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AFC 12 Suggestions/Feedbacks

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hi fwishy ><

-remove postpones

-try investigating unfamilliar-ish players so no more smurfs pls

 

 

 

 

 

 

make me head admin

Edited by dracomm

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Ok finally this thread came up I think there are so many changes/implementations that could be made with regards to the actual AFC tournament and also Asiafortress as a whole in terms of resources/outreach to get more people involved.

I'll be drawing comparisons to how Ozfortress is run simply because structurally it's the most similar to ours compared to ESEA/ETF2L/Zimbabwe TF2 Community, and also because I think we're more acquainted with them which makes it easier to understand my points

ANY EXAMPLES THAT I USE IN THIS POST ARE DEFINITELY NOT PERSONAL ATTACKS, BUT MERELY BROUGHT UP FOR THE SAKE OF ILLUSTRATING HOW THE FLAWS IN THE RULESET HAVE BEEN EXPLOITED WHICH RESULTED IN UNFAVOURABLE OUTCOMES THAT WOULD HAVE OTHERWISE BEEN AVOIDED

AFC MERC RULES (Regular Season)

This is actually a pretty dumb rule. 6 mercs allowed during regular season with 7 gameweeks. MERCS FROM THE SAME DIVISION CANNOT BE REJECTED. This is a huge ass problem because of the huge skill gap between the top-tier and lower-tier teams in the same divison (for example div 2, who has s11 div 1 champ floaty playing against players who JUST GOT OUT OF DIV 3)

case in point: http://logs.tf/1798521 (guess who's the merc for red guys xD oh but he's same division so he can't get rejected and can carry!) im not having a go at my aussie friends, the rules were there and they followed it (since you can't deny mercs from same division) He also did this with 360 ping because he was apparently too lazy to turn on his VPN. This really shouldnt be allowed and there's apparently also no restriction on how many times you can use 1 guy as merc in a whole season. This basically means that if I'm in low div 2, I can get the best player in div 2 to carry me for 6/7 games and give me a really good chance at getting into playoffs.

Proposed changes: Lower the number of allowed merc usage, and make it so that ALL MERCS HAVE TO BE APPROVED by the other team so we avoid having players carry teams from the lower tier of the same division SIX GODDAMN TIMES with the other teams being unable to do anything about it

 

AFC PLAYOFF RULES

POSTPONING JESUS CHRIST. When teams give reasons like 'oh we have exams' or 'oh we unavailable on that day going on holiday lol' when the entire schedule of the season is already posted before the season even starts. Literally all the dates are posted up to grand finals. for sapnu puas, corto has exams, but we made sure he could commit all the way to grand finals (even though we didnt reach that far LUL) just in case so we don't run into scheduling issues. The onus is on the teams and players to make sure they can commit to the whole season (schedule wise). If you can't make it for grand finals THEN HOW ABOUT DONT COMMIT TO SEASON OR JUST BE A SUB? The schedule has already been posted, why should the opposing team (and also the whole league) have to wait for you to finish your goddamn shit IRL before proceeding with the match 3/4 weeks after the scheduled time? A team that I scheduled a match with wanted to postpone our match. Their reasoning for not using subs? "Who uses subs in playoffs man. Subs are only for emergency internet issues" which is honestly a pretty dumb justification.

This is a huge reason why ozfortress is in season 20 + summer cup + ultiduo + other stuff while we're still stuck at season 12 (which officially concluded yesterday CONGRATS 2F). It's not even an issue about the post-season being too long, but the postpones are just delaying EVERYTHING when the extra time could be used for doing something else (post season surveys/feedback threads like this one, revising the map pool because reckoner is a piece of shit map, other icebreaker things like scrambles/asiafortress academy)

Mercs also should not be allowed in playoffs (my team is guilty of this lol sorry) because of how high the stakes are. tbh against ERA in div 2 lower bracket finals (the one with 3 golden caps) we didn't really care that they got a div 1 med merc because we just wanna play some TF2, but what's the point of slogging through the whole season just to use a merc to help you win the playoff matchup? Also, you have 4 other goddamn subs USE YOUR SUBS FFS)

