All players can play vidya games if want to, nothing is stopping them from registering in our league within our rules and if we had a majority of players wanting to play. We'd increase the restrictions we put into place.

I have no issue with giving b4nny money every 3 months, what I do have an issue with is not having a healthy competitive ecosystem. b4nny is playing this season, would be happy to pay out to him again.

It's possible that those teams wouldn't be possible now since you don't see the best teams possible in the NFL. Due to the salary cap put in place in 1994. While the NFL didn't place rules directly against those teams, they did place rules to make it less likely to happen again.

NHL: Salary cap added in 2004.

NBA: Soft "salary" cap added in 1984.

MLB: Luxury tax added in 1997.

So you can see almost all of the teams you listed either existed before or could have been the direct reason why the rules would put into the league. Might be why you haven't listed any team that's existed in the last 20 years. Because virtually all North American leagues have seen the value in having talent spread around a league rather than on one team.

Even when you get a great team in modern sports, like the Patriots, while they are very good, they still lose games because they can't stack all of the best players onto their team.

Soccer is the is the closer comparison since, to my knowledge, no European leagues have any sort of caps on spending. Which is why you also have fairly predictable local leagues. For instance in the NFL, the last 12 seasons have had 11 different teams win the championship. Whereas if you want to find the last 7 different winners of the English Premier League (since Premier is only 20 teams compared the NFL's 32 teams), you'd have to go back almost 30 years to find 7 different winners of the premier league.

But if you look at the UEFA Champions Cup, see it being broken up a bit more. A bit harder to maintain year after year winning success with teams who are able to spend similiar amounts money as you on talent. Plus, there is too much top-tier talent to contain onto one team.

But even with that, there's a difference between a team consistently winning championships and a team who goes undefeated, never losing games and is blowing out their opponents who are supposed to be of equal skill. So it's a bit funny for SpaceCadet to list all of these teams, only to have the truth be that... The leagues did make rules against those teams, they are just more formulated and league-wide. Which is one of the negative aspects of the temporary rule that we created, that it's so focused on one team, rather than doing what every other major professional sports league in NA has done, which is a league-wide rule to have talent more distributed through out the league.

And there's an even larger difference between professional players putting in 40 hours a week trying to grind out to beat their best competition and a recreational league with small prize pools. Where a majority of players do this in their spare time. All of this is included in the revised article, that we would not have made this same decision if this was a league of full-time professional gamers. Because that would be different situation. Context is important in making decisions.

Yes, having more money to incentivize more players to play the game full time professionally, so you have a larger pool of top-tier talent that plays would be the better solution. I think that's pretty obvious, unfortunately, TF2 doesn't have that kind of money. Else you would see other teams stepping up over the last 16 seasons to contest froyotech more than twice in ESEA with a 15-20k prize pool.

I didn't call them unbeatable. I simply listed out facts. They've basically won every major tournament in the last 3 years and have lost a game in the last two years straight. They beat the second best team int he country in the grand finals 5-0 on both maps. Those are the facts. Those are the words I said.

I think it's very awesome to see a rejuvenation of teams coming back to ESEA. Were seeing a similiar thing happening in the RGL HL league.

I agree that the rule is going far, possibly too far. As it says in the article, we plan to reevaluate after the season. It's possible we may relax it or remove it all together.

I think everything you said is very fair and true. We are artificially lowering the skill ceiling, but ultimately it's a question of what's more important. Having, essentially, every best player on one team with a skill gap, seemingly, so large that no other teams are beating them over the course of years, in every format, or a more balanced competitive environment.

The idea of trying to have talent be distributed throughout a league rather than be siphoned onto a single team is not new. To say that artificially lowering the highest level of teams makes a league-worst, would mean that there is gimp credibility with the NFL. Which has a salary cap that you cannot go over, artificially lowering how strong one team can be. The NBA has a soft salary cap, attempting to artificially lowering teams skill levels. The MLB has a salary cap luxury tax, to punish teams financially who overspend on the max salary a team can have, to try and artificially lower teams skill. (Also see NHL, CFL, and MLS)

Each league has introduced a system, to attempt to stop teams from gathering all of the best players onto one team.
We made the choice for the greater community, maybe it's the wrong one. We'll find out after this season and find out how competitive it is.

