IDL Radio #10 - 7/28/13

Recording: http://www.twitch.tv/idlradio/b/437344479

Was a good listen, thank you to the two who are rooting for me. I didn't like the player bashing so much though. As for coverage goes I'll try and shoot some video and write some about the event.

  DemonSphere said:

I didn't like the player bashing so much though.

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That's kind of par for the course with these guys, unfortunately ;-) I mean you could run a sweepstake on how long a given show goes on before dew makes a joke about capo...

Anyway, good luck for Quakecon!

it's the bread and butter of the competitive multiplayer community! as ralph says, we love to hate jkist. he's definitely one of the very best duelers in doom and the hottest candidate to grab the prize money (i think ralph favouring demonsphere is a bit of wishful thinking), but he's not a loveable kitten like, say, chewy and he likes to ease up holding on to this status by changing the playing field a little. i was genuinely disappointed by the decision to use ZDDL settings and have judas23 in the map pool. we want to see the big bad schemer fallen and he does his best to avoid it. :)

Thought everyone was playing with Jumping and Freelook on ZDaemon. But I am curious why you guys seem to be complaining about there NOT being Jumping and Freelook in this tournament.

Anyway, I don't see why you guys complain about the mappool being to familiar and think that a fresh pool with untested maps would be a better thing. Had you done something like that with the Quake mappool and released the information less than a month before the tournament, people would be pissed.

The Quake pool is a mixed bag for instnace. with really old maps like DM13 and ZTN, then one another staple in T7. Then the two last ones are Tox and Cure. Tox is kinda faiamiliar for everyone by now. But Cure is the curious newcomer which was only released this spring. But it has become a familiar part of the mappools in online tournaments so it's not a map that everyone who are serious hasn't learned.

Dwango 5 Map01 and 7 and Judas aren't "unfair" because the people who invested time into Doom knows them by heart. (even though I hate Dwango5 Map01 and would have much rather seen the original it messed up). If you are interested in seeing a tournament with skill, and not random bs. Then this is a good pool. Because the people who play Doom all knows them.

It's not that I don't think the maps in this map pool fit into the category "best maps to determine skill", I just think that category is full of other maps that often get overlooked in tournaments for these ones. I would have liked to have seen something like Boo, Moo2d, or Dweller2 Map11 mixed in as well.

Let me preface with expressing I'm very glad Doom gets to have a Quakecon tourney. It's a fantastic event and I support it no matter what. That said, we were discussing it from the point of experienced players who found some points more or less annoying or slightly disappointing. The panel was "the old boys club" nitpicking about details that would've made the tourney better in our eyes, but what we got is still good enough.

  kristus said:

Thought everyone was playing with Jumping and Freelook on ZDaemon. But I am curious why you guys seem to be complaining about there NOT being Jumping and Freelook in this tournament.

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Jumping and freelook is pretty much the standard for CTF and FFA. People usually keep freelook and do away with jumping for coop on classic wads. Duels are kept old school, because that's the way the maps were designed and played for years and some of the most favourite ones would simply not work at all with full 3D physics.

We probably failed to explain what the "kistdoom" ZDDL settings were before we started crying about them. They're jkist's own attempt to add some modern features to the oldschool base and call it the new standard (est. 2004, I think). That'd be symmetric wallrunning in both directions, (much) easier item grabs, zdoom sound curve, fixed infinitely tall actors, crosshair and most importantly PWO allowed. Jumping and freelook is not enabled.

This is something the community as a whole didn't accept and it sort of coexists with regular vanilla-like settings. jkist was successful in popularizing it over many North American servers, because for a long time his ZDDL (with his rules) was the major/only 1on1 competition on the new continent. Europe mostly ignores it and sticks to a purer form of OS settings. You can fairly safely argue that it doesn't really affect gameplay in an important way on most maps, which we agreed upon afaik. However two of the most prominent maps that get a pretty radical makeover are doom2 map01 and judas23.

