Forum

On ladder : Like someone said i don’t see the point in wanting ALL teams including top teams playing the ladder actively. Also i don’t think substitute the league to the ladder as the main competition is a good idea, in fact it’s imo a veeeeery bad one and your points have a lot of flaws. Do you really think a mid- new team will enter in division6 ? Admins have a bit a knownledge of the scene and the new teams can send screens.

The ladder is a good thing wich maybe need some improvements cause it’s far from perfect, but a lot of teams requested it and as far as i know it was being played actively by a lot of div3-6 team, here is the summer and the fact the ladder is played less seems ordinary.

I think you can and you have to do some improvements to the system, i remember when i played for cawards we played some ladder matchs and they appeared to be the best we played apart from the league matchs because :
1)We could target exactly the level we want (ie : our level or a bit above our level), this is not always the case on tf.wars with teams seeking for a better level or a level below them for a cool rape.
2)We played seriously and teams against us too wich was very pleasant, the fact it is “half official” is certainly the cause. Again it’s not always the case on irc with flame, unlocks lame, 30 mn of waiting etc…

The main problem was that scheduling a ladder match was too complicated like tikcus said maybe make it more simple.

-In some clicks select the maps/unlocks rules (?)/serv on-off + connect/date/time and send it to an oppenent with a little message (“We are a mid skilled team”) ==> OK/No/eventually some other proposal in map/rules/time.
-Drop the obligation to accept a challenge, playing a ladder must be a bonus not a chore, you can have games to schdedule for another competition or specific maps to train so engage on a ladder match can sometimes be difficult. All challenges can be rejected and if no response then the challenge is auto rejected, after some inactivity points will go away from theirself anyways.
-Delete the match match after a defined delay if the match hasn’t been played so you don’t have to worry about. If a team has been waiting for some time on the server and the other team didn’t come just give them a point penalty or a “karma” penalty so they will not be challenged by other teams.
-When teams adds to the ladder give them a defined amount of points (According to their actual or last division) or they can auto assign their level in the case of a new team (low+/mid-/… etc) with admin approval.

Beside that continue to promote your ladder in pre season like you did before as a proof that a team is motivated to enter the division but i think it will be a terrible idea to force team play ladder matchs as a division 7 like i read on that topic.

On design : Yeah when you look at interwebz 2.0 nowadays it’s clear etf2l look a bit old. Maybe change a little colours and style, ask the community for a new logo/banner i’m sure you will have a lot of nice work back and people will be glad to help.
But keep in mind the main strentgh of etf2l is the very easy and pleasant navigation and you must keep that !

The forum can be improved a lot also, i just spoted bbcode when typing that wall of text, maybe create some easy to use buttons :)

Having to press ‘Team Admin’ when you just want to edit your own profile doesn’t seem to make much sense. This link taking you to a different page (that doesn’t even look like the rest of the website at all) even less so. This causes a fair bit of confusion for new people (or people that are permanently ‘new’ to using a computer).

mini sentry is fine but i’d like to see the wrangler tested a little more before it’s allowed in officials.

Quoted from jaks

haven’t read anything on unlocks in general, especially the new engi weapons:
I would like to see the wrangler, mini-sentry stuff to be allowed in etf2l matches. We haven’t tried to integrate the engineer in our tactics so far but I guess the unlocks could make the engi actually useful in some cases or maybe some maps.

There have been a lot of discussions about gun-boots, pain-train, FAN, … I hope to see as many unlocks unbanned/allowed as possible, because it gives teams the possibility to play various tactics.

I agree

Quoted from Tikcus

[…]

what?

the gun ONLY fires where it is told to, i really can’t see how you would fail to take down that gun

Well if the entire team is spamming in 1 direction, and the sentry on the other.
Its hard to get throught, meaning – that you would have to über quickly. Problem is, with an engineer it can get tough to push out.

STALEMATE

Quoted from Monkeh

[…]

Yeah but there are other team members too. Wranglers infinite range means it can cover doorways and cp’s, plus the wrangler can be put away too you know. Wrangle the doorway then they uber early and approach the CP, get the shotty out and leave it to do work/get destroyed and only then do you need to uber. Stalemate-tastic.

change your class setup, adapt to kill the gun no stalemate

I really can’t see a problem, unless you only run 2 soldiers, 2 scouts a demo and a medic, and refuse to run anything else.

Spy backstabs engy – gun down for 3 seconds (if the engy keeps looking behind him, he aint firing at a choke)
or
spy saps gun, engy removes wrangler to remove sapper, gun is down for a few seconds

a bit of co-ordination and it aint a problem

or just attack the gun from 2 angles

which maps is it impssible to get to? if other team has all 6 alive, the push is hard anyway, in what situations would a spawning player have a chance to get a level 3 gun built, carry it to where ever, and have 5 team mates alive with uber charged, before the other team push in?

hmm well I’m not sure about lvl3 sentry + wrangler … haven’t seen that combination in action (not counting pubs).

mini-sentry + wrangler should be allowed in any case, dunno about the lvl3 sentry + wrangler … you also have to consider that it takes quite a long time to upgrade a sentry to lvl3 and if the attacking team isn’t wasting time you normally don’t get the chance to build a lvl3 sentry + dispenser…