TSL Finals - Reschedule or forget?

[Henry Saari]

Greetings everybody,

As you may know we had issues with show ups for TSL Finals. We've been trying to figure out a solution for the problem and we're open for suggestions regarding the finals. We can (re)schedule the finals to be played during the next weeks, for upcoming Sunday we can not schedule anything due to Superbowl Sunday.

For example during next week we could run the finals as following: Tuesday February 6th 4pm TSLD finals, Wednesday February 7th 4pm TSLJ finals and finally on Thursday February 8th 4pm TSLB finals.

If there is not enough interest towards the finals we can just call it a day and move on to other upcoming leagues or events.

For next season we will be looking for some changes in the system to avoid playing games without a meaning. Season might as well end to some special week of normal games rather than to finals that has no meaning.

Please comment and discuss.

[IxaDor]

Correct me if I am wrong, but is there actually a point to playing finals? Top 10 in each category gets their medal, finals are just for show right? I am more curious about when Season 4 starts and or any league for that matter to keep the zone active.

-IxaDor

[Tiny]

Reschedule.

you get medals for winning finals.

[Tiny]

Will be nice to play with 10 capable players instead of the usual 1 1/2 per team per tsl game.

[Henry Saari]

Awarding medals for winning finals was removed after season 1. We can bring it back to award medals to inspire interest - that is no biggie it's just more pixels to your profile page.

[Tiny]

no point in a finals if there isn't that....imo

[IxaDor]

Seems rather silly to me to award top 10 with a medal and finalist winners with an additional medal. Would make more sense to go with one or the other eg. only finalist winners get medals, top 10 get ?go tsl background recognition or top 10 get medals and ?go tsl background recognition with no need to play finals since they are in fact pointless.

-IxaDor

[skyforger]

Don't schedule something and then cancel just because some people didn't show, unless it would be a forfeit. It's not like there weren't enough guys online to fill the games. More so, if the finals 'don't matter', it doesn't matter some lower rated players are added to fill the spots of 3-4 missing guys. As far as I noticed, nobody opposed the scheduled time publicly. What happens when the people that showed aren't able to show for the next sunday due to superbowl or it being too late in europe etc. Going forward players that show for scheduled games should get them if it's possible to start, no convincing reason to waste their time.

[Spezza]

Im not available for any tsl times really (Tuesday until 430 est only) until 2 Sundays after superbowl sunday. So it's probably better to play them without me. But should play them for sure! I am available after 5 EST mondays and fridays but those arn't tsl times.

[Tiny]

there is a difference ixa. small one....but one means more

[qan]

Rather than an extra medal, could also simply be a modified one. The All-Stars earn one. But only the finals winners can earn the slightly shinier version.

[Omega Red]

Forget the medals, do we have a new league planned yet fellas?

[qan]

Forget the medals, do we have a new league planned yet fellas?

It's the absolute top priority at the moment. Would be great to have something to coincide with the Steam Visibility Round in particular. Options are being weighed, though not progressing as fast as could be hoped. If you have any ideas to share, or are willing to put in some work to make something happen (open comment to anyone reading this) please do.

Thoughts:

• Mustering another TWDT at this point might be difficult. Captain commitments are tough to secure. Probably more of something to shoot for a little down the road.
• A TWD Cup was in the works, but unfortuantely not much has come of it. Would need more squads to make that happen. The usual thinking for making more squads is "roster caps" and then hope they sort themselves out. Roster caps tend to have the opposite effect intended ... they seem to kill activity rather than encourage it, probably because those who are axed when the limits are imposed are also the least likely to start their own squads/be able to run their own squads. In order to run a successful TWD Cup, new caps would need to have a reason to recruit and run a squad. Captain medals were mentioned as an idea, something to compete for over time. Other rewards possible?
• People may be a little too burned out by TSL to play another one so soon. There are also complaints of skill being too uneven among individual players for the matches to stay interesting, even if they are relatively balanced between teams. However, it's the simpliest and most reliable league option, and it might provide an easy way during Visibility Round for returning squadless vets to get involved in competitive play, as well as for new players to dip their toes in.
• If going the TSL route we can add a simple system to adjust rating very gradually over time, which should result in slightly fairer matchmaking.
• We could look at "select" TSL times, such as games where you need to be above a certain rating cutoff in order to play. Or, below, for newbie-friendly games. We could also look at trying to create a vet game and a new player game when we can matchmake for 2 or more arenas. Would that be preferable to the way it is now? It would mean games would be slightly less balanced (bot wouldn't have as much choice in how it arranges people) but it might make the games feel more even in terms of tone. One downside of this is that it would mean games would become more difficult for vets and less difficult for new players, and would skew values accordingly. We'd probably need a way to incorporate the skill level of the player you kill/are killed by into value calculations, and without any testing (we have no testers or testing framework other than running games live), this would probably be prone to serious errors.
• If we could funnel squadless players from TSL into TWD, we might see an activity uptick. Have been talks about "active free agent" commands that allow caps to view who's looking for a squad, with their TSL ratings displayed next to their name. A simple system to get recruits that doesn't involve scouting like back in the day -- few people have the time or interest for that anymore, which is possibly one of the reasons TWD fell off to begin with. It's hard to get excited about recruiting for the spaceship game when you work full time and have a kid. And even harder to justify it to your spouse. Having it more streamlined somehow is essential to bolster ranks.
• Have been talks about another TWEL, though it favors certain players. Still, if there's interest and someone willing to take it on, could be good.
• A racing league is being kicked around as an idea, and there are people willing to run it, if people are willing to play.

[mtine]

Racing league is definitely a good idea. Brings vets and newbs together and creates fun. More fun leagues should be done imo, so both casual and vet players can enjoy them.

As for something big: I loved the one time I played Basing World Cup. Why don't we do something like this again? Basically make 2 teams, example: Europe vs. North America, and then within those 2 teams we make smaller groups of 4v4, who then battle it out for the semi-finals/finals amongst each other and also amongst themselves, the 2 highest rated groups progress until only 2 are standing in the finals. For base, we can probably make 4 groups, 2 for each continent, and just do Best of 3 amongst each group and thus prolongue it a bit more, over let's say 3-4 weeks. Let's everyone play, doesn't take much effort to host and do scores and it keeps the vets on their toes all the time.

Also, Hokki Cup anyone?

I said it before and I'll say it again: this zone needs more diversity. More stuff to do. Not just one league, like TSL, over and over again. It becomes tedious and boring. Why not do TSL, then a world cup in between for like a month, then a Racing League, then another season of TSL, then TWDT, then TWD cup, more TSL, Hokki Cup, etc.? Or even mix them up. Example:

Monday: TSL
Tuesday: TSL
Wednesday: Hokki Cup
Thursday: Racing League
Friday: none
Saturday: hosted events
Sunday: TSL

Just my 2 cents.

[Crescent Seal]

we launch on steam yet