Welcome back from winter break everyone. I hope yours was as relaxing as mine. Here are my rankings for this week. There aren't many changes because most of the teams only played one match since the last rankings. But tMarshall is bored, so I decided to write this for him. Rankings 1-6 are still incredibly close, I would not be surprised if everything is completely different after turbine and freight, where the top teams face each other.

Click read more to read the rankings

The first round of the tournament is wrapping up with 12 matches played so far (2 remaining to be played).  You can see the results as they are posted on the Lo3 section of the forums.  The brackets can be viewed HERE.

We are moving to one match per week since folks' schedules are kinda hectic around holidays and since the normal league seasons are starting up again.  Round 2 will be played on koth_nucleus and the deadline is next Sunday (January 10th).  If you are playing in the tournament, check out your round 2 match-up below:

Mappers' Expeditionary Excursion
Princeton Plainsboro

Misfits In Arms
Gravegun's Team

Jackson 4
The Harty Boys

High Koala Tea
I F*cked Mrs. Claus

Generic Team
The Big Dicks and Scottermac

Outbreak Shades
Self Destruct Kings

box?
Jersey Shore

Target Practice
Ballers Anonymous

The Team Right Under The Staff Team
THE O.G's

CommFT Staff Team
Disco Crisco Twister

If you are on Easter Bunny Hates You, Shadow Company Elite, TERRIPRO, or The Game, you need to get your match played and the result posted on the forums.  Once you have done that you need to find your round 2 opponent by looking at the bracket and following the cues.

Hello everyone!  So i figured i'd give predictions a shot since they seem to be hard to come by now a days.  For those of you who do not know me, i'm Phaser - i currently play for MoB gaming in ESEA-I.  Before this i've played for HF, sway, pure e sports, and TDA.  I've been around since the game started all the way back to the first cevo tourney.  Being around the game, leagues, and players this long has hopefully helped on my insight into these predictions.  Hope you enjoy - be gentle, it's my first time :)

Complexity v Loaded

Complexity is looking great so far - pretty much blowing past everyone they've faced and making it look almost too easy.  It's no mystery that their scout duo continues to carry them, but add along 2 solid soldiers, one of the best demos in the game - and hopefully a consistent medic in pure and i can almost guarantee they go back to the finals again.  Loaded has all the talent to make it far, but they have yet to really click in a match.  They recently added my boy reen to the mix, so it will be interesting to see if he is a starter or just a backup - and if he has lost any of his pizzazz.  Hopefully with a few more matches together they can make an impact in the division- unfortunately I do not see that happening in this match though.

Complexity>Loaded

EG v Complexity

MOTW

This will definitely be an awesome match.  The top 2 teams squaring off on a map that hasn't seriously been played in NA will definitely add to the excitement here.  EG has been playing solid lately, and cyz/syck (if on their top game) i feel are capable of leveling off the col. duo.  Carn/enigma are known for being amazingly coordinated with flanks and double attacks - but this is more of a head on DM scenario so i'll be curious to see how this pans out.  The demo/ soldier matchups are too close to call, this will be ridiculous!   It will also depend on what new strats we see...engy, maybe even a heavy???  I think this will be a close one regardless, i can't foresee either of these teams playing super aggressive and getting blown out by silly strats.  While this could go either way, i just have a feeling EG will edge this one out and keep their undefeated steak alive.  Make this your HLTV / Demo download of the week :)

EG>Complexity

edit: updated upcoming ESEA-I matches, EG match re-scheduled

It's the beginning of a new decade and Team Fortress 2 is continuing strong! We've witnessed a year of big changes and updates, and come through a brutal war relatively unscathed. CommunityFortress has been proud to support several different community efforts that are helping to improve the game, bring in new players, and expand the coverage of competitive matches!

2009 featured the emergence of the TF2 Mentor Program, where players can get assistance from veteran competitive players.  There was the announcment of the CommFT Map Testing team, which will be working with Mapmakers to fine-tune maps and increase the diversity of the game. On top of that, Cinq continues to improve the #tf2.pug and #tf2.pug.na IRC channels. These channels have replaced the previously prefered Pick Up Game system, and provide a great place for new and old players to find competitive games.

CommunityFortress is continuing to improve the quality of it's coverage based upon the grass-roots support of the community. This site is based upon the contributions of members of the community, and the more people involved the higher quality of coverage and information.

