite me to their discord afterwards for some inhouse games and they immediately start shrieking the n-word, is it reasonable for me to expect Valve/Riot to ban them for those actions? I think you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone who’d legitimately think it’d be a wise use of resources or judgment. Why is this? Because the size of those companies and those games make the distance between end-user and producer/admin clear. Regardless of your personal feelings on those actions, crying to Riot/Valve would be stupid at worst and nobly futile at best.

So why do we expect RGL to do the opposite? I honestly think it’s just an issue of size and the peculiarity of the tf2 community in regards to how much more tight-knit and “full-time” it is compared to other games. The playerbase is small enough that you can make meaningful friendships and form strong communities that are meaningful in the large-scale of the scene’s fabric. I think that’s wonderful, but I also think it’s not RGL’s responsibility. Are there meaningful differences between Riot and RGL? Of course. But as “providers of an entertainment service”, I think the standard applied to both should be the same.

I’m trying to read into the motivations of this post, @Ampy, and here’s what I’m getting:
-You aren’t doing this solely out of selfless concern for the league
-You couldn’t have thought this would get you clout considering the make up of the community
-You’re clearly passionate about this issue
So my guess is that you (or someone you care about) was hurt by certain malicious things said by others. I think that’s honorable and this conversation is a good one to have. So I apologize for coming off a little crass, but,

Why should RGL have (or even want) to watchdog your optional, private, social interactions?

everyone in this thread who’s name doesn’t rhyme with Ballin Lord or Limeless is officially in the Dumb As Fuck Zone (excluding OP)

NAHL item bans/exploit bans are literally just a cringe comp of people saying ‘this isn’t good just play around it lmfao’ until someone with more brain cells than them finds a way to implement it effectively and public opinion begrudgingly shifts the other way after 3 seasons of it contaminating comp play

“it’s cheese” and “high plat players don’t rely on it” didn’t stop ugc from realizing that storing a gunslinger crit was just stupid and didn’t belong in the league, i don’t see why people are trying to defend a clear exploit of game mechanics

borneo’s pretty solidly the 4th best map in the pool, but i m o i don’t think it’s such a step back that the downside of ‘having to play long map :(((’ is bigger than the downside of a permanently stagnant pl pool. polls have shown time and time again that a large part of the community is in favor of new/different maps, and borneo is 100% playable in it’s current state. A map being more difficult to push isn’t inherently worse, it means that there are more stringent conditions to get advantages and that working/using those advantages is a skill rewarded more than ‘let’s just pop in 9v9 and hope we can out dm them lul’.

without major prize pools in the HL there’s very little reason to take a hardline stance of ‘only play the best 7 maps every season no question’, and if rotating in borneo means we don’t have to play upward for one fucking season out of the past 30+ then honestly i’m all for it. it doesn’t have to be in semi-constant rotation like cascade, just put it in once every 3 seasons for a little bit of variety and to force players to learn something new. Considering some newer advancements in PL technology (enforcer) and vigil’s seemingly-increasing average cap time (completely anecdotal, waiting for sand’s spreadsheet to update after this week for more hard data), i see very little reason to not put it in for a season.

also, only person in this thread who’s legitimately qualified to talk about borneo as a map and not just likes/dislike is @TheS4rr

It really comes down to theory. I absolutely fucking despise the toys, they’re so fucking rancid and degenerate gameplay to this insane degree without even labbing for them like asher said. Long range is something that scout does not need given it’s current strength.

That being said, despite how fucking badly I want them gone, I don’t think they’re strictly overpowered in the traditional sense, with the exception of product. Given the prominence of the map I think a lot of people conflate “the cleaver is broken and a straight upgrade all the time” with “the cleaver is better than the pistol on product.” I’ve watched syath 1-clip enough scouts with the pistol to know that the weapon is insane, but only a handful of players are good enough to warrant it. If you’re taking a top-down approach on balance, though, that’s enough to keep it unbanned following “the traditional sense”.

Which is why these bans come down to the theory of what a whitelist should be. There’s been a prevailing school of thought that “comp should be kept as similar to pubs as possible to encourage new players to join.” I understand the reasoning for it well enough, but I really don’t know if it’s been effective and how players in NC/AM/Open feel about having certain weapons allowed. I bring this up because under this principle, the I don’t think the cleaver is bannable.

Under the ideal that “a whitelist should exist to enforce competitive integrity and balance,” the cleaver should absolutely be banned, as should the wrap assassin. I, for whatever it’s worth, think this is a better system to move towards. I honestly doubt there’s a meaningful amount of pub players that are interested in comp, who still haven’t played it, that would cite the cleaver of all things as the breaking point for why they don’t play comp. That entire argument is based on the old 6s whitelist policy of ‘ban everything that doesn’t actively enhance gameplay’ instead of ‘only ban the things actively disrupting gameplay’, and applying it to HL as a reason to keep dogshit like the sandman back when it stunned in the game always felt like a misuse of argument.

