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Highlander Autumn '25 Changes!

The following are changes that will debut in Highlander Autumn '25.

Fresh Meat (New Admin)

Please welcome Pulse, our newest Trial Highlander Administrator, who will be joining the team this coming season! Pulse has been an active member of our Highlander community over the last few seasons and has provided us with excellent feedback and opinions over said seasons. We're very pleased to bring him onto the ozfortress staff team, and we know he'll do great things this coming season.

Map Pool

Below, you'll find the Autumn '25 Map Pool.

Highlander Autumn '25 Map Pool:

Upward

Swiftwater

Vigil

Eruption

Steel

Product

Ashville

Proot

Similar to last season, we're sticking with a total of 8 maps for Autumn '25. We have also stuck to our mission of rotating a minimum of one map out a season to add variety alongside the maps we all know and enjoy in our Highlander competitions. A detailed Map Schedule will be released in the coming days.

So Long Summercoast

Just like the season it was named after, Summercoast's time has come to an end. Upon reviewing our post-season surveys, it was clear that players didn't enjoy playing Summercoast in the Spring '24 Highlander season. This was further reflected in a follow-up map vote with the map receiving minimal votes to its contemporaries, Eruption and Borneo. Although we intended to keep Summercoast in for a minimum of 2 regular seasons to give players a chance to learn and enjoy the map, the outcry for its removal was too large to ignore, and thus Summercoast will be removed from the season for the foreseeable future.

I Am Proot

With our initial idea to keep Summercoast in for a minimum of 2 seasons, Proot was meant to be on the chopping block for replacement. However, after making the decision to drop Summercoast in favour of another Stopwatch map, we have opted to leave Proot in for another season. The map wasn't overwhelmingly disliked like Summercoast and had a positive reception from players, thus justifying our decision to leave it in for another season.

Eruption > Borneo

Like the legendary guitar solo of the same name, Eruption is here to leave its mark! With Summercoast being removed, 2 candidates were front runners for inclusion in the Autumn '25 Highlander season. Borneo and Eruption were both highly requested in our Post-season survey, so we decided to poll both maps in a recent Discord poll. To our shock, both maps tied with a total of 76 votes each. This is the second time that Borneo and Eruption have tied in our map vote. The first time this happened, we chose to include Borneo in the map pool, where it lagged significantly behind other maps in it's post-season reception. After careful consideration and feedback from the community, we’ve decided to go with Eruption for this season, given its recent updates and positive reception from players.

Eruption's recent balance updates as well as play in other regions, compared to Borneo's lack there of as well as their respective playtime in the global Highlander ethos outside of ozfortress also cemented our decision. Furthermore, Eruption has only seen 1 full season of league play in ozfortress back in Spring '23/ Season 5 where players weren't opposed to playing the map again in future seasons, whereas Borneo has been played in 4 seasons, constantly in a state of 'in and out.'. We're hoping that players and teams will be able to form more concrete opinions about Eruption over the next 2 seasons after they've had time to learn the map and explore it further.

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Playoffs

Returning to Page Playoffs

Last season we experimented with a new playoffs concept in 'Expanded Playoffs' which allowed the top 6 teams from each division to progress into playoffs opposed to the usual top 4 teams progressing forward that is found in Page Playoffs. Unfortunately, after reflecting on its inclusion in Spring '24, we can't justify using it again in future regular seasons, as it has flaws that don't allow teams to be accurately ranked from 1st to 4th at the end of playoffs. Expanded playoffs may return in future off-season competitions that take place over shorter time frames, as a key strength of the format is its use of double elimination. We intend to return to our tried-and-true Page Playoffs system this season, which is only single elimination and flows better come playoffs.

Bronze Final Continuation

After its introduction in Experimental Cup 3 and its regular season debut in Spring '24, the Highlander Bronze Finals have been a huge success, with the majority of players liking the idea of a final match between 3rd and 4th place. Thus, we will be keeping bronze finals going for all divisions for Autumn '25 Highlander and beyond.

Tiebreaker Measures: Round Win Rate Method of Calculation

Come playoffs, if teams are tied and their correct standing can't be determined via our first and second tie-breaker measures (being Map Points and Direct encounter, respectively), then a Round Win rate calculation will be performed. Moving forward we'll be listing the formulas used to make this calculation in our rules alongside our other Tiebreaker Measures on our docs in the coming days, as there is no reason for this information to not be public in the first place.

If you have any questions about the way this calculation is performed, please reach out to its creator and fellow Highlander admin, redja on Discord via @redja.

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Rule Changes

There will be a News Post detailing all upcoming changes that will affect both Sixes and Highlander coming out in the following days. This Post will list changes we're making, such as how we deal with teams playing with cheaters, map play order, and more.

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Signups Close Soon!

Don't forget that signups close next Wednesday, February 5th, at 11:59pm AEDT. If you require any assistance, such as finding a team, finding players, or any other sort of help, please reach out to our Highlander Admins or, alternatively, open a support ticket in our Discord.