Today is the official start of our second competitive season. With it, comes a new feature to make Game 2 dynamic in a best-of-3 series, Sanctioned Events program, and tiered Competitor Points awarding. Let’s break down each addition below.

Game 1 Loser Map Select

The match structure and regulation rulebook have been updated to allow the loser of Game 1 in a best-of-3 series to declare any legal map in the Tactics League map pool for Game 2, either medium or small-sized, as long as it is a map that does not already exist in the map selection for that match. The 3rd game’s map would then become the opposite map size chosen to still have 2 medium and 1 small map in the match. This is a break away from the traditional Medium > Small > Medium map structure that was presently used in Season 1’s competitions and allows for Game 2 to be dynamically played shaking things up from our previous static rotation.

Sanctioned Events Program

As detailed more in its separate article, the Sanctioned Events program is a means of supporting grassroots events as Tactics League-supported, giving the tournament organizer access to a plethora of resources to ensure the event’s success. Competitions that are approved for sanctioning are eligible for Competitor Points awarding allowing for a hopeful increase in annual competitions, hosted directly by Tactics League and the community as well!

Tiered Competitor Points Awarding

Alongside the Sanctioned Events program, also includes an update to Competitor Points (CP) scaling and there are different point awards based on the bracket size of sanctioned events, allowing for more flexibility:

• Tournament-Style (large pool)
  For Double Elimination & Round Robin Allocations for 7+ Competitors
  • 1st = 2000 pts.
  • 2nd = 1600 pts.
  • 3rd = 1400 pts.
  • 4th = 1200 pts.
  • 5th – 8th = 800 pts.
  • 9th and lower = 600 pts.
    
• Tournament-Style (small pool)
  For Double Elimination & Round Robin Allocations for 4-6 Competitors
  • 1st = 1400 pts.
  • 2nd = 1200 pts.
  • 3rd = 1000 pts.
  • 4th = 800 pts.
  • 5th = 600 pts.
  • 6th = 400 pts.
    
• Cup-Style (large pool)
  For Single Elimination Allocations for 7+ Competitors
  • 1st = 800 pts.
  • 2nd = 600 pts.
  • 3rd – 4th = 500 pts.
  • 5th – 8th = 300 pts.
  • 9th and lower = 200 pts.
    
• Cup-Style (small pool)
  For Single Elimination Allocations for 4-6 Competitors
  • 1st = 500 pts.
  • 2nd = 400 pts.
  • 3rd = 300 pts.
  • 4th = 200 pts.
  • 5th and 6th = 100 pts.

With all of these changes starting today, we are excited to take Tactics League and competitive play to new heights!

With the start of Competitive Season 2 on October 15, 2024, Tactics League is opening up a new way to drive community-inspired gatherings and events so we can empower the competitive scene further with community Discord members.

The Sanctioned Events program is a means to fully back community-made events by providing the tools and support needed for growth, participation, and success as well as more ways to award Competitor Points throughout the current season and future. To do so, Members propose their idea as a Roll Call, filling in all the details first and publicizing it so that everyone is aware of what goals they want to achieve with their event. Once the Roll Call gains momentum and more and more people become interested, the organizer can reach out to the Tactics League administration to request to be sanctioned and receive further support, including Competitor Points awarded post-event.

But what does sanctioning offer in terms of incentivizing your grassroots-based event? Tactics League will offer support and resources with the following:

• Basic banner/logo creation for your event (if needed)
• Tailored Competitions Registration form for your event to provide sign-ups
• Access to the Roster Registration form (if you are enabling Roster Lock)
• Access to the Post Game Report (PGR) needed to report match data for official records (this can be additionally provided to multiple assigned Officials as needed)
• Official Announcement updates via Discord, added to Discord Events for notifications, and the Tactics League website’s Events page
• Official/Staff Discord role so you have partial moderator powers as well as Staging channel operability (this is granted on the day of or the day before the event)
• Priority support from Tactics League administration during your event’s runtime (as much as possible)

The end goal for the Sanctioned Events program is to give the tools for more competitive events annually and sow the seeds to further Tactics League PvP into the future and beyond. If you are interested in hosting an event and potential sanctioning, please join the Tactics League Discord today.

Tactics League-sanctioned events award competitors with Competitor Points (CP) based on their finished ranking after the conclusion of the event. As of yesterday, Season 1 has officially closed and we are finalizing plans for the upcoming Competitive Season 2. Let’s take a look at all of the events we have hosted over the year:

• 2023 Opener
  • Date: October 8, 2023
  • Number of Competitors: 5
  • Event Runtime: 9 hours and 15 minutes
  • Rebroadcast: https://youtu.be/D-Fb3TdCN4Y
  • Tournament Data: https://tacticsleague.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/Tactics-League-2023-Opener-Tournament-Data.pdf
    
• 2024 – Starter Winter Cup #1
  • Date: February 11, 2024
  • Number of Competitors: 8
  • Event Runtime: 4 hours and 58 minutes
  • Rebroadcast: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nFHN_ooy-VA
  • Tournament Data: https://tacticsleague.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/Tactics-League-2024-Starter-Winter-Cup-1-Competition-Data.pdf

Competitor Points – Final Ranking (Standard)

Ranking is determined by accumulative CP awarding from past events based on your event’s placement.

• 1st – @WngMan – 1500 pts.
• 2nd – @jokerfisch – 1100 pts.
• 3rd – @dr.jay. – 800 pts.
• 4th – @therumer – 600 pts.
• 5th – @pista – 400 pts.
• 6th – @sandcatankh – 400 pts.
• 7th – @mikey_tacticslive – 200 pts.
• 8th – @hewhostandsalone, @space_monkey00 – 200 pts.

