Old Thread

[skyforger]

The problem with league planning is that pretty much nobody has any interest in doing it.

That's not true. I've seen people being interested and capable of providing value, but ultimately end up quitting. Starting from Rab and myself and to Geio. Why do people lose that spark that made them care in the first place? IMO it has to do not only with it being a largely thankless job but also internally fked up more than it needs to be. Having to run everything through Henry Saari first to have any chance of getting something through only to get the classic "we'll see, afk smoke" zzz ignored. Fk that.

Really hope Grasps or Jessup or whoever with new energy accepts qan's invitation. But to not make them also end up disillusioned, I would really suggest to take a critical look at Henry Saari at the Group Moderator position. What I mean is - allowing only him start votes and set criteria does not work. At all. Make the new recruits have equal powers. Secondly remove the guys who haven't played for months and don't participate but randomly appear to vote on something. If they return to the game, they can return to the leagues team but for now they should not have a vote. Third - make it public who is the so called Leagues Team and everyone's function in it.

[Dierienow]

It's a good point - there's only so many people willing to put up with the work. At first it seems like an amazing job to have a position as a sort of game designer for a game they love - and perhaps it is (you're not paid but is it something you could MAYBE put on your resume? I think so, especially if you work in gaming). Excluding that opportunity it is an unrewarding job and eventually for most people will feel like a chore. Also there's no guarantee that whoever's in charge is capable.. how do we know Grasps TWD Apex idea is good for example. It might be, but how can we know? You don't REALLY want to be offering jobs to just anybody who asks because that'll kill the game far more quickly.

That said there must be some sensible and practical improvement we can make in the interim. Whether it's an in-game/forum poll, community brainstorm, acquiring more talent and help, more transparency (maybe we can discuss the rules of a league and change the bad parts before the league starts? And have the league ops willing to implement the changes..) etc.

Also you can't deny that half of the problems in this game are due to the fact that some people have 10000 hours played in leagues alone plus innate skill difference. Games in TSL are boring because first the bot needs to learn the best matchups and second the lower level game contains all the people who simply never get to play leagues because they're not good enough. The cycle just gets repeated and so you have one match where the total time played in leagues is humongous and another match where its pitiful. So if you ever get placed in the wrong match it sucks.

TSL was ok once it learned who to put in what match. Someone like me or even MC (who I remember was pretty good before but could be considered above average now) who skirt the line between total newb destroyer and 1337 pro gamer are put in an awkward spot so if there were people for like 3 tiers of games that would be perfect imo. I don't want to demolish wicket666 or Lupin in jav and I don't want to disappoint the toxic personalities in the other match so it is kind of boring having only enough players for 2 tiers most of the time. But still I'm hopeful that there are some practical solutions.

[Dierienow]

What about TSLB only for a season and TWD reformed/renewed. Or TSLB and dueling cup. Let's get practical solutions that everybody can enjoy. Why should anybody care about TSLB only or dueling cup? Dunno lol, why should we care about any of this crap. Ppl are just trying to game with their friends and shit right? So let's enable that.

[Major Crisis]

The problem with league planning is that pretty much nobody has any interest in doing it. If you'd like to see one reason why, just take a read through this thread (or any number of leagues threads over the years). At the end of the day, a lot of people are afraid of opening themselves up to ridicule. Especially on the internet, which is srs bsns.

Lol please... The problem is that you and Henry Saari (mainly Henry) made sure everyone who is/was willing to run leagues has ran off. I can name 3 people who dont want to do a thing for leagues anymore because of Henry Saari and a little bit of you. You guys have the feeling like you need to run this whole show. But lets be realistic, you have never entered an arena outside pub to play. And Henry Saari should just take care of DSB, where he belongs. Both of you have no clue how to run a league, yet you want to have the highest say in everything. Like Skyforger said as well, everything has to go through Henry Saari. How can stuff happen if this guy is afk 24/7 himself? The only thing he cares about his himself. TWDT-B ratings had to be limited on 8's because mr Saari was scared he wouldnt play enough. Well... After all he was right, because he got benched as soon as Heaven got active. You need to spam the guy HARD to get his attention when a game is going on. He doesnt pay attention to chats or w/e, but yet this guy is in control of everything in this game. Everything taking so long with resets etc is no surprise. If me, zid and mythril didnt step up last TWDT, we would still have to wait on the ratings.. The guy has no plan at all, but he makes sure that people who do have a plan, dont want to work with him or do even anything at all for staff cuz the guy will interrupt.