Under the traditional system, you could actually make the argument that the wrap assassin is better than the cleaver because the pistol has a ton of uses whereas the basher (tradeoff for the WA) is a lot less necessary in HL than in 6s, and I think that’s dumb. Although if you banned the cleaver, I think there’s a decent amount of other weapons that’d be worth looking into banning under the same principle (starting with, but not limited to sniper secondaries).

I made this exact thread a season or two ago and nothing came of it. If you really want to see the cleaver removed, you need to make an argument for a different ban policy that marks the cleaver as banworthy, because the current framework doesn’t.

i’ve got some nuanced thoughts on the SS that i’m going to try and delineate here

1. does the scorch shot meet the criteria for being banned under a whitelist that aims to ban weapons that degrade competitive integrity? yes

2. does the scorch shot meet the criteria for being banned under a whitelist that aims to be as open as possible and only ban weapons that are legitimately overpowered and straight upgrades in almost every situation (our current framework)? yes

3. has the reasoning for why 2 was yes been brought up yet? no

let me explain a bit here. under our current whitelist guidelines, “it’s easy to use”, “it’s annoying to play against”, “pyro is a bad a class”, and bliztank’s theory of pyro development (as much as I deeply agree with his reasoning) are all invalid arguments to the current system. important to note that an invalid argument is not necessarily a bad one; it means that it’s inapplicable to the current situation. If you want to get the scorch shot banned, you need to do one of two things-

a) prove that the scorch shot is just objectively better than all other pyro secondaries AND that it contributes to poor gameplay (a bit of a grey area here, but it’s the difference between the crossbow being “overpowered” and still allowed vs. the machina being banned)
b) argue for a different system that the one we currently have, similar to what i mentioned in 1)

Personally, I think there are ban cases in both systems, but the problem is that current teams aren’t good enough to really reach the level where the scorch shot is an obvious ban in the current system. Imagine the perfect highlander team. Hitscan classes that are basically aimbotting, a spy with mind control, and projectile classes running 80 different instances of the source engine on a giga-array to calculate the best projectile angles in real-time. On that team, pyro does not need to kill anything. Anything a pyro can do in terms of damage, another class can do better at god-like levels of aim.

You can argue this may have been different before the nerfs, but currently, 70% of pyro’s value is derived solely from airblast and the other 20% is to light spies on fire, with the most of the remaining 10% being a deterrent to people running into your combo. In a world where pyro does not need to kill anything, any additional damage the pyro can do to other classes in downtime without putting itself at risk is gravy; thus, the shotgun is useless and the flares are much better options. And of the flares, I’d argue the best one for doing chip damage is the scorch because of the ease, safety, and total damage output. Something that often gets ignored is how just how actionable scorch shot damage can be. When we played froyo in 7s, arekk would run scorch shot and just spam it at flank and the second he got a hit b4nny and blaze would push off of it, because those 20-30+ hp margins the scorch shot can essentially give you for free is enough for top-level players to take a fight that’s 60-40 or even 50-50 and flip it into an 85-15 or a 90-10. I freely admit that I’m not very familiar with how the det compares to the scorch in terms of harassment, but I’m working under the assumption that the det is more dangerous to use and less effective at getting the first hit due to the necessity to sometimes blind det it and with the projectile disappearing faster vs. the scorch remaining.

Obviously, the big asterisk on this is that there are no teams, nor have there ever been, that are good enough to warrant relegating pyro to such a small role, because players are human and make mistakes that a class like pyro is perfectly designed to clean up for. It’s the reason why shotgun is a still an option and is often the better choice depending on the team. But if you want confirmation for effectiveness of scorch shot scaling exponentially with team skill, look back to S1 of RGL highlander when IRENE had billysaurus run full time scorch shot - they relied on him for airblast denial and spychecking and anything a shotgun could contribute would just be done better by a different class. At the time people almost thought it was a meme and it was the team telling their pyro to troll as some kind of flex on other teams, like ‘we don’t need a shotgun pyro or flare pyro to win’, but I think they were just ahead of the curve.

So, back to the question at hand. Is there an argument to ban the scorch shot under the current system? I think definitely. Follow-up question: is it necessary to ban the scorch shot under the current system given the state of the top teams in HL? I don’t think the ban’s necessary in the same way something like machina or diamondback are necessary, as the true “broken” qualities of the SS (at least as I believe the current system would define it as) haven’t really been unlocked yet, and I think we’re straying further from the peak of HL skill where it would’ve been possible.

