yeah i guess i shouldve specified that on day 3 they were. going into the tourney they looked like the favorites and most of the people i talked to at the time seemed to agree, but the scrim logs weren't fully replicated in the first couple days
everything else you say is totally true

sorry my fault
4 hrs of sleep and 5 am posting is a bad combo
ill keep up posts so u can all read my cringe
i think most na players are nice and cool i was worked up and happy for my boys
pls come to eu so we can play with real rulesets (you would probably win!)

you're like top 3 least likeable european oat for this

it was genuinely super sick seeing another team other than froyo win, at an international lan no less
with how much smaller the community has gotten, i will gladly cheer for the team striving to make things more interesting in the scene by actually challenging and dethroning the defending champions we've all seen win time and time again.
while it doesnt specifically give me hope or anything for the future of tf2 it sure as hell keeps it entertaining

Ggs @NA. Feels so good to finally win one back :D
WG Eu are proven to be eu goats now, so happy for them
Heres hoping this wasnt the last one and we get to see that again soon :)

GGs to EU. Tough loss for our boys but after how hard they were dismissed pre-LAN it was just good to see them show up and play at a high level

Hopefully this pushes them to go overseas and really show 'em what for :)

i talked a lot of shit about this config because it was genuinely frustrating to see players fatigued after 50-60 minutes, or that dead time wasn't fully eliminated unlike promised by the advocates BUT it does feel like a step in the right direction, it's just difficult to see it viable as is when a schedule needs to be followed
would it be so crazy to start with 20 or even 15 minutes on the clock?

big ggs to the teams, it was fun to watch

i think group stages being old config makes sense in the interest of time and playoffs on prog ruleset makes sense in the interest of game quality and removing garbage time/soft garbage time
im pretty sure rgl pugs use a 20 minute clock +overtime for that exact reason. obviously games where teams can't push will still run long but it still makes those pugs much shorter on average so i don't see 30 mins as gospel and it honestly seems more like an "ancestral trait" so to speak, rather than a number with a considered purpose

if u give each player like 2 bottles of monster they wouldnt be fagitued fatigued and they ycould play hours long rounds so that would fix everything just give every player a can of mango monster or two even if they dont like it just forcefeed that shit and then they w could play and noboy owuld w ouldo have problems with teh config or anything

Having a cup of tea.

g6 :(

We should dose each player with aderall pre-game and see the human limit of tf2

Massive props to wG EU absolute iron fortress mental, very well played by them.

Enlighten my NA burger mind but if this is just referring to Gully c'mon man it's a massive stretch to say that they don't get or play for the config cause of that alone. Like TurboTabs said it's grand finals of lan bro they probably just got excited and had a momentary lapse; you can even see what looks like botmode trying to get off the point once he realizes (marmaloo pointed this out on cast as well).

Aside from waiting until winlimit is set infinite overtime changes risk/reward of pushes but I don't think that really affected g6, it's not like they rushed a push out of last or something and just exploded because of it. IIRC they had maybe one last push on process which they rushed because they had picks instead of waiting for uber ad but to me (granted I am bad) it's not a crazy play to go for. G6 had many good opportunities that they should and ended up going for but simply couldn't close out. While that probably screws you over harder on b4nny config I wouldn't call that "not understanding" the format. But IDK maybe I missed something else.

There are a couple of options to shorten game time while keeping the benefits of the NA config (less garbage time, not being forced to push when it's bad because you're down rounds).

• Option 1: Shorten the match time limit by 10 minutes. This is the simplest option and would reduce the time of all matches by 10mins. The problem is that you'd still sometimes have long games (45+ minutes), although these would be partially "balanced out" by also having very short 20 minute games that end right after overtime starts.
  
  
• Option 2: Shorten the round limit by 1, so 4 rounds wins on 5cp instead of 5. This would also reduce the average time of matches, but not by a fixed amount. The con is that it would only reduce match time for the portion of games that get to 4 rounds won in the first place, so long 2-1s or 3-2s wouldn't be affected.
  
  
• Option 3: Forced halftime after a certain number of rounds. One of the reasons I think the NA config became accepted here is because we used to have a 2 half config that caused most matched to be 1 hour long. Most matches in NA now are actually shorter than they were under the old ruleset. However, one of the things people like about the old ruleset was that you'd get a guaranteed halftime to strategize and take a breather after 30 minutes. While having any hard time limit wouldn't work with this config because it creates garbage time, a way to still get a halftime break would be to code in a halftime pause/unexec after, say, 3 rounds total had been played. So if the score was 2-0 and a team won a round to make it 3-0, there would be a 5 minute halftime break like there used to be. The pro of this is that teams won't get as fatigued, but the total match time would be unaffected.

I'd be open to testing any of these three options and seeing how people feel. I also think that the matches went longer than usual at this LAN because teams were understandably taking fewer risks (because of how high the stakes were). Fewer risks taken will naturally lead to slower games on any config.

