After discussion, we have created a survey to determine whether or not we should delay week 3.

https://rgl.gg/Players/My/Survey.aspx?r=24&s=66

Division Questions

A fairly close split on the skill range for the divisions. 48% of players felt the skill range was appropriate, while 52% believed it was at least a little bit too large.

Main had a 74% result that the skill range was at least a bit too large. This may be due to a couple of Advanced level offclass teams playing in the division.

Overall, players felt their division was the correct size, except for…

…Advanced, which had an almost even split on it being too big and just the right size. While I personally agree 14 team Advanced was too big, it is interesting to see that some Advanced players also thought it was an appropriate size.

Admin Questions

Most players felt their interactions were positive. Nothing really of note here.

Players still felt like it was easy to get a hold of their division admin.

Overall players felt the decisions of our admins were reasonable. Again, nothing really of note here.

Interestingly, an even split of players felt we were effective in curbing sandbagging and at the same time we were too lax regarding sandbagging. 3 divisions stuck out in terms of being too lax regarding Sandbagging:

Newcomer

Newcomer felt like we were too lax regarding sandbagging. This is odd to me, as Newcomer is the division with the most strict sandbagging rules. If you played in Newcomer this past season and felt we were too lax on sandbagging, please open a ticket in the RGL discord or DM me (WiLLmaTiC#0777) or Kitty (Kitty#5889) on discord, as I would love to find out more information.

Amateur

Amateur also felt we were too lax on sandbagging. After reviewing the playoff teams in Amateur there was definitely 1 team that should not have been placed in Amateur, however the remaining teams all seemed fine overall.

Main

Main was the last division that felt we were too lax with sandbagging. As stated in regards to the skill range, I believe this may be due to the couple of Advanced offclass teams that made playoffs in Main. Looking at the remaining playoff teams, they all seemed to be placed appropriately.

Maps

Vigil

Vigil is the second most enjoyable map, and is still going strong with 78% of players enjoying the map. This is down very slightly from last season, by 3%.

Ashville

Ashville gets the distinction of being the highest rated map this season, with a whopping 83% of players enjoying the map. This is actually an increase of 2% from last season.

Upward

Upward was rated the 3rd most enjoyable map this season, with a rating of 76%. This is a small 4% increase in enjoyability compared to last season.

Lakeside

Lakeside was NOT enjoyed, with a rating of only 36%. Compared to Cascade last season as well as the last time Lakeside was played, this is a 6% drop in enjoyment rating. Lakeside will not be making a return for Season 11.

Swiftwater

Swiftwater had an enjoyability rating of 61%, a small 2% decrease compared to last season. This is about average for the map.

Product

Product had a tiny bump in enjoyability, up to 68% from last season’s 67%. Nothing to see here.

Steel

Steel ended the season with a rating of 73%. This is a 1% decrease from last season.

Refresh Maps

Players unanimously voted to use the “Refresh” version of maps, provided there are no major gameplay changes to the maps. We will continue to use the Steel Refresh, and may use the Upward Refresh version. You can find a full list of the Upward Refresh changes in this TFTV thread.
In addition a thread has been created to discuss if the Upward Refresh version should be used. You can find it HERE.

Unban Cup Results

Unfortunately, the only weapon that had a remotely close vote to wanting to be tested was the Crit-a-Cola. Since players do not want to test out unbanning weapons the Unban Cup will not be happening.

Format Changes

Week Break

The majority of players voted to include a 1 week break between Week 7 and the start of playoffs. Originally, this was to be included in Season 11, due to originally having scheduling conflicts with Prolander it was removed. However, since the Prolander scheduling conflict has been removed, we will add this in for Season 12. Holding off until Season 12 is primarily due to the dates for Season 11 having already been announced.

1 Extra Match A Week

56% of players voted in favor of not adding an extra match on Sunday 930 EST, so it will not be added. This may be repolled in future seasons to see if opinions have changed.

Extra Weeks

An even 50% of players voted they would like to add 1-2 more weeks to the HL season. While this change will not be in effect for Season 11, we will look into if adding an extra 1-2 weeks to the HL schedule is feasible. Since HL no longer has scheduling conflicts with Prolander, the main issue preventing this is the limited map pool HL has to offer.

