as I have said (here for instance: https://www.teamfortress.tv/post/1035702/rgl-announces-upcoming-summer-seasons-and-preseason-events) this is the crux of every single RGL issue.

this thread wasn't asking "if tf2 was announced as an esport tomorrow, what ruleset would you advocate for", it's just asking what it would be like in the most realistic scenario imaginable

and if it's anything like every other esport, no unlock would be banned period, let alone almost all of them

arena:respawn

eXtine was right the whole time...

on the one hand, I agree

on the other, I'm pretty sure at least 3-4 of them are weebs

https://i.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/original/000/019/571/dailystruggg.jpg

???

xen.arc when his girlfriend broke up with him and cut everyone from his roster at once

damn did um steal makka's waifu or something why you gotta do my boy like this

you should probably clarify that this doesn't apply to literally 40% of the division

https://i.imgur.com/cYsu6FX.png

ongoing list of people fucked extra-hard by rgl:

-kev
-safrix
-um
-aim

hmmm I am starting to see a bit of a pattern here...

also, since we've all acquiesced to playing the qualifier:

where is the thread about it to build hype? where is the news post listing the teams trying to qualify? etf2l always has that shit before the games happen, and considering the first matches will be played tonight, you kinda fucked up...

Therein lies the problem with everything, the fundamental root problem with every terrible decision RGL has ever made.

That 'we' is a non-inclusive we. It's not 'we the competitive tf2 community', it's 'we the 5 people in RGL who have any real input'.

RGL is the fakest community league that has ever existed in tf2. The surveys are a smokescreen, because it's actually even more undemocratic than ESEA.

RGL is instead, at best (as in, this is how they see themselves), a benevolent dictatorship. Who cares if people want to play older maps? We will force in new ones, because it's for their own good. Who cares if people want to play with their friends in advanced and not grind the season like crazy? We will aggressively class restrict them, because it's for their own good. Who cares if black people want to be able to say the n word? We will ban them for it, because it's for their own good.

As long as that approach exists, no one will ever be satisfied with a single one of your decisions. That's the deal y'all have made.

so yeah, I don't know why rgl hasn't even slightly promoted this, but there's gonna be a 6 team round robin to decide the final 4 invite spots.

I don't know why they couldn't think of a better solution than us having to play 5 bo2s in the next 4 days, even if there were a qualifier happening, but that's the situation we find ourselves in.

when ire reached out to me on discord to get my confirmed roster, I asked when we would know if we had to play the qualifiers. all he said was 'after the 6th', which I assume meant right after. I still don't know...

Brace yourself for a long one folks!

I have nothing against giving people a chance to play invite, but there are many ways of doing that. ETF2L's approach is generally to holistically move teams up based on a combination of experience and scrim results, and then run quals if it's too tough to call. I'm fine with that, but etf2l never goes more than like a 4 team qualifier for 2 spots, at least off of memory. What I don't like is when teams that should either obviously be invite or obviously be div 1/advanced are roped into the qualifier because admins haven't done their research.

You said you wanted to give teams a chance to make invite, and yet you're basing this team being 'similar in skill level' on their previous experience, not their current scrim results, or just as importantly, their scrim ambitions. This team has barely existed, and they've only scrimmed the other team I suggested should be in the qualifier, and Cat Posse (who beat them relatively convincingly). Compare that to the artist team, who have much less invite experience, but have traded maps with multiple other teams trying to be invite and have also scrimmed froyotech, showing their ambition to improve.

If we look at the (not very recently-updated) RGL spreadsheet:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1f2B-iRBUALd0RLRHb0cwVWMMwCSsyvvLjtn8UYus02M/edit#gid=925585840

We see 6 teams already in invite, and 6 teams in the qualifiers. One of those teams is a really weird RainofLight team that I highly doubt has any ambition to play invite with people like stoper, goldfish and carnage who definitely don't care to try super hard. Them aside, that means there's a 5 team qualifier for 4 spots. Doesn't that seem a bit excessive?

The way I see it, you have 3 options that make more sense.

1) my original idea of the cleanbuddy and kylor teams fighting it out

2) include a couple more teams on the basis of slightly worse scrim results- like the rio team perhaps

3) include a couple more teams on the basis of less invite experience- like the artist team

Either way, from a selfish perspective, my team a) has a lot of people with significant invite experience and b) has clearly performed at a higher level in scrims than the 'obvious' qualifier teams. If we play a team like the cleanbuddy team in the qualifiers, is there a greater than 0% chance they beat us? Sure, anything is possible, and we'll play it if we have to. But I also feel like it's a bit of a distraction when I want to be scheduling weeklies against a lot of the teams that are automatically in invite and preparing for the season. Even if my team does have to play it though, I'd rather see 7-8 confirmed teams and then 3-4 teams competing for 2-3 spots rather than 5 teams for 4 spots.

If the rubric we're using isn't prior experience, but rather how well teams are performing now, then yes, I think that team is actually pretty good.

You worded this like the default is to have qualifiers, but I can't think of a single situation where you had 11 teams trying to play in a 10 team invite and the admins wanted 5 of them to play in a qualifier.

Putting aside the current RGL admins, it really shouldn't be that difficult to figure out which teams should automatically make invite. I haven't even discussed the fact that Yambo seems to be grandfathered in from playing last season or that Cat Posse got in for winning advanced, even though those teams are definitely close skill-wise to the better teams in the qualifiers. If we've established that some of those teams can be let in automatically, I don't see why we can't make reasonable decisions about teams based on their scrim results or prior experience.

I'm pretty sure looking at that Burnsiders team's scrim results would make it pretty clear that, even if they made invite, they'd clearly be at the bottom.

The pootis.org thing is not comparable to me, because they're a team that legitimately put the admins in a no-win situation. On the one hand, their re-emergence would force a team back down into the quals that had already been told they could just play invite. On the other, they were clearly MILES ahead of all of those qualifier teams. This season, I'm trying to get out in front of this topic BEFORE the qualifiers even start.

Anyways I know some people will laugh at me for going to such lengths to try to get out of playing a couple maps and call me chicken or big ego or something, but it's not even only about that, I just think the league should be run more logically in situations like this. Hell, it's very possible that that google doc is SUPER outdated and there will be far fewer teams in the qualifiers (again, why the fuck is the RoL team there lol).

this may be a fruitless appeal, but I really hope the invite qualifier isn't like 5 teams or 6 teams competing for 4 spots and we have to do some massive round robin just to have most of us make it, that sounds like a big waste of time

if you want 10 teams, I personally believe it should be:

froyotech
witness gaming
ford gaming
globalclan ice
my team
yambo
cat posse
platypugesports
six paths

and then the other teams (cleanbuddy? kyler? whatever the exile team is?) competing for the 10th spot

if you wanna make it a set 8 teams in invite and add 1 of the above^^^ to the quals that's reasonable too

but I do think it'd be a bit of a waste for rgl to only give 5-6 of those teams guaranteed spots when there's such a clear line of demarcation between the teams that are clearly invite and those that may not be

obviously I am extremely biased here but this is my opinion