UnFreeZe league

[adminless]

I know as I said that's part of the game (to some extend) and this particular time it even added something (in a positive way) to the game (it added balance/strategy/competitiveness). that being said, if from now onward camping ra/committing suicide becomes the wining strategy or simply the game start revolving only about that and it gets overused then obviously it will be patched on the code as is evident that's not the way the game is supposed to be (generally/for the most part) played. agree, the thing with dm11 (as well as dm14 btw) is that they are more for 6vs6/7vs7 onward games thus it struggles for a 5vs5 competitive game. matter of fact if by any chance dm11 (or dm14) would have been picked and it ended up being a 4vs4 I can tell you it would be virtually unplayable. I simply suggested them/leave them there as I knew there was interest for them as they are immensely popular anyways so it was a good option to get started. yes, probably a much better choice rather than messing up everything it would be simply replace dm11/dm14 with q3dm4 and rpg3dm2 for example that should play lot better for this kind of small/mid size competitive games. additionally as a map pool revision if you want you could also drop pro-nodm9 and qxtourney1 as bonus maps there. from what I've seen so far I believe pro-nodm9 in particular could be a very good choice and you can just have qxtourney1 as a good all around map for some extra variety too. in fact, if people agrees/is ok with that I believe we could even implement that map pool for the coming final four (i.e. q3dm4, pro-q3dm6, pro-q3tourney2, q3dm7, q3dm8, pro-q3dm13, pro-q3tourney7, 6++, 7++, bloodcovenant, focal_p132, hub3tourney1, overkill, phantq3dm1_rev, pro-dcmap7, pro-nodm9, qxtourney1 and rpg3dm2).

[fau]

For dm14 - maybe, but nobody has tried it yet. Hopefully it's not so bad, dungeon below quad is important and it's not easy to hold for neither side. I'd say - give it a chance, let's see how it plays in actual match.
dm11 was played only twice and we didn't practice on it so who knows, it may get better as teams learn how to play it. But I don't see it happening myself.
Ofc for public server dm11 is perfectly fine, you've convinced me. Many players die in bad spots and it creates some dynamic and circulation, even if it takes a bit longer than other maps.

I'd prefer to stick with original map pool for finals - it starts feeling like a separate, second tournament (4 out of 5 teams play in it, 1st team can end up 4th and now different maps?)

[Liza]

I believe that it is too late to change the map pool.
For example, OKO trained dm11 quite a lot - by withdrawing that map we do harm to their preparation.
We play on the server where dm11,dm7,dm14 are played on most evenings - we should have included them because people are familiar with them.

[adminless]

I know that's why I didn't say anything against them (dm11/dm14) until issues surfaced for those very same reasons (popularity/consistence). yes, probably it's the most fair/best option to just leave it as-is, no big deal, just saying. btw may be what could be done in favor of a better experience would be simply add q3dm4 and pro-nodm9 to the map pool for the finals. after have referred the fights and the topic spawned here and I (re-)reviewed the map pool I have the feeling that those two are particularly missing from the map pool and, again, it shouldn't make any major difference (q3dm4 I believe everybody know it already and pro-nodm9 is just a competitive remix of q3dm13 so it shouldn't be big deal. the other two and the removals, yes, they would overall make a significant change over the original). I don't know how would you see that for the finals then (i.e. q3dm4, pro-q3dm6, pro-q3tourney2, q3dm7, q3dm8, q3dm11, pro-q3dm13, q3dm14, pro-q3tourney7, 6++, 7++, bloodcovenant, focal_p132, hub3tourney1, overkill, phantq3dm1_rev, pro-dcmap7 and pro-nodm9).

[YORELito]

We all known Dm11 because it is in unfreeze rotation very often and we all know name of locations/items/respawns so we had an strategy.
In my case I played Hub3tourney1 about 2 hours in my life before tournament and I was litterally crossing portals without knowing were I was going to appear. So in my case 0 strategy. I believe Fau's team choose that map because it is a common 1v1 map and they are familiar with it.
The third map I was told it is a Quake Champions popular map which I played about 1 hour of my life before tournament.. again 0 strategy.

You can add/remove many maps from the poll but both teams wil stick to those maps they have played more ofthen DM11(our case) hu3tourney1(Fau's team case), If you want that to change you have to include it in the unfreeze server rotation, or otherwise i believe they are going to be discarded over and over

Just a friendly opinion!

[fau]

We all known Dm11 because it is in unfreeze rotation very often and we all know name of locations/items/respawns so we had an strategy.
In my case I played Hub3tourney1 about 2 hours in my life before tournament and I was litterally crossing portals without knowing were I was going to appear. So in my case 0 strategy. I believe Fau's team choose that map because it is a common 1v1 map and they are familiar with it.
The third map I was told it is a Quake Champions popular map which I played about 1 hour of my life before tournament.. again 0 strategy.

