On October 21, 2021 I submitted three proposals to RGL.
The primary one was titled
* “[Money and Development - A Spectator's Suggestions (M.A.D.A.S.S.)]”
The premise was this: RGL is a league that receives an arguably unfair expectation some of which can be traced to its required 6s fee. RGL is a paid league that offers the service and development of a free one.
The takeaway thesis: RGL by my estimation spends less than 1% of its funds on sustainability and development of the scene (Newbie Drive). It’s well past time to change what that money is doing - to stop putting the money purely into the prize pool (commendable but flawed), and start putting it into community efforts that grow and sustain the scene (Mapping efforts, API development, Learning Resources, and League Growth Incentives).
In my document I catalogue both methods of rearranging these funds in addition to proposals to support. As mentioned this document was conceived and contributed close to a year ago, since then I’ve not received any word from RGL about the ideas nor generated significant interest in rearrangement of the funding.
I am thus releasing this document publicly in the hopes of stimulating a conversation regarding this topic.
Even if you don’t play in RGL or even if you don’t play competitive anymore I’d be interested to hear insight or ideas.
Is it right that 2/3 of the funding is locked into solely Invite? Are there any better proposals or avenues I’ve missed? How else could growth be supported? What other projects or ideas are worth supporting and how?
r/truetf2 Post
RGL Forums
On October 21, 2021 I submitted three proposals to RGL.
The primary one was titled
* “[[url=https://docs.google.com/document/d/1KjElXWFHLccTagLeMJ1QYfL2t2uQxhf_FHobt7ocuI4/edit]Money and Development - A Spectator's Suggestions (M.A.D.A.S.S.)[/url]]”
The premise was this: RGL is a league that receives an arguably unfair expectation some of which can be traced to its required 6s fee. [b]RGL is a paid league that offers the service and development of a free one.[/b]
The takeaway thesis: RGL by my estimation spends less than 1% of its funds on sustainability and development of the scene (Newbie Drive). It’s well past time to change what that money is doing - to stop putting the money purely into the prize pool (commendable but flawed), and start putting it into community efforts that grow and sustain the scene (Mapping efforts, API development, Learning Resources, and League Growth Incentives).
In my document I catalogue both methods of rearranging these funds in addition to proposals to support. As mentioned this document was conceived and contributed close to a year ago, since then I’ve not received any word from RGL about the ideas nor generated significant interest in rearrangement of the funding.
I am thus releasing this document publicly in the hopes of stimulating a conversation regarding this topic.
Even if you don’t play in RGL or even if you don’t play competitive anymore I’d be interested to hear insight or ideas.
Is it right that 2/3 of the funding is locked into solely Invite? Are there any better proposals or avenues I’ve missed? How else could growth be supported? What other projects or ideas are worth supporting and how?
[url=https://www.reddit.com/r/truetf2/comments/vw1eqq/money_and_development_a_spectatora_suggestions/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf]r/truetf2 Post[/url]
[url=https://forums.rgl.gg/topic/1854/rgl-money-and-development-a-spectator-suggestion/2]RGL Forums[/url]
In your proposal, you claimed that invite players don't care about the money. However, the article released today about RGL LAN includes adjusting the top 4 teams' prizing so that they could be financially compensated better for going to LAN. Did suddenly RGL do this out of the kindness of their hearts? Doubtful. There was definitely a push by many invite players for this to happen. We can conclude two things from this: 1. With the introduction of LANs, Invite players care a lot more about their own financial sustainability of playing at a high level. (I would say some care a lot even before LANs) 2. RGL decisions are highly influenced by those invite players.
To be clear, right now RGL is most likely focused on making LAN happen successfully. I think this is fine since it still grows the scene in a significant way. But this also means I highly doubt any of your proposals (which I won't comment on) will see any action in the near future unless someone with big RGL sway makes it their priority.
In your proposal, you claimed that invite players don't care about the money. However, the article released today about RGL LAN includes adjusting the top 4 teams' prizing so that they could be financially compensated better for going to LAN. Did suddenly RGL do this out of the kindness of their hearts? Doubtful. There was definitely a push by many invite players for this to happen. We can conclude two things from this: 1. With the introduction of LANs, Invite players care a lot more about their own financial sustainability of playing at a high level. (I would say some care a lot even before LANs) 2. RGL decisions are highly influenced by those invite players.
