Season 21 powered by Tt eSPORTS: New Schedule

Looking at the current signups we have decided to push the whole season back a week. We are well aware that this is the summer season and the signups seem to generally drop or at least stagnate a litte. But right now we are at only 60% of the signups we had for Season 20, which is something we think can definitely be improved. Therefore we want to give teams an additional week of signups, resulting in the following schedule:

• Signups: April 20 – May 12
• Publishing of Provisional: May 13
• Publishing of Final: May 14
• Schedule Deadline: May 16
• Main Season: May 17 – July 2 (7 Weeks)
• High/Mid/Open Playoffs: July 5 – July 19
• Premiership Playoffs: July 12

Season 21 powered by Tt eSPORTS: Map Poll

We said we would probably never run them again and yet here it is. A map poll! We already gathered the feedback from the Premier Division, but it is not really decisive enough to base a decision on. Therefore we will take the input from the whole community into our considerations. Though there are not a whole lot of new maps, if there are any; instead this poll is going to decide which map will make a comeback or if the map pool will stay as it is. The maps in question are cp_logjam, cp_granary_pro, cp_metalworks and cp_granary. Make sure you check out what has changed in the attached links before voting.

The map with the highest average score will (in case its logjam) stay or (in case its granary, granary_pro, metalworks) replace logjam. Keep in mind logjam is still being actively developed and improved based on your feedback. Same goes for granary_pro who will most likely, based on upcoming feedback, still undergo some changes before the season will start. Metalworks has also seen some changes recently, although those included mainly bug fixes and the map has not changed drastically as a result. We will use the most updated version at the time, if either of the maps will make it into the season.

Be careful with your votes, the order in which the options are displayed is random!

Staff Update

Despite not being German, a group of trials have proven that they are close enough to the high standards by which the German part of the admin team is measured, to now be granted the status of full staff status.

We are welcoming:

• Aoshi – Highlander League Admin
• deathyy – 6s League Admin
• DyaWyb – Highlander League Admin
• Morphine – Highlander League Admin
• prof – Newswriter
• Toodles – Newswriter

At the same time we also have someone leaving the staff, watering the German/Non-German ratio down even further.

Effective immediately ash will be leaving the staff. We thank him for his commitment and all the time and nerves he invested. He had the following to say:

After a great time with everyone on ETF2L, both staff and otherwise; I’d like to express my gratitude to everyone involved for the great time and the countless things I learned. Recently I’ve already reduced my workload for ETF2L quite drastically, so it probably doesn’t come as a surprise to some. Mirroring this, I’ve been busy with real life and actually playing this game reasonably regularly, so I hereby resign from all my duties at ETF2L with immediate effect. I’ll keep on watching from the sideline and will always be first to harass any non-German admins for being, well, not German. Without doubt the league will continue to run smoothly – I was barely involved recently anyways. I wish everyone the best of luck, and I hope ETF2L continues to thrive under the iron hand of Sonny Black, who is now the lone German ruler.

Join CeeJaey and Heavy Is GPS on BlackOut TV tonight at 21CEST for tonight’s week 6 Highlander game between Fair Enough and PremTech. Koth_viaduct_pro_rc7 and cp_sunshine_rc7 are going to get RC7 shades of hell kicked out of them as these two fierce rivals contest for one of the three precious playoff places.

PremTech are coming into this fixture after trouncing UKIP on Badwater last week, with the added bonus of BAITO Mayweather beating down Manny Pacquiao last night to cement his status as TF2’s greatest fighter. Their momentum could be stalled by the surprise loss of Pyro Ascendary, though, with the Swede quitting TF2 citing a lack of interest and an unhealthy addiction to Guild Wars for his departure. quell is poised to stand in for tonight’s game, but Ascendary will surely be missed after an impressive season so far. No word yet on whether tracker or Tseini will be picking up the scope tonight – BAITO likes to keep his Snipers on their toes.

Fair Enough had a less successful week 5, going down 0-6 to Tourettes Chessclub. They now find themselves sitting outside the top three for the first time this season after leading the pack for 4 weeks, and desperately need a result tonight to keep their playoff hopes alive. With the majority of bets on Saloon.tf going against them, finding themselves back in the underdog position they’ve occupied for the past few seasons might relieve some pressure and provide the extra belly-fire needed to claw some points away from their rivals. Perma-merc it's Mint has finally seen fit to join the roster – maybe having the superstar Swedish Engie officially on their side will spur HartzFartz, Qnai and the rest on to put in a big performance.