You can add/remove many maps from the poll but both teams wil stick to those maps they have played more ofthen DM11(our case) hu3tourney1(Fau's team case), If you want that to change you have to include it in the unfreeze server rotation, or otherwise i believe they are going to be discarded over and over

Just a friendly opinion!

That was just my opinion and I'm obviously biased there. But did you enjoy that dm11 game? Our reaction when it was over was: "wow, great that we won, but I hope we never play this map again". There are many faster standard maps, almost anything I think. dm6, dm13, dm4, t2, dm8 come to mind.

PS I think all non-standard maps in the pool are played on glacius server so you can get familiar with them there.

[oKo*Magister]

Honestly I enjoyed this map and I liked that it was long

[YORELito]

We all known Dm11 because it is in unfreeze rotation very often and we all know name of locations/items/respawns so we had an strategy.
In my case I played Hub3tourney1 about 2 hours in my life before tournament and I was litterally crossing portals without knowing were I was going to appear. So in my case 0 strategy. I believe Fau's team choose that map because it is a common 1v1 map and they are familiar with it.
The third map I was told it is a Quake Champions popular map which I played about 1 hour of my life before tournament.. again 0 strategy.

You can add/remove many maps from the poll but both teams wil stick to those maps they have played more ofthen DM11(our case) hu3tourney1(Fau's team case), If you want that to change you have to include it in the unfreeze server rotation, or otherwise i believe they are going to be discarded over and over

Just a friendly opinion!

That was just my opinion and I'm obviously biased there. But did you enjoy that dm11 game? Our reaction when it was over was: "wow, great that we won, but I hope we never play this map again". There are many faster standard maps, almost anything I think. dm6, dm13, dm4, t2, dm8 come to mind.

PS I think all non-standard maps in the pool are played on glacius server so you can get familiar with them there.

I enjoyed all of them, but I enjoyed DM11 the most of the three by the mere fact that is the only one I knew. I know the maps are available on glacius, but the most active server its unfreeze. I enjoy a lot playing in unfreeze even tho I think maps like dm6 are not supposed to host 22 players. because it feels random.
Also your team choice was a 1v1 map, were there was 10 players playing... I dont think it is confortable to fit so many players in that small map for a competitive game, but a fast game of course. last map was big enough for a proper match and you team clearly had an strategy around MH that worked very well.

I dont think DM11 its one of the best maps of the server, I just played for the first time last year when I joined unfreeze servers, but Ive got to know it now because I was forced by the server to play on it many times, and If I have a list to choose a map to play I would always go for a known map no matter how pottential other maps have... just because I just dont know them,(this is my point). If we get to play the other maps in the active server we will provably move our choices to other

[fau]

Ok, fair enough. That's a different opinion and I respect it.

[adminless]

I know don't worry that as I said in favor of the fairness the map pool won't be (significantly) changed for the finals and even so afterwards for potential future editions in light of the (obvious) popular demand is also highly likely that dm11/dm14 will stay anyways. other than that, as I said I believe that by now we can just add q3dm4 and a q3dm13 competitive remix (pro-nodm9) to the map pool so people have more variety and options to chose from for the finals and that should be it. in my opinion that can be particularly important as on the finals the fights will be played at five games instead of just three games thus I believe is important to have a good repertoire of options to chose from. as said I believe is a minimal change and pretty much everybody here knows dm4 let alone dm13 which was even already on the pool so I understand people shouldn't have any problems with that.

for the rest, long story short, problem with all those extra custom assets is that outside of a private/competitive/elitist setting they just don't work for your daily hot busy public gaming experience. glacius (now rescheduled 24/7 at baltic btw) is death/died for a reason (the rotation) period, it's more than a well proven fact already, not just a opinion. so bottom line here, loading those maps at UnFreeZe would kill it big time, sure may be not today or tomorrow but in the mid-term, not even the so long run. matter of fact, if it wouldn't have stuck to the well known proven assets that do actually really work on Quake III Arena public servers this wouldn't have been where it's today and for sure it wouldn't have liven this long. that being said I still look forward seeing those assets have some more play at least around this more private/custom/competitive circle as they are indeed great assets for this use. as usual in my opinion balance is key here as in anything else so if you look at the current map pool draft (q3dm4, pro-q3dm6, pro-q3tourney2, q3dm7, q3dm8, q3dm11, pro-q3dm13, q3dm14, pro-q3tourney7, 6++, 7++, bloodcovenant, focal_p132, hub3tourney1, overkill, phantq3dm1_rev, pro-dcmap7 and pro-nodm9) you can see that there's a pretty much 50/50 standard/custom asset split and that even several of the custom assets are merely competitive remixes of the standard maps. overall I (re-)reviewed it several times and I see it as good as it realistically gets and fairly balanced.

