News

The ozfortress seasonal league returns with OZF 33! Returning from a quieter off-season for administration, there was plenty of action for the players, however, and we look forward to potentially working with other organizations in the future to bring new and exciting off-season competitions for you all. But, first, we have to get back into the action!

You can sign up for ozfortress season 33 from Sunday the 16th of January, up until Wednesday the 26th of January. We aim to have seeding out by the 29th of January (at the latest) with the season starting on the 30th of January. This gap between the closing of signups and the start of the season is to give the administration team time to seed. ozfortress season 33 will begin on Sunday the 30th of January.

[Sign Up!]

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Map Pool & Divisions

The map pool for OZF 33 will again be comprised of nine maps and certain maps will be played once during the regular season with other maps being played twice. This season the map pool will see some changes, namely in the inclusion of a third KOTH map, Bagel. We've decided to include Bagel, and drop Metalworks for this season. As you'll see with the release of poll data, Metalworks does sit considerably higher than Granary, but we're hoping in this season and the next to "run the gauntlet" of the lower-rated maps (whether they are in the pool currently or have been gone for a while), and ascertain what maps should be sunset in favour of others. We've had numerous low percentage maps sitting there for many seasons now without much change, so we hope to clear up the "backlog" so to speak. Clearcut will be returning yet again, being played twice in the season like OZF 31, with Product now being played only once. We're also seeing the return of Refresh Gullywash, and we hope to work closely with the Refresh team to collect feedback and issues with the map via our seasonal polls. Going into future seasons we will be putting much more focus on providing better ways of collecting map feedback on the polls for map authors, and ensuring those results are forwarded to authors.

There will be five skill divisions in OZF 33. The brackets we will feature are Premier, High, Intermediate, Main and Open! Both Premier and High will have a Round Robin group stage while the bottom divisions will consist of a Swiss group stage. All brackets will continue using the Page Playoffs format. Grand Finals for Premier shall be played as a no-advantage best of five, while all other division's Grand Finals will be a best of three. Premier and High (or Intermediate in the event of a four-division season) will have eight teams while the other division's sizes are pending signups. Depending on the number of signups we receive for OZF 33, we may adjust the number of skill divisions after signups have closed.

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Season 33 updates & Poll Data

OZF 33 will feature three new fixes from twiikuu's TF2 Comp Fixes, namely Deterministic Fall Damage and Override Pipe Collider Size (a pipe size fix for the Iron Bomber unlock). The third fix is for a camera-related exploit involving the extendfreeze command. All plugins used for OZF 32 will remain.

This season we will also be keeping the forfeit all matches on disband setting off permanently. After running and experimenting without it for multiple seasons now, we see removing it as the best solution to teams who disband having remaining matches, especially for Round Robin divisions. Previously, if a team disbanded during the season then all matches that they had already played would turn into forfeit wins for the other team, but now only matches that haven't been played are forfeited. This season all match results from a disbanded team will stand, and no matches will be retroactively forfeited.

We had initially planned to release Poll Data prior to releasing the next poll, so you would be able to pull them both up straight away and compare. However, while we still will attach a link to the data, we figured we would include it with the season-opening, and refer to it throughout this page or other posts we make, allowing you to see some of what informs our decision making. When considering what needed to be asked in this poll, we looked at questions that frequently received higher than 80-85% on average and removed them, be it map options, weapon unlocks, etc. We did this because as much as we want to get as much feedback and votes on certain aspects as possible, staple maps like Process, for example, are unlikely to change. In saying that however, we will reinstall them in the poll at some point in the future, but we need to find what works, and what you the player would want to see in polls. Click here to see the January 2022 Poll Results.

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Bookable Servers

The official ozfortress bookable servers have returned! See our news post released prior to this post / season page for more information, and below you can find a basic how-to on booking an ozfortress server.

Server booking can be done via the ozfortress discord once again, praise be to the almighty BookerBot. Simply join the #bookings channel in the ozfortress Discord and type /book and details of your server booking will be PM'd to you. To view more commands, type /help in the #bookings channel.

Qixalite provides free and paid bookable server solutions for the community, and we would like to thank them for continuing to do so not only whilst our servers were down or unusable, but for their dedication to maintaining, building and expanding upon the Australian TF2 community, and the competitive scene at large. You can find out how to use their bookings system and more from their discord.

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How to; Create a Team, Join a Team, and Sign up!

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 section 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 season; teams are allowed a maximum of ten players rostered on for any single tournament.

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Reminders

• During OZF 33 we plan on conducting random demo checks to ensure players are recording demos. Please ensure that you are recording match demos in order to avoid punishment.
• Transfers will continue to be completed on a bi-weekly basis referred to as "Transfer Windows". This system will allow those reviewing them more time to review and accept transfers. Please refer to the Transfer Window page here for more information.
• If you are unsure on whether or not something is considered a game exploit, contact a League Administrator for clarification. Ignorance is not an excuse.

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Helpful Links

[Map Pool] [Key Dates] [Unlocks] [Administrators] [Class Restrictions] [January 2022 Poll Results]
[Transfers] [Transfer Windows][Server Configuration] [Rules] [Patreon]

We brought you news two weeks ago regarding the state of the ozfortress servers and that we were investigating solutions. With a few of those solutions in mind, we have 4 ozfortress bookable servers ready for use and testing, but we want to set some expectations, along with providing you with all of the information you need on operating them, and what to do if something unexpected happens or if an issue arises.

When testing the new servers, we will be keeping an eye on stability and routing above all else. Provided that this solution is stable, without routing or ping issues, and is achievable long term, we will be able to quickly expand our max server count up to 8. Many of you will remember we previously had 16 servers, however, between less of a need for 16 servers to be ready at a moments notice for off-season cups, and keeping monthly server costs achievable, this is a good compromise.

This sounds all well and good right, but what happens if this solution does not prove to be reliable and/or usable? Good question. In the past, we had the old ozfortress dedicated server box that was initially funded in 2009 by the community. With minimal upgrades over the years, keeping it up to spec at a hardware level would have been costly, and thanks to various providers over the years, we were able to colocate (host the physical server on their network) the servers affordably. But it became apparent after routing issues prior to October that we needed to start looking at other solutions.

As there will be a testing phase (which we aim to end before the start of the season), we will need your help! If you find an issue with the server; stability, ping, routing, plugins, configs, anything - let us know immediately via #admin-support. We will work with you to not only ascertain the scope of the issue but to have it resolved before season play if possible.

So, how do you use them? Thankfully, we have two pages for this. See our Book a Server page for how to book a game server or our Server Configs page for using the configs. Also for changing the map, you can refer to our Map Schedule page.

Thanks,
The ozfortress staff team.

Evidence Ban

PhyberZ STEAM_0:0:230201196

We have substantial proof to believe that the above player has been using game-altering third-party programs. Cheating provides an unfair advantage for competitors. As such, the player has been banned from ozfortress.com, the community's competitions, and all other ozfortress properties for a period of 2 years, after which time the persons will be on permanent probation. If they are found aliasing during their competition bans, their ban duration will be extended.

Should ANY clans in ANY ozfortress competitions be found housing the listed players, the team will be permanently removed from our competitions and all members involved will face severe penalties.