Forum

Please use this thread to offer your feedback on:

– The Dead Ringer Ban
– The Razorback Ban
– The structure/schedule of the cup

Last time there was a ban I had a lot of fun for a week
Felt like I could do a lot better because I used the invis a lot in the past but switched to DR because its a lot more braindead since the speed buff letting you get to any pack you want
I’d be all for it to be honest, even if it does make me and others a bit worse for a while, it’ll do a good job of weeding out spies who ended up in high divisions without much experience outside of playing ambassador only on skial badwater

Sounds really fun. Like Woolen said, last time this happened, most of the amby DR spies seemed quite lost ! Looking forward to that.

I agree with a razorback ban. Playing with this ban in UGC scrims has been enjoyable since it’s less likely that teams will be stuck in stalemates where one team needs a sniper pick to push but they can’t get one because he’s relentlessly protected.

As far as the dead ringer… meh. I can see the argument for it, and the razorback ban makes it fair for spies – in fact I see a lot more spies switching off the DR in UGC scrims because they know they can get at least an easy sniper frag. Not sure if it’s a needed ban, but happy to test it.

Regarding the maps I like the concept of having a preseason cup with well-known maps to test the waters for new teams – maybe one of the three maps could have been switched with an “experimental” map but idk if there are any good ones to try. koth_bagel maybe? They seem to like it in 6s…

RB ban has been tried and tested over the past couple of seasons in UGC. From personal experience, I didn’t notice any difference. I don’t understand this belief that the meta currently is “we cannot push unless we get a Sniper pick – and he is running the RB, so that’s impossible”. This ETF2L season we have seen a lot more use of the Jarate (which many people complain is too OP in the 6v6 whitelist) at certain times and on certain maps, so people aren’t 100% relying on the RB. Milchmann ran Jarate constantly when playing for us, and in the UB final, tracker used it to great effect against us on Coalplant.

DR ban was discussed (at length…) before the start of the season. In my opinion, removing it reduces the adaptability of the Spy, or at least limits the options in their approach. I don’t agree when people say it is overpowered; in it’s previous state you could tank more damage, the cloak lasted longer, the drain was not as much when you triggered and you could pick up ammo while cloaked. It was nerfed heavily after Season 8 of HL. The addition of the speed buff since then has, for some reason, caused people to flip out and claim it is uncounterable.

I think, in general, we should be opening up our whitelist and trying to test as many weapons as we can, rather than running a cup where just two are banned. I would have preferred a cup where there were no weapon bans at all, to see what loadout changes there were, and which weapons that are currently banned were used and if those bans are justified. If we want to be more welcoming to the average pubber, having a more open and free whitelist is a better idea than banning weapons that are used by a large majority of the casual community. Before last season, a lot of people (from lower tiers, or first-timers) told me they weren’t bothering to play Highlander because the DR was banned and “it made it boring”, for example.

The schedule seems a bit stretched out. Might have been better to have the group stage one day, and the knockout stage the next? Could prove difficult as it’s right in the middle of the 6v6 season.

This all seems like negative feedback – I am however happy to see a cup, and I’m glad the maps chosen are commonly played maps, to really test out these bans.

Quoted from CeeJaey

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We have had bad experiences before by trying to cram in too many games as all you need is one game to over run and the whole schedule gets ruined. Hence why this one has more time than may appear necessary. Also we only have friday-sunday to run the cup due to the 6v6 season, which is why it cant be during the week.

As I said on the news post this is just one cup, this doesnt mean we are going for this whitelist in any future event. We did consider doing a more experimental whitelist with some controversial weapon unbans however as this is the first offseason highlander cup we have done in quite some time we do not know what signup numbers will be like. So we are going with a safer cup first.

“This whitelist is only for testing and use in this cup, it does not indicate what any future season or cup will use.”

All knockout rounds will be played on pl_upward with golden cap.

So we are actually going to have BO3 of upward in the quarter-, semi- and grandfinals?

Sounds pretty sweet.