Hello Everyone,

2016 has been a busy year. After the transition from RGL to TSG we've seen a fairly successful first season of CANZ and started our journey on Rocket League (though it's been a bit of rocky start, I'll admit). We've had a few successful nights on GTA with some big turnouts (and some not so big), and we've begun to explore our options for broadcasting some of the social and competitive content for everyone to enjoy.

So, where do we go in 2017? Let's take a look at each section and how things will be changing in 2017.

CANZ:

As we've already started discussing in the 2017 Structure and Changes thread over in the CANZ section we'll be moving to fixed monthly events for both Forza and pCARS for 2017. Whether that changes in 2018 or not to feature more races more often is a future discussion for the 2018 changes thread. The only change that may come at this point is a change to the day in which we will be racing in 2017. A move away from Thursdays would be a pretty big changeup though so we'll be sure to have a discussion about that and how it affects everyone before we change anything.

On the series front, it's looking likely that we'll be doing V8's again in 2017 with Classic F1's as a support series. Our issues with the current season of Rocket League (discussed in full further down) have meant that our plans to run a second Forza test night had to be postponed and given we have a better idea of things we like in Forza over pCARS we'll need to prioritise a second pCARS night so we can determine what we'll be running on that in 2017.

At this stage we are also operating on the assumption that Caderz's F1 2016 series will be running, but we don't have a timeframe or dates worked out for that yet.

Summary:
1st Thursday* of every month is Forza
3rd Thursday* of every month is pCARS
Starts in Feb, ends in Nov
V8's/Classic F1's on Forza
TBD on pCARS (Test night #2 still to be run)

* Day may change

Soccar Championships:

Okay so this is a bit of a big one. I'm prepared to take the blame for the shimozzle this season has been. We had a pretty good idea that we wanted to run a second season before the end of the year after the first season finished but we sat on it for too long and didn't act until it was a case of "Cram it in and rush the planning for it" or "Don't do it and wait for 2017". Unfortunately the decision was made to rush one together with the new draft format and we've seen the end result. Sure a scheduling conflict for what seems to be half of our players didn't exactly help but that's the nature of the beast. I admit that I got this one wrong.

So where does this go from next year?

We've had some rather frank internal discussions, and those are still ongoing. Everything from sticking to the current season on the day we scheduled it, to moving it around to different days to avoid conflicts and even trashing the whole event and starting again in the New Year. We've also had some discussions about some changes to the format which are also ongoing so we can't really announce anything on that front at this stage, however, some changes will be coming. At this stage our plan is to announce officially the new season for 2017 shortly after New Year, if there ends up being a draft we'll be holding it at the end of January, with a late Feb/early March start. Like I say, however, we're still discussing any changes and can't really annouce anything other than that at the moment.

On another front, the BYOT format has been on our mind for a while, and we're going to be trialling something in the first half of the year. So keep an eye out for the announcement for that in the coming weeks.

Summary:
Season II a mess
Changes coming in 2017
New BYOT format trial coming in 2017
Better planning in 2017

Socials and Other Things:

This is a front we've been really lazy on. Social nights should be much more common than we've been making them and we usually get great footage from them to use in any compilations/trailers/highlights so we definitely need to improve on this front. We'll also be making a greater effort to produce video content for our YouTube channel.

Lastly, if anyone has any ideas/suggestions/thoughts/feedback/scrutiny/input/other on anything in this thread or things we could explore don't hesitate to get in touch with us, either reply here or contact us privately. We're always open to fresh thinking and we could definitely use any help if you're interested in lending a hand anywhere (from organising events/socials, to content, anything helps).

Summary:
More socials


End of broadcast,
Scav3nger out.

So what is Discord and why is there a thread about it?

The use of Facebooks messenger app has become very popular in the community which reduced activity on the forums significantly. While instant messenging has proved to be a very useful tool for organsing our gaming, it is very isolated and is counter productive to tsg being able to grow, as visitors to the website and forum see lack of activity, reducing their ability to engage.

Discord offers all the benefits of messenger, but better in a number of ways. 

1. It is public - so people can join without having to be friends of someone first
   
2. A server can be setup with "channels" that enable slightly more focused conversations e.g. CANZ channel or Rocket League channel 
   
3. It is available to download on IOS and Android devices as well as PC or you can use a web browser.
   
4. It has voice chat so cross platplatform gaming is possible such as PC players on Rocket League teaming up with Xbox players using Discord for chat.
   
5. You can mention people so they get notifications (handy for reminding peeps when something is on)
   

Happy birthday Caderz, dont go getting too serious now that you can legally vote

Anyone interested in playing some rocket league tonight :last night was fun as ! ??

New to the website keen to play in tournaments if anyone needs a player

Anyone up for a rocket league pre-season night tonight, no records kept, just play games and have fun with your new teams?

Interesting discussion coming out of NeoGaf for Infinite Warfare, apparently there's going to be pay-to-win elements to gun crafting.
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1303027

Quote:To craft the best (Epic) version of a gun, you need 5840 salvage (200, then 540, then 1600, then 3500). Assuming you get 10 salvage every game (and that's probably not happening), you need to play 584 games. A COD match takes anywhere between 7-15 minutes to complete - assuming 10 minutes per game, that's 97 hours to complete one gun.

Because that takes some dedication, there is an alternative! You can give Activision a thousand dollars and hope that the Supply Drop RNG loot boxes give you the goods! Supply drops were already horrible in Black Ops 3, because all new guns were put into them, but now they are giving you better versions of guns that are already there. This game also has map pack DLC, so they are getting greedier than ever.

Had a thought that we could come up with some awards that are earned at the end of each Soccar Championship season for various achievements.

Example:

The Scott Sterling Award - given to the player with the most saves at the end of the Home and Away season.


Other awards could be for:
most goals scored
best and fairest for the player with the most MVP's won and highest player value.
Striker award - most shots on goal

etc etc - essentially an award for each of the stats tracked.

The main thing is to come up with names for each award, such as the example I gave above.

If you can think of any post below!

Has anyone here have tried to make a tsg bikers club ? do you think we should make one?