Proposed changes: DON'T ALLOW ANY POSTPONING OF PLAYOFFS. If you wanna postpone regular season matches fine, that just means your team has to play 2 matches in 1 week, but PLAYOFFS SHOULD ALWAYS GO ACCORDING TO SCHEDULE. (shoutout to aqua)

 

CLASS RESTRICTIONS FOR DIVISIONS

This is a thing which definitely should be implemented. There's no reason to let former div 1/2 players (who have actually placed pretty well in past seasons) play their main class in lower divs, which ruins the competitiveness of the division because it just becomes a game of 'let that player try to make plays during stalemates' and conversely 'shut down that specific player' instead of actually watching 6v6 TF2 take place. Not to mention just the idea of letting superior players play against other people of significantly lower skill level should not be a thing.

Proposed changes: CLASS RESTRICT PEOPLE PLAYING IN DIVISIONS BELOW THEIR SKILL LEVEL

 

TRANSPARENCY BETWEEN ADMINS AND PLAYERS

This isn't the biggest priority on the list of things to fix, but I think it could've been improved. I honestly only have one example for this. Historically for AFC, the way the map pool works is like this

Week 1 : Map A,B - Week 2: Map B,C - Week 3: Map C,D ....... Week 7 Map F,A (Let's call this Map Rotation 1)

Unfortunately for AFC 12, due to Div 1 having only 5 teams, the map pool was changed to this

Week 1: Map A,B - Week 2: Map C,D - Week 3: Map E,F Week 4: Map G,H (Let's call this Map Rotation 2)

This was completely unnecessary for div 2/3 teams which use a Swiss-system because it doesn't use a round robin like div 1. The map rotation couldve been changed for just div 1, with divs 2 and 3 using the old system. What the real problem was that when the entire league changed to Map Rotation 2 all of a sudden, there was no official announcement that Map Rotation 1 was not being used any more. Teams which actually scrimmed pre season focusing on Map Rotation 1 were fucked because of the abrupt change to Map Rotation 2 without being given any prior warning. It's not the hugest of deals because it only affected preparations for week 1 and 2, but the real issue I'm trying to highlight is that this could have been easily avoided without making things more complicated.

Proposed changes: Pretty much what i just said lol

 

LASTLY, THE DIVIDE BETWEEN LOWER AND HIGHER TIER PLAYERS

It's actually worrying that there's such a huge number of players in div 3, who have been playing in div 3 for multiple seasons. Also, there also have been a large influx of players in lower tier pugs given the prominence of more pug servers (Chilly, Pure, Govt). This opportunity should definitely not be wasted given how noncompetitive div 1 is right now compared to past seasons. Of course, you have a few 'gems' like lerl, k1lled, itachi who have worked their way up the ranks really quickly, but for every lerl you get like 20 other people who are constantly stuck in the same skill level. When I first started 6s in late 2011, there were stuff like Sandvich pugs (which had veterans volunteering to captain 5 newbies and teaching them about the game in mumble) and Asiafortress academy (which hasn't been around in a while, but then there was AFmash or Scramble or whatever it's called).

This problem is not as prominent in Ozfortress due to 2 reasons

1) Friendlier community as a whole in terms of providing resources/feedback to newbies in pugs/scrims

2) Higher skill level players actually hanging out with players of lower skill and inviting them to their inhouse pugs, which is a way more conducive environment to play TF2 compared to pugs in Asia.

I can't see a change in mindset happening for Asiafortress and asian pugs (where people permasnipe or direct hit/battalion's backup) so I think it's unfeasible to simply say oh just be less cancer to newbies xD (though it's a good start tbh try to be more patient and understanding)

Asiafortress has a really long post-season compared to other regions, and honestly nothing happens outside of pugs and mixes/scrims. 

Proposed changes: Use the off-season time period to organize an initiative to help newbies acclimate to 6s TF2, and offer proper platforms for them to get better at the game. This helps in increasing the competitiveness of the league, attracting people to play 6s, and make the divisions more balanced instead of having 100 teams in div 3

 

 

Almost there guys.

