With so many new people on ETF2L.org because of the Highlander Challenge, we have made some small changes which we hope will make things easier for everyone.

Highlander FAQ

We have written a Highlander FAQ which includes much of the information that you are asking about on the forums and news post comments, such as how we intend to increase the size of the tournament to accomodate as many teams who sign up as possible. The FAQ will be updated with any new information that lots of people are asking for. Please read the FAQ and the main ETF2L FAQ before posting questions on the forum, because you may find the answer you were looking for.

Highlander Ladder

A reminder to all the Highlander Challenge teams, whilst you are waiting for the main competition to begin, why not sign up to the Highlander Ladder? This ladder will give you the opportunity to get some game experience and also give you experience with scheduling matches and submitting results using the ETF2L website.

6v6 Recruitment Forum

Due to the large numbers of Highlander recruitment posts in the main recruitment section, we temporarily request that all 6v6 team recruitment be moved into a new 6v6 Recruiting Forum. We are also taking the opportunity to test a new skill ranking system based entirely on the ETF2L divisions. Please read the stickied thread in the forum for further instructions.

Any posts that are not for 6v6 team or player recruitments in that forum will be locked or deleted.

AFS Deadline Reminder

Everyone has until the end of Sunday 15th August to play their remaining AFS games. Because of the Assembly LAN, we have made an exception for Division 1, who will get one extra week to play their games. Any games left unplayed after this deadline will be left without any score, so neither team will get any points.

Oh boy, it’s really happening. The rules have been rewritten, the ladder has been climbed (it works) and we nearly created our very own version of Valve Time, but now we are thrilled to announce that the Highlander Community Challenge is a go!

And what exactly is this, we hear you ask? Well check out our fantastic and visually pleasing Highlander Community Challenge Page! It contains all the basics about what exactly the Highlander format is, and essential (light) reading for all who want to get involved.

This tournament is meant for people who are new to competitive play, a competition to find the very best pub team. That said, we understand that many Division 6 teams are community teams, so they will be eligible to take part.  Much like the World Cup, the tournament will kick off with a Group Phase designed so that all teams involved will have the chance to play some exciting games. After the Group Phase the best two teams from each group will engage in a straight knock-out cup as we progress on in our journey to discover, and reward, the very best Pub team in Europe.

But wait, there’s more! To launch the Highlander tournament, we’re offering a once in a lifetime opportunity to team up with some of the very best competitive players and some of the Valve TF2 staff to play in a special exhibition game, in what will be a thrilling example of the many exciting matches that we’ll see in the competition.

So When Is It Starting?

Good question! The tournament will start in September but the signups are open as we speak. These signups will be open for a month so there’s plenty of time to create and enter your team. The exact dates are as follows:

• Signups open: Now (Your team leader will have to sign your team up – for more info check out the FAQ)
• Signups close: Thursday 26th of August
• Final divisions announced: Sunday 29th of August
• Schedule deadline for week 1 matches:  Sunday the 5th of September
• Week 1 start: Sunday the 12th of September

You said something about a Ladder?

For those of you who can’t wait to play some Highlander games we have created an exciting ladder competition where you can find and play all kinds of opponents. Of course you can organize practice matches against future opponents for the Highlander challenge, but there’s also the option to challenge the very veterans of competitive TF2 as every team will be free to join the ladder. Sign up now everyone!

Update: We’re thrilled to have received such a fantastic response from the public community, thanks! The 160 slots we had for the competition filled up so quickly that we’re looking at expanding the tournament so more and more teams can play, so please keep signing up! Check back on ETF2L for more news coming shortly.

Read the rest of this entry »

AFS status update

As we enter week 7 of our beloved AFS season we see that division one can still be won by 5 of it’s teams. With the Assembly LAN coming up the teams will be at their very best form when we enter the last weeks of the summer league. That’s right, weeks, even after week 7 ends you will still have one full week to play your remaining matches. Feel free to take a look at the schedule and match deadlines below.

