Part 1 : The supposed fixes

From what I’ve been hearing, the “Unity Ruleset” is supposed to fix three issues (maybe its supposed to do more but I haven’t really found like a design doc so) : bring a unified ruleset to bridge gaps before intercontinental LANs, get rid of garbage time and remove or at least reduce stalemates.

The unity thing is admittedly a little funny as an idea originally from NA considering RGL still plays (afaik), 1 map a game with freaking half-time when every other league in the world plays windiff 5 and timelimit 30 and didn’t really pressure for unity. But im just being a salty euro, I can’t deny that a unified ruleset would be a good thing for any intercontinental event.
The only issue I have with it is simply that continuous overtime (the part that makes all games golden caps, not the one that makes golden caps start without a new midfight) is simply something I see impossible to use at LAN without putting a hard timelimit, which kinda defeats the point imo. People have flights to catch, go eat and forget the time, have issues with getting the config to work on their rentals, adding unlimited overtime on top of it sounds unnecessary. One LAN finals being cut short was enough for me.

About garbage time, I can’t deny that its effectively gone, ya got me there. What I will deny is the importance of it. I think garbage time is mainly a spectator issue, and more of an annoyance than a problem. I consider garbage time to be >8 minutes at most (= a team down 4 rounds can’t come back assuming 2 minutes per round, not always true but works often enough) and to be usually close to more or less 5 minutes. If you don’t want to watch it cause you find it boring, sure but I don’t think that should be factored in balancing decisions. As for playing through it, odds are you’ll want to close out strong, to prepare for the next map (or if you’re a big nerd, to get a better tiebreaker score). And if you get annoyed of garbage time when you’re losing we had the !concede plugin for those situations, not sure why it got removed, should be brought back imo.

Onto stalemates, the focus point of this ruleset based on how many people talked to me about it. There are a few layers to this one. First off, old Se7en style stalemates, where a team is winning and just doesn’t push are just not something ive seen in the last 2 years. Like, at all, and I watch Prem pretty religiously. I think generally teams are better at pushing off small picks and making plays because I’d say (numbers pulled out my ass) that the time between two caps was already below 3 minutes 90% of the time and below 5 minutes for like 98% of the time. You could tell because when watching the LAN or the cup, most of the footage didn’t really feel different, like I didn’t feel anything changed until people started feeding in or the round suddenly reset sometimes.

There are still stalemates of course, although I’d say most of them consist of a little bit more than trading single soldiers and don’t last a lot more than 5 minutes. Those stalemates usually happen on lasts, and for me are more about maps than time. A team can be holed up on Gully or Process last with a full setup, but the attacking team still has many options due to the amount of doors available on both maps and unique map traits like water on Gully or the need for the defenders to fight for lobby control on Process. Those options vanish on other maps, and when you add in fast respawn timers for the attackers and a second point complex to push into (Sunshine is for me the worst offender on both those aspects, but Snake and Metalworks aren’t ideal either), you end up with almost an involuntary stalemate, where both teams are encouraged to play slow by the map design. Tweaking those maps or simply playing new ones is what we should be focusing on instead to solve the stalemate issue.

To conclude part 1, I’d say that while its impossible to deny that the ruleset had an impact, I think it impacts parts of the game that didn’t really need to be impacted. And by it’s creation, the ruleset might also creates problems that we did not have before.

Part 2 : Upcoming issues

So yeah, while I think that those changes are pretty low impact (especially timelimit 5), I do think that they bring a bunch of annoying possibilities and that this should make us reconsider their implementation.

-the round timer does not necessarily represent if a game is slow or not. There can be a lot of action without a point changing hands, like Team A failing their last push, followed by team B aborting their push out as it took too long, and now team A has to push with 2:30 on the clock, which effectively nerfs stuff like Spy or Banners

-A shorter roundtimer will fuck up Granary’s unique yard gameplay a little bit. I know some (most ?) people dislike the map but I personally enjoy it so it gets on there.

-Short roundtimer could also ultimately slow the game down by having teams play for the clock more now that the round reset is more reachable, something that already happened in the cup. This creates the most boring type of stalemate, as a team trying this will have no interest in any risky plays like sacs or maybe even sniper. We might even see the opposing team opting not to all in before the clock ends as they might fancy their chance at another mid compared to the enemy pushing into Mid with ad should they not manage to get on their med, so we could see two teams not doing anything.

-Winlimit 5 removes garbage time sure, but it also makes close games end earlier. During Rewind 2 Grand Finals, the second map ended 5-3 with 7.30 on the clock. Ascent had already clawed back 3 rounds in 5 minutes, they could have done it again, but no the game just ends. I don’t know about you but I’d rather have garbage time and close games last the whole 30 than the opposite.