 

 

QUALITY OF LIFE CHANGES

These aren't really related to Asiafortress and League Rules as a whole, but would be personally considered as 'icing on the cake' type of changes, such as:

End of season awards (Best scout, best pocket, best whatever. refer to ozfortress)

Post a DRAFT OF THE AFC RULESET on forums and give like a week for COMMUNITY FEEDBACK. Make changes to the rules based on community response/further deliberation before finalizing it.

More casting hubs other than Rednaxelawee (Not a huge problem as of right now since we have tflive and cappingtv guided by our lord and saviour mitchcliff1234567890)

Pre-season article columns http://ozfortress.com/showthread.php?t=63149

Playoff article columns https://asiafortress.com/index.php?/blogs/entry/35-afc-12-div-2-playoffs-preview/ (gj justin and ev it was a solid writeup except tharnos was playing pocket so you baited my team)

 

We did it.

 

 

Edited by harvey
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lol harvey nerd essay

class restrictions might be nice, also from what i know about it (very little) the merc system seems a bit borked

update maps to pro version, remove reckoner

 

 

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Need double the weeks in division 3 if the amount of teams remains the same for next season.

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1 hour ago, Aqua said:

Need double the weeks in division 3 if the amount of teams remains the same for next season.

not needed if you use swiss system

 

the edit button is a thing

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everything harvey said,

the complete set would be best pocket,roamer,demo,med,scout offclasser and caster iirc

and if it's not decided yet, pls add replace blands with prolands

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1. Make two divisions or admins should be more aware of which team is suppose to be in which divisions perceptively.

-We don't have keep making it into 3 divisions all the time.

-The lack of div 1 team just doesn't make the division interesting or fun enough to play.

-Make the division count to 2 instead will make players more exposed to one other and have better sense of what they lack so they can practice and work on it. Even if per say the low div 2 team is to be rolled by high div 1 team at least we will have a schedule where a division will finish their regular season sooner and maybe the low div 2 team can at least bridge a connection towards the high div 1 team and ask for tips etc.

-Also, renaming the division to something corny may help unless you guys into the whole stick to your roots thing. 

2. Regional admins

-Have back again regional admins where the player from that respective region that isn't comfortable speaking English can refer and bring their insights to an admin. i.e EoLA for Japan admin. Any japanese player have any word or say they can approach him comfortably and work something out.

3. Admins or content writers that give a damn and provide contents through the season

-Harvey already summed it up. Having awards end of the season is also a good content thing at least players have something to play for other then the general team glory. A lil ego boost is what everyone loves rite and yes a dedicated casting team.

-Have someone to also be the bridge to TF.TV where we can also provide insights and let them know what's going on over here. Provide them with team name and players so at least the world would know TF2 community is internationally close (somewhat). I maybe can suggest concor to step up and maybe be the bridge and help out both Asiafortress and TF.TV and help provide contents. Start putting out ads on whomever wants to help out with content writing and etc. and not only rely on 1 or 2 people.

-I didn't even know the 2nd transfer window is open as there was nothing about it mentioned at the news section and still no one is bothered closing this season? I don't know but all these things usually need to be done then and there but oh well.

4. Have more mini tourney like ultiduo and etc.

-Have entrance fee or something if you guys don't have any prize to give. I given aqua 10+ keys for you guys to start ultiduo tournament i hope it will be after during the pre season. If you guys need help. Say it.

5. Just have people that give a damn to run the league. 

Edited by reaper

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Replace reckoner with sunshine

Have a 4th division between 2 and 3 for top div 3 teams. This will help lower the skill difference between the bottom and top of div 3 

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This was my first season in AFC, but it was enough for me to realize how much of a bad state the community was in. Most of the paragraphs are going to be a rant based on my experience playing in division 3 this season, followed by other stuff that need fixing which can be explained in bullet point, and ending with my personal requests.

RULES - what are they and what are they for?