Match Overview
Fair Enough vs PremTech
Week 6 (Premiership)
Sunday, May 3rd 21:00 CEST

koth_viaduct_pro7

2 - 3

cp_sunshine_rc7

1 - 3

OVERALL
Fair Enough [0:6] PremTech

Announcing Season 21 powered by Tt eSPORTS

After wrapping Season 20 powered by Tt eSPORTS up and crowning SUAVE champions for the second time in a row, we are happy to announce our next 6v6 Season. All the information regarding the coming Season can either be found in this newspost, or will be announced in the future!

>>> Sign up now! <<<

 Sign-up process

Make sure to choose your desired tier when signing up. If you created a new team, feel free to apply for the tier you believe you deserve you should be in. To prove you are capable of the tier you applied for, we require you to submit screenshots of results from your recent practice matches or tournaments where you scored decent results against teams that play on the level you aim for. The quantity is not the most important factor in this case, it’s more of a helpful measure for us to figure out if your team will be able to keep up with the pace. There is no magical, minimum or maximum number of screenshots that you have to submit.

Sending links to logs on logs.tf or similar are fine if you include a short explanatory comment for each linked log, e.g. who your opponents are supposed to be and where they played last seaseon. We will not accept plain lists of logs without any comments!

If you want to be more specific about a tier you request, send an application to staff@etf2l.org (details listed below) with a suitable subject. Emails with subjects like “Hello”, “Hi” or anything else that cannot be identified as a team applying for a tier by mail may be ignored.

Additionally since it happens time and time again, you do not sign up by mail, you sign up on the site and apply by mail if you are a newly formed team playing in anything higher than Open.

Please note that the success of your request also strongly depends on the free slots in the tier you aim for. Established teams will be favoured over new teams or teams that request to jump a tier. The screenshots have to be uploaded to an online image storage service (for example, you can use imgur or Dropbox). Keep in mind that if you opt for a zipped archives with tons of pictures attached to an e-mail, your application will be ignored. Keep it clean.

Also helpful for us, but not a must however, is adding who the opposing team is in each screenshot (and maybe even the division they played in the last time). That makes it easier for us, because sometimes it can be quite hard (especially in the lower tiers) to figure out who the teams in the screenshots are.

If you are applying for Open (which is our entry division), you do not have to provide any proof that you are capable of playing at that level.

Please send your application to staff@etf2l.org. The tier assignment request has to include the following information in order to be considered. Incomplete applications will be ignored!

• Do not use HTML in your e-mail. If you want to add a link, just paste the link in the e-mail as you would enter it in your browser.
• Team name
• Team link on ETF2L.org
• Tier/Division you apply for
• Link to the online photo album
• Reasons why your team deserves to be placed in the tier you applied for (optional)

Season 20 Promotions/Demotions

All Open and Mid playoff teams will receive a promotion to the next highest tier, unless their starting roster changed by more than half of their players. ELOGURL will be promoted to the Premier Division after winning the High Tier in Season 20.

Additionally the bottom 20% of the remaining teams in the High and Mid Tier will not have a guarantee to stay in their respective Tier. This affects the places 19 – 23 in the High Tier and the places 45 – 57 in the Mid Tier. The Open Tier does not have demotions.

Season Schedule

• Signups: April 20 – May 5
• Publishing of Provisional: May 6
• Publishing of Final: May 7
• Schedule Deadline: May 9
• Main Season: May 10 – June 25 (7 Weeks)
• High/Mid/Open Playoffs: June 28 – July 12
• Premiership Playoffs: July 5

Premiership Playoffs

We’ve received a couple of improvement suggestions for the Premiership Playoffs, none of which really convinced us. If you have any concrete suggestions to improve the system any further, please do let us know. Until then the full schedule for the playoffs will remain as follows:

July 5th

19:00 CEST – 3rd vs 2nd

21:15 CEST – Winner vs 1st

The day of the finals is set to Sunday July 5th. This day may be changed to a day before Sunday July 5th if all 3 teams agree.

Maps, Prizes, unlocks & other changes

Everything else will be announced in the future, we just wanted the schedule and the signups to be available to you all as early as possible.

Banner made by Yggdrasil

Hit the road, bozo! Let a real Scout get to work!

Pull up your socks and head to your nearest MGE server because ETF2L is proudly announcing – after a several year hiatus – the return of the Scout 1v1 cup!

Have you ever wondered who has the best Scout DM in Europe? Have you ever felt that your Scout DM can take on the likes of wltrs or smziii but your gamesense isn’t quite up to standard? In this competition – it’s every man for himself. No skill brackets, no seeding; you have the chance to take on some of the finest scout MGE heroes in the league!