I had a long convo with b4nny and this is one of the first things I mentioned to him, that he could do.

Nope, that's not at all what this is about. As it says in the article, it's highly unlikely that we would ever consider doing something like this again. While I think your slippery slope concerns are valid, it's clear that this is an extraordinary situation, not a normal one. There's a difference between a team doing well and a team with a clear skill gap for multiple years.

The reason I put that in quotes is that it's something that I've read many times before, whenever these conversations come up. To try and stretch and contort my words to somehow say that I'm insulting players and deeming their efforts is disgusting. I'm fine with being called every name in the book on here, but to try and twist something so clearly not intended that way is disappointing, to say the least.

I'm happy that b4nny has had really great success, he definitely has earned it. He's a nice dude, I've chatted with him several times. However, as it says in the article, we had to make a choice. Do we allow this team with a clear skill gap in both ESEA and RGL to exist untether to see if this is the season where someone can cross that valley? But after seeing the dominant performances out of Froyotech in the ESEA Grand Finals, where they beat Ascent, not even dropping a round. Made me question if anyone, in any format, could cross that valley. And that's where this decision is coming from.

As I said, I think this season of ESEA is looking great. A lot of energy going on inside of it and that wouldn't be happening if my rule was in effect in ESEA.

This isn't something I decided lightly or on a whim. And it's not even something I 100% agree with, but I felt like action needed to be taken. I'm not going to say that I'm right and this rule is definitely not ideal. I saw a problem and I made an attempt to resolve it. It's a problem that you hope the community resolves on its own, but it wasn't seeming to do that in any format over several years.

All of the criticism, calling me a fool, dumb, etc... All fair, because I could be completely wrong about this. Of all of the decision that I've made, this is the one I'm least confident about. So we'll find out, either it'll be a massive flop that we made an extraordinary rule for an extraordinary situation, or it'll help the healthiness/balance of the league. I'm curious to see myself.

twitter

We're happy to see other TF2 Leagues/Orgs join into the idea that has been at the very core of RGL. It's literally the first thing we talk about in our Mission Statement as a league. We like to say having a "healthy balanced between competition and community." And you cannot have a healthy community if you allow toxic voices into them.

The fact that this, clear black and white situation, was seen as debatable and many were calling for no action to be taken from organizations, is disappointing, to say the least. Action must be taken and people must be held accountable for their hate-filled words.

We stand with the many and will not allow the few ugliest and, often, loudest voices to dictate how our community sounds. We will stand together with the good voices and build a great balance between competition and community.

--
And for people calling for warnings, while yes warnings can be good and the correct choice in some situation. If you need a warning to not say blatantly racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic words... A warning isn't going to stop you. Just being a decent human being with empathy towards others should stop those words from coming out of your mouth.

In sixes, absolutely this. Spies natural counter is mobility, e.g. scouts and rocket jumping soldiers or medics healing scouts. Spies aren't meant to go light speed to get picks, that'd be awful to play against. I don't see spies ever seeing any real play in sixes, outside of stalemates, since that's when mobility isn't that much of issue.

Because spy isn't a sniper (low risk, high reward). Though the TF Team has given many classes options for how to be played, they generally don't fundamental change the classes design.

Demoknight - Demos have always been somewhat mobile through blast jumping. You give up that form of mobility (stickies) to gain a different version of mobility. Though the melee killing is new, it's not like he's a spy who can instant kill everyone through melee.

Medic Crossbow - Still fundamentally a healing class, now just a ranged healing one.

Rescue Ranger - Engineer is even moreso a class based around his sentries with this weapon. Though like medic it gives the engineer range, he's still fundamentally an engineer. Plus the weapon is hard countered by spies.

Scorch Shot/Dentonator - This does change pyro to be ranged, but it's also not a serious damage dealer at range. It's a nuisance weapon. So this does fundamentally change change pyro from a pure close range class to a long range nuisance. Still though it's not like he's doing 102 damage every time a scorch shot hits. Let alone this is easy to quickly mitigate the light damage: (medics, dispensers, health packs.) Getting scorch shot doesn't prevent you from pushing.

Blackbox - Soldier is still fundamentally a soldier, same rockets. Just is a side grade, the choice to give up one rocket to gain some heals on damage.

So despite the weapons in the game giving classes some play style variance, the fundamental design of the class is still the same.

