November 12, 2001
The Website has been updated with information from all matches played thus far. This week only 3 of the five matches were completed. There seems to be an ongoing problem with teams being able to schedule their matches. I wanted to give people the freedom to set up their matches when it was best for them, but for some reason this does not seem to have worked well. Unfortunately this leads to a large number of outstanding matches and delays in posting the results. For this reason I have had to create some rules to help get some kind of result for outstanding matches. I really hate forfeits and did not want to have to use them, but unfortunately I will need to include forfeits as a possible option.
I will give teams every opportunity to schedule their matches on their own, but at some point I need to just say "Time is up", and set a default time for playing the match.
Each team has the normal scheduled week to play their matches. If at the end of that week the match has not been played, the match will go on Postponed Status for one week. If at the end of that week, the match has not been played I will send both captains an email notifying them that they have one last week to schedule their match on their own. If the teams are not able to schedule a time on their own for this match, the match will be scheduled for the end of that week at the League Default Time of 3:00PM EST on Sunday. This will give you a total of 3 weeks to schedule matches on your own which I feel is more than enough time to set something up. Failure to play the match after three weeks and then at the League Default Match Time could result in a Forfeit Loss.
Now I realize that sometimes it is not your fault that you have not been able to schedule your matches. It may be hard to get ahold of the other team, or work, school or other obligations may make it hard to find a time that works for all people involved. I do not wish to penalize teams that have made every effort to schedule their matches, so I have designed a system for forfeits that will not penalize teams that have done everything they could to play their matches.
If teams are unable to schedule matches on thier own and a Scheduled Make-up Match needs to be played at the League Default Match Time, the members of each team involved will need to meet in the FLF 2v2 League IRC channel (#flf2v2) at 3:00 PM EST on that given Sunday (a grace period of 15 minutes will be allowed). I will be in this channel to administer the situation and make rulings on forfiets if required.
There are three possible outcomes of the Make-up Match:
1. Both Teams Show Up - In this case, the match will then be played as normal and the results will be recorded as any other match.
2. One Teams Shows Up, One Team Does Not - If at least two memebers of one team show up and less than two members of the other team show up, the team that showed up will be awarded a Forfeit Win while the team that did not show up will be given a Forfeit Loss.
3. Neither Team Shows Up - If neither team has at least two memebers show up at the Make-up Match, BOTH teams will be given a Forfeit Loss.
(Note - If Neither Team Shows Up for a Make-up Match that has been PARTIALLY Played, the team that was ahead at the time the match was stopped will be awarded a Win. Regardless of the Win/Loss outcome of a forfeited match that has been partially played, game points earned will be awarded.)
The reasoning behind these rules is not to punish a team who makes every effort to play their match and gives them an opportunity to earn a Win. If neither team shows up for the Make-Up match, neither team deserves a Win on their record.
Now, some of you may be thinking "Hey, how come they get a Win and didn't even play the match? My team had to play and earn every one of our Wins!" In order to make an Actual Win worth more than a Forfeit Win, NO GAME POINTS will be assigned for a Forfeit Win (with the exception of partially played matches as described above). In this way, a team who won their match due to an Actual Win will earn 3 Game Points for their win while a team who won their match due to a Forfeit Win will earn 0 Game Points for their win. Thus the team that played and won their match will have an advantage in the case of a tie for the playoffs at the end of the season.
Hopefully these rules will help get some of the outstanding matches taken care of in one way or another. These rules result in any outstanding matches from Weeks 1, 2, and 3 will have to be played on or by 3:00 PM EST Sunday. However, there are a four teams that have outstanding matches from 2 or more of these weeks and I can't scheduled two matches for the same time. Therefore outstanding matches from earlier weeks will have priority. So, while you may have outstanding matches from weeks 1, 2 or 3, you may not be assigned a Make-up match this Sunday.
November 4, 2001
I have updated the Website with all the Results of Matches that have been sent in to me thus far. There are still several matches that need to be made up through Week 3, so if you haven't played any of your matches, try to get ahold of the teams you need to play to get the matches played.
