last season doesnt count we're running it back

any map pool changes?
p.s pls keep reckoner

how many more seasons without NR 6s existing until we can just call it 6s

Invite playoffs LAN this season rather than next? The dates say playoffs are between April 5th and May 1st, would it not conflict with Copenhagen? Sounds pretty tough for wG who are planning to attend cph (though granted covid may just cancel that lan entirely so who knows)

Playoffs aren't at LAN this season, they're just going to be tournament style.

Map pool for every div besides invite should be the same with product swapped for bagel.

also yea uhhh i just copy/pasted my post from last season and forgot to change 7 to 8 woops!

Every season there is always some list of the existing teams that I ask some guy who knows a guy who gives me the list and by the end of the pre-season everyone has the list anyways can we just have that list posted when its made because it helps us make scrims with people and it helps lft people find tryouts.

why would you take bagel out of the pool??????????

werent they talking about rotating the koth maps for the last like year, isnt this just them actually doing it?

why rotate bagel when its clearly become a staple map that many people like playing? last season bagel was in literally every single invite playoffs match

Remove fucking reckoner

rotate clearcut out of hte pool permanently

just because they warned us they were going to make a bad decision doesn't make it a good decision

bagel was played in every invite playoffs series and its being rotated out

is there some invite illuminati map pool meeting or is this just rgl, how does this manage to happen every season

i like watching clear cut :)

I feel like I always hear people complaining about metalworks so why not take that out and have 3 koth maps? We did the koth rotation the last 3 seasons, so what about having all 3 in this season and getting rid of a 5cp map.

Then again, you might as well only ask invite and playoff advanced teams from last season what they think about metalworks since it seems like even main players still just have no idea what's going on when playing metalworks.

I think Metalworks is a fine map and that it should stay in the map pool, if anything RGL should remove Clearcut instead of Bagel and MAYBE swap Granary for Badlands.

https://i.imgur.com/5Jvsq0H.png

despite not being played until week 6, bagel was the 4th most played map in invite this past season
it was played more than twice as much as clearcut, which was the lowest played non-new map
bagel was played more than 2 of the "Big 5" 5cp maps

if you filter to only playoffs games it was the most picked map by a margin of 2
clearcut was not played once during playoffs

compare to season 6's numbers (s6 had considerably more matches played, but the relative numbers/ratios are still relevant):
clearcut was played 12 times, including twice in playoffs
viaduct was only played 6 times, and only once in playoffs
curiously, bagel was only played once in regular season, but was picked 3 times in playoffs (including the triple koth grand final)

Can we please play on the metalworks refresh?
Also rotating out bagel seems very stupid when clearcut is an incredibly polarizing and unpopular map that doesn't have as active of a dev as bagel.

ay i agree, bagel is way better than clearcut, im just answering the question lol

more stuff from invite playoff

https://i.imgur.com/zLdRVsv.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/Vu4uHwr.jpg

probably not the prettiest or best way to display the data but whatever it's there

botmode is literally giving factual proof for which maps are fun or not I wonder if rgl will listen

Map pool should be big 5 + product bagel granary imho. Clearcut and reckoner are mostly very unpopular, not sure why RGL would rotate bagel out but keep clearcut in

i miss badlands

Don't really get the point of the map pick statistics. Got me curious so I checked the (regular and playoff) games: witness picked 4 of the bagel games, g6 picked another 4, and froyo picked it once against estrogen (notorious for picking whatever map against bottom invite teams). So basically wg picked bagel a bunch because they established last season they were the best bagel team and could get free wins on it, and I would assume g6 did the same because they were also trying to become a good bagel team. Which makes sense, because people typically prioritize maps they can win on over maps they find fun. Of course it could be both, but it doesn't change the fact that these stats only reflect the opinions of 2/10 invite teams lmao.

I still think bagel sets a new precedent for what a good koth map looks like in tf2 and I hope it encourages more new maps, but those stats are just wacky.

it's just more data
looking at firstban% can be just as valuable as looking at # of games played on those maps (indicates that one team was able to have a significant advantage on one of those maps)

to clarify a few more stat points

mal and froyo always banned clearcut (vs all), and wg banned clearcut vs us because no one wanted to play that map vs us (last time we had the option of playing it was like week 3 or something)
g6 was the only team to ban snake first phase (vs wg and froyo)
froyo was the only team that picked metal (it was banned by wg in wg v mal)
wg was the only team to first phase ban metal (vs mal and froyo)
granary and snake were the only map3/4 (even in gf granary was map3 and snake was map4)
both times gully was picked was vs wg
reckoner was the only map essentially untouched, largely because none of the teams practiced it enough to actually have it force a ban or be a pick (for us it was literally not worth because everyone was going to ban clearcut and we were gonna pick other maps that we thought were more worth the practice anyway)

imo give reckoner 1 more season at least, give triple koth, remove metal (maybe add it back after next if people still don't care for reckoner), and possibly swap granary for badlands (1s cap)

Added to the OP, spreadsheet is a work in progress but you can check that for what I have. I'll start linking rgl/steam pages and schedulers in the next day or two (hopefully).

