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Prob needs some formatting, also unsure how productive expressing your thoughts like this will be when you touch on multiple different subjects.

Things botmode talks about for those who want a TL;DR
- The win condition system for the 3 min config
- The round timer for said config
- Implementation in RGL
- Pros/cons of season length/structure
- Implementation of cups to replace Post-Lan seasons
- Benefits of cups we've had in the past
- Plans for future international LANs

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On the topic of your cup idea, it would have been beneficial in some scenarios in the past to have some sort of a "shorter season" when holidays/LAN timing got in the way. I know scheduling was a mess for my teams ESEA matches around the time of Rewind II, and it looks like the current RGL Match Page could tell a story of what the recent Fullerton LAN did to the teams this season.

We're 3 weeks in, and 19/30 games do not have their scores reported.

I feel like na invite is dying for this "cup" season

Nice post, I like the reasoning behind why 3 mins played better than 10. Personally I thought 7 min or even 7.5 min would be the best (Allows for a 30 min map timer to go to mid, and take the full time to force a second push and a last push and still have the same amount of time - 15 mins left to allow for the other team to do it as well). However, the reasoning for the time being lower forces offclasses (and buffs like banners/phlog) to force harder is well thought. I would still say 4-5 min somewhere is the sweet spot but definitely needs to be played more, which is why saying to implement asap in leagues is also a decent call.

If point timers do decrease, this is more of a reason why win limit 5 and halves are worse. The main reason for win limit 5 or NA rules is that the map always ends on a high. It ends on a round win or a timeout (in which case golden cap win or golden mid). The main reason for win difference 5 or EU rules is that it allows for comebacks and some insanely high round counts. Whilst this doesn't happen often, it does still happen. It has happened in div 1 this season in etf2l https://etf2l.org/matches/82477/. It also happened last season https://etf2l.org/matches/81754/ and a potential comeback could have been stifled by NA rules.

The reason why point timers decreasing should allow for more rounds is because there simply will be more rounds as teams are forced to be more active earlier in the game. It enables for comebacks to start sooner as the initial rounds from one team will happen sooner as they will generally have to be more proactive sooner.

That being said, win limit 5 and win difference 5 don't really matter as much as the halves system the NA ruleset uses. 30 min maps (or even 20-25 min maps) and playing multiple different maps I would argue is always a better display of skill than playing the same map for two sets. Main reason being that different maps test different skills and force teams to learn to play more maps together. This is probably the most important thing about the rulesets difference, as long as different maps are prioritised than playing the same map over and over each match then any ruleset is ok.

Final point of leagues and timings being too restrictive is definitely true. Most people have time on the weekend to play and having a tournament throughout the afternoon on saturday/sunday and potentially 0-2 scrim days during the week of a tournament is optimal. It allows for keen teams to play every week whilst players who cannot commit tons of time to only play every other tournament or when the weekend opens up. The essential.tf tournaments were really good in EU but they lost interest quickly as people didn't play if they wouldn't have a chance to win. "What's the point of playing if the better team is just gonna win anyway". The prizes were decent too.

Hopefully NA tf2 pushes something like that and keeps either a monthly or fortnightly tournament alive for a few months cus it's already failed here due to a mentality of wanting to play fair and balanced matches but not wanting to improve as well. Leads to people just chilling playing the game with friends and so more intense tournaments of playing for a whole afternoon for 5-6 hours is too much for them.

the "cup season" idea is really cool; most people in the lower divs only watch invite tf2 at grands

committing to a full season of invite is such a chore, so many people (myself included) get pushed out of the game because of it, one full online season before RGL lan makes sense but other than that I think invite should just do cups.

changing invite to mostly cups would also mean that people can play regular seasons in lower divs and not have to make the decision between offclassing with friends and tryharding in invite

i can see lower invite teams/adv moveups would like to play a season of invite in order to learn more, but realistically getting stomped almost every match is pretty demoralizing and just sucks, the only games that matter are vs the other low invite teams so doing cups (providing the lower invite teams get to play each other) would be about the same

as another note, having open tournaments at LANs or in online cups is definitely a good idea. Rewind 1 open tournament was super close and it was so hype doing a bo5 to determine the winner

suggestions seem reasonable

Committing to a full season of tf2 in any division in general is such a chore, and single weekend cups taking up the entire weekend is too much as well.

Having a cup split up over multiple weekends, perhaps 2-3, would be great at every level for people who can't do this all day every day.

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monkey paw

rgl switches to no restrictions 7v7 cups going forward

Hard agree, wish tf2 was less league play, more cups.