[Geio]

Lol please... The problem is that you and Henry Saari (mainly Henry) made sure everyone who is/was willing to run leagues has ran off. I can name 3 people who dont want to do a thing for leagues anymore because of Henry Saari and a little bit of you. You guys have the feeling like you need to run this whole show. But lets be realistic, you have never entered an arena outside pub to play. And Henry Saari should just take care of DSB, where he belongs. Both of you have no clue how to run a league, yet you want to have the highest say in everything. Like Skyforger said as well, everything has to go through Henry Saari. How can stuff happen if this guy is afk 24/7 himself? The only thing he cares about his himself. TWDT-B ratings had to be limited on 8's because mr Saari was scared he wouldnt play enough. Well... After all he was right, because he got benched as soon as Heaven got active. You need to spam the guy HARD to get his attention when a game is going on. He doesnt pay attention to chats or w/e, but yet this guy is in control of everything in this game. Everything taking so long with resets etc is no surprise. If me, zid and mythril didnt step up last TWDT, we would still have to wait on the ratings.. The guy has no plan at all, but he makes sure that people who do have a plan, dont want to work with him or do even anything at all for staff cuz the guy will interrupt.

Well said get rid of that pile of dumpster juice.....😎💯

[Lupin]

I don't want to demolish wicket666 or Lupin in jav

say wot. I'll fite you m8

[Dierienow]

Talk shit about pub get hit, m9.

Not that you really talked shit lol. Anyway I'm sure our match would be much closer than the time I dueled 24,000 on a different name

[Grasps]

Fuck TSL, Fuck Henry Sowwy and all the incompetent fucks who surround him.

Qan, stop being a puppet for this prick, your deserve better man.

Henry, you need to step the fuck down before you get knocked the fuck down. There are plenty of hungry, goal driven individuals who would run laps around you in your position, your nothing man, your less than dogshit. I'd happily take over or see that Ogron, Major, and the like who actually care, get shit done and would be healthy for TW to be in your stead. I'm fed up, a lot of us are. Seriously, go back to DSB or someshit please.

[Jessup]

[zidane]

lmaooooooooo A+

[qan]

Busy weekend, took a bit to get back to this.

Bottom line, a big part of what makes leagues successful is the community, as you pointed out, Major. People stepping up to cap, bringing in their friends, making content that builds hype such as Hot or Nots, etc. For the staff side, dev keeps things running (though for old leagues the work needed is minimal) and gives an outside face to it, such as with Wirah's TWDT site or Rab's TSL site, and Wirah's relentless PR. General staff's role is largely hosting. And, at least traditionally, planning.

But there's no compelling reason to require league planning to be done by staff. Staff members are those who dedicate themselves to consistently keeping the game alive. The main difference between a staffer and a community member is that they're making a commitment to take responsibility, to show up, put in time, to not flake out or flip out when it gets tough or uncomfortable. That doesn't always work out ... but at least that's the commitment. The biggest benefit of staff is that it offers stability. It rarely results in the best possible outcome. But the main strength of any bureaucracy is that it continues to function, at least in some sense, without having to reinvent the wheel every week. But again: the bureaucracy doesn't need to be involved with planning. Planning is what you might call the executive job. In that case, that could be the community.

If organized, the community could easily be able to call the shots regarding plans such as leagues, league rules, etc. We just lack that organized method to make it happen. Anyone who knows my history with TW knows that I've tried (and failed) to do this for the last 15ish years.

I was brainstorming with Wirah a bit back about how to be able to get the community involved in decision-making. Problem with forums is that it's a pretty small portion of the population, many of whom don't even play anymore. Discord's an option, but many don't have that/aren't willing to join. In-game could work but requires some infrastructure to have a discussion, meaning dev work.

How can we get the community to agree on something fast enough to be able to make it work, and with a minimum of dev work? Especially when a lot of folks are more looking to make the next hilarious shitpost. It's a difficult problem.

tl;dr: I think we as a community should be running leagues, not just people who can put in time consistently enough to be staffers. But how do we get there from here? How can we open this up?