'09 also featured a multitude of video coverage that is continuing to improve. The CommFT youtube channel introduced the community to eXtv, a Match Recap series done in a unique and informative style. It also features the work of Wanderfull, who covers map startegy and terminology. CommFT ended '09 with the introduction of our Top 10 Plays series, put together by Lange and hosted by Vinny Da Boss. This series is dependent upon user contributions, so save those star moments, and shoot us demos + ticks! We'll be introducing a system for submissions soon. The first video can be found at PLDX, although future installments will be showing up on our Youtube channel. Subscribe to stay up to date on the latest videos and look for more episodes of eXtv once ESEA-Invite starts back up.

Which is coming right up! ESEA's TF2 divisions have been continuing strong with Season 5 featuring an extensive list of talent in both the Invite and Open divisions! Not only that, but this year will be featuring LAN playoffs! ESEA also switched around it's map rotation a bit this year, introducing KotH which was fairly well recieved, and bringing Turbine back into the rotation. As teams get back together after a Holiday break, we're finally starting to see some matches again with three matches scheduled within the next few days. The first two are left overs from Week 2 and will be played on Follower while i7 and MoB gaming will show us how North Americans play Turbine!

MoB vs Pandemic Mon Jan 4th 10PM EST (Follower)

Blight vs. Loaded Mon Jan 4th 11PM EST (Follower)

i7 vs MoB Wed Jan 6th 9:30PM EST (Turbine)

Keep your eyes peeled here for all your TF2 coverage as Alienware Arena kicks back up, TWLs multi-division madness continues, while ESEA's Invite and Open divisions continue to bring the heat.

Last and certainly not least, the CommFT Holiday Tournament is underway! Thanks to all the teams that signed up for supporting our efforts! The bracket will be updated by Jinn shortly as matches continue to be played.

The matchups for the first round of the CommFT 4v4 Tournament have been posted on the forums and are listed below. Full brackets can be found HERE. This round will be played on koth_viaduct and should be completed by January 3rd.  Since we have 28 teams competing in the event, we need everyone on the same page in terms of the rules and procedures.  The official tournament config is HERE (you don't necessarily need to use it if you understand the rules).

Outbreak Shades
Mappers' Expeditionary Excursion

Self Destruct Kings
Princeton Plainsboro

box?
Misfits In Arms

Gravegun's Team
Jersey Shore

Easter Bunny Hates You
Shadow Company Elite

Meatshot Orchestra
QQ - Tears of Rage

Jackson 4
Target Practice

The Harty Boys
Ballers Anonymous

The Team Right Under The Staff Team
High Koala Tea

THE O.G's
I F*cked Mrs. Claus

ATG
Cascade

TERRIPRO
The Game

CommFT Staff Team
Generic Team

Disco Crisco Twister
The Big Dicks and Scottermac

Week 3

Week 2 of ESEA was played on cp_follower, a map plagued by stalemates and backcaps and is agreed by most to be boring to play as well as to watch. Week 3 presents ctf_turbine, a map that was tried early on in the life of competitive tf2 but was taken off the lineup in NA because most believed ctf didn’t work as great in TF2 as it did in its predecessor, TFC. Yet, Euro’s continue to play on the map and it’s considered one of their favorites. After the success of the koth gametype in week 1, hopefully ctf can be revived, adding depth to competitive tf2.

Snipers and engineers are situational on turbine, yet I feel most teams will see that 2 scouts are better than 1 scout + 1 engy/sniper. Therefore for many teams, the basic lineup will be played for the majority of the match. Kritz is also run from time to time to mix things up and keep opponents on their heels, but uber remains the default choice.

The CommFT 4v4 Tournament is still planned for the next two weeks with team sign ups closing Sunday, December 27th.  The community has decided that unlockables (except Sandman) and Medics will be allowed.  The poll to discard one of the four possible KOTH maps is live; the loser on Sunday at midnight EST will not be included in the event.  The rules that are completely settled for the event are the following:

1. All unlockables are allowed except for the Sandman. This includes the new Demoman and Soldier items.

2. Each team may not play with more than one player on any class.

3. The maps in use are XXXXXXX.

4. Servers must be set to have criticals disabled.

5. First team to get 4 points wins.

6. Match scores must be posted on these forums the night of the match with thread titles of the format "Team XXXX > Team YYYY".

Get signed up by Sunday and be ready for brackets to be released Sunday night.

I would like to introduce you to a pick-up game system that was launched this last month. For those who don't know what a pick-up game is, it's an organized game, with rules, that happens when enough players are gathered together to play. The difference between a scrim and a pick-up is that a pick-up is not scheduled and is formed with teams that are built on the fly. The concept of pick-up games is not new - it's been around in computer gaming for decades and in sports for much longer. But pick-up games in competitive TF2 are still young.