To be clear, right now RGL is most likely focused on making LAN happen successfully. I think this is fine since it still grows the scene in a significant way. But this also means I highly doubt any of your proposals (which I won't comment on) will see any action in the near future unless someone with big RGL sway makes it their priority.
I think that money could be rearranged within RGL a bit better and money transparency could be better (where does confiscated team prize money, ringer fees, etc go) but other than that I don't see how anything listed or unlisted (aside from maybe providing servers) is worth spending money on or will significantly change the scene.
Also your initial statement saying rgl is a paid league that provides the services of a free one is a bit disingenuous as basically any team that plays invite or makes playoffs in the lower divs makes money from playing the game.
I think that money could be rearranged within RGL a bit better and money transparency could be better (where does confiscated team prize money, ringer fees, etc go) but other than that I don't see how anything listed or unlisted (aside from maybe providing servers) is worth spending money on or will significantly change the scene.
Also your initial statement saying rgl is a paid league that provides the services of a free one is a bit disingenuous as basically any team that plays invite or makes playoffs in the lower divs makes money from playing the game.
Just an idea. But maybe they should add a “donate 2 dollars to developing tf2” button on league fees? Make it totally optional but I’m sure it could help raise a bit of money towards incentivizing people to help with growing the scene.
Just an idea. But maybe they should add a “donate 2 dollars to developing tf2” button on league fees? Make it totally optional but I’m sure it could help raise a bit of money towards incentivizing people to help with growing the scene.
Reero I don't see how anything listed or unlisted (aside from maybe providing servers) is worth spending money on or will significantly change the scene.
Perhaps I’m a bit more optimistic or cynical depending on your viewpoint.
Regarding Map Support: One division admin I’ve talked to expressed interest in running a map cup to support some of the already under appreciated 6s mappers, but told me that to run additional cups the administrative burden falls entirely on the admins who want those (if you want it do it yourself) - and ditto for any funding (fund it yourself).
Here’s where the potential proposal and feedback for being a volunteer could exist - service rewarded with money that still doesn’t go to single pockets but instead back to the community in the form of organized efforts.
My ideal support would probably be a funded sidepool off-season experimental map cup in addition to compensation via in-season incentives. The two main problems preventing map breakthroughs into the pool is a streamlined process for potential maps and a method of really incentivizing those maps be played.
To be more explicit:
- A League sponsored group that vets a “pool” of maps down to 3 during active season.
- An off-season Cup featuring the 3 maps where there is a prize pool or league reimbursement.
- The least popular map in the next season has the OPTION of being played on the top rated map (from cup) - doing so discounts a portion of both teams league fees
Regarding APIs:
I’m going to cut a few corners here and say there are two huge befits to an API that are apparent to me
- It could make the volunteer admin’s lives better
It cuts out a huge amount of busywork admins basically do - my info might be outdated but the method I hear most admins use to determine info is bascially opening 30 tabs, hunting logs, and assigning a basic number (1-10). It’s not perfect but instead of having this as volunteer work (unpaid labor) there are people that would be willing to develop a functionally identical tool (don’t think about how the developers are also unpaid)… the problem being they need that public API.
Arcadia So like the point of the API from a technical standpoint is it allows us to programmatically ask the RGL servers for all kinds of different information, names, matches, that sort of thing. If we had access to something like that it would make the development of tools much easier from a developer standpoint as we can incorporate the true identity of players into our projects. It might seem like this is a small thing, but being able to figure out the alias and skill of a player is really difficult from logs or demos alone, and this would expedite all of that…
...and as developers, we love to make stuff. If there's a need for new tools, we would love to oblige, especially if it makes admins lives easier
- It would make it infinitely easier for any form of analysis, research, or basic organization.
With other leagues you can see a history of matches a particular player has played in, this is basically a nightmare in RGL. It’s not even possible to determine who is really on a roster without scraping the site and I constantly find myself confused if someone is actually on a team or just roster riding… and even then the website is - I quote “Slower than the muma rollout”.
