Sign up to fight! Featured Matches this Saturday, April 5

I am pleased to announce that we will be resuming our shoutcasted Saturday Featured Matches tradition beginning this Saturday. Shoutcasting will be provided by LoL Tourneys.

We’re going to be rotating through faction matchups this arc. We’re beginning with Piltover versus Zaun.

Click here to sign up to fight.

These will be the first Featured Matches of the Hextech Revolution story arc.

Format and Stakes

This set will be a best-of-three Piltover versus Zaun matchup.

We’ll be experimenting a little with variant Tier configurations. We’re curious to see how the matches play out with different arrangements. We also think this might help with organization.

Each match will have a base point value of 10 points, double the usual amount. The winner of the best-of-three will receive either an additional 10 point flat boost (70% chance) or a new Champion (30% chance). Champions won through Featured Matches can come from outside the faction’s usual sphere of influence.

Schedule for Saturday, April 5, 2014

Here is our schedule for this weekend. As usual, we begin at 12:30 p.m. Pacific.

Matches will begin no earlier than the posted times. Those who’ve registered have until the posted start time to show up and claim their spot. After that, even if they show up, they lose their priority status. (Sounds a bit harsh, but we want to respect the time of our viewers, shoutcasters, and other players.) After that point:

• If either team has gaps on their roster at the posted start time, we’ll turn to priority subs. Priority subs are people who registered in advance but didn’t win the draw for a spot.
• Five minutes after the posted start time, we’ll open it up to volunteers from the audience.

Match One

Starts at: 12:30 p.m. Pacific — 1:30 Mountain – 2:30 Central — 3:30 Eastern

Team configurations: Diamond Platinum Gold Silver Bronze (full rainbow)

Summoners Representing Piltover:

• TBA

Summoners Representing Zaun:

• TBA

Match Two

Starts at: 1:30 p.m. Pacific — 2:30 Mountain – 3:30 Central — 4:30 Eastern

Team configurations: Diamond Silver Silver Silver Silver (silver+)

Summoners Representing Piltover:

• TBA

Summoners Representing Zaun:

• TBA

Match Three

Starts at: 2:30 p.m. Pacific — 3:30 Mountain – 4:30 Central — 5:30 Eastern

Team configurations: Diamond Gold Gold Gold Gold (gold+)

Summoners Representing Piltover:

• TBA

Summoners Representing Zaun:

• TBA

How To Register

We’ll try to fill the rosters for each team in advance. The registration form is below.

Click here to sign up to fight.

This registration form will be open at least until tomorrow (Thursday) evening. We may leave it open longer if we’re coming up short on signups (which might well happen this early into the new arc).

Come Watch!

We encourage everyone to tune in and invite their friends to do the same.

The matches will be streamed at twitch.tv/LoLTourneys.

Rules

Factions is supposed to be mostly lighthearted fun, but to keep things clean we’ve developed some rules.

Timeline for starting matches

Matches will begin no earlier than the posted time. Those who’ve signed up to fight will have until the scheduled start time to show up. If any spots remain unfilled at the posted time, we’ll turn first to the list of priority subs (people who didn’t win the draw for a first-line spot) and then, if there are still openings 5 minutes after the posted start time, to volunteers from the audience. Should a team still have unfilled spots at 15 minutes after the posted start time, it forfeits. If both teams are missing players, the team missing the most players forfeits; if they are missing the same number, the match is played as-is.

Selection Process

The general principle for Featured Matches is that we want to rotate people around as much as possible and give many Summoners a chance to fight. However, balanced against that principle is the importance of matches starting reliably on time with full rosters, and secondarily of giving teams time to do some cursory pre-match planning.

We fill up the rosters through random selection from the list of registrations. Generally, we only place a given Summoner in one slot, and will leave some open spaces for audience volunteers on the day of the match. (We might expand that to two slots per Summoner for this set of matches, given that it’s pretty early in the arc and we may have trouble getting enough people.) Likewise, we prefer to pull a volunteer from the audience than to bring in the same Summoner multiple times. That said, if no volunteers are forthcoming, we may put someone in again.

Tiers

Each team has rank-limited slots for players. For example, in the first match, each team has room for one Diamond/Challenger, one Platinum, one Gold, one Silver, and one Bronze. If necessary, a team can fill a slot with a Summoner of lower rank: for example, a team could fill a Gold slot with a Bronze.

We use the higher of end-of-S3 and current Summoner’s Rift solo queue rank. (In previous seasons, we used “highest rank at any time in Season 3”; going forward, we’re using end-of-S3. Likewise, we’re now sticking to actual current rank, not, e.g., highest rank obtained at any point in the season.) To keep things impartial and unbiased, we very, very rarely deviate from this rule, and only then for the most compelling reasons.

For the sake of fairness, only level 30 Summoners may participate in Featured Matches: it’s simply too difficult to balance out the impact of different levels of access to Runes and Masteries.

Remakes

Remakes are generally not allowed. There are two main exceptions.

Large-scale server problems. If massive server problems are causing a significant number of Summoners to d/c or have unplayable levels of lag, we may call a remake.

Five-minute rule. Within the first 5 minutes of a game, either team may call a remake if one of their Summoners is involuntarily disconnected or has extremely serious lag issues (e.g. 1000ms). They will have 5 minutes to get a substitute in place. Each team may call a remake only once per match. Remake requests are subject to staff approval. Lag happens, and brief d/cs happen; this rule is in place for the most serious problems only.

Pauses

The /pause function may be used only where necessary due to, e.g., a player’s connection problems. It is not to be used for strategic purposes. Each team has a total of 10 minutes of pause time. After that, the team must play on, braving the storms of chrono-thaumic distortion (“lag”) as best they can.

Conduct

Summoners who engage in a little friendly all-chat banner, compliment others, or otherwise add to the enjoyment being had by players and viewers alike will win my appreciation and favor, possibly in the form of video clips of red pandas playing in snow.

Anyone who rages, whines, or otherwise behaves in a toxic manner is to be reported by all other Summoners, and may be suspended or expelled from Factions.

Organizer Discretion

The tournament organizers have the ultimate responsibility for ensuring fairness in these matches. We have final say on how to apply these rules, and the authority to develop ad hoc rules to address novel situations.

Crafty attempts by any team to circumvent the letter or spirit of these rules, or to exploit them for unfair advantage, will be rewarded with due appreciation for their cleverness and unreasonably harsh retribution.