To add on the cup idea, I think that we could have our "regular seasons" be a few games to place a seeding into the cups. Maybe like 4-6 games (only 2-3 weeks) and then a cup. I think the cups should be split into at least 2 weekends however because it would allow for the better teams to recuperate and create new strategies for the next and final week of the cup. Also, the people who like to go outside on weekends can actually do that this way.

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/695478704746528831/945189614266769438/unknown.png

very sad that people wont be able to get these anymore they are clean af

as much as it is nice to have weekends free i think if ur committing to playing a tf2 cup its perfectly reasonable to sacrifice some time of a weekend or two, that said playing all day saturday is fucking painful so spacing it out over 2 weekends is probably better (having to have 3 weekends in a row committed is a little much tho it shouldnt go more than that)

I mean even the games that don't "matter" in league play have value, a lot of getting better in invite is trial and error to see what works and what doesn't, plus what other teams do that you don't. The benefit of league play is you play a ton more than cups so you get a lot more opportunities to learn your limits as a player and team. If your main goal is to have matches that matter then sure a cup oriented season would work for that but league play is good for actually improving at the game.

Never say never...

I'm torn on the cup idea because I think the only way I can grow in the game is playing on a team long term but I can't commit to that, but also weekend cups are fun with the right team. However I can't see them as much more beneficial (to me personally) than a series of pugs.

i really really would like it if tf2 transitioned away from seasons and more towards having semi-frequent tournaments the way games like smash do. much better to play + watch imo

i dont really think theres an issue with both league-play and cups occurring apart from burnout. but most people who play in the reg season also pug all night on weekends so i doubt its a problem for many players

cups with swiss groups? :D

I agree with you that seasons kinda blow, even below invite. We have to play the same map for two matches in a row, which usually means 3 scrims per match. So that means we have to play an average of 16 halves of a map each week. I would love to see the implementation of pick banning maps to IM and above. Maybe the map pool could increase as well making things more varied.
I've thought about the season length before as well. The only thing I could really think of to have a still have a season would be either 1 match a week or shorten the season to 5-6 weeks. I feel like 5-6 weeks should give enough time for the playoff bracket to be reasonably built for most divisions. I also feel like they could lengthen the amount of time in between each season to give more time for teams who are trying to build rosters. It can be difficult having enough time to tryout a lot of people when you are only given 3 weeks after playoffs or however long it was and then have time to build team chemistry.

this is also my main line of thinking

I'm not sure about seasons vs cups for lower level teams (if we wanted cups to work for lower level teams we'd have to format them to be rewarding and offer a chance of prize money to some lower level teams (divisions in cups?)) but if you're playing multiple cups with the same stack and you scrim/practice together with them, would you still feel like you are playing a series of pugs? Just food for thought.

agree that lower level invite actually kind of sucks, having a shorter turnaround between tournaments would also help with teams that tend to die, give those players more opportunities to make new teams (and who knows maybe they find a stack that can actually stick together)

Also yeah have an 'open' and 'invite' (or high level or whatever?) tournament for each cup would probably help a lot, it can also make buy-ins more reasonable for lower level teams, can have like $20/TEAM, whereas I would think most invite teams are probably going to willing to pay a lot more since they should have a very realistic shot of making it back (and the prize pools can work to help lower level teams from going bankrupt). should probably just structure the cost/tournament around how much it costs each div for a season, idk sort of just guessing with this.

I know the 'why not both' options always exists but burnout is a huge issue in tf2, multiple people have stopped playing for at least some period of time because of it, myself included. NATF2 has prize money in their seasons, you could argue it's not a lot but it is something, FROYO for instance is never gonna skip a season if it's offered, my team probably wouldn't either. Also there is a limit to how much money is in the scene (prize pools come from fees), maybe there is enough to do both but is it worth it? Also with having season and cups I think you'll end up with a situation where some teams only play the season and some teams only play cups and I think that should be avoided. So I guess the answer to "why not both?" is "why have both?"

I think that cups could really power up tf2 back into something people tune in to watch, because I think our viewership is actually way lower than you would think given the size of the tf2 community (not just the people who play 6v6 HL, though obviously they're a big portion of it) and how many people who have participated in it and then left. Basically esports is content and cups make more content than seasons.

I love the 3 minute timer and im okay with it being raised to 4 minutes, against Poc and gilbert, and firedup at LAN we would not of won those two games if it weren't for the 3 minute reset to mid. I just fucking hate the idea of a team taking 1 round over the other team then forcing them to hold last and stalemate. I hate this pussy foot sniper v sniper send 1 man to sac on last stale ass meta thats been happening for awhile and cursing some of the best maps in the game like snakewater. Like take a fucking risk and walk through a doorway u fucking pussy's and exchange.