So yeah, a public API is fuzzy because it’s the backbone other tools work off, but RGL doesn’t have one, and logs.tf does which is why you see so many creations and tools that work with logs, but none with RGL. I probably bungled this explanation, maybe someone else can explain it better
Other thoughts about rearrangement of funds/
Currently the method of discouraging sandbagging is basically something like getting 8th place in main is better than 1st place IM. The way this is done is essentially by stacking the division up with cash relative to the prior division, which gets really extreme in Invite.
I personally think - especially for lower divisions, it should work off something like if you get Top 3 IM you can get your fee waived for Main. To compensate other rewards should probably be toned down (I really think 5-8 getting the same quite high amount is a tad awkward).
[quote=Reero] I don't see how anything listed or unlisted (aside from maybe providing servers) is worth spending money on or will significantly change the scene. [/quote]
Perhaps I’m a bit more optimistic or cynical depending on your viewpoint.
Regarding Map Support: One division admin I’ve talked to expressed interest in running a map cup to support some of the already under appreciated 6s mappers, but told me that to run additional cups the administrative burden falls entirely on the admins who want those (if you want it do it yourself) - and ditto for any funding (fund it yourself).
Here’s where the potential proposal and feedback for being a volunteer could exist - service rewarded with money that still doesn’t go to single pockets but instead back to the community in the form of organized efforts.
My ideal support would probably be a funded sidepool off-season experimental map cup in addition to compensation via in-season incentives. The two main problems preventing map breakthroughs into the pool is a streamlined process for potential maps and a method of really incentivizing those maps be played.
To be more explicit:
[olist]
[*] A League sponsored group that vets a “pool” of maps down to 3 during active season.
[*] An off-season Cup featuring the 3 maps where there is a prize pool or league reimbursement.
[*] The least popular map in the next season has the OPTION of being played on the top rated map (from cup) - doing so discounts a portion of both teams league fees
[/olist]
Regarding APIs:
I’m going to cut a few corners here and say there are two huge befits to an API that are apparent to me
[olist]
[*] It could make the volunteer admin’s lives better
It cuts out a huge amount of busywork admins basically do - my info might be outdated but the method I hear most admins use to determine info is bascially opening 30 tabs, hunting logs, and assigning a basic number (1-10). It’s not perfect but instead of having this as volunteer work (unpaid labor) there are people that would be willing to develop a functionally identical tool (don’t think about how the developers are also unpaid)… the problem being they need that public API.
[quote=Arcadia] So like the point of the API from a technical standpoint is it allows us to programmatically ask the RGL servers for all kinds of different information, names, matches, that sort of thing. If we had access to something like that it would make the development of tools much easier from a developer standpoint as we can incorporate the true identity of players into our projects. It might seem like this is a small thing, but being able to figure out the alias and skill of a player is really difficult from logs or demos alone, and this would expedite all of that…
...and as developers, we love to make stuff. If there's a need for new tools, we would love to oblige, especially if it makes admins lives easier
[/quote]
[*] It would make it infinitely easier for any form of analysis, research, or basic organization.
With other leagues you can see a history of matches a particular player has played in, this is basically a nightmare in RGL. It’s not even possible to determine who is really on a roster without scraping the site and I constantly find myself confused if someone is actually on a team or just roster riding… and even then the website is - I quote “Slower than the muma rollout”.
[/olist]
So yeah, a public API is fuzzy because it’s the backbone other tools work off, but RGL doesn’t have one, and logs.tf does which is why you see so many creations and tools that work with logs, but none with RGL. I probably bungled this explanation, maybe someone else can explain it better
Other thoughts about rearrangement of funds/
Currently the method of discouraging sandbagging is basically something like getting 8th place in main is better than 1st place IM. The way this is done is essentially by stacking the division up with cash relative to the prior division, which gets really extreme in Invite.
I personally think - especially for lower divisions, it should work off something like if you get Top 3 IM you can get your fee waived for Main. To compensate other rewards should probably be toned down (I really think 5-8 getting the same quite high amount is a tad awkward).
