TSL Season 4 Details & Schedule

[qan]

Season Opener: Sunday, March 18th, 2018
Finals: Sunday, April 22nd, 2018

TSL will continue to run on its now-proven formula, with marked improvements. Also, this season, emphasis will be placed on TSL as a gateway for new blood to enter the squad-focused TWD, which will run alongside.


Weekly schedule

Sunday/Tuesday/Wednesday/Thursday (click to show local time)

3:00pm - 5:00pm ... 2x2x2 format
5:00pm - 8:00pm ... TWD Happy Hour (click for details)
8:00pm - 10:00pm ... 2x2x2 format

What's new?

1. Value earned per kill now depends on who you kill (Dueling and Javs). Newbie hunting is not as advantageous, and risking chasing a vet is more worthwhile
2. Individual TSL ratings now change automatically after every game played
3. When there are enough players for 2+ arenas, TSLBot will create 2 tiers of games, for higher and lower-rated players
4. TSLB required win flagtime is now 10 minutes. This brings match time more in line with D/J
5. 6v6 TSLB is now an option. Hosts may end matchmaking with 6v6 if there is dificulty showing enough for 7s or 8s
6. 10 minutes max matchmaking time per round
7. !backfill has been re-enabled
8. TSL Ops will focus on rating unrated players and adjusting existing players using a new set of tools
9. Squad vs world challenges will be possible during TWD Happy Hour. Match your squad vs others using TSL matchmaking

Details

2x2x2 format: 2 games will be played in each league, consecutively. Matchmaking for each league will be attempted for a total of 10 minutes (timed by the bot). If matchmaking can't finish in this time, the round will not be played.

After the first 2x2x2 block, the focus switches to TWD with "TWD Happy Hour." See this link for more details.


Finals

Finals will be held Sunday, April 22nd. The All-Stars of each league must show on this day. TSL Finals winners will be given a TSL Champion medal, and will be recognized on the TSL map graphic.

If an All-Star player doesn't show, their slot will be given to the non-All-Star player with the highest season value available. This player will be eligible to receive a TSL Champion medal, and will receive recognition on the TSL map graphic.


Additional notes

• Games may NOT be started earlier than 3:00pm EST or after 10:00pm EST. If this happens, hosts will be warned and game stats will be void.
• This season, the start time returns to 3pm, as showing was too weak to justify starting at 2pm in S3.
• TWDBot2 (another TWDBot) now resides in ?go TSL for easy recruiting from TSL players.
• Rules will be the same as S3, with the addition of Markmrw and Johnno as TSL Ops.

[PrOnEsSim]

10 minutes? who the hell agreed to this? TSL only way to play basing these days, I rather do 15 minutes.

[IxaDor]

10 minutes? who the hell agreed to this? TSL only way to play basing these days, I rather do 15 minutes.

It eats up way too much time. 15 minute matches can easily go 20-30 mins. On top of that, it also takes a long time to get enough people to !p in tsl. Usually it's anywhere from 45 minutes to 1 hour for a single basing game. Top it off, it's the only one from league that didn't get changed in TSL. TWBD matches are 15 minutes and are also 15 minutes in TSL. TWDD/TWJD matches are best of 3 where in TSL they are best of 1. This should help lessen the wait times for those who either showed up late for a base game or sat out in hopes to play wb/jav. Let's be honest too, there are many times over the last few seasons where matches were totally one sided and the other team had no chance of winning, yet had to wait 15 minutes for it to end, this should help with those type of matches as well.

Overall, I think for TSL this is great. Hopefully this incentivizes players to join a squad and organize an actual TWBD match. The main focus shouldn't be TSL but TWD, the games are better, the teams are better and overall they are much more fun.

-IxaDor

[Soldier13]

Team who gets flag first will win(over and over).....and there is no chance for recovery or great come backs. Which only works in favor for strains that only think losing attitude is a happy idea and the good guys have no second or third chances to prove it that is really just a simple mistake and not an error in real skill. Too much tension not enough 'relax there is plenty of time' with these. Might not play with this sort of automation but that is just the way it is.

RIP: deadlyaardvark style game play.

[Rab]

season number needs advancing on the site

[Jones]

I thought everyone agreed on 5 minute basing games. Might want to push for 3 minutes in the near future.

[Trasher]

Just cancel basing altogether.

There are next to no basers left in the game and it takes as long to set the game up than to actually play it to completion.

[Rab]

Rating adjustment bug.
It'll tell you your rating changed. e.g. 78 -> 76
Then the next round it'll adjust again, as if your changed rating wasn't saved. e.g. 78 -> 80

[qan]

Team who gets flag first will win(over and over).....and there is no chance for recovery or great come backs.

