I really, really like halftime. It's a great time to decompress, talk over what's going wrong, and prep for a comeback/a strong finish. Correct me if I'm wrong, but euros play 2 maps per week still, right? Considering how much most people seemed to hate prepping for cevo and esea at the same time, I don't see a two map week working out well here, so that break that they get wouldn't be available in NA.

Is there any reason that we couldn't consider something like 2 20 minute halves? 15 minutes for a half seems too short, and 30 minutes for a half with a win difference instead of a win limit is probably too long. I think 20 or 25 minutes would be about right. Matches would take about an hour, and we'd get all the benefits of the EU ruleset as well.

Brazilians use the EU ruleset aswell afaik.

Pretty much everything you said is correct, however there are a few things I've found rather neat that ESEA/CEVO does:

•2 Halves, makes things even, allows both teams to have a break in the middle, switch sides, and take a break for bathroom or to go over strats/important game issues they are having, or just generally relax a bit.

•'.ready' System, makes things alot less complicated and will insure that nobody won't be ready at the start of the match, The 'live on 3' system is also a neat feature imo.

But if I'm not mistaken (not 100% sure) the Asians have created server plugins that does the above and other features like showing score and time on the beggining of every round, they did say they're going to release it soon enough to the public, so I hope ETF2L adpots their plugins.

I think that i49 gave us the best show that we've ever seen, every match there was incredible to watch and they were all played on EU rulesets, the NA players who have been to the Insomnia LANs should express their opinions on this.

One thing is for sure, a universal ruleset will be a great thing for the game.

Sorry if I got sidetracked from the topic.

I really enjoy the EU ruleset if only just for scheduling reasons. The longest an official can go is 40 minutes, with the first chunk being 30 minutes and the 10 minutes being if the golden cap manages to time out (this is my understanding of it, at least). I've experienced a lot of scrims (HL and 6s) that only play the first 30 minutes anyway because playing the second half would conflict with other scheduled scrims or individuals' personal schedules as they only had that much time before needing to do whatever.

As a spectator, I prefer watching EU games because I know there will, generally, be less stalling of the to take it to the second half from the team that's down because they don't want to push out and risk giving up another round pre-half.

Even if this ruleset was adopted, the practice of doing two maps a week wouldn't need to be adopted. Though, as a player in only CEVO, I wouldn't be opposed to that. I can completely see why that'd be a nightmare for someone in ESEA and CEVO though.

They recently changed the golden cap rule, there is now no timelimit on golden caps.

That's right. I forgot about that, thanks for reminding me. I liked that change too.

Keep in mind that with EU rules 2 maps are played every week. So 2x30mins + possible gc

I've never really understood the problem with why 2 maps a week is too much.

Do you guys practice 1 map the entire week and never mix it up with another map to break the flow?

the owl competition in Australian tf2 uses halves like esea and plays 2 maps per round (each round lasts 2 weeks). Both maps are first to 5, or 4 in the case of koth. We have had other competitions that only allow a 30 minute time limit and are first to 5 however.

The 5 round difference rule could create some interesting situations for teams and make the game more exciting, giving the losing team a chance to make a comeback. However, in a 30 minute time limit, getting more than 6 or 7 rounds played is very unlikely and the team that pulls ahead could just turtle to win.

i have to say since its been mentioned, i like aspects of both rulesets and one thing i would love eu to adopt is not playing two different maps a week, just play the one map twice a week i'll be honest i haven't fully thought through how etf2l could implement it i just feel one map a week would be better in terms of finding scrims easily and really working out some proper strats for maps especially for lower level or new players who could benefit from focused scrims

6 or 7 rounds happens more often than you might think. The argument that always seems to be brought up about the turtling, personally I've never encountered it. I don't think you wanna hold on you last for 5-10 minutes when you've only 1 round advantage, evebtually they will break through. Also I would try to make my advantage bigger.

