#spontanctf reopens

First and one of the most important things is certainly the fact that #spontanctf is ran by people who are still very much interested in Quake CTF overall and still play on a daily basis. #Spontanctf is a completely fresh start and everyone is welcome, regardless of skill level or past offenses (as long as cheating wasn't one of those past offenses). If you have any issues or inquiries, just PM the admins and they'll do their best to help.

We also have a completely new bot and the bot is really cool. Aside from regular pickup, it can and WILL do regular drafts, spawn servers, track your stats using trueskill, pick up girls, make sandwiches and many more features at disposal mostly for admins to make #spontanctf as enjoyable of an experience as it can be.

Last, but not the least, possibly even the most important reason is if the activity of the channel picks up, there could very well be a proper CTF league again. But you people need to play a lot of CTF and show the league admins they can finally host a CTF league that won't have more dropouts than active teams and that they can host a league that will finally be completed.

The guys that are doing this for you are Hanti, Insaccato and Spart1e. There might be one or two more additions to the admin team. If you feel like you'd be the man for the job, feel free to PM one of current admins of the channel and they will take you in to consideration.

The map pool encompasses almost all of the maps that were played competitively in Quake Live or Quake 3 at one point or another. If you are a map maker, feel free to PM any of the admins and they'll make sure your map ends up on the servers as soon as possible.

The map pool so far: Camper Crossings, City Crossings, Courtyard, Duke's Garden, Finnegans, Infinity, Ironworks, Japanese Castles, Pillbox, Shining Forces, Siberia, Spider Crossings, Stonekeep and Troubled Waters.

Custom (non-QL) maps won't be added to the map pool unless there's a positive feedback from the majority of players. Still, that doesn't mean you can't play them. To play such a map the map vote needs to pass. If it does pass it's assumed that most players do want the map and everyone in the active game is required to play it. More about this in the rules section.

And yes, it's a big map pool, but it's better to have more options than less.

Yes, the drafts were mentioned. To accomplish the long term goal of having an active ctf scene, the drafts are seen as one of the tools to accomplish that. It's intended to run a draft per month. Hopefully this can be achieved, but everyone has their real life obligations and if one month is skipped then it can't be helped. But yeah, draft per month. Fingers crossed!

There could be a lot of stuff written, a ton of dont's that can result in getting your ass locked on the channel, but the admins feel that such way of handling things is too restrictive.

The only real rule is to use common sense while playing and always keep in mind that you yourself wouldn't like taking shit from others before you start dishing out shit. Remember, it's a game and you're playing to have fun. So are the others, so think before you start running your mouth. Make no mistake, you WILL be properly dealt with if you ruin the game or experience for others in any possible way.

If there were specific rules to be put on paper, it would be the following:

General rules:
* When you join the server, pick your position and hold it for whole 20 minutes, no matter how good or bad the game is going for your team. Abandoning your position will be considered as griefing and will result in a lock.
* Use binds, or use voice chat if you're too lazy to bind stuff to your keyboard. If you prefer teamspeak, let the admins know and a TS3 server will be set up.
* Don't harass other players, this goes both for on server harass and on channel harass.

Map rules:
* Use cointoss to decide which team gets the map pick.
* The map pick has to pass if it is a map from the map pool.
* If it is a custom map you're voting for, the players can vote against it. Please pick a map from the pool if the vote fails instead of spamming the vote again. You'll just prolong the wait time for the game to start and most likely won't get your map pick no matter how many times you issue the vote.
* If a custom map passes the vote, everyone in the active game is required to play it.

The duration of locks (inability to add without getting banned) is 24 hours at most, unless you're a cheater. In case of cheaters - please don't even try it.

There's also a cooldown lock that lasts for 2 hours. It's mostly for people that take the games too personal and need to chill out some. It will also be applied to map dodgers.

If you're a total nutcase and keep doing the same stuff over and over again, you'll get completely removed from the channel.

Before you can play you need to identify yourself with the bot. To do that please do !iam steam64id. You can find it in X:\Steam\steamapps\common\Quake Live\, with it being that folder name full of numbers. The folder name / the numbers are your steamid.

You can also use any of the following websites to retreive your steamid: http://steamidfinder.com/ or https://steamid.io/. The last method would be joining any of QL servers, typing /players and writing down the string next to your nickname.

Once the bot knows you, the commands are the same old you've encountered in other channels, !a/!add to play, !r/!remove when you decide you've had enough, !w/!who to see who is added along with you and !l/!lastgame to check how much time has passed since the last played pickup. If a substitute is needed do !sub player or use !teams player1 player2 ... player8, depending on your preference. It doesn't matter which one you use because the bot tracks everyone playing on #spontanctf servers, regardless of them being in the pickup topic or not. To check the progress of currently active games, do !cg.

The servers are hosted in Frankfurt, Germany on Vultr Cloud. Currently there are 2 servers constantly up and if need be the bot will spawn more on it's own in case of more than 2 simultaneous pickups. Such case is highly unlikely, but one can always hope and if it does happen the bot will handle it.

The stats are calculated using the trueskill ranking system (i.e. Xbox Live system). You can check out the details about trueskill system on the following page, http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/projects/trueskill/. You're probably wondering why is trueskill used in #spontanctf. The current experience with ranking systems used to make even teams in CTF isn't really a good one. Be it ELO or custom ranking systems that were deployed, the teams were more of misses than hits. In that light, #spontanctf has turned to trueskill in order to make the best teams possible.

Please keep in mind that no ranking system will work if you don't play a lot and give the bot enough of games to process in order to make the most precise calculations possible.

With that mentioned, the bot's database is currently empty and in terms of trueskill everyone is unranked yet. That roughly translates to the bot falling back to qlstats for initial ratings. If you feel the teams given by the bot are bad, feel free to cap and pick. When all the players in the topic have played at least 10 games in the channel, the bot will have enough information to start using trueskill system and create even better auto-teams.

Yes, bad games will happen, no one can make a perfect system, no one can dodge a bad team and no one is denying that. If you have any suggestions on how to improve the system, don't hesitate to PM the admins with your solution and it will be taken in to consideration. The #spontanctf crew just wants to make and use a system that will reduce the number of said mistakes and bad teams to a minimum.