But because I think the current system is outdated as fuck, tl;dr it doesn’t matter what it is under the current system because we should move to a system that cares more about game integrity than an open whitelist. Fuck the scorch.

@Markers said in [pl_borneo:

Where my millstone bois at, can we sub out upward for millstone?

@Bliztank said in pl_borneo: The Dark Horse of the Highlander map pool:

millstone enthusiast reporting for duty

if only u knew my struggle
that map was destined for greatness but the mapmaker is too much of a headass who’s completely unwilling to make any meaningful changes to the map despite being given a LITERAL ENCYCLOPEDIA of potential changes that could make the map playable, all because he’s too afraid of ‘alienating the pub community that likes the halloween version’

i wanted that map to be good so badly but it’s not gonna happen

@scaredy-bat said in [pl_borneo:

Damn… the Swiftwater snub is real

swift >> upward >= vigil > borneo >> badwater > barnblitz

sequel hell (heaven?) is upon us
watching most of the popular sequels but esp excited for log horizon 3, slime, rezero, and beastars. i’ve got a lot of reasons to believe world trigger s2 isn’t going to get the toei babby treatment and since that’s my favorite manga i’m hyped af

as far as non-sequels go, i’m interested in spider isekai (beginning of the LN was cool, concerned about the CG) and jaku-chara tomozaki-kun (heard it compared to ned’s declassified and now i have to watch it). sk8 the infinity and kemono jihen look like some dark horses, and redo of healer is going to be an absolute shitshow

@pajaro

you were not in these pugs even though i initially thought you were because andrew was aliasing as you

again, it was basically unanimous that if the barrel to close off the tunnel-side sightline on batts got added and some the rocks on point were rearranged then it’d be great

also I don’t remember the exact changes but i’m p sure there were some substantial changes made about the sniper rotations from b1 to b4 that may make those concerns invalid, and to say the house geometry changes don’t do anything or that concrete feels the same is just untrue lmao, pushing through main into house is actually a good idea now

this man will commit war crimes in your name

combining different points from different maps is kinda inherently flawed because of how transitions work but i’ll bite because it’s a fun thought exercise

borneo 1st (specifically the house allowing for box gun)
millstone 2nd (dropdown ubers are cool)
upward 3rd (great, solid points)
rushingriver_a19 4th (zoomers mad)
swift last (only good pl last)

@Markers said in [pl_borneo:

Where my millstone bois at, can we sub out upward for millstone?

@Bliztank said in pl_borneo: The Dark Horse of the Highlander map pool:

millstone enthusiast reporting for duty

if only u knew my struggle
that map was destined for greatness but the mapmaker is too much of a headass who’s completely unwilling to make any meaningful changes to the map despite being given a LITERAL ENCYCLOPEDIA of potential changes that could make the map playable, all because he’s too afraid of ‘alienating the pub community that likes the halloween version’

i wanted that map to be good so badly but it’s not gonna happen

@scaredy-bat said in [pl_borneo:

Damn… the Swiftwater snub is real

swift >> upward >= vigil > borneo >> badwater > barnblitz

borneo’s pretty solidly the 4th best map in the pool, but i m o i don’t think it’s such a step back that the downside of ‘having to play long map :(((’ is bigger than the downside of a permanently stagnant pl pool. polls have shown time and time again that a large part of the community is in favor of new/different maps, and borneo is 100% playable in it’s current state. A map being more difficult to push isn’t inherently worse, it means that there are more stringent conditions to get advantages and that working/using those advantages is a skill rewarded more than ‘let’s just pop in 9v9 and hope we can out dm them lul’.

without major prize pools in the HL there’s very little reason to take a hardline stance of ‘only play the best 7 maps every season no question’, and if rotating in borneo means we don’t have to play upward for one fucking season out of the past 30+ then honestly i’m all for it. it doesn’t have to be in semi-constant rotation like cascade, just put it in once every 3 seasons for a little bit of variety and to force players to learn something new. Considering some newer advancements in PL technology (enforcer) and vigil’s seemingly-increasing average cap time (completely anecdotal, waiting for sand’s spreadsheet to update after this week for more hard data), i see very little reason to not put it in for a season.

also, only person in this thread who’s legitimately qualified to talk about borneo as a map and not just likes/dislike is @TheS4rr

everyone in this thread who’s name doesn’t rhyme with Ballin Lord or Limeless is officially in the Dumb As Fuck Zone (excluding OP)

NAHL item bans/exploit bans are literally just a cringe comp of people saying ‘this isn’t good just play around it lmfao’ until someone with more brain cells than them finds a way to implement it effectively and public opinion begrudgingly shifts the other way after 3 seasons of it contaminating comp play

