News

As the age-old saying goes...

Something old, something new older.

As we prepare for a big 2024, we would like to welcome back Hawk for a third time. Hawk has worked under several different Head Admins, and his experience will only strengthen our efforts moving forward.

And that's not all – we would like to welcome Celph, the newest addition to the Sixes admin team. Celph is an active member of the pugging community, having taken up an admin role in noob pugs; if you have ever played a pug with him, you know why he was an obvious choice.

We Want You!

We're looking for people to fill the following roles. To submit an application, see our Join Us page!

League Administrators

We're looking for new League Administrators for both Sixes and Highlander. League Admins are responsible for the effective running of both our seasonal league formats and off-season cups.

League Advisors

A lesser known, non-staff role is being an advisor. Each seasonal league has a team of advisors who provide their opinions on a variety of decisions, most notably class restrictions and seedings. If this something you would be interested in doing, please reach out to multi (@canyouprovethatimdriving) on Discord.

Ruby on Rails Developer

Do you have a knack for Ruby on Rails? Sixes Head Admin multi certainly doesn't but he is trying his best. If you have experience working with Ruby on Rails and would like to support ongoing efforts to improve the ozfortress website, we would love to hear from you.

Sourcemod/Sourcepawn Plugin Developer

We're looking to finish off some old projects that enable further integration between Citadel (the framework running this website) and bookable servers. We might also be looking to make modifications or entirely new plugins to improve the playing experience.

Spring '23 and Autumn '24

Spring '23 is quickly coming to a close, with Highlander Playoffs already commenced and Sixes Playoffs just around the corner. Although Autumn '24 isn't that far off, we know that you are all excited to hear about the off-season cup; we hope to have something four you soon.

2024

As we said earlier, 2024 is gearing up to be a big year, with a lot we want to accomplish finally seeing fruition next year.

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Spring '23 Ruleset Updates

With Spring '23 already underway, we hope you're all excited for our last 2023 seasons! We have some ruleset updates to let you know about, so we've split them into three different categories below. So without further delay:

Changes/Additions

Global Ruleset

• Team names and player names should be "safe for work". Added 1.1.5. Team and Player Names.
• All seasonal league rosters (Sixes & Highlander) need a minimum of two captains, and can have a maximum of three captains. These captains will be ultimately responsible for the effective running and organisation of their roster, and will be responsible in the event of disbands, poor organisation, etc.
  • This is two a two pronged approach which aims not only to prevent teams from having six captains and making it rather confusing for other captains or admins when trying to contact the team, but also so captains are held responsible for team issues.
• Added 3.1.2. Match Extensions, which serves as a basic outline of how to get an extension, and states that the opposing team does not need to agree to an extension, meaning both teams need to be in agreeance to be eligible for an extension.
• Players with Player Restrictions cannot play that class in the same division or any division below, added 3.3.9. Restricted Players as Mercenaries.
• Rule 4.4. Casted Games (which has been renamed to Broadcasting Games) has seen significant updates to it's wording, and has been reworked to allow for the addition of 4.4.1. ozfortress Representation. This rule asks casting organizations to represent our community in an open and accepting way, and does not police opinions of ozfortress or sponsor conflictions in any way. It is simply there to set our expectations for those representing our community.

Sixes

• The headline change, Progressive Ruleset is in. We've updated all of our Sixes 5CP documentation to reflect this.
  • Map timer reduced from 30 minutes to 25 minutes.
  • Round timer remaining at 240 seconds / 4 minutes.
• Whitelist changes:
  • The Loch-n-Load is now banned.
  • The Detonator and the Gas Passer have been unbanned.
• Premier will feature a bottom four playoff bracket.
• The Sniper class limit has been reduced to 1.

Infractions

• Added a Tier 1 infraction for non-approved organizations failing to get permission to cast from team captains.
  • "Failure to seek permission from captains of both rosters to cast their official match."
• Added a Tier 3 infraction to cover illicit content posted on ozfortress services and within our community.
  • "Posting of illicit content on ozfortress services or within our community."
    • This has been added to better police content including (but not limited to) gore, violence, cruelty, etc. This infraction will be highly contextual in nature.

