when ire reached out to me on discord to get my confirmed roster, I asked when we would know if we had to play the qualifiers. all he said was 'after the 6th', which I assume meant right after. I still don't know...

Brace yourself for a long one folks!

I have nothing against giving people a chance to play invite, but there are many ways of doing that. ETF2L's approach is generally to holistically move teams up based on a combination of experience and scrim results, and then run quals if it's too tough to call. I'm fine with that, but etf2l never goes more than like a 4 team qualifier for 2 spots, at least off of memory. What I don't like is when teams that should either obviously be invite or obviously be div 1/advanced are roped into the qualifier because admins haven't done their research.

You said you wanted to give teams a chance to make invite, and yet you're basing this team being 'similar in skill level' on their previous experience, not their current scrim results, or just as importantly, their scrim ambitions. This team has barely existed, and they've only scrimmed the other team I suggested should be in the qualifier, and Cat Posse (who beat them relatively convincingly). Compare that to the artist team, who have much less invite experience, but have traded maps with multiple other teams trying to be invite and have also scrimmed froyotech, showing their ambition to improve.

If we look at the (not very recently-updated) RGL spreadsheet:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1f2B-iRBUALd0RLRHb0cwVWMMwCSsyvvLjtn8UYus02M/edit#gid=925585840

We see 6 teams already in invite, and 6 teams in the qualifiers. One of those teams is a really weird RainofLight team that I highly doubt has any ambition to play invite with people like stoper, goldfish and carnage who definitely don't care to try super hard. Them aside, that means there's a 5 team qualifier for 4 spots. Doesn't that seem a bit excessive?

The way I see it, you have 3 options that make more sense.

1) my original idea of the cleanbuddy and kylor teams fighting it out

2) include a couple more teams on the basis of slightly worse scrim results- like the rio team perhaps

3) include a couple more teams on the basis of less invite experience- like the artist team

Either way, from a selfish perspective, my team a) has a lot of people with significant invite experience and b) has clearly performed at a higher level in scrims than the 'obvious' qualifier teams. If we play a team like the cleanbuddy team in the qualifiers, is there a greater than 0% chance they beat us? Sure, anything is possible, and we'll play it if we have to. But I also feel like it's a bit of a distraction when I want to be scheduling weeklies against a lot of the teams that are automatically in invite and preparing for the season. Even if my team does have to play it though, I'd rather see 7-8 confirmed teams and then 3-4 teams competing for 2-3 spots rather than 5 teams for 4 spots.

If the rubric we're using isn't prior experience, but rather how well teams are performing now, then yes, I think that team is actually pretty good.

You worded this like the default is to have qualifiers, but I can't think of a single situation where you had 11 teams trying to play in a 10 team invite and the admins wanted 5 of them to play in a qualifier.

Putting aside the current RGL admins, it really shouldn't be that difficult to figure out which teams should automatically make invite. I haven't even discussed the fact that Yambo seems to be grandfathered in from playing last season or that Cat Posse got in for winning advanced, even though those teams are definitely close skill-wise to the better teams in the qualifiers. If we've established that some of those teams can be let in automatically, I don't see why we can't make reasonable decisions about teams based on their scrim results or prior experience.

I'm pretty sure looking at that Burnsiders team's scrim results would make it pretty clear that, even if they made invite, they'd clearly be at the bottom.

The pootis.org thing is not comparable to me, because they're a team that legitimately put the admins in a no-win situation. On the one hand, their re-emergence would force a team back down into the quals that had already been told they could just play invite. On the other, they were clearly MILES ahead of all of those qualifier teams. This season, I'm trying to get out in front of this topic BEFORE the qualifiers even start.

Anyways I know some people will laugh at me for going to such lengths to try to get out of playing a couple maps and call me chicken or big ego or something, but it's not even only about that, I just think the league should be run more logically in situations like this. Hell, it's very possible that that google doc is SUPER outdated and there will be far fewer teams in the qualifiers (again, why the fuck is the RoL team there lol).

this may be a fruitless appeal, but I really hope the invite qualifier isn't like 5 teams or 6 teams competing for 4 spots and we have to do some massive round robin just to have most of us make it, that sounds like a big waste of time

if you want 10 teams, I personally believe it should be:

froyotech
witness gaming
ford gaming
globalclan ice
my team
yambo
cat posse
platypugesports
six paths

and then the other teams (cleanbuddy? kyler? whatever the exile team is?) competing for the 10th spot

if you wanna make it a set 8 teams in invite and add 1 of the above^^^ to the quals that's reasonable too

but I do think it'd be a bit of a waste for rgl to only give 5-6 of those teams guaranteed spots when there's such a clear line of demarcation between the teams that are clearly invite and those that may not be

obviously I am extremely biased here but this is my opinion

well-deserved, he's clearly been the best regular-season player

and yet, you could easily make an argument that he isn't even top 5 in the 'true' best nba players list

it just goes to show that the top of the league superstars are maybe more stacked than they EVER have been

from a dm perspective, a lot of new demos make the mistake of thinking that they need to grind their pipe aim, but that sticky aim is 'just left click + right click"

in fact, being solid with pipes is significantly easier than being actually good with stickies ever since the demo nerf, and being effective with stickies requires a lot of time investment- whether in mge or just in real game settings

demo is also the class where positioning and ammo management flow most directly into aim- if you are desperately trying to fight a scout or soldier at close range while reloading one sticky or pipe at a time you're probably going to die. as domo said, good demos use the totality of their 12 projectiles to make dm fights easier- it's a lot harder for a scout to dodge pipes when there are also a bunch of stickies around them, or for a combo to avoid pipespam when there's 4 of them etc.

