Before we get too sappy, you should head over and read the first half of the posts found on ozfortress, we'll summarize some of what is written over there.

Respawn League, founded in mid-late 2018 by core & Brady, was founded in youthful eagerness to improve and expand upon Highlander not just as a format, but as a community within our region. Over the years we have seen many staff members, even more contributors, and hundreds of players. Having just recently reached over two thousand accounts, nearly three hundred teams, and twelve hundred matches over thirty-three competitions! We owe that growth, this opportunity, and much more to you, the community. We are hoping that this move is one that does not alienate either league and gives you the player the best possible experience we can provide.

We would like to thank each and every player who has played in a season of Respawn since September 2018. We hope this next step provides an even better experience going forward.

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RSL HIGHLANDER MERGING INTO OZFORTRESS

The heading sells itself. RSL Highlander, and Respawn League itself, will be dissolved into ozfortress for future competitions. There are some factors behind this decision, but we hope many of the benefits will help us improve Highlander within our region going forward.

RSL ASIA WILL NOT BE MAKING THE MOVE

Whilst we did want to continue RSL Asia, there will be no Asia specific division within ozfortress Highlander Season 1. Any and all out-of-region players are welcome to join in-region rosters, but there will be a cap on the amount of out-of-region players on a roster.

Finding staff from the region has been a consistent issue, and regardless of staffing problems, there hasn't been as much interest for Highlander in the region compared to AU/NZ, thus we will be focusing our time purely on one region for now. We would like to thank everyone who has participated in RSL Asia over the years.

WHAT WILL HAPPEN TO THE RSL WEBSITE?

The RSL website will become functionally static, meaning the leagues, posts, users and teams will remain, but you will not be able to create new ones. There will be a pinned post on the front page of the website directing to ozfortress. This will be done to still allow people to see their past Highlander accolades, roster history and more.

SLOW RESPONSE TIME / NO RESPONSE ON TICKETS

It simply isn't acceptable. Every ticket or report submitted should see even a standardized response as soon as possible. The fact that this hasn't happened is simply not good enough, and we're sorry. Going forward, it is something that will be improved on within the different teams within ozfortress.

INFRACTION BANS WILL BE REVIEWED

Infraction threshold bans will be reviewed by the ozfortress Behaviour Panel and a decision will be rendered on whether or they will be continued at their current punishment length or removed. Any other ban can be reviewed upon request by that person who is banned.

OK, BUT WHY IS THIS HAPPENING?

Whilst there are factors internally that the merge would help us resolve, the benefits of this merge are the driving force. By merging Highlander under the ozfortress banner, we will be able to better market Australian Team Fortress to potential sponsors, and work closely with other organisations to plan tournaments and events at a larger scale than before, not to mention more off-season tournaments and a wider range of tournament formats. We hope you are just as excited about these changes as we are.

That title looks nothing but foreboding, but at the conclusion of 2022, the new RSL (Respawn League for short) administration brought some concerns about the future and continuation of RSL to me, and in wanting to keep Highlander alive in the region (a project I set out on in mid-late 2018), I jumped at the chance. I know the stigma around Highlander in Australia but rest assured, with both administrations working together, full-steam ahead, we’ll be ready to bring a true revival to the classic Community Highlander some of our older players may remember.

So what are we calling this then? Well, I am glad you asked! Say hello to the ozfortress Highlander Revival. Whilst it is a very simple name, we feel it sells our goals and ambitions for Highlander. Working together with RSL’s administration team, we have managed to set up and secure prizes, including a monetary prize pool and some other rewards. Along with these, we have managed to prepare the season info in just under two weeks, and have a season ready for you to be playing, with signups open now and the season starting Monday 11th of April.

While it’s not quite the direction we were aiming to take 2022, we are thrilled to be working with a larger team towards delivering the best Australian Team Fortress 2 experience possible. Stay keen-eyed for more details regarding this and off-season tournaments post Season 33 of our 6v6 format.

Kind Regards,
The ozfortress and Respawn League administration teams.

SIGNUP NOW

Alias: 
Discord: 
TF2 Experience & Background: 
Previous Experience (if applicable): 
What do you believe the Anti-Cheat process is? This should cover everything from collecting and reviewing evidence to a verdict and behaviour after a verdict: 
Why do you think you would be a valuable addition to the Anti-Cheat team? 

