A Year in CTF: 2016

I was planning on releasing this on December 31st, but I don't want to lose all this information and start from scratch, so here it is a little early!

Another year has passed... and this year has been quite interesting. Some great things happened, some terrible, but there have been plenty of fond memories throughout the year here on ctf. This thread will recap all that has happened over the past year in ctf, including matches, teams, updates, staff promotions/resignations, etc. Keep in mind these dates that I post may or may not be accurate, but they are close to the time which they happened. If you do see any mistakes throughout this post, please pm them to me via forums, skype, or discord!
So here is CTF throughout 2016!

Warning... Long lists ahead!

Spoiler: Staff

• Mar 26: Decelvice resigned
• Jul 29: kevshadowslayer was promoted
• Aug 13: aRandomBob157 resigned
• Aug 14: Jul13n was promoted
• Aug 22: Quarrelt resigned
• Sep 22: NomNuggetNom resigned
• Oct 31: Miskey was promoted
• Dec 21: gamren was promoted
• On a side note, sometime during the middle of the year, an incident happened and Xelia_ was demoted, but soon after was promoted back to jmod/mod.

Spoiler: Teams

Official Teams coming into the year 2016:

• Adventurer
• Annihilation
• The Black Knights
• The Crusaders
• Defiance
• Delta Force
• The Flying Walruses
• Genetic
• Ha Ha You Lose
• Majestic
• TeamTeamTeam
• The Templars
• Dare Devils
• The Blue Flaggers
• The Outcasts

January:

• Timeless became official
• The Paladins became official (after disbanding for 15 minutes)
• The Paladins disbanded (for a 4th time)

February:

• SuperNova became official
• XenoGenesis became official

March:

• Radiance Reborn became official
• DareDevils disbanded

April:

• Team Bravo became official
• The Blue Flaggers disbanded
• XenoGenesis disbanded

May:

• The Bomb Team became official
• Silent Waters became official
• The Soaring Falcons became official
• Majestic went inactive
• Ha Ha You Lose disbanded
• Timeless disbanded
• The Outcasts disbanded

June:

• Phoenix became official
• Deception became official

July:

• Unity became official
• TeamTeamTeam went inactive
• TheBombTeam went inactive
• Majestic disbanded due to inactivity
  
• TheBombTeam disbanded
• The Black Knights disbanded
• Phoenix disbanded

August:

• Morimur Invictus became official
• Mock It became official
• Deception disbanded
• The Soaring Falcons disbanded
• Team Bravo disbanded

September:

• The Black Knights 2.0 became official
• The Flying Walruses disbanded
• Mock it disbanded

October:

• Silent Waters disbanded

November:

• Genetic disbanded

December:

• Totally Not Solar Ecplise became official

At the end of the year, these are the teams that are official:

• Adventurer
• Annihilation
• The Black Knights
• The Crusaders
• Defiance
• Delta Force
• Morimur Invictus
• Radiance Reborn
• Supernova
• TeamTeamTeam
• The Templars
• Totally Not Solar Eclipse
• Unity

Looking back throughout the year, there were 15 teams to begin with, which then increased to a peak of around 20 teams (if I counted correctly) at June/July. It then started to decrease for the rest of the year, with 5 new teams, but many more that disbanded, leaving us with 13 teams. Overall, we had a net lose of 2 teams, with many old ones disbanding and many new ones being created.

Spoiler: Matches

This year has seen a ton of matches, about 155 official matches, and a ton of ppm's, unofficials, pyot, etc. I will only go over the official matches this year, since those are the easiest to find and give data about. The Team on the left is the winner, team on the right is not, and the one match that was a tie is in yellow. For reference, these are the acronyms for the teams:

• ADV = Adventurer
• Anni = Annihilation
• TC = The Crusaders
• Defy = Defiance
• DF = Delta Force
• TTT = TeamTeamTeam
• TT = The Templars
• SN = Supernova
• RR = Radiance Reborn
• U = Unity
• MI = Morimur Invictus
• BK2 = Black Knights 2.0
• TNSE = Totally Not Solar Eclipse
• TML = Timeless
• TBF = The Blue Flaggers
• TO = The Outcasts
• MJT = Majestic
• BRV = Team Bravo
• DCP = Deception
• Gen = Genetic
• Mock = Mock It
• PHX = Phoenix
• H2YL = Ha Ha You Lose
• XG = XenoGenesis
• DD = DareDevils
• TSF = The Soaring Falcons
• SW = Silent Waters

January:

• BK vs TC + TFW
• DD vs TFW
• TTT vs Defy
• ADV vs TFW
• TT vs TBF
• Defy vs TTT
• DD vs Anni
• BK vs TC
• DD vs ADV
• TO vs TT
• Defy vs Gen
• BK vs DF
• TT vs Defy
• DF vs ADV
• TO vs BK
• DF vs TTT
• BK vs TBF
• BK vs TML