Korky finally decided to be somewhat photogenic for once

My dog Korky

Very dependable and consistent spy. Gets the rights picks at the right times. He’s also been playing the game forever so he knows what’s going wrong and what needs to change in the team. Great player, pick him up

@gobitoe said in We need more game modes: a discussion:

How many of you guys have actually played CTF? How many of you guys have actually tried PL race?

I personally believe that these 2 formats would not work for HL due to the nature of HL. Payload Race is a fun 12v12 or 16v16 game mode with multiple combos to do different things, reducing it to 9v9 seems very unfun.

@vibeisveryo said in We need more game modes: a discussion:

UGC HL had an 8 week season. What if RGL seasons included an “exp week” which doesn’t count for match points and on which a half of two experimental maps was played?

Back in the day UGC used to have a “Week 0” match where it would be a new map that gave no MP and had no effect on the Week 1 placements. While I do think this would be interesting to have, most teams just ignored that week to scrim the normal maps of the season. The issue is giving some incentive to play Week 0.

I think the mode that can be expanded on for HL is 5CP. I will never understand why Gully is considered the “go-to” 5CP HL map. It always devolved into one team capping mid then each team would stare at each other through a tiny choke for 5 minutes until someone gets bored, screws up a push and then something happens. Also pushing into 9 players on that tiny last point was absolutely cancer.

@gobitoe said in We need more game modes: a discussion:

(go boot up cp_science, I dare you)

how dare you talk shit about cp_science, that map is a relic and should be treasured

@patrick ight bet

also one more of my dog

I love my good friend Spades Slick

After discussion, we have created a survey to determine whether or not we should delay week 3.

https://rgl.gg/Players/My/Survey.aspx?r=24&s=66

Re: ban poll results?

Do you mean the ones from Season 8, or the results for Season 10 to attempt to have the banned weapons be test for unbanning?

Here are the S8 results for all the weapons that were polled

Here is the Season 10 article that had all the weapons polled

If I recall correctly, I do not believe we have ever skipped a week due to Valentines Day. Also as exa stated, only 1 invite HL player is going to the LAN. So currently I don’t have any plans to delay the season.

@ckrow said in round robin advanced:

okay excuse my ignorance, but is it really that hard to just, push all the “good” main teams down a div until they comply, im sure hurt their egos n shit but idk, what is like the obstacles youre talking about?

I’m not sure why you would push high main teams down to IM, that to me just does not make sense. Also the obstacle Im referring to would be the low advanced being so much better than the high main teams from last season feel like they have a shot against them.

@Xenagos said in round robin advanced:

I think the amount of restrictions that would be required for low advanced teams playing in main would be pretty minimal. I’m talking about high advanced/invite players playing in main on specifically high impact classes. a low advanced engie main playing engie in main is fine.

It’s definitely a case by case basis. Depending on the make up of the team you may need to restrict like 4 players, or none at all.

@Xenagos said in round robin advanced:

This is going to be something that varies from season to season in HL just because there’s less players than in 6’s. While this season the number of teams wanting to play invite was low that hasn’t been true of every season.

While HL does indeed have less players than 6’s, the main point I was trying to get across is that I’m willing to change how we restrict Invite players in Advanced, but I need to see an amount of teams trying to play Invite to support it.

@Xenagos said in round robin advanced:

I think this should be true for the higher level main teams. I don’t think this should be true for the teams playing their first season in main out of IM.

I agree. I was referring to existing high Main teams that are playing in Main again.

@Micahlele said in round robin advanced:

If the general skill level increases to the point that invite players are put into lower divisions because they can’t fit into invite, then lower divved teams have to suck it up that the skill ranges of divisions are shifting.

As I stated with the about 9ish teams wanting to play Invite, I do not believe the skill range has shifted a significant amount to warrant needing to force a bunch of teams down a division.

@Micahlele said in round robin advanced:

If ginyu, knd, dk, mts, ad, pyp, irene, >> (the names do not matter, but we assume they are all invite level) all came back, what happens?

Maybe Challenger comes back, if there are enough low Invite teams to support a Challenger division. In your scenario where a bunch of legacy teams return I feel Challenger returning would have significate merit.

@Roofon said in round robin advanced:

On the topic of low/mid advanced teams taking over main: I think this isn’t a bad thing, assuming advanced and invite are healthy especially.

