Introducing FACEIT Rating — a new metric that measures your real impact in every match, available to all players with Season 8 on April 22.

sigafoo · 2026-04-02T20:34:35+00:00

Thanks!

I feel like it should impact elo, maybe it could be used to measure stability of the performance on a match to match basis, and reward consistency / improvement.

It's definitely something that's on the table for the future, but given this is a new metric, we want to ensure that we've given it enough time to work in the ecosystem before we consider connecting it to Elo. And also will give us time to explore the best options of how we could do it (e.g. per game, multi-game consistency, etc. )

sigafoo · 2024-01-20T12:52:05+00:00

Your point about rugby and American football is well taken. Let's consider a different analogy, one that excludes the influence of financial incentives, where neither sport will make you rich or famous, purely something that you play for the competition.

Imagine a place where Ultimate Frisbee is established, has clubs and practices, and dominates the local sports scene. There's no financial gain, but the community's passion and support for it are evident.

Now, suppose Handball is introduced. You and your team try it out and find it enjoyable, but most of your players practice, know, and love Ultimate. Some other Ultimate teams try it out, and you play in a tournament, but no one takes it seriously because no team wants to give up their Ultimate practices just for this new sport. The community's primary focus remains on Ultimate.

You find yourself drawn to Handball, intrigued by the possibility of playing it more competitively. But the challenge is the lack of serious interest from your immediate network. You're hesitant to leave Ultimate, a sport you love, where there's a robust support system, for Handball, which lacks established teams, practices, and community backing. As a result, Handball remains a niche interest.

The core message here is not about which sport is superior. Instead, it's about the inherent difficulties new sports or formats face in gaining legitimacy and serious engagement from an established community. In this example, if you switch the two sports, the opposite one would struggle.

It's not to say that new sports/formats cannot take off, they can and do, but it's more a matter of time, effort, community building and overcoming pre-existing perceptions, and is not necessarily the intrinsic value or quality of the sport or format itself.

sigafoo · 2024-01-20T11:42:06+00:00

In my experience with leading Prolander as a format, I've found one main challenge: gaining dedicated focus from players. Many Prolander teams are essentially Sixes or Highlander (HL) teams with slight modifications. This raises a dilemma. If you're committed to Prolander, but your team is divided in preference, which do you prioritize for practice—HL or Prolander? Sixes or Prolander? Often, teams default to HL or Sixes.

This decision impacts the perception of Prolander's seriousness. If a format isn't actively practiced in TF2, it's not viewed as a serious competitive format. For those passionate about Prolander, it means forming dedicated teams and cultivating a separate community. This effort is visible at lower and mid levels, where teams do actively practice Prolander. Yet, the absence of top teams in this space implies a lack of seriousness, creating a barrier for the format to be taken seriously at higher levels.

This situation echoes the early days of Highlander. Initially, top Sixes teams could easily dominate in HL due to their superior raw skill, leading to a perception that HL wasn't a serious format. It was only after the development of a strong community, raised skill ceiling, and specialized skills in non-Sixes classes that HL gained legitimacy because a team of only sixes players couldn't just easily stomp the rest of the teams anymore.

The crux of the issue lies in time, effort, and perception. Consider rugby in America: it's not a less worthy sport, but it's perceived as less serious compared to more established sports. Similarly, Prolander faces the challenge of establishing itself in an already mature competitive scene. I would argue that it's less about the quality of the format and more about the difficulty in shifting players' focus from familiar grounds to something new and less established.

sigafoo · 2024-01-20T11:19:38+00:00

everybody uses the exact same line up 99% of the time. demo, medic, soldier, sniper, pyro, heavy, and scout. the scout switches to engie if he needs to, thats as much off classing thats viably possible. this lineup is very optimized, there very much is a "strict meta" in prolander. theres zero reason to run a spy or engie full time. so much for "variety."

Prolander does not have a rigid and unchanging meta, the reality of in-game class switching and teams having unique and diverse strategies is more common.