The latter made it into the map pool, so the OS advocates among us complained about jkist bias. Instead of "the way things were meant to be" since 1996 when it was made, judas23 will be played with settings he created and propagated. Let me briefly explain: the central pillar contains a BFG on a small lift operated from the inside, you need to get it by jumping into a chute from the top level. If you go for it, there's a forced weapon switch involved, making it harder to snatch if a guy is guarding it at the ground level. With ZDDL settings you drop on the BFG and get to fire SSG unrestricted. This leads to more BFG spam, which can get devastating to a killed/spawning guy with little chances of dodging. Someone mentioned 3sec forced respawn, that makes it even worse. There are other issues like nerfed rocket explosions and two-way wallrun on the upper level. I don't think this will make a difference to most of the participants, since they never played it anyways, but for us this is a case of a very old, very traditional map being played in a way that serves to widen the skillgap. Defensive options are weakened and a guy more familiar with these settings gets to spawnrape with the BFG more than he would otherwise.

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Anyway, I don't see why you guys complain about the mappool being to familiar and think that a fresh pool with untested maps would be a better thing. Had you done something like that with the Quake mappool and released the information less than a month before the tournament, people would be pissed.

The Quake pool is a mixed bag for instnace. with really old maps like DM13 and ZTN, then one another staple in T7. Then the two last ones are Tox and Cure. Tox is kinda faiamiliar for everyone by now. But Cure is the curious newcomer which was only released this spring. But it has become a familiar part of the mappools in online tournaments so it's not a map that everyone who are serious hasn't learned.

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That's not exactly what we meant. The custom made fresh maps were the original intent of the organizers and it's only for the best the idea was ditched. Actually, all of us hoped for a similar mixed bag map pool you mention, but what we got instead is the 5 most overplayed maps sans doom2 map01. All of them were used in ZDDL and pretty much every other Doom 1on1 league ever, by the way. When we were talking about moo1, moo2, lazarus map04, boo, etc, we weren't discussing some wild new experiments of the past fortnight. All of those maps are still at least 6 years old and well tested in tournaments tournaments and skirmishes. Of the illustrous five, SSL2 is the youngest one coming from 2001. All of the maps remember the two towers standing! Cynically speaking there is nothing really interesting in the mix, nothing mixing it up for the experienced players. And it's one massive comfort zone for jkist, hehe.

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Dwango 5 Map01 and 7 and Judas aren't "unfair" because the people who invested time into Doom knows them by heart. (even though I hate Dwango5 Map01 and would have much rather seen the original it messed up). If you are interested in seeing a tournament with skill, and not random bs. Then this is a good pool. Because the people who play Doom all knows them.

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I would never imply that maps are unfair, because someone got to play them more over the past 15 years. What we agreed upon is that in the light of the ZDDL settings and quite "undoomish" time limit we'd pick more appropriate maps than d5m1 (slow maze of camp) and judas (settings catholicism vs evangelism). But SSL2 and king1 especially are excellent picks. d5m7 is a dumb shooting gallery and gets boring after the first match.

I hope this clears some of the issues where we took our insider knowledge for granted.

I have a few issues with all that. But mostly because it doesn't actually reflect much of anything of what you guys actually said on the program. Like aside from it favoring Jkis, you expressed the reason you gave for the mappool was that you wanted people who don't play Doom to have a fair shot at winning. Which was what I raised an eyebrow for. As that doesn't make any sense. But if you have a better, still very much tested and (more or less) generally accepted pool. Then I can understand where you're coming from. Like I said, I don't like Dwango and would have rather seen Map01 be played rather than that modified one. And I never liked Map07, at all. But it's true that I am not experienced in the modern scene, as I've not really been playing since 2001 or something. And then I only played Map01 and Judas in Doom2.exe.

Now what I don't see in the rules however are any DM flags that are aimed at setting up the stuff that you mentioned Dew.