Invite will always have priority on ensuring it is healthy. Whether that be through qualifiers, forced team move ups, or having a team sacrifice ala Imposters in Season 3. Invite is also in a way the easiest to ensure it is healthy, due to how few teams want to play in Invite. It leaves less room for an Invite team unintentionally landing in Advanced. On the flip side, due to the amount of teams that want to be in Advanced, you have to figure out how both Advanced and Main can be healthy. I’m of the belief that removing the bottom 3rd of Advanced and putting them in Main does not make Advanced healthier, and it certainly does not make Main healthier.

Honestly Constantly, Vibe, and wize hit the nail on the head. Ill try to provide more context to responses in this thread where I can. My responses are to an attempt to give an insight to my thought process, or opinions on certain topics.

@Constantly said in round robin advanced:

Main players, especially on the lower end of the division, seem to have an issue with Advanced/Invite players being within the division and view it as a “brick wall” they cannot beat.

As they rightfully should take issue with. To provide an example of what may have happened if Advanced was Round Robin this season:
4/8 Team slots are taken up by the losing Qual Teams and the Main Winners
The remaining 4 slots are taken up by the 4 best high to mid/high advanced teams.

This would leave the remaining 6 mid-low advanced teams into Main. This leads 2 issues issues:

• Do you restrict the Advanced Teams for being in Main when they simply couldn’t fit in Advanced
• Do you restrict them to keep in lines with our rules?

The first leads to upsetting the Advanced teams for not making the cut, and doing nothing wrong.
The second upsets the mid-high Main players who then have to deal with Advanced, and may the odd Invite player in their division. It basically leads to the playoff teams already being decided since the Advanced Teams would be so much better than everyone else.

Changing Advanced from Swiss to Round Robin affects Main in a very serious way.

@vibeisveryo said in round robin advanced:

having more round-robin divs is not necessarily a bad thing. round-robin can be a healthy tournament format

In a vacuum, I agree having more Round Robin divisions would be a good thing. However when applying our rules to the divisions, Round Robin causes more trouble than Swiss.

@vibeisveryo said in round robin advanced:

there can be a double round robin, with 16 teams and two “conferences”

This is one thing I disagree with, mainly due to the notion that one “conference” would be labeled as “easier” than the other. Which would lead into players going “Oh you only got so far because you conference had all the bad teams!” I also expect it would be a nightmare trying to balance the conferences to be even in skill.

@Wize said in round robin advanced:

It has been discussed at meetings and looking at the polls and internal discussions, it just seems everyone is split.

To expand on this a bit: in the preseason for Season 11 I wanted Advanced to be Swiss. When we picked up new staff members we had a staff meeting to go over things like assigning roles and any thing they wanted to bring up regarding their division. Joey Lemons wanted me to consider being back Round Robin Advanced. I took my time to look over previous discussions, the Season 10 poll results about division size, the Main sandbagging results and the current teams trying to play in Advanced. I simply could not find a way to have Advanced be Round Robin, AND at the same time be fair and healthy to the Main Division. So when time came to place teams I ruled to have Advanced be Swiss. ˢᵒᵘʳᶜᵉˢ: ᵀʳᵘˢᵗ ᴹᵉ

@Wize said in round robin advanced:

If I’m gonna provide you a professional/mature response, I ask that you do the same moving forward…I’ll always try to sit down/communicate with players if you approach me or notify me. I take your questions/comments/concerns/suggestions seriously.

THIS. My DMs are literally always open and if you want to message me and have a mature conversation regarding why I made a choice I did I would love for you to do so. You may not agree with me, but Ill be happy to explain my stance.

@Xenagos said in round robin advanced:

Does it suck to play against advanced (or invite) players in main? Yeah obviously, but the way you rectify that is with more class restrictions

As I stated earlier in my post, slapping more class restrictions on Advanced Teams that did not make the cut only leads to upset the teams that are doing nothing wrong. An analogy to this would be having Invite Qualifier teams get restricted in Advanced for losing Qualifiers. They wanted to play in Invite, but failed to qualify, why are we punishing them?

@Wize said in round robin advanced:

There has been a trend (from my perspective) of Invite players wanting to off-class in Advance or not wanting to play in Invite for a season

This also has a very negative effect on Advanced and Main. The invite off class team essentially takes a spot away from a low Advanced team trying to improve. The low Advanced team is now in Main and the whole cycle of “should we restrict them” starts again. In addition, most of the time, off class teams are teams that are looking to have a fun season. What makes a team that’s more likely trying to have fun, more worthy a 1 of 8 Advanced Slot from a team that wants to improve?

