CommunityFortress

It is a pretty busy week for the folks over at the Xtreme Professional League. I managed to catch up with Charles and ask a couple of questions from the man in charge of the TF2 division of XPL…

Can you introduce yourself for those in the community that do not already know you?

Wow, where to start? I am Charles, the Game Manager for TF2 at XPL. The TF2 community and most people in general refer to me as Hawkeye. As far as Team Fortress 2, I have played since around the Pyro update regularly. I also serve on staff here at CommFt as a forum moderator and Server admin for the two DM servers. Author of the TF2 MatchMod plugin (matchmod.net) and generally help quite a few different communities out getting servers configured and routinely answer steam IM for general game questions to pretty much anyone.

I have been active in gaming and competition for quite a long time. Back in the 80s I played Elite, Trek 2.8 and Doom over a modem for 1v1 match ups. Plus hit up Dwango quite a bit back in the day. Active at LAN parties and tournaments in Michigan from about the Doom era until the LAN participants decided I was old enough to ask to buy them beer. This covered Quake/2, Rise of the Triad, Descent, Warcraft/2, MechWarrior, Diablo/2, X-Wing vs Tie Fighter, Age of Empires, Command and Conquer, Starfleet Command, Unreal Tournament, Tribes, and a ton of others I am leaving out. I stopped actively attending/organizing LANs in the late 90s era.

I was active in many of the communities around these games, and modded many of them. TNTBot for Quake 1, 4-Team CTF for Quake 2, StarSiegeCraft:Fallen Jedi Edition for Tribes, and writing tutorials when I was on staff at Inside3D.net (Quake modding site)

What are your thoughts on the turnout so far for XPL Team Fortress 2 season 1?

The turnout has been great and exceeded my expectations to be perfectly honest. We began the season with 62 teams which exceeded my initial target of 40 teams quite handily. So potentially there are ~900 individual maps to be played this season.

I am hoping for a lot of feedback from the teams. I am planning a get together with the active team’s leadership to comment on what they like, don’t like and so forth in about a month. So far I am happy; I am more interested to hear from the community after we have a few weeks under the belt. Something we are going to do quickly is starting at week three, getting the matches schedule on Friday as opposed to the current Saturday to give players more time.


What made XPL want to adopt TF2 for their supported leagues?

Honestly, this was a business decision made by XPL before I was brought onboard.


What is the leagues plan for integrating the (semi)new community weapons available and future releases into competitive play?

Basically, give the community time to get the weapons (45-60 days from initial release) and allow them. Truth be told, I am an advocate that no weapons should be banned or limited until they prove to be game breaking, but am firmly against introducing new weapons during a season.

I really wanted to push for the Sandman to be allowed this season, but many players to this day still don’t think favorably of that particular weapon.  So it remains out. I really want to let the community decide things as far as the league goes so no sandman and a whole lot of trains this season.


What does the league have planned for if/when the Engineer update is released mid season?

The weapons will not be allowed in during Season 1. I expect all previously released weapons to be allowed in Season 2 with the exception may be the Sandman.


Will season 2 see a split in divisions? (ie: Invite level, Main level, Open)

The options exists, it really will depend on a number of things. How Season 1 plays out, interest from higher level teams to open up a main division.

Since the rule of the day online is seemingly to follow the mantra of “If you build it they will come.” I chose to break that mold and if the community shows interest we will accommodate the community. We are more than willing to talk about a Main division and changes to the Open division for next season, but there are no firm plans just yet for Season 2, Season 1 remains my priority right now and will remain so for a bit.


Well there you have it people, straight up answers from a stand up fella. I’d like to thank Charles for taking the time to let us all know what’s going on with XPL, also thank you to Graham for giving me the opportunity to contribute to this already amazing community. Later

-nX