Granary pro which we play is still being updated tho and prolands is a thing why not give useful criticism on those maps and identify and see if it's possible to fix their major flaws? By the same token we aren't just throwing out bad maps like cardinal why not give specific reasons and things that can be changed? Long post below identifying the flaws I see and potential ways of mitigating them (sorry there's a lot to say maybe I'll edit in bullets/tldr later)

Badlands:
I think there are some key issues by all means but they're definitely workable. I have placed so many super fun close badlands matches I think the flow of the map can be stale and boring but there can also be super back and forth last to last games if teams are willing to do unconventional stuff like push valley into mid and go for 3 man sacks to force them to push our of last and then fight second.
Though as a medic I personally find it super hard to play and I nearly always die on mids, that's not really a reason to just all together scrap it. Yes it is certainly not a fun pug map cause back caps and the need for coordination and slowness making last pushes hard, but in league play with an hour to widdle down their defenses the better team nearly always wins badlands and I don't think this "boring" ness should be the main consideration. Yes most people don't find it fun, whereas EVERYONE though cardinal wasn't fun but vel and froyo would be willing to play it cause they had practiced. Even though it's not fun for me, I think it's good to have it in the pool because it adds variety and if teams want to choose it and play it there can be really good matches often times. I don't like it too much myself but to win sure we will pick it if we are better. It's a map where teams can play methodically and strategically (vs entirely dm you have to play smart) and rewards the best coordination as a team and knowledge of the map/experience doing the various non conventional pushes. It's also a very strong soldier map which is another thing to consider.

Granary is a very slow map yes but I am unsure what exactly is meant by a "modern flow". New maps such as sunshine and metalworks are both known to be INCREDIBLY stalematey, and without uber against a sentry gun their lasts are also very hard to break similar to gran and badlands. Hell even snakewater last can be super hard to break and in Europe people seem to hate that map for the reason that people pussy hold last forever, whereas we generally play it more fast and I don't think invite teams have such a problem with that due to our playstyle and developed meta. We've seen plelenty of matches this season and in the past huge stalemates on sunshine second with a sniper trying to peek and just doing 1 man sacks over and over again, same with process and virtually any map (other than via which is THE MOST FUN AND FAST PACED AND DEF SHOULD NOT BE REMOVED) if it's in an important match and people are afraid of losing. There have also been many granary games that have been super close and interesting to watch (never forget the legendary 5-4 tcm game), which shouldn't be discounted. If people really unanimously agree out with granary (THERE SHOULD BE A POLL ABOUT SPECIFIC MAPS WE WANT GONE NOT JUST #) im fine removing it but I do think there's potential for dagger to fix some of the issues with it (see below)

There were talks to keep the cow mangler in as not to nerf soldier class even more cause it's the worst class, but nobody mentioned the how bad it will hurt soldier class by removing badlands and granary two strong soldier maps (which are by no means super easy to play as a soldier well, just that good experienced players know the intricacies of them and can have lots of impact vs good soldiers who aren't as practiced or knowledgeable in the maps who won't be able to shine as much) and adding a nearprocess/sunshine/snake clone (propaganda) as well as a mid where soldiers literally just get denied entirely by scouts and cannot double bomb vs good scouts cause there's nowhere to properly land on (logjam, people generally thought the mid was bad, esp for soldiers).

remove cardinal
add propaganda

I and others have given constructive feedback, many others have simply said it is bad. Saying it is bad is feedback that it is indeed not a good map. Both are valuable to know, if everyone who has played it thinks the map is bad, that should definitely say something.