@Wize said in round robin advanced:

believe from internal discussions, we are trying to find the right number for the division (whether it be 12 or 14) that will keep the status of Advance while also not drastically affecting Main’s upper half.

This has been exactly what I’ve been trying to do. I sincerely apologize if I have not made the clear.

@Xenagos said in round robin advanced:

Most invite teams have a full roster of invite level players because there just isn’t space in invite for every invite player. This means that if these players actually want play time their only other option is advanced, like you said.

One thing the 6s team is doing is being less restrictive to teams trying to play in Invite, since they have something like 10-15 teams gunning for Invite, on top of the already established high and mid Invite teams. I would absolutely be down for doing something like this, however this would require teams to want to play in Invite. If I recall correctly, after the smoke settled from teams forming and dying, only 9ish teams TOTAL wanted to play in Invite.

@Xenagos said in round robin advanced:

IMO the best solution is to push for more maps to be created for the format so that we’re able to have a longer season and therefore larger round robin divisions. (I don’t think this should be done by bringing in ram jam/borneo/warmtic/millstone etc.)

I wholeheartedly agree with this, except for the maps you listed. We have some plans to try to get some fresh maps added into the rotation. On the flip side, adding more matches to a season would in turn allow Swiss to preform better at finding the top teams in a division.

@Xenagos said in round robin advanced:

If you put good teams in main, then the div becomes something players want to play in again.

I agree! The thing we are trying to do, is have the “good teams” in Main not feel like they are impossible obstacles that can’t be overcome.

@Wize said in round robin advanced:

I think the community needs to revive the spirit of competition a bit more again

This may be a hot take, but I believe there is a general culture of HL to just go for easy wins and not really try to improve. At the end of the day this is one thing I’m trying to change, the culture of play in the lowest division you can and just get free wins. Maybe I still have some UGC in me, I don’t know.

@ckrow said in round robin advanced:

shoutout wize for actually acknowledging complaints and trying to figure out the situation and listening to the ppl :DD:DDD

wize is fucking GOAT’d and I would give him a raise if I could.

I know it may not seem like it, since I have a tendency to keep to myself, however I DO in fact read these threads and try to take them into consideration when making changes or setting up the format. I will try to make this more well known moving forward, and I apologize for not doing so in the first place. At the end of the day we are all posting about what we think is best for Highlander, and I respect everyone for that. At the same time, I am trying to make changes for what I feel is best for Highlander using the resources at my disposal. We may have differing opinions, but we are on the same team. As stated, if you want to have a civil conversation with me feel free to shoot me a DM on Discord. I’d be happy to answer any questions anyone may have.

Division Questions

A fairly close split on the skill range for the divisions. 48% of players felt the skill range was appropriate, while 52% believed it was at least a little bit too large.

Main had a 74% result that the skill range was at least a bit too large. This may be due to a couple of Advanced level offclass teams playing in the division.

Overall, players felt their division was the correct size, except for…

…Advanced, which had an almost even split on it being too big and just the right size. While I personally agree 14 team Advanced was too big, it is interesting to see that some Advanced players also thought it was an appropriate size.

Admin Questions

Most players felt their interactions were positive. Nothing really of note here.

Players still felt like it was easy to get a hold of their division admin.

Overall players felt the decisions of our admins were reasonable. Again, nothing really of note here.

Interestingly, an even split of players felt we were effective in curbing sandbagging and at the same time we were too lax regarding sandbagging. 3 divisions stuck out in terms of being too lax regarding Sandbagging:

Newcomer

Newcomer felt like we were too lax regarding sandbagging. This is odd to me, as Newcomer is the division with the most strict sandbagging rules. If you played in Newcomer this past season and felt we were too lax on sandbagging, please open a ticket in the RGL discord or DM me (WiLLmaTiC#0777) or Kitty (Kitty#5889) on discord, as I would love to find out more information.

Amateur

Amateur also felt we were too lax on sandbagging. After reviewing the playoff teams in Amateur there was definitely 1 team that should not have been placed in Amateur, however the remaining teams all seemed fine overall.

