The Highlander Open: The Medals are here!
August 31, 2014
The Highlander Open Cup Medals
We’re heading into the final 16 teams with Round 4 of the playoffs beginning today so there’s no better time than now to announce the final design and completion of your highly coveted medals, all crafted by 
nabique & Brd! For the teams and players that unfortunately fell short of this stage, you will still receive your participation medal for HLO! For those of you who are still in the race for victory, good luck! Click the images to see the Steam Workshop pages.
| 1st | 2nd | 3rd | Participant |
Click here to see the collection on the Steam Workshop. (The gems on the crowns will change colour depending on which team you play in-game, red or blu).
– 
Jon
Posted by Jon1155 in Cup, Highlander, Sponsors
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neat
They look epic.
Looks really nice
plat buddies made it a very fair competition. congrats.
The competition was a mess and deviated massively from what it was intended to be, but the medals looks nice. Hopefully it will be a learning experience, and we’ll see a Highlander Open 2 sometime which helps new players get into comp.
HLO 2 with only new players and max. 1 buddy from div 6 :>
“Introducing The Highlander Open, a brand new initiative to introduce non-competitive players into the comp scene or for those wanting to get into league-style competitive TF2” – main idea of hlo
Yeah … Plat players … yeaa..
I dont understand how can people find buddies that can only play medic to be unfair, after all HLO is about learning and getting a little feel of how playing organized matches in a league feels like. Having a higher division player as medic doesnt make the team unbeatable but not having a higher division buddy doesnt make it necessarily bad either, isnt it only natural that you will learn faster if you have someone helping and teaching??
medals look good btw
The issue with high div buddies is that they can just main call with more seasons of experience and give a significant advantage. I think in the future when more of these tournaments happen it should be limited to div 5/6 for actual buddies that can play in the game and also it should be limited to people new to competitive rather than leaving it open to div 6 and steel.
Main issue I have isnt with high rank buddies. it’s the fact teams could just recruit platinum league players from UGC, not as buddies, and get official permission for them to play, providing the etf2 admin think it’s ok (and every one I have seen is well known and popular with the admin here, though I guess that COULD be coincidence…maybe.) and it has made it very very predictable as to who the final 4 or 8 teams are going to be barring some big surprise results. And funnily enough it’s all, once again, teams and players popular with the regulars and admin here. Makes the fact that this “tourney” is supposed to be for new players and those with little comp experience a bit suspicious when it’s basically just a free pass to anyone who managed to either get away with it, orget official etf2l permission to break the rules.
Care to elaborate?
Uhm
The purpose of a buddy is to help teams improve and to more easily guide them to the proper way of competitive play. There is literally nothing wrong with having some high div guy be “press mouse1 to heal” guy trying his best to organize the div6 mess that is a HLO team, in fact these buddies should be commended for their noble willingness to help. To bash them is wrong.
Now as for Platinum non-buddies, those are strictly against the rules previously stated by the admins and must therefore be reported. HLO teams were already dropped or had officials reverted to Default Losses for using forbidden Silver members. I refuse to believe you’ve found illegal players, reported them to the admins and had nothing happen.
Now if you did report them and nothing happened then go ahead, post them right here right now. I dare you, I double dare you to do it and you will see that action will be taken.
We have tried our best to keep consistency across HLO, but with a limited admin teams and a cup this size which specific requirements that were fuzzy in areas has caused these issues and problems for people so I apologize for that.
If we run a “Season 2” of this, we will hopefully organize a clearer and more structured system based on what we’ve learned from this.
and na admins
Other than the teams with plat players as classes other than medic (38special was actually on a team as a demo, lmfao), this was a pretty good introduction to competitive TF2 for me and my team. We’re going to be doing UGC Steel next season :]
Actually, just remembered, it was someone who was pretending to be 38special, but they still had a plat badge, and claimed that they just roster rided.
Anyways, is there a set date for when we get these or is that in Valve’s hands?
@ all the players complaining : With this many new players in a cup experienced “buddys” who guide you through are almost a necessity.
Now I’m not saying that ALL new players can’t manage on their own. But most of them can’t.
Just look at one of the major issues we had in this cup: HLO is like 70-80% default wins because many teams don’t know how to organize a match properly. They aren’t able to field enough players at the required time ,lend a server long enough,execute the proper configs and many other rule breaks that could’ve simply been avoided by a) reading the rules (which nobody does) or b) having an experienced player who looks over everything for you.
That’s the whole point of having a “buddy” on your team. Some “buddys” never even participated in any matches and were just there to arrange stuff.
When introducing the HLO we made sure to give everyone the option to try and get a hold of a “buddy”: a steam group ( http://steamcommunity.com/groups/HLOBuddies) ,higher div players were encouraged to help,some even offered their assistance on their own.
Hell,you could’ve asked an admin on the support page and I’m sure he would’ve tried to find a buddy for your team.
If you didn’t bother trying then that’s your own decision and none of our responsibility.
To me it feels like at this point of the competition many players are very salty for the wrong reasons.
If you lost a match you didn’t lose because a plat player was playing medic: You lost because the other team just played better overall.
You can’t always win, losing is part of the competitive experience. The sooner you learn that the easier it will be for you in the future.
If you want to do better stop blaming your losses on other people and start to improve your own performance instead.
@The Great American S. Sometime after they are shipped with the game (you’ll see like Highland Open medals added in the changelog for TF2 probably) we’ll get them to you.
ignore what quintosh said
so teams that where eliminated at the group stage will receive the same medal as a team that will be eliminated in quarter finals after survived the playoffs? pretty unfair… the medal should have written in the description something like “group winner”, “playoffs winner” or something like that, without any aestetich differerence (if it’s possible) but just to make a difference between who did something and who got immediatly defeated… sorry for bad english hope you understand
@GreySlime
I really doubt someone would do that.
The salt is too strong
Salty_HLO_gamers.com
I just wish you wouldn’t keep changing your mind about stuff, so much time was wasted because admins were disagreeing with eachother. Please fix that for next time
Yay, the medals were added to the game!
Anyone know why i haven’t received mine yet? Some of the people on my team have gotten theirs.