My past experience with the DPL

[Gibb]

Well I logged onto IRC today and caught wind of the DP Community wanting to start up a league.  Good stuff.. RedEagle and I ran a successful one maybe 4+ years ago or so.. it has been so long I don't even remember.
I can give a list of a few things that made the first season of the DPL successful and why following seasons were not successful.

1.  Right Place - Right Time... When we started the DPL, the community was large. Clans were plentiful and most importantly, they were DEDICATED.  
These clans wanted to compete and they wanted to see who the best was.  During all of this, Red, myself, and a few guys in Rust all wanted to start up a league.  So there was a) a group of people who wanted to start a league and b) a very large group of people who wanted to be apart of a league.

2. Organization.. Probably the most important thing next to the people/clans participating in the league.  We were lucky enough to be approached by teamplay.net.  I have no idea if this site is still running or not, but at the time they were a new group of people who specialized in running gaming leagues and tournaments (They later became pretty successful running Quake3 leagues)  The whole league was basically ran off their site.  All the players had to register, all the clans had to register, and all the clan rosters were available via the website.  We provided the clans and the kind of format we wanted our season to be run and the site really did the rest.  

3. Rules..  A list of LEGIT maps needs to be made and only those maps can be matched on.  This is one thing that we were not very strict about during our league.  Rust had a few signifigant mappers and we knew the maps our members made pretty well (except for Sandtrap). Was this an advantage over other clans? I dont know.. probably.  Another example was that god darn map Bogleg made with the snow and the center flag?  Ya... I don't think anyone beat them on it. I don't think I really have to say anything else about that.

Other rules:
*20 Min timelimits
*4vs4 Minimum
*Best of 3 series-Each team picks a map and the tie breaker map is a set map BY THE LEAGUE which changes each week.  Yes the league can set the tiebreaker map to midnight and a clan can choose midnight for their map.. and hell the other clan can do it too.  
*Overflows: this league was going on during the peak of overflow issues.  If you overflowed, then you better get your arse back in the game because it isn't stopping.  
*Cheating obviously isn't tolerated and if a clan is caught, the clan is gone.  I don't think this was ever an issue.

4. Scheduling:  This is why there was not a second DPL season.  We had the league set up so that a clan had 7 days to match their scheduled opponent.  We felt 7 days was plenty to find an hour out of the day to match.  This was the most frustrating thing about the league without a doubt.  Little disagreements between clans were easy to fix because Red and I ran the league and what we said went.  Having to go around on IRC to gather up clans and remind them to schedule their matches was a pain in the ass.  After the successful completion of the first season we quickly knew that we would not be administering of the second season.  We had numerous people wanting to take it over and we gave it to who we thought was the most responsible, well we were wrong and I personally haven't seen a successful league since.  Then again I come in and out of the community every few months, so I could be wrong.  


The keys to running a successful season are this:
Dedicated participants
An Organized league format
Solid Rules
A good number of Servers
and a Quality map list

I hope what I've said helps this new league out


Gibb

[RoyalBlood]

Very well said.  I think the original DPL that you guys ran was successfull mostly because of your first point.  I honestly think the league and the format/rules of it had some flaws.  It wasnt perfect.  Other league attempts since than have pretty much just copied off of what you guys did.  They didnt work however because those same flaws were magnified due to the fact that the clanning scene just wasnt as good anymore.

The main thing I had problems about with the original DPL was that the rules were too loose and not enforced very well.  Example, my clan DOM had a match against another clan that i cant remembr anymore and it probably doesnt matter anyway.  But this this other clan and DOM got scheduled a day to play TWICE.  Both times DOM showed up on time and had the required number of players.  Both times the other clan did not.  And basically the set week that we were supposed to play in was past and the next week had started already.  Now we brought up our case to you and Redeagle i think.  Anyway, what happened was that you forced us to play on a certain day that DOM was not able to get all their guys together on, but the other clan did.  So my clan got penalized for better following the rules and being more prepared , not once but twice.  That just cant be allowed to happen.

So basically im hoping that by setting up this committee we can better avoid those types of things.  Anyone who played back then probably enjoyed the original DPL.  But at the same time theres no reason we cant try to do it even better this time around.

[Gibb]

Ya that stuff was bound to happen when you get frustrated dealing with clans.  I think a large diverse panel would be excellent because the DPL panel was basicaly Rust... and by basically i mean it WAS Rust.  But, I think for the most part we handled it fairly.. I know there were times when I would have loved to pull the 'I run the DPL card' and have things turned around, but of course that wouldn't have been good.

[Belmont]

RoyalBlood, that should be one of the most enforced rules (making sure the match happens).