I mean, these are the server settings:
Duel gametype
 Ten (10) minute timelimit
 Thirty (30) fraglimit
 No Freelook
 No Jumping
 Weapon Stay
 No Item Respawn
 Skill: Nightmare
They don't mention anything other than what you would expect from an oldschool tournament. With obvious exception to the 30 fraglimit and the 10 minute timelimit. Unless Odamex got these things you mentioned on by default and omitting them in the flags means that they will be active. Which sort of makes me wonder why Odamex would have that on by default, considering it's (at least initially) oldschool ideology.

  kristus said:

Like aside from it favoring Jkis, you expressed the reason you gave for the mappool was that you wanted people who don't play Doom to have a fair shot at winning.

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I had to check back on the stream. Rustking said something along those lines when he was expressing his disappointment about the borin' ol' map pool, then we went with it to grill jkist for a while. :) I specifically said "to put them on more equal grounds" and I stand by that. There are good underplayed maps hovering around for years that could make the map pool more exciting and take away some of that grind edge. On the other hand you are right with that mixed bag approach, some classics should always be in, otherwise it won't feel as "legit". And re: fair shot at winning, heh. The "casuals" will be playing uphill no matter what maps get used, so no, I don't think their chances can be improved (much).

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Now what I don't see in the rules however are any DM flags that are aimed at setting up the stuff that you mentioned Dew.

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At 23:30 Ralphis tells me they're using "jkist doom", which means all those specific DMflags, and I went with that. I half-expected it anyways.

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Unless Odamex got these things you mentioned on by default and omitting them in the flags means that they will be active. Which sort of makes me wonder why Odamex would have that on by default, considering it's (at least initially) oldschool ideology.

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No, Odamex is oldschool by default. The ZDDL settings are used on servers hosting the ZDDL wad, a compilation of the most common duel maps. The convenience factor of having all the maps in one place does a lot for both players and server maintainers, so it persists along with the settings. Since there's a lot more to configure than just fire up the server with default DMflags, I assume a whole config file will be provided by one of the server maintainers.

I can see the main reason for using these settings, they are more newb friendly. Not having weapons switch on pickup in the middle of fast action will save many a ragequit. I actually agree with that - except it distorts one of the most popular maps in the pool, especially for high tier games, in a way that annoys me greatly.

  dew said:

I had to check back on the stream. Rustking said something along those lines when he was expressing his disappointment about the borin' ol' map pool, then we went with it to grill jkist for a while. (much).

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I can however agree with everyone(Almost everyone?) on the stream that I would have LOVED to have seen new maps and honestly would not be as worried coming into this tournament as I am now, specifically BECAUSE of the map pool, it's definitely in the favor of both Jkist and DevastatioN, and as far from my favor as possible. I think I'd of had a really high chance of taking this tournament if it was all new fresh maps, which I was hoping for. I honestly did not see them using ZDDL for Quakecon and am honestly disappointed in the selection they stuck with, however I am still very very excited and happy this thing is being ran and people like the ones mentioned above are going to be showing up and playing their best. Regardless of the map pool I think I'll still put up some what of a fight, and I won't be going out easy.

  DemonSphere said:

defiantly in the favor

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ha, brilliant dodge of the spellchecker script!

They are using the ZDDL config supplied for server admins in the /sample-configs folder that is packaged with Odamex

  dew said:

ha, brilliant dodge of the spellchecker script!

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Opps. I fixed it.

  Ralphis said:

They are using the ZDDL config supplied for server admins in the /sample-configs folder that is packaged with Odamex

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That's not in the rules so how do you know?

  dew said:

I can see the main reason for using these settings, they are more newb friendly. Not having weapons switch on pickup in the middle of fast action will save many a ragequit. I actually agree with that - except it distorts one of the most popular maps in the pool, especially for high tier games, in a way that annoys me greatly.

