Unban vacc

i think we should make timer 1 minutes so the game doesnt slow down and no stalemates

It's an ESU tournament

Winlimit 5 sometimes ends games prematurely when a comeback would still be possible. This is especially bad if there's a fast paced game ending way too soon. It does not eliminate dead time at all any more than windifference 5 would, unless the win condition is met, which is rarely because stalemating is still going to be a desirable strategy for the winning team if the time limit is still 30. Both the EU and the ESEA rulesets are better than this compromise.

Edit: this has been tried and tested before. Not sure what's different this time around.

there's an argument for min win diff 2 which means that games dont awkwardly end at 5-4 when otherwise there's a chance of comeback (though that's pretty rare ofc). basically pugchamp rules

ozfortress starts next Sunday on the 28th with season 21

Are you also including Highlander rulesets in this discussion, they do play 5cp and koth, doubt you need to mess with ABBA(BA) on payload.

Time to get CTF rules sorted once and for all! /s

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TLDR: get rid of halves!

The current winlimit or windifference 5 for 5CP is fine as is BO5 or BO7 on koth
Golden Cap: unlimited time, timelimits on LAN except for the final stages of playoffs.
As long as the winlimits/-differences are made clear in the rules it's up to the organizers to pick what suits best for their tournament/matches.

ondkaja is right

Pretty sure we asked them to change the ruleset since 2016 and yet, we are still playing with winlimit 5 in EU pugs.

Winlimit 5 is bad imo and deny any potential comeback.

Are teams currently able to forfeit a map when they feel like they can't come back?

#5
#6

I'd be happy to change the OP with PugChamp Rules (timelimit 30, windiff 2, windiff min 5), IMHO this thread is more about finding a compromise to abolish ESEA ruleset (mainly the two halves), all in all there's not a huge amount of deviation from ETF2L/OZ ruleset. If you can get the Yanks to agree on playing ETF2L ruleset, I wouldn't mind either.

Min windiff 2 should be an improvement to the ruleset in the OP. It would still end certain games too soon. I'd say ending a 5-3 match with 5 minutes on the clock would still be undesirable because that's when the crunch time kicks in.

Windifference 3 would be better in this case so that matches would still continue at 5-3 when the losing team can actually still put up a fight for a golden cap at least, but would already end at 5-2.

I personally wouldn’t mind if NA switched to windiff 5, seems better than winlimit 5 to me.

I prefer 2 halves

Kinda silly to have ESEA change our ruleset to match a ruleset designed to allow a team to play 2 maps against each other, when we don't do that.

A lot of comments in this thread are about comeback potential, but having a half time is the best way for a team to actually sit there and think about why they aren't winning

Maybe it's a good thing if somebody could explain why we have to unify the ruleset? As long as we all agree on a ruleset on the LANs I feel like it's not really necessary.

wouldn't it be easier to play the same ruleset at lan as you do in the seasons? Seems like an unnecessary difference which we could easily resolve

Twiikuu is right, this is just the logical thing to do. Let's get it over with

Thanks for speaking out.
I think you raise interesting views that I don't share because I've never had the chance to play the ESEA system.
I don't really agree that ETF2L's ruleset is purposefully designed to let us play two maps per official, when you look at it, everyone are playing with similar rulesets (aside from the few details here and there), in scrims and in pugs, NA included; I think it's more that ESEA's system was designed to play a full official on only one map, which is a fine choice, but the implementation feels abnormal to what is common to every other league and service; it requires server plugins to run without hassle, etc.

I think another thing to consider would be time constraints in something like a tournament; would two halves take too long in that sort of setting?

Here's a spreadsheet that may help in this conversation:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1euOl5wcgYZ1ki-Mg63o0W1vk_Hktzrrha_5AXMHSYMY/edit?usp=drivesdk

euros comin for our whitelists and now our halftimes smh

Winlimit should absolutely be used. Winlimit creates more uniform results, ends rolls in a reasonable fashion, and creates a strong incentive to close out matches rather than dragging games out. While many people are clinging to the idea of windifference and its comeback potential as its only redeeming factor, this has simply been proven in practice to not be the case. If comeback potential was being stifled by winlimit 5, you would be seeing matches where both teams score 5 or more. However, a quick glance at the last 3 years of ETFL2 premier results reveals that not a single match has done that. What seems to happen every single time is that any team that passes 5 rounds ends up winning anyways, often by large margins still. So instead of enabling a comeback, what the windifference does in these situations is create unnecessary garbage time where the team that has a big lead just keeps building upon their lead and ends up winning regardless. Even the most legendary comeback of TCM vs iM which ended 6-4 didn’t do that, where a 5-4 comeback actually would have been more exciting than the 6-4 game that ended in an anticlimactic garbage time. Windifference 5 never creates the same level of pressure and excitement of a close game where one team is on game point, or of a 4-4 game where the next round decides it unless of course they go to golden cap, which already happens in ETF2L and we can probably all agree adds a unique and special layer to the game. It’s also important to imagine under a windifference 5 system an invite playoff spot coming down to a rounds-won tiebreaker so a playoff bubble team lets bad teams win a few rounds so they can milk them for more than 5 rounds.

