H2H7 / H2H7 Rules & Regulations

Head to Head 7. A new round to the biggest contest in RCT history.

RULES & REGULATIONS

What is Head to Head?

H2H is a team contest featuring six teams and sixty players. Each team has a captain who is in charge of managing the team's performance. Your team competes against all other teams with mini parks made by up to three players. Upon the deadline, both parks of the matchup are posted on the forums for the public to vote upon. The creators are kept anonymous until the vote has ended to prevent biased votes. The winning park is the one with more votes. After the Round Robin The Top 4 teams then go forward into the Playoffs to fight for the title.

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Please note that failure to follow any of the following rules will result in the respective park, player or team being disqualified.

H2H Referee

(1) Louis! will act as the overseeing referee throughout the contest.
(2) The H2H referee is in charge of all aspects of the contest and has final say on all matters.

Player Lineup

(1) Every player on a team must be used at least once during the round robin.
(2) No park can be built on by more than 3 players in the round robin.

(3) Play-off parks can not be built on by more than 4 players.
(4) Each park a team submits must be built by a unique set of people throughout the whole contest. No two people can work together twice.
(5) No player can build more than three times, including playoffs. So be careful how you use certain players. This is to ensure that everyone on the team gets their chance to participate.
(6) No more than one solo park allowed during the season, including playoffs. Use it wisely if you choose to do so.

Park Construction & Submission

(1) There is no official bench for H2H7, but we are providing you with a 80x80 starter bench: RCT2 | RCTLL. Map sizes must consist of a total amount of tiles that must be no more than 3600 and no less than 1600 during the round robin, and no more than 4900 and no less than 2500 during the playoffs. This allows you to shape your map in any way you like.
(2) Any player may create or provide a bench or custom scenery for his team. This will not turn him into a creator of any park. To be classed as a park creator a player must physically build on the park. Performing small hacks by non-creator team members will be tolerated as long as there's not creative input involved.
(3) Park construction can't begin until after the team draft. Therefore, recycling old unfinished projects is not allowed. Recycling smaller elements like a layout, a building or an idea will be tolerated on the condition that is hasn't been advertised before.
(4) It's strictly forbidden to show screens or stream your team's work to anyone other than your team mates and Louis until the park in question is released. For reviewing purpose, screens and streams are allowed inbetween the release and the match-up conclusion, as long as the park creators are not revealed or hinted at.
(5) Parks must be anonymous, meaning you must not identify which player(s) has/have built the park. This includes staff names, mosaic signs, underwater land coloring or any clever way of putting your name in the park. You may put names of team mates in the park (e.g. everyone from your team) as long as there is no revelation or indication of the real creators.
(6) All parks must be submitted to the submission database before their respective deadline (11:59PM GMT). This is the only instance when the creator's names can and must be revealed.

(7) An 800x600 screen must be submitted alongside the park. This is to be used to give a preview of the park as aerials will not be provided.
(8 ) A forfeit is ruled if no park is submitted and possibly if a park is not submitted on time.

Creators that were working on that round do not count towards Rule 1 of the Player Lineup section.
(9) If a park is submitted after the deadline or not submitted at all, the captain of the respective team may PM Louis a link to a post in his forum where an attachment of the park can be found. If the timestamp of this post is prior to the deadline then this version of the park may be entered into the competition.
(10) All Teams receive the chance of a one-time deadline extension of 3 days. This counts for the entire contest. The captain of the team has to create a written record in order to make use of this option. It has to be dated before the respective deadline.

Captains

(1) No captain can replace a player unless a player drops out, where they will choose a player off the Replacement List.
(2) Players will be allowed to join the replacement list after sign-ups.
(3) A captain must not add a player's name to a park that he did not participate in.

Voting

(1) The parks will be voted on anonymously. The players will be revealed at the end of the voting.
(2) All matches will have a three day limit (72 hours) after they are posted for voting to occur. If the voting is tied after the three day limit, the voting will remain open until a winning vote is received.
(3) In the event of a forfeit or disqualification, the park that was submitted will receive the average relative winning percentage of all winning entries to be used in the event of a tie and the contest statistics. The team forfeit will receive 0% for this round in calculation of their average relative vote percentage.
(4) Players will not be allowed to vote in their own team's matchups.

Advancing to Play-Offs

When the round robin has come to an end, all teams will be ranked primarily on their win/loss record, and secondly on their average relative vote percentage. The Top 4 teams advance to the playoffs.
 

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We have tried to cover all areas of the contest but feel free to ask questions about remaining unclarities.