Schedule deadline for all matches: Sunday 8th of August

Matches deadline for all matches: Sunday 15th of August

Bball Schedule

Don’t forget to schedule your matches. Drag your friend out of the sun and play your virtual bball games. The Round 3 deadline is on the 8th of august, make sure you have played your match by then or make it appear you tried to by posting clever information on the match page. Round 3 matches without results entered on Wednesday the 11th will be decided by a virtual coinflip.

Staff Updates

As you all know we recently saw, with pain in our hearts, our beloved friend and fellow Head admin D2M resigning from the ETF2L admin staff. In name of all admins I would like to give him a huge thanks for the efforts he made for the league and the many improvements and projects he was founder of.

During the summer we also had to see 2 other admins leave. Another word of thanks goes out to _Ben and Anderson who due to inactivity both parted ways with the admin team. Best of luck in your future online endeavours.

On the bright side, we have been able to replace our appearing shortage of Englishmen by welcoming Gubbins to our Anti-Cheat team. Also strengthening our staff for the Highlander Challenge in foreign territory is the well known Flame-.  A warm hearted welcome to them both.

Some Rule Updates

We recently updated the rules page to improve it’s readability for new users. Feel free to suggest improvements here.

Additionally we found some other rules that were ready for some updates. Read on to see what rules are updated

• The previous penalty for amassing 3 and 5 major warnings were respectively an additional 3 league points penalty and expulsion from the league. As there are few teams able to get to even 2 major warnings and we really like banning (or do we?) we will change the amount of misbehaving required for expulsion from 5 major warnings to 3 major warnings. (General rules 3.10)
• Getting a major warning in a ladder match did not have a point consequence. Until now! From now on teams who misbehave enough to get themselves a major warning will receive 10 penalty points along with it.
  (General rules 3.10)
• Another rule that has always been problematic in the last weeks of the season is the roster lock rule. Causing problems with many true hearted teams looking to add members for a ladder match this rule has now been given the Community 2.0 overhaul and is changed to:
  “1.7 Teams are not allowed to use new players from week 7 and onward
  It is not allowed to add and use new players to your roster for matches happening from week 7 and onwards unless your opponent agrees.”

I am resigning from the ETF2L Admin Team with immediate effect.

I’m sure this post will bring about many happy cheers from the bandwagon groups in the community and good for you. You should be immensely satisfied that 7 months of abuse can push someone so far away from being enthusiastic about a gaming league and wanting to help it to be a fantastic place to play.

When Kop asked me to join him as a head admin 7 months ago, I was both excited about the role and also a little nervous at the prospect of becoming the new scapegoat for every single decision that someone didn’t like. Whilst the majority of comments have always been lighthearted and those who have made them have usually apologised about them in private, it’s quite disgusting to read death threats and unbelievably poor and misinformed comments on a daily basis.

The events over the last two days have certainly not helped. My comments about AFS were partly out of the frustration that the last 7 months have presented, but also due to the fact that we arranged a competition for the summer to appease people who desperately wanted to play a game and it still went wrong/turned into shit. I apologise to the other Admins for making those comments, they were not particularly well thought out in their posting.

I stand by the fact that running a full league season over the summer would’ve been the most ridiculous idea that we could have put into motion. Having around a third of the teams not entering because of the summer would’ve harmed the game. Teams like Power gaming having to play Season 9 in Division 2 because they no longer had a spot in Division 1 would be insane and lead to yet more people whining about TF2 and the way ETF2L is run.

With more time and less pressure on us to announce a competition, I think we’d have come up with something far more enjoyable for every single player in the community. I hope you can all remember that as a 3-man Head Admin team, we are all in our relative infancy with ETF2L. It’s a difficult community to manage at the best of times and it’s quite disheartening to see that there are many people who find it difficult to ever use words of praise about the league, or even their fellow community members. Is it so hard to look at something objectively in your lives sometimes?

