metalworks :3

This is very interesting, I'm really curious about how good this rotation is going to be, however, why is metalworks there twice and sunshine once ?

Sunshine was played during the previous seasons and wasn't disliked, so it's a "proven" map.
Metalworks comes from a preseason cup and therefore (even though it's been played before in etf2l) hasn't been really deeply tested.

To me it would have made more sense to do twice sunshine and once metalworks but heh, it still looks pretty good.

where is my logjam @

metalworks been in esea for years - so it has been tested

I completely agree, same goes for sunshine. My points is, since the map is pretty new in ETF2L, it would make more sense to play it only once since a large portion of ETF2L players are still relatively new to this map (compared to sunshine).

worth a try i guess but i agree 2x sunshine 1x metalworks for now

It's nice to see 9 maps in the map pool, but I totally agree with Opti and Cyanic to play sunshine twice and metalworks once in the regular season.

the mid to 2nd stalemate on logjam is the stuff of nightmares. if we have to have a bad map in the pool could it not at least be an untested map so something good comes from it

To be fair teams are very familiar playing sunshine and if metalworks is played only once teams are barely going to scrim it and it would be a waste having it in the season

lets be honest its pretty dumb having 9 maps in a 7 week season. also how are the maps in a bo3 gonna be decided with 9 maps?

hyce is quite open to changing things about the map and i believe he's working on a new version based on feedback from ozf and etf2l

I would assume:

A: ban
B: ban
A: pick + ban
B: pick + ban
A: ban
B: ban
decider

Giving team both teams 3 bans and team A the pick advantage, but I suppose the S33 rule page will be updated to reflect the new pick/ban system, with also the single elim playoffs being full BO3 and not having a BO5 GF anymore.

ozfortress started with 9 maps in 7 weeks last season, and they just announced they are going to keep this system in next season so I assume it was a success for them.

reposting from my twitter but i dont think anyone talked about this

still dont see the point of having 9 maps and some only being played once and a weird playoffs etc over just removing the worst 2 from it and having a regular season.
last season but logjam -> metalworks would be really nice

Replacing one sunshine for logjam? Ngl I don't think I've ever seen anyone complain about the map, even if, it wasn't as much as for example logjam. Also it seems weird to have a brand new map (to EU) have 2 weeks and a map that was in rotation for quite some time only once.

True, could we do something like last team to have held mid wins ?

Personally I think it would be better to do one additional mid fight if nobody capped mid after 15 minutes.

The 9 maps feels fairly pointless is there a good reason to have it in? It feels like an awkward compromise because people can't quite agree on what maps to play.

as IF we're not playing sunshine twice

-logjam, -metalworks. 7 good maps to go :D

I thought Americans didn't really scrim metalworks because they don't like it. in ESEA i think its much harder to say what maps gonna be played and idk anyone whos hyped on the fact they gotta play metalworks.

anyone in their right mind knos badlands is much better

What's the point of 9 maps if you're using the same map rotation system with 7 weeks and aren't playing the same maps as esea?
Why did propaganda not even get tested in the map cup when its being played in esea?
Why has the latest version of reckoner (rc4 so not the one with stupidly high crates on mid) never been tested in these cups, afaik most europeans enjoyed reckoner.

If etf2l does decide to stick to this map pool please atleast have sunshine x2 metalworks x1

get rid of logjam and granary, problem solved

can etf2l at the very least give some kind of communication or insight as to why these changes were made?

you could make arguments for 9 maps vs 7 maps, and what maps you play twice over the season, but everything in this thread is wasted breath if we dont know what the plan the admins have when these decisions are made.

Please tell me this is a mistake, and that Metalworks isnt going to be played twice while Sunshine and Granary will be played only once
Having week 1 map being played once doesnt make sense either

Agree with the fact that it's pretty strange to have 9 maps in a 7 weeks season

Can we stop having new maps every season ? people disagree with what should be the last 2 maps in the map pool but whats the point of switching maps every season ? it's not going to help

you cant get used to a map (like metalworks even if its for eu only) or expect the map to be improved (for logjam) in one season every time

We should have a discussion about switching maps every 3 seasons or so (after every insomnia would make sense)
Just get a real preseason cup with prem team actually playing it early september and give the best 2 maps of the cups a real chance after that in the long run (like reckoner did)

At the moment we are having a preseason cup every season and the best map of the cup is getting in the season for 1 season only.

having 9 maps instead of 7 will not help people will just play the new maps less and enjoy it less as well

Just get back to 7 maps and give a real chance to a map like metalworks or anything else

Why is it such an issue for people that we're only playing old maps once instead of twice? If you only play a newly introduced map for one week, there's going to be significantly less feedback compared to having two weeks of real games to look at and have feedback from.

This legit just looks like people unwilling to change and complaining about new things happening and being completely in favour of stagnating and not doing anything at all new. Also, NA haven't complained at all about Metalworks at all recently as far as I'm aware, so why not try it out for a couple weeks, play some real games on it, and see if it really is a problematic map or not. If sunshine is already a proven map, and metal unproven, it only makes sense to actually give it time to "prove" itself.

Also gonna agree with Jordy though, why was Propagande not tested at all for this season when it's been shown to be a pretty good and fun map in NA. I'd also like to see a Reckoner return (without the stupid double crates on mid) because there were no huge problems with it until it was updated.

Thank You For Reading, God Bless.

I'll bite in to this one by one, if there's something missing out on what do you want to know then just feel free to ask me all you want.