    The rules for asiafortress cup 12 obviously had some parts missing from them, but the biggest problem wasn’t even about the details. As humans living under a massive set of rules, we are raised to follow these rules from birth and get punished severely for every rule that is broken. As soon as I joined this season, I read through the rules many times and memorized them as a team captain. I followed the rules throughout the entire season, but by the time the season ended I realized that the community wasn't really following the rules at all. What even surprised me more, was that the administrators didn't want me to follow some of the rules. 

    The best example here would be regarding forfeit wins. Being an extremely punctual person, I expected everyone to be on time. If the enemy the team wasn't on time, I could simply get a forfeit win and get ready for the next match. It was supposed to be simple as that. However, every time I would ask a question regarding forfeits, the first thing an admin would say is that 'we try to avoid forfeits'. Despite the rules clearly stating situations that give forfeit wins, the admins just turn it down. It should not even be up to an admin if a team gets a forfeit win or not. A team doesn't come to the match at the scheduled time, so they lose. A forfeit win is supposed to be a consequence, not a decision. The constant looming threat of a forfeit win forces every team to be on time, making the entire season flow neatly from start to end. However, since the forfeit win system is thrown out of the window, there is no rule (haHAA) or order to match punctuality, and the tournament itself. One time I brought up the possibility for a forfeit win as a warning against the enemy team, they just laughed it off and the match ended up being 50 minutes late by the time everyone from the enemy team arrived. The Asiafortress community is still filled with immature humans that need to be forced to be on time, and the rule of a forfeit win is supposed to be that force. 

    The motto for this particular season seemed to be “case-by-case”, where every single match was an exception from being punished for not following the rules. Whenever a player didn’t follow the rules, they were allowed to not follow the rules. By the time the season ended, there was no merit or reason to follow the rules since nobody got punished. The concept of “case-by-case” should be completely removed from the community because there simply aren’t enough admins to actually follow every single ‘case’ properly. This is why rules exist in this world in the first place; it’s supposed to be a guideline that every human in that community follows because the court (admin) doesn’t have the time to deal with every single ‘case’ in the world.

    The easiest way to fix the current state of sluggishness and chaos of this community would be to enforce rules, removing space for exceptions as much as possible. As some admins have told me before, if the rules were never made to be enforced, then it’s time we changed that. The rules itself don’t need to be that strict, it just needs to be executed strictly. This will tighten up the community from all sides, and should make every tournament in the future look much more ‘professional’. 

 

DIVISIONS 

    This season had a walloping 24 teams registering in division 3! That’s amazing! Oh wait, there were only 5 teams in division 1 and 10 teams in division 2. The distribution of teams among each division could have definitely been done better, to say the least. 2 or more of the teams from division 3 would’ve probably been able to play in a higher division, and the exact same thing could be said for division 2 as well. There isn’t much that the administrators can actually do to distribute players fairly because they don't know the skill level of every single player. The only way every player can be distributed to a fair division is to have them team up with players at the same skill level as each other. It is always disappointing to see playoff matches ending with 5-0 5-0, hopefully next season it will work out better. 

 

PLAYOFFS MAP SELECTION

     Basically, the map pool for this season's playoffs was rigged. Despite having 7 maps used in the regular season, teams only had 5 maps to choose from in every BO3, and it went like this:

UBSF - Badlands Process Gullywash Snakewater Granary 

LBSF/UBF- Process Snakewater Granary Reckoner Product

LBF - Badlands Process Gullywash Snakewater Product

We can see that Process and Gullywash were the only 2 maps in all 3 map pools of playoffs. This means that statistically, the team that was the strongest in Process and Gullywash had the highest chance of winning these 3 playoff matches, not to mention that Reckoner only had a chance of being played once. To prevent the playoffs from being unfair by default, we could simply implement the pick/ban style using in i61. The team with the higher status (the home team) will be able to ban 3 maps, giving every match a chance to at least choose from all maps.

screen_shot_2017_10__BWNnX.jpg.6bef2540feed87ad969a064789278633.jpg

   

Summary :

  • Enforce rules, change the rules so they can be enforced throughout the season.
  • Recommend and support players to create teams with other players that are around the same skill level as them. This will make it easier for admins to determine what division to put the teams in.
  • Have every single map in the playoffs map pool for a fair map selection.

