[saCTF + Powerups I] Announcement

[rain]

Owned Well Community,

It’s my pleasure to announce the inaugural season of OW.saCTF + Powerups! We are very excited to introduce this brand new league to our community. While signups are not yet open, we are encouraging everyone to start pugging as all maps need testing to determine which will be used for the league. You can expect to see signups open this upcoming week!

HOW MANY TEAMS/SIGNUPS ARE WE AIMING FOR?

Due to the success of the last saCTF season that was played on GlobalUnreal (rip), we are looking to attract between 120-140 players. Ideally we would like to run a 4-5 week regular season with a 2-3 playoff schedule to wrap up the league in 8 weeks at most.

WILL POWERUPS BE USED?

Absolutely, due to the overwhelming positive response we received in a recent survey and in previous posts we have decided to include powerups. All maps have been edited with powerup placement (and some other exciting changes) I would like to thank Windigo for working with me and making some great edits (check out the new Duku & Command!) and power-up placements. We have a total of 19 pug-able maps, which we will later choose 9-11 to play in the league. Get your pugs on and give us your feedback on your favorite maps to play!

Powerups you will find (a full powerups guide will be posted separately):
- Damage Amp (30 Seconds)
- Shield Belt (150 Armor)
- Armor (100 Armor)
- Thigh Pads (50 Armor)
- Health Packs (**CHANGE: Heals you to 100 HP, no longer just +30 HP)
- Vials (+5 HP)



I’VE NEVER PLAYED ONE OF THESE.. HOW DO THEY WORK?

Players signup for the league and join a free agent pool. They are then ranked and assigned a salary. Team captains will then draft teams based on salary restrictions and finish with a roster of 10 players.

Tip: If you would like to play in the season, get active in #iPug and strut your stuff. If you are new or unknown, captains might be weary about picking someone who they haven't seen play or are unsure about their activity/reliability.

WHAT TIME WILL MATCHES ME PLAYED?

Dev Matches: 2:30/3:30PM EST - 7:30/8:30PM BST - 8:30:9:30PM CET
Reg Matches: 5:00/6:00PM EST - 10:00/11:00PM BST - 11:00PM/12:00AM CET

WHEN IS THE DRAFT DATE AND WHEN DOES THE LEAGUE START?

May 24 - iCTF SPECIAL! (More details coming soon!) + Final Maplist Announced
May 27 - Signups Close
May 28 - Rankings Released
May 31 - Draft Night #OwnedWell / Schedule Posted / Rules Posted
June 7 - Matches Begin

AVAILABILITY?:
Players who sign up with Full Availability will be expected to make at least 75% of matches. If a player cannot commit to at least 75% of the matches, they can sign up with partial availability which will make them mercenary and not eligible to participate in the playoffs.

MAP SELECTION:
Group stages will be best of 3, playoffs will be best of 5. The first two maps are chosen by the teams, the remaining map is done via elimination. All maps that will potentially be played will be revealed 96 hours before the match start time - usually Wednesday at 4 or 5pm EST. Captains will have to enter their map picks on the website by this time. There is a potential 4 maps that will be available. The tiebreakers will be listed in the event of team 1 or team 2 having more points at the conclusion of two maps.

The official map list for the league has not been decided and will be determined based on pug response. Please give us as much feedback on maps as possible!

MAP PACK:
Please download the full saCTF map pack here: http://www.ownedwell.com/files/saCTF-mappack.zip
** Please ensure these maps are placed in your UT/Maps folder before pugs (our redirect is currently down)

Signups will be opening this week and there will be a lot more posts leading up to the draft. If anyone has any questions or issues that they would like addressed, please post about them sooner than later. I look forward to this our first installment of OW.saCTF + Powerups!

Your OW.saCTF head admins,
Rain & Chica (RICA)

[HULKSMASH]

**** HYPE TRAIN HAS ENTERED THE STATION ***

[Viperzz^]

Cool! How do you get keg in brokenlimits though?


edit; ok its a boost but honestly whos gonna do that
nice job on the other maps tho, so many changes. Rip defenders .

[d3R]

Awesome! I'll sign up for this

[RickJames]

Interesting changes, but it'll take a lot of testing.

I can think of some potential problems, like defenders pushing for powerups- it's certainly easy to do on many of the maps and it seems like a more viable strategy to fall back or defend with a stack than it is to attack with one, especially on fast paced maps. I mean, these days any average player can defend duku at least semi-effectively from high mid, giving them an amp and keg might not help things. Also, it seems like having lots of stuff going on at mid could slow the game down (especially boosting for powerups, which doesn't seem like a good idea to me initially).

I'm eager to try everything, but we need the activity for it and also for people (both players and admins/mappers) to be open-minded.

