[quote author=DeathBR1ngeR link=topic=89.msg689#msg689 date=1237681900]<br />oh and expand map selection to a wider variety of wads. Otherwise you guys are doing a great job<br />[/quote]<br /><br />This from the guy who used a remarkably similar maplist for SICL?<br />Aside from that swipe I agree =) new wads/maps make for more fun games.<br />I personally like the idea of ZDECTF/2. <br /><br />[quote author=Fastidious link=topic=89.msg691#msg691 date=1237775881]<br />I would suggest moving the IDL to all super offensive maps.&nbsp; Maps where going up 1 then playing 3D is a good strategy are broken.&nbsp; Keep Blair banned.<br />[/quote]<br /><br />I&#039;m curious on this one. What maps are super offensive? I can&#039;t even remember an instance of a team playing 3 defense. Maybe SUC on map27 =) But aside from that I don&#039;t really remember very many 2 defense matches really. As a side note, I will say that playing 2 defense is kinda a good idea for most teams, especially when their opponents are rushing. It might not lend itself to being &quot;action-packed&quot; but it&#039;s probably a good strategy for teams with less than allstar lineups. Oh, and I second the Blair rule.<br /><br />[quote author=Mantis-X link=topic=89.msg692#msg692 date=1237776911]<br />Possible places....<br /><br />DUI NJ<br />Horizon <br />Frag Happy<br />Rampage Servers<br /><br />Now.... As for Horizon, the large majority pinging 100-170 to me is more even than sub 30s to high 80s? <br />[/quote]<br /><br />First and foremost I want to say I&#039;m just responding as a server admin. I have no standing as an IDL administrator or w/e they are. But I have been privy to some discussions on this topic and I can tell you the issues that have arisen in those conversations.<br /><br />I personally would be happy to play on Horizon, and I do on a regular basis. However, I suspect most players would not agree to such a thing in a primarily North American league (sans TJ =). Also, ECDL is a good option for you if you want to play on European servers.&nbsp; It&#039;s really very fun.<br /><br />As far as DUI NJ, Domains flat out said he would not host unadvertised servers for us. I asked in season 4 and he was quite clear.<br /><br />Fraghappy is a problem because Niv is SO INACTIVE. Things like getting the logs for games or getting maps changed or anything we would ever need server-wise would be contingent on Niv&#039;s participation which hasn&#039;t been stellar, even when he was a player in IDL. We would no doubt be severely inconvenienced by his absence. <br /><br />Rampage is a good idea except (I am told) they&#039;re hosted at a university (subject to bandwidth [student usage] interuptions). Think...Bittorrent. Also, I&#039;m pretty sure that Rampage would be worse for most of the people TT is bad for. I may be wrong, but I think UWM is serviced by Level3, same as TT. so your route will most likely be similarly bad. The only players that would benefit from Rampage are probably the people who ping &lt;30 to TT (i.e. Canadians).<br /><br />Also, most of these server admins are still running a 1.08.07 version (with the exception of TT and Unfy) which still crashes upon playerlimit in teamplay games. There are .08RCs that do not crash but they&#039;re still beta testing them afaik. For reference, I did at some point use .07D (a version supposedly fixing the crashing) during this season and serveral people lodged complaints that the &quot;feeling of the server&quot; wasn&#039;t right. My point is that it&#039;s not just about asking server admins to host IDL servers. It&#039;s imposing rules on their servers for IDL, like you have to run a&nbsp; certain version or keep logs or give shells access or give rcon or not tax the server or blah blah blah. It can be a seriously involved process.<br /><br />I realize that server connections make a huge difference in performance, and it can really make a player sour when their abilities don&#039;t shine through because of a networking issue. But there isn&#039;t really a good solution to this problem right now. When we had St Louis and everyone pinged ~40-80 (except gay miek) people complained. I put TT at two hosts in Chicago, one with Cogent bandwidth and one with Level3/nLayer. Seriously the same 8 people complained to me about their connections at each location. And while I&#039;m not disregarding their shitty situation, I am saying it&#039;s not something I&#039;ve just sat idly by and done nothing about. And I think it might not be something I can do anything about.<br /><br />Lastly, server variety brings with it a mess of upkeep. The most obvious is that server choice will be one more thing admins will have to arbitrate between teams. Scheduling is already kinda tough let alone server agreement. The headaches that go with keeping server sets regulated and making sure that other uses for IDL servers don&#039;t affect the play is really just such a pain in the ass. There are many more issues, some of which I addressed in the server version rant earlier. This to say it&#039;s not simply a matter of getting a server admin to host an extra server, it&#039;s slightly more involved.<br /><br />----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------<br /><br />My criticism of IDL is that it seems to be stagnating. I would have liked more drastic format change for the franchise era. Some examples of format change would be, 4v4 teams, flag/timelimit changes, and maybe a better system by which people could signup midseason. I get the feeling that new players aren&#039;t being ushered into the league properly and I see older players leaving for new games and personal lives. This is probably the biggest problem for IDL in the future. IDDL was a great idea but I think it needs some ad campaign or marketing firm to help bring new competitive players into the fold. <br /><br />Now none of that is to say I disliked playing this season, quite the opposite. I think Ralph and Ladna and the rest of the board did a great job and ran a fun and competitive league. Some of the best players I&#039;ve played with signed up and were active this season. That alone was a huge step in the right direction.<br /><br />I will say that I tend to disagree with Fast (and many others) on a fundamental issue. I really feel like ctf is a defensive game, the 3v3 format especially. I sorta believe that you can control a game&#039;s pace and hold positioning with defense in a way offense kind of can&#039;t. Maybe it&#039;s my predisposition to defense or that i spam and camp a lot or w/e but I feel like having bad offense is a lot more forgiving than having bad defense. But again, maybe that is just my experience.<br /><br />So far I think this season has been a success. I do hope people return for the summer season, especially the people on less than dominant teams as they will have a leg up in the draft [see: http://forums.intldoomleague.org/index.php?topic=73.0]. And I have a suspicion we&#039;ll see a couple veterans return to the league as well :) .....WHOPPAR!!!!!!!!!!!!