Hoo, boy! Now we got some discussion goin&#039;. Let&#039;s see if we can get anywhere with fixing these problems, yeah?<br /><br />[quote author=Ladna link=topic=26.msg276#msg276 date=1219629341]<br />[b]Too much bullshit, over competitiveness[/b]<br /><br />I think there&#039;s two kinds of IDL players:<br /><br />[list]<br />[li]Players who play to have fun[/li]<br />[li]Players who play to win[/li]<br />[/list]<br /><br />There&#039;s no point in telling a player they&#039;re &quot;being too competitive&quot;.&nbsp; The only thing IDL can do is make rules that make competition fair.&nbsp; You can totally debate all day on what is &quot;fair&quot; or not (3v2s, 2v2s, server agreements, time of day/scheduling), and you can lobby for rules against stuff you think is lame, but complaining that someone is &quot;too competitive&quot; is being obviously butthurt.&nbsp; You and your opponent had the same rules, and you were out competed.&nbsp; Tough.&nbsp; In fact, I&#039;d say that players making the IDL competitive isn&#039;t the problem, people making the IDL personal is.[/quote]<br /><br />I fully agree with this, and to expect otherwise is a little absurd, considering that there are a good number of players who do want to win, seeing as it [b]is[/b] a league, there&#039;s a goal clearly set on being the best team out there. A players have a lot of fun winning. But look, this is Doom, and being as how small of a community it really is, everyone knows each other, so you&#039;re going to have at least some people create or revive grudges as the seasons go on. It&#039;s just how it&#039;s going to be. What you can do to avoid this is either to ignore IRC for pretty much most of the time, or just take short breaks from it, if it proves to be too much. If it doesn&#039;t involve you, I can&#039;t see it being a problem that can&#039;t be avoided.<br /><br />No one is forcing anyone to sign up again if the heat of the IDL is proving too much to handle. There&#039;s players that keep coming back and playing season after season, so it&#039;s not like there&#039;s a mass exodus of players from IDL happening, so it doesn&#039;t seem to me like a problem that really [b]needs[/b] fixing. Then again, it&#039;s not like you can &#039;fix&#039; it anyway. It lies in players&#039; attitudes and sportsmanship, more than anything else. It&#039;s up to them, not really the administration. Take Tai for example. That guy causes some strife, sure. Is it good for the sake of competition? Why not? Every time someone talks shit it&#039;s good to make them eat their words, making people practice that much more when they&#039;re up against a team with a player or players that they dislike. I don&#039;t think this is a bad thing, unless it&#039;s taken to a point where players leave, like Radnsmash, for example.<br /><br />[quote author=Ladna link=topic=26.msg276#msg276 date=1219629341][b]Need an admin who:[/b]<br />[list]<br />[li][b]Is around a lot to deal with crises[/b][/li]<br />[li][b]Adapts rules quickly to fix things[/b][/li]<br />[li][b]Takes chances mixing things up with new seasons[/b][/li]<br />[/list]<br /><br />I might be wrong, but aren&#039;t there 3 admins (Ralphis, Fastidious and Humanbones)?&nbsp; I know whenever there were problems with the demos Ralphis would leave it to Nostar and me to resolve it.&nbsp; Maybe the problem is that the &#039;leadership&#039; structure of IDL isn&#039;t as obvious as it should be.&nbsp; In any case, the answer is probably more than one admin.&nbsp; Having one guy hanging around all day every day isn&#039;t feasible... even if it is, that one person is probably extremely maladjusted (I&#039;m looking at you nostar!) and would benefit from input from normal people.&nbsp; Anyway, I thought there were already multiple admins, and if there aren&#039;t, there should be.&nbsp; Whatever the case is, this stuff should be public so players know how to resolve issues that come up.[/quote]<br /><br />I don&#039;t know about this. What are you saying, here? That the current administrators are not up to the task of keeping up with the IDL currently? If so, the solution would be to add more admins? I don&#039;t think so. No administrator has to be on 24/7 to keep up with events. If there is a pressing event that needs to be tended to, it will either be brought to their attention when they [b]are[/b] active, it would get posted here, or they would be sent a PM. Either way, I don&#039;t see solid examples to Fastidious&#039; complaints. Adapting the rules quickly to deal with problems? Hmm, that wouldn&#039;t have anything to do with this season&#039;s mid-season draft, would it? Also, I&#039;d see it as kind of hard to come up with new ideas for the upcoming seasons if there is little to no input from players on what should be changed, rather than just saying &#039;fix this&#039;.<br /><br />[quote author=Ladna link=topic=26.msg276#msg276 date=1219629341]Also, IDL has almost no rules.&nbsp; The few rules that do exist are always adapted to the current situation (Bloodstrike&#039;s demo issue is a good example), and I honestly can&#039;t think of a time where Ralphis didn&#039;t arbitrate effectively.