tldr + ratio + i made invite playoffs

I read through everything and while I can't say for sure any of the specifics are the best course of action I support the concept 100 percent. I've been saying for a while now that it's absurd that rgl is a paid league that doesn't pay it's staff.

#FinancialFreedom #Grindset #SpeakEnglishEatIndianDressItalianSpendArab #WarrenBuffet #Motivational #HustleQuotes #4_millionaires #EntrepreneurMotivation #JeffBezos #SuccessTips #WordsofWisdom #WorkHard

Thanks for taking the time to read through everything. I'm not really dead-set on pushing my specific proposals, but I hope to at least spark some discussion into what can be done better (or at all).

I think the paid staff point is an interesting one, but I'd rather take a different approach.
Rather than pay the admins for the work they do which right now they certainly should be compensated for, I'd like to see if it could go the other way around - reducing their workload to one which is more acceptable for volunteer work.

(Hot Take?) I don't think paying the staff wouldn't be so bad if a majority of the staff of volunteers primary role was to MONITOR systems or execute FIXED RULES instead of being forced to make their own interpretation/do other heavy lifting.

It might just be an idealistic POV, but I think if money went into development into systems that could assist/lighten the responsibility of admins, that's a better long term fix than compensating individuals for their time (I think unless RGL is looking to hire people full time, paying every staff is a slippery slope.)

What would be the point of having admins if there is 0 interpretation? This is literally the reason why admins exist is to have interpretation and say in fixed rules. Given RGLs history with set rules, don't you think it would be better for admins to be necessitated to assess these rules and situations on a case-by-case basis (especially when we fuck up)? Main stay rules as well as admin discretion, feedback, adjustment, etc. are necessary for the league to operate at all. I will say that the lack of give/assessing/patience in cases has fucked RGL in the past, so having a system automatically give people penalties for shit that may not even be in their control would be a mess in code (how do you code for every situation?) and logistically (how can we fairly interpret outcomes?). I will say the staff we have now are adjusting rules to be more specific or be more lenient as there are more cases of "x" things that happen. We've all played the game and never want to punish anyone if they don't truly deserve it.

I absolutely agree with investing with the development of systems. This is something that we want to take into consideration, if people don't want a large prizepool, to instead invest that money into the development of the website, match servers, etc.. I will say that the lack of automation on the RGL website (imo) takes up a lot of time as an admin, for example, it is extremely painful to do demo checks especially in the lower divs of 30+ teams, where randomizing and going through each match/player is tumultuous. We've talked about several things as admins that could lighten the workload recently, it's really just about putting the stuff in writing into action.

Writing code to scale penalties based on previous actions is not difficult, and would help in situations where repeat offenders need to be scaled up. I should however agree that a lot of the decisions should be made by admins, but I think some heavy lifting can be done via some little code here and there.

Also, a lot of those issues that admins face can be, what I think, easily solvable with engineering. All it takes is maybe 1 or 2 guys and a month and you probably could fix that and world hunger. BTW, side note, website costs for this type of scale doesn't come close to exceeding $150/year base, add on $200 / year for match servers (at the very, very max. I'd average it to $150 a year)- highly dependant on total teams versus who's going to reserve servers.

Not sure what is holding up the development to be fair. A lot of competant and really dedicated members of this community are far more active on development.

Scaled up penalties and repeat offenses do not take a lot of time anyway, what takes a majority of the time is specific cases that are not within a certain rule (match fixing, ringer disputes, etc.). For cost? I have absolutely no idea, that isn't my expertise, I leave that stuff up to Sigafoo and Exa who are more than capable to manage that stuff. As for dev availability, that has never been the main issue, getting the right person/people to dev it is obvious, but finding someone who would do a bunch of work for free is another thing. If those people exist and want to work on RGL development for free, they should at the very least fill out the application form if not message an admin about their interest. I'll try and see thoughts on increased web dev presence in RGL, I understand the league had trouble with that in the past.

I'm not for complete automation (though that does seem like it'd be pretty sick ngl) - but I do think that right now the amount of things OPEN to interpretation is too damn high - and writing more rules to be lenient is fine, writing rule to be VAGUE (which gives more power to interpretation) is asking for trouble => vague rules + large admin team is a recipe for disaster (or at least more tftv threads).

