I acknowledge the possibility of long matches, but have also proposed a way to encourage them to resolve in a more timely manner through short round timers. The only way to determine what will happen in practice is to actually test it.

To your first question, yes, I do think we should remove viaduct, and here's why:
1. It is the sole koth map in the map pool. I think it would be more valuable to clearly define competitive TF2 by our best gametype, 5CP. It is strange to have only 1 koth map, just as it was awkward to have only 1 A/D map in gravelpit. People don't pug it, people rarely scrim it. Either all koth or no koth would be best for resolving this, but as it stands now it seems more plausible to remove koth than to expand it. Though I'd love to see koth only tournaments, those should be separate from the main league.

2. It is a custom pro version of the map. I think its valuable to have only official or *soon to be* official versions of maps in our map pool. Pro versions of maps will never be endorsed by Valve and will never appear in matchmaking, hurting the accessibility of our leagues to players who are only familiar with the stock versions or are hindered by downloading custom versions. Currently the only 2 maps we have in ESEA that are pro versions are granary and viaduct, so they are not really necessary to keep around for the integrity of our map list. A quick look at the most recent abominable version of pro granary should be a cautionary tale enough about the dangers of pro versions of maps.

3. It has inherent imbalances in its symmetry. Giving one team the advantage over another simply based on side choice is something I think we can all agree is not fair, especially if we are arguing to eliminate halftime color switches.

Because class and loadout switching are just a natural part of the game that you can even perform without binds, banning them is too problematic. The only real solution is the map adjustments you mentioned where the resupply zone inside the spawn door does not overlap with any region where the doors may remain open. However, I don't think it's worth corrupting our map pool with even more pro versions in order to achieve this. It's a topic to bring up with Valve.

Winlimit should absolutely be used. Winlimit creates more uniform results, ends rolls in a reasonable fashion, and creates a strong incentive to close out matches rather than dragging games out. While many people are clinging to the idea of windifference and its comeback potential as its only redeeming factor, this has simply been proven in practice to not be the case. If comeback potential was being stifled by winlimit 5, you would be seeing matches where both teams score 5 or more. However, a quick glance at the last 3 years of ETFL2 premier results reveals that not a single match has done that. What seems to happen every single time is that any team that passes 5 rounds ends up winning anyways, often by large margins still. So instead of enabling a comeback, what the windifference does in these situations is create unnecessary garbage time where the team that has a big lead just keeps building upon their lead and ends up winning regardless. Even the most legendary comeback of TCM vs iM which ended 6-4 didn’t do that, where a 5-4 comeback actually would have been more exciting than the 6-4 game that ended in an anticlimactic garbage time. Windifference 5 never creates the same level of pressure and excitement of a close game where one team is on game point, or of a 4-4 game where the next round decides it unless of course they go to golden cap, which already happens in ETF2L and we can probably all agree adds a unique and special layer to the game. It’s also important to imagine under a windifference 5 system an invite playoff spot coming down to a rounds-won tiebreaker so a playoff bubble team lets bad teams win a few rounds so they can milk them for more than 5 rounds.

The real component stifling comebacks is not the winlimit, but instead the timelimit. More often, comebacks are cut short because of a lack of time. Some comebacks are simply not possible given the timeleft in a match. The less time left in a match, the more the team with the lead is incentivized to slow the game down dramatically as well, making any further rounds also unlikely. While it is still possible for timelimits to hurt comebacks in the ESEA ruleset with the 1 hour match length, the longer the match, the less you hinder comebacks. With no timelimit, all comebacks would be possible. Without a timelimit parking the bus also becomes far less beneficial. I think this is what we should be moving towards. Obviously, this could potentially create immensely long games, but we’ve already seen with the windifference situation that the potential outcomes of a ruleset don’t necessarily create the norm. Many games don’t have timelimits these days, so I can’t agree that tournaments would be impossible to run with longer or no timelimits. What you find with games with no timelimit like DOTA2 or LoL is that the games naturally resolve themselves after a certain period of time. This too is something we should be moving towards in addition to removing the timelimit. If we can adjust the ruleset so that it has no timelimit but has a strong natural tendency to end at around 30-45 minutes, we’ve created the perfect ruleset. Obviously there is a missing component to help move matches along quickly and eliminate stalemate time, and I am inclined to think that the simplest solution would be shorter round timers. We absolutely need to get testing on shorter round timers. I’d like to see how the game plays out at extremely short round timers, as low as 2 minutes, but most likely something like 3 or 4 minutes would end up feeling the most natural. Though it would take a plugin or custom versions of current maps to implement currently, if proven to be useful through extensive testing and results, I am confident we could get Valve to implement something that replicates it easily through a config.

On to halftime, it’s a luxury not a necessity, except on non symmetrical maps (another strong case for removing viaduct!). For a similar strategic reset effect I think we could extend humiliation time at the end of each round by 10 seconds or so, allowing teams to have more time to reflect on rounds and prepare for the next one (some servers already do this and it’s quite nice).