I'm not sure why everyone sees 2 maps in a week as a problem, it's completely fine in EU due to how we scrim. I'm not at all familiar with how you guys scrim in NA, but because of the 30 timelimit in EU it's easy to schedule pcw's far in advance. It's normal to have 1 opponent at 20:00 and 1 opponent at 21:15 which allows for 2 maps against each team + 15 minutes for inevitable delays.

This allows teams to practice 2 maps against each opponent. Usually it's done with each team picking a map they want to practice, but it will follow the ETF2L maps for each week. Playing 1 map would more than likely mean playing the same map 3-4 times in a row (for up to 2 hours!).

So I really don't see any issues with playing 2 maps each week, if there is something else I'm missing I'd love to hear it.

edit: I should probably have mentioned scheduling scrims is only common in Prem/div1/topd2. In the lower divisions you just find scrims in #tf.wars whenever you want to play.

this sounds like TF2 heaven. where's the best, most American place to live in EU? I'm moving ASAP.

Gotta agree that the EU ruleset is better than the NA ruleset.

GXL will be using the EU ruleset. :]

While I agree with every point you mentioned, when I ran the comp.tf newbie cups last year I noticed another thing and I think it's an even more important aspect and advantage of the EU ruleset.

From an admin/league pov its so much easier to set up and admin a tournament running with the EU ruleset vs running one with the NA ruleset, not mentioning that you need special infrastructure (servers prepared with plugins / ready system) or else you're gonna have a scrappy solution where you have to exec another config at half time. While on the EU ruleset setting up a server for it is as straightforward and foolproof as possible.

Also the scheduling is another huge advantage, in the EU ruleset you have a set time and unless on rare occasions you have to play a golden cap (which only happens on officials) you have no problems scheduling set times in advance because you know exactly how long it will take maximum

It's a difference from day and night in terms managing and setting up servers and coordinating teams, etc...

At the moment, NA basically scrims to the EU ruleset except without the Win difference rule. And if I recall correctly, we only play to five round wins and have a half-time because that was how ESEA did things for CS when we debuted there.

Here's what I see the benefits to the EU ruleset:

1. More TF2 in less time - in the span of 90 minutes, you can get what amounts to two full matches in EU compared to just one spread-out match in full-modded NA rules.

2. Easier to setup servers - currently we're fudging a ton of things server-side with custom league mods to get the game to do what we want, on top of that they're vulnerable to breaking whenever Valve releases an update and when that happens the pressure is on the league to provide a fix before matches or teams have to reschedule. Playing to a natural win difference is something that the game can do just fine and doesn't break (as often).

And some cons:

1. No halftime = map advantage - The main reason half-time works is it allows both teams to play both sides of the map, normally this isn't a big deal but in the past there have been maps that have not been fully symmetrical (see Granary). So without a half-time there can be a unfavorable advantage given to one team that plays a specific color (RED or BLU).

2. The Two-Map debate - I want to say that the big issue for NA players seeing the EU two-maps per match thing is that they're used to just practicing one map in the regular season. And that playing two maps a match means they have to compromise on practice time for both and thus, quality of play might suffer.

Feel free to correct me if I made any mistakes.

im down for trying new things

its still time, esea (killing). make a poll brah

I too prefer the EU ruleset. Would be pretty great if we could eventually get ESEA & CEVO to switch over to this. (plz)

now change to the metric system too, america.

A L E X B E N D E R

I prefer watching the EU rule set. I also don't see the problem in playing two different maps in a row if you can play three to five different maps in a row when it comes to grand finals time(not to mention you don't even know what the maps are going to be, though you do have a pool to practice in its entirety). I suppose it might be a bit harder for players at lower levels of competition, as they haven't played the maps as many times as invite/professional/premiership level players, not to mention their team might not have been together as long.

I think there are merits to both, but the nature of turtling with a 30 minute time limit is a bigger detriment to the game than a "more passive style" that na ruleset apparently encourages.

