Discord

APAC League Rules

Definitions

APAC - The "Asia Pacific" region and countries that are in said region. APAC Community - The community in the APAC region that resides mostly on the APAC Discord. Participant - A league participant is an umbrella term that could be a player, captain, liaison, moderator, caster or even audience member. Match - A single instance of a game to be played between two teams.

Forward

Below are the rules that will dictate how the APAC league will run, it is expected that all participants in the league have read and gained a decent understanding of them. Some rules can seem a bit nebulous in their descriptions but this is by design as context is king for a lot of situations that a league and community can face. The main idea is that this is a community run league with a governance structure that supports that and will let the rules evolve naturally over time to suit the ever changing wants and desires of the community.

1. Code of Conduct

  1. The stability and unity of the APAC community is the top priority, even over the league itself. Without a strong community backing a community run league becomes difficult and it can ruin the fun of competitive play. Any actions taken to discourage, undermine, agitate or otherwise negatively impact the community will be met with moderation.
  2. Don't be toxic. Avoid using discriminatory language, hate speech, threats, doxing and and other forms of harassment or unlawful behavior will not be tolerated. Targeting players, groups or teams with the intent to agitate or annoy is just not on.
  3. Sportsmanship is key to any good competition, it is expected that games are played with fairness and respect for your competitors and team mates. Channel your frustration and issues into lead to fire down range. We are all here to have fun and get away from our day to day stresses and we are all human so treat everyone with dignity and respect. Basically the Australian adage "Don't be a cunt" fits here.
  4. Responsibility for league governance falls on to a few groups:
  • The players and their team will be represented by their appointed team liaison
  • Team captains are responsible for the actions that their players will take, and will be reflected on the team (or teams in the case of sister teams) as a whole.
  • Moderators will be responsible for making final decisions on matters, concerns, rulings and rule changes. To avoid bias if a moderator belongs to a specific group or team that is having an issue they may not be involved or have less weighting in decision making.

2. Player Participation

  1. This league is for players residing in the APAC region only.
  2. Players are encouraged to be active on the APAC discord for participation, at the very least have an account on there linked in their player account.
  3. Players participate by being part of a team, players not in a team can sign up as a ringer.
  4. Players are not allowed to play under more than one account, and must not have more than one account registered.
  5. Players and teams must play using their registered name. One must not hide their identity under another alias.
  6. Player names, player logos, team names or team logos are forbidden if they:
  • Are protected by copyrights/royalties/third-party rights and the user has no written permission
  • Resemble or are identical to a brand/trademark no matter whether it's registered or not
  • Resemble or are identical to a real person other than themselves
  • Resemble or are identical to another player or team
  • Are deemed too hard to read, distinguish, interpret or have multiple unnecessary characters
  • Are nonsense
  1. In addition to the above, any player names, player logos, team names or team logos that are defamatory, pejorative, offensive, vulgar, obscene, anti-Semitic, inciting hatred, or offending against good manners are forbidden. Using alternative spelling, gibberish or wrong spelling in order to avoid the requirements mentioned above are forbidden.
  2. Players are not to falsely represent a team for which they are not a rostered member. Likewise teams are not to falsely represent players that are not on their roster.
  3. When a player leaves a team for any reason, that player will be subject to a "cooldown" period for the next 2 match-weeks (that is until two more matches have been generated since they left). During this period, the player may become a member of the ringers group or another team, but shall be prohibited from participating in a league match.

3. Teams

  1. Teams minimum size is 6 players and max size is 8 players.
  2. Each team must assign a captain.

Captain's roles & responsibilities are:

  • Organising the team
  • Organising scheduled matches with other teams
  • Will be held responsible for their teams behavior
  1. Each team must assign a liaison to act as a representative for the team for league governance. This is usually the captain but it does not have to be.

Liaison's roles & responsibilities are:

  • Submitting tickets of rule breaches and disputes
  • Organising scheduled matches with other teams when the captain is unable to
  • Active participation in the governance section of the discord & helping with league governance and decisions
  • Players banned from the APAC discord cannot be a liaison
  1. When a team disbands, the cooldowns of the players may, upon request, be waived. League Moderators have complete discretion and may, depending on the situation, decide not to waive said cooldowns.

