disagree with @Markers

not everyone has time to play actively in pugs, and many people can improve fine without the help of pugs - slower, maybe, but fine. especially people busy with other commitments like work, school, etc. may have trouble finding time to pug.

while i can see the draw of encouraging people to play pugs, it’s important to note that this has the opposite effect of possibly discouraging people who don’t have time or don’t want to play pugs from playing comp tf2 at all.

there’s also the elitism factor. people who do actively want to play comp tf2 but don’t have time for pugs may look into trying out for teams only to be denied tryouts because their faceit rank is too low or not up to their standards. this may cause them to stop looking - the discouraged worker phenomenon is not just a thing in real life.

i for one have already seen, before the introduction of faceit on player pages, too many low div teams with ridiculous/unreasonable standards for players (HL or 6s must be the only gamemode you play/you must play x tf2c lobbies a week/you must have xxxx hours in the game) - adding one more potential one, in itself a huge time draw, is not a good ideai mo.

i think you and others have recognized that pug levels will have an effect on the public perception of players they may not be familiar with - i think if people want to dig into their faceit profile (which is linked on players’ user pages!) that’s legit, but having them displayed so prominently will likely be harmful to the health of the low divs especially and the comp scene as a whole.

I think that as @Wize said, having a forum/roundtable where representatives of the community (team leaders is a good subset) can directly bring concerns to the admins without having to reach out on their own would be an excellent thing. I think that having all the team leaders from Main to Invite would be a bit chaotic, especially in a voice chat format, but smaller meetings are definitely something I can see working. I’ll be sure to follow up with our other mods and admins and RGL leadership to see what we can do with regards to this.

Moreover, I think that the current format of admins scoping out what issues are contentious in the community and then polling them in post-season surveys works in some ways but falls short in others.

They do an excellent job of scoping out community opinion on short, easy questions. For example, should the Scorch Shot be banned. Sure, there are sophisticated arguments for and against such questions, but the end result can be boiled down to a yes/no question that almost everyone is likely to have a clear opinion on and a clear picture of what the format would look like in either world.

They also do well on confirming community opinion where the community clearly leans heavily towards a certain policy outcome, but the change is major/radical enough that it requires polling of some kind just to make sure there isn’t a silent majority/even split that opposes the outcome.

Where they fail, in my mind, is when the choice isn’t simple. When the choice is between round robin small-team-count advanced and Swiss relatively-large-team-count advanced, there are several implications for players, not all of which are encapsulated by a simple survey question.

For example, the implications of round robin Adv are:

1. (+) Each team plays every other team -> Each team has a similarly strong schedule and final seedings are reasonably representative of each team’s relative strength to others in the division (I say reasonably, not totally, because team strengths vary by map).
2. (~) The division structure reflects that of the top division, Invite, which Advanced sorta serves as a holding chamber for.
3. (~) There is a fixed cap of 8 teams (number of weeks + 1) meaning that teams that do not, whether subjectively determined by admins or objectively determined through qualifiers, get pushed down to the division below. This has further implications for the div structure below - for example, does Main simply expand to accommodate more teams, or are some teams from what would be Main pushed down to IM, or is another RR div (Chal-Adv) introduced to hold the overflow?
4. (-) RR means that team deaths affect everyone more than Swiss - either a forced bye week is added, one for every team death, or teams are pulled up from the division below, leading to possibly more team deaths (See Invite and how teams die to avoid playing it)

and the implications of Swiss adv are as follows:

1. (+) Flexible division structure means you can accommodate as few or as many teams as you like, only strictly bounded on the bottom by 8 (number of weeks + 1), and team deaths do not disproportionately affect it
2. (~) The opposites of 2 & 3 for RR
3. (-) Small-div Swiss leads to suboptimal outcomes (See an analysis BBL did last season and I contributed to here)

Look at all those (~)! They’re neither objectively good nor bad - they can be construed as good or bad for any number of reasons, and people will always have wildly different ideas on the nuanced aspects of this. Should, for example, RR be accommodated by adding back Challenger, or should the worst teams simply be moved down to Main, having the potentially desirable, neutral, OR undesirable effect of increasing the skill gap in main (see also, arguments in this very thread about whether it is right for main to be a filtering grounds for the top divs, or if main should be a div with a more defined skill and that all teams should fit in that skill, or 15 other nuanced viewpoints that I can’t possibly list out)?