[D4RR3N]

I'm eager to change some map into sa if people want map(?) Though I've been checking the map list and it looks pretty solid. gj guys

OT: I have a sdom version of bells ready since 2 weeks b4 the sdom finals but enevr poested because pppl dont seem to care about it *bitch mode off*

[HUMPTY]

boosting in sniper?

[Viperzz^]

[uenz]

[rev]

I like it..here's an idea: what do people think about changing the pup times to more round numbers so that it's easier to time? Armor 30 instead of 27, belt at 1 min, amp at either 2 min or 1 min 30 etc. I've noticed that even at high level sdom matches, people don't call times and I think it's just because the math is too difficult.

[Sauron]

[rev]

The armor isn't the difference maker, the difficult timing is for amp/keg etc.

[d3R]

[PACO]

[rev]

One of the things im noticing from pugs played is that pups are having little influence on the game. Making them easier to time would make them more influential. I dunno, just brain storming. I think it needs some tweaking

[atr0city]

Haven't tried all the new maps yet, but the new Duku is awesome, I think it would help in iCTF too. It's good how things are being made more difficult for defenders, even though I am one, it's the right choice and it's what the game needed. I like how on most maps too the power ups are laid out in a way that the attackers will be picking them up the majority of time.

[Sauron]

[flowX]

Sniper <3
Im Not sure if amp at sactf 5on5 will work out ..but we will see i guess.

Lets Start pugging !

[rain]

[d3R]

[kevinsan1ty]

Whoever made the change to Duku, bravo. Think it could work really well in iCTF, too.

The flow of all the pugs I played yesterday was really good. Plenty of grabbing, and teamwork required to cap. Definitely more fun than any iCTF pug I've been in for quite some time.

[rain]

Thank you everyone for the feedback so far!

I have updated ip2 with some updated map changes.

CTF-CommandLE15-V2 - Health packs changed from +20HP to bring you back to 100.

CTF-DukuLE15AMP - This is a BETA change that will likely be implemented on all maps. Basically, it is only one single 'stacked amp' in the centre where the Keg/Amp sat before. Grabbing this Amp will instantly give you a 30 second amp, 150 armor, and 199 HP. It has also been changed from re-spawning every 120 seconds to now re-spawning every 90 seconds.

CTF-NIX-LE-V2 - The back flagroom lift has now been changed to a bouncepad.

CTF-SprintaLE15-V2 - The flagroom armor has been swapped with the base bounce-pad thigh pads.

[PACO]

[rain]

[Hallu]

There is another possibility, I've seen a mod where you gain HP by fragging, I can't remember the name but some players should know it, it's on the all weapons 10 players deck16 only public server. And for each spree, you get a random powerup : it can be invis, armor, amp, belt etc... Now before you say "it'll only favor defenders", I was thinking about tweeking this so that it would be :
-powerups only available for people having the flag, anywhere on the map (with maybe a limit if they have it for too long, to avoid cross flags situations that last for 5 min) to favor FCs and caps.
-the HP increase (+10 to 30 HP per frag, amount to be decided) for any people entering enemy base : could be tricky to define the limits of the base for the mutator maybe ? I don't know enough, but it's to favor covering and attacking in general.
-both forbidden to defenders inside their base or people DMing on mid.

What do you guys think ? I strongly believe it's worth a try. Of course the "luck" factor for the powerup you get could be annoying, so it could be tweeked so you'd get the best powerups (amp or shield) for a spree done with HS only, and armor/keg/whatever for regular sprees. Possibilities are endless. Of course that's only if the current way we're playing SActf doesn't work out (not enough caps, too much defense).

[HULKSMASH]

I can understand the 'easier' timing to make it more accessible to non weapons players...

But as for Hallu's suggestion I definitely wouldn't reward high fragging with even more power ups. There are already incredible fraggers with incredible aim in our community who it's pretty much impossible to attack against as is. A reward incentive to frag whore would just lead to more laming, back shooting, etc. - which is the exact opposite of what we want!

I personally really like the changes and the pugs so far have been great. While initially worried people would be uninterested in change (as is often the case), people have been really open to ideas and supportive (other than a few surprised OwnedWellians asking "why the f*ck is there a hole in duku?").

It's a step in the right direction of changing the stuffy turtle & lame meta that has so far been the precedent for hitscan CTF. Great job rain and windigo.

Really excited for this league!

[Hallu]

[RickJames]

[Sauron]

Hallu, I don't like that idea. It rewards people who frag. Yes, you specify ways to make it offense-oriented, but you neglect the fact that people will be sitting in mid racking up kills to obtain the powerups prior to making much offensive effort. It would simply create a spike of DMing in mid and backshooting like Chica said. Keep brainstorming though, perhaps there is a solution to that problem.
I think a cool extension to the idea would be to reward grabbers - every 10 grabs you get some sort of powerup when you grab - like an extra 150HP on your 10th grab, something of that sort. Could lead to some interesting tactics and promotes actual offense.

[rain]