-It doesn’t look like continuous overtime will be here to stay, but if it were I’d argue the concept ends up helping out good teams more and would limit upset potential : If I’m playing a team that I know we should beat easily, but we’ve had difficulties getting into the game and it’s now 2-3 with a few minutes left, I know we don’t have to take more risks than needed because the timer is infinite. There’s still a risk on midfights and such of course, but compare and contrast with today’s system where the team losing has to take more risks as the time goes on and I think that this is more fair to a “worse” team who managed to held a narrow lead.

I’d like to conclude by saying that I didn’t write this post to shit on the people proposing new things, as botmode said a few months ago, we’ve been playing this game for so long that there are a lot of things we just accept without thinking about and its always nice to see people try out new things. I just thought there was a lot left to improve on the format and didn’t really see anyone else mention the things I was talking about. I am curious to hear other opinions on the topic, especially since im just a Mid player and lack a perspective on what its like to play the game at a high level.

Oh god its 730 am

both our upper page playoffs and grand finals this season were pretty much decided by the winning team stalemating on gullywash 4th

i actually like stalemates. they give me time to think and make me a better gamer

koth inherently avoids all issues the unity ruleset tries to combat
we should just play it instead :)

no

gigantic fucking nerd essay aside I feel like banners are a mildly interesting thing that comes out of a moderately negative thing (which are stalemates)
like yeah the game does become slightly more interesting when a team gets a banner but highkey I'd rather just see the round reset and watch a midfight than watch a team fuck around with less than half of an ubercharge

I agree that the winlimit 5 thing could potentially cut some really great matches short. I've seen many teams manage to come back after a 5:2 or 5:3 scoreline in the last 10 minutes of the game and win the map. Another thing is that I believe it will make the risk-taking aggressive and unorthodox plays by the team that is losing like 4:2 or 4:3 much less common (and from my experience spectators love weird and funny strats working) in order to break a stalemate because of the potential that if it doesn't work they could just lose the map even if the match has been very close up until that point.

Something to note that might not be relevant for everyone depending on your job/social obligations: given that etf2l plays 2 maps per official instead of 1 like RGL does, officials might eat up a lot of time. Again, this may be fine for some of you, but I do not think that everyone who plays competitive tf2 is committed enough to sit through a potentially two and a half hour official. Add a potential warmup game to that and you are essentially gaming for three and a half hours, which is a much larger time commitment than the 30 mins x 2 that came before.

I think if etf2l wants to implement this change, we should follow the RGL format of only playing one map per official. This relates more to the "casual" competitive tf2 player who plays the game for fun than the average prem gamer, but ultimately it is the former that keeps the league alive, not the latter.

https://i.imgur.com/j3WHvEc.png

The ruleset is ok but as you said, it exaggerates some problems that are much worse than the minor ones it fixes. Logistically it just isn't possible for lan or playoffs or regular season since matches can go infinitely long. People have stuff to do and you can't expect someone to stay up till midnight when they need to be up at 6am. There has to be an ending either caused by increasing difficulty or time. The only competitive games i know that keep going infinite are poker, chess and mobas and afaik all get increasingly more difficult for players over time until one who accrued an advantage earlier in the match comes out on top. Poker has increased antes depending on number of hands played, chess has reduced time gained per move after certain move numbers and the environmental enemies in mobas gets stronger and stronger until they end the game themselves.

In order to fix unity ruleset you would need something like this to force a game to end. Longer spawn times every 5 minutes that pass, or faster capture times, or a hard time limit. Then you have to think which one works, and which one do players want. These are the most important thing to think of when designing rulesets in this game since it isn't a high end competitive sport. You don't need to worry about which one is the most competitive since if it's no fun to play noone will play it since there is no other incentive other than fun.

It's why it's so difficult to have a unified ruleset when some people are playing for money and some aren't. Some things that would be tolerated if you were getting paid to do them wouldn't be tolerated if you did not have this incentive. I would not stay up all night for the chance to win 20 euros, but if I was in NA, and I had already invested the money into a whole season for a chance to win 300 dollars, I likely would. That being said, if I was in NA I wouldn't have started playing because of a paywall for entry. I don't really care how small it is, I just wouldn't have when I was younger and I had no money.