I have also updated the "Awards" section with all the data from matches played thus far. I did make a modification in how the Offensive scored are recorded and ranked. Instead of listing the times as how much time was left on the clock, I listed them as how long it took to capture all the points. Thus the less time it takes the better. In this way I was also able to give a penalty to the attacking team when they are unable to capture all the points (see the front page of the Awards Section for details on this).
Please remember to have at least one member of your team recording the times durring matches. This is always a good idea in case something happens and there is a discrepancy in the times. While it does not make a difference in the League Standings, it does help see what teams/partners/players are good at what and will help you plan better for your matches later in the season or playoffs (plus it is kinda fun to follow who is best at what mode and map).
October 29, 2001
WELL.... at long last it looks like I FINALLY have the website finished. There are still a couple cosmetic changes I want to make, but other than that, its pretty much done. Here is what it new:
FORUM - We now have a Forum for the Frontline Force 2v2 League. I set it up so that each team will have their own section so that you can talk amongst your teammates or post in your opponents sections to help you arrange match times. If any team would like a Private Forum to discuss Tactics and Strategies, please let me know and I will set one up for you. I also have a forum for News, one for General Discussions and one for Questions, Comments and Feedback. Feel free to post in the forum... lets get some communication going.
AWARDS - I also have put up the "Awards" sections, so you can go there and check how well you are doing against other Teams, Partners and Individuals. Remember, this section is only for fun to see how you stand up against others. The way these rankings are determined are explained on the front page, and are really only showing the results from League Matches. There are some really high ranks so far, but that should level out as time goes by.
RESULTS - I set up the Match results in two ways. First, by week. This will show you the detailed results of each week. However it seemed that it might be more helpful when scouting a future opponent to have results broken down by teams (see what maps they are good at and what they are not so good at) so I did that also.
You may notice several Postponed Matches on Week 2 Match Results. This is because the results of three of the five matches for Week 2 were not reported to me by Sunday morning (when I update the results). Please try to get in touch with your opponents early in the week to schedule your matches before Sunday. It makes my job much harder if I have to go back into prior weeks to update the results. Hopefully now that we have the Team Forums, there will be a little more communication between teams.
Please be sure to check the website and Forums often to get new information about what is going on with the League and to schedule your matches better.
October 26, 2001
Well I have a bunch of news today so please take a few minutes to read through everything.
WEBSITE UPDATES - I have got the Match Results Pages up now (YAY!), so you can look on there and check out the results of matches by week. It will automatically default to the current week, and from there you can click on any week you want to check out. However, I was thinking that while this might be good information to check the weekly results for everyone, it might also be useful to check results by Team. For example, say you are playing |HCC| next week and want to see how good they are, what maps they play well (or not so well) and how they have done against their opponents so far. You will be able to click on the |HCC| link and see a listing of the Detailed Results from each of their matches. I will be working on this when I get time, but since we are only in the second week, I will be putting that lower on my priority list.
Higher on my priority list is the Awards Section. We are starting to get a larger number of Rounds being played and it is already becoming evident who the dominant team is (I won't tell you their name, but their initials are HCC). I am trying to figure out the best way to put this data up as manually writting the tables would take me forever. I keep all the data in an excel spreadsheet and if I can figure out how to copy these tables into html code I will be set. I currently have excel 97 which does let you do this, but it comes out really crappy. If anyone knows how I can copy excel tables into html quickly and easily, please let me know.
EUROPEAN LEAGUE NEWS - I'm sorry to say that I am going to have to put a hold on the European League for a couple of weeks. I just have so much to do right now with the website and league management that I can't take the time to make sure the EU League is running well. On the positive side, this will give European Teams the chance to sign up, get the word out and hopefully get some more teams. If any of the teams currently signed up in the EU League would like to play some "Pre-Season" matches to get the hang of it, please let me know as I would like to help facilitate this.
TEAM CHANGES - Unfortunately one of the teams in the NA League (Team |316| has had to drop out due to problems with their Cable Company (pings of 1500 make it hard to play FLF). However, since the season is only in its second week, I have simply taken the schedule for |316| and replaced it with a team that was on the waiting list |cLrR| made up of AntiTrust and Badaxe. Welcome to the FLF 2v2 League |cLrR|! If you were supposed to play |316| durring the 1st or 2nd week, you will now need to contact |cLrR| and schedule that match with them.
