• Option to Disable D-Pad lean and re-assign left and right directional buttons.
• Ladder Climb less audible.
• Round timer for 8x8 Medley decreased to 5 minutes.
• Picking up the bomb prompt now has priority when a body is on top of the bomb.

Hi, Folks-

The QA team is working their way through Patch 1.50.  It's a big update with a lot of new features.  We will announce details on its release in a future update.

In the meantime, I found out some details about the Tournament Matches so I wanted to share some of that with you today.

Tournament Matches
Tournaments are bracketed matches of multiple teams going head-to-head on the field of battle. Tournaments will self-balance, so that there will not be an odd number of teams. Tournament matches are separate from clan ladder matches, so your clan standing will not increase. Your personal rank will advance, however.

Tournaments can take course over a set period of time. There are separate weekday and weekend tournaments to accommodate a variety of schedules. You can join a tournament as a solo player placed on a team or you can get a party together and join a tournament as a team.

Registration
If a player selects a tournament that has not yet started they may select the tournament and pre-register for it. Any player may join a tournament as either a team leader or a team member. Players may also be auto assigned to public teams. A player does not need to be in a clan to participate in a tournament.

Scheduling
Tournaments are divided into two timeslot categories, Weekend Tournaments and Weekday Tournaments. Weekend Tournaments run Saturday-Sunday, Weekday Tournaments run Monday-Friday. Timeslots are further divided by region.

Structure
Matches are played in a single elimination format, without consolation rounds. A tournament is broken into qualifier rounds and final rounds. On weekdays, one Qualifier is played each day throughout the week. On weekends, Qualifier 1, Qualifier 2, and Qualifier 3 are played on Saturday, while Quarterfinals, Semifinals and Final rounds are played Sunday.

Team Creation
After registration a player may choose Create Team. After selecting this, the leader must enter a Team Name. Immediately after the name is entered the team will appear as their active team in My Tournaments.

Joining a Team
After registration, there are several ways a player may join a team (other than creating one of their own). Methods include accepting a team invite, requesting to join a team, and awaiting auto assignment.

The Tournament Lobby
30 minutes before match start time the tournament lobbies will be created. At this time all teams will be randomly seeded and matched up against other teams. All players of each team will be sent a game invite to join the tournament lobby.

Advancing in the Tournament
After a match finishes each team will be notified of the result of the match. If a team is eliminated then they will no longer be registered in the tournament. Also, each player will not receive any future game invitations. If the team wins, then they will be given a notification of their next match start time. Players on winning teams will join the next bracket or round in the same way that the team joined the first tournament match. For the top three positions the team will be awarded a trophy in the form of bronze for third place, silver for second place or gold for tournament winner.

You can comment on this post here. 

As testing continues on Patch 1.5, we thought we could give you a little more information about some of its features. This week we will talk about Clan Ladders.

Clan Ladder Match

Clans can battle for the top of the ladder position through Clan Matches. Clans may sign up for 4, 8, and 16 player ladders. Matches occur within Daily, Evening and Weekend time brackets allowing clans to schedule the most convenient times.  A clan may only have one active ladder challenge at a time, regardless of the time slot it is in, or the size of the clan. The scheduled battle will have to play out or be forfeited before another battle can be scheduled. You can challenge anyone that is in the bottom ten percent of the ladder directly above you.  If a challenging clan wins, they take the position of the defending clan, dropping the defending clan down one spot. Ladder positions update after every series of matches, allowing clans to send new challenges.

Ladder Details

There are a variety of Clan Ladders in which players can participate in SOCOM: Confrontation. There are three designated time slots that dictate when ladder competition will take place.  

• Daily Monday-Friday
• Evening Monday-Friday
• Weekend Saturday/Sunday

There are three basic Clan Ladder sizes and all require a minimum size clan in order to join the ladder and initiate the battle.  If the clan is large enough to join a ladder battle, but the minimum number of members stated below do not show up at the time of the battle, a forfeit will be issued to the team with the lacking number of members.

• 4vs4: Clans of 3 players or more may join the 4vs4 ladders.
• 8vs8: Clans of 6 players or more can join the 8vs8 ladders.
• 16vs16: Clans of 12 players or more can join the 16vs16 ladders

Clan Ladders show the current rankings amongst the clans. You can view the clan name, challenge clans and view their ratings inside the ladder area.

You can comment on this post here.

The 1.50 Update for SOCOM: Confrontation is feature complete and currently in test. Due to the number and scope of the feature set of 1.50 the testing cycle has taken longer than anticipated. We remain committed to releasing this patch as soon as the remaining open issues are resolved. It is extremely important to us to make sure the 1.50 update is as problem free as possible when it is released and we are working towards that goal rather than pushing it out as is on a specific date.

A number of features in 1.50 are of such a scale that it will not be possible for us to fully predict how they will behave before public deployment. An example of this is the tournaments, each of which can accommodate 1000s of players. To account for this, we will ramp the size and number of tournaments during the first weeks after release to monitor and address any issues which may arise. We have also been working on a 1.60 Update which will incorporate any fixes that are required as Tournaments and Clan Ladders become fully populated.

FREE Downloadable Content:

We are happy to announce that the 1.60 Update will also contain additional features and content. Weve heard your requests for new content and we are happy to provide free downloadable content with the 1.60 update. The following free Downloadable Content will be available to all players:

New Special Forces: The Dutch KCT and the Italian COMSUBIN Special Forces. Each Force includes new heads and voice + a light, medium and heavy variant of their own torso and legs (each with a unique camouflage pattern).

Two new primary weapons will be immediately accessible to players who select to play as the new Special Forces; the 417 assault rifle for the Dutch KCT and the SPAS 15 shotgun for the Italian COMSUBIN Special Forces.

Four new weapons will be available to all players regardless of assigned Special Force. These are the 9mm Sub Machine Gun, M82A1A, Ak-74 and SR-25. The 1.60 will also include a number of weapon updates and adjustments to existing weapons.

In addition to the free DLC included with the 1.60 update we are also working to add 100% Random Medleys in the 1.60 update. We know this is a highly requested feature and we really want to get it out to you.

More DLC coming! - We can also confirm that we have been working on a major content release/pack. Look for an announcement later in the month.

We will release more information on Patch 1.6 after 1.5 has been released.

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