As to the map discussion, I wanna establish two things:

First, in regards to the invite map pool, we're letting invite vote out/vote in maps based on the league wide map pool. For example, out of the 8 league wide maps, invite may vote out 2 of them and vote in 3 more. With this, they could vote out reckoner or metalworks, and vote back in bagel, granary, and badlands. It's up to them entirely.

Second, in regards to the league wide map pool, we do do surveys and are trying our best to find what maps people enjoy and which they don't enjoy (see villa being completely removed from the map pool in place of reckoner). We're going to give reckoner another season before reconsidering it's place, and similarly the koth rotation is something we are testing based on survey results as well.

For our most recent survey (Season 7), here are some results (just from the text document I have, no pretty formatting):
--
cp_gullywash_final1
Results
11 (5%) - Very unenjoyable
20 (9%) - Unenjoyable
29 (14%) - Neutral
88 (42%) - Enjoyable
61 (29%) - Very Enjoyable
2 (1%) - I did not play this map this season

cp_metalworks
Results
18 (9%) - Very unenjoyable
20 (9%) - Unenjoyable
44 (21%) - Neutral
84 (40%) - Enjoyable
42 (20%) - Very Enjoyable
3 (1%) - I did not play this map this season

cp_snakewater_final1
Results
5 (2%) - Very unenjoyable
10 (5%) - Unenjoyable
26 (12%) - Neutral
87 (41%) - Enjoyable
80 (38%) - Very Enjoyable
3 (1%) - I did not play this map this season

cp_process_f9a
Results
9 (4%) - Very unenjoyable
9 (4%) - Unenjoyable
19 (9%) - Neutral
88 (42%) - Enjoyable
83 (39%) - Very Enjoyable
3 (1%) - I did not play this map this season

cp_sunshine
Results
4 (2%) - Very unenjoyable
8 (4%) - Unenjoyable
13 (6%) - Neutral
80 (38%) - Enjoyable
103 (49%) - Very Enjoyable
3 (1%) - I did not play this map this season

koth_clearcut_b15d
Results
17 (8%) - Very unenjoyable
21 (10%) - Unenjoyable
37 (18%) - Neutral
76 (36%) - Enjoyable
55 (26%) - Very Enjoyable
5 (2%) - I did not play this map this season

cp_reckoner_rc6
Results
36 (17%) - Very unenjoyable
39 (18%) - Unenjoyable
48 (23%) - Neutral
55 (26%) - Enjoyable
26 (12%) - Very Enjoyable
8 (4%) - I did not play this map this season

koth_bagel_rc5
Results
16 (8%) - Very unenjoyable
13 (6%) - Unenjoyable
30 (14%) - Neutral
76 (36%) - Enjoyable
73 (35%) - Very Enjoyable
3 (1%) - I did not play this map this season

[INVITE ONLY] cp_granary_rc2
Results
1 (1%) - Very unenjoyable
2 (1%) - Unenjoyable
3 (2%) - Neutral
6 (4%) - Enjoyable
5 (4%) - Very Enjoyable
118 (87%) - I did not play this map this season

[INVITE ONLY] How did you feel about experimental map (cp_granary_rc2)
Results
3 (3%) - Very unenjoyable
1 (1%) - Unenjoyable
2 (2%) - Neutral
5 (5%) - Enjoyable
3 (3%) - Very Enjoyable
3 (3%) - I did not play this map in a match this season
74 (81%) - I did not play this map in a match or scrim this season

[INVITE ONLY] How did you feel about the experimental map pool
Results
1 (3%) - Too large (too many maps)
1 (3%) - Too many unnecessary maps
20 (51%) - Appropriate
1 (3%) - Too small (not enough maps to choose from)
15 (38%) - Too small (not enough variety in maps)

[INVITE ONLY] Would you like to keep Granary for season 8, or would you like to vote for another map
Results
9 (41%) - Yes, keep Granary for season 8
9 (41%) - Neutral
4 (18%) - No, vote for another map
--

Map results like these are why we are letting invite deviate from the regular map pool, as often invite's statistics vary greatly from the rest of the league. It also lets invite test out new things (such as granary) so we can consider adding it to the general map pool next time we revise it. However as is, we do want to give reckoner another season.

Is no one else gonna mention this