Reero your initial statement saying rgl is a paid league that provides the services of a free one is a bit disingenuous as basically any team that plays invite or makes playoffs in the lower divs makes money from playing the game.
Hm, I don’t really think what I said was wrong but I see where you’re coming from.
Just in case I’ll say explicitly again RGL isn’t stealing money - the league fees do go into the prize pool, in fact that’s where all the money goes!
The angle I’m more looking at it from is what SERVICE does RGL provide?
Let me put it like this - If I’m paying 20 dollars to play in a large league, BESIDES a prize pool what should I expect?
I think reasonable expectations might be that a portion of that money is being used to ensure matches are smoothly organized, cheaters are caught, perhaps additional events organized…
They don’t host match servers, don’t do any development, don’t have any admin incentives or rewards - as a result every service RGL provides outside of their prize pool is “free” - not supported or funded in any way, not functionally different than the service a fully free league.
The one sentence summary might be “there is no administration fee, so there is no administration”
This isn’t to say that having A will immediately solve B, but I’d like to start investing in solving problems.
That’s where the root of my perspective is, over the past year the prize pool has nearly doubled from $13,000 to $25,000 yet (AFAIK) nearly all of this is going still directly to the prize pool. Now this is really pure opinion, but I don’t think TF2 should be moving in a direction where our primary focus is pumping prize pool payout, there is absolutely no way to compete with other titles when it comes to monetary incentive.
This isn’t to say we should eliminate the prize pool, but the strength of TF2 has always been its community - and I’d rather a portion of the money be dedicated to exactly that - community projects instead of individuals pockets.
Hope that provides some perspective, thanks for the thoughts!
[quote=Reero] your initial statement saying rgl is a paid league that provides the services of a free one is a bit disingenuous as basically any team that plays invite or makes playoffs in the lower divs makes money from playing the game. [/quote]
Hm, I don’t really think what I said was wrong but I see where you’re coming from.
Just in case I’ll say explicitly again RGL isn’t stealing money - the league fees do go into the prize pool, in fact that’s where all the money goes!
The angle I’m more looking at it from is what SERVICE does RGL provide?
Let me put it like this - If I’m paying 20 dollars to play in a large league, BESIDES a prize pool what should I expect?
I think reasonable expectations might be that a portion of that money is being used to ensure matches are smoothly organized, cheaters are caught, perhaps additional events organized…
They don’t host match servers, don’t do any development, don’t have any admin incentives or rewards - as a result every service RGL provides outside of their prize pool is “free” - not supported or funded in any way, not functionally different than the service a fully free league.
The one sentence summary might be “there is no administration fee, so there is no administration”
This isn’t to say that having A will immediately solve B, but I’d like to start investing in solving problems.
That’s where the root of my perspective is, over the past year the prize pool has nearly doubled from $13,000 to $25,000 yet (AFAIK) nearly all of this is going still directly to the prize pool. Now this is really pure opinion, but I don’t think TF2 should be moving in a direction where our primary focus is pumping prize pool payout, there is absolutely no way to compete with other titles when it comes to monetary incentive.
This isn’t to say we should eliminate the prize pool, but the strength of TF2 has always been its community - and I’d rather a portion of the money be dedicated to exactly that - community projects instead of individuals pockets.
Hope that provides some perspective, thanks for the thoughts!
It's good to incentivize teams to move up and make more, the bottom of invite should never make less than the team winning advanced. If I think about only myself or the players who I know and hang/pug with I think dispersing money to top talent to go to rgl LAN would be cool and fun, but being honest if I put myself into the shoes of a mid-IM player whos trying to get better or wondering if dedicating more time to tf2 is worth it, id probably not really care for the difference between the regular online playoffs and the rgl LAN. either way, I'm probably going to catch the same online stream and watch the same fragmovie that comes from it.
This only really matters in my eyes because Invite prize pools are pretty much directly funded by the IM and main players who don't make playoffs. They also don't really get a say in how money is allocated. From what I've heard ( and I may be wrong) they poll the top teams and make a decision, so it's not really surprising that the majority of the money goes to the top teams.