4. Match Format

  1. Matches are played on the "Search and Destroy" game mode.
  2. A match consists of 3 maps. All maps must be played.
  3. The official player count is 5v5.
  4. When scheduling for their match, teams can mutually decide to play the match 3v3 or 4v4. No teams are obligated to lower their player count for any match.
  5. Maps are to be selected from the map pool for the season (as shown on this website).
  6. 5v4 can be played if the team with 4 couldn't find a ringer in time.*
  7. 4v3 can be played if the team with 3 couldn't find a ringer in time.
  8. 5v3 is an automatic forfeit if the team with 3 couldn't find a ringer in time.
  9. A match can be played 5v5 if both teams need a ringer.
  10. In all cases, a team will be ineligible to play its match where it has fewer than 3 rostered players present and thus forfeit the match.

5. Match Organisation

  1. Scheduling is to be done between captains or liaisons of the competing teams.
  2. Matches will be generated 1 week in advance of the week they are to be played in and are to be organised by the Friday of the week they are generated. This includes match day, time, maps and sides.
  3. Matches not scheduled by the Friday will have moderator mediation between captains or liaisons to organise match.
  4. If a team is found by Mods unable to or unwilling to organise they may be penalised by game, round or score loss.
  5. Maps are to be picked in the following order:

Map Bans

  • Home team bans a map.
  • Away team bans a map.
  • Home team bans a map.
  • Away team bans a map.

Map 1

  • Home team picks a map
  • Away team picks a side.

Map 2

  • Away team picks a map.
  • Home team picks a side.

Map 3

  • Home team picks a map.
  • Away team pics a side.
  1. Map picking is to be done with match scheduling so is also expected to be input on the website by the Friday of the week the match is generated.
  2. Official map pool for the season can be found on the maps page of this website.
  3. In the case of playing an unofficial map (see exceptions section below rules) a non map pool map can be played if both teams agree, however the picking has to be done with official maps first (as per 5.5) and a moderator is to be told what the replacement map is after match generation.

6. Ringers

  1. Only official ringers authorised by the League can be used to fill empty slots in a team for a match.
  2. Official Ringers can not play for the same team more than twice per season.
  3. Only moderators may allow a non ringer or another to play in the case of scheduling issues.

7. Match Results & Ranking

  1. TBD

8. Tournament Format

  1. The tournament cycle
  2. Season Round Robin TBD
  3. Finals TBD

9. Match Forfeits

  1. Teams must not voluntarily forfeit any match. This includes purposefully not showing up, rage quitting or throwing a game.
  2. A match that was unable to be scheduled will result in a forfeit. The team with the worst availability or communication will take the forfeit.
  3. A match where one or more of the team players was found cheating or using an exploit will result in warning, round loss, map loss or forfeit.
  4. A match where a player was displaying poor sportsmanship or abusing another player will result in a warning, round loss, map loss or forfeit.
  5. The final score of a map loss will depend on a moderator review of the entire match.
  6. A forfeit leads to a score of 0 - 30 to the team that did not forfeit.
  7. If both teams forfeit no match score will be given 0 - 0 or 'no game'.

10. Gameplay Clarifications & Restrictions

  1. Full 3rd party communications is allowed while playing. Generally the APAC discord is used with a team specific channel but this is not required.
  2. The In-game mic should be muted during the game, not including the pregame lobby. This can be done via Pavlov's Steam VR push to talk binding or other 3rd party means, but in game voice should not occur during the game. Using in game voice to agitate or annoy other players is considered bad sportsmanship.

11. Streaming & Media

  1. At least one player must have a stream or recording of the match. It is advised to have at least 2 players recording incase of hardware or software failure.
  2. The minimum acceptable resolution of the Pavlov or game window is 480p, any stream or video overlays will not be included in this size determination.
  3. Avoid having stream overlays or alerts obscuring the video or sound of the game while a match is on.
  4. Both game audio and team communication audio must be clear. Music is allowed as long as it does not obscure the game and team communication audio.
  5. Cutting out any audio or video from the game video during the map (from round 1 to game win) is not allowed. In between matches can be cut. In the case of doxing information in a video a cut may be permitted by a mod.
  6. Media must be posted in the #league-media channel within 72 hours of the game ending.
  7. Media should be available for at least 2 weeks after it is put in the channel.
  8. Failure to provide a recording may lead to map or game forfeit.
  9. In the case that a player is being investigated they may be required provide a video from their perspective for a certain number of matches.