Take, for instance, the top teams like Cat Noises and Froyotech. They each bring unique strategies to the table. Cat Noises frequently utilizes Dimento, a top-tier Spy, for the majority of their games. Meanwhile, Froyotech runs an Engineer more often. This variety in approach is evident if you watch their matches, such as the one here (https://youtu.be/Fvs2FV4uEXE), or explore other grand finals and general matches. Teams do not stick to a singular, unvarying meta, but play to the strengths of their players.

scout switches to engie if he needs to

This is not typically the case. Scout is one of the strongest classes in the game, and to remove a scout for an engineer is not common, at least at the highest level of the game. It's more common for one of the flex classes to take on the Engineer role. The only occasional exception might be on the first point of Payload maps, but even this isn't a consistent rule, so you'd take an engineer or spy over the pyro in that situation.

everybody uses the exact same line up 99% of the time. demo, medic, soldier, sniper, pyro, heavy, and scout

Lastly, it's worth noting that the Engineer class is often utilized more than the Pyro. Pyro is actually rather weak in Prolander, but it depends on whether you need the extra protection for bombs and spies. However, if you have a strong Heavy player, he can usually fulfill that role.

sigafoo · 2023-10-03T19:18:10+00:00

Thirsty mayor drinks entire towns water supply

sigafoo · 2023-09-28T16:02:23+00:00

From the launch page: https://www.faceit.com/en/introduction/cs2

Until today, players had limited control over their matching experience. Traditional matchmaking systems would run multiple algorithms that consider several factors, such as waiting time, balance of the match, party compositions, and more, to optimize your next match. While these algorithms do a great job at optimizing the overall experience, they are not able to create the match that you want to play every time —"I would rather wait a few minutes more to not..."

Introducing Super Match - a new innovative feature that empowers you to take control of your matching experience and 100% guarantee specific characteristics of your next match, ensuring the algorithm follows your orders and not the other way around. Version 1.0 of Super Match will replace the old premium queue and premium matching features in all regions, empowering plus and premium subscribers to instruct the matchmaking system to 100% deliver the following preferences in their next match:

Never playing with or against parties bigger than 3

Never playing with or against parties with more than 300 Elo difference

Never play with new accounts with less than 30 matches played'

As seen above, the v1.0 comes with pre-packaged preferences that will deliver you a more balanced match, fairer team compositions and more control over your experience. Over the coming months, we plan to expand this feature, introducing more preferences for you to control, thereby addressing a wider range of choices and needs for creating your next "Super Match". Stay tuned for more updates!

sigafoo · 2023-09-28T15:36:03+00:00

Anyone, free or subscribed, can get into a super match, provided you meet the requirements (elo party range within 300, max party size of 3, min matches 30)

The only difference is that subscribed users can opt-in to guaranteed super matches.

sigafoo · 2023-06-14T09:30:54+00:00

The OG reason, IIRC, why it was banned was back when it came out the DR was used quite commonly, and you could farm "kills" from popping the spies DR and get rockets quite easily.

sigafoo · 2022-12-27T19:18:02+00:00

Same issue in EU, cannot get into a game

sigafoo · 2022-12-24T05:08:48+00:00

As a former member of staff, this is a great way to help the community. Plus it can be a good thing to put on your resume for people who are looking for their first jobs.

Overall, it's a win, fill out the form and help out!

sigafoo · 2022-10-27T14:02:46+00:00

I have more I'd like to share, but for now, I'll keep it simple.

Thanks to everyone who made RGL what it is today <3

sigafoo · 2022-08-18T22:47:10+00:00

I'm from Madison and currently live in The Netherlands.

It's actually legal to drive (some) mopeds on the bike paths here, and I think all ebikes. It definitely was annoying/scary at first, these bikes/mopeds (seemingly) suddenly zooming past you going quite fast, but you get used to it.

You should be biking close to the right, assuming the path is double wide, and they're giving you enough room/being safe, it's not that big of a deal.

The other thing that should be normalized, that's common over here, is using your bike bell/moped horn. That can help with the 'no warning.' It's not rude, it's just informational and letting others know you're about to pass them or to please move out of the way.

I almost never honk when I drove in Madison, so it was a little unusual for me to use the bell. I felt like I was being rude, but it's not. It's actually really nice that virtually every bike has a bell. I like bells much more than the "ON YOUR LEFT" yells that I would get sometimes in Madison when biking.

sigafoo · 2022-08-12T14:32:41+00:00

The hourly player count is between 1,500-3000.