Take ringers for example:
"A default ringer is the first ringer a team presents that is of the same or lower skill level as the team. Default ringers cannot be denied; however, if the opposing team believes the ringer is greatly better than the person they are replacing, then they should contact an admin citing the above criteria for ringers"

Ok, so for a default ringer dispute you have one party's interpretation of a players skill versus another party's interpretation VERSUS the admin interpretation.
I have to think RGL is even somewhat aware of how this vague and troubling this open to interpretation rule is as in main+ the rules even say no default ringers - because for starters more often than not the players most aware of that individual's "skill" are the ones in a dispute - and the admin will either very likely be bias (if they know a party/the player) or clueless (have to rapidly scan RGL page/logs to make a snap decision). I guess the real point I'm trying to make here is why have a system that gives admin the opportunity/ability to mess up - I think well written rules SHOULDN'T be open to interpretation, as each admin trying to understand the rules and applying their own understanding of them results in a disorganized mess that TFTV and others point out as RGL inconsistency.

Consider restrictions... same deal - one person deciding who gets to play and who doesn't, which possibly no interaction with the player they are assigning and no PUBLIC criteria, guideline, or rubric their decisions can be held responsible to. I don't know the details of how RGL does it, but given how late some restrictions come and how inconsistent I've seen some past performances vs restrictions - I have to think it ends up being a lot less structured decision-making and a lot more hope-and-pray.

The solution? Well I was working on a document proposal but the general idea should be to have a STANDARIZED (public) CRITERA for "skill" level of a player. A line drawn in sand where having these checklist of accomplishments qualifies you as a "Main-level demo" - and both ringing and restriction follow suit. What that criteria should be is what admin experience/interpretation should work towards, but that public rubric at least allows some admins who might not be qualified to make important decisions with a guideline and some template for decisions to be held accountable against.

This is unfortunately where our views shift.

No dev has the time to do this unpaid, and rightfully so. Depending on work that needs to be done, maybe? But depending on what you, and furthermore, what "upper level" wants, wishing on a star for a dev to work for free is never, ever going to happen, sorry.

Also, there's tons of competant devs. Maybe trying to reach out to them or post a thread promoting it seems like a good idea if you're going to help get people moved. But as I said, if the workload being proposed is a lot, there's little to no incentive other than "working on the greatest league in NA!", which is frankly a low bar at this point.

You say this, but when you add the times together, it amounts to a non-zero amount of time. Not saying that it's an absolute essential, but you should consider tasks that you deem to be "repeatable" to be something solvable via engineering.

I agree with your pretty much on all of this. I will say that there is a backend RGL "skill" rating for each player that is updated periodically (I can see the validity of this being public but it could cause some issues for players that don't like their rating lol, though I agree that the scale itself should be public), I will also say that sometimes things slip through admins hands and I hate that, but it's really a direct result of there being so much to do as an individual admin. As for the rules, I meant to go through them and try a somewhat comprehensive rewrite but school started so I ran out of time. That being said, admins rarely ever decide stuff on their own and talk to the rest of us if they are having trouble or need advice. Restrictions are something that have recently been relaxed especially in advanced, we're really trying to refine them and make them fair for the all the divs, but sometimes restrictions come in late and that is nothing but our fault alone.

The idea originally is that we want to offer fair compensation for a committed dev. From what I understand, it's the workload on top of the time commitment that Sigafoo/Aad have to give to teach new people the ropes of the website, and then retaining said people for a productive amount of time. Also now that I think about it, the only repeat offenses that should be automatically penalized are forfeits and demo checks, otherwise (for the most part), player conduct bans, other investigations, etc. contribute much more in the grand scheme of things, though I'm sure if demo checks ever get automated that system would be put into place as well.

