- Interested in helping out RGL and being a part of the staff team? Open staff positions and applications for SUMMER 2024 can be viewed here.

- Click here to complete S17 Post-Season Survey #1! Survey closes in on Apr 9th @ 11:59PM EDT!

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RGL HL S3 Map Pool, Rule Changes, and More (Part 2)

   exa   - 5/8/2019
RGL HL S3 League Structure, Plans, and More (Part 1)

Important Details


Region
North America

Experimental Cup #2
April 13th - 27th

New Team Registration Ends & Placement of Teams
May 28th

Roster Locks
July 8th

Regular Season
3 June - 15 July

Playoffs
22 July - 5 August

Default Match Day
Monday @ 9:30 PM EST**

Cost
All non-Invite division are free

**Read below to view more about the Invite default match day.


How to find a team to join


Finding a team is not hard, but it does require you to put in a little effort.

New Players to Competitive:

We encourage you to make a post in the websites Looking For Team (LFT) section and also post in our Discord #lft channel.

You should also contact leaders of teams who need a player. You can find them listed in the Teams Looking for Players (LFP) section and also the LFP section of our Discord #lfp channel.

Experienced Players to Competitive:

We particularly encourage you to make a thread on the RGL HL LFT forums section. This will allow you to advertise yourself to higher profile teams.

Browsing the LFP section of the forums will also present you with many teams that are looking to recruit players.

Config Changes


We have updated the network settings on the RGL HL base cfg file. These changes, among others, allows for better interpolation with capping the interp ratio at a higher value and sets a higher sv_minrate to help with laggy players. You can read which settings were changed (as well as a detailed response) in the thread here.

NOTE: If you own a dedicated server, you can update the network settings with the updated rgl_HL_base.cfg file below. These changes will also be pushed for na.serveme.tf and cpu.tf servers.

RGL HL Base CFG File

Thanks to the Comanglia for recommending these changes for the RGL server config.

Map Pool


  • Week 1 - koth_ashville_rc1
  • Week 2 - pl_swiftwater_final1
  • Week 3 - koth_cascade_rc1a
  • Week 4 - pl_vigil_rc5 (updated from rc4)
  • Week 5 - koth_product_rcx (updated from rc9)
  • Week 6 - pl_upward
  • Week 7 - cp_steel

NOTE: The latest versions of each map will be played. Invite and Advanced regular season to be structured based on the number of teams in the division as we near the end of new team registration. The map pool has also been updated in the "Map Pool and Structure" found under the league table.

Experimental Map Cups

There is reason to believe that Proside is not exactly yet league ready, with some issues on the pro version that still need to be fixed (lighting issues, added sniper sightline on ramp, etc.) Although this map offers much needed improvements over its stock version, the agreement was to give this map another season to get ready (with unanimous changes that do not cause further problems with the map), before we introduce it for league play in the following season. Vigil has seen play multiple times (most recently in S1 Invite) and this cup confirmed its viability as a league map. The last map that was tested in the cup was Synthetic, which was a map that was previously tested in the first experimental cup that most recently had changes to the dynamic of the point and the garage. This is a map that takes inspiration from maps like Product, Coalplant, and Warmtic to create an interesting and new king of the hill map. With this being noted, the recent version of Synthetic (RC5) would benefit from more playtesting, before we feel comfortable introducing it for league play. We would like to revisit this map again down the road and gauge community feedback (polls, etc.) to see if it would be able to be swapped out with the traditional KotH maps that are in our pool.

Map Pool

As you may have noticed, the "big three" (Product, Upward, and Steel) have been moved towards the end of the regular season. I discuss the reasons for going forward with this change in my thread here.


Additionally, the idea with having the "newer maps" towards the middle of the season is to generate and encourage more playtesting of these maps to increase and improve overall feedback and suggestions.

Borneo: The voices of the community became clear that this was a map that people want swapped out for the season in favor of another payload map. The map's fundamental design leads to the longest average cap times of any competitive payload map, which does not bode very well in highlander. This map has been swapped in favor of Vigil, a map that had good receptions from the cup, an active map developer, and one of the quicker cap times of any payload map in highlander.

Cascade: Lastly, Cascade has been a map that has been league ready, with an active map developer since its inclusion in other leagues. This is a map that we feel comfortable with introducing in our rotation again (was in the Invite S1 map pool) and is one where the metas of the map have not been fully explored yet. Swapping out Lakeside for this map allows us to begin the tradition of swapping maps in and out every season (Lakeside/Proside will likely make a return for S4) and to introduce variety in our map pool, instead of having the same maps every season.

Staffing Changes


With FATHER being removed from the staffing team, we will be moving our admin positions around. We would like to thank FATHER for helping with Open during Season 2.

The following reflects the updated positions of each admin in RGL HL going into Season 3:

  • Invite – cinder
  • Advanced – Dimento
  • Main – Aad & Witness
  • Intermediate – wax
  • Open – exa_

Placements


Placements are important for any team, specifically for the league structure that we are trying to aim for with Season 3. We have started placing teams into the divisions to allow teams to understand which teams to scrim in their division and to allow us to receive feedback about our placements. Teams that believe they belong in a higher division should be able to defeat at least half of the division above their current division OR dominate most of the top teams in their current division.

Please note that a team’s division is still subject to change as the week goes on or if a team leader can make a compelling case for being in a division. Players that leave and join new rosters during the season will also be monitored, teams with significant changes will regularly be reevaluated and placed in a division. If you believe that a team should be in a different division, you can contact us here on Discord.

Invite Default Match Dates


Invite default match date should be at Monday on 9:30 PM EST. This, however, will come at the cost of the production side, as we will likely not have the best casters to commentate each match and will also be at a time that most players (that are interested) will not be able to watch the stream.

Every week, we plan to look at the match of the week and ask if teams would want to reschedule to a different day to play the match. We will prioritize covering teams that can reschedule their matches from Monday though.

Changes in Rules


We have added a new rule regarding the pick/ban system during playoffs in order to facilitate and ensure that the process is running smoothly.



We have updated our RGL equivalency rules with the soon removal of ESEA TF2 and to also update the skill levels with ETF2L.

NOTE: This is only a BASIC guideline, please consult an admin before joining a team to avoid unintentional sand bagging.


Bans


These bans were enacted before the release of this article.

The following players have been caught cheating by the RGL team and will be banned for one year:


The following player has been banned for continuously toxic behavior with harassing players as well as using derogatory remarks on RGL platforms. Said player has also had a case of sexually harassing an individual and harassing an admin. Ban issued for one year.


The following player has been banned for one year for doxxing and distributing personal information of another RGL member.


You can read further details and context about each of the player's bans by viewing their discipline history on their RGL profile.

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