Through my experience on pubs on forums such as these I feel that many non-competitive players (also referred to as "pubbers") know very little about CAL and may have some misconceptions about the nature of it. As a former CAL player for many years, I would like to "bust" some of these myths and give the general community a little more insight into this league.
CAL stands for the Cyberathlete Ametuer League. It is an organization that has existed for many many years and has supported tons of different games. It is known as the little brother of the CPL (Cyberathlete Professional League) which hosts live tournaments for big bucks. This is the league Fatality plays in. CAL is a league conducted much like any sort of sporting league. During the off-season any team that wants to can sign up. When the league starts the teams are divided into divisions and they play matches once a week. The teams record's are kept and at the end of the season the teams with the best record make the playoffs.
CAL-BF2 currenty has two divisions, Open and Main. The open division is the lesser of the two divisions. This is the division all new teams are put in and the division all CAL-M teams ultimately came from. At the end of each season the best CAL-O teams are moved up to the CAL-M division. The divions function as two completely seperate leagues and never play against one another in matches.
CAL currently uses BFpro. BFpro is a mod created by Ginc, a CAL administrator (like a league official) and leader of 20id. The mod was designed to make very minor tweaks to BF2 in order to make it more competition worthy. The main changes in the mod are that the random deviation is lowered. BFpro was created a very long time ago but was not adopted until last season. If you would like to try the mod you can download it here:
It is a small file and installation only requires two clicks of the mouse. The CAL players have a BFpro pub that is frequented daily by some of CAL's best players that I think you may have a fun time playing on.
Here are some of the most common assumptions I have seen made by pubbers.
CAL is full of super uber leet players who are much better than me and I could never play in CAL.
This is most certainly not true. In CAL-O most of the teams are made up of players whom I doubt are any better than the average player on these forums. Only the best CAL-O teams are all that good. The majority of CAL teams are not very good at all, it is only the top CAL-M teams who are so talented and renown. I am sure that if you wanted to you could join a CAL team, or if you are in a clan that does not play in leagues you could have a lot of fun in CAL. I
If you are interested in joining a CAL team look at this thread:
There are always teams looking for more players. Usually all you have to do is add someone to your Xfire and request a tryout. Not all teams are hard to get into, some are rediculously easy.
CAL is full of a bunch of arrogant assholes.
There is no denying that some of the CAL players can be very hostile towards pubbers in particular, but many of them are not. The competition CAL creates is very intense, and one has to be very self-confident in order to play at the highest level. Intimidation can be a big factor in the outcome of matches. Not all CAL players think they are god's gift to gaming, and many of the very very best players are not outwardly arrogant at all (like Joe from HOT). That being said, many of these players who act arrogantly are very very talented and if anyone has the right to say the things they say, it is them. The competitive atmosphere can be very hostile. **** talking and grudge matches are common and on the CAL forums opinions are hard hitting.
A lot of the players in CAL hack.
Another completely wrong assumption. This is not to say that there aren’t cheaters in CAL, but there are very few and they often get caught. The ones who do cheat are almost always the bad wannabees trying to hang with the big dogs. CAL has an entire group of Admins devoted to catching cheaters. They create custom Punkbuster configs that have caught many the cheater in the past. Besides that, many of the best CAL players play on LANs, which are offline competitions taking place in a single building were cheating is obviously not a possibility. The CAL players in general, being as good as they are, are good at spotting cheaters. A player named Gifted! was recently busted by a few CAL players who were able to obtain videos of some interesting shots and a convicting screenshot. A couple of weeks ago a player from a CAL-O team many CAL players noticed had mysteriously gotten a lot better named MiQ was busted for an aimbot after getting 2 headshots simultaneously on players considerably far part. The CAL players made a recording from a demo of this shot and were able to get him banned from CAL and Punkbuster. The majority of CAL players have a lot of respect for the game and would never think of hacking.