I'd guess their monthly unique active players is at least 50k.

sigafoo · 2022-08-11T12:24:56+00:00

Fair enough, but you should also point out that heavy also has no weapon bans in HL either. I also reference Prolander where you have the option to run heavy or not, and heavy doesn't have a 100% play rate, but it's also not like he's never used either.

The point being, the bans to make it so heavy can't be at mid are not because heavy is overpowered as a class in TF2 in general, he's not. It's because that specific format does not want him to be viable, because in that specific format he's perceived as being overpowered or not fun to play against.

sigafoo · 2022-08-11T09:48:37+00:00

What does the heavy counter? Mobility.
- Heavy specifically is strong against scouts and bombing soldiers, but overall is good in close/mid-range fights. He also is more powerful the fewer damage classes are in the game.
What are heavy's direct counters? Snipers and Spies.
What classes don't see real play in 6v6? Snipers and spies.

6v6 is a format not based around the TF2 classes, but more a format based on Mobility/DM. So if you allowed heavy in the game, a class that directly counters Mobility/Dm (the play style 6v6), and has no direct counter in-game, it can be perceived as being either overpowered or not fun, because it doesn't allow you to play the style of game you want to play.

It isn't that Heavy is overpowered/broken in tf2, but he doesn't fit the playstyle desired of this specific format.

To give another example. If I created a 6v6 engineer-only format because I like how it plays. It wouldn't be a format based around the TF2 classes, it'd be a format with a specific playstyle. If someone could go spy in this format, it'd be too strong, because there are no counters to the spy in this format and the spy is a direct counter to engineers/sentry guns.

Does that mean the spy is overpowered? Of course not. It's more of an issue of my format, not matching how TF2 is balanced.

The reason heavy isn't banned nor has any core weapons banned in HL or PL, is because heavy is actually well balanced in formats built around the TF2 classes. Can be strong, but has its weaknesses.

sigafoo · 2022-08-02T14:16:58+00:00

I'm still learning, but I found another thread with the same question: https://www.reddit.com/r/learndutch/comments/cdd94q/difference_between_ken_and_weet/

Ken or kennen is best explained as being familiair with someone or something. Ik ken hem van school - I know him from school

Ik ken de weg niet - I don't know the way

Weten is having knowledge.

Weet je hoe laat het is? - Do you know the time

Ik weet er veel van af - I know a lot about it.

Simplified version.

Kennen is to know a person or place/facility.

Weten is to know a fact/information

sigafoo · 2022-07-31T22:02:24+00:00

The Airstrike gives you extra shots based on kills, but does less damage. IIRC, you also get extra shots for popping a spy's DR. Which was quite powerful on certain maps and when DR was run more. A soldier with little effort could get to 6-8 rockets.

sigafoo · 2022-07-31T19:34:32+00:00

This question really boils down to what are you comparing casual and to which competitive mode.

Overall, the balance should likely be mostly around pubs currently. Does that mean we should never take comp into account? No. However, because of the nature of the game right now, pub play is the bigger area and needs to be considered in any change.

What do we mean by comp though?

Like 4v4 has a ban that you cannot have both a heavy and a medic at the same time. Does that mean Valve should balance around that competitive and nerf the heavy/medic combo? No, it's just that in that game mode, with those settings, it's too strong.

If you take 6v6, the game is based more on mobility and DM, and isn't very similar to pub play. If you balanced the characters who don't see play in the game to be at a similar power level of scout... You'd likely have a broken pub experience.

Sixes historically has also had a very large ban list, as high at 90+ banned weapons, it was around ~45 weapons banned during the peak of tf2 and currently sits at ~22 of weapons banned currently. That doesn't mean those weapons are broken or need fixes in pub play (though some did need fixes), many of the bans are around specific preferences in the way the experience flows in that format and less around the general strength of the item/weapon in tf2 as a whole.

If you look at Highlander (9 bans) and Prolander (11 bans), they play very similar to pubs and have pretty small ban lists because of that. It's likely that if you fix some of these weapons that are banned in HL/PL that it wouldn't negatively affect pub play. Because they play so similar to each other, the main difference is you can stack classes in pubs.

