Part 2 : Upcoming issues

So yeah, while I think that those changes are pretty low impact (especially timelimit 5), I do think that they bring a bunch of annoying possibilities and that this should make us reconsider their implementation.

-the round timer does not necessarily represent if a game is slow or not. There can be a lot of action without a point changing hands, like Team A failing their last push, followed by team B aborting their push out as it took too long, and now team A has to push with 2:30 on the clock, which effectively nerfs stuff like Spy or Banners

-A shorter roundtimer will fuck up Granary’s unique yard gameplay a little bit. I know some (most ?) people dislike the map but I personally enjoy it so it gets on there.

-Short roundtimer could also ultimately slow the game down by having teams play for the clock more now that the round reset is more reachable, something that already happened in the cup. This creates the most boring type of stalemate, as a team trying this will have no interest in any risky plays like sacs or maybe even sniper. We might even see the opposing team opting not to all in before the clock ends as they might fancy their chance at another mid compared to the enemy pushing into Mid with ad should they not manage to get on their med, so we could see two teams not doing anything.

-Winlimit 5 removes garbage time sure, but it also makes close games end earlier. During Rewind 2 Grand Finals, the second map ended 5-3 with 7.30 on the clock. Ascent had already clawed back 3 rounds in 5 minutes, they could have done it again, but no the game just ends. I don’t know about you but I’d rather have garbage time and close games last the whole 30 than the opposite.

-It doesn’t look like continuous overtime will be here to stay, but if it were I’d argue the concept ends up helping out good teams more and would limit upset potential : If I’m playing a team that I know we should beat easily, but we’ve had difficulties getting into the game and it’s now 2-3 with a few minutes left, I know we don’t have to take more risks than needed because the timer is infinite. There’s still a risk on midfights and such of course, but compare and contrast with today’s system where the team losing has to take more risks as the time goes on and I think that this is more fair to a “worse” team who managed to held a narrow lead.

I’d like to conclude by saying that I didn’t write this post to shit on the people proposing new things, as botmode said a few months ago, we’ve been playing this game for so long that there are a lot of things we just accept without thinking about and its always nice to see people try out new things. I just thought there was a lot left to improve on the format and didn’t really see anyone else mention the things I was talking about. I am curious to hear other opinions on the topic, especially since im just a Mid player and lack a perspective on what its like to play the game at a high level.

Oh god its 730 am

Part 1 : The supposed fixes

From what I’ve been hearing, the “Unity Ruleset” is supposed to fix three issues (maybe its supposed to do more but I haven’t really found like a design doc so) : bring a unified ruleset to bridge gaps before intercontinental LANs, get rid of garbage time and remove or at least reduce stalemates.

The unity thing is admittedly a little funny as an idea originally from NA considering RGL still plays (afaik), 1 map a game with freaking half-time when every other league in the world plays windiff 5 and timelimit 30 and didn’t really pressure for unity. But im just being a salty euro, I can’t deny that a unified ruleset would be a good thing for any intercontinental event.
The only issue I have with it is simply that continuous overtime (the part that makes all games golden caps, not the one that makes golden caps start without a new midfight) is simply something I see impossible to use at LAN without putting a hard timelimit, which kinda defeats the point imo. People have flights to catch, go eat and forget the time, have issues with getting the config to work on their rentals, adding unlimited overtime on top of it sounds unnecessary. One LAN finals being cut short was enough for me.

About garbage time, I can’t deny that its effectively gone, ya got me there. What I will deny is the importance of it. I think garbage time is mainly a spectator issue, and more of an annoyance than a problem. I consider garbage time to be >8 minutes at most (= a team down 4 rounds can’t come back assuming 2 minutes per round, not always true but works often enough) and to be usually close to more or less 5 minutes. If you don’t want to watch it cause you find it boring, sure but I don’t think that should be factored in balancing decisions. As for playing through it, odds are you’ll want to close out strong, to prepare for the next map (or if you’re a big nerd, to get a better tiebreaker score). And if you get annoyed of garbage time when you’re losing we had the !concede plugin for those situations, not sure why it got removed, should be brought back imo.

Onto stalemates, the focus point of this ruleset based on how many people talked to me about it. There are a few layers to this one. First off, old Se7en style stalemates, where a team is winning and just doesn’t push are just not something ive seen in the last 2 years. Like, at all, and I watch Prem pretty religiously. I think generally teams are better at pushing off small picks and making plays because I’d say (numbers pulled out my ass) that the time between two caps was already below 3 minutes 90% of the time and below 5 minutes for like 98% of the time. You could tell because when watching the LAN or the cup, most of the footage didn’t really feel different, like I didn’t feel anything changed until people started feeding in or the round suddenly reset sometimes.