This is the kind of stuff that a post-season survey just cannot accurately capture the public’s opinions on. When you survey their opinion using disjoint questions that people respond to individually, without the whole picture in mind, the outcomes are reasonably likely to be different from what they would actually prefer.

This is the kind of stuff that staff should directly approach the community to ask about. This is, after all, as I’m sure @Mothership would appreciate me saying, the point of these forums: to have reasoned discussions about things in comp TF2 and to collect intelligent, nuanced viewpoints that cannot be represented by bar graphs and checkboxes.

Admins can then use the general consensus drawn on in these threads to make stronger, more popular decisions that are less likely to lead to disappointment and more likely to be sustainable over the long term, so we can stop reinventing the wheel of divisions (as just one example) every season.

I’m going to commit myself to working, as I said earlier, with other mods and admins and RGL leadership to see what I can do to take initiative in soliciting community feedback in a back-and-forth manner like this thread, minus the resentment/disappointment and in a more proactive manner. If anyone has any thoughts on how this can be done, feel free to drop them as well.

hey @cayorne and everyone - just posting to let you know that we, as the RGL admin team, have seen this forum post and are discussing it internally. we’ll let you know when we have more to tell you for sure

in the meantime feel free to drop y’all’s ideas - your input, and your reasons for why you want this (or why you might not want it), help us make these decisions.

Let me just begin by clarifying that I don’t disagree with this post in principle in the slightest. Having unique ways to play the game that challenge players to outsmart their opponents, especially as opposed to just winning DM fights, is an excellent thing.

That being said, I think there are a number of logistical problems with actually trying to add new gamemodes to our existing formats of comp tf2 that it is not sustainable in our current community with its size and focus. Note that, as a baseline to compare against, it is hard enough to add new maps for existing gamemodes to any of the formats - they face stiff resistance, it is near impossible to get serious playtesting done short of actually adding the map to an EXP Cup, one of which happens at best twice a year, and mapmakers may be apprehensive to create new maps for a community that just tends to stick to its preconceived notions about them anyway. Note that I believe that, volume of maps to be tested permitting, frequent EXP cups, if not to actually determine whether a map is suitable for inclusion in a regular season to give the mapmaker feedback on how to improve it so as to make it more fun or playable, are an ecellennt idea and if they were implemented, would make this idea a whole lot more feasible.

For gamemodes like KoTH, 5CP, and Payload, there are clear mapping standards for competitively viable maps - for example, for KoTH, there is the clear area-connector-area-connector-area-midpoint layout that most maps tend to follow, and for Payload there’s the unwritten rule that for each point there tends to be only one strong hold - such standards do not exist for other gamemodes and would require mapmakers already familiar with how comp tf2 plays (who are already few and far between) to improvise and theorycraft the map design such that it would not follow a standard that works in pubs but cannot work in comp.

Take for example the standard layout of Capture the Flag maps. Setting aside the outdated layouts of 2fort or Sawmill that make you literally go into a basement with two chokepoints to retrieve the intel, even on modern and well-designed maps like Landfall, the intel is right next to its team’s spawn, meaning that against a competent team, especially one with classes like Engineer, for example, retrieving the intel with just a dry push would be near impossible, and you would need Uber AND significant other advantages to retrieve the intel - other advantages like players up to get close enough to the intel to take it in a clean Uber push, and Uber to actually reach the intel (god forbid the other team has Uber too).

This is not to say that CTF is competitively unviable. It might very well be, but there might very well be an ideal CTF map design that maximizes both fun and competitive rigour for players in one of our existing competitive formats. The problem is that this ideal map design is so far unknown, meaning that mapmakers would have to play with simple trial and error to figure out what that map design is, which, given the constraints that already exist for competitive map designers and the mental block many people would have to seriously giving feedback for a CTF map and considering its merits (and knowing what feedback to give!) makes it a formidable task for any mapmaker that requires significant personal time and effort investment, and not necessarily one that will pay off.

Then there is the problem that some gamemodes have fundamental flaws that make it impossible to make a map that is competitively rigorous. For example, Mannpower has random power-up spawns, making it possible for one team to beat another through pure luck of the draw on what power-ups spawned on their side. Obviously, this is bad. Then, Player Destruction (the format you mentioned "What about a mode where it’s just a kill fest where people collect points and need to score them? ") has a gamebreaking flaw in that the player carrying the most points on each team has the self- and area-healing and ammo restore power at the rate of e Level 1 Dispenser, which makes it a whole lot harder for a team to kill any players who simply stick to their “team leader” as I believe the mechanic calls that player.