Main

Main was the last division that felt we were too lax with sandbagging. As stated in regards to the skill range, I believe this may be due to the couple of Advanced offclass teams that made playoffs in Main. Looking at the remaining playoff teams, they all seemed to be placed appropriately.

Maps

Vigil

Vigil is the second most enjoyable map, and is still going strong with 78% of players enjoying the map. This is down very slightly from last season, by 3%.

Ashville

Ashville gets the distinction of being the highest rated map this season, with a whopping 83% of players enjoying the map. This is actually an increase of 2% from last season.

Upward

Upward was rated the 3rd most enjoyable map this season, with a rating of 76%. This is a small 4% increase in enjoyability compared to last season.

Lakeside

Lakeside was NOT enjoyed, with a rating of only 36%. Compared to Cascade last season as well as the last time Lakeside was played, this is a 6% drop in enjoyment rating. Lakeside will not be making a return for Season 11.

Swiftwater

Swiftwater had an enjoyability rating of 61%, a small 2% decrease compared to last season. This is about average for the map.

Product

Product had a tiny bump in enjoyability, up to 68% from last season’s 67%. Nothing to see here.

Steel

Steel ended the season with a rating of 73%. This is a 1% decrease from last season.

Refresh Maps

Players unanimously voted to use the “Refresh” version of maps, provided there are no major gameplay changes to the maps. We will continue to use the Steel Refresh, and may use the Upward Refresh version. You can find a full list of the Upward Refresh changes in this TFTV thread.
In addition a thread has been created to discuss if the Upward Refresh version should be used. You can find it HERE.

Unban Cup Results

Unfortunately, the only weapon that had a remotely close vote to wanting to be tested was the Crit-a-Cola. Since players do not want to test out unbanning weapons the Unban Cup will not be happening.

Format Changes

Week Break

The majority of players voted to include a 1 week break between Week 7 and the start of playoffs. Originally, this was to be included in Season 11, due to originally having scheduling conflicts with Prolander it was removed. However, since the Prolander scheduling conflict has been removed, we will add this in for Season 12. Holding off until Season 12 is primarily due to the dates for Season 11 having already been announced.

1 Extra Match A Week

56% of players voted in favor of not adding an extra match on Sunday 930 EST, so it will not be added. This may be repolled in future seasons to see if opinions have changed.

Extra Weeks

An even 50% of players voted they would like to add 1-2 more weeks to the HL season. While this change will not be in effect for Season 11, we will look into if adding an extra 1-2 weeks to the HL schedule is feasible. Since HL no longer has scheduling conflicts with Prolander, the main issue preventing this is the limited map pool HL has to offer.

According to the Season 10 Highlander Survey, players shown they want to continue using “Refresh” versions of maps, provided there are no major gameplay changes.

The Refresh team has release a final version of their Upward Refresh, so I would like to open a discussion about whether it should be used or not for Season 11.

The biggest change the Refresh version of Upward has is the blocking of the box spot from the tiles hold on last. A full changelog can be found on the tf.tv thread.
You can also download the map: Here

Based on the recent survey, players are interested in having a cup solely focused on testing out whitelist changes. This thread will be used to discuss which weapons players feel should be unbanned for testing, and which should stay banned. The Season 10 Survey will have a section solely dedicated to which weapons players would like to see tested to be unbanned.

The only weapon currently confirmed to be unbanned for testing is the Air Strike, with the Season 8 postseason survey results having a 25 vote difference if the weapons should be unbanned.

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Since some players may not have been playing Competitive TF2, or even TF2 in general when the current weapon bans were placed, I have included the historical logic as to why the weapon was banned. If there is a reason I missed, please let me know and I will update the weapon.

Scout:

Crit-a-Cola - While this weapon has received numerous changes over the years, it’s case still remains the same. Giving the Scout, an already good class at dealing damage, the ability to deal even more damage is not a very good idea. Combining Crit-a-Cola with an uber completely removes the trade off of taking more damage to deal more damage.

Mad Milk - Having an easily spammable ability for both the user and their team to heal 60% of their damage in a fight was deemed too overpowered.

Soldier:

Air Strike - In the past, the Dead Ringer allowed for it’s cloak meter to be filled with ammo packs and scrap metal. This would allow Air Strike Soldiers to repeatedly trigger the Spy’s feign death and get 1 extra rocket, instead of the intended use of getting a real kill to get 1 extra rocket. This would allow for almost uncounterable bombs by Soldiers with a maxed out Air Strike, providing little counter play.