 

Other stuff that require fixing

  • Despite the match thread recommending us to upload our demos to the demo uploads page, it doesn't exist anymore after the website migration. Please create another demo uploads page. 
  • The current class limit is supposed to have 1 pyro and 2 spies, but somehow in some servers the AFL config allows 2 pyros and 1 spy instead. This needs to be fixed since every mach could be overturned with the usage of incorrect class limits.
  • The rules state that we use the latest global whitelist, but the link was broken and it was unclear if the jarate and vaccinator was allowed or not, creating problems. This also needs to be fixed to prevent further conflicts from happening.

Personal Requests

  • Casters should also get permission from both teams if they want to cast from spectators. However it is still recommended to cast from STV which is done in ESEA and ETF2L.
  • Consider doing captain bans upon request, if multiple team captains complain about a certain team captain it would be better to utilize bans rather than letting the community get intoxicated. 
  • The community needs better administrators that actually have the ability and the commitment to administrate. me
  • Consider straight up adding maps such as cp_sunshine and cp_metalworks and maybe add a week to the regular season, it won't be much of a change as long as they are executed in an orderly fashion. In fact, it'll still be shorter than this season which was actually 13 weeks long because of all the postponements.

Thanks for reading through.

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21 hours ago, harvey said:

not needed if you use swiss system

 

the edit button is a thing

of course, but the placement wouldn't be accurate

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20 hours ago, reaper said:

 

-Have someone to also be the bridge to TF.TV where we can also provide insights and let them know what's going on over here. Provide them with team name and players so at least the world would know TF2 community is internationally close (somewhat). I maybe can suggest concor to step up and maybe be the bridge and help out both Asiafortress and TF.TV and help provide contents. Start putting out ads on whomever wants to help out with content writing and etc. and not only rely on 1 or 2 people.

Whaddup you rang? We've been trying to talk to TFTV (I'm a bloody staff), it ain't happening. TFLIVE / CappingTV is our best bet for international coverage. I could try and talk to TFTV again, but chances are slim. 

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I rmb in AFC 10, the playoff prediction and overview articles really hyped ppl up for the season. In AFC 11 , I was specifically looking forward to my team being covered in that small article.

Obviously there was no such thing present this season, so it would be neat to have these small little tidbits to return , if only to make us look good, and to leave a good impression on newbies.

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1 hour ago, Justintayz12345 said:

I rmb in AFC 10, the playoff prediction and overview articles really hyped ppl up for the season. In AFC 11 , I was specifically looking forward to my team being covered in that small article.

Obviously there was no such thing present this season, so it would be neat to have these small little tidbits to return , if only to make us look good, and to leave a good impression on newbies.

There was a playoffs article written but not published for AFC11. iirc vetia and moose wrote most of the articles but I'm sure they need more help with them, maybe you should volunteer because I enjoyed reading whatever coverage that was written over the past few seasons. 

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I prefer Pick-Ban systems over predetermined maps + ban system, could work on that. Also, end-of-season awards, possibly voted by the community if the admins aren't familiar with players. Mercenary usage was abused pretty heavily in div 3 this cup, mainly because of the sheer skill difference between the top of div 3 and the bottom of div 3, so mercenary usage should be rank-based(eg. Can only use mercs from team rank or below) and/or make it necessary to have permission from the opponent team.

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Thanks for all the feedback! Do keep in mind however, that not every suggestion will be implemented, but all will be taken into serious consideration. Thanks once again, keep them coming if theres more.