Not just directed at you, more to everyone in the community you just happen to be the one talking about it... But I really have to ask (and maybe I am just too much of a boomer) but why is this sandbagging shit such a sticking point for RGL? I don't play anymore, but are sandbaggers or "OP" ringers actually a problem? I haven't truly played since ESEA died, but in comparison ESEA had way less issue with people sandbagging than RGL does, seemingly because ESEA said "fuck it figure it out yourselves" instead of trying to regulate it. I cant help but think that trying to regulate these things really only produces negative outcomes. One, people get super frustrated when they see players that they think should be banned from X or Y class and are not, and two it adds so much extra work for the admin team to try and juggle a whole bunch of super subjective ideas on who is good at what class. Its also not like a whole bunch of players even try to sandbag anyways, most players that plan the game want to play at the level they are capable of rather than down 2 divisions.

I would say that restrictions are WAY more important for lower divs than they are for upper divs. The problem with ESEA is that there was literally 0 rules for sandbagging just around until it's bitter end. I think what RGL went way too hard with the restrictions at first and we're now starting to lax way more (justifiably). The only judgement that RGL goes off of is past league history and status (this eliminates a majority of the subjectiveness), generally players that win a division aren't allowed back on that class in the same division (this goes mostly for teams that get top 3 in general). However, especially for advanced this season, the skill level has risen a lot and invite has a constant amount of players flowing towards it, as well as a renewed mentality on not hemorrhaging skill in the div below invite, are contributing to a greater effect that will likely trickle down to Main at some point. I don't see it going farther than that though, we really prioritize protecting the lower divs because one or two out of place players can shake up the entirety of the standings, where as in advanced one good player is way easier to deal with.

nerd identification thread

Finally a good post, thank you Mario.

On one hand, I don't remember it being THAT bad in ESEA
On the other Tino, we literally rang Yui, who was one of the best scouts in the world.
Also I definitely played against a team that rang Stark at one point.

And we did still lose that game...

id change the wording from "way more important" to "only important" for lower divs (nc & am). im of the opinion that class restrictions overall only ruin competition in higher divs rather than improve it, and that theyre the reason why the gap from invite to advanced and advanced to main is so big right now. for context, you could get top 3 in main, even win main, and people still wont want to even try u out because of that gap unless ur the last option out there, and more often than not it wont come to that. this season of main is actually decent but i still think the best season was 1 where there werent any class restrictions at all, they didnt exist at the time.

if anything, its very silly that low invite players are banned from their classes while theres a number of other players in advanced that are better than them. yumyums class restricted off scout, but scarfs and legit arent, and an easy way to be more consistent is to be more lenient.

I would contribute the skill gap in advanced and main more to the lack of resources to learn the game, as well as teams not living for more than one season than class restrictions. They definitely still play a role, but I don't think it is significant. For class restrictions I think it can be a two-way street, I think too many restrictions as well as too little restrictions contribute somewhat to a skill gap, but again, I don't think it would be that big of an issue if teams actually stuck together or if there were more valuable resources to learn the game. Resources are hard to make because so many different situations come up, and it isn't always entirely resourceful to watch invite demos, for example, where the pace of the game is so much faster than it is in main, you really have to work your way up in terms of skill level. I will say that RGL looks at class restriction (at least now) from a team-based level, where people are more likely to get restricted if they start stacking rosters or if they are a high invite player playing in advanced. For example, to let a team that has won advanced on 3-4 different classes go unrestricted would be somewhat unfair, maybe not as stringent as we have been but situations like that will see some sort of restriction. I 100% understand being more lax in Main, as I said I think as Advanced gets better less class restrictions will exist in Main, but for IM, AM, and NC restrictions will probably stay relatively as strict, as to why I stand by my "way more important" wording.

For your last point, did you really just call yumyum, someone who is solidly bubble invite playoffs (5th place), low invite? They're in a completely different situation from scarfs and legit, who played on low invite teams portland (5-13, 8th place) and HR Team (-1-18, last place) respectfully. The system we have in place isn't 100% fullproof or without flaws but I would say it is fairly consistent in terms of: Teams that have won a division, and players that have almost made invite playoffs.

Open Level Scouts

and they lost the div who cares

People complained "we cant win open because of stacked teams" yet those stacked teams were the only reason winning Open meant literally anything. Any time an up and comer pulled it off and beat the sandbag team in finals you KNEW that was a good team.

