Just another example of why Swiss system is bullshit. Don’t take the hate out on csn, focus it on Swiss. I’ll probably do another dumb spreadsheet breaking down swiss system or something like that, if I have the time. Same thing happened with bodybuilding.com and oWn a couple of seasons ago.

No offense to Crit Sandvich, I think they’re a surprisingly decent team, and you can only beat who you’re scheduled to play against, but their schedule was much easier than Flow’s.

Hopefully we’re able to do Round Robin next season.

really cool features, thanks for putting in the time to do these
however, at least for the stats search, i think you forgot to remove a test print statement or something, because my names always end with cum

So I’m in the process of trying to salvage a diet oWn team for next season, but if that falls through I’d like to play next season regardless. I want to prove myself as a top advanced or even low invite (stretch, i know, lmao) sniper without having oWn around me. I’d also be happy to sub in invite on sniper.

Otherwise, I’d be alright with trying a season on spy or soldier in advanced or high main, preferably with a friend and/or legacy team.

I watch demos religiously, I can secondary call, and I’ll push myself out of my comfort zone to do whatever the team needs me to do to win.

joey lemons for not cutting me

@Alto This. Just because something is harder to push doesn’t mean it’s inherently a worse map, imo it makes things much more skillful if you can consistently pull off quick times, you get a much bigger reward for being better at the map than the other team if you can cap 3-4 minutes faster than them consistently, rather than like 1-2 minutes on vigil or something.

Take old Nuke from csgo for example, or just a lot of the maps in the pool ~3+ years ago. Getting 5 rounds on T-side was good, but if you were skilled enough that you could win like 10 rounds T side, then you played so well that you were able to give yourself a significant advantage on the CT side. Maybe you weren’t a fan of nuke, but what I’m trying to say is that making things harder increases the skill ceiling, something we shouldn’t shy away from.

Obviously having a map be nearly impossible to push is dumb (I don’t wanna play some shit like Dustbowl last for example), but longer map times does not mean the map is inherently worse playwise at all, it only affects scrim times, but 12+ minute average time is still enough time finish scrims on time even with some added highlander time.

tl;dr Harder to push points (within reason) can raise the skill ceiling of the game

unironically make prolander the default competitive mode
smaller than HL so easier queues, can swap classes
still essentially the same game as what is played in casual, 6s to me feels as if i’m playing a completely different game that’s been awkwardly incorporated into the game

So nurkz and I are sticking together from oWn, with Joey Lemons as team mentor/cheerleader, along with some old oWn players subbing. Looking to be a fun mid adv/playoff contender team with cool dudes who don’t suck. Demo tryouts are our biggest priority, but solly, pyro, med, and engi tryouts would be nice to have too, but please have some decent advanced+ experience. Message me on discord for tryouts: tua#6935

Scout
patches

Soldier
wubs

Pyro
klowwd? raptoir? despy? lumiti? gabiduo?

Heavy
Nurkz

Demo
dt

Engineer
High Impact Dolphin

Medic
rona

Sniper
tua

Spy
zokie0

Subs
Stardust, tlar, raptoir, patrick

Do you think maybe you could add Kills per minute in the future? Might be a better gauge than raw kills

@dlphn I agree with dolphin here

i started hl with rgl, I never played UGC. I would at least like to try the old maps that everyone says were meh and make up my own opinion rather than have someone with their head up their ass try to lecture me on why i shouldn’t even consider trying a map.

Maybe they’re not quite as bad as we remember, perhaps metas have shifted since then, especially with different weapon bans. At the very least let the zoomers who’ve never had the opportunity to try these maps see how bad they are so we can end this discussion and not have to debate on whether or not we should include borneo or whatever in the map pool. Many of the maps listed in end of season polls as potential swap ins haven’t been played in years, how can me and a huge chunk of the rgl playerbase who have never played them properly vote on whether or not they should be played?

Maps can still progress via testco and other map testing groups, map development isn’t going to grind to a screeching halt without this cup. Obviously getting an entire cup or even season would be ideal, but I also seriously doubt this is gonna be the last experimental cup ever.

Also i’m speaking about this as a player, not as a staff member, I didn’t take any part in the decision for this experimental cup.