Updates/Clarifications

• Numerous readability/wording fixes throughout the Global Ruleset.
• Fixed all known broken links. If you find anymore, please contact us via #admin-support.
• Updated starting side rules in Sixes & Highlander rulesets to point to the Global ruleset rule 3.4.1. Team Starting Side.
• Forward-spawn/Back-spawn binds and Resupply binds were legalized last season, and we haven't heard any complaints thus far so it'll be remaining legal.

Reminders

• It is your responsibility to adhere to any and all restrictions you may have. To see your restrictions, see the Player Restrictions page, which is linked as a button on each match thread and season page.
• We have it on every match thread, but please ensure you are recording POV Demos. You can find more information here.

Small Infractions Update

A concern raised by the community regarding infractions was transparency, and whilst there were many other points conveyed, transparency is something that we believe most would like to see improved. With the seasons now out, we'll be reviewing our existing infraction system and discussing it internally.

We have also asked every current panel member and advisor if they individually would like to become a public member/advisor. We would like to take a moment to thank ory who has been with us since the get-go, and has stepped into an advisor role for the panel. Advisors don't need to be public, but ory has chosen to step out into the role publicly.

Advisors aren't active panel members, and will typically only be poked for input where needed. Advisor roles will only be open to those with extensive experience on the panel, or past panel leads and head admins. We ask that if you need to contact the behaviour panel, you contact the Head of the Behaviour Panel or make a report.

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You've probably already seen some of the changes we have made in our discord, but we want to talk about some of them with you:

• Streamlined support. Whilst we did love the #league-support channels, often questions and support requests could just go unanswered. Yes - that one's on us, but we want to make it more convenient for staff and players alike to get help faster by having @Alfred create tickets depending on what support you need. From there, you are sent to the right people who can help you, and they'll be notified when you make a ticket.
• Removed, moved or replaced some lesser used channels, or channels that could be improved a bit:
  • The old #pugs channel has been replaced with #pug-servers, containing a list of community-run pug servers and services. To have yours added, contact an admin! Please note, we won't add every single server that is made, you'll need to have some reputation.
  • As stated above, #sixes-support and highlander-support have been removed, and we've added #help-and-feedback. We ask that players who need support that they'd typically take to one of our old league specific channels, use #admin-support. This channel will allow you to quickly create a ticket that is opened with the correct admins for that league or question, and it's all done via DM's between you and @Alfred.
    • #help-and-feedback is now a more general, open channel that anyone can ask and answer questions in. Got a question about a HUD, want to make us aware of something minor or have feedback for us? This is the place. Please be aware we will keep a close eye on this channel, excessive trolling, especially of newer players will land you timed out or worse.
  • We also moved quite a few channels:
    • All discussion channels are now all in the same Discussion category, including the voice channels. The Recruit & Organise category is still in the same place, and still functions the same way.
    • The #book-a-server channel has been moved to the ozfortress category with our support channels and whatnot.
• We have some exciting stuff coming up, so we figured we should get our discord ready. Whilst most of the changes are minor, we do expect there to be some learning curves when it comes to support, but please know it comes from us genuinely wanting to better handle, answer and resolve questions/concerns/issues/disputes you may have in the future.
• Whilst we are preparing for some upcoming announcements, we want to let you know about one in particular. We will be writing a short list of rules for our discord which will reside in #readme and on our Community Guidelines (which will be soon overhauled). Don't expect these rules to be anything crazy, but it will make it a little clearer what our punishment process will be.

There will be a not-so-small post coming very soon detailing Spring '23 season changes (which definitely should have been out before now, sorry 🙃), updates to our docs and rulesets, the usual. If you have any issues with anything we've detailed above, or know of any problems with our docs you think we should be aware of before publishing an update, please DM @core directly on discord, thanks!