This is not to say that these barriers are insurmountable. For sure, my post is a bit disingenuous - you’re making an idealistic appeal, but I’m responding by citing realistic barriers, and not ones that cannot be overcome with enough willpower. My question is simply if that willpower actually exists. I believe that with enough effort, enough changes to the community to allow for, for example, more frequent EXP cups to give mapmakers feedback, and enough accommodation by existing players who encourage forward thinking mapmakers, anything you said in this post is possible. Am I for it? Also yes, but I’d definitely not be the one spearheading it just because of how much effort it is. What do you say about these challenges?

@Kastaling said in Addressing Racism/Anti-LGBTQ Speech on Off-Platform Media:

Once again, I say this; GROW THICKER SKIN.

Unfortunately, this always tends to be a bit of a strawman and really doesn’t work in context. That’s mainly because growing thicker skin is not an option for some people.

Although some of you may not believe it based on my earlier posts, I am not easily offended. When someone uses one of the “big three” slurs or others, I can easily laugh it off. I can even use the one that applies to me in certain people’s company. Because of this, I have the privileged position of being able to simply ignore, or make a reasoned/civil argument, when someone expresses opinions that directly derogate someone’s identity. Even though one of the “big three” slurs applies to me, I really don’t care or get offended, on a personal level, when someone uses that slur. But not everyone has this position.

I’ve come to know several people who, because of who they are, have been disowned, kicked out of their houses, lost any hope at inheritance they had, ostracized by their school communities, passed up for jobs because of what bathroom they came out of, or at worst, even attacked because of who they are.

Some of these people used to be in RGL. There may be some like them still in RGL.

I ask you: Is it fair to place the burden of growing thicker skin on them, who have already had to deal with countless burdens in their lives? Is it fair to say that they, who have this constant reminder in the form of a word of the hardships they have suffered, are the ones at wrong because they are offended by a word whose existence so many people take lightly?

This is not about a minority imposing its will on the majority, either. I think you will find that most people in or outside the league, whether or not they support OP, are opposed to the use of racial slurs because in whatever context they are used, they demean people.

So the fact that this discussion is about “growing thicker skin” shows how prevalent this rot, if you will, is within the TF2 community. The burden should rightfully be on those who use slurs to not use slurs, an action which can directly cause harm. Any less is an attitude that tells everyone that you (not you, Kastaling, just the audience of this post in general) are more important than the people who would be harmed. And so this discussion should not be about thick skin or thin skin at all, or if it is right or wrong to say slurs. It should be about whether it is feasible or not for RGL to act off of reports gathered on such platforms, and what should be the extent of this.

@djnnseng said in Wallop lfp everything:

sniper: shaayy (but not until may)

you mean not until maayy

@Kodyn With regards to the naming scheme - it makes sense why you do it, but multiple scrims I’ve played so far have had issues with the server host using the commands, often instructed by others/by unofficial guides out there, to exec configs such as exec rgl_HL_stopwatch, but they did nothing, and we ended up playing out a scrim with no stopwatch and on the default config. I feel like this is an issue that is likely to pop up over and over again, and this will create the necessity for two sets of instructions - one for all non-Qixalite servers using the official config names like exec rgl_HL_stopwatch and one for Qixalite servers using your own config names such as exec rgl/HL_stopwatch - this is bound to generate much confusion and possibly the need for rounds played all over again or banned weapons being used, etc.

Is there a way you could create a simple server side alias to match the config names we RGL players are used to, and that we tell everyone who asks to exec, to the config names you use? For example, an rgl_HL_stopwatch.cfg file that contains one line: exec rgl/HL_stopwatch - so that your updating service can update rgl/HL_stopwatch but using exec rgl_HL_stopwatch will still get RGL players to the right config.

The second waterfall hold is really janky to push because they only have to watch one angle and they are comparatively very safe, especially the medic, and have high ground and can watch everything.

This could be fixed in two ways IMO. One is to straight up remove the waterfall area as far as gameplay is concerned, walling it off with glass. This essentially forces defense to play in a passive position, though, so idk how good it is - others may have better input. The other way could be to link the left area to the waterfall - this would force players holding in that position to watch two angles with less safety, allowing flank to play more on that point.

Also, in general I feel like players have to commit too hard to 2nd to cap it, maybe because the point is really far back. I’m not entirely sure how big of a problem this is or how it could be fixed, though. Maybe making the stream under the waterfall less deep and moving point into it?