[YORELito]

I like the idea of adding new maps of course, and Im not trying to argue or anything about it, I hope I am not being misunderstood, just wondering if some of the maps that I admit they look good can be added(just a few gradually) to the servers where usually most of players play(unfreeze and freefun), without putting the popularity in risk so we have the chance of playing it and loving them.
Having semifinals to 5 games would also force players to choose new maps, because being realistic just an example Fau's team have choosen 3 out of 3 times as a home map hub3tourney1 from a pool of 16 maps, I bet you add 30 maps to the pool and they remain 90% chances to choose hub3tourney1. Which I think its something i would do myself(if something works dont change it), and i believe most of maps will end up virgin in the league, because nobody wants to do experiments in a competition.

[fau]

Maybe we've chosen hub 3 times, but we've played hub, bloodcovenant, dm6, dm7, 6++, dm11 - 6 different maps in 9 games. I think that's plenty, considering we've had only two proper trainings with other teams to prepare so far.

[adminless]

@cacahuete I know, I know, don't worry that it's not like I'm mad, blaming any of you or anything, I understand you, I'm just trying to say/explain too. unfortunately as I said, no, there's none, the general public that at the end of the day are the ones that really build the top public servers for what you all are here refuse to consistently play anything else besides pro-q3dm6/q3dm7 24/7 and may be a few other standard assets from time to time. as I said, it's more than a well proven/documented ~15 years fact based on have actually tried it over and over again already, not a opinion or what I think, it's what actually happened for real. loading any of those maps at the top servers will immediately led to a less busy server than what even the private server currently is and the player/community growth will only start to go down instead of up and once that happens things can only head a way, the end. think about it as I said at the end of the day that's exactly why you're here yourself, you're here because you fired some Quake III Arena after some decades and still found a server full of cool people that worked out-of-the-box and that ran the maps you liked/knew and on where you could comfortably have fun and experience the game and thus you grew to love the community and stuck around. it's quite obvious that if instead of that you would just have found a elitist server reduced to a limited elitist audience (please notice here that per definition the elitist portion of any group is a limited percent of the total group, otherwise it's obviously not a elitist portion) that didn't even work out of the box and that it would have taken you like 100+ hours of hard daily dedicated effort just to set up and get to know a little to be able to enjoy some hot Quake III Arena again as you are requesting me now to do and as people requested me way before (and trust that they did requested it for good), we both know you (or at least the super majority) would have moved on from all that just after a few games at best and all this thread wouldn't even have spawned.

I repeat once again not trying to criticize you, blame you or anything with all that, just saying and trying to explain you why the servers are setup the way they are and how things work so you know. your best shot to get to know and enjoy all those other assets at fpsclasico too at the moment is probably precisely the private server. I believe the private server is precisely there 24/7 exactly just for that, so people can assemble there and get to also play all those custom assets in a training setting and on their own terms. thus my advice is that the next time oKo (or some other clan) meet at the private server instead of just keep playing over and over the map/s you all know already and hence probably don't require anymore training start to play all those other custom assets too there. in my opinion that should probably be the best shot to make that work at the moment.

[Liza]

i believe most of maps will end up virgin in the league, because nobody wants to do experiments in a competition.

In 8 matches (incl match today) the following maps were chosen:
1) Hub3tourney1 - 5 times
2) q3DM7 - 4
3) q3DM6 - 3
4) Overkill - 3
5) q3DM11 - 2
6) pro-q3tourney2 - 2
7) 6++ - 2
8) q3DM8 - 2
9) bloodcovenant - 1

So at least 9 of 16 maps were played. And I expect 2-3 maps more will be used for play-off. So most maps will be played.

I do not think that we need to add another q3DM13 map to rotation. We use standard q3dm13 and nobody has chosen it yet (though several teams consider it as a round 3 map).
And changing rules to include one more map (q3dm4) does not cost that. We already have enough rocket-friendly maps in the list.

By the way, I believe that Fau's team used hub3tourney1 3 times in a row, because it was a great choice for them (their strengths) initially. And other teams (except for Russia) just were disappointed by their previous home map choices.

[adminless]

I don't think so, may be dm13 wasn't played because it wasn't the competitive version people was looking for (pro-nodm9) and overall, no, I don't see any enough q3dm4 similar maps on the pool (may be pro-q3tourney2 the only one somehow similar) so it can definitively add something else mostly missing at the moment for the next phase. whatever the case is, just having more sensible options to chose from is never a bad thing and ultimately doesn't force/mean anybody will chose them anyways so if improvements/adjustments to the competition are found along the way it would be unacceptable to fail to implement them for no good reason. providing any kind of services is always a continuous improvement/revision cycle not something you just set once and that's it so bottom line the map pool for the finals will be q3dm4 , pro-q3dm6 , pro-q3tourney2 , q3dm7 , q3dm8 , q3dm11 , pro-q3dm13 , q3dm14 , pro-q3tourney7 , 6++ , 7++ , bloodcovenant , focal_p132 , hub3tourney1 , overkill , phantq3dm1_rev , pro-dcmap7 , pro-nodm9.