&nbsp; I don&#039;t really see what could be done differently or more &quot;quickly&quot;, but I&#039;m open to hearing some examples.[/quote]<br /><br />Of course, you realize that there are opponents to Ralphis and the IDL&#039;s administration in general. Chaindude comes to mind. However, whenever I saw him complaining about rules or how the IDL is being run, I never saw a solution or even a suggestion put forth to address the problem. Then again, I do not know what goes on behind closed doors, so this is merely an assumption.<br /><br />Nevertheless, you [b]need[/b] ideas and support from the players before the administration feels that it&#039;s in a position to change anything! If no one speaks up or offers suggestions, nothing will happen that will satisfy the players.<br /><br />[quote author=Ladna link=topic=26.msg276#msg276 date=1219629341]IDL has also changed pretty drastically over its 4 seasons, from creating the mid-season draft, to increasing the numbers of teams and games, to running the pre-season draft live, and even creating a demo upload system.&nbsp; I think it&#039;s easy to forget that there are things about IDL that are waaaaay better than they used to be, just because some stuff currently sucks.&nbsp; Everyone&#039;s got their little list of &quot;5 things I&#039;d change about IDL&quot; and I think we&#039;ll talk about that stuff after the Masterbowl, but it&#039;s a little disingenuous to insinuate that Ralphis hasn&#039;t &quot;mixed things up&quot;.[/quote]<br /><br />Well, I agree, but without an idea as to what Fast meant by &#039;mixing things up&#039;, I don&#039;t think anyone&#039;s in a position to insinuate anything. Things have improved, but there are lingering issues that have not been pinned down. Hopefully, this topic will serve as a grounds for discussion of those issues and solutions for them.<br /><br />[quote author=Ladna link=topic=26.msg276#msg276 date=1219629341][b]3v2 / 3v1 /2v1 games suck[/b]<br /><br />Yeah, they do.&nbsp; But the alternative is forcing a team to play without some of its players, even if they didn&#039;t do anything wrong and they showed up.&nbsp; Let&#039;s take a hypothetical situation (sorry, it&#039;s kinda confusing):<br /><br />Team A has two &quot;premier&quot; players, and two... &quot;not-so-great&quot; players.&nbsp; One of the &quot;not-so-great&quot; players has lag problems, and has basically dropped out of IDL because it&#039;s pointless for him to keep showing up.&nbsp; During Week 2, the other &quot;not-so-great&quot; player forgot to demo, so he has to sit out the first round of Week 3.&nbsp; Team A&#039;s Week 3 opponent is Team B, which has 3 solid players, but none are as good as Team A&#039;s top two.<br /><br />Here are the problems:<br /><br />[list]<br />[li]It isn&#039;t fair at all that Team B should be forced to play a disadvantageous 2v2 game against Team A (which they&#039;ll probably lose... forcing them to risk more on offense in the subsequent games and possibly costing them the entire match), when Team B didn&#039;t even do anything wrong.[/li]<br />[li]Team A can consistently do this to other teams that are similar to Team B using the excuse &quot;Player C isn&#039;t around, and Player D&#039;s connection won&#039;t stay connected for more than a few minutes&quot;?[/li]<br />[/list]<br /><br />Fundamentally, if your players aren&#039;t showing up, or if they&#039;re failing to demo for whatever reason (forgot, corruption, etc.), the other team shouldn&#039;t be punished by cutting its team down.&nbsp; A good real life example is when BBS played MAD Week 7 (ODA04); MAD would&#039;ve crushed us in a 3v3, but they graciously agreed to play us 2v2 and we were a lot more competitive than we should have been.&nbsp; Sure it was great of Doomguy to do that for us, but nothing about it was &quot;fair&quot; in the larger sense.<br /><br />So while I agree that unbalanced games are pretty lame, it&#039;s nothing compared to manipulating the other team to play with a weaker roster with &quot;attendance issues&quot; or &quot;demo problems&quot;.&nbsp; Sure there&#039;s a few things that can be done administratively, but you end up dealing with player attendance, which is complicated.&nbsp; It is [b]NOT[/b] as simple as just disallowing unbalanced games, in fact, I&#039;ll bluntly say that&#039;s stupid.[/quote]<br /><br />I think they should be allowed, personally. You already explained how it breaks down so I won&#039;t repeat that, but look at it this way. If you&#039;ve signed up for the IDL, you have essentially told everyone in the league that you WILL set aside playing time, because come on, one hour a week is not that hard to conjure up. If it is, then you should not have signed up in the first place, and doom your team to play handicapped. This is why there are four players, which is a vast improvement in case some emergency comes up in a player&#039;s life, or if they&#039;re caught off guard by work or school, or something else. It&#039;s not that hard, though, in the grand scheme of things, to devote at least some time to a competitive league that you signed up for! If you can&#039;t make it, there&#039;s no reason the other team should have to be punished for your lack of scheduling. That&#039;s just how it works.