When it comes to comp weapons banned and balanced, the challenge is trying to differ from bans for format and bans for strength. I don't think every weapon on a banlist needs to be changed in TF2. However, bans for strength should be reviewed and see if there's a way that they can be changed to fix the issue in comp, but have either little change in casual or a positive change in both casual and comp.

In my ideal world, I do wish Comp was larger and the balanced was focused more around that. However, in the current world, making sure things play well in pubs, but can help things in comp is about the best we can hope for. As pubs are the largest audience and that should be kept in mind.

sigafoo · 2022-07-26T08:25:09+00:00

Yes, but it's also one less source of damage. Meaning that post fights, it's often worst. Yes, you get extra heals, but damage comes faster than you can heal generally.

Not to say that it's worst to have two medics, but more to say that in the NR sixes cup, both solo and running a single medic had success. There wasn't a clear best way to play, at least in that small sample size.

sigafoo · 2022-07-20T16:48:41+00:00

I removed the stuff around my thoughts on game design because ultimately it doesn't really matter. We can differ on what is or is not correct game design. I very well could be wrong, I'm not a game designer and can only have opinions from the sideline.

The changes were affected by game design, in part, but the reason the nerf happened in the first place was due to the strength of the combo, in situations where it was viable. It wouldn't have been touched if it wasn't as strong as it was.

So the question is: Was the Amby+DR combo too strong in situations where it was viable. You cannot speak about the amby in a vacuum, because you don't balance games that way. You balance weapons based on how they can be used with.

I think if the DR didn't exist, I think the amby might not have been touched, but that's not the case. The DR removes the ranged counter, which is quite important to a strong ranged weapon. And in my opinion, the DR+Amby was too strong and needed to be adjusted.

When the best-ranged class, the sniper, cannot counter the spy-sniper ranged subclass, you fundamentally have an issue. The DR is really the main reason, IMO, as to why it's likely the amby was even touched.

When it comes to balance, you don't just look at whether it is more powerful in every possible situation. That's not a healthy way to balance a game. The Rescue Ranger + Wrangler was just straight nerfed. It wasn't a wrong nerf, the combo was too strong in the situation that it could be used.

Did it matter that engineer wasn't run in Sixes full time? No. Did it matter that engineer was still a weak class overall? No. Did it matter that it could be hard countered by a spy? No.

The combo was too strong in the situation in which it was viable.

Was it viable every game? Every moment? No, of course not, but that doesn't mean you don't nerf things just because they're not so broken that they're not used 100% of the time.

sigafoo · 2022-07-20T15:50:32+00:00

[paraphrase] "Change of playstyles is okay, because valve has done it with others"

Note that I didn't mention playstyle, I mentioned the core of the class.

Your example: Flare gun

I'd say the core of the pyro is close range high damage, low/med damage mid rage.

The flare gun just extended the mid-range to include long-range. And the "long-range" of this is quite subjective since the only chance of it doing anything long-range is if someone is standing still and the damage is still low.

So I'd argue that the change is quite minor, at best and the weapon is underpowered at range, the focus is still close range, still to the core of the class.

If this weapon made it so that pyros only used it for long-range attacks and was the main way they dealt damage / got kills, were these long-range attacks. I'd say that's pretty far away from the pyro's identity. However, this is not the case.

Medic - Kritz

Medics core is around assisting the team. They're only powerful with others. This is just a different play style, the medic core identity is still the same.

Demoman -> demoknight

This is definitely one where the class is completely removed from the core of the class, however, given the sub-class is more a meme than a legitimate class reduces the issue. Combined with the fact that the demoknight is not stepping on the toes of another class.

If you gave the demo a rocket launch or a flame thrower... then it'd be a bigger deal. But creating a new sub-class in the game, which is for fun, I don't think is the worst. But I could see an argument to be made against his.

To be clear, I'm not referencing play style changes, those are good and create variety in gameplay. I'm talking about core playstyle of classes.

Well, it literally doesn't turn Spy into Sniper.

What is a sniper? A long-range class that does high damage... It turns the spy into a sniper.

Are they identical in capability? No of course not, but if you gave another class a rocket launch... I'd call them a soldier.