What is the spies fundamental design in the game, he's a High Risk/High Reward class. Meaning than for him to get the benefit of doing well, he needs to be up close a personal (high risk). The amby alone was bad, but not horribly broken. The problem was that a spy at long range with the amby/dr had literally no simple counter. A sniper can't headshot him because he spams a shot with the DR instantly, blocking a death from being headshot. Pyro's don't counter him since the spy is at range. So the only way to deal with that spy was to send mobility at him, scout or soldier. To chase him down. That's only if he's in the back lines. If he's fighting at the front lines, where he just DR's to safety to heal. The only counter he has really is to just hope you catch him when he didn't have his DR up.

So the change that was made to the amby was to switch the spy to it's original fundamental class design. The amby is now only effective at close range. Making the weapon and the class again, a high risk/high reward class.

Now there's the question of was the nerf to the DR and Amby too far, yeah I think so. I think both could use a slight buff, but given the strength of the weapons prior. I'd rather them nerf too far and then slightly move the dial back until they get to a healthy point. Then not nerf them far enough.

I would disagree. The main reason the DR has always been annoying - prior to the the speed boost - was the ability to spam the damage mitigation. Shoot-DR...Shoot-DR, back with when you had the DR and it had 90% damage mitigation... yeah that was bad. A spy could take a bad fight, be out of position, lose it and then have 11hp and scout couldn't kill him and the spy would get away. That's not great design.

I've given this thought for a while, since I really love spy and I would love to see him used more. Though part of the problem is that spy is inherently a class which isn't good on it's own and it really shouldn't be. Spy becomes good with game sense, timing and communication. Obviously all classes need that to do well, but if a spy is only relying on DM to be played. Then it's not really a spy anymore, it's just a worst version of another dm class.

Spy obviously relies on some surprise factor. Now spy can be ran full game at a high level and be effective, but it's harder since the enemy team knows that a spy is out there. Though I'd argue more that spy is less effective in HL due to the number of bodies (easier to get found/bumped/someone hears your decloak), lack of surprise and full time pyro.

It was a shit show. It was a non-elimination playoff match, we haven't had in the past. We follow the Page–McIntyre system for playoffs.

What happened is Froyotech put on a typical dominate display and in the second half of the second map. Since Faint Gaming wasn't going to be eliminated, but they didn't think they had a chance to even win at all. They opted to throw the final round.

This is a pretty stark contrast to their incredibly close and tense game from earlier in the season - [link].

It's damn shame, but they also lost earlier this week in UGC Playoffs and maybe that played into it. Not sure, but always disappointing to see a team with such potential completely give up.

It seems like a lot of people so far think that Star just had a chip on his shoulder and was an outlier.

I can tell you from my own personal experience, prior to all the hate recently for prolander. Everything Star is saying rings very true with my experience and it wasn't like I was just some youtuber with limited exposure to comp. I played about 4-5 years of comp.

This isn't me trying to say, every single person in X community is shit and the other has no issues. My point is, the loudest voices are often the most toxic and if you don't do anything to try and silence them. They'll represent your community, whether it's accurate or not.

Do you think the other communities in tf2 (casual/highlander) view sixes overall as a friendly, warm, welcoming community?

Do you think other communities in tf2 (casual/highlander) view tf.tv as a positive place to have a discussion?

Very short, it's my ego that gives me height.

I was planning on not posting anything, as this shit does tend to just drag on. But then it got bumped back up today for whatever reason and pete raised some interesting points that I thought I could answer.

I didn't define all class viability, but lets do that here. All class viability, what that means exactly is what that statement says, that all classes are viable. For instance, a majority of tf2 classes in sixes are not viable a majority of the time. For instance during the Rewind finals Froyotech only ran 5 of the 9 classes in tf2 a cumulative 1.7% of the time. Ascent ran 5 of the 9 classes in tf2 a cumulative 7.8% of the time. When you see a majority of the classes in TF2 see less than 2% game time, that's not viability, that's a voting margin of error. And to be clear, that's okay for this game mode. This isn't me trying to say sixes should change, it shouldn't. It is exactly what it wants to be already. It's genuinely a great game mode for what it's aim is.

My point is, that sixes does not have all class viability in any meaningful way. There is a section of the community, that includes me, who think that class viability/diversity is important to their competitive tf2.