What time frame will teams have to build throught the contest? 

AT LEAST 3 weeks between parks this season please!

so when will drafting take place? and how long will we get to work on parks?

This is what I posted at the end of last season and I stand by it:

Good job managing the league fairly. You followed the basic H2H rules quite well and we had no DQs. What I did not like was the constant waiting for parks. Next time, NO AERIALS PLEASE. I did like that most of the times you would apologies for the waits or explain what was going on. I did not like how the sign-up rule was changed right at the start. That's a pretty big damn change and keeps you from getting an A from me.

Still, I cannot see myself doing H2H ever again, at least like this...

Just to much work with to many limits. No back to back building, no building with the same player, 3 player max per park, 2 weeks between round robin rounds... all those rules need to go or be changed.

I want to see H2H7 be a TEAM contest. This is just mini teams with a lot of restrictions. If I had it my way all those rules would be removed or changed. I would hold the draft next Summer and start the season in the Summer of 2014.

With that said and time to think about it since, this is what I would do for H2H7:

- 5 player max per park

- 4 parks can be worked on by a single player

- An R1 and R2 draft pick can only build on the same map twice (once in the post-season)

Would really be a shake-up, but I see these types of loose rules as progress.

Key word: Team Contest

Key word: Team Conetst

Damn it, I fixed that typo like 30 seconds after!

Really tho, the less limits the better. Too many times last season my team was in a jam because someone was unable to build. Why? "Oh, no Goliath built with Josh in week 1, that's a rule violation."

You guys want finished parks right?

People drop out. My team really just had only about half our players active at the end of the season. The limits just hurt the abilty to finish.

My dream H2H sees so few limits that almost cannot happen. Still yeah, if last season my team just had a park each week by J K, RRP and me that would be unfair, just is why a few limits should stay.

So if I'm reading it correctly it looks like players can go consecutively, as long as they don't go more than 3 times or are paired with the same players? Or was that just overlooked.

Nin, we removed that rule intentionally. Players can build in consecutive rounds now.

What's so bad about that? So some extra Goliath with me and Comet with J K, not sure how that's unfair to anyone.

I agree with a lot of Kumba's points, may be helpful to relax the rules a bit here and there (though we still gotta have some, right), especially given that keeping a full team of 10 people active throughout the season is very very difficult nowadays.

Maybe be good to add a way to remove inactive players. Something like, a captain can bring it up to Louis, he investigates, and if the player is found to be inactive, they can be removed and replaced. Not sure if we have had this before, but would be nice to keep all the teams fresh. Would easily be controlled by saying, players can only be removed due to inactivity if they have not built on a released entry. 

Just an idea, always good to try and improve things, especially given current challenges of the community. 

so i'm not an expert at H2H except for all it's parks and all, but i think it would be a good start to atleast allow people to play with others they've played with before in roundrobin in the play-offs to avoid nasty situations like kumba described

I definitely like the 3 parks per player rule as it allows for MVPs in the teams but the team will still be just that -> a team. After all this is not Pro Tour, it's H2H. If one team isn't able to produce a week 4 park and doesn't want to take anyone from the replacement list, then so be it. There are 5 other teams who most likely won't run into the same problem.

Kumba, I mean this in the nicest way possible, but you sound like a whining child. Maybe it's just me, and I apologize in advance for coming off in the wrong tone. The admins here are trying to start up one of the most renowned contests here and you're telling them how to do things and that things need to be changed? It's a contest. There's rules and there's always going to be rules and I think they're pretty fair. Apart from you, I don't think anyone really had an issue last time? I could be wrong. Point is, if you don't like the rules, then don't play. Don't sit here and tell the people running things how to do their job.

Sorry if I want to see improvments. If H2H6 was flawless why 7 unfinished/rushed parks? The less limits the more fun we could have.

I think Kumba has a fair point. It's up to to Liampie and Louis to decide what to do with it. 

There always have been unfinished parks and there always will be.

What if just round 5 was restriction-free as far as combinations go?  That way captains only have to really plan teams for the first 4 weeks and then 2 potential playoff parks.  Week 5 would be a "wild card" round that could use whoever is available.  It would still count towards the max of 3 parks per season, but it would open up a lot of possibilities for teams struggling to keep players around.  Plus it would be really exciting to see teams going all-out in the last week with their stronger builders to fight for the playoffs.  Personally I'm fine with the rules as they are, but I'm just looking for some middle ground here.

That's a really clever idea Walto. We'll keep that in mind during our discussions.