The 2016 UGC League Fall Season is Starting!

tf2.com

L13: Stunning Member
Jun 16, 2010
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Prepare yourself, the UGC League Fall Season is about to start! Join the 1,000 teams that played last season for some competitive TF2 action! The first week of matches starts late this month: September 21st for 6v6, September 24th for 4v4, and September 26th for Highlander.


UGC has over 9,000 players in divisions across North America, South America, Europe, Asia, and Australia/New Zealand. Players from any of these regions are encouraged to sign up and join the fun! Remember, October 4th is the last day that teams can sign up. Visit the UGC website for more information.

Read on the TF2 Blog...
 

leprecan

L2: Junior Member
Feb 10, 2013
96
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For those interested in maplist news:

"In our last Platinum Advisory meeting we have guaranteed the following 7 maps to be put into rotation for Season 20: Upward, Product, Borneo, Swiftwater, Steel, Lakeside and Ashville. At the time of the meeting we have determined Snowycoast was going to be the 8th map, however, due to concerns with the map we may shelve the map in favor of Millstone - pending testing done by the Platinum Advisory."

I'm assuming thats @ics pl_millstone? If so, congrats on getting into Highlander testing!

Also noteworthy, the Razorback is banned for this season. Roaming Sniper is an even weaker option, expect Snipers to hug their combo and Medic even more than before. Jarate and Cozy Camper are the two vying options for the secondary slot, and with the Camper having been nerfed somewhat by MyM, Jarate is the likeliest choice to see. With all of the strong Sniper maps listed above (Lakeside, Swiftwater, Ashville), the season looks good for testing how drastic the weapon ban's effects are.
 

ics

http://ics-base.net
aa
Jun 17, 2010
841
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I'm assuming thats @ics pl_millstone? If so, congrats on getting into Highlander testing!

Thanks.


I can confirm it's the one and i'll propably change few things in it. I've had some feedback mainly about few bugs from which some are also present in the halloween version but i'll get those sorted in both. There has also been a bit talk about changing the last area of the map a bit on the regular version but i'm waiting some additional input on that.

They already have the event version in the game, so I don't see why not.

I'm not too confident about that but if the highlander stuff goes well, then maybe it has a chance to get in.

To me it seems that valve is adding maps that generally has about ~8000 views or more on the workshop at the time of getting into the game. So if you submit map at a wrong time into the workshop, it may not collect as much votes and thus gets no attention from valve, even if the map would be solid enough.

This is generally a flaw within the workshop. If the map submitted does not generate enough views within 7 days when it submitted into the workshop, it never will. It will get buried, it will never come up from low views again. I've been doing some studying along when i have used workshop and submitted stuff into it. CSGO and TF2 both.

So within those 7 days beginning from submission, a large portion of views comes from the direct page of Team Fortress 2 (page where you can start it from) when you are viewing it in Steam detail mode. That way the top 3 maps will usually be shown in the page itself and they generate a lot of views from that alone.

Other views come out from the main page of the workshop of TF2. You get your map "started" with enough votes, lets say reddit, it will get some boost and stays on the 1st page for the duration of the 7 days. A lot of votes, a lot of interest from players.

But luckily, having a lot of votes in the workshop is not the only meter Valve uses when adding maps. But it is, a one factor.
 

Fruity Snacks

Creator of blackholes & memes. Destroyer of forums
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Sep 5, 2010
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This is generally a flaw within the workshop. If the map submitted does not generate enough views within 7 days when it submitted into the workshop, it never will. It will get buried, it will never come up from low views again. I've been doing some studying along when i have used workshop and submitted stuff into it. CSGO and TF2 both.

So within those 7 days beginning from submission, a large portion of views comes from the direct page of Team Fortress 2 (page where you can start it from) when you are viewing it in Steam detail mode. That way the top 3 maps will usually be shown in the page itself and they generate a lot of views from that alone.

Other views come out from the main page of the workshop of TF2. You get your map "started" with enough votes, lets say reddit, it will get some boost and stays on the 1st page for the duration of the 7 days. A lot of votes, a lot of interest from players.

But luckily, having a lot of votes in the workshop is not the only meter Valve uses when adding maps. But it is, a one factor.

It's not a flaw. It's called ~marketing~

okay, maybe it's a dash of a flaw.
 

leprecan

L2: Junior Member
Feb 10, 2013
96
89
It's not a flaw. It's called ~marketing~

okay, maybe it's a dash of a flaw.

Has Steam ever released metrics on people using the Voting Queue system? That Queue dredges up some weird stuff from the bottom, but in the workshop, the queue only applies to cosmetics. Though the only way I've seen my freinds clear their queues has been for Summer Trading Cards.
 