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While I understand what you're saying, that doesn't make any sense since the tournament isn't for Noobs, that's what all that BS with the FFA seeding round is for. And considering the state of the Doom Duel community (in that it is a mess) and the on location registration, I can't blame them for taking the easy way out on seeding.

  dew said:

I had to check back on the stream. Rustking said something along those lines when he was expressing his disappointment about the borin' ol' map pool, then we went with it to grill jkist for a while. :) I specifically said "to put them on more equal grounds" and I stand by that. There are good underplayed maps hovering around for years that could make the map pool more exciting and take away some of that grind edge. On the other hand you are right with that mixed bag approach, some classics should always be in, otherwise it won't feel as "legit". And re: fair shot at winning, heh. The "casuals" will be playing uphill no matter what maps get used, so no, I don't think their chances can be improved (much).

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What made me think it was the common opinion of the cast was that the (monumentally stupid) comment was not contested by anyone, instead you all decide to derail by talking about Jkist. And again, it's a tournament, Casuals aren't supposed to have a chance, if they did then it wouldn't be much of a tournament. But the people who aren't casuals should have very specific ideas on what kind of mappools they would like to see as there's a lot of practice involved. What are online tournaments using? Everyone will of course have different preferred mappools. But if you want a pool that will make the game's turn out more random simply because they're not current standards for duel (as you are insinuating when you talk about underplayed maps). Then you're on thin ice competetively speaking.

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Anyway, I don't see why you guys complain about the mappool being to familiar and think that a fresh pool with untested maps would be a better thing

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Shortly after the tournament was announced, there was a rumor floating around that it had been somewhat decided that maps were going to be created for the tournament. I thought it would have been an interesting setting for a 'non-super-srs' tournament and not necessarily a better thing.

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What made me think it was the common opinion of the cast was that the (monumentally stupid) comment was not contested by anyone, instead you all decide to derail by talking about Jkist.

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Having a refreshing maplist doesn't mean advocating random match outcomes at all. There is nothing wrong with giving the casuals a chance in a casual tournament. It's already been established that this isn't a 'super seriously 10k prize E-Sports event'. While you may have stopped dueling for the most part in 2001, people continued to duel and the scene changed after that point. Since 2004, most duelers have been subject to zddl-like settings and those same dreaded maps. There are plenty other maps that have been proven to be fit for high level play (proven across all of the multiplayer ports). I threw out greenwar and the udm series as containing high level duel maps and others have given great examples in this thread. As DemonSphere stated, he would have preferred to see other duel staples in the tournament than a full blown jkist home field. Bottom line, there are other choices that could have made it into the tournament and for the most part should have considering the time/frag limit being used. This is the basis of what I said in the stream.

It's a shame you don't take the tournament serious, but if you as a target for said tournament isn't going to take it serious? Why should anyone else?


To me your entire duel community just seem extremely disorganized and while I know there's been tournaments, you don't really give any indication of that being the case. You wave around UDM and Greenwar as possible candidates without even giving specifics (that's a truckload of maps and most of them are decent but nothing special). None of you give examples of previous mappools from previous tournaments, or even your own preffered mappool.

The thing is, LAN tournaments aren't the place for testing new setups, they are there for using the tried and true setups that a lot (like daily cups) of online activity has honed in advance. The fact that none of you seem to be offering that makes it pretty easy to see why they would go with something that is for a lot of you coming off as stale and over the hill.

I don't know about you, but I am not interested in seeing players slug it out on maps they don't know inside out, because there will always be a lot of mistakes that they wouldn't do if they truly knew the angles and strategies of the maps. That makes for a less intelligent and more random outcome, and a less competetive tournament. Like I said, there are places and tournaments for players to figure shit like that out. But a lan tournament... THE lan tournament for this given game, is NOT that place.

  kristus said:

That's not in the rules so how do you know?

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Because someone involved in QCon was in one of the most populated Doom IRC channels talking about it. Maybe it'll change at the tournament but from the information I've seen this is how I interpret it. If I wasn't pretty sure of it, I wouldn't say it.

Also, in the post above this one you say: "None of you give examples of previous mappools from previous tournaments, or even your own preffered mappool." I haven't gone back and listened to the broadcast but I at least remember the two moo maps being mentioned, possibly among others.

