Basically I&#039;m going to bitch alot about the trivial things no one gives a shit about except myself. But I&#039;m going to bitch about them anyway.<br /><br />This season was a good &#039;start&#039;. I put start in quotations because it&#039;s not really a fresh start, it&#039;s just an overhaul. Not really a major overhaul either. What I mean by this is that changes were done, some that I thought were good, some that I thought were good but needed work, and some I didn&#039;t like at all. I think the IDL is slowly losing the simplicity which made it so appealing to me in the first place. By &#039;simplicity&#039; I mean of course the simplicity of not having a ton of players, two leagues run at once, forums, and stuff like that. But mostly I&#039;m talking about the rules and regulations that were put into place before the league started. Everyone knows I probably won&#039;t let that die. But first things first. I&#039;m giving credit where credit is due.<br /><br />The website&#039;s revamping and reinstatement as an integral part of the league was, first of all was a spectacular addition to this season. I don&#039;t think there&#039;s anywhere to go but up as far as the website is concerned, with a good demo system, workable stats page, and one of my favorites is definitely the ability to visually see which map is being played via the website. Mainly because I can&#039;t remember names/numbers worth a damn! It goes without saying that the Stats page is new and could use improvement, but it&#039;s a great start, as is the demo processing. As far as demos go, though, I wish there were a better method than to wait for Ladna to process the log until you could upload. But it&#039;s not that big of a deal, and probably best where it is right now.<br /><br />I don&#039;t particularly agree with the map selections this season. Personally I lean in favor of more obscure and lesser played maps than the inclusion of any of the &#039;trifecta&#039;. The trifecta being 01, 04 and 08. I don&#039;t see why these maps are being played every single season when other potentially great maps are denied their chance to shine. We do have a gigantic mappack, and I think it is only fair. It&#039;s unlikely all the well-known maps would be purged, unfortunately, but I think it would help players not only grow exponentially in skill due to having been thrust in a map they aren&#039;t familiar with, but hell, it&#039;ll make for some interesting games. I&#039;ve gone through the IDL wad and there&#039;s maps there I&#039;ve seen once or twice, and never played on. That doesn&#039;t mean it goes the same for all of you, since I&#039;ve been &#039;competitively out of action&#039; in between seasons, so that speaks for itself. I&#039;d love to see alot of crazy variety. Someone touched off on the idea that we should have a jumbled mixture of offensive and defensive oriented maps. I think this would really affect draft picks as well, as captains would be forced to take in all players in consideration.<br /><br />One complaining point of mine that everyone knows well is the team name selection. What happened to teams picking their own names? Or hell, at the least suggesting them! Personally, I despised the fact that I was stuck with a name that was pretty horrible in comparison to the rest of the league. I&#039;m pretty sure anyone else who would have landed on the team wouldn&#039;t really care that much, but come on. It&#039;s not even doom-themed. Look at all the others. RottKing suggested Plasma Patriots, and I remember the name Rocket Dodgers being thrown around. There&#039;s two decent names that are a hell of a lot better than Electric Bills. Come on. Why not let captains suggest their team names to the board? This was one of the things I liked about the previous seasons, it gave a sense of personalization to the league&#039;s captains.<br /><br />As for the game structure itself, I don&#039;t think there should be a change to 4v4, since getting 3 players to show up on time is hard enough as it is, and bolstering rosters to 5 players, with a backup player for the normal 4 would make things a little more complicated, and probably a bit more hectic too at gametime. Couple that with the measly 16 player limit in ZDaemon servers and that could prove to be a problem. On paper I love the flag limit removal idea, but what if a team like SPE gets matched up against say, DMR or SUC? That&#039;s a crushing defeat that could total 10 flags or more per round. Some players might just get up and walk away after a game like that. I like the idea of only having a timelimit of 15 minutes or whatever variable you want to set up, but I think it needs in-depth discussion by not just the IDL board, but also the players of IDL, which brings me to another point that peeves me.<br /><br />It DOES stem from the same argument about team names I&#039;ve made for awhile. The board seems to override any opinion a player or a group of players may have, unless there&#039;s a sizable force going against an instilled policy. I don&#039;t remember any topics on issues the IDL board is currently discussing (as opposed to ones already decided on) being posted in the IDL forums before Season 5. I think that&#039;s something that should change, but like I said, I might have missed such a topic, so please, if I&#039;m wrong, link me to said topic. :P What I mean here is that this is a league run by players, I don&#039;t see why the people not on the board don&#039;t get to discuss and have a say in changes being talked over by the people at the top. Even if there is no influential discussion on the topic, I think it&#039;s important in a community like this one to at least let the people voice their opinions on it. Sometimes it leads to a solution better than the one thought up by a small group of people. It shows trust in the members participating in the league.<br /><br />Overall, I can&#039;t find too much to complain about. I&#039;m in a shitty area of routing so server choices are limited in my eyes. Total Trash Chicago is a lot better to me than its St. Louis counterpart (I&#039;ll take 30% packet loss over 67%, thanks).