Pyro:

Scorch Shot - This Pyro secondary is commonly seen as a Swiss Army knife of pyro secondaries. It’s easily spammable, deals fairly good damage with its initial hit and explosion afterwards, and denies ubers from range with little to no counter play.

Engineer:

Short Circuit - Another weapon that has undergone multiple changes since it’s banning. It was originally used by Engineers on Payload offense as a way to deny both Soldier and Demoman spam on the cart, as well as countering Demoman solo ubers to destroy their sentry gun. The ability to remove 2 classes from doing their job for virtually no effort was deemed too powerful.

Sniper:

Machina - The Machina is similar to the Diamondback where it rewards Sniper for doing what he would already be doing: charging shots, but to the extreme. Fully charged Machina shots deal 173 damage bodyshots, which just barely does not kill unbuffed Pyros and Demomen. In addition, fully charged Machina shots penetrate players, which removes the ability for medics to get out by being body blocked by teammates. The Machina’s downsides are almost completely irrelevant in HL as well since comms are good enough most of the time that the tracer rounds don’t matter. Also some feel not being able to no scope is irrelevant because you can simply quick scope the 50 damage bodyshot you would normally do. With so much upside and very little to no downside, it was banned.

Jarate - With the Jungle Inferno Updated on October 20th 2017, the Razorback was nerfed to no longer allow Snipers to be buffed. It was determined that Jarate would be the go-to sniper secondary. With it’s short cooldown, low risk/high reward, and the ability to spam it indefinitely on most Payload last points it was determined to be worthy of a ban.

Darwin’s Danger Shield - The Darwin’s allows the sniper to completely ignore the afterburn flinch, negating one of Sniper’s soft counters for virtually no downside.

Spy:

Diamondback - Provides too much benefit to Spies for simply doing what Spies already do, stab players and sap buildings. Giving the Spy 2 free 102 damage shots for sapping a teleporter, or being able to backstab the sniper behind his team, then being able to deal 102 damage from any range.

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This thread is intended to generate discussion regarding which weapons should be tested to be unbanned. The Season 10 Postseason survey will have a page dedicated to polling the community as to which weapons should be tested in the cup. The format for the cup remains to be decided.

Here are the playoff structures for Season 10 of Highlander:

Invite: Top 4 Double Elimination
Advanced: Top 6 Single Elimination
Main: Top 8 Single Elimination
Intermediate: Top 6 Single Elimination
Amateur: Top 8 Single Elimination
Newcomer: Top 8 Single Elimination

We have re-added the playoff shading on the League Standings page.

In addition, we will be having a 1 week break between the regular season and playoffs. The first round of playoffs will start on November 15th. This is an experimental change to align with the 6s schedule. This change will be polled if it should stay for future seasons.

Highlander Season 9 Survey Results

This article was delayed due to family matters and illness. I apologize for the delay.

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Skill Range and Team Count

Skill range and team count for each division was in a good spot last season.

Newcomer through IM felt the skill range was slightly too big, however this is to be expected lower level teams tend to grow at different rates.

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Admins and Sandbagging

Admin interactions were positive and when needed admins were east to get a hold of. Players also felt like, for the most part, decisions of the admin team were reasonable.

Our anti-sandbagging policies were generally effective, however some players felt we were too lax on restrictions. The divisions where players felt we were too lax on restrictions were Newcomer, Amateur, and Main. We will look into methods of improving out sandbagging measures in these divisions.

Players currently don’t want to play more than 1 map per week, so this suggestion will be but on the backburner. There is discussion to possibly had about when the extra match may happen and if that would change opinions of this, but that wont be for sometime.

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Map Results

Vigil was the map with the highest “Very Enjoyable” votes out of the Season 9 maps. A whopping 81% of players found the map enjoyable. This is a 10% increase compared to last season with a 71% enjoyment vote.

Ashville was voted the most enjoyable Season 9 map, barely beating out Vigil with 82% of players enjoying the map. Compared to Vigil, Ashville had a small 4% bump in player enjoyment compared to last season.

Swiftwater had a slight increase in enjoyability at 63%, a 3% increase from last season.