The only functional problem with sandbagging was that maybe one or two games in your season were lost before they started, but that was a problem for like 95% of teams anyway due to the large skill disparity (still true to a degree). Overall it always looped back to people crying that they lost to a team because that team was better than them.

I don't think people who sandbag have healthy brains and they're generally unlikeable people but it's just not the end of the world. You go "oh no, I lost to people better than me" and move on.

Sounds like not playing RGL is one my biggest dubs and I've won a lot of championships

outside of marxist's outdated guides theres always been a lack of resources for the game but the gap being this wide is new, same goes for ppl not making long-term teams, and actually class restrictions make it so teams die earlier since ur either forced at gunpoint to go 0-16 in invite or kill ur team. most ppl wanna actually have fun while they play. i dont like using anecdotes but when i played my 1st season of open, i learned a lot from getting shat on by sandbaggers and it set a minimum bar that if u didnt reach u wouldnt play well. that bar not existing is why most main players have no way of making it to advanced unless they do what the crazy team did this season which is make a team with a bunch of other main players and get steamrolled. i rly respect the grind tho.

for the 2nd paragraph uve kinda forced me into a bad corner, i either have to concede and say i didnt mean what i actually do, or say negative things about yumyum which isnt the intention. the way i look at yumyum and cat posse is shining star and kurama did A LOT of work for the team and rly put them up there, yumyum just happened to be there. i think any low invite/high adv scout could have filled his shoes and i think scarfs and legit wouldve done better, even if on paper those 2 are supposed to be worse. if u think attributing the success of entire teams towards individuals is good practice, ive found at least one of ur guys' major flaws in deciding restrictions. but this still doesnt make any sense, by ur logic safrix should never be allowed to play advanced without class restrictions, and yet it was fygg that was the one that got restricted off demo... on the same team that has air in it... who's demo is significantly better than fygg's. theres plenty of other really dumb restrictions but i think ive made my point on how silly u guys are with them, i still stand by that yumyum deserves to have the option to play advanced if its what he wants.

Are you implying that the lack of long-term teams is a newer issue? Because if so I got bad news for you...

It's not a new issue but I feel like it's worse than it used to be.

Partly I think that despite their issues, ESEA's roster moveup rules encouraged a lot more teams to move up as a team. If you were even one of the better players on a low playoffs open team, would you take your free spot on an IM team with your moveup roster, or take your chances LFTing for IM without a great e-resume?

Now there's almost no incentive to move up with your team unless you absolutely believe in them. Everyone wants to go at least 8-8 in their first season in every div now so they all go LFT I firmly believe this leads to moveup teams losing their best players more consistently, thus struggling and losing motivation to stay together.

Also (this is part of a whole other theory) I believe the rise of discord has killed the classic idea of strong friend groups/circlejerks, which were a major source of long term teams. When you hang out every night in voice with the same 8 dudes, you're generally gonna be making teams based around playing with those dudes for as long as its viable. Now people just post the same sped up gifs in the 23 identical tf2 discords they're in with the same 93 people in them. Season ends, team discords die, rinse and repeat.

Agreed on both posts, I think most of the skill disparity issue has been solved by more divs, and the RGL is still in the transition of phasing out extreme sandbagging rules. I also think circlejerks contributed to why it was so hard to move up, people seem slightly more willing to explore other options but overall yeah the discord thing is just a shift in TF2 "culture" (lol).

Taking this moment to mention that Tery is a TF2 GOAT.

I don't think getting repeatedly stomped by sandbaggers is particularly enjoyable lol. Sure, someone who is on a mid main/advanced team or something along those lines might learn a lot, but somebody on a low main team who doesn't deserve to be forced back into IM will likely learn nothing. I agree it sets some sort of bar but I really don't think there is this wholistic benefit from being shat on, like you immediately see the light of how to play tf2 better or whatever. Obviously it takes time, sandbaggers serve a somewhat positive purpose, but competition wise some players may be completely demotivated or see it as unfair (aka the time in ESEA where SLEMNISH PLAYED IM).