First off, as for why Sunshine is being played only once while Metalworks is played twice simply comes from my thoughts on making EU more used to the map in general, it's already well proven in NA but keep in mind that the last time Metalworks was played in ETF2L was back in Season 17, in 2014. There's already a lot of information for people to seek further into, but giving it only a single week to play on is not going to make anyone feel like it would be here to stay, maybe it won't. However still, we as admins are completely aware of how Sunshine is already liked in ETF2L and has become one of the Top 5 maps to play in competitive 6v6 as per the poll that we did at the beginning of Season 32 so we do have proven data on that already in our hands.

As to how players are going to make a map veto with this many maps, it can be done with the already existing system that ESEA uses in their playoffs, for the people that are unfamiliar of it it's upper seed to decide who starts, AB to ban maps, AB to pick maps, ABAB to ban maps again with the last remaining map as the decider. Do keep in mind that this is not yet confirmed, we are still able shift around the ban/pick order so that at least teams taking part in the Premiership Qualifiers don't need to suddenly ban Metalworks and Logjam only to play Badlands for the first time in possibly 5 months. Whether that will also remain the same for the playoffs at the end of the season is up to a debate as well, but I don't see this having too many issues as of now.

EoN's #44 post brings up a really great point, I had overlooked this from even being a possibility. I would say expect a new rule update on that matter, most likely to include the first team to win the mid point if neither team has mid point in control even after the time is over, ensuring that round resets do force teams to start fresh.

I've probably said this enough to make it sound like an excuse at this point, but adding in Metalworks is a step towards having a similar map pool in line with ESEA, with Logjam just being an exception so we do not have to end up with a similar mess of opinions Cardinal had brought to us a year ago where the map got a heavy amount of critique that we couldn't give it a second change even afterwards, the fact that the map development stopped for it by that point didn't help that fact either. Personally I would also want Logjam to receive seasonal updates to bring it to peoples liking again like it did for the people that wanted to play Logjam again before it was added in Season 32. But just to touch on to the ESEA part still, we are aware that this will be the last season ESEA will have for TF2 and whether other upcoming orgs wish to alternate the map pool significantly is up to them to decide on, but if they would rather copy the map pool mostly from us then we already have a rather familiar template for NA to work onwards from then.

The reason why testing Propaganda has been skipped over in ETF2L is pretty much my fault, I do believe that the map could very well shape up to be a decent map at the very least in EU, I would be glad to test it out at least once. However before we had made our preseason cup to try out maps in, I got approached by lucrative, a key figure in NA that really wants to introduce new maps to a competitive format and help them succeed in the future. Not calling him out for doing anything bad, rather the opposite because he's pouring his heart into getting a kickstart to these new maps that could easily be ignored otherwise. Anyhow, he suggested for me to try out new maps that had done well in his map testing PUGs with plenty of positive results in some of the ones that were chosen for the preseason cup we had in last week. I would like to note however that Metalworks was not one of the maps lucrative suggested for us to try out, having that included was purely done because of people asking for it to get played in ETF2L. I wanted to add it into the cup to see if the playerbase would be a lot more fond of it now than previously, however had we not added it in I'm pretty certain we would have the same guys asking that why is EU not playing Metalworks still when it has been played in NA for many years already for now, that's not something I'm able to answer to but that's the reason why Propaganda could have been recently played instead. All the feedback regarding how much you want to play it will be kept in my mind for the next time we want to give new maps a similar chance.

Will continue in the post below to make sure I won't get annihilated by any possible character limit for a single post.

As for why Reckoner has not been tested, I haven't heard of that many things even about it for a whole year since the most recent rc4a version was pushed out. I'm rather surprised honestly of how many people suddenly have asked that why aren't we even playing rc2 version of Reckoner after the preseason cup now, or even the latest version for that matter. In most cases the simple answer would be that the map is not really in development anymore but popular demand can still change that as seen from the fact that EU is still playing an outdated version of Granary Pro. But honestly I'm not even sure am I out of loop all of a sudden because I myself do not remember any comments having been made about Reckoner until now, which I will keep in mind for the future. I mean, please, if you have any issues with ETF2L in any way, please let us admins know, public or private. I would've probably kept double elimination in Premiership playoffs yet again for this season had Starkie not made a public thread about it, but since he did and it provided a good amount of thoughts on what we could change with the playoffs, we did all that for this season now just because someone expressed their opinion out.

To comment on why we have been changing maps every season now, I do agree that it has become really messy since we haven't been able to keep up the map pool similar for even 2 seasons in the past couple years. Some might find it to add in a new interesting element to the table, but I can really understand the confusion behind it for the sake of consistency. I would want to keep things mostly similar to avoid making too many changes overall, but it's impossible to know of what the future has to bring to us. People like to say that "TF2 is dead" yet it still remains to get a lot of insanely great stuff made by the community that can take over older favorites.

And as a last note, I already personally spoke to Raf about what he said about having a proper yearly map discussion and a cup with prem teams playing in them and I would be really up for something like this where we can get not only the top players playing the maps they'd like to give a chance but also showcase some high level competition in them. I would still like to have new maps to test in ETF2L cups that we do before every season, but they can be said to be purely for general map testing only in a cup setting with ETF2L used as a base only and not as possible candidates for the upcoming season's map pool all of a sudden without people actually becoming more familiar with them beforehand. This is only a thought at this point, but I would be supporting this sort of thing really so that the smaller seasonal cups will remain to provide feedback for the map developers and the yearly discussion/showcase will be what would actually change up the map pool if needed, but it'd require for Premiership teams at the time to invest their time and interest into.

If you do spot several spelling mistakes then I do want to apologize on them, I wrote this all alone and didn't want to use any tools to check on broken sentences or such. In case something still brings up questions to you in one way or another then feel free to ask about them.