5 min round timer seemed fine, disagree that it didn't make much of a difference, it definitely affected strategy as teams would only push out of last if they could cap mid off of it. This didn't slow down the game since the round would just reset anyway if the team didn't push. Alternatively, could also go ape mode and just remove sniper, spy, engy, pyro and banners, That would be great to speed up the game. Allowing free entry for soldier sacs and medics nowhere to hide would do wonders. Could also remove golden caps during main season and have draws. Nothing wrong with that either so games actually end when they should.

You are looking to minimize, change and/or remove 2 main areas (Garbage Time and Stalemates)

All of the possible "solutions" I saw in your #2 post hurt the natural flow of the game IMO. It is true that putting time constraints on teams will force them to engage more heavily because of the time pressure. It will truly only impact the attacking teams and does not address the inherent advantage of the defending team in every situation.

I feel the only way to break this is to shorten the respawn timer significantly, perhaps by 50% or more.
The main reason for a shorter respawn timer is to encourage more 6v6 style team fights on every point. This will mean more action and less incentive for both teams to play passively and not risk anything.

I realize this will probably be an unpopular suggestion but, unlike mostly all of you, I played in the era of instant respawns and can tell you hands down the action was non-stop, the game was more fun and the teamwork needed to be successful much more gratifying.

With a shorter respawn timer it will open up incredible possibilities for both attacking and defending:

• It will remove the idiotic "just live" mentality so prevalent/necessary in our game these days (this slows the flow of the game more than anything)
  
• There will be much more action and risk taking because of a quick respawn
  
• off-classing would happen much less (another huge problem that slows the game down)
  
• Stalemates will by more easily broken or countered (No more 1 player sac, rinse & repeat for 10 mins)
  
• Teams could sac 3 players at a time and still have a full 6 to engage in a 6v6 team fight after they respawn (more action, removes stalemates)
  
• Lot more examples but didn't want TLTR

shortening respawn timers would just turn 5cp into shitty koth, the attackers would always want to dry into the point the moment they have 6 people because if they even get 2 picks they can still defend their point with better spawns

I can see what you mean but "get 2 picks" implies something went badly for the defending team during a stalemate.

If one team did a dry push and got the first 2 kills in a 6v6 fight then they simply won the team fight. What does it matter that they have quick spawns or not? That is the goal, more action all the time and less sitting around watching scouts stabbing themselves with swords for the next 45 seconds.

This is how you get overwatch style holds on 2cp, where it is a zombie horde of defenders on last.

I'm all up for the shorter round timer, I like it.

But for EU, we don't normally* calculate our rounds won or lost anywhere and we only care about whether we win or lose, so I don't see the winlimit itself mattering that much if one of the key parts of this new ruleset is to also reduce garbage time.

Instead I'd say that "mp_windifference_min" could rather be in use for EU so that you could still have the comeback potential from a 5-4 situation for example, whilst it already ends the match in a 5-1 situation when it's only a dream anymore for a team to make 4 or even 5 rounds at that point. The main reason why I could see this being reasonable to use is because ETF2L would still keep the same timelimit on from the start, so it's not the same as with RGL where you have another 30 minutes to play after one team has gotten 3 rounds.

But I also do realize that the main reason to even create this ruleset is to finally have a similar ruleset for both regions, which in my opinion requires for both leagues to also run a similar scoring system. RGL can keep their 1 map matches and ETF2L can have 2 map officials but either both should start counting rounds won or only care about maps won and lost.

* Only for the last possible result for tiebreakers, but I'm pretty sure it has only been used less than 5 times in the past 20+ seasons.

when's the last time a prem match went 5-6 or higher?

that's not true at all, taking a 6v6 teamfight should usually result in two deaths for the defenders at the bare minimum. think about a koth teamfight and that's the scenario you end up in. usually, the defenders will win, but the majority of the team ends up dead and behind on spawns

Decreasing cap time bit by bit after 20 minutes or something seems cool. Playing a long overtime game where you can cap in 3 seconds seems really fun LOL

You're right, it is an uncommon occurence, the last time that I could find it happening in Europe was during season 32, so 4 years ago. For me that's not the point though, my point is that I simply don't see garbage time as an issue that needed another fix apart from the concede plugin, so winlimit 5 just to "fix" garbage time seems unecessary.

Simply looking at comebacks that actually happened doesn't paint the whole story either, having a game end at 5-3 with 8 minutes left just felt super lame as a spectator and will probably feel even worse as a player. You could make the point that it'd also feel lame to have a team run the clock down against you but : A. winlimit 5 doesn't do anything to change that and B. as shinso points out, it would also cut down the number of options available to losing teams, seeing as their doom is always around the corner.

Small aside but I think banners are a lot more interesting outside of stalemates cause they charge faster and can be used in fights that aren't always big team trades, its more than gunboats are so fucking good outside of stalemates so they only see use there.