Hey so I have a bunch of irl commitments this summer I’d like to prioritize over HL, but I should be good to sub in s9. I think I’ve grown a lot since oWn, I’ve been grinding my aim harder than I ever have before, and I’m happy that I’ve learned how to play multiple styles of sniper.

I can obviously play sniper, but I feel fairly confident I can hang on engi, spy, scout, and solly. I can also do heavy if needed.

Invite would obviously be nice, but I’d be perfectly happy subbing on a challenger team.

I don’t have any inside info, but I find it hard to believe that sigafoo will stop with only 7s here. I imagine they’d like to expand to HL and 6s on the faceit site and if that’s the case then it makes a lot of sense from a development perspective to just write the feature in now and then tweak it in the future to maybe show different ELOs based on if you’re on the HL, 6s, or 7s version of the RGL site.

I don’t think having additional info on a user’s page on RGL is a bad idea, as long as they go back at some point and maybe clean up how it’s presented. I think the layout is a bigger issue than adding cool, free content to the RGL site. That being said, it’s easy to backseat drive here and I haven’t thought much about on what I’d do in the devs’ position to make it look spiffier and just generally less cluttered.

@Alto I mean UGC season 25 was literally over 3 years ago now. A significant part of the community has started playing since then. We have different maps in the pool now and different metas. How long does it have to be until it’s okay to take a look back at things? 5 years? 10 years? Obviously I’m playing devil’s advocate here, but as someone who never played in UGC and had never even heard of it being tested before, I voted to test it. Why not, if we’re testing other weapons?

And as for the cozy, I will reiterate: all sniper secondaries are banned in prolander aside from the carbine and the sniper is just as powerful, if not moreso. Banning all the secondaries on sniper imo just comes across as spiteful and doesn’t really change the outcome of HL being sniper-dominated. You’d have to fundamentally change the class or map pool to do that. It’s like making the 9ft tall guy in basketball wear wooden shoes because he’s too good and ruining games, so now he scores 45 points a game instead of 50. The same problem still exists and the game of inches at that point is pretty much impercievable to everyone except the sniper.

The problem with sniper is his primary weapon, not the secondary, and no amount of tweaking to his secondaries will change the meta or player experience in any meaningful way

I think Air Strike, Darwin’s, and Scorch Shot are the only weapons on the list that are just kinda annoying and not game-breaking imo, they could be tested.

From what I said in the original thread on banning Scorch Shot and Darwin’s:

You’re gimping yourself by running the darwins. The only situation darwins would be useful would be if a pyro chases you down like post-uber and you try to melee him to death. Sniper has an advantage to win that fight only the pyro doesn’t go for the melee fight, which most pyros are too stupid to do in my experience. My pan will out dpm your flamethrower, but you have more hp than me. I have to hit you three times with the pan, but you only have to hit me twice with the powerjack. If you die to a pan sniper, unless he has more hp than you, you’re just bad. Plus, if scorch shot is banned, you can shotgun me to death. […]

At the end of the day, banning cozy camper or darwin’s won’t change the fact that sniper is OP. You can still sit in pocket on product, get juggled, aimpunched, set on fire, etc. and you can still hit a full charge bodyshot on their medic to drop him, without any secondary. We’ve literally already tried banning the sniper secondaries before in prolander and sniper is just as OP in prolander. These reaching bans out of spite and frustration don’t solve the problem, and unless we are confident these bans are very likely going to change the meta of the game for the better, we should avoid them. That goes for all potential weapon bans, not just sniper secondaries.

I think I was a little wrong, as I didn’t expect so many pyros to run detonator and actually be able to hit their shots, but I think my point still stands, that it ultimately doesn’t change anything in the grand scheme of things, banning the scorch shot + darwin’s just moved the goalposts back a little further: pyro still annoys people by setting them on fire from halfway across the map and sniper is still OP as fuck.

