Korky finally decided to be somewhat photogenic for once

Demo so I can yell at my teammates.

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

gg home depot

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

Week 1 (9/20): pl_vigil_rc7
Week 2 (9/27): koth_ashville_rc2d
Week 3 (10/4): pl_upward
Week 4 (10/11): koth_lakeside_r2
Week 5 (10/18): pl_swiftwater_final
Week 6 (10/25): koth_product_final
Week 7 (11/1): cp_steel_f5a

HL Admin Roster

• Head Admin: WiLLmaTiC
• Invite Admin: ire
• Advanced Admin and Mod: Joey Lemons and Bert
• Main Admin and Mod: Rebel and Spazz
• IM Admin and Mod: Icy and grey
• Amateur Admin and Mod: Charizard and ygrrt
• Newcomer Admin and Mod: Powerpuker and Kitty

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Roster Size

After some internal discussion, we have decided to increase the roster size back to 18 players. In addition to this change, a rule update has been made regarding being rostered on a team.

This rule update means regardless of your role on the team (main, substitute, or roster rider) if you were rostered on the team, it will be taken into consideration when team placement and class restrictions are done.

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“Refresh” Maps

Group players have been working to modernize and optimize maps used in competitive play. These “Refresh” maps have changes such as but not limited to clipping fixes, bug fixes, and optimizations. An important point to note is the only time a gameplay change is made to a refresh map is with explicit approval from the map’s original creator. This season we will be using the latest version of the cp_steel refresh, cp_steel_f5a. Click HERE to download it.

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Playoff Structure

Due to the issues regarding playoffs last season (teams dying and the playoff structure not reflecting the number of teams in the division fast enough) we have decided to remove the playoff shading from the League Standings table for all divisions except Invite. As a general rule of thumb, the top 4 teams are guaranteed a spot in the playoffs.

Here are the current playoff structures for each division. Please keep in mind these are tentative and are SUBJECT TO CHANGE:

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

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Challenger

Let’s talk about the elephant in the room, Challenger. As many of you are aware Challenger will not be returning for Season 10. Initially, Challenger was created as an overflow division for low Invite teams that did not make the invite cut to use their roster without restrictions, and for the high advanced teams that could keep up with the low Invite teams. In reality, the low Invite teams decided to play Challenger instead of Invite together for easier matches. Many of these issues were also seen when 6s added its “Div-1” and “Div-2”. After the removal of both divisions, large improvements were seen to the health in Invite in the following seasons.

With the removal of Challenger, a discussion was had regarding the format of Advanced. The admins concluded that Advanced will be a 12 team Swiss with a Top 6 Single Elimination Playoff Bracket. The Swiss structure over Round Robin was decided as having Advanced Round Robin will both upset Advanced teams that are now either pushed out into Main or having to fight to stay in Advanced. Also, with how often teams die, a team dying in Round Robin has the potential to cause major issues if a team dies early in the season.

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Season 10 Map List

• cp_steel_f5a
• pl_upward
• pl_vigil_rc7
• pl_swiftwater_final
• koth_product_fina
• koth_ashville_rc2d
• koth_lakeside_r2

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original article link: https://rgl.gg/?r=24&a=1581

Announcing RGL Highlander - Season 10

Banner by Frazzanator & Raos

Register for Season 10 Here

Important Season 10 dates

• New Team Registration Open: August 21st
• Invite and Advanced registration Ends: September 8th
• General Registration Ends: September 10th
• Qualifiers (if needed): September 11th & September 12th
• Division placements finalized, week 1 matches scheduled: September 17th
• Invite Fees Due: September 20th (Time extension is given for qualifier teams.)
• Regular Season: September 20th – November 8th (7 Weeks)
• Roster Locks: October 31st
• Playoffs Start: November 15th
• Last possible date for playoff matches: December 13th

Confirmed Maps

• pl_swiftwater_final1
• cp_steel (New Steel Refresh update may potentially be used.)
• pl_upward
• pl_vigil_rc7
• koth_ashville_rc2d
• koth_product_final

The final map for the rotation will be released after the RGL Highlander Season 9 Postseason Survey results are processed.

A quick note about Challenger

For the time being, Challenger has been removed. More information regarding this will be in the season changes article.

original article: https://rgl.gg/?r=24&a=1555

@scaredy-bat said in PSA for teams trying to play Invite and Challenger:

Oh, and fwiw, S8 Adv qualifiers was pick/ban all three matches, just for Historical Context.

This is what I am leaning toward having all the qualifiers be. More info, like map list (but not order), will be in my next article. I’m hoping to have it out after the map cup to discuss the results of the Season 8 survey, how the map cup results are at the time of writing, and a few other topics with HL.

Matches is a really cool gamer and a pleasure to hang out with. She’s been trying to grind out scout super hard and definitely deserves a shot with a good advanced roster.

Even though S9 had an awful season civ was awesome to play with. I would definitely recommend picking him up!

Dude has some REALLY good DM, but I think the jump from Main to Challenger may be a bit too big gamesense wise. He will absolutely crush Advanced

Korky finally decided to be somewhat photogenic for once

Hi looking for a Challenger team for S9. I come with a server and a mumble. Regardless of Seductive 9’s awful performance, I was able to keep up with the low invite snipers that were in the division.

I may be making a team (again weeeeee) but I want to keep my options open