About the game being more interesting with round resets and new midfights, I can see where you're coming from but I don't fully agree. First off, delibaretly waiting for a round reset is the most boring kind of stalemate by far imo, sure it'll be shorter overall but I find it more stimulating to have "active" stalemates where a team is trying to do things than seeing people watching paint dry for 4 minutes.

I also think that midfights don't need to have more importance in today's game. I'm about to say some negative stuff about them (and possibly look like a noob in the process), so let me start by saying that I think mids are completely fine right now, they're an iconic part of tf2, trying to outsmart your opponent is really fun and they're a good way to show off cool jumps.

I love TF2 (on top of all the other reasons) because for me it's a game with both complex team fights where teams have to make on the fly decisions and can come down to very fine margins, and more solo plays, almost always still supported by the rest of the team, but where one or two players are the focal point of an action. Midfights are usually more team based than solo based, and that's completely fine, but forgoing opportunities to go behind, sac, offclass or try something wacky in favor of just having more mids until one med survives and not the other (otherwise you'd just stalemate again right) is a bit of a shame, especially as I think that midfights are not even the best type of team fights. I don't think it's very noticeable now because people play like 4-5 midfights a map at most but if you played more of them, some of their inflexibility would become apparent imo : losing your demo to a fast bomb or a scout to spam in the early stages usually means you should bomb your sollies and leave, your scouts will probably ave to stay on the beam for most of it, and on a majority of maps your soldiers will at some point bomb in and die. What I'm trying to say is that repeating midfights over and over doesn't seem like the most fun interaction to me either.

why? i guess it's just normalized for me as an NA player but i feel like first to 5 is fine. losing 5-3 with 8 minutes left just means you lost. kinda motivates you to go out there and win 5 rounds and close that shit out and assert dominance ASAP
but I've already made + bumped a thread about my distain for stalemating when up a round or two already

edit: i did not make a thread - i posted on a rahThread and then bumped it a couple weeks later

banners definitely do not charge faster than an uber. i suppose you're talking about in an actual fight a soldier could do a lot of damage and charge it but even then by taking a team fight with a soldier who doesnt have his banner charge ready puts you at a massive disadvantage due to the lack of gunboats, while not having the "dm benefits" of a shotgun.

i played a funny season of shotgun roamer coming about a year ago now, which i honestly tried to make work, and i will tell you 110% that i would lose my fucking mind if i had to take a fight while taking 50 damage while rocket jumping, and NOT having anything to show for it. i was a sitting duck in team fights with a shotgun against similarly skilled players. i cant even imagine willingly taking 50 damage per jump while trying to have an impact on the fight without my banner's buffs without dying and losing any of the progress i made. making banners work practically requires a stalemate situation into an uber exchange + repush with buffs

Yeah that one's on me, I only watch Europe and sometimes NA my bad. I don't know if you're arguing for anything particular, but im in a typing mood again and so I figured I'd use this post to talk a bit about the dreaded "Se7en stalemate".

5CP in TF2 does have this problem : there's just no real incentive for a team in the lead to push since they're already winning. I don't even think that changing the round timer solves that issue seeing how nothing stops a team from letting the clock run all the way down and go stalemate on their second again instead of going to mid apart from the unspoken agreement that people will usually show up to mid. WInlimit 5 also doesn't fix this directly, it simply assumes that a winning team will want to close out the map before the timer runs out.

So, how do we fix this ? From a mid player POV, my answer would be to say : we don't do anything apart from lowering the round timer to like 7:30 (5 is probably fine for most if it, it's about the few edge cases in the original post lik Granary yard and failed push outs) because I think breaking a stalemate is something interesting that can really test your team synergy and mechanics, and because I think it's more of a crutch than a really optimal way to play the game.

But you're here and you're a prem player telling me that people are still having issues breaking them in the top level in current year, so clearly it's not as simple as it seems and the few stalemates I encountered were of a lower quality.

I'm willing to admit that I don't really know then, but I will say that I still think lowering the round timer to anything below 5 is not a good solution for me, as it effectively forces everyone to adopt a fast paced playstyle to solve a problem that (unless Australia is massively different) doesn't exactly pop up every day. There is nothing stopping you from playing fast with the current system, b4nny has been going balls to the walls for as long as I can recall and it worked, but I think forcing everyone to emulate that no matter their div or will is too drastic of a measure.

As long as one team has an incentive to fight, the other team has to meet them or concede ground. The team that is behind has the incentive to push since they will lose if they don't. The only time a stalemate should occur is when neither team has the reward outweighing the risk. In reality things people call "stalemates" occur for a couple reasons, mostly due to players having poor strategy and not playing enough.