12. Game bugs & Crashes

  1. Unfortunately game bugs and technical issues can happen during league play. These are considered in game and will not be taken into account for changing the game scores.
  2. Exploiting a known bug or a unique issue in a match is considered cheating.
  3. If a player crashes during a game the game will continue, unfortunately Pavlov does not yet have a timeout feature between game rounds. In this case players are allowed to talk to participants outside of the match for the express purpose of getting a new player (or ringer) into the game ASAP.
  4. Sometimes the server will crash ending the map early and kicking out all players. In this case the captains can agree on how they want to resume the match, the best method though is:
  • If the game servers crashed before 2nd half then the game should be replayed from the start.
  • If the game servers crashed after the 2nd half the game should be replayed from the start of 2nd half with how the scores were at 2nd half.
  1. In the case that 3 or more players crash or drop out at the same time it will most likely be considered the same as a server crash.

13. Cheating, Exploits & Breaches

  1. Any cheating, exploiting, or contravention of the foregoing rules must be brought to the attention of the League Moderators.
  • If a player cheats, exploits, or abuses game mechanics, their team will forfeit the match. Any prizes or rewards a team may have received from a match will also be revoked.
  • Any player found to be cheating or exploiting during a match will face suspension from the league if determined complacent by League Moderators.
  • Teams that participate in the creation of, promotion for, or use of cheats, exploits, or abuse of unintentionally harmful game mechanics will face additional penalties as determined by the moderation team.
  • Examples of penalties are: round forfeit, map forfeit, match forfeit, player suspension or team suspension.

  1. The term exploit is intended to include the intentional or reckless triggering of code, attribute or function, in game, that is otherwise not envisaged as a legitimate feature of the game.

  2. Intent does not absolve game abuse or exploits.

  3. Players participating in a match are prohibited from watching the live broadcast of an opposing team while their game is still in progress.

  4. Non-exhaustive examples include:

  • Going outside of map boundaries
  • Clipping inside solid objects/floors (using room-scale or not)
  • Body glitching (body not following player's viewpoint, including going prone)
  • Peeking through solid walls
  • Using a VPN or any other network manipulation with the intent to delay or drop packets
  • Using software tools or bindings (eg. Play space mover) to alter their play space during play in order to gain an advantage
  • Manipulation of software (such as the Pavlov game, or third party software) to gain an advantage not ordinarily achievable with in-game settings.
  • Using a sound visaliser.
  1. Examples of allowed 3rd party software:
  • FPS or system performance monitors
  • Centre markers and cable twist quality of life addons
  • Changing the EQ of your sound settings
  1. Exceptions to banned addons will be given by moderators to people with disabilities.

14. League Moderation and Governance

  1. Moderators will be responsible for making the final decisions on rulings, game outcomes and penalties.
  2. Captains are responsible for their team behaviors, organising their team and matches so that they run on time and according to the league rules.
  3. Players are responsible for their own actions and sportsmanship. They are encouraged to raise concerns, ideas and qualms with their team liaison. In the case that there is an inter-team issue or issue with the liaison they should approach a moderator.
  4. Liaisons are responsible for representing their team in governance, coming up with new rules and rule changes and the overall inter-team cohesion in league participation.
  5. All decisions are final.

Exceptions

  1. Team Exception rules
  • A cooldown assigned to a player can, for any individual match, be waived by written, voluntary, agreement between team captains.
  • A ringer can be used more than 2 times for a team if both captains agree.
  • For any decision where both captains agree there should be no pressure, a captain can deny any exception to the general rules presented for any reason what so ever.
  • Only the rules above can be waived by captains agreeing, if you are unsure ask a moderator.
  • With moderator approval a match can be pushed after the schedule date without a forfeit.
  1. Player specific exceptions
  • Player 'Xandon' is banned from participating in the league.
  • Player 'Skylark' is banned from participating in the league.
  • Player 'Pulse' is allowed to play and be captain but must assign a different team liaison for match organisation and league governance.