ozfortress Sixes Season 35

As always, the map pool for Sixes Season 35 will be comprised of nine maps and certain maps will be played once during the regular season with other maps being played twice. Sixes Season 35 will see the departure of Prolands, off to not-so-green pastures, with the newer kid on the block Metalworks making its return! Metalworks has received some work from community mapper xobile, who has been working on a "Pro" version of the map recently. As of now, Metalworks Refresh has been listed, but we will update it when the public release version is available. A new version of Granary Pro has arrived (RC13), with minimal changes to doorways, fixed forward spawns and some small optimizations. Clearcut will be departing for the season, with the ever faithful and reliable Product returning to fill the void. Bagel will remain as the second KOTH map, with only two KOTH maps being featured in Season 35 - with the majority wanting to keep the number of KOTH maps at two.

There will be four skill divisions in Sixes Season 35. The brackets we will feature are Premier, Intermediate, Main and Open! Premier and Intermediate will use Round Robin for their regular seasons while Main and Open will use the Swiss System. All brackets will continue using the Page Playoffs format. Grand Finals for Premier shall be played as a no-advantage Best of Five series, while all other division's Grand Finals will be a Best of Three (BO3) series. Depending on the number of signups we receive for Sixes Season 35, we may adjust the number of skill divisions after signups have closed.

At this point, we feel most are probably more than clued up to what this is, but for those who may not be, it's pretty simple in theory. This plugin changes the way you play Sixes, as typically within ozfortress you would play a Control Point (5CP) map to a thirty-minute map timer, a win difference of five (aptly dubbed the "mercy rule" in a long-lost age), and a round timer that is hard coded by the map itself.

So what does the Round Timer plugin change?

As we mentioned above, the default round timer is set by the map. With this plugin, the default round timer is overridden to a lower value. For this season, we are running a round timer of five minutes (5:00). With 53% of the vote leaning in favour of five minutes over four minutes and four minutes thirty seconds, we will be running five minutes for Season 35. We will look to collect further feedback on this once the season has concluded.

This plugin also somewhat reintroduces an existing mechanic; stalemates. And no, not stalemating or "parking the bus", but the game mechanic itself. It never went anywhere (unlike what our Experimental Cup page may have alluded to - sorry for that confusion), it was just incredibly rare to see the mechanic ever occur, many experienced players would struggle to count more than a few instances of it occurring over the years. For those who understandably may not know the mechanic, if neither team captures a control point before the round timer expires the round is reset, with both teams needing to roll out to a mid-fight again; win, capture & repeat.

So what else changes?

Other than the round timer value being lower than previous seasons, nothing. The lower value just helps further encourage faster play really. Golden Cap scenarios remain identical to previous seasons with one exception, the round timer is set to the same value present in the rounds played before it (five minutes/5:00).

So what about Win Difference, aka the "Mercy Rule"?

It's gone. For this and any future seasons running this plugin, Win Difference will not be present. Many seemed to like the absence of win difference during the experimental cup, and we feel it brings us closer to what other leagues have done format-wise with this plugin. We feel Win Limit is a better fit for this format, and whilst we did not poll this to the community we feel many will agree that its usage globally has prompted giving it a go. We will of course look to collect feedback on this as well in the next Sixes poll.

New TF2 Comp Fixes applied

Sixes Season 35 will feature two fixes from twiikuu's TF2 Comp Fixes, namely Fix self-damage on reflects (reflected projectile damage calculation will properly take into account that it is self-inflicted), and Gunboats apply when hurting an enemy (gunboats resistance will apply even if the explosion hurts an enemy). Both fixes have been added as a result of poll responses, with both being incredibly well received (the former of which was active during the Experimental Cup). Empty active ubercharges when the medigun is dropped and Projectiles Ignore Teammates from Season 34 will remain active for this season. All plugins used in previous ozfortress Sixes seasons will remain of course.

The Experimental Cup saw the Market Gardener banned for its duration, and was put in the latest Sixes poll to discern whether or not players wanted to be free of the flying kitchen utensil. With an even 60% of players opting to keep it unbanned, Season 35 will not be safe from its wrath.

The Sixes poll also saw another shakeup in the whitelist - the Buffalo Steak Sandvich has been unbanned for Season 35 after an unexpected slight majority in the polls voted to see it plated up and served ready for your use!

The changes being made this season are not limited to just gameplay. It has been long requested that we do something with the transfers system, but there have been very mixed opinions on exactly what to do. We'll be looking to once again collect further feedback as we work to entirely reform this system, but for now, here is the change.

Each team in Season 35 will be limited to two transfers per transfer window. This means that both transfers in, and transfers out of an Active Roster are limited. For example, if you transfer someone out to get another player in, that will count as both of your transfers for the window. We understand this is quite an aggressive and sudden change, so if you have any questions or concerns please speak with an administrator!

Out of region player limit

In the most recent poll, we asked if we should look to add a limit to the amount of "international players" per roster, of which the vote for yes and no stayed pretty tight the entire time, with maybe splitting them down the middle with ~7%. For Season 35, we will be trialling a limit of two (2) international/out-of-region players per roster. This will mean that out-of-region teams will be unable to participate. Please note that New Zealand players are not counted as international players, as we have and always will cater to Australia & New Zealand.

Our Divisional League Administrators should be your first point of contact for any questions/concerns/issues within your division. If you cannot reach one of them within a timely manner, please seek assistance in #sixes-support in our Discord.

Premier

• ants

Intermediate

• chimes

Main

• raina

Open

• samson
• snazzy

We've been looking for ways to provide quicker and easier access to our seasonal key dates for all of our seasonal leagues and tournaments, so we've made a public calendar on ClickUp! As we arrange season details and add dates to those tasks, you will see it update live, so no matter if we have announced it or not, it'll likely be there!

Public Competitive Calendar

By signing up, you acknowledge that you may be placed in any division the administrators deem fit for your roster, and thus your entire team should be reasonable in their expectations on division placement. We will endeavour to let teams know of changes in initial seedings before the final release. Please ensure you specify the division you truly believe your team should be in, this will make it easier for administrators to consult with you on your seeding. Along with selecting your desired division, please also list who you expect to play, and what class/role. We've left a template below, please include it in your signup application's description.

On the ozfortress website, captains can create Teams using the "Start Team" button on the Teams page. Once created, captains can invite players to the team. Team invites are shown on a player's profile, which can be accessed by clicking on your name next to the bell on the top right-hand corner of your screen. Teams provide a pool of players that can be signed up for a tournament. Players may be in the pool for multiple teams but only one active roster for any given tournament. Captains may sign up a roster for tournaments under the league page.

If you're new and not sure how to get started, don't fret! Check out the Recruitment category of the ozfortress Discord where you can express your interest in joining a team, or peruse potential players to form a team of your own. Teams are normally comprised of one Medic, one Demoman, two Soldiers and two Scouts. If you're new to the competitive scene, click here for an introduction to ozfortress!

Once you've signed up your team or have joined one, your part is done. Don't worry if you didn't find or join a team in time, you can always be transferred onto a team in one of the Transfer Windows. See the Transfers link for more info on Transfers, and the Transfers Window link for info on when these windows are, both links can be found at the bottom.

Please ensure you have enough backups to last the entire cup; teams are allowed a maximum of ten players rostered.