New Forged Alliance Ranked Ladder and Cash Tournaments

Ranked Ladder

Members of the Forged Alliance Community are attempting to revitalize the game by developing this new ranked ladder, which uses the 3603 patch mod and all custom maps. With the help of programing guru Moritz, all games will be launched directly through GPGNet and reported to the Ladder ELO rating system identical to the one currently used in GPGNet. This ladder will be the foundation for a cash tournament to be held every three months. All you need to do to join is run the FA-Ladder Installer in the downloads section.

All players start with 1600 points which are adjusted after every game. The amount of points won or lost is determined by the point differential of each player in the rankings. A draw is worth a point or two to the lower rated player.

The FA-Ladder program includes all the changes from the 3603 patch mod, as well as a no score mod. After that it is as simple as hosting a custom game and selecting "yes" on the ladder game option. The program will take care of automatically selecting the appropriate settings. It will also make sure both players have all maps installed, and will randomly select one to be played after the game launches. You will see the fa-ladder icon in place of the map if everything is working correctly.

Important:

The winner of the match must zip the replay (Right click on the replay file and select send to....compressed "Zip" file), then upload the zipped replay at the ladder page by hitting the submit win button. The website will take care of the rest. There is no sign up needed, just upload your first replay and you will recieve your first ladder rating.

Everyone has been issued a FA-Ladder Avatar in GPGNet. Put this avatar up only when you are searching for a ladder match, as it will let everyone know who is currently looking. When this avatar is up, you can challenge any other player within 100 rating points of yourself that also has their avatar up. You issue a challange by posting in main chat "I challenge (GPGNet Name)" When you have your avatar up, you must accept the first person to challenge you. We use main chat because it is easy to see who the first challenger is. Private Messages do not count.

Check out the maps here.

Cash Tournament

The tournament will take the top 16 players in the ladder and seed them 1 through 16 accordingly. In the event someone is unable to participate in the final tourney, everyone will slide down a seed to replace the missing person. The tournament will be setup in a bracket format with the 16th seed playing the 1 seed, 15th playing the 2nd, etc. Each match will feature the best of three games, except for the Finals and Semi-Finals, which will be best of five. The lower seed (Higher ranked player) will pick the first map, while the following maps will be selected by the loser of the previous game. This results in the higher ranked person getting to pick an extra map, and is part of the incentive to compete on the ranked ladder. Each Tournament will have a Cash prize of 200 Euros, 150 for 1st place and 50 for 2nd.

Community - Long Term Goals

At the end of the Tournament we will reset the ladder and start the entire process over. During this period, the maps will rotate as well as any changes to game play or balance. Our goal is to have the community develop new maps, balance tweaks, and mods so we can maintain and patch the game for competitive ranked play. This will keep things new and interesting for each 3 month season.

We hope that everyone will get involved and spread the word. We are open to any ideas or suggestions that we can try to implement in the future, so let your voice be heard.

Right now we would like some volunteers to do live casts / announcing of the ladder games next weekend to help us kick off the new ladder.

We will also need plenty of help running the tournament when the time comes, so let us know if you would like to be involved when the time comes.

We know that not everyone will be happy with all the changes in the patch , map selection, or all of the ideas we are currently implementing...but it is only the start!

We will listen to the community and make changes accordingly. The good news is that we don't have the restrictions of a giant company that is bound by QA issues. We will be able to make changes quickly and keep FA alive and active. We hope you all join in!

TAG_ROCK & CrazedChariot