The Highlander Open: How to make sure your match runs smoothly

The Highlander Open created a huge influx of players into ETF2L – more than 250 teams signed up for the tournament,  many of which are completely new to competitive TF2. There are a lot of things to be learned, a ton of knowledge is hidden away in rule sections and new player guides. While we’d like for everyone to read all of the manifold written pieces on ETF2L and on other sites, that’s a somewhat unrealistic notion. So we’ve decided to write this news bit as a quick reminder of how to make sure all your matches run perfectly smoothly and to point towards those various guides if you haven’t found them yet.

If you read the HLO hub page, you will recognise most, if not all information listed here – but two are better than one!

Match preparation

You can see all your future matches in the ETF2L dashboard (click Team Admin top right on the homepage to get there), with links to the respective match pages, and the option to propose match dates. All times on ETF2L are in CEST, so if you’re native to a different timezone, make sure to convert times correctly (check worldtimebuddy – a nifty website to help you with all your time zone needs). When scheduling, make sure to adhere to each match’s deadlines! There are multiple ways to go about scheduling: Communicate via the match page comments and proposals, or try to get your opposition’s leader or war arranger into a Steam chat.

You have to be done with the scheduling process of a match until the scheduling deadline, and you have to actually play the match before the match deadline. On the day after the scheduling deadline an admin will set each still unscheduled match to a default date, based on whatever information that admin can find on the match page in regards to which days & times teams can or cannot play – both proposals and comments will be taken into account. CanFo wrote a guide on getting a good default date. tl;dr: Make sure to document anything relevant on the match page

For a match you’ll have to have some kind of private, i.e. password protected, match server with at least 18 slots and the relevant match configs & settings. If you don’t have one yourself, perhaps you are being backed by a public community that has servers at their disposal, or your opponents have access to one. There’s also the option to borrow a server on serveme.tf  or to request an ETF2L server, courtesy of purepings. Our Newcomer Guide‘s Server, do I need one? section sheds light on how to set up a server and what things you need to look out for.

The actual match

You need to have at least 8 players in a  team to play a 9v9 match. In Highlander, teams can use up to three mercs in total – of which one may be a default merc. Mercs need to be presented to your opponents, default mercs may only by declined if they’re too experienced to play in the HLO, normal mercs however can be rejected without any reason. A player will be listed as unverified for 24h after being added to a team’s roster – during which that player counts as merc for all purposes. Backup players on your roster may be worth their weight in gold!

All your players and mercs need to be registered on ETF2L – using an unlisted player may result in your match being turned into a default win for your opponents!

HLO matches consist of two different maps, you play both. Check out our general rules as to how to play the different game modes. Attack/Defense maps and payload maps are played in a best of one format – each team attacks & defends once, the team with the better time wins.

There are two kinds of screenshots that need to be taken by at least one player in each team: Screenshots of the winpanel or scoreboard when a map ends, and a status screenshot: When all players are connected to the server, open your console, type status and hit enter, and take a screenshot of the output – it will list the SteamIDs of all connected players and our website will be able to process this and link the individual players to their played matches.

All players need to record POV demos in all their matches! There’s a helpful plugin called P-REC for that – if set up properly, it records both POV demos and all necessary screenshots! All your players want to use that.

If you happen to start the match and then notice that the config is wrong or similar, talk to your opponents about it. If it’s early in the match, simply restarting the match with the correct cfg is often the best thing to do. If you are in doubt, request admin support!

If during a match something unforeseen happens and you need to pause the game, you ask your opponents in chat to do so for you. They can pause the game by typing pause into console. Do not pause the game yourself. Details can be found in our general rules, section #3.8

You can also have up to one player switch per map – but make sure to never have more than 9 players on the server at any given time, and take another status screenshot to record the new player’s SteamID.

If your opponents forfeit or do not have enough players to play a match, you may claim a default win. Please request an admin to do so. Have proof – screenshots are usually best – at hand, the admin will help you with that if needed.

The aftermat(c)h

When you’re done with a match, someone will have to submit the results. There’ll be a link for that both in the My Matches section of the dashboard linked above, and on the match page itself. If the submitting person is missing screenshots, any other player can add them here. The team who did not submit the result will have to verify the result – there will be a button for this on the match page. Check everything thoroughly.

If anything is out of the ordinary, try to iron it out with your opponents or request an admin straight away.

Requesting an Admin

While requesting an admin, please remember that all admins live in Europe, mostly in CEST which means that if you’re from outside of Europe you may need to adjust the time you request an admin accordingly. The local time can be seen on the homepage in this section here.