Obviously, the Doom duel scene IS unorganized and part of it is because of the very issue that was written about earlier in this very thread - the scene was split in the mid 00s and it was more or less spearheaded by JKist and his ZDDL event (the only large North American duel event worth playing in for at least a few years). Over the next few years, most of North America took on this new "NS" ruleset where weapon switch was optional, it utilized all of the Randy Heit zdoom physics, etc while Europe (and some Americans like me, Toke, etc) preferred the classic physics and ruleset of vanilla DM. It straight up BROKE maps that had been played a certain way for a decade (Judas) and some players were never on board with this new "standard".

That split ON TOP of the three-engine scene HAS caused issues in establishing standards for competition. The IDL more or less set the standard ruleset used in most CTF tournaments across all engines (SICL, Zdaemon CTF League, Zandronum CTF league, and others have all used exact or close variants of the IDL rules) but the duel scene has not been as lucky given its much longer - especially region centric - history.

There's no shortage of players by any stretch of the imagination. It's just hard work trying to haul all of these players who prefer different rules in duel into one large league or event without some level of contention. JKist, considered by some to be one of the top players in the US, wouldn't ever even consider playing in a league that forced weapon switching (at least, this is the impression I've gotten when trying to coerce him many times). On the other hand, another player considered at the top, Devastation, prefers the "oldschool" vanilla style game more because that's what he came up on. This is why it has been so hard to establish an organized standard.

EDIT: Also, like I said on the broadcast, I'm personally astounded and super happy that Doom is getting play at Quakecon and I hope it's a huge success. I hope it is so successful that they do it again next year and give everyone advance notice so that dozens of Doomers can buy a block of BYOC (because this would definitely happen). Of course, I also hope I hit the lottery so I don't want to take for granted that this is probably a one-time thing and that it's still super awesome either way.

I think you're missing the point about seriousness. Originally when the tournament was announced, the intention wasn't to host a grand tournament of the ages. The tone set by id or the organizers was that this was a tournament to go "oh hey remember that good ole doom 2?". It wasn't until top players and competitive duelers started showing seriously interest that the tone shifted. After several individuals went out of their way to contact sponge and after the mass interest from players, the tournament became a bit more serious than it was initially. However, the tournament isn't at the magnitude of, hmm lets say, a QLive tournament.

I'm guessing you're asking for maps that would fit the bill for this type of tournament? I'll give you some:

moo2d: A map by the late Toke that was used for many ZDaemon tournaments and a current staple in the Zandronum and Oda duel scene.

boo.wad: Another map that gained attention in the mid-late 00s that has actually been used in a zddl season and a current staple in the duel scene.

udm3 map07: was used for a ZDaemon tournament and was played when servers hosted it back in the day. It's been forgotten, but it's been proven.

dweller2 map11: A European favorite that's been used in Tournaments and it's still played by many today.

greenwar map20: Been played in tournaments using OS and NS settings. It is part of AlexMax's duel32 and sees play often. I personally endorse map16 over this one however after running an Oda/IDL tournament earlier in the year.

pobla8: A highly popular, albeit controversial, map that is played by modern duelers. It earned its stripes in tournaments of the past.

lazarus1j map04: A newer map created in the mid-late 00s that sees regular play today on ZDaemon and Zandro. It was also used in the map pool of several seasons of zddl

udm3 map04: A map made by AceOfSpades that was seen in both tdm and duel tournaments on ZDaemon. It was played regularly on ZDaemon when it was hosted.

These are maps that have been proven to produce high level play in a tournament setting. Some have been forgotten by time and should be revived and others are being played as I type. You can take out d5m1 and judas and replace them with any 2 of these maps and you would have a mix of ancient, old and newer maps that would produce a highly competitive and highly successful lan tournament.

bad maplist ofc rust gg
also i hope there will more qcons in future, i really dont care about prize money , there could be 0 dollars but qcon just could be prestige and shit.