There's certainly less of a chance for a comeback with a reduced amount of time. Statistically, it's true that the team who gets the flag first will have a win % significantly above 50%, simply because to turn over the flag is not easy. But that doesn't mean it's a guaranteed win. It's also true that the longer a match goes, the less significant it is to take the flag first. If it's to 2 minutes, whoever gets the flag first is the winner almost every time, sure. It's also less significant to take the FR first with 15 minutes to win as opposed to 10. But it's even less significant if it's 20 minutes to win rather than 15. Does this mean we should raise the time to 20 minutes? Probably not. It's hard to argue why 15 minutes is the magic number based on it offering a chance for turnovers/upsets alone. The main reason seems to be that we've always done it that way in TWD, TWL and TWDT, and it's what people are used to. But ?go base uses 10min timers, and WB/Javduel are single-round matches. So having single round dueling matches and ?go base-length base games seems to make sense for consistency, especially in the interest of catering to everyone in the community.

Take a look, just today a very close game despite only going to 10m: http://twd.trenchwars.org/index.php?...tchID=90097061 http://trenchwars.org/tsl/index.php?...ch&id=90097061

Rating adjustment bug.

Floating ratings should be fixed up now. Thanks for bearing with it ... you guys are the software Quality Assurance dept, heh.

[Henry Saari]

We're going to experiment a little to find the best schedule possible. Today we're going to test out if doing TSL late slot (starting at 8pm) in reverse order would work better.

[Dierienow]

Please remove blueout. Or whatever its called.

[ogron]

lol every change made is terrible. wiibimbo goes 14-7 in a game and gets $40 and is #1, one of the worst players to ever play, who couldn't even get close to the Top 10 in the first 2 seasons. 10 minute basing is awful. I logged in for 5 minutes and found the best player from Season 3, Racka:

1:Ogron> wiibimbo goes 14-7 and gets $40
1:Ogron> rofl
1:RaCka> yea its REALLY bad now

qan, congrats on ruining the league and making half the veterans quit. season 3 was a complete joke and didn't even have a finals. hope being a complete control freak trying to steal the one good thing left in TW and promoting activity from someone else was worth it. you don't play the game, have never been good, aren't online, and have absolutely no idea how to run a league or be successful.

enjoy being king of the ashes.

[zidane]

as the #1 player in TSL history, it makes me miss this game a bit more to see my buds catching up

[Geio]

lol every change made is terrible. wiibimbo goes 14-7 in a game and gets $40 and is #1, one of the worst players to ever play, who couldn't even get close to the Top 10 in the first 2 seasons. 10 minute basing is awful. I logged in for 5 minutes and found the best player from Season 3, Racka:

1:Ogron> wiibimbo goes 14-7 and gets $40
1:Ogron> rofl
1:RaCka> yea its REALLY bad now

qan, congrats on ruining the league and making half the veterans quit. season 3 was a complete joke and didn't even have a finals. hope being a complete control freak trying to steal the one good thing left in TW and promoting activity from someone else was worth it. you don't play the game, have never been good, aren't online, and have absolutely no idea how to run a league or be successful.

enjoy being king of the ashes.

I refuse to play TSL anymore it’s a joke. I’ll host it if around but to play its trash

[Mythril]

lol every change made is terrible. wiibimbo goes 14-7 in a game and gets $40 and is #1, one of the worst players to ever play, who couldn't even get close to the Top 10 in the first 2 seasons. 10 minute basing is awful. I logged in for 5 minutes and found the best player from Season 3, Racka:

1:Ogron> wiibimbo goes 14-7 and gets $40
1:Ogron> rofl
1:RaCka> yea its REALLY bad now

qan, congrats on ruining the league and making half the veterans quit. season 3 was a complete joke and didn't even have a finals. hope being a complete control freak trying to steal the one good thing left in TW and promoting activity from someone else was worth it. you don't play the game, have never been good, aren't online, and have absolutely no idea how to run a league or be successful.

enjoy being king of the ashes.

I've worked with Qan many times in the past and I've never found him to be anything remotely close to selfish or egotistical. He's an intelligent guy who's been giving countless hours of free time coding and helping out the zone behind the scenes. However, it's true that he doesn't have the experience of playing in competitive leagues, so his expertise isn't in having a good grasp on the heartbeat of the culture. I'm pretty sure even he would agree with this. Unfortunately, this means he's highly reliant on feedback from the community.

The problem with that is the forums have never been an accurate or complete reflection of the zone, and most of the loudest morons on here are completely retarded and also have no idea what it takes to run a league. So he's not in the best position to filter out all the bad ideas. But let's give him credit for creating the TWD league, looks promising and brings back the squad element.

But yeah, I always thought things worked best when we had a psuedo dictator run a league himself, as long as he was smart enough and understood incentives/priorities/how to generate and maintain interest as you did for all your successful leagues. People took that shit for granted.

I just think your criticism is aimed at the wrong person. What I'm saying is, blaming Jessup is not only the most enjoyable thing to do here but also the most sensible. Love you and miss you man. Burn Brothers. Triple Crown.