“it’s cheese” and “high plat players don’t rely on it” didn’t stop ugc from realizing that storing a gunslinger crit was just stupid and didn’t belong in the league, i don’t see why people are trying to defend a clear exploit of game mechanics

scout: whymeo (650)
soldier: bliztank (450)
pyro: american (500)
demo: chase (800)
heavy: caboose (750)
engi: twisted (100)
medic: sakura (500)
sniper: deadpixel (750)
spy: jayeezy (350)

@proton how do u end up 450 over

syath
jel
melon
logan
chocc
aaron
dinko
lenny
homeless

4850 even

jjslim: how did your experiences on the meme stealers shape you as a player and a person?

pretty much the entirety of ugc s24
-went undefeated in the HL reg season with a win over dK
-went undefeated in the 4s reg season with a win over the bo4r team
-went 4-1 in the concurrent 7s season, sweeping velocity and getting 2 rounds off of froyo
-started 11-0 in esea open running double pyro and became that season’s Open Villains

ended up missing placement in HL/6s and only came 2nd in 4s/7s but that span of time might’ve been the most fun i’ve ever had

some other scattered ones
-going iron to plat with sleepteiner, and iron-gold with most of the old door guys
-most of s15 gold and all the crazy drama and twists and rivalries and friendships, personally taking a half off aeiou when we were outmatched on almost every class, and the insane ban paals comeback against dream killers being spectated by like 40 people in the nasty mumble
-s20 gold door vs jammers rivalry and that insane grand finals that went until like 2am

these arguments are always such a pain in the ass tbh because the inherent moral high ground in “stop saying slurs” automatically makes anyone arguing against it look like a mouthbreather

The root problem, as I see it, comes from the fact that many tf2 players conflate their “RGL experience” (which is a professional/public setting and should be held to a certain standard of conduct) with their own private social lives (private setting held to a lower standard). it’s RGL’s job to ensure that all experiences necessary to reasonably partake in their league are held to that aforementioned “certain standard of conduct.” Currently, these “experiences” are defined as pretty much everything RGL-sponsored (including but not limited to RGL pugs, forums, matches, and discord servers), as well as “optional” scrims.

I think the move to punish players for offenses in scrims is a very good move, because realistically scrims are necessary for meaningful participation in RGL and thus should be held under the same rules as everything else. It’s worth noting that including scrims as an essential part of the RGL experience differs vastly from other leagues and was met with understandable backlash, but again, I personally think it’s for the better.

However, privately-run PUG groups are not essential to the RGL experience. I think RGL’s reluctance to definitively rule private pug groups as “not in our jurisdiction” makes this problem a lot worse than it could be, but that’s an off topic gripe. Private PUG groups, from RGL’s perspective, exist for social purposes first and game-related purposes second. No arguments. Regardless of the stated aims of the creators or players of these groups, they are secondary to the things already under the “RGL Umbrella”, as it were. You are willingly choosing to enter these private spaces on your own, and demanding those inside be held accountable feels like a vast, vast overreach of what a TF2 league should be doing.

If an individual is concerned about experiencing slurs/hate/etc, all experiences deemed essential and necessary to participate in RGL are (reasonably) safe spaces. Anyone can safely experience RGL, or at least have the knowledge anyone violating that safety will be punished.

If I solo Q a game of CSGO or LoL and my teammates invite me to their discord afterwards for some inhouse games and they immediately start shrieking the n-word, is it reasonable for me to expect Valve/Riot to ban them for those actions? I think you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone who’d legitimately think it’d be a wise use of resources or judgment. Why is this? Because the size of those companies and those games make the distance between end-user and producer/admin clear. Regardless of your personal feelings on those actions, crying to Riot/Valve would be stupid at worst and nobly futile at best.

So why do we expect RGL to do the opposite? I honestly think it’s just an issue of size and the peculiarity of the tf2 community in regards to how much more tight-knit and “full-time” it is compared to other games. The playerbase is small enough that you can make meaningful friendships and form strong communities that are meaningful in the large-scale of the scene’s fabric. I think that’s wonderful, but I also think it’s not RGL’s responsibility. Are there meaningful differences between Riot and RGL? Of course. But as “providers of an entertainment service”, I think the standard applied to both should be the same.

I’m trying to read into the motivations of this post, @Ampy, and here’s what I’m getting:
-You aren’t doing this solely out of selfless concern for the league
-You couldn’t have thought this would get you clout considering the make up of the community
-You’re clearly passionate about this issue
So my guess is that you (or someone you care about) was hurt by certain malicious things said by others. I think that’s honorable and this conversation is a good one to have. So I apologize for coming off a little crass, but,

Why should RGL have (or even want) to watchdog your optional, private, social interactions?