The reason these games happen is because there's a crowd of players that wants to play games that have more structure than pubs. Gaming on public servers can be very fun but it's lacking some things that makes pick-up games more exciting and challenging. Here is a list of things a PUG can provide :
- An equal and predefined number of opponents that will play the whole match.
- A predefined maximum amount of time that a game can last.
- A great chance that players are going to hold their assigned positions during the match.
- And of course a higher level of cooperation.

Six months ago I created from scratch a program that can connect itself to an IRC channel and help people make PUGs. I did it mostly to improve the system that was being used by the community at the time, which was just a copy of a Counter-Strike bot. Their system was working and a lot of people were using it because it was one of the few options for PUGing available. But at the same time TF2 is a more complex game than Counter-Strike, so even though it was providing us games there were some major problems. And this is what I tried to improve. It took a lot of effort and time but after a while the older channel collapsed and my channel became the place where better PUGs are played. Unfortunately, this also created the negative effect of PUG noobs having a hard time getting in games.

That's why last month I started a new channel with different mechanics. The channel is still young but we are getting fun games played there. There is also place for improvement and I am getting ideas already about what could be added. From the features that may interest some of you there is detailed statistics after every matches. And the system can makes highlander (9v9, 1 of every classes) games.

How to and what you need to play there :
- You need to join the chat, you can download an IRC client and join us on #tf2.pug on irc.gamesurge.net or you can simply use this web service : http://www.mibbit.com/networks/gamesurge/tf2.pug.html
- Once you are in the chat, in order to play you have to subscribe for a game. This can be done by typing "!add class". Example : !add demo
- Have the VoIP client installed to talk with your teammate when you play a match. For more information about this type "!mumble" in the chat.
- Once a game is started you have to join the TF2 server, it's simple, the information is sent to you when it happens.
- Cooperate with your teammates and listen to admins.

Last but not least, Apoplexy Industries is now supporting us by providing us 4 high quality servers.

So, I hope you will get interested by this and will give it a try. Because PUGs are great to get new friends in the community while providing you a place to play challenging games in a competitive environment.

That's right, we are in need of someone with PHP coding experience to help us with a number of small projects.  Please add me on Steam (http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561197992854690) if you are interested in this opportunity.

Check out the blog post from Valve:

With the success of the AI systems of Left 4 Dead, we've been continuing to develop these technologies to create new kinds of game experiences. Team Fortress 2 is an excellent "sandbox" for explorations of this sort, and we've been quietly doing so for much of this last year. Some of the results of these explorations are TF "bots" — AI-driven player proxies with simulated humanlike senses, reaction times, and tactics. Although the TFBots are not yet complete, they play a pretty decent game of King of the Hill.

We thought you might enjoy testing your skill against these work-in-progress digital killing machines.

We'd also like to hear your thoughts on how the bots are behaving. Although we have our list of behavior bugs to tackle (this is a beta after all), we're sure you'll discover issues we haven't yet seen. If you'd like to give us bot feedback, you can post your thoughts in our new Bot Feedback sub-forum, or send us an e-mail at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it . In either case, please tell us the three things you hate most about the bots, and the three things you like best about them (as well as anything else you think we should know).

Since this is a beta test, the TFBots are only functional on these King of the Hill maps: koth_viaduct, koth_sawmill, and koth_nucleus. They don't understand the rules of multiple point capturing, cart pushing, or flag getting... yet. There's also no interface in the game to accessing them yet (we'll add one in an update shortly), so you'll need to access them manually.

• To add bots to your game, use the console command tf_bot_add. This will drop a random bot onto a random team (assuming there is a free player slot). The tf_bot_add command can also take up to three optional arguments: <count>, <class>, and <team>, in any order. For example, tf_bot_add 10 will add 10 random bots to the game with auto-assigned teams. Typing tf_bot_add pyro blue will add a Pyro to the blue team. Entering tf_bot_add red 5 will add 5 random bots to the red team. The command tf_bot_add red 3 heavyweapons will add three heavies to the red team.
• In order to put specific bots on specific teams (for a bots-vs-humans game, for example), you may want to disable automatic team balancing. To do this, enter mp_autoteambalance 0 followed by mp_teams_unbalance_limit 0.
• To remove a bot, use the console command kick <bot name>. To remove all of the bots in the game, use the command tf_bot_kick all.

TFBots are "players", and take up player slots. They run the exact same code that human players do, moving and firing weapons by pressing "virtual buttons". The bots have simulated humanlike senses, and only know what they see, hear, and touch. They also have realistic reaction times and aiming limitations. They don't "cheat" or use omniscient knowledge of the server state to make their decisions.

If you're interested in the technical details, give this a read-through.