For futureproofing, it’s also important to consider the matchmaking ruleset. Though potentially liable to change, at the highest levels matchmaking currently plays winlimit 3, no timelimit. To me, winlimit 3 feels fairly short, but this could be offset by playing matches bo3 or something.

Proposed ruleset: winlimit 5, no match timelimit, short round timer.

Go read post #24. Compare what I wrote there to what the current whitelist is and you can clearly see that my opinion wasn't held in any higher regard than anyone else's.

Are those seeds final? Seems a bit inappropriate to have SVIFT, Ascent and Velocity all on the same side of the bracket.

C U @

I'd argue that there are enough good players out there that could make strong enough teams to the point where we could have an entire 9 team Invite division worth of playoff quality teams. What's missing to bring those players forward are motivation/incentives to reach the top and strong leaders. More opportunities, more payout, more prestige for being a top level player would hopefully encourage teams to struggle their way to the top (could be in the form of prizes, LANs, recognition, in-game skins etc). Leaders who refuse to let their team die at any cost and provide a constructive environment to their teammates would provide stability. However, I think there is a strong systemic component holding some of these teams back as well. Currently, it's discouraging to play Invite when only the top 4 teams in the division receive prizes. This pushes people to prefer to dominate a lower division rather than struggle in the higher division. In their minds it's better to coast to a small prize rather than than struggle for nothing at all. I think that being on an invite team should be a coveted/privileged spot, such that even if you are the winner of the division below its still not on par with being invite. There should be as much appeal as possible to playing invite and as little appeal possible to play in a division you are better than. An important step would be restructuring prizes such that winning a lower division paid out less than getting last place in the division above it. Perhaps harsher punishments to letting teams die, sandbag, throw, act unprofessionally may also help to revitalize the league. I believe that's where we should really be focusing because if the integrity of competition isn't being upheld then we're never going to get anywhere no matter what we do. Unfortunately we always reach a chicken and egg type problem where the support wont come unless we have the teams and the teams wont come unless we have the support. Something has to break the cycle, but the only way to solve the problem is to step up and take action. The last thing you should do is belittle teams for earning championships and surviving for 12 seasons straight. If that's not the goal of every single team then the competition loses all meaning.

So with that said I have an open offer to the community and invite division: I will fully reimburse the league fees of any bottom 5 invite team ($240 per team for a possible total of $1200) if they meet the following criteria by the end of the season (all or nothing):

1. play all matches
   
2. no forfeit losses
   
3. no thrown matches
   
4. no 5v6 matches
   
5. proper aliases used in every match

Hopefully that will help remove some of the intimidation of playing invite this season while also serving as an experiment to see if restructuring of the division and encouraging positive conduct will have positive effects on the league.

As alluded to above, more progress has been made on the TF2PL project. I've assembled a group of Head Admins consisting of myself, sandblast, Jarrett and Nursey and we have also narrowed down our candidates for Division Admins and are just waiting to receive more division invites from FACEIT before we appoint them.

For now, we have been working to finalize the TF2PL rules and would like to share them here and collect some initial feedback. Read the rules here: https://goo.gl/os2aRg. If there is anything you think should be adjusted, please let us know.

Beyond that, there are a couple remaining tests we need to run, but we are aiming to launch the TF2PL the first week of January 2018!

Theory crafting perfect usage is not really a fair way to judge items. When considering an item like the Flying Guillotine, for example, people keep instantly jumping to reference damage output for if you hit every single throw for maximum damage every time. If you could hit every single shot every time, sure it would be pretty damn dominant, but by that same logic everyone would be running The Direct Hit and fulltime Snipers too. We know that people don't do that because generally people favor consistent and reliable tools that don't require perfect execution to offer any sort of return. For this reason, the practical impacts should be the main consideration in these discussions. Even when something works in a certain situation, you also have to consider the majority of the times where it requires a sacrifice, hinders someone's play, or just straight up fails, but those are constantly ignored too. Again, you could grab a clip of someone going on a headshotting spree or a Direct Hit spree, yet we know in the bigger picture those kinds of things are the exception not the norm. What it seems to come down to is that people are more resistant to change and dying to something new even if something that has been around for years would have beat them too.

And that resistance to change is hurtful to TF2 as a competitive game. In most modern competitive games, the competitive and casual experience overlap perfectly, which creates a natural progression for new players that filters them into the competitive scene. We do not have that in TF2, and things like whitelists absolutely contribute to the fissure between competitive players and the rest of the playerbase and hurt the accessibility of it. If you are not convinced that TF2 is moving in a more competitive focused direction you're simply not paying attention. In the Jungle Inferno update, at least a dozen of the items that were considered problematic (banned) were changed to be much less problematic. This was based on direct feedback from the competitive scene. Now it's time to meet Valve halfway. Unban the items that were changed and are no longer gamebreaking, then hone in on the remaining banned items so that we can complete this process again during the next major update. Following this trajectory it may only take 1 or 2 more major balance updates before a whitelist is obsolete and every item can be allowed and a major barrier to entry of competitive TF2 will be eliminated. Keep in mind too that official competitive matchmaking will be essential to the growth of competitive TF2, and it will never have a whitelist, so we should be aiming to take steps to align with that system for the greater good.

