Well the goal of this, is not to prove that this format is amazingly fun. The goal of this is to get as much real feedback as possible to give to Valve to help bring the comp community and Valve closer together.

Whether that's finding out, this is an amazing format or finding out it has issues that need to be resolved and here's the evidence to prove it.

I think all parties are going to be able to take away something positive from this event.

I'm ready for the 2 heavies, 2 engies, 2 medics final defense, only to lose to six invis spies decloaking on the final point.

Source code

Howdy!

Currently, in TF2 there is a bug that during pauses medics will still continue to build uber if they are healing a player. One of our staff members at RGL was able to slightly modify the existing pause plugin by F2 to fix this and prevent medics from building uber during pauses.

We installed this on our servers earlier this week and are ready to release it to the public.

Original pause plugin post

Download the new pause plugin (1.4) (source code)

You can go to the original plugin post for details on how to install it. This replaces the original pause plugin, not a new separate one.

Original/Base plugin author: F2
1.4 Version updated by: Aad

If you have any questions/issues, let us know!

The situation wasn't a big deal, just calling out someone who's trying to twist the facts to attack me. Explaining why someone is lying often takes longer to explain than the lie itself.

Good question.

If you're going to attack me over something so inane, at least have your facts right. This was clearly not me reporting you for stacking, that happens. Whether you do it purposefully or not, rolls are going to happen. Dragging out a lobby that should have been done in under 10 minutes to take over 23 minutes. That's lame.

But let's just quote from the report, because it's pretty straightforward about what I was talking about.

"One of the problems that can happen with lobbies is stacking. Sometimes it's malicious, other times it's accidental. When it's malicious it's only truly bad when you purposely draw out the game and it creates an unfun environment.

Purposefully drawing out a game which is clearly one sided for your own benefit is rude and exploiting what the purpose of lobby is. [...]

Just looking at the logs from the game: http://logs.tf/724124

They out damaged us by over 50,000. They have over 200 kills more than us. Every person on our team has a negative K/D. Yet some how we were able to cap all four points? Just looking at the stats, that doesn't make any sense.
[...]
Also to really just show how much they went out of their way to prolong the game on purpose.

The cart is so far back on the third point that they let overtime go on for 45 seconds. None of the 9 players on the defensive side even attempts to contest the cart. And if wasn't clear enough that they did nothing on purpose (to let us cap). As soon as the third point is capture (@ 1:48) the whole defense combo attacks the cart... "

I agree that extending the game is not wrong if the game is even remotely close. Who doesn't want to play a good game? When they purposefully drag it out like this, it's more akin to a team who doesn't capture the point on koth and opts just to forward camp you to drag out the game for their fun. This wasn't just a little roll, the final score was 271 frags to 81. We didn't even break 100 kills after 24 minutes, whereas they almost broke 300.

I'd rather end the game, and move on to the next one than have to stay and play out such a terrible match.

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But either way, this thing is what? Over three years old. It wasn't a big deal, I brought up something I thought was not healthy for the lobby site. They said they're fine with this behavior on their site and the world moved on.

Is it just tf2 in steam or is it all games?

I had an issue with the new steam interface, where the friends list would take focus and "alt tab" from what game I was playing.

I resolved the issue by launching steam with the old interface. I created a shortcut with the target as:

"C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\Steam.exe" -nofriendsui

Haven't had any issues since then.

Again if we did this, Proland wouldn't exist. RGL wouldn't exist. Listening to others opinions outside of your own circle is important, but when those voices are very skewed, and you know that. You take it with a grain of salt. There are a few voices that stand out on the forums who are actually well reasoned and we listen to those moreso.

Fair.

Having hard rules is how you create loop holes. Having guidelines that you judge by allows context to weigh into decisions.

I don't think you could define that and have it always apply 100% of the time.

Roster changes would have to abide by our rules and a majority of teams won't have froyotech players this season.