@Ampy said in Addressing Racism/Anti-LGBTQ Speech on Off-Platform Media:

I can understand your argument, and would like to raise an objection that pug groups are essential. I find it incredibly unlikely that people will grow to higher level TF2 based solely on scrim time and matches alone. Consistently throughout my career I’ve been instructed or advised to join pugs to improve. It is not absolutely necessary, but I think players would severely hamper their growth and improvements by not taking this advice. Which then leads to the issue at hand of all the pug groups I’m aware of being filled with the toxic behavior.

Hopefully RGL Pugs on launch will help mitigate this, with greater accessibility and reach than Discord Pugs.

Upward 1st > Vigil 1st > Borneo 1st > Swiftwater 1st > Barnblitz 1st

Upward is pretty much the gold standard of first points, a point which can be exchanged on but isn’t a super strong hold either once ubers are out. Other maps (Vigil, Borneo, Swift) essentially have throwaway firsts, though you will see the exchange sometimes on borneo 1st, and others (Barnblitz) force the cart through a tight choke that can be painful to dislodge

Vigil 2nd > Swiftwater 2nd > Upward 2nd > Borneo 2nd > Barnblitz 2nd

Vigil is great because there are options and based on what picks you have there are multiple viable pushes (hill, side tunnel, 9 man main tunnel). Swiftwater has options too, but RED has a massive height advantage for 2 of 3 viable pushes so it’s not as good. Upward doesn’t have options but it’s saved from being a brick wall by the fact that it’s actually not that hard to push. Borneo and Barnblitz 2nd, well, suck. All points are holdable; Vigil, Swiftwater, and Upward are the most balanced here in that order.

Upward 3rd > Vigil 3rd > Swiftwater 3rd > Barnblitz 3rd > Borneo 3rd

Upward 3rd, once again, has options. It has good spam angles, good sightlines, and flanks that put you in the heart of the RED team, but is also very holdable for a team that knows what they’re doing. Vigil 3rd also has options but the hill for the cart can suck sometimes

Doctor: Swiftwater 4th isn’t real, it can’t hurt you

Swiftwater Last > Vigil Last > Upward Last > Borneo Last > Barnblitz Last

Swiftwater is the gold standard of last points imo. It’s super defendable for a team that holds their ground well, but they can also be overwhelmed in the best of positions by superior dm and coordination. Vigil is a close 2nd; its last overall is designed excellently, but it’s hurt majorly by how close the spawn exit is to the cap; it’s too easy to reestablish a hold even after being near-wiped as red. Upward, Borneo, and Barnblitz last are all shitshows in every sense of the word.

@ethan why would there not be a prizepool if there is one currently

@ben huh it is noticeably taller on the blue side

@Mothership Teenagers can go to their local walmart/target/circle K/big box grocery store and buy a visa gift card, which they can then use on paypal.

If they are poor, the issue does not change; even with team fees, they are presumed to be responsible for some portion of it. Per player fees also give people the option to pay others up, which is pretty common in sixes.

I really appreciate the initiative in taking your time to make a post like this. I think having community conversations about things like this is super important, and echo what you say about getting others involved in this conversation as well. I can’t speak for the admin team as a whole before this discussion has been had in more depth, but I do want to give my personal thoughts on this topic.

On your first point: in principle, I totally agree. I don’t think class restriction patterns and paradigms are something that should change from season to season, or even, except in qualitatively different divisions, from division to division. I think, however, that it is the way it is right now because of certain edge cases that don’t fit neatly into the system you’ve proposed. I do agree with the idea of having general rules for who should be able to offclass, and in fact, there are such rules:

[1006.3.3] - Sandbagging and Class Restriction Guidelines

In general, we will class restrict:

• If a person has made the top 3 in the same division
• If a person has made playoffs in the division above
• If a person is demonstrably better in a class than everyone else in a division

But the wording here is deliberate, even if a bit intentionally vague, and I don’t agree with putting in rules more set in stone. Consider, for example, the case of someone who has placed in a higher division, but is unable to find a team in that division because the skill range has shifted drastically (which I know past cases of - just don’t want to name them to avoid putting them on the spot). Consider the case of skill decay, where someone has played in higher divisions but is no longer as good, if because they haven’t played tf2 in a while or just because they stopped having as much time to devote to the upkeep of their skills. Consider players who want to play a division they’ve placed in before, but their teams get placed in a lower division because they aren’t good enough. Should all of them be restricted? These are some of the edge cases that lead the rule to be vague and only speak in generalities as opposed as to for every case.