People say a stalemate is being done because players aren't doing anything for 2-3 minutes after winning mid and sitting on enemy last. This is usually because the team is scouting out information and is deciding what to do. What hold does the enemy have? Where is sniper watching? Where is gun? Where is medic holding? Do we want to offclass? These questions are either answered inefficiently (because players do not know what they are doing and don't start doing it soon enough e.g. spamming the gun as it is going up) or the team isn't practiced enough as a unit to know where they have to be to support a play since they haven't put time into it. In reality, you could already be doing things like setting up and doing a sac within 60 seconds, but because teams aren't properly practiced (likely due to lack of time investment since this is a hobby, not our lives) there will be some players who need to be told where to go and then go there instead of being in the position already.

Better players are usually ready to do things and support others, worse players generally have to have the team play around them and they play their own game. It's why when you get to a higher level, players are more selfless and move as a unit than at a lower level where people are split and doing their own thing. This is why you see better teams stalemating less on broadcasts and why the common thing people call a stalemate isn't really one. One team is just taking all the time they can to make the best play possible. Reducing the round timer forces people to make a decision faster if they want to attempt more plays, but a team could also decide to take all the time they can and make an informed decision for one good play which they may deem to have a higher chance of success.

To look at some numbers if anyone isn't familiar with probabilities, 2x40% plays has a 64% chance to work once, whereas an informed 1x70% chance play has the 70% chance to work once. What is actually better is up to the teams and players, not up to the round timer. Even now, it is likely more efficient to constantly try for the lower % play as you have more shots at it with a longer round timer than only a couple shots at a set up play. If you go for 5x40% plays, it has about a 92% chance to work whereas 2x70% plays has about 91%. These numbers are arbitary and most teams would do a combination of them where they set up a longer play but then instantly execute a quick play if they see the opportunity.

A final point on stalemates is that if you truly want to reduce them, then you need to look at what actually causes them. Reducing round timer doesn't really change anything other than require more decisive shotcalling to do slower plays. It's mostly just placebo of players thinking they need to move faster and take more risks because the timer is lower. Nothing new has openend up in terms of strategy other than the points cap themselves after a round reset and ubers reset (which is pretty big if you know what to do with that information). Teams can still stalemate it just means you will get more midfights rather than the dynamic flow throughout the whole map if stalemates were less of a problem.

The things that alter stalemate length are map design, ubercharges, offclasses and some specific unlocks (e.g. vaccinator or quickies). If you want to change stalemates then have to change these things. Reduce the impact of ubers, remove/change class limits, ban/allow unlocks and alter maps in such a way that pushes the solution you want.

A change in ruleset like this isn't going to really alter the gameflow to be any better or worse for players, it will just make watching it more interesting.

I've played a fair bit on both EU and NA rulesets as well as a bit on the new one so I wanted to give some thoughts.

Windiff vs Winlimit: I don't think this has made a practical difference in almost any games. Windiff rarely comes into play in EU as it is, and I think comebacks are a lot more common under the current NA ruleset by virtue of the map time being an hour. I personally don't think this matters hugely under current ruleset, but I think the unity ruleset probably should run with winlimit, as windiff makes it much more likely that things will go on forever (The only real problem with this ruleset imo).

I agree that fundamentally this ruleset won't change a huge amount at a top level, beyond an increase in potential for comebacks. I think that the actual purpose of this ruleset is to create disincentives for doing a large number of small % plays. This is currently a fairly effective way to play, especially at any level below top prem/invite, because it doesn't require a huge amount of coordination and it's eventually effective. In your scenario, you can still go for your 5 low % plays, but with a 4 minute round timer you'd now have 48 seconds to coordinate each play from the moment you capture the second point and including respawns and rollouts. This is going to make these plays even lower % (or you get less of them) but will have little impact on a couple of moderate % plays that would take a while to set up normally.

In my opinion the low risk playstyle creates some of the least enjoyable TF2 both to watch and play, because the majority of players will be watching a door for sacs/counter sacs and waiting on a respawn timer during that time. This problem gets compounded even more when a team is up rounds and you're close to the end of map time, because then it's even more effective to do low risk plays and run out the clock. Imo a team losing to the clock is also a situation that should be avoided in TF2 where it can because it frequently just ends a closely contested game in the most anticlimactic way possible. This ruleset minimizes both of the things that I (and probably a lot of other people) find least interesting in the game and replaces them with midfights which are an interesting part of the game.

Crazy question but does the 30 minute reset just not work on windows servers?