<br /><br />[quote author=Ladna link=topic=26.msg276#msg276 date=1219629341][b]Demo rules suck[/b]<br /><br />This issue is actually very simple for me:<br /><br />[list]<br />[li]Cheating sucks 1000x more, because it cheapens the competitive nature of the league[/li]<br />[li]As long as Ralphis/Doomguy/MadV/DeathBR1nger (anyone else?) are in the league, servers have to be unadvertised.[/li]<br />[li]Not everyone is listed on the banlist for cheating, and there&#039;s no reason the ZD administration should dictate IDL membership (if someone is banned for cheating it&#039;s a little different).[/li]<br />[li]Kilgore&#039;s software detection doesn&#039;t operate on unadvertised servers, so without some other kind of anti-cheat motivation, we&#039;re just asking for cheaters in the IDL.[/li]<br />[li]Most players have [b]never[/b] had a technological problem with their demos or auto-demoing.[/li]<br />[/list]<br /><br />And this &quot;the demo rules are punishing the innocent&quot; thing is going way too far.&nbsp; There are 258 demos and there have been 7 demo infractions (of which 2 were Bloodstrike), meaning there was a 2.71% demo infraction rate in the IDL this season, which is pretty damn low.&nbsp; If you just take the &quot;bad/corrupt demo&quot; infraction, there&#039;s a 1.6% demo infraction rate (4).&nbsp; If you consider Bloodstrike should have uploaded his first demo, received his first &quot;your demo is corrupt&quot; notice, and not played until his demoing worked again, it goes down to 1.1%.&nbsp; I mean, 1.1% is better than God does with humans (so is 2.71% for that matter), so I don&#039;t know what you want from us.&nbsp; Requiring a demo from a player for every game they play is the only thing that prevents cheating in the IDL.&nbsp; Any compromise on what we currently have makes it easier to cheat, and given how low the demo infraction rate was and how easy it is to auto-demo, I [b]really[/b] don&#039;t see the argument against it.[/quote]<br /><br />This makes me curious. I didn&#039;t see a topic detailing how to auto-demo, which would save players [b]so[/b] much agony in demoing and whatever. Am I blind, or is there just not one around? This would be essential for players who don&#039;t know how to auto-demo yet, and in my opinion, would save everyone a lot of hassle and blood pressure.<br /><br />[quote author=Ladna link=topic=26.msg276#msg276 date=1219629341][b]Scheduling a game is a new nightmare every week[/b]<br /><br />Yep, and dealing with player attendance is complicated, especially if you don&#039;t want to allow unbalanced games.&nbsp; It sounds as simple as &quot;Ralphis should have made consequences for not scheduling games&quot;, but trying to find which team was at fault for not scheduling is really hard, and figuring how how to penalize a team for not scheduling is even harder.<br /><br />Like I said, everyone has their &quot;5 things I&#039;d change about IDL&quot; list, and we can talk about those later.&nbsp; I just think we should chill with some of the &quot;IDL SUCKS!!!!!!1111!!!&quot; stuff because a lot of the problems can&#039;t be solved with just a little tweak.&nbsp; I know I&#039;m personally guilty of saying that Ralphis should have put teeth in the game scheduling rule, but after thinking about it I realized it wasn&#039;t that easy.&nbsp; I also think there were a lot of really positive things that happened this season, and we shouldn&#039;t just gloss over those.&nbsp; Buck up!<br />[/quote]<br /><br />Well, this is true, none of the problems listed can be solved [b]easily[/b], which is why the community and league players have to get involved in order to find a solution everyone likes. Someone may have an idea that will really help, but can&#039;t or aren&#039;t able to speak up. If everyone got involved, I&#039;m almost positive many of these remaining problems would at the very least get a good amount of attention.<br /><br />As for team scheduling, it&#039;s unlikely 6 players would all get together on a work night, be they either working or attending school that week. If the problem is because of a bunch of games all happening on the weekend, I don&#039;t know how you&#039;d avoid that easily. Seeing as it&#039;s happened since the start of the IDL, it&#039;s become commonplace, hasn&#039;t it? I think a big problem though is that players, instead of saying &#039;lets practice&#039; or &#039;lets play this game&#039; or even &#039;what time are you all on, so we can schedule the match?&#039;, they&#039;ll go off and play public ctf, or some other game, or just goof off on IRC. There&#039;s nothing [b]wrong[/b] with that, but come on, if you&#039;re going to gripe about the other team not getting their shit together, at least make an effort to help everyone out, first, including your opponent&#039;s team. That is common courtesy and in everyone&#039;s interest. I think we&#039;ve lost sight of that as a group.