Nothing too notable with Product with it’s 67% enjoyment rating. This is a 5% decrease compared to last season.

Again, nothing too notable with Upward. With an enjoyment rating of 72%, it had a slight decrease of enjoyment of 6% compared to last season.

The new Cascade did not fare well in it’s first season in rotation, with a 42% enjoyment rating. Coincidentally, this is the same enjoyment rating Lakeside received last season.

Steel is surprisingly the 3rd highest rated map out of the Season 9 maps, with a 74% enjoyment rating. This is an 8% increase from last season.

Some interesting Tidbits

As you decreased in divisions, new Cascade’s enjoyment rating steadily rose

Interestingly, although Invite players have called for Upward and Product’s removal from the map pool, they are still voted very favorably.

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Miscellaneous

Players are interested in having a cup focused on whitelist changes. Be on the lookout for a possible poll on which weapons should be tested to be unbanned.

Invite players REALLY do not want to move to “LAN” style playoff structure, with all matches being played over 1 weekend.

A close vote that resulted in players wanting to keep the current playoff structure.

70% of players from IM to Invite are interested in having their division become a paid division and playing for a prize pool. Be on the lookout in 2022 for more info regarding this!

Since Challenger was removed it is impossible make it either Round Robin or Swiss, however should it have stuck around it would have been Round Robin like previous seasons.

With the removal of Challenger, players voted to have Advanced be a Round Robin format, so why isn’t it? With the survey results in hand, the admin team had a discussion about which format to use. With removing Challenger, we ran into some issues with team placements. Removing Challenger essentially shifts teams down a division and has the potential to create unfair player restrictions and unbalanced divisions.

Assuming 6 out of the 8 Challenger teams live or are remade to be similar in skill as the dead teams, this would leave 2 spots open for teams from the old Advanced. One of those spots would be taken by the Main winners from last season, and the other possibly taken by the Advanced winners from last season. This would place every team from the 2nd place Advanced team and below into Main. This would lead to one of 2 scenarios: the first being we leave the high Advanced teams unrestricted, breaking our own sandbagging rules, and letting them completely roll the division. The second scenario being we follow our sandbagging rules and place unfair restrictions on them because they are in playing in a lower division not of their own accord. There is a high chance multiple teams would die due these restrictions.

With Advanced being a 12 team swiss this issue is solved. You take all the would-be Challenger teams and place them into Advanced, and you take the top Advanced teams from last season and keep them in advanced. The lower Advanced teams then get moved down to Main, increasing the skill range of the division.

Another minor issue that we ran into was the possibly of an invite off class team happening. While we don’t mind invite off class teams happening, they are typically seen as “less serious” than teams with players of the appropriate skill on their mains. With Advanced at 8 teams, this would lead to either a less serious team taking the space of a team that wants to play seriously and improve, or the invite off class team would have been placed in Main, where we typically restrict invite players to only medic.

During the discussion, the majority rule in favor of a 12 team Advanced. In addition to this, there were admins that felt Round Robin would be better, but with Challenger being removed 12 team Swiss would be the better option.

Ok, but why is it 14 now?

As I was out of town with family issues on September 17th when this decision was made, I was unable to provide my input on this situation. I reached out to the Advanced Admin @Joey-Lemons for a comment:

“Regarding 14 team advanced, there were a few reasons for that being the direction we ended up going in. With the deletion of challenger, it created some obstacles for team placement that we would end up having to make compromises for one way or another. For example, with the division above main being removed or made smaller depending on how you look at it, moving up the main winners became a problem. We want to reward teams for winning their div with a moveup, however this put them in above other teams we would have personally chosen based on skill alone, complicating the placements. Another contributor to this was legacy teams returning in both invite and advanced that belonged in those divs, forcing other teams further down in seeding than they may have been in season 9. So again, there were teams that had solid performances in advanced of season 9 that we had to debate between placing in main or advanced this season. With what we had to work with, we believed the expansion to 14 teams was the cleanest solution to avoid being unfair to teams with achievements from the previous season. In hindsight we are aware that this change still ended up upsetting a good chunk of players and we will absolutely take this into account for our decision making going forward and for next season. We hope this shed some light on why we chose to expand from advanced 12 to 14 teams this season.”

We hope this sheds some light on the decisions to make Advanced a 14 team Swiss.

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Original article: https://rgl.gg/?r=24&a=1584