I hope this answers some questions people may have been having. I encourage everyone on these forums to play in CAL. It is at least a 100 times more fun playing in matches than it is pubbing. If you are curious what the skill level of CAL can be I urge you to download BFpro and play on the pub with the other CAL players.
CAL stands for the Cyberathlete Ametuer League. It is an organization that has existed for many many years and has supported tons of different games. It is known as the little brother of the CPL (Cyberathlete Professional League) which hosts live tournaments for big bucks. This is the league Fatality plays in. CAL is a league conducted much like any sort of sporting league. During the off-season any team that wants to can sign up. When the league starts the teams are divided into divisions and they play matches once a week. The teams record's are kept and at the end of the season the teams with the best record make the playoffs.
CAL-BF2 currenty has two divisions, Open and Main. The open division is the lesser of the two divisions. This is the division all new teams are put in and the division all CAL-M teams ultimately came from. At the end of each season the best CAL-O teams are moved up to the CAL-M division. The divions function as two completely seperate leagues and never play against one another in matches.
CAL currently uses BFpro. BFpro is a mod created by Ginc, a CAL administrator (like a league official) and leader of 20id. The mod was designed to make very minor tweaks to BF2 in order to make it more competition worthy. The main changes in the mod are that the random deviation is lowered. BFpro was created a very long time ago but was not adopted until last season. If you would like to try the mod you can download it here:
It is a small file and installation only requires two clicks of the mouse. The CAL players have a BFpro pub that is frequented daily by some of CAL's best players that I think you may have a fun time playing on.
Here are some of the most common assumptions I have seen made by pubbers.
CAL is full of super uber leet players who are much better than me and I could never play in CAL.
This is most certainly not true. In CAL-O most of the teams are made up of players whom I doubt are any better than the average player on these forums. Only the best CAL-O teams are all that good. The majority of CAL teams are not very good at all, it is only the top CAL-M teams who are so talented and renown. I am sure that if you wanted to you could join a CAL team, or if you are in a clan that does not play in leagues you could have a lot of fun in CAL. I
If you are interested in joining a CAL team look at this thread:
There are always teams looking for more players. Usually all you have to do is add someone to your Xfire and request a tryout. Not all teams are hard to get into, some are rediculously easy.
CAL is full of a bunch of arrogant assholes.
There is no denying that some of the CAL players can be very hostile towards pubbers in particular, but many of them are not. The competition CAL creates is very intense, and one has to be very self-confident in order to play at the highest level. Intimidation can be a big factor in the outcome of matches. Not all CAL players think they are god's gift to gaming, and many of the very very best players are not outwardly arrogant at all (like Joe from HOT). That being said, many of these players who act arrogantly are very very talented and if anyone has the right to say the things they say, it is them. The competitive atmosphere can be very hostile. **** talking and grudge matches are common and on the CAL forums opinions are hard hitting.
A lot of the players in CAL hack.
Another completely wrong assumption. This is not to say that there aren’t cheaters in CAL, but there are very few and they often get caught. The ones who do cheat are almost always the bad wannabees trying to hang with the big dogs. CAL has an entire group of Admins devoted to catching cheaters. They create custom Punkbuster configs that have caught many the cheater in the past. Besides that, many of the best CAL players play on LANs, which are offline competitions taking place in a single building were cheating is obviously not a possibility. The CAL players in general, being as good as they are, are good at spotting cheaters. A player named Gifted! was recently busted by a few CAL players who were able to obtain videos of some interesting shots and a convicting screenshot. A couple of weeks ago a player from a CAL-O team many CAL players noticed had mysteriously gotten a lot better named MiQ was busted for an aimbot after getting 2 headshots simultaneously on players considerably far part. The CAL players made a recording from a demo of this shot and were able to get him banned from CAL and Punkbuster. The majority of CAL players have a lot of respect for the game and would never think of hacking.
I hope this answers some questions people may have been having. I encourage everyone on these forums to play in CAL. It is at least a 100 times more fun playing in matches than it is pubbing. If you are curious what the skill level of CAL can be I urge you to download BFpro and play on the pub with the other CAL players.
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