Hey everyone, our final seedings have been released and ASIA Highlander matches have been generated. We ended up reverting back to one division as our prior 5/5 team split per division meant two BYE matches per week as well as some awkward seedings that would leave a team likely in a rough position in the bottom of Premier. As such, only Main will be around this season. Please contact core#6440 on Discord if there are any issues.

September 2018 I began Respawn League, out of nothing but a want for better Highlander in AU/NZ as our existing league wasn't doing anything to improve our situation and was happy with leaving it as it was. Over this time we've run eight seasons of AU/NZ Highlander, seven of ASIA Highlander, and six seasons of Quadlander/4v4. It is my hope that I am leaving this position in a much better situation than when I began, and that the community continues to grow as you have done. However, sadly that time for me has come to an end, effective immediately I will be stepping down from my Head Admin position of Respawn League and passing the wheel to omni.

omni will be your new Head Admin, and I have full confidence that he will take Respawn League further into the future. Many of you were already aware that I was planning to step down and for everyone who has supported this league over it's almost three years of life, I cannot thank you enough. I am beyond grateful for the experiences I had, the people I was able to meet, play and start a league with.

I would like to thank every Respawn League staff member, past and present, for their contribution to growing our small and self-driven, yet determined community. In particular, I would like to thank:

• Brady - He helped me start the league almost three years ago, and has been helped run it ever since for which I will be forever grateful.
• Kodyn - Leaving UGC and joining us to help run each season as a League Admin, Kodyn has been nothing but a champion, and without him we wouldn't be where we were today.
• Michael - This dude, man I cannot thank you enough. You were there from almost the very beginning and helped take the league further than anyone on this list.
• omni - I'm leaving things in your capable hands, and hope that your drive for the game doesn't fade because of this position. I'm leaving you both a curse and a gift, hopefully a gift.
• bird - bird was a later join than most of the list, but her consistent community drive and pre-existing community positions made her the perfect candidate for a League Admin, and an even better fit for the staff team.
• Trips - He may have not been around as long, but honestly Trips was an absolute legend in the early days, and hope wherever you are now or whatever you are doing now that you are enjoying it, and that you never forget you have a very welcoming community here if you ever decide to come back!
• Bizink - Bizink is an incredibly talented artist, and I hope wherever you went you get to explore that talent. Bizink made the concept for the badges we have today. Sadly Valve won't allow new model designs into the game currently otherwise we'd be able to see your second design! D:
• Sickday/Liam - An absolute trooper of an artist, I hope we get to see more of your incredible art in the future! Liam is who you have to thank for our new logo, along with the profile picture for Alfred, our support bot.
• EmperorFaiz - Been a while since I've followed what you have been doing, but am eternally grateful for the timeless badge we have ingame, and that is in no small part thanks to you.
• obla - You were invaluable when I was starting the league, you helped me get into contact with Valve, and after talking to you about the current state of Highlander something you said clicked with me, and ended up being what made me decide to jump in and do it. I cannot thank you enough for the opportunity to run Conquer with you, and for helping start this league!
• catfish - We came into this sort of position at roughly the same time, and you have been nothing but a legend when I needed to talk to you regarding something league related or what I should do with something, that guidance was immeasurably appreciated.
• Agro - We're still writing this story, but I am nothing but appreciative of the growth our league has seen thanks to you and KritzKast.
• Wiethoofd - From help in the early days setting up our own league coverage, to getting our whitelists on whitelist.tf, to helping get our league covered by KritzKast, thank you! <3
• jeebs
• max
• froggy
• inc
• shy
• apples
• Comby
• Mundane
• Devlin

I haven't written a little blurb for everyone yet, but for everyone on the list and to anyone I have missed, I would like to thank you for taking time out of each day to put it into our community. I'm not going to lie and say you will enjoy every moment, sadly that is becoming the nature of volunteer positions in the TF2 community, but I hope that our little community will always have nothing but respect for that time and dedication.

I'll be sticking around as a League Admin for a while, otherwise this should be my last website post and last day as the Head Admin. My hope is that you will all join omni in continuing our little league into the future.

