If anyone truly believes that the evidence used to catch cheaters should be shared by the anti cheat team, or that there is bias in the people banning others in a league (bias exists, but not for bans of this length), then there isn't much to say.

I do think that it is important to have someone (in this case gazy/kn) emphasise that an open information relationship between players and admins is the ideal way to run things, but you both also have to acknowledge that they are unpaid volunteers. There is no strict guidelines in "how to run a league". The person in charge can run it how they like especially when there is no monetary investments. If it truly does disturb you then feel free to make your own league. Or do what happens in real life and become the main financial supporter of the league, hold the money over their heads so they do things how you want it done. Or apply for an admin spot at ETF2L Lord knows they could use more higher level 6s admins even just to talk to players about what they like/don't like. Supra does a good job, but the difference between playing with/against guys every night compared to doing a monthly check in is big and organizing pre-season polls is big.

As long as one team has an incentive to fight, the other team has to meet them or concede ground. The team that is behind has the incentive to push since they will lose if they don't. The only time a stalemate should occur is when neither team has the reward outweighing the risk. In reality things people call "stalemates" occur for a couple reasons, mostly due to players having poor strategy and not playing enough.

People say a stalemate is being done because players aren't doing anything for 2-3 minutes after winning mid and sitting on enemy last. This is usually because the team is scouting out information and is deciding what to do. What hold does the enemy have? Where is sniper watching? Where is gun? Where is medic holding? Do we want to offclass? These questions are either answered inefficiently (because players do not know what they are doing and don't start doing it soon enough e.g. spamming the gun as it is going up) or the team isn't practiced enough as a unit to know where they have to be to support a play since they haven't put time into it. In reality, you could already be doing things like setting up and doing a sac within 60 seconds, but because teams aren't properly practiced (likely due to lack of time investment since this is a hobby, not our lives) there will be some players who need to be told where to go and then go there instead of being in the position already.

Better players are usually ready to do things and support others, worse players generally have to have the team play around them and they play their own game. It's why when you get to a higher level, players are more selfless and move as a unit than at a lower level where people are split and doing their own thing. This is why you see better teams stalemating less on broadcasts and why the common thing people call a stalemate isn't really one. One team is just taking all the time they can to make the best play possible. Reducing the round timer forces people to make a decision faster if they want to attempt more plays, but a team could also decide to take all the time they can and make an informed decision for one good play which they may deem to have a higher chance of success.

To look at some numbers if anyone isn't familiar with probabilities, 2x40% plays has a 64% chance to work once, whereas an informed 1x70% chance play has the 70% chance to work once. What is actually better is up to the teams and players, not up to the round timer. Even now, it is likely more efficient to constantly try for the lower % play as you have more shots at it with a longer round timer than only a couple shots at a set up play. If you go for 5x40% plays, it has about a 92% chance to work whereas 2x70% plays has about 91%. These numbers are arbitary and most teams would do a combination of them where they set up a longer play but then instantly execute a quick play if they see the opportunity.

A final point on stalemates is that if you truly want to reduce them, then you need to look at what actually causes them. Reducing round timer doesn't really change anything other than require more decisive shotcalling to do slower plays. It's mostly just placebo of players thinking they need to move faster and take more risks because the timer is lower. Nothing new has openend up in terms of strategy other than the points cap themselves after a round reset and ubers reset (which is pretty big if you know what to do with that information). Teams can still stalemate it just means you will get more midfights rather than the dynamic flow throughout the whole map if stalemates were less of a problem.

The things that alter stalemate length are map design, ubercharges, offclasses and some specific unlocks (e.g. vaccinator or quickies). If you want to change stalemates then have to change these things. Reduce the impact of ubers, remove/change class limits, ban/allow unlocks and alter maps in such a way that pushes the solution you want.

A change in ruleset like this isn't going to really alter the gameflow to be any better or worse for players, it will just make watching it more interesting.

The ruleset is ok but as you said, it exaggerates some problems that are much worse than the minor ones it fixes. Logistically it just isn't possible for lan or playoffs or regular season since matches can go infinitely long. People have stuff to do and you can't expect someone to stay up till midnight when they need to be up at 6am. There has to be an ending either caused by increasing difficulty or time. The only competitive games i know that keep going infinite are poker, chess and mobas and afaik all get increasingly more difficult for players over time until one who accrued an advantage earlier in the match comes out on top. Poker has increased antes depending on number of hands played, chess has reduced time gained per move after certain move numbers and the environmental enemies in mobas gets stronger and stronger until they end the game themselves.

In order to fix unity ruleset you would need something like this to force a game to end. Longer spawn times every 5 minutes that pass, or faster capture times, or a hard time limit. Then you have to think which one works, and which one do players want. These are the most important thing to think of when designing rulesets in this game since it isn't a high end competitive sport. You don't need to worry about which one is the most competitive since if it's no fun to play noone will play it since there is no other incentive other than fun.

It's why it's so difficult to have a unified ruleset when some people are playing for money and some aren't. Some things that would be tolerated if you were getting paid to do them wouldn't be tolerated if you did not have this incentive. I would not stay up all night for the chance to win 20 euros, but if I was in NA, and I had already invested the money into a whole season for a chance to win 300 dollars, I likely would. That being said, if I was in NA I wouldn't have started playing because of a paywall for entry. I don't really care how small it is, I just wouldn't have when I was younger and I had no money.