[qan]

Regarding comments about Henry. He's is the Dean of Staff; he doesn't run leagues. He's been involved in a lot of league planning and league hosting because he cares enough about the game to put in serious amounts of time. He's also very consistent and reliable, qualities that are pretty damn hard to come by. You may or may not agree with him, but he puts in a lot of work to keep the zone moving forward, not just with leagues.

But again, his role in staff is not overseeing the planning of all leagues, though he's a league op in many leagues and heavily involved in leagues planning. If anyone feels he's been blocking league progress in some way by functioning as a sort of "gatekeeper" for which ideas get through and which do not, I'd be interested to hear about it. (twcomplaints@gmail.com is always open.) tl;dr: Absolutely nothing SHOULD need to go through Henry to become possible in leagues. If you've experienced something different, we've got a problem.

I hear you on the moderator criticism, sky. It's something that's been discussed. I think that part is my fault, for not clearly laying out how this kind of system works. It's extremely simple but not everyone's familiar. The moderator doesn't start votes in a meeting. The moderator ensures motions (votes) are begun and then closed. The moderator does not get to decide what is voted on and what isn't. The process goes:

1. General discussion
2. Someone makes a motion (with very clear wording of what's to be done or changed)
3. Moderator asks for someone to second the motion. Another seconds the motion. (Or, if nobody seconds the motion, go back to discussion)
4. The moderator calls a vote on the motion. Majority wins. Motion does not pass in the case of ties.

(In the case of an online meeting, vote should be set to end at a certain time, and discussion can continue until that time, either about the motion or about other ideas.)

This is the most fundamental and basic operation of any meeting ... with literally only this, you can run a meeting very successfully. But we don't even have this, currently. If we ever get a semblance of the leagues group back, I'll probably take the moderator role to keep to these basic rules. Meetings are meant to be equal among the participants; the moderator should just be a facilitator. I don't think (at least in the group itself) Henry's tried to push undue influence. He's not been on the ball with votes, though. Again, this may be my fault for not being clearer on this process.

We can also look at official leagues threads/Discord channel(s) with this kind of pseudo-meeting format, and see what happens. The thread would need to be moderated. Ideally we'd have two threads: discussion, and votes.

We're about to announce new leagues plans in the meantime. Sorry that it hasn't been more inclusive. Let's try to get there somehow, so that the next time we can do better.

[zidane]

i think henry is a good guy, he's active and he cares. like i said a few times start up TSL on a more strict schedule and then we'll work our way to get more caps to start the next league. no idea why people are overreacting so much. i don't know if going back to losing pts in a loss is a good thing, it may actually reduce activity. I know as someone who usually wins most games twd games the new rating system isn't making me play less, however will the squads that lose a lot more than they win might start playing less? doesn't seem to be much of an upside cause I can't imagine a single player will start twding more because of the change whereas we might lose some

[mtine]

Why do there always have to be captains? Come on Henry, stop being an idiot and actually sit down at your desk, brainstorm for a few minutes and come up with some decent ideas. You are doing what has been done a thousand times before and is already worn out.

Why not, after thinking about it for a minute, do a random draft wb and jav tournament? People sign, get drafted into teams of 10 (considering the stars from TWDT), and then you field 2 9+ stars, 1 8 star, 1 7 star and a lowbie. Ez pz. 2 matches per Sunday per team, 4 weeks of play, top 4 advance to semis which are played the 5th Sunday, 6th Sunday is finals + MVPs play a best of 3 for the crowd.
That's how easy it can be. Making captains and stupid rules just makes ppl run away from your leagues or not show up when they sign up and don't get what they want.

[skyforger]

i don't know if going back to losing pts in a loss is a good thing, it may actually reduce activity. I know as someone who usually wins most games twd games the new rating system isn't making me play less, however will the squads that lose a lot more than they win might start playing less? doesn't seem to be much of an upside cause I can't imagine a single player will start twding more because of the change whereas we might lose some

TWD site still says offseason, so I guess it won't matter much. But yeah, negative loss ratings will have non-stacked squads sit out instead of gaming depending on who is online if they are smart. That is if TWD season is actually started and leads to something. Way to go Henry, removing the best change to TWD since borrowing was added.