Again, it's about context, not just winning. Winning != super team, it's about how much, how to dominate and what are they doing in the market. Are they poaching the best players or are they building off of their own. How is good is the next teams to them, etc... As I've stated before, having a rule that just states "winning 3 times in a row causes a breakup" would not be a good rule.

I believe that having a healthy competitive ecosystem is a benefit to viewership and participation. If a healthy portion of teams in the top level of play, regardless of format, feel they can contest the top team(s), that leads to better participation and viewership.

I also listed a bunch of data showing how strong they are and how my goal is to create a healthy competitive ecosystem. It's not like I picked them out of the blue because they won a game one time.

See the first point. "I believe that having a healthy competitive ecosystem is a benefit to viewership and participation. If a healthy portion of teams in the top level of play, regardless of format, feel they can contest the top team(s), that leads to better participation and viewership."

My point is that in ESEA when you had the top team choose to disband partially, that created a better competitive ecosystem and that's why people are excited over this season. Obviously, there's a difference in the way it's being accomplished, but the end goals are arguably a benefit to the league and viewership.

Of the rules that we've played around with if we did make a more general rule. Which is our goal for the next season (depending on how this season goes,) though all teams would be affected. It still would have hit froyotech the hardest due the caliber of players they have on their team and how they've picked up players from other teams over the seasons. The end result would be very similar.

Because I don't think that's a good rule. If you have a healthy competitive ecosystem, but one team has been clinical in playoffs, is different than one team has a large gap from 1st to 2nd place for multiple seasons in a row and it's not being overcome. Very different situations and a blanket rule wouldn't be nuanced enough to sort that out.

That's fair, mostly waiting because I want to do it more effectively and more thought out. We could try to do a quicker solution, but my worry is that if we do something like a true salary cap this moment. If we didn't do it correctly, it wouldn't be effective enough to do what we're trying to do. I have ideas on how I'd like to implement it, but I kind of want to see how this season plays out before we do that.

Because most of the discussion isn't a discussion. A major of it is just people using hyperbole and hypotheticals that don't apply or are poorly thought out. There is a handful like the ones that you listed and we think about those, but again it goes to. Will this accomplish our goal? And I know the rule I have, more than likely will, but it's not a sustainable rule. And that's where the evolution comes in but to your points. We could try to do better now.

That's the majority of our player base. About 83% of players playing Prolander in our leagues right now are playing in divisions with no prize pool.

From earlier on this page

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I definitely think the majority of players on tf.tv don't agree with me. I've received several messages through DM's (not on tftv) of people expressing gratitude for me making the decision as well.

To be frank, I don't tend to listen to tf.tv opinions anymore, they've been historically very wrong on everything I've done. From claiming that Prolander would never work as a format, for many reasons, including that it'd be too slow. It's not. From claiming that if I just put my money in sixes it would help/fix sixes. It wouldn't (see essentials cup.) That my format is tearing the community apart. It's not. That my league will never take off. It did and is now on three continents. That RGLHL will tear the HL community apart, it didn't. We about 70% of the HL community in the RGL league and HL should actually sustain or slightly grow overall this season. Which is pretty fantastic for this late in TF2, compared to the previous season where sixes and HL both lost about 15% of their players.

When it comes to controversial decisions, this forums seems to consistently be on the wrong side of history.

And then, historically, when I don't change my mind to be more in line with sixes players on tftv who have no interest in a competitive format with all classes being viable. I get labeled as doing things out of "spite," because I don't carry their same perspective and am not afraid to follow through on my actions.

I listen to the Prolander community very much. I'm a very hands-on admin and like to interact with my community fairly often. Their opinions carry much more weight with me, then opinions on here, as they should. Which is why I rarely start threads here, since you guys are not my target audience. Still, this forum often likes to speak hyperbole about me. So I occasionally come back to correct the ignorant statements being made about me, my format or my league. And by doing that, I get label as spiteful, refusing to listen, etc...