it's a hobby of mine!

obviously this is preference, so I will not speak in terms of FACTS, but in terms of CONSENSUS:

the general consensus in the mech community is that creams are an overhyped switch that is fairly scratchy even when lubed unless it has been heavily broken in, so it would make sense that the difference isn't as apparent. I recommend trying a jwk switch, they rule.

I am aware of the mechanics that supposedly explain this argument, but I still find it to be nonsense. There are basically no real world applications where that will make a difference, unless there's some game I don't know about where mashing the W key like 20 times per second in separate keystrokes actually matters. most pro players in actual esports just use whatever keyboard sponsors them, and tf2 players use all sorts of different switches and it doesn't seem to make much of a difference. some people's preference will lead them to prefer switches with very light actuation, or even optical switches, but others might find that more likely to make them actuate a switch by accident or double tap a key and would therefore prefer a heavy switch like mx blacks. I personally have gamed on linears and tactiles and have not really felt like it impacted my performance in the slightest in real-world applications. to me it's in the same category as like mouse polling rate and input latency, where you don't want them to be awful but the products that advertise ridiculously high polling rate and low latency are not that distinguishable from other products in real-world settings.

bottoming out on every keystroke is only uncomfortable if your keyboard sucks imo! and I enjoy typing on both linears and tactiles, so I also think this is a bit of a myth, because I also know people who don't enjoy typing on tactiles and find the bump more uncomfortable than the bottom out in long typing sessions.

as I said in the other thread, that 'self-lubing' thing is just marketing bs. all mx-style linears benefit from lubing, and creams in particular benefit from heavy use before they reach their full potential (some would say using them unlubed first for a while to break them in, but I'm not personally sure if that makes a difference).

gat yellows are indeed pretty much the best "true" budget switch (what constitutes budget will vary from person to person.

I mean the ridiculous thing about his statement was saying they're bad for gaming, but the notion that linears or tactiles are 'better' for either typing or gaming is just dumb anyways

cherry reds and speed switches have ludicrously low actuation force, most nicer linears are more in the 60-80g range and double pressing is never really an issue

while I wouldn't have worded it in such an all-or-nothing way, this is one of the few things he is sorta right about, actually. mx-style switches especially mx-style linears benefit a lot from lubing. once you try it, you can never go back...

to add/modify a bit of what ghadilli said

this is mostly true, but the exception would probably be retooled cherry mx blacks or hyperglides, which are solid budget-mid tier offerings when lubed although a bit scratchy if not

but yeah definitely don't look to cherry for a satisfying tactile or clicky switch unless you like BARELY tactile switches (and even then there are less scratchy options)

while it may be true that the tactility of mx-style switches is not as good as like an alps or topre on average, I do think there are some mx tactiles that can fill the niche if need be (but they can also get very expensive since so many of them are either frankenswitches or zeal). for slightly more affordable and really solid mx tactiles, I would recommend boba u4ts if you can find them.

not only is that 'self-lubricating' idea with POM a total lie, creams are ironically considered one of the scratchiest switches on the market unless they're HEAVILY broken in. it's true that mx switches basically require lubing to reach their full potential unlike a lot of other designs, but I do think most jwk switches tend to be very smooth overall.

I definitely agree that it's hard to beat a good HHKB for office work due to the quiet tactility and portability, but unfortunately topre and hall-effect switches are still not commonly an option in the high-end custom world. you can find fancy keyboards that support alps-compatible pcbs, but a) well-maintained alps are still hard to find and b) I find they still sound best in their original plastic chassis most of the time

it's pretty funny that this is written with such a definitive tone because there's a lot here that is just not true (and a lot that is preference, but that you are definitely in the minority on)

halo switches are not very highly regarded either unfortunately, they're most widely known for their stems being harvested to make holy pandas, a popular tactile frankenswitch

and yeah you're probably not gonna find the 'true' boutique expensive switches in a prebuilt no matter where you look

chris paul is great, but I definitely think some credit also needs to go to:

-monty williams for really stepping up as a coach from all his previous efforts
-mikal bridges and jae crowder for their defense
-how ridiculously healthy their team has been compared to almost every other team in the year

putting aside the question of how good clearcut and bagel are, I disagree with how those entered the pool as well, with the former being shoehorned in when it was so poorly optimized and the latter being put into invite only