There are still stalemates of course, although I’d say most of them consist of a little bit more than trading single soldiers and don’t last a lot more than 5 minutes. Those stalemates usually happen on lasts, and for me are more about maps than time. A team can be holed up on Gully or Process last with a full setup, but the attacking team still has many options due to the amount of doors available on both maps and unique map traits like water on Gully or the need for the defenders to fight for lobby control on Process. Those options vanish on other maps, and when you add in fast respawn timers for the attackers and a second point complex to push into (Sunshine is for me the worst offender on both those aspects, but Snake and Metalworks aren’t ideal either), you end up with almost an involuntary stalemate, where both teams are encouraged to play slow by the map design. Tweaking those maps or simply playing new ones is what we should be focusing on instead to solve the stalemate issue.

To conclude part 1, I’d say that while its impossible to deny that the ruleset had an impact, I think it impacts parts of the game that didn’t really need to be impacted. And by it’s creation, the ruleset might also creates problems that we did not have before.

In the wake of the announcement that ETF2L Season 42’s PreSeason Cup and potentially the season after will be played with parts of the Unity ruleset, I thought I’d type a classic nerd essay at 4 am about how I feel so here it is.

Before I start ranting about why I think everyone is wrong except me, I’ll quickly preface it by saying the actual stuff that I hope I can actually change : I wish there was more transparency behind the changes, I’m not even talking about involving “the average player” in the decision-making process, just saying why some changes are being tried and what are they expected to affect. Right now we’re just put in front of the fait accompli, with no explanation about the logic behind it and I really think that this approach can only drive a wedge between the admin team and the playerbase.

Ah my apologies then. There was also a spot by 5 on the lobby side where you could stand on some computer console thing to get the drop on someone that's been removed but i understand that one a lot more since it wasnt visible in any way.

Ya don't get me wrong thanks for all the work you're doing i just feel like some of the spots that are being removed like the computer panels by 1 and 5 are being removed while others like the medic spot on the spire of 2 get updated visually. It just feels a little arbitrary to me, both of them were situationally useful but a bit gimmicky imo and I'd like to understand what thought process goes behind such a decision. (I'm also unhealthily obessesed with hiding spots so im curious to see if other people agree)

Whenever I play against good scouts I like to enter a parasocial relationship with them in order to get better reads

I'd be interested in adding damage drop off to bodyshots

https://i.imgur.com/touyXj3.jpg

I enjoy having something to do everyday and TF2's gameplay is hard to imitate

We really really need new producers in Europe, if you fit the requirements and are free on some days I'd really appreciate it if you considered it, without producers there's no coverage

You're doing Gods work Arie

• Good music is always a plus but since that is pretty subjective I'd say "music you like and that isn't just there for a meme" is good enough, sometimes you can tell that music is an afterthought cause they put some fuckin meme songs just to have something in the background and its not great.
  
• Overall quality of clips should be the same, too many great fragvids have been kinda ruined because the creator decided to add a 3k demo clip from a 2AM dmix, just make a leftover fragvid for those. I'd also even say that if you have frags from a very serious environement (offis and high level scrims), putting any clip from like PUGs with them isn't gonna work out unless the clip is really nuts.
  
• Kind of a minor point but I'm not a fan of using the song name as the fragvid's name, it doesn't tell me anything new and its kind of overdone imo
  
• I really enjoy when people put clips that aren't usually considered fragclip material (a single kill, a quick 1v2, a daring escape, a nice bomb), I think it adds character to it and if you're proud of it I think you should add it. Of course my standard for those is also highly dependent on the level at which the clips are filmed.
  
• Small thing once again but if you have to fast forward for more than 3 seconds, just do a cut instead
  
• If you can add voices of casters/your teammates screaming at a cool play you did, that's an instant +10 for me
  
• Lastly I will say that editing isn't like ultimately important, I think an underedited fragclip will always be better than an overedited one in my opinion

RGL discord having some technical issues so trying my luck here

Friendly and vocal Euro with no relevant game skills, I am looking for a team to roam on for the coming season. I have good ping to the East cost and can make Dallas and Chicago work as well. Can play every night thanks to my NEET lifestyle (apart from every second tuesday where I play D&D until 10 EST). I've played in ETF2L Mid for a while now and have been informed that this translates to "Main' overseas, but I'm just looking for something to do at night so don't hesitate to hit me up on Steam or Discord (Aelkyr#8581).

I vaguely recall some custom kovaaks or aimlab maps have been made to simulate TF2 sniping, so you could give those a shot as well if you're into that sort of stuff.

I'm guessing probably because you only really need to be friends with like 4 people in order to get on a team and once you play in the high divs its easier to develop a case of the ego.

Also I feel like a lot of players are insufferable in lower divs as well but im like the opposite of a high div player so I can't really compare lmao