Winter '25 Roster Shrinkage, Docs Updates & Penalty System Overhaul

Changes are coming prior to the start of the Winter '25 Season of competition. Let's talk about it!

Roster Shrinkage

Going into our Winter '25 seasons, we intend to shrink roster sizes. We know this seems scary, but don't worry, we are here to walk you through it. After lengthy internal discussion, we aim to change roster sizes by the following amounts:

Sixes: From 10 Players to 8 Players
Highlander: From 15 Players to 12 Players

We believe that shrinking rosters to the sizes listed above will encourage improved competition and potentially allow for the creation of more teams to compete within our seasonal leagues. We believe this is more than reasonable considering the current 'Mercenary Culture' that we find ourselves in, where a majority of teams playing in seasonal competitions opt to use a mercenary closer in skill level to the absent core player, as opposed to a substitute who may not be up to the same standards.

For these reasons, amongst others, we feel we have a strong case for reducing roster sizes. However, we welcome the community to send us feedback, we even encourage it. This is a huge change and directly conflicts with our past initiatives to improve roster and scene health. We get that. So, we want to hear from you, via a support ticket from our Discord or via our General Feedback Forms if you have feedback, an issue that needs to be brought to our attention regarding this approach, anything!

Global Ruleset Changes & Doc Updates

Rule changes have not been added to the ozfortress docs at the time of the post being released, but will be soon.

Combining 1.3.2. Upper Division Playoffs Stopwatch & 1.3.3. Lower Division Playoffs Stopwatch to now be 1.3.2 Playoffs Stopwatch, which reflects the same set of rules for all divisions of Highlander during Playoffs.
Expanded the wording around 2.4.1. BO3 Playoff Matches (Sixes) & 2.4.2. BO5 Playoff Matches (Sixes) to elaborate on pick deferring and its use in Sixes Playoffs.
Players who are transferred out as an 5.4. Emergency Transfers can not be transferred back into the roster for the remainder of the season.
6.2. Mercenary Approval will now specify that teams are not to engage in 'Mercenary Bargaining' of any kind. Additionally, if teams have already approved a Mercenary, they are not permitted to unapprove that same Merc. Only Administrators have the ability to revoke an approval on a Mercenary.
Roles have been modified in the 7.2. Team Captain Discord, which now prevents unnecessary spamming of GIFS and unrelated media within the Discord. Consistently posting unrelated materials and messages in this Discord can result in removal and further league-related repercussions.
The 8.5.1. Live Coaching rule now describes and reflects that all forms of coaching during an active match are prohibited, including messages received over chat services such as Steam, Discord or Twitch. Cases of coaching are to be looked at on a case-by-case basis. Coaching is permitted during scrims, before/after matches and between maps.
The 8.8.1 Pause Limits rule has been changed to '1 pause per team, per map that is played'. This means in regular season matches that play 2 maps, 2 pauses will be available to be used at any time. Whereas in playoffs, 3 to 5 pauses may be used across the match per team.
The following game modifications will be listed as allowed under 12.1.1. Game Modification:
- Medic Radar and any scripts related to it are permitted.
The following game modifications or exploits are prohibited under 12.1.2. Game Mechanic Exploits:
- Rocket Trail scripts that modify rocket trails.
- Engineer stored multiple melee critical hit.
- Heavy lunch box items health exploits
A small guide that will provide players instructions on what to do when an active match's server dies with a Match Restart/ Continuation Procedure.
Round Bans won't be moved around upon the players request. Round bans are now applied immediately once decided upon. If a player is given a round ban and they are set to play in a scheduled match within 48 hours, they will be permitted to play, and the ban will begin at the start of the subsequent round.

Penalty System Overhaul

Since introducing the Penalty System last year, we've noticed both benefits and hindrances. Firstly, having concrete procedures in place to guide teams on how to conduct themselves and punish those who neglect their responsibilities has helped see a reduction in banned players and overall infractions. However, with the current system in place, some teams still don't take the penalties applied seriously.

After internal deliberation and discussion amongst staff, the following changes have been made to the Penalty System:

Team Penalties:

Teams will no longer receive warnings; all breaches will now result in a minor, moderate or major penalty.
2 Minor penalties are equivalent to 1 Moderate Penalty.
2 Moderate penalties are equivalent to 1 Major Penalty.
2 Major penalties will now result in a team's disbandment.
Major penalties will no longer deduct points from teams who incur them.

Player Penalties

Warnings will be kept for some Player Penalties.

In addition to the general changes listed above, all penalties have been looked at and modified. As well as this, new penalties have also been added for rules that previously didn't have any direct ruling associated with them. You can view the new Penalty System as well as individual penalties and rules in a Google spreadsheet linked here until they have been applied to the online ozfortress docs.

We'll be making a follow-up post before the beginning of the Winter '25 seasons, outlining where we stand on Roster Shrinkage after getting additional feedback from the community, as well as other changes, such as Staff Changes, so stay tuned!