>> SIGN UP HERE <<

Prizes

Thanks to our sponsor, Thermaltake and Tt eSPORTS, we have acquired juicy hardware to award our 1^st and 2^nd place winners! Arie  from serveme.tf has graciously donated several donator subscriptions to our favourite server-rental facility. Wiethoofd, creator of whitelist.tf & fabricator.tf and developer for TF2Pickup.net, has very generously sponsored some shiny Killstreak kits for our winners and our French folks over at TF2Connexion have also kindly contributed Steam Games and other cosmetics up for grabs!

Our 1^st place winner will receive the Tt eSPORTS THERON Plus+ SMART MOUSE

The THERON Plus+ SMART MOUSE – the classy sheen smart mouse that built with an upgraded AVAGO laser sensor with up to 8200 DPI that consist an additional integrated Bluetooth communications device to sync your mobile device (iOS/Android) with Tt eSPORTS PLUS+, the mobile application that can store gamers’ stats to the Tt eSPORTS PLUS+ Community & Data Management Platform

And the runner-up will receive Tt eSPORTS VENTUS X

VENTUS X – Gaming Mouse – The new generation from Tt eSPORTS’s VENTUS gaming mouse, providing enhanced modern technology and classic design that fits all gamers and bring style to gaming. The new VENTUS X was designed with a new coating that gives full comfort while in gameplay. The VENTUS X also brings about a new ergonomically tuned right handed laser gaming mouse to the VENTUS family, that will appeal to gamers who’re fans of some classic legacy styled mouse shapes and brings the new tech to them.

Here is the full breakdown of prizes:

• First place: Tt eSPORTS THERON Plus+ SMART MOUSE + 15 keys + 1 Professional Killstreak kit + 1 year of donator status on serveme.tf
• Second place: Tt eSPORTS VENTUS X + 10 keys + 1 Specialized Killstreak kit +  6 months of donator status on serveme.tf
• Third Place: 5 keys + 1 Killstreak Kit + 3 months of donator status on serveme.tf
• Fourth Place: Stranges and cosmetic items

Schedule and Setup

The cup will be divided into two parts: Group Stage and Knockout Stage. Group Stage will be played from the 8^th of May till the 10^th and the latter will be played the following weekend.

Friday, May 8^th – Group stage (best of 1)

• Match 1 – 19:00 CEST
• Match 2 – 20:00 CEST
• Match 3 – 21:00 CEST

Saturday, May 9^th – Group Stage (best of 1)

• Match 4 – 19:00 CEST
• Match 5 – 20: 00 CEST

Sunday, May 10^th – Group Stage (best of 1)

• Match 6 – 19:00 CEST
• Match 7 – 20:00 CEST

128 teams will then proceed onto the Knockout Stage, playing a BO3.

Friday, May 15^th – Knockout Stage (best of 3)

• Round 1 – 19:00 CEST
• Round 2 – 20:00 CEST
• Round 3 – 21:00 CEST

Saturday, May 16^th – Knockout Stage (best of 3)

• Round 4 – 19:00 CEST
• Round 5 – 20:00 CEST

Sunday, May 17^th – Knockout Stage (best of 3)

• Quarter Finals – 19:00 CEST
• Semi Finals – 20:00 CEST
• Third Place Tie Breaker – 20:30 CEST
• Grand Finals – 21:00 CEST

Servers

Keep in mind that while both ETF2L and serveme can provide gameservers, the amount is severely limited! Be ready to provide your own gameserver or make a reservation on serveme beforehand. (TIP:  serveme Donators are allowed to make reservations more than 3 hours in the future)
We obviously recommend you to visit our gameserver sponsor PurePings for stable and reliable servers to play on.

Rules

We will set some ground rules, which can be found here.

The map that will be used in this cup is dm_whiskas

The gamemode will be first to 20 frags wins the round or whoever has the most kills before the timelimit ends. The official CFG/Whitelist will be released at a later date.

Coverage

The boys over at TeamFortress.TV will be providing coverage of the finals on the 17th where prizes could be won for some lucky viewers!

Signup now!

Think fast, chucklenuts! There are 512 slots. If you need help creating a 1v1 team, head over to our FAQ page here. A 1v1 team is required before you can apply.

This map ain’t big enough for the two of us!

As week 5 of Season 8 draws to a close, it’s time for a brief recap of how our Premiership and High teams have been getting on so far. The competition at the top of the table has been close – no team has a perfect record, and the top 4 are separated by only 3 points. The lower end of the table has turned out more or less as expected, but with the bottom two teams yet to face each other the battle for Premiership survival could heat up in the weeks to come.

Read the rest of this entry »