Fruity Snacks

Creator of blackholes & memes. Destroyer of forums
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Sep 5, 2010
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Has Steam ever released metrics on people using the Voting Queue system? That Queue dredges up some weird stuff from the bottom, but in the workshop, the queue only applies to cosmetics. Though the only way I've seen my freinds clear their queues has been for Summer Trading Cards.

Not publically.
 

EArkham

Necromancer
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Aug 14, 2009
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"At the time of the meeting we have determined Snowycoast was going to be the 8th map..."

Why would they even consider Snowycoast for comp? It does everything comp players hate, lol.

Well, if they ever let me know what their concerns are directly or in the thread, I'd be more than happy to take a look at making changes, but frankly I've never considered it as comp viable.
 

Yrr

An Actual Deer
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Sep 20, 2015
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Why would they even consider Snowycoast for comp? It does everything comp players hate, lol.

Well, if they ever let me know what their concerns are directly or in the thread, I'd be more than happy to take a look at making changes, but frankly I've never considered it as comp viable.
I assume #1 would be making it Daytime and Not Snowy, for visibility purposes.
 

ics

http://ics-base.net
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Jun 17, 2010
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Why would they even consider Snowycoast for comp? It does everything comp players hate, lol.

Well, if they ever let me know what their concerns are directly or in the thread, I'd be more than happy to take a look at making changes, but frankly I've never considered it as comp viable.

I saw these notes regarding snowycoast while back when they told me about millstone and asked if i would like to have another look at it. http://www.ugcleague.net/forum/showthread.php?51411-pl_snowycoast&p=281369&viewfull=1#post281369

I assume #1 would be making it Daytime and Not Snowy, for visibility purposes.

I don't think so. Removing snowcame up when i talked with some of them but even the low fps guy who was testing had a good framerate so removing the snow is off the table, atleast for now. As for snowycoast, i think it isn't anything without the snow. It just doesn't have "the thing" without it.
 

Yrr

An Actual Deer
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Sep 20, 2015
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I don't think so. Removing snowcame up when i talked with some of them but even the low fps guy who was testing had a good framerate so removing the snow is off the table, atleast for now. As for snowycoast, i think it isn't anything without the snow. It just doesn't have "the thing" without it.
Snow isn't just about framerate it's about visibility too, identifying colours against flat white as well as depth perception on a texture with no details.
 

Crowbar

Spiritual preprocessor
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Dec 19, 2015
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snowy theme requires icicles and snow on rooftops and other stuff that in enough of an amount takes some fps too.
 

EArkham

Necromancer
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Aug 14, 2009
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Nah, the icicles and rooftop snow don't have enough polygons to meaningfully impact fps. They also use the same snow vtf as the ground blend texture, though I don't know if Source creates a new texture drawcall if there's a unique vmt or not (lots of texture drawcalls is one place where you'll see performance hits add up fast).

Go past the first choke, just past the first point. There's bright spotlights and predominately snow on a slope and it's quite stark there. That's a great example of what Yrr is talking about with visibility.

Leprecan sent me a link to that UGC thread after I posted earlier. Fwiw, nobody ever contacted me so this is first I'm hearing of it.
 

Yrr

An Actual Deer
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Sep 20, 2015
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Yea it's not a map-specific thing or anything, it's just a snow thing, and the reason most "pro" maps get changed to being Alpine grass instead.

Not that most people actually know this, FPS is the usual parroted line but most people don't actually know anything about how it affects color recognition (especially for the colorblind) or depth perception.
 

Crowbar

Spiritual preprocessor
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Dec 19, 2015
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BTW it's a bit boring to see all the pro maps being alpine. I know, green contrasts well with both team colors, but doesn't, say, Granary's ground do that job? And I've seen no complaints about Badlands being rather reddish.
Well this is just me complaining or something else to call it, nothing real important.
 

Yrr

An Actual Deer
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Sep 20, 2015
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I agree, I'm sick of the alpine theme and would love to see other themes used more (especially original theme ideas!).
 

Zed

Certified Most Crunk™
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Aug 7, 2014
1,241
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Barnblitz Pro should have been farm-themed tbh
 

fubarFX

The "raw" in "nodraw"
aa
Jun 1, 2009
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BTW it's a bit boring to see all the pro maps being alpine. I know, green contrasts well with both team colors, but doesn't, say, Granary's ground do that job? And I've seen no complaints about Badlands being rather reddish.
Well this is just me complaining or something else to call it, nothing real important.
the reason why pro maps are alpine is because the base maps were snowy alpine. you don't want to retheme everything