5 min round timer seemed fine, disagree that it didn't make much of a difference, it definitely affected strategy as teams would only push out of last if they could cap mid off of it. This didn't slow down the game since the round would just reset anyway if the team didn't push. Alternatively, could also go ape mode and just remove sniper, spy, engy, pyro and banners, That would be great to speed up the game. Allowing free entry for soldier sacs and medics nowhere to hide would do wonders. Could also remove golden caps during main season and have draws. Nothing wrong with that either so games actually end when they should.

That's why you didn't clear the stickies I see, I see.

I didn't realise that was a general koth bug, have seen it before https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gT9s8vDOJg8

Makes sense that is what causes it.

I looked back at the video and the dropped medigun doesn't decrease in uber over time, so it's also bugged. The uber decreases only when the med uses lmao. Did not realise it even worked like that.

Nvm looked again and is just the swap thing, just did it fast. Disgusting again tbh i see what you mean. I thought the dropped one had ubercharge on it, thank god it doesn't.

Picking up mediguns shouldn't be allowed, and you sure as fuck shouldn't be allowed to use uber and then instantly get another 90% uber.

A better situation would be that you are on last, stalemating, enemy team is sending sacs to force the uber. You are down a soldier to deny the sacs, but it doesn't even matter since the spy just gets you another free 90% uber. Literally doesn't matter if you get forced anymore, just have to snipe to actually drop the medic.

Once you commit your life on spy/sniper/kritz it should be a commitment until you die or walk back to spawn to change off. You already get the surprise factor from these 3, but now you get a second surprise factor with no time deficit. Disgustingly annoying and only serves to slow down the game as the team that wants to be aggressive now has to be wary and check for another thing (solemn vow medic has to see if enemy med has uber so needs line of sight) on top of: stickies, offclasses and hiders (including wall bugging soldiers).

It's going to get to the point where teams will just have to say "eh fuck it" and push into or off of last and just gamble if the stars are aligning instead of being able to use actual advantages in positioning and firepower.

To me, that just seems boring. Less skill being put on team cohesion and making good split second decisions in fights and instead, more luck on which 10 of the 100 possible ways the enemy can win the round do you need to ignore as it's impossible to clear everything.

https://clips.twitch.tv/InnocentPoorSowPhilosoraptor-TkoL6rG1Hdnn4keU

Nice post, I like the reasoning behind why 3 mins played better than 10. Personally I thought 7 min or even 7.5 min would be the best (Allows for a 30 min map timer to go to mid, and take the full time to force a second push and a last push and still have the same amount of time - 15 mins left to allow for the other team to do it as well). However, the reasoning for the time being lower forces offclasses (and buffs like banners/phlog) to force harder is well thought. I would still say 4-5 min somewhere is the sweet spot but definitely needs to be played more, which is why saying to implement asap in leagues is also a decent call.

If point timers do decrease, this is more of a reason why win limit 5 and halves are worse. The main reason for win limit 5 or NA rules is that the map always ends on a high. It ends on a round win or a timeout (in which case golden cap win or golden mid). The main reason for win difference 5 or EU rules is that it allows for comebacks and some insanely high round counts. Whilst this doesn't happen often, it does still happen. It has happened in div 1 this season in etf2l https://etf2l.org/matches/82477/. It also happened last season https://etf2l.org/matches/81754/ and a potential comeback could have been stifled by NA rules.

The reason why point timers decreasing should allow for more rounds is because there simply will be more rounds as teams are forced to be more active earlier in the game. It enables for comebacks to start sooner as the initial rounds from one team will happen sooner as they will generally have to be more proactive sooner.

That being said, win limit 5 and win difference 5 don't really matter as much as the halves system the NA ruleset uses. 30 min maps (or even 20-25 min maps) and playing multiple different maps I would argue is always a better display of skill than playing the same map for two sets. Main reason being that different maps test different skills and force teams to learn to play more maps together. This is probably the most important thing about the rulesets difference, as long as different maps are prioritised than playing the same map over and over each match then any ruleset is ok.

Final point of leagues and timings being too restrictive is definitely true. Most people have time on the weekend to play and having a tournament throughout the afternoon on saturday/sunday and potentially 0-2 scrim days during the week of a tournament is optimal. It allows for keen teams to play every week whilst players who cannot commit tons of time to only play every other tournament or when the weekend opens up. The essential.tf tournaments were really good in EU but they lost interest quickly as people didn't play if they wouldn't have a chance to win. "What's the point of playing if the better team is just gonna win anyway". The prizes were decent too.

Hopefully NA tf2 pushes something like that and keeps either a monthly or fortnightly tournament alive for a few months cus it's already failed here due to a mentality of wanting to play fair and balanced matches but not wanting to improve as well. Leads to people just chilling playing the game with friends and so more intense tournaments of playing for a whole afternoon for 5-6 hours is too much for them.

Yeah, it's ixy and matt arguing...

https://i.gyazo.com/dd8d1ec72b873aef997becfd1362bbf9.png

https://i.gyazo.com/74c354b344f6b4993e2c49ac8f46e847.png

Just to point out (if you don't know their voices), the soldier who said "im jumping" was bumfreeze, the one that actually landed in the enemy team and got a kill.

ofc more fun to think it was dolly but im no fun

It's true, I deserve it

I think all that stuff got discontinued because too many racist/transphobic bigots in the community.

https://clips.twitch.tv/VastHonestHareYouWHY-tQ3638vRJhYtEOlI

u will all see by the end of the season the true power of chaos rollers. You think the 8x bigger hitbox was a problem? no no no...