Map discussion

A key point of contention over last season was the maps chosen by the staff team. Many believe Upward Pro makes changes that are unneeded and the general consensus was that Upward is fine as it is. Whilst it is not directly saying "we want it back" (although some did say that) we would tend to agree. As such, we will be passing the feedback onto the map author, but for the upcoming season, we will be returning to standard Upward, with the potential of Upward Pro returning sometime in the future in a map test cup or something of the sort.

Upward Pro was not the only map with a turbulent reception, and whilst percentage-wise the general response to Warmtic was positive, there were more than a few people wanting it gone. Its future in RSL HL, for now, is unknown, but any future use will be on the newer fixed versions released by the Refresh map team.

Like Warmtic, the refreshed version of Steel was used this season and whilst not making any gameplay changes, a few seemed to be confused as to whether or not there were gameplay changes (which there weren't), but going forward we will continue to use the refresh versions of Steel.

Vigil by theatretechie was somewhat of a surprise for us in the poll, its overall reception last season was the highest we've seen in any of our polls, and thus with an almost 70% majority, we will be keeping it in.

For the last map we will discuss here, Prowater received almost identical percentages to Badwater Pro in previous seasons, and are currently deciding what version will be used, or if it will be included in upcoming seasons. To be clear, both scores positively and majority wanted to keep both, but Badwater's popularity, in general, has been on a steady decrease, so we will begin to look at potential replacements. Whether or not that means this season or in the future, we will see.

Our general line of thought when it comes to maps is to try and include the version that will satisfy the majority of players, whilst not having any lurking issues to gameplay or playability. That is why we will be continuing to make use of the Refresh versions of each map going forward as we believe the Refresh team is doing a fantastic job preserving existing gameplay and enhancing it by fixing critical bugs, clipping and oversights by past map authors. We would like to thank everyone in the Refresh team for their continued commitment to updating and preserving these maps for us to play on!

ABBA returning to Playoffs only

The poll results for this were fairly even, and many of the points raised in the additional feedback for it were valid. We feel for now it is important to keep the Regular Season as it currently is, as we've found the more consistent average match time of two maps per week and the added advantages of the points system less heavily favouring map score and focusing more on map wins has helped create a better competitive environment. There are a lot of factors staff need to consider when making a change like this, so going forward, only the Playoffs Season will be using ABBA.

If you are unsure as to what ABBA is, essentially it means each Payload or Stopwatch map is played in "halves" where both teams need to attack and defend once, with the winner managing to either push or hold the set time. ABBA introduces multiple halves by creating a Best of 3 scenarios where one team will need to win two halves to win the map. Many consider this to be the standard used by other leagues and that it provides a more competitive environment.

Many will remember that we originally removed this from both Playoffs and the Regular season a couple of years ago almost, but its selective reintroduction this time around was also prompted in no small part by all of you. One of a few reasons as to why we originally removed it was to improve overall time commitment for teams and players, and since then we have seen an incredible increase in the number of teams, players and especially scrims. With such a large increase in those three, we are more than happy to reintroduce ABBA to Playoffs.

Have more questions you want to be answered?

Feel free to ask in #tf2-discussion or #admin-support depending on its importance, we are more than happy to answer any questions or address issues.

One last announcement

Since I am writing this in advance and don't know when this will release, but this will be the second last post you see from me. I won't spoil too much, but I am leaving you all in the capable and ready hands of omni who take over as Head Admin from this season onwards. I am eternally grateful for the amount of support and opportunities that have been afforded to me over the seasons and ask that you do the same for my successor and for the staff team. At the end of the day we are all volunteers who are trying to preserve the gamemode we love and the community we adore, and while we will disagree on behaviour and even the game sometimes, we are at the end of the day a bunch of people giving up free time to run a league in the most professional manner we can, so please, be nice!

There are numerous posts set to come out with changes for the future of Respawn, and we feel it is critical to outline the ruleset and infraction changes first. We've drawn these changes from both the general feedback from speaking with players and by collating the poll data. It is important that we outline again that the previous season of Highlander was heavily experimental, and was run in such a fashion as to gauge interest in crossplay for seasonal leagues going forward, along with heavier use of "pro" versions of commonly loved maps.

With this upcoming season, we are making a number of changes that reflect what we believe people want whilst having to think about what is best for the league.