"the map is universally disliked for the same reason all new maps are universally disliked"
Propaganda was liked by pretty much everyone that played it as much as people do generally like to bandwagon the fact is the map has legitimate problems and people are right to think it's not ready to be played at the current state
That's good to hear she is updating it but that may still leave it with major problems so it definitely should be re evaluated before being put in certainly as a weekly map. I think people can be fine with it as a pick ban map in the rotation cause you can just ban it though

Propaganda is just a legitimately good, intuitive map that plays well already. I think you need to consider the possibility that there's an in between of people bandwagoning against it baselessly and people actually realizing it's a bad map. No invite player who did the cup is "afraid" of playing propaganda it was good and universally liked afaik. Logjam and the others though had some big issues and did not flow well at all.

I know there's gonna be a discussion with tri some time about the map list and stuff (tonight? won't be on unfortunately), but I am VERY hesitant to accept this notion of "modern"-ness and the flow of the map being objectively better than granary and badlands. Yes badlands last is super small and chokey and stalemates a lot but I've also played games like a golden cap vs evl where it went back and forth one last to the other like four different times, there is definitely interesting flow to the map and it's such a staple that to say we should remove it simply because it doesn't play like process seems VERY hasty to me. Most newer players don't like badlands because they don't know how to play it and just jump on the bandwagon of hating it. If anything we should be more skeptical of this sudden bandwagon to purge maps rather than "bandwagons" against adding in new unfinished maps that inherently must be met with criticism because they have to be proven ready to be put in.

Granary as well is very slow and can be stalematey which okay that's unfortunate for spectators but I've had some granary matches that were incredibly back and forth and interesting as well. Slow and methodical team play is rewarded on that map as well as having proper strategy to take left yard and wrap and stuff like that. The main criticism is stalemates but plenty of other maps like snakewater can have huge stalemates mid to second and on last, as well as process second. Like literally every map can lead to stalemates if the team wants to (i.e., 7) yes some are more inherently hard to break than others like gran second but my team found no trouble just two man sacking and baiting the push. Sitting on a sniper is bad on both that and the badlands mid to second stalemate cause there's not too many good angles but that's not to say you can't overload flank and send people behind and stuff like that.
Another thing is that soldier is really strong and impactful on gran and badlands whereas every other map scout class is the king maybe having maps that allow soldiers to actually carry versus the giant open maps like process and sunshine where scouts just rule is a good balance change? Combo scouts on gran and badlands can do tons of work as well though obviously just look at b4nny he still puts out a ton of damage and stuff it's just not always as easy and as simple as sitting on the high ground and props like most maps. Flank scout on granary is usually pretty boring and hard to play and people say it's impossible to have impact or do anything, which is true to an extent but doesn't have to be the case. If you jump on the bandwagon that it's awful and u can't do anything yeah you probably won't, but for example on my team in the lower bracket finals this season reimu went in for aggressive flank plays and double sacks and did a ton of work despite the map making it difficult, I believe she even top fragged.

Fuck that's a lot of words
Anyways tldr there needs to be more thought put into it and backing up statements like maps being "modern" and fitting the flow of the game as if there is some given way that the game "should" be played on any given map. Not everything has to be a clone of snake/process.

This and remove cardinal (or replace it with propaganda which was by far the best of the new maps), the second point is so bad on cardinal it has potential but really needs to be updated. The only reason it was allowed to be added randomly in the first place was because of the map veto system, but it's got some pretty big flaws and I'm pretty sure nearly everyone agrees that it's not good enough to replace a proper map in the pool (b4nny seems to be the only person who wants this and is at a bit of a conflict of interest given he made it with phi lol, it was pretty much universally banned this season cause everyone realizes it's not good)

I posted about this in another thread but I very much don't think we should be forced to play cardinal in the regular season and it should just be removed, it's not even getting updates anymore what is the point? I see zero reason honestly. I suppose if someone else decided to update it maybe then we could entertain the possibility of playing it, but it needs a lot of work first. Aside from the second being a disaster, the last is way too hard to push and there are some pretty broken sniper sightlines that make it aids to push out of last cause the main lane to walk up to point puts you directly in the skghine of a sniper in mid who walked out of forward (imagine badlands choke didn't have a spire to block medics walking out trash and side spire)

yea obviously the captain can select themselves on multiple classes but it is a johnmilter classic to pick his good bud mr popo when he's only added on scout and then swap, whereas if the other captain picked him on scout he wouldn't lol

can there please be a rule against people adding med and baiting the pug to start this shit is mad annoying
the only time there's any argument for it is if a pug just ended and you want to cue people to add up or something but even then its pretty dumb