The real component stifling comebacks is not the winlimit, but instead the timelimit. More often, comebacks are cut short because of a lack of time. Some comebacks are simply not possible given the timeleft in a match. The less time left in a match, the more the team with the lead is incentivized to slow the game down dramatically as well, making any further rounds also unlikely. While it is still possible for timelimits to hurt comebacks in the ESEA ruleset with the 1 hour match length, the longer the match, the less you hinder comebacks. With no timelimit, all comebacks would be possible. Without a timelimit parking the bus also becomes far less beneficial. I think this is what we should be moving towards. Obviously, this could potentially create immensely long games, but we’ve already seen with the windifference situation that the potential outcomes of a ruleset don’t necessarily create the norm. Many games don’t have timelimits these days, so I can’t agree that tournaments would be impossible to run with longer or no timelimits. What you find with games with no timelimit like DOTA2 or LoL is that the games naturally resolve themselves after a certain period of time. This too is something we should be moving towards in addition to removing the timelimit. If we can adjust the ruleset so that it has no timelimit but has a strong natural tendency to end at around 30-45 minutes, we’ve created the perfect ruleset. Obviously there is a missing component to help move matches along quickly and eliminate stalemate time, and I am inclined to think that the simplest solution would be shorter round timers. We absolutely need to get testing on shorter round timers. I’d like to see how the game plays out at extremely short round timers, as low as 2 minutes, but most likely something like 3 or 4 minutes would end up feeling the most natural. Though it would take a plugin or custom versions of current maps to implement currently, if proven to be useful through extensive testing and results, I am confident we could get Valve to implement something that replicates it easily through a config.

On to halftime, it’s a luxury not a necessity, except on non symmetrical maps (another strong case for removing viaduct!). For a similar strategic reset effect I think we could extend humiliation time at the end of each round by 10 seconds or so, allowing teams to have more time to reflect on rounds and prepare for the next one (some servers already do this and it’s quite nice).

For futureproofing, it’s also important to consider the matchmaking ruleset. Though potentially liable to change, at the highest levels matchmaking currently plays winlimit 3, no timelimit. To me, winlimit 3 feels fairly short, but this could be offset by playing matches bo3 or something.

Proposed ruleset: winlimit 5, no match timelimit, short round timer.

Wait, do you actually want to remove via? @_@

Also fuck no time limit, 3 hour long coalplant matches proved that shit is fucking garbage.

I acknowledge the possibility of long matches, but have also proposed a way to encourage them to resolve in a more timely manner through short round timers. The only way to determine what will happen in practice is to actually test it.

To your first question, yes, I do think we should remove viaduct, and here's why:
1. It is the sole koth map in the map pool. I think it would be more valuable to clearly define competitive TF2 by our best gametype, 5CP. It is strange to have only 1 koth map, just as it was awkward to have only 1 A/D map in gravelpit. People don't pug it, people rarely scrim it. Either all koth or no koth would be best for resolving this, but as it stands now it seems more plausible to remove koth than to expand it. Though I'd love to see koth only tournaments, those should be separate from the main league.

2. It is a custom pro version of the map. I think its valuable to have only official or *soon to be* official versions of maps in our map pool. Pro versions of maps will never be endorsed by Valve and will never appear in matchmaking, hurting the accessibility of our leagues to players who are only familiar with the stock versions or are hindered by downloading custom versions. Currently the only 2 maps we have in ESEA that are pro versions are granary and viaduct, so they are not really necessary to keep around for the integrity of our map list. A quick look at the most recent abominable version of pro granary should be a cautionary tale enough about the dangers of pro versions of maps.

3. It has inherent imbalances in its symmetry. Giving one team the advantage over another simply based on side choice is something I think we can all agree is not fair, especially if we are arguing to eliminate halftime color switches.

K well I am at work so I cant actually spend time on this atm, but

1. No, time limits work in other games because the games resolve themselves in the end. CS has round timers, Dota and league have creeps that will end the game with no outside input. Games like TF2 or Quake need match times because people could and have gotten stuck in back and forth fights with no winner. Match times stop 3 hours of garbage from happening.

2. I though the meme was we need more variety in KOTH or A/D because 5CP has many issues AND pubbers hate it.

3. I agree that its not balanced, but that is 1 argument for half time to exist.

good luck getting esea to change the ruleset

CS doesn't have match time just round time.

But they play an A/D styled gamemode, I mean we also wouldn't have these issues if we played A/D but I think the general consensus is that 5cp represents tf2 better.

Well that and there aren't really enough A/D maps to fill a season.

I would be fine with fiddling with round timers down to something like 7-8 - the problem with going shorter is that the shorter the round timer is: you would indeed disincentivize parking the bus, you would also incentivize just not pushing at all when your team is in a disadvantageous situation (on your own last). What's harder? Pushing off of your own last and fighting your way back to the opposition's last, or absorbing 1-2 more uber pushes/sack cycles and letting the 2-3 minute round timer go to 0:00 and having another mid. So, you'd have to seek to create a balance between hurting bus parking while not also creating a timer so short that it would be better not to push at all whenever you're not clearly winning (just on feel I'd think 5-6 minutes would be OK and would be interested in seeing how it played out in testing).

I'm not really sure bus parkery is that much of a concern in NA though.

Unification of the rule sets isn't really necessary. Both leagues are structured so differently, and the players are used to playing in much different ways; you're going to end up just upsetting your player base more than is necessary to do for the extremely marginal (if any) benefit you would gain when it came to our very occasional cross-continental competitions (and even then the players from abroad are an extremely small subset of the over all comp community on their home continent, so hardly anyone is being effected by having to acclimate to a different rule set).