February:

• Defy vs ADV
• TT vs DF
• TML vs TTT
• Gen vs TC
• TC + SN vs H2YL + TBF
• Gen vs TML
• TO vs Defy
• MJT vs XG
• Gen vs ADV
• TO vs Defy
• TC vs TTT
• TC + TBF vs XG + Gen
• BK vs TC
• TO vs DF
• TTT vs TFW
• TO vs TML
• DD + TML vs TC + TO
• TC vs Anni

March:

• Gen vs TO
• BK vs ADV
• TML vs TC
• XG + MJT + DF vs H2YL + TFW + TC
• TO vs TTT
• RR vs DD
• RR vs TML
• RR vs TFW
• BK vs TC
• RR vs TO
• TC + Gen vs BK + Defy
• DF vs TC
• TC + Gen vs BK vs Defy
• TC + Gen vs BK vs Defy (no, these duplicates aren't a mistake, there were just 2 more rematches right after)

April:

• RR vs TFW
• BK vs TC
• Gen + TML vs BK + TO
• SN vs Anni
• BK vs Defy
• TO vs TML
• Gen vs Defy
• TT vs TO
• TFW vs SN
• RR vs Defy
• BRV vs H2YL
• TT vs ADV
• TML vs SN
• RR vs BK
• TC vs Gen
• TT + DF vs H2YL + XG
• TT vs Defy
• Gen vs TC
• Gen + TTT vs TC + SN

May:

• TT vs TML
• Anni + Gen vs TC + Defy
• TT vs TO
• SN vs TC
• RR vs Anni
• SN vs TSF
• TC vs Anni
• TO vs SN
• TC vs TO
• Gen vs TML
• ADV vs TC
• DF vs BK

June:

• TFW vs TTT
• TC vs DCP
• RR vs ADV
• DF vs RR
• TC vs Anni
• Gen vs TC
• RR vs TC
• TT vs TFW
• PHX vs TC

July:

• TT vs TC
• Gen vs RR
• TC vs DCP
• RR vs DCP
• SN vs ADV
• PHX vs DCP
• RR vs U

August:

• MI vs U
• SN vs Gen
• RR + Gen vs Defy + Anni
• DF vs Defy
• RR vs TC
• TC vs MI
• TT vs DCP
• RR vs Anni
• RR vs Anni
• TC vs ADV
• RR vs SN
• U vs SW
• TT vs TC
• TT vs MI
• TC vs Gen

September:

• RR vs TC
• TT vs TC
• RR vs MI
• TT vs ADV
• TT vs Anni
• MI vs Mock
• MI vs U
• BK2 vs TC
• RR + SN vs Gen + TC
• Anni + Defy vs MI + TC

October:

• TT vs MI
• U vs BK2
• BK2 vs MI
• DF vs Gen
• BK2 vs ADV
• RR vs TC
• DF vs TC
• ADV vs U
• TT vs TC
• TT vs SN
• BK2 vs Defy

November:

• RR vs TT
• BK2 vs TC
• TC vs Anni
• Defy vs TC
• TT vs Anni
• TT vs MI
• U vs TC
• ADV vs Defy
• RR vs TC
• TC vs MI
• Anni vs ADV
• TT vs Defy
• BK2 vs MI
• SN vs MI
• DF vs TC

December:

• BK2 vs Anni
• Defy vs ADV
• Anni vs TC
• BK2 vs TNSE
• BK2 vs TC
• Defy vs TNSE
• Defy vs BK2

Spoiler: Updates

Right before 2016 came around, Nom released a pretty big update that changed chemist, soldier, and pyro pretty dramatically (especially the latter). From such there have been mostly tweaks of classes and what not.

"CTF Holiday Update": (Dec 31, 2015)

Pyro:

• Instakill removed
• "Frenzy" mode introduced: after getting 4 hits, right click to light nearby enemies and hit them to do 7 hearts of true damage.
  
• Under normal circumstances, hitting an enemy on fire deals 3.5 hearts of true damage.

Soldier:

• Restricted amount of wall-climbs: based on XP bar, which fills from empty in 10 seconds.
• 7 wall-climbs are able to be used from a full bar.

Chemist:

• Made damage pots take 1/3 of mana
• Health III pots turned into Health II pots
• Mana bar takes 7 seconds to fill from empty.

Minor Tweaks:

• Mage damage spell range changed from 22.5 blocks to 15 blocks
• Medic is not able to web teammates

From this we had quite a few tweaks for the next two months, editing classes and fixing bugs that appeared.