I was a lazy idiot and put off way too much work until the end of the semester now it's all piling up and making my life hell (the college student classic tbh)
Thankfully I'll be done in a few days but gonna be rough and my grades def suffered because of it :/

I 100% agree that there are certain cases in which this is totally unfair like if a high invite scout is added to an offclass they're not as good at and then swap in game with a solly main picked on scout for example, then the game is totally changed and it's unfair cause the other captain can't have the option to pick them either.

However, I think there are also lots of cases in which this is not a big deal at all. For example, if I and someone else are both added on pocket and roamer, and in the pug we decide to switch because one of us prefers pocketing on a certain map or is feeling like roaming, I see no problem in doing this. Given that it's a pug site and its primary focus is fun I think people should be able to swap if they want to but only in cases where it is super obviously an upgrade or makes things unfair that people should be punished. The problem with enforcing this is that it's all sort of subjective to say that x player is a certain level at one class vs another, and I very much do not believe it should be banned altogether. I could be fine with it I guess as long as like the cases of two soldiers swapping roles when they're both added to them, or a roamer/demo added person swapping with another roamer/demo added person cause it's perfectly fair within the picking.

Sometimes you just need a break lol pretty sure he was playing like constantly going to every lan and shit for like 3 years, that shit gets to you eventually it's a lot of time commitment especially if you have to wake up early afterwards or your sleep schedule is suffering because of it.

https://i.imgur.com/psurMvR.png

Skeez is simply the best player....

The problem is the fact that the bans are completely blind from the other team, which makes it so both teams can decide to ban cardinal and granary, for example, and end up wasting bans and then ending up being RNG'd onto some other map neither team really wanted to play, like metalworks. If they changed it to a system like in playoffs where you just alternate banning until a map is selected I could get behind that, or at least made it so both team can't accidentally ban the same map.

Also, as berg said the randomness is stupid and should be removed imo. I also agree that having to play process/snake/gully all season is super boring and bland. I definitely preferred the old system where you have a full week to map review and perfect your play on each map vs two different teams then know what to expect when playoffs comes around. I for one liked the idea of striving to get as good as possible at every map, but with this system you're better off calling it quits for maps you're not good at like badlands, rather than working through it and figuring it out as a team. As much as it sucks to get the bad luck of having to play your rival team (that you need to beat to make playoffs for example) on a map that you aren't good at, I think it's fair to reward teams that are more well rounded and can win on any map, versus teams that just deliberately autobans 3 maps they're bad at/dont want to bother getting good at. If your team puts in the time and practice to get good at a few select maps that people don't play much or aren't good at,4 it's really stupid to have your opponents simply able to say nope not going to bother and just ban them off the bat.

I think we should be encouraging rather than discouraging teams to excel and get really good at their specialty maps cause it adds variety/depth and makes the game interesting (e.g., vel on snakewater), but allowing people to just ban them even in the regular season is a giant fuck you to teams like this. As much as I hated playing cardinal and think it's a terrible map, I do think it's good to reward teams that take the time and practice and get good at the fringe maps like that. Granted, having to play the regular season again with cardinal as one of the 8 weeks would be awful and I think it should be removed from the pool 100% if the system does end up getting reverted, the only way to justify adding maps like that is if you can always ban them.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IT92KIB1le8
shameless self post look at my epic airshot

Dear Jeremy, Your team is named Incorrectly.
As a Philosopher demo, you should know that the Theory of Knowledge is simply called Epistemology.