Viability != Overpowered classes. So I'm not sure where you got the idea that I believe that classes are over powered. I don't think that, nor do I believe I've ever claimed that. In TF2, as I'm sure you know there are classes which by default are better than others. I think this is good, I think a homogeneous skill level would make the game worse. So of course there's default picks. You'll probably always see a Scout / Demo / Medic. Pretty much any game mode in tf2. If you can run these classes, you probably will.

The problem comes to class restrictions. When people get really competitive, they will try to min/max a format. Which isn't inherently bad, but can lead to some downsides. e.g. Min/Max 5cp can cause the attacking team to not attack, because there is no upside. Currently inside of MM, there are no class restrictions at all. I'm guess if we had an ESEA league and meta was given time to develop. The majority of the game you'd see something like 2 scouts, 2 demos, 2 medics. Maybe just 1 medic, but you'd probably just add in another scout or demo. This is assuming it's still only 5cp.

It's the illusion of choice, while technically you have exponentially more possible combinations of classes. If you min/max the game you will choose the most powerful class you can. Which means that you actually have less choice, since you only have a couple power classes to choose from, for a majority of the game. Meaning you have worst class viability, because why would you run a soldier, when you can just run another demo or scout.

I don't think having more powerful classes is wrong, I think it makes sense to have these powerful classes, but if you make a format where you cater to them, then you won't see the other classes. It's actually from the class restrictions (or no restrictions) that you end up hurting or helping class viability. That's one of the reasons you see OW went from CL2 to CL1, because early on in the comp game. It was often double tracer, double winston, double lucio. It had a stale hero meta. The only time this wouldn't be true is if the classes power levels were homogenized. Which I don't think anyone wants.

For instance spy isn't good in sixes for anything but a very tiny niche in the game. All of the classes are highly mobile and spies are useless against them. I would say spies counters are: Heavies, Engineers and Snipers. You don't see heavies a majority of the time in sixes because he lacks mobility and the weapons which can help him have mobility (Disciplinary Action) is banned. You don't see engineer because he lacks mobility and generally the scout is just better in terms of raw DM. You don't full time run snipers because it's usually less consistent DPM than a scout.

However, if you had a game format where you see these classes (snipers, heavies, engineers [oh my]), then suddenly spy would be a viable pick. He might not be the right one, but he could be ran and be effective. This is why in Prolander a lot of teams run spies consistently. Since the enemy team runs what he counters.

Basically you get more class viability when two things happen.
1) When every choice you make isn't against the best class in the game.
e.g. If every time you select your class it's, do I run scout, demo or X. It's almost always the power classes is correct. When it becomes a question of do I run a spy, heavy, pyro or engineer, as those are your options. Then suddenly it's a more nuanced and not straight forward decision. This allows leaders to better class diversity for the other teams choices, because you are running a more diverse line up, so now the other teams class selections can be based off of what you're running.

2) You don't play on maps which are focused on mobility. This isn't a shot a 5cp, but it does hurt class viability, since it puts so much of a strain on mobility. If the sixes played more koth and payload, you'd probably see more diversity in class selection.

Spy is useful only if you don't have class diversity, but in a game mode where you see the classes he counters in the game. Suddenly he becomes a lot more useful. In prolander where you typically see a sniper and a heavy. It's not uncommon to see a spy get 20-100% of cumulative game time. Just depends on your teams strategies.

As stated above, I don't think every class has to have the exact same level of importance/strength. What I do believe is that some people want to have the genuine viable option to run the classes they want. And the more classes you see in the game, the more viable all of the other classes become.

And class restrictions help, since you're not comparing every pick against a power class. It becomes a question of between the non-power classes, what is the best choice right now, to help my team or counter theirs. And that's when it becomes more nuanced and possibly strategic. It's not about having every class be at the same level, it's about not making every choice have to be compared against a power class.

To kind of wrap this up. Currently we have two major formats in tf2. You have sixes, which has very low class viability. You have highlander which has all classes viable, but it's static. There's no dynamicness to the class selections. My personal goal is to find the best version of a competitive game mode, that's dynamic, fast paced and where you have all classes be genuinely viable a majority of the time.