I also stand by my comments with regards to ‘Brafflegate’ (as you have affectionately started to call it). I did not delete an account of any player during my time as a Head Admin in ETF2L. I was not even aware that there was a function to do so until last night, when there was a discussion about the missing account in the Admin channel. I don’t know if it was a bug (seriously unlikely) or if I’m being framed, or what the fuck is going on. All I know is that I didn’t delete an account. I’m extremely disappointed that many people formed the conclusion that I had done this based on zero evidence and absolutely no facts whatsoever. However, you are entitled to your opinion and it wouldn’t be right for you to not be able to express these opinions.

I’d like to say thankyou for the opportunity to be part of something great like ETF2L. It has been an absolute pleasure to work alongside every single Admin that has ever been part of the team. There are some incredible people involved with the league and I only hope that they can be praised for their continued efforts and support that they give. I don’t know of many other communities where people give up the sheer amount of time that they do to run a league. As an example, every Monday, the Admin team spend 5-6 hours (sometimes more), arranging all the default dates, which occur when teams cannot be bothered to find a suitable date for their match. If you really want to help the Admins, why not arrange your games a little better and save them some time to work on something important? There are so many better things that the Admins could accomplish instead of tediously adding default dates over and over.

Finally, I hold absolutely zero grudges towards anyone in this community and never have done. People such as kaidus and swifty, both of you have continually tormented me, I don’t hate you. I realise that the position I have been in makes me a very easy target and I respect every comment you’ve made, right or wrong. I hope that one day, some of you will realise that I was just someone who enjoyed the same game as you, who wanted to make a difference and help a league to grow. It’s unfortunate that the dream was crushed in the manner it was, but I’m not angry or bitter about it.

I hope that any of you who still have bad feelings towards me will have the heart to actually talk to me face-to-face at i40, whereby you will have the opportunity to actually form a real opinion of me. I know that I’m not a bad person and I hope that you will be able to see that. If not, no hard feelings.

I wish everyone in the community, all of the players, all of the teams and most importantly every single Admin, the very best of luck with ETF2L in the future. I’m sure that together you can achieve fantastic things. I’m sorry that I can’t be part of it.

Thankyou for reading and all the best to every single one of you x

Matt ‘D2M’ Davies

Traditionally ETF2L have always announced new bans on Sundays. Whilst we briefly considered a shock Saturday switch, the traditional approach struck us as far more appealing.

The following four people find themselves banned from all ETF2L competitions for the period of 1 year from today. In addition to this, in accordance with our reformed stance on bans they will also receive a forum ban for the full duration.

1) reactioN – After sharing some hilarious YouTube footage where he was instantly questioned by many members of the TF2 community, reactioN was kind enough to share some demos with us. Sadly, these and subsequent demos show him to be aimbotting like a boss and thus he is being cast far away from the league.

2) playa – Many of you have seen a certain YouTube video over the last week where playa had the mouse turning circle skills of a super hungry cat chasing two fat mice. For those of you haven’t seen it click me and enjoy! Unsurprisingly our new aimbot hero playa is a good friend of phytek, the fake American who got himself banned for aimbotting not too long ago. The above video and subsequent demos of playa proved he was aimbotting and we can look forward to seeing his beautiful face again next summer.

3) bjornbar – This one is quite amusing. bjornbar or bbberrry was quite noticeably looking through walls to gain an advantage over his enemy. After obtaining his POV demo (directly from him), there was a near-instantaneous AC Admin decision which led to a ban. Goodbye my Russian friend, I’m sorry I couldn’t save you from your fate this time (((((

Edit: Since this newspost was announced, bon appears to have made a wonderful YouTube video about bjornbar. I think you might like it! (For the people that don’t understand or lack common sense, this video has been linked because it was in the public domain and was amusing. It has nothing to do with the AC team releasing any evidence.)

4) GAW – Not really a lot to say here. He was speedhacking, that’s about it.

That’s all for now folks!

See you for another Sunday ban post…soon!