If you're in competitive TF2 10 years later, you're probably going to stick around, but how is placating you going to help grow the game? The slight discomfort of adjusting to a more open whitelist are just the growing pains of competitive TF2.

At this point, only game breaking items should be banned, and the goal to should be to have as few items banned as possible. After their buffs, these items may simply be "overpowered" they have not proven to be game breaking and should not be banned:

• Natascha
  
• Pretty Boys Pocket Pistol
  
• Cow Mangler 5000

While it's good that a few items are being unbanned after Jungle Inferno rebalances, there were several more than just 4 previously banned items nerfed in such a way that they should also be unbanned including:

• Atomizer (must deploy bat in order to triple jump)
  
• Crit a Cola (no longer speed boosts)
  
• Flying Guillotine (no longer mini-crits at long range)
  
• Fist of Steel (healing rates reduced)
  
• Rescue Ranger (ranged repairs consume metal)
  
• Reserve Shooter (no longer mini crits on airblast)

Then there are other lingering items on the current whitelist you proposed that have either similarly not been proven to be game breaking, have been nerfed at some point in the past and never re-evaluated or were unjustly banned previously including:

• Soda Popper (nerfed so that hype meter only builds upon damage dealt, not proven to be game breaking)
  
• Mantreads (buffed for airblast resist and air control, but not proven to be game breaking)
  
• Buffalo Steak Sandvich (always been banned but not proven to be game breaking)
  
• Second Banana (new, not proven to be game breaking)
  
• Solemn Vow (always been banned but not proven to be game breaking)
  
• Vaccinator (unjustly banned before, not proven to be game breaking)
  
• Jarate (unjustly banned before, not proven to be game breaking)
  
• Dragon's Fury (new, not proven to be game breaking)
  
• Quick Fix (nerfed to have slower build rate, not proven to be game breaking)

For things like Soda Popper, Quick Fix, Solemn Vow, and Dragon's Fury, ideally we could have some sort of testing tournaments that feature those items in order to properly evaluate them.

The only weapons that I'd say are still certainly game breaking and should remain on the ban list are:

• Disciplinary Action (forces both teams to run it for speed to mid fights)
  
• Sydney Sleeper (infinite range jarate on all bodyshots is too powerful)
  
• Short Circuit (counters spam making sentries nearly unkillable)
  
• Wrangler (tanks too much damage, requires too much investment to destroy sentries)
  
• Mad Milk (the excessive healing comes too often especially when 4 scouts are running it)

And please don't even consider banning Pyro. Though a whitelist does it already to some extent, class banning is a much more effective method of further alienating casual players from competitive TF2.

According to tri the team registration goals are 50/25/9 for O/IM/I for this to be considered successful by ESEA. Let's hit those numbers.

I didn't get the ESEA PM, what are the division sign up figures we're aiming for?

Your mindset about advancing competitive TF2 is a common but extremely flawed one. A thriving competitive scene should not be about bringing top competitors down but instead about creating an environment with encouragement and incentives for the rest of the competitors to rise up and rival them. Isn't the whole point of competition to find out who can be the best of the best?

I have several updates for you all.

First, the TF2 Hub project is now going to operate under the banner of “TF2 Pro League” or “TF2PL” from here on out (keep in mind it is not an official FACEIT pro league… yet). Here’s a current look at how the divisions page is organized:

https://i.imgur.com/0FsyU8b.png

Current logos and banners are placeholders - I’d like to get original branding for this and will be reaching out to some designers soon. If you are interested and have graphic design experience and SFM experience please contact me.

Second, thanks to twiikuu we have a Discord bot in development that will handle automatic joining of voice channels. We will be doing some private testing soon so that it can be ready upon full launch.

Third, many have asked if this project will include other regions. To begin, it will be an NA focused platform, but if things go well expansion to EU is certain. Unfortunately beyond that I can make no promises.

Finally, I am working on fleshing out the rules but am ready to start recruiting admins for the hubs. I’d like to have about a dozen or so admins for each division. Admins will ideally be active players on the platform as well, but that is not entirely necessary. At the bare minimum all that would be asked of admins would be to be unbiased and objective in enforcement and upholding of the soon-to-be-established rules.

All interested admins please fill out the form below and submit it in the admin application channel in this discord server: https://discord.gg/nseXWaB

Alias:
FACEIT profile:
Which division would you like to admin (Beginner/Amateur/Advanced)?
What would make you a valuable admin to TF2PL?

We’re getting close. Expect the platform to open in the next couple weeks. Thanks!

https://youtu.be/qx8Z0KTzT6A?t=10m Steeeeeeve nooooooo lmao