Why is this important to me, because there's a section of the community that enjoys having the option to play all classes in a competitive game mode. Right now Prolander hits all of those points and a growing section of the community enjoys it. I plan to do some experimental cups in this off season to play with rule sets, maybe have less players, we'll see.

Final thing is, it's okay to not like prolander. To me, sixes and prolander are like Rugby and Football. They have some similarities, but are more different than similar and that's okay. I can see why people like sixes, even if it's not my cup of tea. I hope you can understand why people in the community like competitive game modes that feature all the classes.

I have ready every single post in this thread, but there aren't any real statements about how to make prolander better.

Like that statement you linked, isn't about how to make prolander better, but how prolander might suffer like sixes does when it comes to a stale class meta, if a more defined meta happens.

Pretty much a majority of statements in this thread are either insults at me, or prolander. Or they're statements comparing sixes and prolander.

Which doesn't answer the question of "Can you link to this feedback or give me a paraphrased version of it?"

I'm looking for what can actively be changed to make it better. Those are opinions I definitely am curious to read about. As I stated in this post earlier

I'm very open to hearing on ways in which you could improve Prolander, but still keep class viability.

Can you link to this feedback or give me a paraphrased version of it?

About 10 months ago someone said something similar in a thread someone else created about my league.

To which I responded about the complaints I did hear and adapt from. And pressed for more information about these "many big issues" I'm ignoring. Pretty much the response was something along the lines of just make it sixes.

What lead me to post here is I had a conversation with a person who was upset he didn't know about the EU one day cup: https://i.imgur.com/KJxaGwq.png.

I've avoided posting on this forum since the challenge cup. As this forum is primarily for sixes players and sixes players are not main target audience. It's been what... a year and a half since I created a post on here last. The last time I even had a real post on here was 10 months ago, when someone else created a post about my league. So clearly I'm not just posting on here constantly for "attention."

After thinking about it and having that conversation with the guy about it. I figured, no real harm. There are people like him in this site who might be interested. Even if it's a small number, at least for them to realize that this option is available is good. That's all.

It's fair to say that this is going to be a hostile place, for various reasons, towards me and what I'm doing, but I'm okay with a little hostility at me if it means I can help people like that guy who reached out to me. To have them become more informed about his competitive options.

We've had a majority of ESEA Invite teams in our Invite division for about 3 seasons now. And there's been no conclusive meta yet. Each team runs their own unique style. Froyotech generally relies on their DM, runs a full time heavy and usually an engineer or pyro, with a small amount of spy sprinkled in. Faint Gaming typically runs a full time pyro and mostly full time spy. Velocity runs a full time heavy and typically a spy.

It's possible that we could get to that point, it just depends on how teams play. If they choose classes for their own team, or if they choose classes to counter enemy team.

For example in our week 2 match up on Coalplant. Faint Gaming, made up of UGC Plat players, instead of running their own classes. They chose classes to counter froyo. So they ran a spy full time in the first half, focusing on countering bo4r on sniper. Causing Faint Gaming's sniper, watterson, to top frag while bo4r was near the bottom. In the second half, bo4r started as an aggro engie. Froyotech ran no pick classes. So then the faint gaming spy struggled to focus anyone and the extra front line pressure/damage from froyotech help secured them the first round. So then the spy switched to Heavy to help his team defend against the extra attackers. Which caused them to win the next round.

Then bo4r went back to sniper, since he had less pressure (no spy.) He started to switch back and forth between sniper and spy to mix it up. Dimento, the former spy stayed on heavy and watterson, now without the extra support to counter bo4r, struggled. So then he switched to spy, to keep a pick class on their team.

The cool thing about having all classes viable is that you can choose your strategy to either to just focus on your own team or you can choose classes to counter the enemy teams lineup. Which can allow a team of highlander players compete against the best in the world. Still though, it's possible that prolander, like any game or comp format could get stale in terms of classes. Though this is where the pick/ban format helps, is that if there are stale strategies that rely on certain weapons, you can ban those to force the other team to have to mix it up.

Agreed, I mean you look at Sixes currently in Matchmaking. Technically that is the most class dynamic comp format currently out there. No class limits allows the most combinations you could play (technically.) Most everyone agrees having no class limits did not make a better comp format, despite having six players. Then it just becomes a question of what class limits, help out tf2 have a mixture of fast/fun gameplay, but still allowing all class viability.