For your second point, obviously you do not know that team very well lmfao, from what I understand Yumyum was a giant part of how that team even operated, and consistently came through with giant plays game in and game out. So no, I don't think scarfs and legit would have done better in his position, and Yumyum absolutely deserves to be class restricted in advanced. Fygg was restricted off of demo because he won advanced on the class, this was part of RGL's policy to try and get those players to play invite, btw air is good but his demo is not SIGNIFICANTLY better than fygg's idk what your on about with that, also air has been in advanced for like 5 seasons and never gotten about 4th. Safrix was not restricted because he never played on a team as demo in playoffs invite (he played soldier). It worked out because he played demo in advanced anyway, but I think you think our policy is completely set in stone (it's not), at least from this season's restrictions and on we try and look at relative player skill when we can/understand.

Carried by playoffs invite and LAN scout JM.

u sound like the 23 year old high school drop out who brags about beating up kids on playgrounds

reread "Yumyum was a giant part of how that team even operated," ask urself "how," and any response from me is redundant. air is an emotionally unstable pedophile that a plethora of people (myself included) will never play on a team with under any circumstance, and even with my very negative thoughts of him, theres never been a second where i ever thought that fygg was even close to being as good as air. the fact of the matter is air was the centerpiece of those fygg teams, and when i learned this season that he mightve swapped to soldier with fygg on demo, i considered that a blessing, and it was even better when i heard he left. unsurprisingly, the fygg team would go from beating/contesting high adv teams, to going down to the very bottom into the inevitable path of dying, which they did. heres a log of fygg doing a lot worse than a low advanced demo.

im not saying ur policy is set in stone, im saying its dumb and laughably inconsistent. if u want another funny example, zaboomafoo (undoubtedly top 3 adv demo right now) was not class restricted in main this season, but i was on soldier after having just played on the same team together. and if u want an example of how not class restricting wound up doing good? had u class restricted me from iM scout out of fear cuz i played adv, the team i played on wouldve 100% died and outside of maybe 1, none of those players would ever consider getting back into comp cuz of how unfun itd be (and probably was when i wasnt in yet, putting them in iM was unreasonable) u wanna know how u couldve done something similar but for this season? letting dingo play soldier or demo. im the one whos actually playing against this shit bro, IM the one who actually loses out of it, and im telling u, it wouldnt have been a big deal at all, since at the end of the day better team wins. and if dingo demo is what it would take to save the slicerogue team from dying this season, so be it.

I wanted to pop in to see if I could help clarify why we make some of these decisions. First, I appreciate everyone raising their concerns on the matter, I always recommend people to send over their suggestions so we can improve how we run things.

Something I have heard a few times was having a set in stone rule for ringers, but I think room for interpretation is always good and needed for something like this. I honestly feel like there would be more people restricted if we managed it that way. Lets use Zaboomafoo as an example... We try to restrict people if they have received top 2 or 3 in the division they are playing in, or lower. Considering Zaboomafoo has only reached mid Advanced twice, and upper mid-main, it would make no sense to restrict him even if people think he's "a top 3 demo in Advanced".

We did try to be more relaxed about restrictions this season, and even based restrictions on the overall skill of the team to avoid stacks that Scream mentioned earlier. Typically, if we restrict one person from a class and not the other, it is likely because they either were top 2 in the same division or higher, or played mid-Invite. Of course, this system is never perfect. If anyone has any suggestions on other ways we should handle this, please let me know.

Calling someone a pedophile is a pretty serious accusation so if you have any evidence of that being the case you should prove it. For your first paragraph, I just explained to you how are policy is consistent with what players place as teams rather than complete individual "skill" (this takes again, 95% of the bias out of class restrictions, we still take other stuff into account though), yet I guess that means nothing, and even then, I admitted that we are trying to move to lighter restrictions in advanced/main. For the IM scout thing, yeah we missed that initially but I went back and corrected it as soon as you joined the roster so no harm was done there, as for Zaboomafoo, if your talking about last season, it's probably due to how we place teams. We go off of average player rating, where the the top 5 player ratings are averaged to make the team rating. As for y'all in Main, you were restricted because you won main in season 1, and Zaboomafoo had not. Also yeah, let's let playoffs invite demo and soldier Dingo play in advanced so a singular team can live, yeah, no.