IRC CHANNEL - I have set up an IRC Channel where players can have a neutral place to meet before their matches, schedule matches, or just to hang out. The channel is #flf2v2 and is set up now, so feel free to idle. I will pretty much be in there whenever I am online so if you need to get ahold of me, you can PM me frome there.
MATCH SCHEDULING - Well it is already Friday of the 2nd week of the season, and only one team has played both of their first two matches. Please remember that it is the responsibility of the Team Captain to know his players schedules and to contact the Captian of the teams they are supposed to play each week. I wanted to give teams maximum freedom in scheduling their matches rather than have a fixed day and time. Please do your best to get your matches scheduled early in the week (or even set them up for the next week) and have the results in by Sunday mornings. It is not a MAJOR problem if you can't but it makes things run much smoother if I don't have to have a bunch of Postponements on the Resutls Pages.
October 23, 2001
With the help of some of the people mentioned yesterday, I have finished putting up the Standings Page on the Website (see Standings page). I think it looks pretty cool. You will now be able to see how your team and the other teams in the various Leagues and Divisions are doing. I will be updating this page every Sunday Afternoon (or as match results come in as time permits).
I am now going to be working on the Detailed Match Results Pages which will show all the information you send in on your Results Forms for each match played that week. There will be a seperate page for each week so you can check past results and use that information to plan your Map Selection and Strategies. I hope to have this finished today or tomorrow. After that I will be working on the "Awards" pages. This is going to be really cool because you will be able to measure your results and skills against other Teams, Partners, and Individuals for the Modes (attack/defend), Various Maps and Overall. There will be a lot of data here with 60 Categories (14 maps plus Overall with Best Rounds, Best Team, Best Partners and Best Individual rankings to record for each one) and with 95 matches and up to 570 Games and 1140 Rounds to record this season you can imagine this may become a great deal of information for me to plug in each week, so I may limit the rankings to the Top 10 for each category... we'll see.
In other news, TS (TheSuckers) have filled the final open spot for the European League that was formerly held by a BYE match. With the addition of this team, there will be no BYE matches in either of the Frontline Force 2v2 Leagues this season!
October 22, 2001
Congratulations to those teams that played their first week's matches. There are still two North American League Matches and two European League Matches that have not yet been played. If you have not yet scheduled and/or played your 1st Week Matches, please do so as soon as possible. I don't want to have a fixed day and time for matches, but if people can't schedule them on their own, I will have to do that. If there is anything I can do to help facilitate scheduling, please let me know.
|HCC|Deja has graciously offered to donate their clan server to teams for FLF 2v2 Matches. If you are having trouble finding a server you can schedule your matches on you can PM Deja in IRC (#hcc chan) or through ICQ #92511104 and he will be happy to set it up for you and even admin your match if you like.
I have made a few changes to the website in case you haven't noticed. I have finally been able to get the Season 1 Schedules up (please take a look)! I would like to thank [hLABS]tryptefan, [NXP]Wraith and all the other people who offered and donated their time to help me get this information up on the website. I am still working on the Standings and Match Results Pages and hope to have those up in the next few days.
I am also working on an "Awards" page. The data and format for this section are finished and I just need to convert it into html code. This section will show the top ROUNDS, TEAMS, PARTNERS, and INDIVIDUALS for both Offensive and Defensive categories for each Map as well as Overall League Leaders. The Overall rankings will take into consideration the total Time of the Map and will weigh times accordingly. The Awards Page will define how the rankings are determined as well as provide links to each map and overall rankings. This information will not be considered in the Standings or in determining who will play in the Playoffs. It is simply for information purposes similar to the team and individual statistics kept for various sports (batting average, ERA, total yards rushing, shooting percentage etc).
October 10, 2001
OK everyone; today is the last day to sign up a team for the league. At this time we have 8 teams for the North American League and 5 teams for the European League (2 are confirmed and the other three I suspect are European). If you haven't signed up a team yet or if you know of someone who wants to sign up a team, they must be submitted by midnight tonight. I will be making the season schedule tomorrow morning, and then the season will be fixed for the next couple of months.
