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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. 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.

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.