The only difference now is that snipers are like 100% on the Cozy Camper now, which imo has a more general upside/OP aspect to it compared to the Darwins. The darwins was actually better for everyone else imo because it prevented the sniper from being on the cozy camper and getting free health regen + no flinch. No sniper would tell you the darwins was better than the cozy camper, there’s so much more upside to getting to hold your shot in to drop the med and not missing due to a scout hitting you for 3 damage. The darwins only cancels out 1 type of spam that can fuck your shot anyways, you can still get flinched by bullets or getting juggled by explosives, the cozy camper eliminates the bullets and gives you regen.

It’d be really cool if you could implement groups for like Former RGL Staff, maybe with their titles (though that might be too much work lol). That way people can know someone like Micah or I have a bit more info behind the scenes in regards to certain things compared to the average speculating layman.

Was grinning the entire time I read this, excellent analysis! The graphs especially were very well thought-out/chosen and informative. You should consider going into Data Science.

oh and one more thing:

We might want to enact some kind of policy of holding people accountable for killing teams/forfeiting matches, because it is a significant part of this issue. People can kill their teams multiple seasons in a row with no real repercussions, when it ends up being a wasted slot that could’ve been given to a team that wouldn’t have died.

I’ll be honest, I haven’t thought much about how such a policy would look like, but surely that needs to be addressed. In the same way we in the past have only let Invite players main in Advanced/Challenger if it’s clear that they had no opportunities in Invite, why don’t we do anything of the sort for people trying to keep their teams together? A dead team fucks the ENTIRE division (unfair FFWs for some but not others), not just the players on that team.

For example, I saw in esea’s csgo rulebook that dead teams lose their spot in their div and get moved down to open; you can’t just make a new “Main” team, any team you make will be placed in Open. Obviously we wouldn’t do anything like that, but it’s food for thought.

Maybe a warning system like we do for demos where if you play on two dead teams in a row then you get banned for a week, then for three it’s like 4 weeks? Keeping a team alive and retaining the slot imo should be the responsibility of the entire team and not just the leader’s. Or if a team dies and another is selected to be moved up to replace them, RGL makes them promise to not die or they’ll all get banned for a short period at the start of next season. RGL needs to take some kind of stance against killing teams, right now it acts like that’s perfectly fine.

@FlipFTW Strong agree with Flip, excellent write-up

The situation of a team making playoffs due to getting two FFWs has happened before (https://rgl.gg/Public/Team.aspx?t=5987&r=24). Because of the small sample size of 7 matches a season, we’re kinda screwed no matter what we do, playoffs will never be perfect every season for every div.

I do like the idea of point decay for getting two FFWs in a season, but it should probably be noted that in bodybuilding’s case, they still would’ve gotten into playoffs with 1 less MP. It was a very close season where very few wins were 3-0 so getting one clean, free win would be a big deal, let alone two.

I’d almost lean towards the second FFW being a 1.6-0, like how FFWs are counted until there is no “replay” guaranteed.

Regardless, I think all we can do is band-aid this until HL players agree to play a double digit number of matches every season. Even if all we do is reduce the MP of a subsequent FFW to 2 instead of 3, it’s a step in the right direction and would prevent the Cat Lovers Situation this season.

@vibeisveryo very good point

if it was pick/ban then the more consistent team in that case would likely be better
teams hardly play each 7 maps in playoffs anyways, you mostly figure out what your bans are during the season

I don’t have a particular preference for wins or points, I can see both of their merits, but I think people should discuss why we have playoffs/playoff cutoffs in general. For me, you let in the 4 (or however many) teams that are most likely to win the entire bracket based on their regular season results. That feels slightly less subjective to me than the concept of the “better team”.

Would a 3-4 team that upset the #1 and #2 seeds and played all the mid table teams super close but lost to a shit team too do better in playoffs than the 4-3 team that beat all the mid-table/low-tier teams but got bodied by the top 3 teams? I mean, in either system, beating the 4 worst teams without dropping a round and getting 0 rounds against the top 3 teams would be counted the same as steamrolling the top 4 and getting 0 rounds against the bottom 3 teams.

The concept of which team is “better” when teams are close is so subjective. Is the difference in skill more important? Experience? Map pool? Teamplay? Tactics? Consistency? How do you weigh those different aspects?

The question imo should be “How do we have the most competitive playoffs possible?” rather than “How do we let the ‘best’ teams into playoffs?”.