I also think that the config delivered on its core aims during the LAN, at least from my experience as a spectator: games were exciting, the comebacks (and failed comebacks) were really fun to watch, and not having to watch the losing team desperately try to win 3 rounds in 5-8 etc. minutes made for a more enjoyable experience. Since getting used to the new config a few years ago, I've gone back and watched a few old demos/matches and they seem so much more boring, so I don't think it was just a coincidence that this LAN had more exciting games.

I also think that there would probably be some pushback if RGL tried to reduce the match timer to 20 minutes or the round win limit to 4, but these numbers are basically arbitrary and thinking that 30mins, 5-to-win is the best ruleset seems like the result of "status quo bias," as Rumpus said.

you should have to win by a difference of 5 in infinite time

I feel like after seeing the infinite overtime at this lan, it should only kick in if the current round diff is 1 or 0.
If a team is up 3-0 at end of timer, I feel like the game should end (which I know doesn't completely rid the parking the bus). I think if a team has done enough to be up by >1 rounds at end of timer they deserve to win that map.

I think parking the bus is only egregious when it's like 3-2 and it is genuinely stifling comeback potential. This is when the overtime config should kick in.

A good example would be WGAU v Froyo on snake which took 60 minutes to get to 4-1. Doesn't make any sense to me.

there have been quite a few 4-0 to 5-4 comebacks with the infinite overtime config, and tbh this is the first i have really heard any complaining about it. considering that a lan with 3 different continents being represented does not come around too often, is it really that bad that some of the matches were longer?

You will have those moments sometimes, but the most statistically likely thing to happen will be that the winning keeps winning, so you're just delaying the resolution. It can have cool moments but at the end of the day its just kinda making matches longer and delaying the resolution of a match. You can have a comeback within the 30 minute timelimit just the same as you can have it during overtime, its as if we went "but what if we had a 60 minute timelimit" because sometimes teams manage a comeback on those extra 30 minutes.

imo calling it a 60 minute time limit is a stretch when most matches on the config are resolved in ~40 minutes or less, in line with average competitive koth match length. So in exchange for up to 10 minute longer games, you get more interesting games (both with the real comeback potential outside of rolls and the lack of dead time.)

I think the mention of a forced half time is interesting, I think instead of an unexec teams could play to reset with it might be better to have an extra 5/10 minute pause, and the condition could be something like next round won after infinite overtime or after 35 minutes with both teams agreeing and forced by one team after 45 minutes if not previously taken or mutually waived. (This way teams do still get their break either in a common gamestate for pauses, or can elect to take it early the same way an unpause is called by teams, and to prevent one team from forcing the other to play continuously for an hour+ it can be taken as a longer pause after another few minutes). Though I think a weakness of this is it makes longer matches more likely, either because there's no fatigue factor or just because an extra 5 minutes is an extra 5 minutes.

Congrats to WG EU team for their victory, first TF2 I watched in years, really enjoyed it.

Not much to say about the cfg really, you know the ruleset you got to play and play it to win, if it means you are losing in normal time then win in regular time, so be it, if you got to reset a lot of rounds, so be it. You just have to give WG EU credit how they played the Grand Final, Bomo was insane on Product and they still won the map, most teams would have faded in that situation.

To be fair to WG AU, G6, if TF2 had a regular international LAN and ways to consistently support top teams to go to events, maybe all of these teams would have all won World Championships. Real shame to not consistently see the best players from each region compete regularly, great effort by everyone involved in organisation to make it happen. GG

each team could have a 7th player that has to catch a golden snitch hidden in the venue that instantly awards you five rounds and ends the game

Writing this out really makes me feel old. I remember the feeling of dejection when the Immunity boys lost back at i52, I was rooting for them so much. The walk back from where I was watching the game to the actual lan hall (sort of hall, the ricoh arena was weird), the amount of people commiserating with the team, the happy cheers coming from basically only the mixup players that they had won.

Very glad to see that the curse is broken, even if it took a couple of years to happen, and even if it wasn't the overall win. The event also showed that it really goes to show that even as isolated as the scene in AU is, it's definitely not fallen behind at all. It was really sick seeing a full-on top level international LAN after so long, it's got me looking forward to playing this season (in mid, I'm washed).

Congrats to the eu witness lads too, it wasn't ever in doubt though.

eu winning a international lan i think is not only healthy for current players to compete more, but also for past players to consider giving the modern gamestate/config a try (i.e tagg considering making a comeback :eyes:).

if there is anyway asia teams/sa teams could come for the next big lan i think we can finally call that a true international lan. (witness sa when)

i dont think anyone who has completely quit the game will ever go back just because of one plunder event

I've been always annoyed by this but this comment made me finally come out and say it
poland.tf, rgl.gg lan, dortmund, every single i series were international lans - they all featured teams from multiple NATIONS, denver, rewinds, i58, i52 were interCONTINENTAL since they featured teams from multiple CONTINENTS (while obviously also being international)

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