From Update Log:

• Changed Chemist's 10 Health II pots to 5 Health III pots
• Elf's wind element takes 2 arrows for boosting
• Chemist's damage pots now take 4 to empty full mana bar instead of 3.
• Fixed plenty of bugs

About a 6 month gap between the next major update, where alot of the classes were tweaked:

Tweak Update: (Jun 27, 2016; my birthday!!!)
Archer:

• Bow has enchantment Punch I instead of Punch II

Chemist:

• There are 12 damage pots instead of 20 and 8 poison pots instead of 10
• Slowness pots changed to weakness pots
• Fire resistance potions last for only 30 seconds instead of 2 minutes

Dwarf:

• Dwarf's levels are capped at level 10

Elf:

• 16 arrows instead of 10
• Using Earth Element uses 2 arrows instead of 1
• Protection 2 chestplate and boots instead of protection 1

Engineer:

• Turret's health changed from 20 to 15

Medic:

• Webs can be broken by enemies at normal breaking speed
• Removed Sharpness I from sword D:

Necro:

• Enchantment knockback I added to pickaxe
• Changed netherbrick fence to normal fencepost

Pyro:

• Fire from arrows lasts for 3.5 seconds instead of 8
• Double click to activate frenzy (changed from single click)
• Changed amount of arrows from 20 to 25

Features:

• Medic healing overrides chemist and cake regeneration
• All players are allowed to switch on match server
• Blacklist added to match server

One last tweak from Nom:

• Ninja's sword has enchantment Sharp V instead of Sharp IV

Necro Update:

• Dec 27: Necro updated so that you use spawn eggs instead of a spawner to create mobs, and you can buff and rally the mobs instead of having them aimlessly walk around.

That's about it...

Spoiler: Events, Maps, and Misc.

At the beginning of this year, a big tournament was planned by the CTF committee, and started in January, making it the highlight of that month.

January:

• Tournament started, which included the following teams:

1. The Outcasts
2. The Paladins
3. The Templars
4. The Blue Flaggers
5. Genetic
6. Majestic
7. Defiance
8. TeamTeamTeam
9. Annihilation
10. DareDevils
11. The Flying Walruses
12. The Adventurer
13. Delta Force
14. The Black Knights
15. The Crusaders

• The standings from this tourney were this: 1st: The Templars. 2nd: Delta Force. 3rd: Defiance
• Though never finished, a PYOT (pick your own team) tournament was started in early December and continued through a portion of the year.

March:

• Mar 26: The Third UHC (Ultra Hardcore) hosted by AdamLovesBarca, hallopiu, and FinniBoy4ever on hallopiu's server

April:

• On April 4, Wave XI came out, introducing new maps while removing bad maps. On top of this, they introduced a new map rework about once a week

June:

• June 25: Flag Runner II, hosted by Quarrelt and others was an event where the map was a giant maze, and you had to weave your way through the map in order to cap the flag.
• June 27: A news letter by the name Going Ham was reintroduced by PolarizedHam, though it did not last long.

July:

• July 2: The 2nd Annual CTF Prom was hosted by aRandomBob157, and it is where you bring your "prom date" to a match.
• July 18: A CTF Rotation Mini-Update came out, introducing a few more reworks to the gamemode.

August:

• August 6: The 4th Annual CTF All-Star Match was hosted by aRandomBob/CTF Committee, where 14 teams send their best players to be combined into two massive teams.

September:

• Sep 4: Gamren introduced a new newsletter, called the Match Spotlight Newsletter, where they review the matches that occurred that past week and talk about any news dealing with teams.
• Sep 6: b0squet introduced the plan for Wave XII for CTF.

October:

• Oct 28: The CTF Map Wave Boogaloo came out just in time for Halloween.
• Oct 29: The 2nd Annual Halloween Event, hosted by xAsh, Lugia, and kevshadowslayer, had two parts to it: a costume contest on build and then a match on ctf.

November:

• Gamren, along with the MSW team, introduced the MSW Invitational Tournament, which begins in January. The teams that are competing are as follows:

1. Unity
2. The Black Knights
3. Annihilation
4. The Crusaders
5. The Adventureres
6. Defiance
7. Morimur Invictus
8. Totally Not Solar Eclipse

December:

• Dec 30: Kevshadowslayer, Lugia, and xAsh is hosting the 3rd Official CTF Winter Prom.

There were many, many events and map waves and other such things that occured this year. If I missed any that you think I should include, please let me know!!!

If there is anything you think I missed or should be added please let me know!

TL;DR: A lot of **** happened

 

I can add one more major update: THE BUFF OF NECRO!

 

Actually not that long, you guys on the CTF committee do a good job of keeping track of teams and matches on the google sheets. Of course not everything was up to date nor was it all up there, but I could easily figure out when things happened. The updates weren't that hard to find, and I just searched through the forums for events, map updates, and staff things.