FPL CS2 Proving Grounds - How to Qualify

General overview

Designed to empower the highest Elo-rated matchmaking players to break into the professional scene, the FPL Proving Grounds event will occur every four months at the end of a FACEIT Season.

Its first iteration will serve as the grand finale of FACEIT Season 1, replacing FPL-C Hubs and FPL-C Qualifiers as a new way to qualify for the FPL.

The inaugural season of FACEIT, Season 1, commenced on September 27 and is scheduled to continue until January 27, 2024. Following the conclusion of Season 1, the debut FACEIT Proving Grounds event will take place in the upcoming weeks. We will provide you with the precise date for this event in the forthcoming months.

How to qualify? 

• Every four months, the top 125 players by Elo in each region will qualify to be invited into the FPL Proving Grounds. 
  • Eligible players will receive an email with an invitation to the FPL Proving Grounds hub alongside the full schedule & rules.
  • If there are any already existing FPL players among them, they will be ineligible to participate in the event. They will instead be able to nominate one player who can play instead of them. This player has to be a Challenger player. 

Who is eligible to qualify?

• Players must have played at least 750 matches on the FACEIT Platform
• Players must play from within their own region
• Players must be verified
• Players must be at least 13 years of age
• Players who have had previous VAC bans or FACEIT cheating bans are not eligible to participate.
• Players must use their respective nicknames that they have used throughout the season. Also, any player that has an issue with their email, such as but not limited to not having access to the email linked to their FACEIT profile, must resolve this or any other form of problem with FACEIT Customer Support before the end of the season and before the invites have been sent.

Event Scheduling & Format

• Scheduling
  • Proving Grounds dates will be scheduled on dates where no big event broadcast or qualifier is live. Communication will be done a few months in advance.

• Format
  • We will use our Hub product and Hub leaderboards.
  • Hub opens at 12:00 CET and closes at 0:00 CET daily until the final day when it closes at 17:00 CET. (Start time in NA will be the same, just PST time at 12:00; for SA, it will be the same, just BST at 12:00.)
  • 1 week long leaderboards
  • +6, -4 Leaderboard Point System; +3 Point Bonus for 3+ matches won in a row
  • Matchmaking is solo-queue, FIFO, Captain Pick

How are winners determined

• On the 7th day, the queues will close at 17:00 CET. (NA PST, SA BST)
• The top 30 players from the leaderboard will be put up for a vote
• Voting begins at 18:00 and lasts until 19:00 
• The vote will weigh as follows 
  • Judges 50%
  • Proving Grounds Players 25%
  • Community 25%

• Depending on their final placement in each vote, players will earn points. (Judges will provide double points). For example, if M0nesy is #1 by Judge vote, #5 by player vote and #10 by community vote, he will have 24*2+14+4 = 66 total points.
  • #1 - 24
  • #2 - 20
  • #3 -18
  • #4 -16
  • #5 - 14
  • #6 - 12
  • #7 - 10
  • #8 - 8
  • #9 - 6

Rules

LEADERBOARD / PRIZE TIEBREAKER

In case of a tiebreaker on the leaderboards at the end of the season, we will apply the following logic to determine who gets a higher placement:

The player with the higher number of matches played will take the higher placement. If players have equal matches played, we will look at Win%, and the player with a higher Win% will take the higher placement. If players are tied in all of the above-mentioned aspects ( Points, number of matches played, and Win% ), the prize money of the tied positions will be summed together and then equally divided among each player.

TEAMS

Captains are chosen based on the ongoing leaderboard placement.

The selection order is A-B-B-A-A-B-A-B

Players are not allowed to ask or demand to be picked or not to be picked during the captain-pick phase. Team Captains that were selected by the system are responsible for picking the players on their team. Any attempt of players forcing, suggesting, or trying to fix the captain picks will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis and will be punished accordingly.

MAP POOL

FPL Proving Grounds will follow Valve’s official competitive map pool

• Ancient
• Anubis
• Inferno
• Mirage
• Nuke
• Dust2
• Vertigo

MATCH SETTINGS

Max Rounds: 12

Start Money: $800

OT Max Rounds: 3

OT Start Money: $12,500

SERVER SETTINGS

All servers have the official competitive ruleset that is used for official events.

TECHNICAL ISSUES

Technical problems / Player disconnect: Players must pause the match if there is a technical problem or a player disconnect(if needed, both team pauses must be used.) and contact one of the admins on duty. If the disconnected player is missing for more than 10 minutes, has not tried to reconnect, or contacts admins and there are less than ten rounds played, then the match will be cancelled only if the score/result difference is less than five (5) rounds.

MATCH INTEGRITY

Match integrity must be upheld by each player; failing to do so will result in direct removal from FPL Proving Grounds.

Rule violations may result in a 2-year ban from all FPL competitions and an investigation opened at the platform level.

GENERAL

• No cheating
• No bug abuse (In case a bug is discovered, we will give everyone an opportunity to report it to the FPL Staff)
• No match-fixing
• No stream sniping
• Players must use the same FACEIT nickname as they have used during the season.
• No toxicity - We don’t take into account friendly banter between players however, crossing a line with players who do not see it as friendly banter and report you will result in a warning.
• English only - To play CS2 at the highest level, you need excellent team communication. FPL is a community of players coming from all parts of the world, and we understand some players find it easier to communicate in their own language. However, the official language of the FPL Circuit is English, and we expect everyone to uphold this during every match in FPL Proving Grounds. The only exception to this rule is if your team has five players speaking the same non-English language (E.g. 5 Swedish players in a team can speak Swedish). In any other scenario, everyone has to speak the English language, and we will give warnings for not following this rule.
• No silent communication - Everyone has to be on Teamspeak/Discord and use their microphone to communicate with each other. We understand that players might sometimes tilt and prefer not to speak. However, if you stop communicating, you are effectively destroying your team’s chances of winning.
• Always play to win - Players are expected to consistently compete at the best of their ability during their matches. If you do not do that, you are letting down your teammates and exhibiting behaviour that no professional player should ever do. Always play to win. (E.g. Playing Proving Grounds under any substance, teamkilling/griefing, throwing on purpose, going AFK, focusing on stream chat and not the game etc.)
• Any behaviour that puts you in an unfairly advantageous position and breaks the integrity of the match (Giving information to the enemy player, being on the same TeamSpeak as the enemy, etc.)

SPORTSMANSHIP

We expect every player to show an example of how sportsmanlike behaviour should look, whether you are a top-tier professional player or an aspiring player who wants to become a professional player one day. Every player wants their matches to have excellent communication, great teamwork, and significant social experience.

DEFAULT COOLDOWNS

Player failed to join match (AFK): 24 hours cooldown 

Captain failed to pick players - 5-minute cooldown 

The player failed to accept the match - 3-minute cooldown

Player left match (Leaver) - 3 minute / 24 hours cooldown 

Cooldowns given by the system automatically will not be removed, and players must wait until the cooldown expires in order to be able to play again. The only exception to this rule is if there is a major outage on a Steam platform or FACEIT website.

Some of the examples of situations when the cooldown is not removed:

• Internet issues or outages.
• Power issues or outages.
• The Player has to leave the match due to an unexpected event.
• Computer-related issues.
• VAC authentication issues (These are now considered a computer issue)