Name: G.I. Jonesy
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Posts: 2441
Toxic says he doesn't like QL duel because of the maps. But why are the maps so shitty? Because of the timelimit.

With such a short timelimit, it means, if you get behind, you have to either rush (making yourself vulnerable), or play defensive hide-and-seek to build up enough health and armor before you rush. Either way, you're completely screwed. If you rush, you can easily be killed, thus compounding the problem. If you play defensively, precious time is ticking away. That's why, in QL, the most popular maps all have the same armor configuration: 1 ra, 2 YA's (if not more or the equivalent), and a 35 second mega. When there is so much more armor, it means you're only partially screwed.

When you get behind, if the other player manages to play defensively, you simply don't have enough time to mount a comeback. You would think, these high-armor maps would help the player behind, but really, they help the player ahead. It allows the leading player to more easily defend themselves. With such a short time-limit, that's really all they need to do. Just keep the other player weak, while keeping themselves strong. You don't even need to kill them. If they rush you, it makes for an easy frag. If they sit back and try to gather comparable armor, time is ticking away, reducing their potential to make up the frag-difference.

In CPM, a 10 minute timelimit makes sense, being that YA's give 100 armor, RA's give 150 and players can move so quickly around the map. In baseq3, it just doesn't work and instead, ruins the game.

If we restore the 15 minute timelimit, QL duel could actually find itself being a great game. With 10 minutes, you barely even have enough time to warmup, much less figure out your opponent. Lowering the timelimit ruins the depth. Obviously, you don't want the timelimit too high, but a happy medium can easily be achieved, and 15 minutes is that medium. No one ever complained about the 15 minute timelimit. They complained incessantly about the railgun, which was changed... but why was the timelimit changed when the community had no problem with it? What's also strange is that the 10 minute timelimit seems to be forced - servers do not even have the simple ability to set their own timelimits, thus preventing us from testing which one actually works best.

Maybe id could free the timelimit restrictions? I can't imagine it would require expensive coding. Then we, the community, can determine exactly which timelimit makes for the best games.