Look at the turtling that occured at i49 (and the turtling that should have occured -_-) - e.g. us defending last vs hrg when we were 2-1 up. I really hate that our best move was to sit around and waste time with a 1 round buffer, and the eu ruleset really exacerbates maps with problem chokes & holds like snakewater. The reality is that not having that extra "clean slate" 30 minutes doesn't force teams to play more aggressive, it forces a vast disparity of desperate aggression and utterly tedious holds because there's simply too much at stake. When two really good (international quality) teams are playing against each other (particularly on some maps), only having 30 minutes is going to encourage less risk taking in the first 25 minutes of the game & will likely result in more frequent low-scoring games with drawn out rounds.

I think the "passive" playstyle that you're rreferring to comes a lot more from the players & teams than from the ruleset too btw. AU tf2 has been using NA ruleset forever and although most of the teams in aus have historically been weaker than other scenes, there has been very little evidence of this kind of playstyle causing a detriment to the gameplay/viewing experience

While I don't have a problem with watching EU tf2, I find NA tf2 more enjoyable to watch. The longer matches with the halftime makes each match a story of it's own. I think NA tf2 may have more stalemates, but that gives casters time to talk about what happened and create a story out of the match. Same with half time.

And on that point, I don't think stalemates are necessarily a bad part of the game. It happens in real sports, eg. the back and forth in football. It also happens in other esports, eg. the farming stages of dota. It's just what happens when neither team has an advantage and is working towards one.

why don't we do first to 5 and 30 minute timelimit / map
incentive to push when up and down in points
there isn't a "momentum break" in the middle of the map but why should there be if a team is winning shouldn't the other team break the momentum on their own if they really wanted to make a comeback

etf2l plays two maps and in boX series the in-between map period could be considered "halftime"

also etf2l's point system is awful for league scoring

That's how they score things for most European leagues (Soccer comes to mind), where effectively the "regular season" is just a big group stage for the playoff tournament.

I think you need to be careful comparing the two scenes, usually the scene with players you know better is more enjoyable to watch. Personally I only really watch ESEA LAN from NA TF2 since it's not enjoyable, but thats probably because I don't follow it too much.

Explain?

Points distribution for Golden Cap Wins/Losses is truly bizarre :D
You lost more slowly than normal... here have a point!

Instead of a artificial halftime I'd like to see a longer period in between rounds, which is the natural break in the flow of the game. Players would be frozen in spawn for 20-30 seconds before a new round begins, but the time doesn't come off the map clock until the round starts properly. Something like the way the clock stops in American Football? (I don't know what I'm talking about!)

i'd imagine that would be most easily done through increasing the "humiliation" time, which we lowered from pub level in the first place. however, the fast transition we have between capping last and rolling out for the next round allows for continued momentum throughout a game. a player might get a nice spree at last to win the round, and they'll be pumped and ready to play a solid mid. if we increased that delay, even just by returning it to whatever time period ships with tf2, it'd be quite a momentum break. if you wanted clock stops during games for the sake of recouping or discussing something, i suppose as-is teams could utilize one of their X number of pauses allowed for the match.

also, can we bring up whitelist revision with all the changes to weapons? or will i get shot for mentioning it

I don't think it's possible to stop the clock from running off during the beginning-of-round "freeze time" (mp_enableroundwaittime). You could try to mess with the end of round time (mp_bonusroundtime), where there isn't a round timer to affect.

However, in either case, the server clock (mp_timelimit) will still run in either case. It will always end time when it is that number of minutes past the map start time.

There's probably a way to hack around all of those restrictions, but that would require server plugins.

Yeah giving teams a shot at breaking momentum is sort of what I am aiming for here. I'm tired of seeing teams sleepwalking in to a three round deficit by the 15 minute mark and finally changing things up when it's already too late.

Just give teams those few extra seconds to air their thoughts on the last round. Most teams do this during the rollout phase, but I wonder if a little extra time might allow teams to recompose themselves and adjust.

Definitely wouldn't want it eating into the map time, but unless it is doable without a plugin ETF2L probably won't consider the change.