I want to point out some important changes that have been made to the league from a statistics perspective. Previously, we have allowed any game to be considered for statistics, but that was before we had teams that would score 10 or more times an opponent's score in a game. You wouldn't want the Golden State Warriors to rewrite the record book by playing games over a random high school basketball team, and the OTL shouldn't be any different.

The OTL has been divided into two leagues, upper league and lower league. From the team perspective, nothing changes. Upper league teams still play lower league teams, and team ratings are still counted as they do now. What does change is that individual player stats and records are only counted for games where a player played against an upper league team, regardless what league they are in.

Upper league teams are defined as the six teams that made the knockout stage of the previous season championships, and also the two teams that were in the Best of the Rest II finals. In the seasons that didn't have such a tournament, we simply took the top 2 that didn't make the knockout tournament by their most recently completed season's rating. Edge cases exist and are addressed in the new #leagues channel under the Rules section. Note that this is a retroactive change. Individual season stats and records have been updated under the players and records pages accordingly. You can also still see your stats against all teams on your individual player page.

This change may not be permanent, and could be altered or removed at any time based on feedback. Feel free to discuss the changes in #ideas!

You can read up on the reasons behind this change at https://roncli.com/blogger/4346341627055792095/a-two-tiered-untiered-otl, but the TL;DR is that the OTL should still be accessible to teams of all skill while acknowledging that we would like our individual player stats and records to mean something.

It's been a while since we've had an announcement post. Let's take a look back at the major tournaments of 2022:

Sorry Guys took the Season 6 Championships in February with a thrilling 3-2 win over Invidia, with The Three Queens winning the 3rd place match for the 6th consecutive season, and SpaceCowboys took the Best of the Rest II finals over Argus Industrial Moons, reversing the result from the Season 6 Best of the Rest tournament.

Invidia defeated Sorry Guys 3-1 in the Season 7 Mid-Season Invitational in April, while Disoriented in Mines turned their season around by winning the Best of the Rest tournament 3-1 over DynaCore Enterprises.

Sorry Guys would go back to back for the first time since seasons 1 and 2 by taking the Season 7 Championships in August with another 3-2 win over Invidia. And despite giving up their first overtime loss, The Three Queens kept up their perfect run of 3rd place finishes for the 7th consecutive season. Argus Industrial Moons took out SpaceCowboys 3-0 in the Best of the Rest II tournament.

Finally, Sorry Guys took the Season 8 Mid-Season Invitational in November with a clean 3-0 sweep over The Three Queens, while Just Another Team take their first Best of the Rest tournament 3-0 over SpaceCowboys.

Sorry Guys are back with a dominant 3-0 win over Invidia in the Mid-Season Invitational! Also, Argus Industrial Moons was equally dominant in the Best of the Rest tournament with their back-to-back sweeps, defeating SpaceCowboys in the finals! Congratulations to both teams!

Before the conclusion of season 6, we will be trialing a change in settings when it comes to Respawn Invulnerability time, increasing it from 2 seconds to 4 seconds. The mechanics behind this timer are a bit quirky, so I thought I'd explain exactly how it works:

- If you stay completely motionless and don't fire any weapons, you'll get the full benefit of the invulnerability period, in this case 4 seconds.
- If you start moving while invulnerable, you'll lose invulnerability time relative to your speed. It is possible to lose up to 2/3 of your invulnerability time, down to 1.33 seconds. Whether you are moving normally, trichording, boosting, or moving through a wind tunnel, any of these actions will cause a reduction in your invulnerability time. Realistically you'll probably see an invulnerability time of around 1.5 to 2.5 seconds in most circumstances, but it all depends on how quickly you move.
- If at any time you fire a weapon while invulnerable, you immediately lose invulnerability, regardless of how much time was left.

We will discuss making this change permanent at the end of the trial, which will be December 14th.

Also, prepare for the Season 6 Championships, which will begin December 31st at 4 PM Pacific! The schedule has been setup in the new Events section of Discord. All team rosters will be locked at that time and we'll begin with the qualifying stage. We had some great upsets from two lower seeds last season, and I look forward to seeing how this season goes! Good luck to all teams!

The Season 5 Championships have drawn to a conclusion, and Invidia is back on top, taking the finals 3-0 over Sorry Guys and denying them their second back-to-back run! Also, congratulations to Argus Industrial Moons for triumphing over Post Terran Mining Corp 3-1 in the Best of the Rest II! Finally, The Three Queens claimed their fifth consecutive 3rd place result, taking the bronze match 3-2 over Old Man Gaming!

The Mid-Season Invitational and Best of the Rest tournaments for Season 6 are here! With that comes olmod v0.5.2 which includes new balance changes targeting the cyclone, crusher, and hunters. There have been several releases in the last month, so be sure to catch up with all the release notes for olmod at https://github.com/overload-development-community/olmod/releases.

Best of luck to all teams involved in the mid-season tournaments!

Congratulations goes out to Sorry Guys for taking the Season 5 Mid-Season Invitational 3-1 over Invidia, and to SpaceCowboys for their impressive sweep of DynaCore Enterprises in the Best of the Rest tournament! SG will get that all important 2 additional points in their Season 5 Championships group stage in July.

With the advent of olmod v0.4.0, it's important that everyone be aware that the balance of many weapons in Overload have been changed. See the release notes for olmod v0.4.0 at https://github.com/overload-development-community/olmod/releases/tag/v0.4.0 for a full list of changes.

This doesn't just involve weapon damage, either. Respawning has changed, favoring not spawning near opponents. Reduced shader cloak has changed to be harder to see, more on par with normal shader cloak. New settings exist under multiplayer options to change the intensity of the damage color and damage blur that occurs when you take damage.

v0.4.0 is the largest change to the game balance yet, and the changes have been all based on feedback from the community. Thanks to everyone who has participated in making this happen, and here's to an even better Overload experience!