Ruleset changes

It is important we note that not all of these changes are purely additions or major changes, many are further documentation to clear up misconceptions or confusion caused, and changes will be reflected throughout our documentation in a few days time.

• We've refined the mercenary rules to make the dispute process a little clearer, along with how mercing players who are class restricted in that division will work.
• We've updated our dispute rule to reflect that we have Alfred, the almighty and powerful support bot.
• Added a condition to the mercenary rules defining that the mercenary has to be within the same region they are being merced for unless they are already playing in that region.
• With the updates to the mercenary rules, we've also added a clause regarding mercenaries already playing that class in a higher division in ozfortress (for example, a Premier ozfortress player trying to play their main in Main for RSL).
• After some internal deliberation, we've added a clause to our policy about Alternate Accounts, allowing us to ban off of evidence that isn't completely 100% proof, but 95%+ heavy suspicion and/or evidence like voices matching.
• Expanded on exploits to include more specific exploits, eg. water jump scoping.
• We've also added a clause to the demo recording rules requiring scrims be recorded in POV demo format and can be requested by Respawn's Anti-Cheat team, and follows all of the same delivery conditions as a POV demo from an official.
• The Emergency Transfer rules are finally in the ruleset and are less forgiving and far stricter than the existing undocumented process.

Using the feedback we received, we went after a few main points of issue; cheating, mercenary rules, the mutiny process and poor captaining leading to disorganization or forfeiting. Many will say that we haven't been strict enough on these points of issue so far and that certain individuals and even entire teams get away with the benefits of this. We want to make it very clear that we hear you, and are making these changes as strict as we can whilst also preserving other aspects that many may not have considered.

Infraction changes

• Adding infraction clause regarding public allegations/accusations of cheating and/or purposeful exploiting. We are releasing a page on our docs website specifically outlining the Anti-Cheat process for both you and us, and it will make it immediately clear how accusing someone of cheating is only making our job harder and potentially making those individuals aware of what they need to refine.
• Updated both Tier 1 and Tier 3 infractions surrounding racism, sexism and further bigotry and hate speech. As a league and as individual community volunteers, I think many will agree with us when we say we are fed up with seeing this verbal garbage and will be punishing its use more heavily than ever before.
• Updated many clauses to better deliver their intent.

While the infraction changes seem light on details, we would like to assure you that we plan to make much more use of them going forward.

The Reporting Process for Anti-Cheat and Poor Behaviour

We are already working on updating our documentation for this, basically, you will now submit reports via our Discord bot Alfred, which directly notifies our staff for a quicker response and allows us to directly communicate with you via the bot's Direct Message channel with you. Admin communication is a continuous point of contention for many and whilst we would like to think that the majority that seems fine with how we handle this already are truly fine with it (and just not filling out the poll) we have to be realistic, many of you will not read our news posts or even this one. So going forward we are working on finding ways to better deliver news content to you in a way you will actually either want to consume it in, or at the very least in a more efficient format.

General discussion about last season's poll data

Again to preface this (and we feel it is something that was lost on many), we aimed to make last season heavily experimental to better give us an idea of what we can and should not do going forward, and to test the waters to see how players receive potential exciting changes like crossplay between the regions.

League Ban

sen STEAM_0:1:127120857
author STEAM_0:0:497085392

sen/author has been found using an alternate account within ozfortress. Under our Associated Punishments clause, we will be selectively mirroring this ban for competitive integrity. As such, they will be receiving a standard 2 Year Competitive Ban for their use of alternate accounts, along with a 1 Year Community Ban.

Should ANY teams in Respawn be found housing this player, the team will be permanently removed from our competitions and all players involved will face severe penalties.

Community Guidelines Ban

Papapatooie STEAM_0:1:60905488

Papapatooie has been found conducting themselves inappropriately within our community and has breached our Community Guidelines. As such, we will be barring them from our services indefinitely. Let this serve as a lesson that inappropriate conduct that violates our Community Guidelines will not be tolerated over any medium.

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Should ANY teams in Respawn be found housing this player, the team will be permanently removed from our competitions and all players involved will face severe penalties.

The final round of the regular season has finished for ASIA Highlander Season 7! Congratulations to the teams who have made playoffs, and your top four teams are:

MAIN

Daybreak
Plan B
Evanescence
Still thinking a name

Coverage will likely come for Semi-Finals and beyond.