The problem with this is we try to accommodate our own region. I may be wrong here as I am not in Euro; but if a very large portion of the community wanted the NA rule set, I'm sure they could talk to the admins and try and get it changed.

The AU rule set was very similar to the NA rules in previous seasons but a large portion of the scene wasn't happy with it so we changed it in OWL12 iirc. Having all the league admins together wont solve much. It needs to be the community as a whole that makes a obvious choice between the 2 rule sets.
As GJon stated, NA have a client that also provides some difficulty to change rules and but I don't think this means we should default to NA rules because they can't change it.

The time between rounds is longer in the ETF2L ruleset and you also have the right to a five minute pause, although it has to be for technical reasons but it's completely unenforcable so a tactical pause is de facto allowed.

Too many egos on both sides. By changing to one ruleset they would be admitting it was better than theirs.

I think the switching of sides is the least of the worries/problems with ESEAs ruleset. Like Jon said it's something completely pointless and trivial, if other regions were to hypothetically adopt NA ruleset nobody would switch sides @ halftime and it wouldn't change a single thing, nor would anyone care if you didn't switch.

In general, I do think EUs ruleset is better -- it's just better logistically in every single way in terms of casts & viewership, but every player has their own preference to the rulesets depending on how they see it.

I personally prefer EU ruleset, but I fucking love the idea of a halftime. A lot of the teams I have been on have used it for halftime adjustments or just to cool our heads if needed. We've all seen the invite matches w/ 3-0 rolls at the beginning and after a halftime talk + adjustment the other team brings it back.

Saam's idea of two 20 minute halves is the perfect compromise in my eyes.

As a spectator, the EU ruleset is a lot better than the NA ruleset

imo, winlimit is better than windifference because it gives the team who's ahead incentive to push by allowing them to close out the game

edit: and I'm just gonna add that in eu windifference was the standard because of football

The timing of this thread is so perfect lmao

Halftime is good for teams but it sucks for spectators. You take away from gametime and in 90% of the cases it won't actually change the outcome of the game. In CSGO you need to have halftime and it doesn't actually cut short of any action so it makes perfect sense to have it there, but in TF2 you stop the game for no real reason except to give the underdogs a chance to make a plan, which can be achieved with a tactical pause anyway. 40 minutes per map + a pause inbetween is also impractical schedule wise, especially at LAN.

Though most people don't use them there are plenty of hiding spots that only exist on one side of certain maps. For example, on gullywash mid there is a light you can stand on as roamer in order to force meds coming in from one 2nd into mid (IIRC it's red) which technically gives blue side an advantage. On badlands as well there are a couple of spots that exist on red second that aren't mirrored on blu side. In house there is a hiding spot above the door frame by window room/entering the health pack room with a prop of like a ram's skull or something. Way above patio by choke on red 2nd you can stand on a prop and see through walls all the way to blu diag/house (more of a glitch than anything useful) and since nobody checks up there it's pretty easy to force medics coming through choke and if you do it right you're so high up that you can sync rockets on him. Obviously if the map makers were to do their jobs right and mirror the maps properly it would be a non issue but as it stands that we have a halftime in NA I see no reason not to switch sides because it's only fair. Also I think it may be from maps like gravelpit where switching sides is customary.

Edit: also I completely agree that in anything other than an esea lan with 4 teams (rip) the esea ruleset is simply too time consuming. I would argue that in single online matches its better than having just one 30 minute half (you can use halftime to check stats) but obviously in playoffs it becomes really time consuming especially in best of 5 games. No idea how the EU map rotation works could someone explain how there are two maps played each week? Sounds like an interesting idea.

Hopefully a compromise

Then why is this? People being unable to a) make a compromise or b) finding the best ruleset? Either way it's an inconvenience that we probably dont' want or need.

Why can we not have a map pool and a ruleset that defines the player base of the entire community? I thought we wanted to expand our communities not isolate them.

Sure etf2l and esea might be competing with ugc (at least in lower levels of play) but they're not competing with leagues in other continents, which is what the problems is. I'm sure if all asiafortress, ozfortress, etf2l and esea used the same ruleset and mappool ugc would adapt it as well.

Because people generally don't like change? Who would have thought.

Correct me if I'm wrong but ESEA rules are harder to change than etf2l rules. ETF2L have been changing maps and unbanning lots of weapons recently, I don't really see the same things happening in ESEA. This is (imo) the reason why I've personally heard NA players complain about the ruleset more than I've heard EU players complain.

Playing 2 different maps for a match rather than 1 also assures us that your team doesn't get lucky. Maybe ur the best team at all maps except reckoner, and then you play 1 map against a team who is better than you on reckoner. This can seem unfair since overall, you're the better team. In EU there would be 2 maps in that week, thus making sure that the best team can at least secure a draw.

So you guys didn't like NA rules what makes you think europeans would like to switch to it? Sure if everyone in the community wanted change it would be MORE LIKELY to happen.

As I previously have said, and I know this is anecdotal, I've heard more complaints from NA than any other region about the ruleset, so why are they not changing it?

And here we have the problem.