Kuiper and I played the "not-it" game to determine who writes this article and I somehow lost... so yeah: we have been tapped as the heads of the new Official CommFT Map Testing Team.  Jinn gave us orders to make an article announcing what we'll be doing and basically justify our existence.  So here it goes:

In Starcraft, which is hands-down without argument the most successful e-Sport ever, there is an organization called KeSPA.  Think of them as the FIFA of Starcraft... or if you're an American, the NFL/NBA/MLB of Starcraft.  Within KeSPA, there is a department that determines, playtests, and creates the maps that will be played for the coming seasons, regardless of the individual league.  This department works to evolve the way that Starcraft is played by the pros, while providing new, fresh environments for them to do battle and entertain the spectators.  What Kuiper and I will be in charge of doing is essentially what that department does, except we won't make a business of it, create two cable television stations for the masses, and enjoy millions of dollars of profit... and its for Team Fortress 2.

The head of CEVO, who just so happens to be the head of this website, decided that his map pool for the coming CEVO Season 5 will come from our choice of maps.  Looking beyond just CEVO, though, our larger goal with this program is to introduce — on an official level — new maps to the competitive community and encourage the leagues other than CEVO, such as ESEA and TWL, to make use of our map pool choices.

For every map pool choice that we make, we intend to write an article as fully detailed as possible to explain our decision in welcoming said map into the competitive pool.  After we have chosen the maps for the next season of CEVO, we will be reviewing as many maps as we can to evaluate their usefulness in competitive play and properly introduce the TF2 community to them.  The head of CEVO summed it up as "the Supreme Court for competitive maps".

As for determining which specific maps to choose... well... that's G-14 classified for now.

Here is a link to the thread that Kuiper and I will try to use for keeping up with everything that we do.

A few members of the community have requested that CommFT host a 4v4 tournament over the holiday offseason.  We agreed that this was a great idea and as you guys know, the community's wish is our command.  It will be a KOTH-only event and it will be run through our forums (no fancy scheduling system and no anticheat).  Our game server provider, Apoplexy Industries, will be providing a number of top-notch servers for those teams without match servers of their own (of course litany says that he would prefer that you would buy one instead).

Multiple polls have been rolling in the past few days, gauging the community's opinion towards unlockables and Medics in this tournament.  As of right now, we have decided upon the following rules (based on the majority of the votes in the aforementioned polls):

1. All unlockables are allowed except for the Sandman. This includes the new Demoman and Soldier items.

2. Each team may not play with more than one player on any class.

3. The maps in use are koth_viaduct and koth_nucleus.

4. Servers must be set to have criticals disabled.

5. First team to get 4 points wins.

6. Match scores must be posted on these forums the night of the match with thread titles of the format "Team XXXX > Team YYYY".

We are thinking at this point that sign ups will close Sunday, December 27th at midnight and that the matches will be played throughout the following week or two.  Stay tuned to this article for the latest information regarding the event.  You can go HERE to sign up your roster and go HERE to discuss the rules.

And get some boots...

http://www.teamfortress.com/war/victory/

Check out the complete update below:

New Content

• Added new control point map Gorge
• Added new capture the flag map Double Cross
• Added item crafting
• Added work-in-progress TF Bots for beta testing in KOTH maps (blog post coming with more info)
• Added headshot death animations
• Added more backstab animations

Soldier

• Added 35 new Soldier achievements
• Added 4 new Soldier items
• Added new Soldier Domination lines

Demoman

• Added 35 new Demoman achievements
• Added 3 new Demoman items
• Added new Demoman Domination lines

Spy

• Now pretends to be carrying the weapons & wearables of the target he's disguised as
• Moved the Spy's camera-beard to the Misc loadout slot so he can equip it with a hat

Scout

• The Sandman now only stuns on a max range hit (when you hear the cheering)
• All shorter hits now force the enemy into the thirdperson fleeing state (also removed the damage reduction on them)

Minor changes

• Added new options to the Multiplayer->Advanced dialog:
  
  • Combat text, which displays damage amounts you do to enemies.
  • Medic auto caller, which automatically shows you nearby friends at low health.
  • Heal target marker, which better highlights the target your medigun is locked onto.
  • Alternative Spy disguise menu, which lets you choose disguises using just the 1-3 keys.
• Fixed being able to affect friendly pipes with airblast (they would unstick)
• Added recharge sound to abilities with a recharge bar
• Fixed attachable wearables not staying on ragdolls
• Players no longer see the wearables that are a part of a friendly spy's disguise, fixing various graphical glitches
• Added jiggle bones for Pyro's chicken hat
• Added 2 new game startup songs

Community Mapmaker requests

• Implemented InputSetSetupTime() for team_round_timer (was in the .fgd but never implemented)
• Added "SetDispenserLevel" input to cart dispenser (1, 2, or 3)