I do have a minor nitpick with your proposed wording - top half of a division can be exceedingly big in larger divisions such as Main - playoffs or placement would be a better bar instead in my opinion. With that said, another reason I don’t agree with having clearer, more codified rules is because divisions are inconsistent with treatment. Newcomer, for example, has super strict guidelines: you cannot play Newcomer at all if you’re not new to comp, and you cannot be class restricted in Newcomer - you can either play the div or not play the div. Then, do you think restrictions in Amateur, a division meant for people to have a fair place to work on their skills, and Advanced, a division meant for people to prove themselves and prove that they’re Invite worthy, should follow the same guidelines? It makes sense, to me, for different divisions to have different ways restrictions are handled.

On your second point, I once again agree in principle but not totally in practice. It does make sense to me that, for example, a medic from a higher division may still be able to maincall in a lower division. I also do agree that all classes can have huge impacts on the game in their own ways, even less powerful classes. But again, we already take this into account. Players are routinely restricted from Engineer and Spy just as they are from classes like Demoman or Sniper, and even though the same is not true for Medic, players are still generally outright denied from playing certain divisions - usually, for example, placement Invite players cannot even play Medic in Main, just because they can’t roster in Main to begin with.

Your third point I agree with the most. I think that offclass teams generally don’t have much to contribute to healthy competition. If people want to offclass in lower divisions, I think that’s great and should be encouraged, but entire teams of higher division players offclassing is just a recipe for sandbagging.

The way I see it, players have different skill levels: class-specific skill, and game skill. When they offclass, the former may change but the latter does not. When you put enough offclassers together on a team, their average game skill is still at a higher division. So I like to think of it this way: a team belongs in the division its players’ average game skill is, irrespective of what classes they’re playing.

el puertorriqueño puede apuntar bien

somehow too much yet not enough

hmm good

@Xenagos said in the same thread, new season, BUT WITH A TWIST:

but the format of the division and whether or not there’s a prize pool are two completely separate issues, one doesn’t have anything to do with the other and bringing it up here just distracts from the actual problem.

yeah fair

@JohhnyFromCali I agree - but the other viewpoint is:

Main has always been 2 divs in one, so it may make more logical sense to separate them.

As I said I think it makes more sense to have Main be a filter div for good teams, but others may disagree.

There are a few things that, since this thread exists, I think it’d be worthwhile to consider. I don’t want y’all to view this as personal opposition from me, because it’s not - but just things that I think would be valuable to the discussion. Because even if round-robin Advanced may be a no-brainer, it still opens up several questions about what happens next.

I think everyone should, in order to come to a community consensus, drop their thoughts on these considerations below

What happens to the div below?

What we had for a long time, with a smaller Advanced, is that Main was essentially two divs in one div. There was high main, and then there was low main. Low main was basically teams who were facing trial by fire to improve or die; they were just top IM teams at heart, looking to break out of “elo hell.”

I don’t think this is a problem at all. I think Main should be the filter div; any teams higher than it should have demonstrated their competence.

But some people disagree. I know people want the reintroduction of Challenger. I think the terminology is confusing that way, since when we had AM > IM > Main > Adv > Chal > Invite, it was in fact Main that was being split into Adv and Main, and Chal just became the new Advanced. I think it would make more sense, if the div below was split, to be like AM > IM > Main-2 > Main-1 > Adv > Invite.

What do you guys think?

What happens if teams die?

Do you just keep moving teams up from Main? Teams have died from being moved up to Adv or Invite before; do you just keep killing teams? What’s to stop that from happening? Why does it happen? When do you stop moving up teams from Main and just create more BYE weeks? Bye weeks fuck with the schedule, do they not? How do you handle points from bye weeks, if this happens?

I have a hunch that this will happen less in Adv than it currently happens in Invite just because the quality of competition isn’t so high that people feel compelled to play a lower div to place high, but I think it’s still something to expect.

Does Advanced follow Invite in having league fees and a prize pool?

After all, it would follow Invite in other aspects, and be a higher prestige div.

Does Advanced have qualifiers?

etc. etc.

I’m all for Advanced being Round Robin - I think, on a personal level, Swiss is bad for competition in small divs, as I’ve said many times on the forums - but I think we should reach a consensus on these other questions that arise out of Advanced being changed.