Based on the Regulation Rulebook, certain tiebreaker rules are in place to resolve where members sit when it comes to tied rankings. This is also why some members above have the same points, but different placements:

• 1st – Round Finished
• 2nd – Total Games Played in the finished series (up to 4)
• 3rd – Your Opponent’s Seeding/rank
• 4th – Units Alive Per Game cumulatively

With Season 1 at its end, I want to thank everyone who has participated in the past events and even those who were anticipating the now canceled 2024 Fall Cup, for being a part of the competitive scene I look forward to new heights, new players, and new competitions to come with Season 2, starting on October 15, 2024!

Copied directly from the Tactics League’s Discord
It is with a tough decision to announce that the upcoming Standard – 2024 Fall Cup for October 6, 2024 is now canceled. This event is canceled due to not reaching the minimum number of fully eligible competitors for it to proceed.

The reason the minimum number of 6 is there is to avoid a short event or potentially starting out in Semi-Finals; the goal is to put on a show and showcase Tactics League in a LIVE manner, though it is not an ideal look when the event falls short of players and has a short ending to its beginning.

What Comes Next?

Since the event did not meet its required expectations, we will move forward. This event was the last of ⁠Season 1 – Competitor Points and thus the future is now set for Season 2. This means that CP will be reset and all past competitors will restart at zero CP. As mentioned earlier in the beginning process of Competition 3, the next event to plan for is the Generics Premade format. As a Tactics League official format, this format needs an opportunity to be showcased in a LIVE competition and that will be the goal going forward.

Season 2 Initial Changes

I do apologize to anyone that took time off or had to plan around to participate in this event. One issue that stemmed that did become a problem was relying on “interests” to fully gauge participation levels. This is still feasible, but will not be the core decider for future events; Sign-Ups will start earlier and will close earlier to give at least 1 – 2 weeks ahead of time before the event date to give plenty of time to determine if we are good to go or not. This also gives people more time to respond in the event of a cancelation instead of it being last minute.

Thank you to all who were interested in competing or were planning to help with Sunday’s event and I apologize once more for the cancelation in the matter.

With the dust settling down after the largest update yet in Tactics League’s history, it’s time to put your skills with the plethora of new and exciting changes to the ultimate test: another live competition!

This competition utilizes Tactics League’s tried-and-true competitive Standard format, where players have access to an array of different unique characters, equipment, abilities, and jobs ALL at their disposal with limitations baked right into the patch and format. As the third competition, we have new and returning competitors looking to take on the challenges of both time, intellect, and strategy as they make their way through a single-elimination style bracket that is targeted to take approximately 5 hours.

As the last event in the first competitive season, we are hoping you will join this presentation and watch it LIVE at either Tactics League Discord or the Tactics League Twitch channel (or both)!

This event will take place on October 6, 2024, starting at 12:30 PM EDT.

For more information about this event, please visit our Events page.

In PvP Patch version 3, many gender equality changes were made to close the gap between male and female build varieties; hair adornments, bags, perfumes, and the Tynar Rouge accessory were now accessible to males. Additionally, the reaction abilities, Fury and Magick Boost, that were gender-locked to Bard and Dancer were added so that either gender could use either ability. These improvements were well-received and opened up build diversity in a positive way. However, there is one outlier that version 4 is addressing – the gap between male magical and female physical specs.

The changes you will read more about are centered around improving the male and female Squires in both Standard and Rendezvous and have minimal impact on unique characters.

To resolve this task, this required a two-pronged approach:

• First: Fixing the stat disparity by adjusting PA/MA values of the base Squire stats – the result is that male Squire will now have 13/12, and female Squire will now have 12/13, a +1 stat increase from version 3.
  
• Second: Fixing the PA and MA multipliers (also known as PAM and MAM) marginally; most jobs received a 5% bonus to these multipliers depending on needs. For example, White Mage’s MAM was increased from 110% to 115% which resulted in generic male White Mage specifically getting an extra +1 MA.
  
• Combining the base Squire stat increase and job PAM/MAM resulted in:
  Male White Mage – 11/14 (+1 MA)
  Female White Mage – 10/15
  
• Lastly, to make sure being a male or female gender still played a role in the higher HP or MP spread, male Squires received +8 HP and female Squires received +9 MP.
  
• The accomplished goal of these changes is that the total stat spread (between PA and MA) is no more than 1 point between either gender. You can still build “optimally” and use a female White Mage, or you can choose for whatever reason (aesthetics, sprite design, wanting to use the additional PA) and go male White Mage instead and perform well and with a bit more added bulk!

The result of these adjustments to male White Mage for example is:

Another example of these base stat and job PAM/MAM adjustments are female Monks. In version 3, running a female Monk was very much not desirable, because there was realistically little to be gained from doing so (comparing Martial Arts, a female Monk had a marginally better Doom Fist).

In version 4, this changes quite differently, as you will now see that a female Monk is viable and even plausible for running secondary Dance or Arts of War:

And lastly, to quell any worries about how these job PAM/MAM changes affect unique characters let’s compare Agrias as a Dark Knight in version 3 and version 4:

Dark Knight’s PAM was increased from 130% to 135% resulting in a +1 PA value for female Dark Knights. This ultimately sets generic female Dark Knights to 16/11 while male Dark Knights retain 17/10 and the +1 PA translates as a minimal difference here with Agrias.

In PvP Patch v4.0, you can truly play any gender, and any job and perform well competitively. I look forward to seeing new builds and creations once we enter public beta on March 12th!