I kind of like the idea of a pause in the middle for league play and the ability to switch sides for the previously mentioned reasons. However, we kind of get this in Europe with the switch between maps, though if you lost that map you still lost the points which isn't the case in ESEA. I think some sort of pause and switch like this halfway through a 30 minute map would really break up gameplay and wouldn't be good.
However I think the 30 minute ruleset has the potential to be much more tense which makes it way more fun to watch casted matches of and is better for lan games imo. I think although the EU timer is way harsher on a losing team it does make the game way more interesting from a spectator perspective.

In EU you have the right to at least one 5-minute pause each map.

Compromising on the ruleset is such a stupid idea and is completely the wrong way to approach the situation. I'm not even saying that one region should adapt to another region's ruleset. It's much better to have a ruleset that most of the community can agree on than a compromise that makes nobody happy.

The rational way to approach the problem is to:

1. Make a list of many possible rulesets
2. Set up a list of priorities (e.g. works in online matches as well as cups, doesn't require plug-ins, etc.)
3. Choose the best ruleset based on how well they satisfy the priorities

This is a time consuming solution, but it's so much better than tunnel visioning on either the ETF2L or the ESEA ruleset, because there are so many more unexplored options out there. It's time for the leagues to take initiative and make this happen, in a transparent manner so that everyone in the community can be a part of the decision. In the end, a unified ruleset would benefit all of the leagues, so it's a common interest for all of the community.

Ending up in scenarios where one team might as well just leave because they can't win is kinda silly. So too is how it doesn't really matter what the points are beyond a tie and one team being ahead. 7 mins left, 4-1. At that point unless it's a team prone to tilt, it's almost 1/3 the time of a map being wasted.

Literally this

What if they did 30 mins with first to five instead of win by five?

nvm

That used to be the eu ruleset, timelimit 30 winlimit 5, it was then changed to timelimit 30 win difference 5

why was it changed?

Win limit stops close games as soon as they get to 5. Games like i49 Grand Finals, Epsilon vs. Broder map 2 wouldn't have happened in the NA ruleset where it went 4-0 to broder then 5-2 broder then 5-5 into a golden cap, one of the most hype maps ever played and it would have been killed halfway through.

I'm pretty sure most players who have experienced both rulesets prefer the EU one, myself included. Besides, if the ultimate discussion is for a potential intercontinental NA LAN, then we have to use EU rules anyway otherwise it'll take 500 years to complete matches. The biggest issue is that we'd never get ESEA to change the ruleset. We've brought this up before (me in 2014 lol) but I don't think there's anything we can do about it with regards to ESEA.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PI4vcg6pv8Y

Na rule set seems more effective, at least two mid fights compared to Eu where only one mid fight is a possibility.

what rulesets do asiafortress and ozfortress use?

I've never understood this point like yeah I get it, assuming its literally the most miserable game ever you can get at least 2 mid fights in but you're still sitting through the rest of two 30 minute snore fests instead of just one.

What's there to understand? Each week you play 1 match against 1 team. A match involves both teams joining a server, loading the etf2l config, setting the map to the current week's first map, RUP and play for 30 minutes, screenshot the result, change the server to the current week's second map, RUP again, play for 30 minutees, screenshot the result, go to the etf2l site, write down the score for each map, with screenshots for evidence (+screen shot of "status" output to prove which players played).

Wasn't sure how it worked in terms of which maps are played in what weeks and how the team matchups work (thought you may play two different teams on different maps each week but it looks like its just 1 team on 2 maps from what you said)
Assuming there's 8 weeks and 9 teams in prem that would work but i feel like in IM or open you would only get to play 8 teams in the season vs up to 16 which makes it much more beneficial to get an easy schedule
That being said it makes each week more fun and variety is never a bad thing (unless you have to play reckoner....)

I prefer the NA system of playing 1 map per week and you go hard on it. 1 map between two teams is preferable to 2 maps against a single opponent imo but I think that aspect is way less important and way more personal preference than winlimits/rulesets/whitelists.

But then Epsilon's spirits might have been crushed and the people's champions could have overcome the unfeeling juggernaut of dream crushing TF2 gods. Our chance to witness a Nordic Prometheus stolen by the degenerate EU rules.

Although seriously if it had been played under different rules then it's reasonable to expect we might have seen different play. Nobody tries to go 3 or 4 rounds down but changing things more urgently could have happened on Epsilon's side. It's all speculation.

Yes, 1 match, 1 opponent, 2 maps in a week. Except there are 7 weeks and maps. Last season, the regular season went:

• Week 1: cp_badlands & cp_snakewater_u8
  
• Week 2: cp_snakewater_u8 & cp_process_final
  
• Week 3: cp_process_final & koth_product_rc8
  
• Week 4: koth_product_rc8 & cp_reckoner_b2a
  
• Week 5: cp_reckoner_b2a & cp_gullywash_final1
  
• Week 6: cp_gullywash_final1 & cp_granary_pro_rc3
  
• Week 7: cp_granary_pro_rc3 & cp_badlands

It used to be 8 teams per division, round robin, and scheduling matches was up to teams, who had a 2 week time slot to play a given week's match (and yes there were something like 20 divisions). Only prem works like that now. For open/mid/high, swiss scoring is used and teams are assigned an opponent with the same number of points as them, and given a 5 day time window to play the match (1 match being about 1.5 hours on a server with the other team, playing the week's 2 maps. Order the maps are played in only matters if your opponent complains).