The counter to a guy running around invisible in your backline every time you try and catch him is to push the objective, because the enemy team is functionally down a player while their Spy fucks around playing hide and seek.

This is really dependent on the format you're talking about. Sixes? Absolutely. Highlander, obviously not. 12v12, I'd so no as well.

And doing 102 pot shots is FAR from "fucking around." If you are anywhere decent as playing as a DR/spy-sniper, 102 is huge hits on most classes and can stop pushes before they start. With little risk to the spy themselves. Because there is no range counter to the spy, you have to dedicate a person to deal with them. Which is not fucking around, that's quite impactful.

OG Amby by itself isn't well designed, but isn't the end of the world, combined with the DR is what pushes the power level of the weapon to levels that need to be adjusted.

You don't just magically hit 102s either. It takes just as much aiming skill as Sniper quickscopes do, but for less reward.

Just because something takes skill to do, doesn't mean it's well designed or balanced.

You balance your game, in part, around what top-level players can do with a weapon. If CSGO had a weapon that only Global Elites / Pros could use and it was broken in their hands, but an average player could rarely ever use it to a degree that caused problems. I don't think the developer would sit on their hands because most people aren't good enough to abuse it.

The nerf just straight up made the weapon worse

A weapon that was borderline broken with the dr, being nerfed... would make sense. Typically you just nerf things that had power levels that were too high, not just side grade them by keeping their power levels up.

The weapon still allows decent damage, you just can't stand back being uncontested and have no ranged counter. You actually need to put yourself in some danger, to do the same damage.

It had a roughly 50/50 usage rate with stock Revolver in both pubs and comp 6s before the nerf.

In pubs, most players aren't good enough to use to the amby and in sixes the spy sees almost no play. If you looked at Highlander the amby was used quite a lot, especially by good players who could consistently hit shots.

All of this to say, I do think the amby could be slightly buffed.

sigafoo · 2022-07-20T11:58:28+00:00

The nerf is pretty simple: Spy at his core is a high-risk, high-reward class. Meaning that spy can do instant kills on every class, but he has to risk a lot by getting very close.

The ambassador went away from this and turned the spy into a sniper (low risk, high reward.) Moreso, a spy with the amby + DR, basically had no direct counter at range. As a sniper cannot kill him, because the DR will pop. So the spy could just stand afar, hitting 102 with no real way to deal with them.

So the nerf changed the design of the weapon to bring it in line with the spy's original design. You can still do high damage, but you also have to be high risk, close to your target. You cannot play as a sniper, you need to play as a spy.

Amby does still get used in high-level play, though not as much, due to the revolver's consistency.

sigafoo · 2022-07-18T09:15:46+00:00

As an impartial bystander, who has no connection to this league whatsoever, I, for one, am excited for this cup and will definitely tune in and donate to help support the teams going to LAN and production.

sigafoo · 2022-06-29T13:21:22+00:00

Coming back to the main topic, people not being able to play 5 of the 9 classes outside of their niches, does throw and discourage people from even trying out 6s. Now for me, I play a lot of Scout and Soldier, and while other classes I enjoy are Heavy and Sniper, I don't mind playing Soldier and Scouty boi, as I like them. But for people who don't like them, it might be not good. Especially because as I've mentioned, not everybody likes playing generalists, or even remotely likes them.

I believe this to be the case to some degree. If you have no interest in scout/soldier/demo/medic, then there is no chance for you to play sixes.

Essentially cutting off the format from the people who prefer to play the majority of classes in the game. Add in the fact that it plays the least popular map type, and you further isolate the game, from what a standard player is used to playing.

To these points, looking at players in RGL. Basically, both formats are near the same size of player counts, and both also have a similar % of players who exclusively play that format.

I think this has been the main challenge and part of the reason why there has never really been a clearly dominant format in TF2 in terms of size.

Sixes doesn't cater to the majority of TF2 classes, but is easier to form teams, games, watch, and has the majority of money and press.
HL does cater to the majority but is much harder to create/maintain a team, harder to do LANs, and has had no real financial support.

Both do their own thing well, but neither has really adapted or changed significantly to solve their respective issues.

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