As it stands right now, we will have two divisions of 4 teams in the North American League (the division a team will be in will be decided randomly) and one division of 5 in the European League. I've heard of a couple more teams that may be signing up, so that is subject to change.
The more teams we have, the more diverse the competition will be, so be sure to remind your friends and/or clan mates to sign up today.
I had hoped I wouldn't have to say anything about this, but a couple of people had asked me about cheating and how this will be taken care of in FLF 2v2 League. While most people do not cheat (this is FLF after all, not CS), there are some that feel that it is more fun to cheat or have an unfair advantage over the other team than to meet a challenge on equal terms. There is some debate as to what is considered "cheating" (do scripts count as cheating?), and I have addressed this in the Rules & Information Section. Please review this information so you are sure to understand what constitutes cheating. Contrary to what some people may want, we will NOT be requiring Punk Buster as I have spoken with several people who are knowledgeable about different kinds of cheats, and they have told me that if someone really wants to cheat, it is not very difficult to get around Punk Buster.
I had hoped I wouldn't have to deal with this issue since this league is really just for the fun of the members, however like I said before, some people think it is more fun to cheat. Unfortunately this ruins the fun for those teams that do not choose to cheat. There is really no way to stop cheating if someone really wants to do it, so I just hope that everyone will be honorable and try to keep the playing field equal for all teams.
October 6, 2001
Well it looks like we have a total of 9 teams signed up for the first season so far. However, I am not sure of the validity of all the teams and if they are European or North American Teams.
I will be sending out an e-mail to all the contacts for the teams and will need to get a confirmation letter back before the schedule is cast in stone.
Due to the fact that North American and European teams may have problems playing on each others servers, if you have entered a team from Europe, please let me know. If there are at least 4 teams from Europe, we will have a seperate European League.
I would like to give a few more days for teams to enter before making up the season schedule. I hope to have this done and posted by Thursday to give you a couple of days to work out the details with you first week opponents. So if you have not yet signed up your team, please try to do so by Wednesday evening.
If you know of any other people you think might be interested in signing up a team, please let them know as the deadline for signing up teams is approaching quickly, after the first week, there will be no more teams accepted until the next season.
October 1, 2001
The Frontline Force 2v2 League is now open for entries for the Fall Season. If you have interest in the league, please feel free to check out the rules and information page.
If you would like to sign up for the leage, please go to the Join FLF 2v2 Page.
The Fall season should be starting October 14th, so you have two weeks to form your teams and sign up.
Good luck and I hope you enjoy FLF 2v2 as much as I do!
This league is dedicated to the Half-Life Mod Front Line Force. Unlike other Leagues, the Front Line Force 2v2 League is NOT a perpetual league (ongoing forever). This league will be broken down into seasons of between 8 and 12 weeks (depending on the number of teams entered). At the end of each season, the top teams will qualify for a multi-level playoff to determine the overall champion FLF 2v2 Team. Schedules are made at the beginning of the season and are set up in a round-robin format. This way schedules are not determined by your wins or losses and each team will play each of the other teams in their division at least once.
Teams are made up of between 2 and 4 players. But only 2 players can play at any given time (see Rules and Information for details). A game consists of the teams each Attacking and Defending once. The winner of a match is determined by a best of five series of games. In standard Front Line Force the objective is simply to capture as many points as possible and to prevent your opponent from capturing as many points as possible. However in FLF 2v2, the objective are a little different. You still want to capture as many points as possible, but in 2v2 you will have to do it as fast as possible while keeping your opponent from capturing all the points for as long as possible.
In the past, I have run several FLF 2v2 Tournaments and the rules and play have been well tested and well accepted. However such events require a great deal of preparation and work to pull off (not to mention several servers and moderators), so I have decided to move the format to that of a League. The default time for matches will be 3:00 PM EST however it is acceptable (if not recommended) that teams schedule their matches for whatever time is most convenient for them. Other Leagues have tried this in the past with minimal success. I believe this is due to the fact that it is very difficult to check the schedules for 14 different players and find a time that will work for them. With FLF 2v2, there are only 4 players involved so self scheduling should not be as difficult.
Please see the League Rules and Information page for detailed information about this league and FLF 2v2.