Having an API, servers, paying for mentors and a newbie drive to be organized, paying admins and expecting higher quality and more professional work, and paying for the development of the league all creates a smoother experience.
This is especially true for those in the lower divisions who may not have all the networking and resources that people in advanced+ do.
It's good to incentivize teams to move up and make more, the bottom of invite should never make less than the team winning advanced. If I think about only myself or the players who I know and hang/pug with I think dispersing money to top talent to go to rgl LAN would be cool and fun, but being honest if I put myself into the shoes of a mid-IM player whos trying to get better or wondering if dedicating more time to tf2 is worth it, id probably not really care for the difference between the regular online playoffs and the rgl LAN. either way, I'm probably going to catch the same online stream and watch the same fragmovie that comes from it.
This only really matters in my eyes because Invite prize pools are pretty much directly funded by the IM and main players who don't make playoffs. They also don't really get a say in how money is allocated. From what I've heard ( and I may be wrong) they poll the top teams and make a decision, so it's not really surprising that the majority of the money goes to the top teams.
Having an API, servers, paying for mentors and a newbie drive to be organized, paying admins and expecting higher quality and more professional work, and paying for the development of the league all creates a smoother experience.
This is especially true for those in the lower divisions who may not have all the networking and resources that people in advanced+ do.
the biggest difference from esea to rgl is that i can actually watch the fucking games because stv works
the biggest difference from esea to rgl is that i can actually watch the fucking games because stv works
CAP_CREATUREIt's good to incentivize teams to move up and make more, the bottom of invite should never make less than the team winning advanced.
disagree, rgl prize pools are diluted to the point of being a complete non factor. i can see invite teams at least getting their fees paid to incentivize playing there but i preferred the esea system where you have to do well or you get jack shit. getting money for not making playoffs feels weird. also should apply to lower divs imo u should make way more for winning main than getting 4th its just cooler and more motivating. its not like the people getting 5-8th in main are gonna miss their $5 that much.
rgl has similar prize pool overall to esea i believe but esea was paying out like $4000+ for winning invite, $1500+ for adv and $600 for open because they only paid out to top4 and put a big gap between the payment for each placing
[quote=CAP_CREATURE]It's good to incentivize teams to move up and make more, the bottom of invite should never make less than the team winning advanced.[/quote]
disagree, rgl prize pools are diluted to the point of being a complete non factor. i can see invite teams at least getting their fees paid to incentivize playing there but i preferred the esea system where you have to do well or you get jack shit. getting money for not making playoffs feels weird. also should apply to lower divs imo u should make way more for winning main than getting 4th its just cooler and more motivating. its not like the people getting 5-8th in main are gonna miss their $5 that much.
rgl has similar prize pool overall to esea i believe but esea was paying out like $4000+ for winning invite, $1500+ for adv and $600 for open because they only paid out to top4 and put a big gap between the payment for each placing
trippa i can see invite teams at least getting their fees paid to incentivize playing there but i preferred the esea system where you have to do well or you get jack shit.
This incentivizes those teams to play advanced and win over playing low invite. because placing high in advanced would make more.
[quote=trippa] i can see invite teams at least getting their fees paid to incentivize playing there but i preferred the esea system where you have to do well or you get jack shit.[/quote]
This incentivizes those teams to play advanced and win over playing low invite. because placing high in advanced would make more.
is anyone actually deciding whether to play high adv or low invite based on the money involved
i would assume it would still be 90%+ about preferring to go 12-4 vs 4-12
is anyone actually deciding whether to play high adv or low invite based on the money involved
i would assume it would still be 90%+ about preferring to go 12-4 vs 4-12
FlipFTWAPI....
https://github.com/c43721/rgl-api
"This API is no longer active. The owner of the site decided to not provide API access nor to include it first-party. "
Disappointing and confusing to see them going out of their way to also take down community made api as-well. Its only unnecessarily increasing the work load for developers.
[quote=FlipFTW]
API....
[/quote]
https://github.com/c43721/rgl-api
"This API is no longer active. The owner of the site decided to not provide API access nor to include it first-party. "
Disappointing and confusing to see them going out of their way to also take down community made api as-well. Its only unnecessarily increasing the work load for developers.