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oh I forgot one thing but I don't really wanna edit my original post cos nobody will read it

 

please put up match threads on time!! its frustrating especially for playoffs when we dont even know what map we're playing and it's like wednesday so we have no idea what maps to scrim (cos not all maps are in the pool for each playoff week)

if possible, the best would be to include all maps in the afc rules thread (for example, what maps for UB semis, what maps for UB finals, grand finals etc)

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On 10/14/2017 at 7:23 PM, harvey said:

not needed if you use swiss system

 

the edit button is a thing

I do think there needs to be something done for Div 3, if its gonna have a lot of teams again next season. I admit that I don't quite understand how the swiss system works, but my feeling is that my team got a rather tough draw mid season. Abomination Nekos faced 2f, ROMA, and EXB back to back during the pre playoffs phase, and while there were some close maps, losing against 2f and barely losing to EXB, those matches were enough to reduce our playoffs chances to 0% by round 6, while some teams got easier draws in my opinion. I wonder if there's any seeding system in place, or if its just random? Were we meant to face other higher tier Div 3 teams? How are matchups decided when theres a lot of teams in the division? Because I thought that the toughest, most deciding matches were supposed to be saved for the end, like the playoffs. At least, thats how it is in more conventional tournaments. 


I guess this isn't really feedback so much as it is confusion. This could possibly fall under the admin transparency thing you mentioned. 

Edited by Enganox

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I made suggestions beforehand but I don't know if the admins even care about it so I'll put it here instead. Please read it.

 

AFC12 ruleset is a hideous blot: 

https://asiafortress.com/index.php?/blogs/entry/36-afc12-ruleset-is-a-hideous-blot/

 

AFC Suggestive Ruleset [WIP]

https://asiafortress.com/index.php?/forums/topic/5410-afc13-suggestive-rule-set-wip/#comment-40363

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On 15/10/2017 at 10:49 PM, concor said:
On 15/10/2017 at 1:55 AM, reaper said:

-Have someone to also be the bridge to TF.TV where we can also provide insights and let them know what's going on over here. Provide them with team name and players so at least the world would know TF2 community is internationally close (somewhat). I maybe can suggest concor to step up and maybe be the bridge and help out both Asiafortress and TF.TV and help provide contents. Start putting out ads on whomever wants to help out with content writing and etc. and not only rely on 1 or 2 people.

Whaddup you rang? We've been trying to talk to TFTV (I'm a bloody staff), it ain't happening. TFLIVE / CappingTV is our best bet for international coverage. I could try and talk to TFTV again, but chances are slim. 

From the side of CappingTV we've been quite open to cover matches that show interest to people, and our Oceania casters are quite fond of the Asian scene. We hope that we can continue to help out AsiaFortress and hope that the admins continue to support us in doing that.

TFTV though don't seem to be interested. However it would be a nice suggestion to have a journalist to update people (like concor).

More casting hubs other than Rednaxelawee (Not a huge problem as of right now since we have tflive and cappingtv guided by our lord and saviour mitchcliff1234567890)

your really funny lol

 

Edited by Mitch

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^Yeah, I do wonder about the player limit. I think I get why it was lowered-- whats the point of having so many subs that those subs could make their own team? But it seems to me many players aren't interested in starting a new team, don't have the time, or feel they couldn't do it well. So that extra 2 sub slots could go to players who would have otherwise not participated in AFC at all. 

 

Just a thought. 

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Many people feel like the roster limit is a problem, and here may be a better way to fix it.  

Since theres so many participants in Division 3, might as well increase the player count, as it won't make much difference. The commitment level of each player should be lower in the lower divisions,  so having sub slots are necessary. As for Division 1, the commitment and time put in has to be more,  so I don't really see a need for so many subs (maybe 8?). Maybe the admins can restrict the roster limit based on division. 

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One thing I would like implemented is the ETF2L Playoff Map Pick system, rather than the current AFC system, as it seems cleaner, and there was a bit of confusion regarding the rule: "Grand finals: Higher Seeded team gets to ban 2 maps and select map order." since both teams in Div 3 GF banned maps rather then the higher seeded team, although I suppose this just falls into the category of cleaning up the rules.

 

Case 2: For any matches where both teams are unequally seeded (e.g. playoffs), the following system has to be used.

  1. The higher seeded team can decide if they want to start or if the other team should.
  2. Team A eliminates a map
  3. Team B eliminates a map
  4. Team B picks a map
  5. Team A picks a map
  6. The higher seeded team chooses the decider map from the remaining three maps.

 

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