And so when I say things like "I could be wrong," but still follow through. It's because we still believe that leagues stepping in to help balance out an unhealthy competitive ecosystem is the right step. We could be wrong on that, but we're going to follow through to find out. Many of you are firm in that leagues should never step in ever and we're curious what happens if a league does. From our own community, we've seen a much more balanced response than here. If our community was fully against this, then we'd almost certainly not have gone through with it.

So then the question is how do we do this? Which is why I'm open that I don't think our implementation is correct. To target one team and why I've called this a temporary measure, as it's not sustainable nor should it be repeated. And once this season is done, we can talk about whether or not it was the correct decision, did it help as intended. etc... And adapt, grow or abandon it based on the results.

I don't think I'm right under all circumstances. If you read through the few posts on here. I've admitted multiple times, that we may be wrong. I've spoken openly about how the rule is not implemented well and literally, the end of the article has an entire section with the header "We could be wrong." Because at RGL, we're not afraid to take chances and be wrong (but learn something along the way.) Even in that article, there are a couple rule changes from mistakes we made in the past that we openly talk about.

I'm not sure what you're huffing about. All I did is took your hyperbole of hypotheticals and looked up the actual facts behind it. That's not me "convinced I'm right all time." That's me pointing out how your hypotheticals are not only misguided, but they don't even apply and to some degree even go against your own argument when you actually look up when rules were implemented.

You can paint me as many things and this forum does, and more, but if you're going to try to paint me as someone who doesn't listen and is convinced their right. I'm pretty sure that's just you. I've shown the ability to listen, adapt and change opinions, but you're still spouting the same ignorant viewpoints about me because I shot down a poor argument by you.

The thing is, most people on here are starting at a different place. They're okay with Froyotech's overwhelming dominance and the gap from 1st to 2nd place. They don't see any major issue with that. Which is a fine and valid way to look at the game. Obviously, everyone prefers a competitive and healthy ecosystem, but the question is... should leagues ever step in to help correct it. That's where the difference really comes in and virtually all professional NA sports leagues have stepped in to correct it. We're trying to figure out if we can, how do we do it, does it work and if so did it make the league better?

That's not me convinced I'm right all the time. That's me unsure and wanting to try out something new and then learn from the experience to make better decisions in the future.

Last season we didn't have a div-1, we decided to merge the Div-1 into Invite. So we had 8 teams in Invite.

Currently, we have 4 invite teams and 8 Div-1 teams, so a total of 12 overall. So that'd be more than last season.

Overall between NA and EU, we're expecting to grow about 30-50% from our last seasons depending on how many of the teams fill out. And in Australia our league, we have more teams in our first season than UGC had in HL teams.

The same conversation that happens after this ESEA season. When talent isn't stacked onto one team, but you have it distributed onto multiple (see froyo black). Did that make the league better?

All players can play vidya games if want to, nothing is stopping them from registering in our league within our rules and if we had a majority of players wanting to play. We'd [lower] the restrictions we put into place.

Poor phrasing.

Again, context, this isn't about a team winning 3 seasons in a row. How'd they do throughout the season and how is the second/third place teams doing. Are they poaching the best players from other teams to further the skill gap.

However, if they won 8 seasons in a row, every major competition for 3 years, didn't lose a single match in 2 years and at the end of it all the gap from 1st to 2nd seems it's largest after all the time, not getting closer. Because the Grand Finals was a 5-0 roll on back to back maps. Then that's something we consider. The problem is that most people are incorrectly grabbing the headline and not thinking about and just saying "sigafoo is banning good teams!" rather than realizing this is an unordinary rule for a truly unordinary situation. Not just a good team who just happen to win a couple times.

And we have zero interest in doing this rule again for another team. If we do consider to do something again to help the balance of our competitive ecosystem. We would follow the guidance of what every other major competitive sports league in NA has done and do a more league-wide rule which affects all teams.