Yeah... this is an ouchy announcement. The announcements to come are much sweeter lol.

When I joined RGL, the first thing I thought was, "Where the fookin' hell were RGL PUGs?" I learned that B4nny was leading it, so I mistakenly thought that B4nny's project was under the RGL umbrella. After being a dick for a bit, I realized that they have taken the time out of their lives to develop a great pug system, and it's attachment to RGL just gets in the way. So, I wish them luck and am excited to play on the pug site when it comes out.

I agree that it's been a bit of a vague mess, and it sucks we don't have shit for you today. But, it's important to me to start on the right foot and accelerate the timeline. I just wanna pug, man

Hey everybody!

Since officially joining RGL two months ago, I’ve neglected my real-life job (<-- this is a joke for legal reasons). I dove head first into learning the ins and outs of the RGL structure as well as RGL’s impact on the history, drama, and perpetual puzzles of the TF2 community. Historically, I’ve been pessimistic about the upside of TF2’s potential as an esport, and ironically, that sentiment has been disproved time and time again: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1056510/team-fortress-2-number-players-steam/

TF2 really is a beautifully diverse game with a strange community and aesthetic so strong that it not only stays alive, it outlives almost every other game. I can’t help but be inspired.

As a long-time forum lurker and TF2 market landscape nerd, I had a sense of what needed to be done regarding RGL, and I set out to push for many changes and new developments.

Fortunately, I’ve met incredibly capable staff members and developers that share the same passion for TF2, and they have raised my vision. We’ve conducted dozens of interviews with players, created new bridges with other TF2 organizations, began collaborating with community developers, parsed the forums for critiques and suggestions, and storyboarded ideas for weeks. Finally, we’ve broken ground on projects that will improve the quality of RGL as a service and potentially invigorate the competitive scene in a significant way. All of this comes from the constructive feedback we’ve read from the community, so thank you!

Anyway, ADVENT CALENDAR. It’s cheesy, but in the spirit of the holidays, we will be announcing a new project every day with the biggest one landing on the 25th!

Some age-old questions will be answered, and some new developments will come as a surprise. We’re excited to include the community along the way!

Tune in tomorrow night to see the first announcement!

Day 1 - An Update on RGL PUGs (Dec. 22nd)
Day 2 - Public API (Dec. 23rd)
Day 3 - Current Website Changes (Dec. 24th)
Day 4 - RGL New Player Experience (Dec. 25th)

I will post the links here as they come out.

Yeah, that has seemed to be the forever issue. There's two camps: players eager to learn new maps and players that only want familiar maps. Reckoner, in particular, has had a hard life in RGL lol. I personally like learning different maps and keeping the map pool fresh and want to support active map developers, but there's so many varying opinions on what the rotating maps should be, so it seems that RGL has based their decisions on the popularity of the maps from survey polls.

Beast, imma watch

I've been reading Going Postal by Terry Pratchett, and it's fr the first book I've enjoyed in like 3 yrs. The guy was a genius. He could stuff a joke and some pathos into every paragraph.

Also, definitely will do this.

Agreed, I understand that this was something people really liked about ESEA. I'll look into that update.

bump w/ updated info

Quick clarification:
We included both classic and premium options for the merch. The classic is cheaper, but the premium is better. Though RGL makes slimmer margins from the premium merch, I would recommend premium. Thank you for your support!

Ok, after reading the deliberation between you and DubThink, I have some thoughts.

I agree that RW% is likely a better indicator of playoffs percentage. However, the standard deviation of strength between teams around the 6-10th spots is likely less significant than that of the top 6 teams. Also, the 9th and 10th teams aren't in the population analyzed, so it's even harder to pin down how a 9th place team would perform against the 8th place team if rematched (because that data doesn't exist). So, intuition has to fill in because there's a hole in the data in that regard. It might still be the case that RW% proves the better team for 8-10th, but the question is: what is the most fun?

I'll think about this more and do some analysis, but my intuition is that in the event that multiple teams tie for 8th place, H2H wins (or even a play-in tournament like the NBA) would emphasize rivalries among teams of similar strength in a more fun way. The next question is how to develop a consistent criteria. No promises, but I'll deliberate with DubThink and maybe consult w/ you SpaceCadet.

Have we ever considered play-in matches in lieu of tie breaker stats?

Oh interesting, I agree with this. Head-to-head wins reflect strength better than just RW%. There's too much RNG that affects RW%. The question then is how to automate the process or create a criteria to base it off. Let me think about this.

https://www.teamfortress.tv/62493/i-want-to-delete-this-thread#1 LOL

1. Implement the win-difference config in all divisions.
- I'll dm you to ask some questions about this.

2. Change the round timer to 4 minutes or 4 minutes 30 seconds.
- I've heard both sides on this. From what we've seen, the 5 minute round timer is clearly an improvement to the pace of the game. I've enjoyed watching the VOD's more with it. And, in higher divisions, I can see a 4 minute timer pushing the speed of the back-and-forth to a more exciting level. Still, we'd have to research this more; 5 minutes gives teams just enough time to coordinate creative sac's--especially in the lower divisions. Snake last has proven to be an issue with a low round timer tho. Idk yet. In the meantime, I want more suggestions on potential hotfixes to improve gameplay.

3. Implement the pick/ban system for all or most divisions.
- One of the differences between the lower and higher divisions is team leader participation. While I do agree the pick/ban system is better than the locked map rotation from a enjoyment perspective, requiring further coordination between teams in IM and Main could present more problems than it's worth. I could imagine it working in Main, maybe.

4. Only include new maps that are in active development.
- Agreed, I have some strong opinions on this. Encouraging community content creation is one of our MO's; that's why we're doing things like player-designed merch, community spotlights on YouTube, player focus groups, developing an API for developers to create more sophisticated projects (we'll announce more on our development projects later), and focusing on including maps that have creators who genuinely care to improve it (e.g., Sultry). Most of those points are beside the point, but I agree.

I'll respond in a lil bit. I agree w/ the 'faded than a hoe' suggestion tbh

This is beast