Twdt 2009

[Izor]

bram raises a valid point. perhaps we could create rules to make squads gear towards at least 2 leagues instead of spreading themselves too thin with 3.

I would have to disagree here. By your logic a professional (american) football team like the Patriots should not exist, because if they spend all of they money they do on Brady, Moss, Welker, O-linemen, then they shouldnt be able to have any type of defense. AKA there would be no dynasties, because of parity. I'll go back to jaa last season and the job he did of evaluating talent. Sure bidding on players on thursday at 11:59 helps, but a lot of the core of his team was there from the start of the season, and he did a good job adding players who can play well together as a team, vs whatever team had like...unabled and zelazny who are both pretty good at what they do, but arent on the same page with each other. A good captain can and will find talent out there to complete their lines in all leagues, especially with the player pool that there was last year.

I think I mentioned in this thread earlier that one of my main concerns with TWDT last year was that almost 300 people signed up but a lot of those players just never got added despite the 6* rule. I really dont know how to prevent this. TWDT isnt necessarily a 'competitive' league like TWL, but when captains are forced to submit their best lines they're going to do it week in and week out. I personally like seeing the new talent in the zone progress and make their way up the chain, but last season they werent given that opportunity. The only idea I could come up with was to have squads playing 2 games a week per division with some rules on not using the same lines each day, but that is admittedly not very feasible because it would add a lot of stress to staff for hosting and captains for getting enough players to log on actively.

I would like for anyone who is interested in this league to contemplate what I just said and remember when they were 'growing up' in the zone how hard it might have been to get an opportunity to play with some of the leagues top tiered players. I personally remember sitting in a crowded ?go siegetryouts arena waiting to duel Raspi to 5, and that was as close as it got outside of elim. Even now with TWD, TWBD is the only place that I think new talent can be grown because people will pick up just about anyone to field teams of 8 for BD's. Squads like Deathcaps, NC17, Ossify, WhiskeyJack, and Syne are just going to recruit newbies and get beaten down by the better DD squads without much of a chance of learning anything. JD is even worse with the difference in skill. I think that getting some of the newer players to play alongside of the older veterans would benefit the zone as a whole, as they could take a lot out of the league, which doesnt mean anything to the older players anyway (who really brags about winning TWDT other than the captains?)

[DankNuggets]

I think I mentioned in this thread earlier that one of my main concerns with TWDT last year was that almost 300 people signed up but a lot of those players just never got added despite the 6* rule.

got to say, it was pretty annoying/depressing/etc to see squabbles over players who came in weeks late, and to see teams that failed to field a line, all when there were 20-30 people who never got picked to play. That, and the people who did get drafted at the 6* spot never got to play, and only a few of them got to play more than once. That's pretty bad, when you have bidding wars that go up to 20+ *'s when there are people willing to play for 4-6 *'s. You could field and entire line with one of those "bigshots".

Even now with TWD, TWBD is the only place that I think new talent can be grown because people will pick up just about anyone to field teams of 8 for BD's. Squads like Deathcaps, NC17, Ossify, WhiskeyJack, and Syne are just going to recruit newbies and get beaten down by the better DD squads without much of a chance of learning anything.

I think you're probably right about the basing aspect, though I'd say there are plenty of teams that could field competent basers.. they just don't bd very often because their squad doesn't have enough ppl on to do so, or there isn't anyone to play that's a comparable skill level.

I wouldn't go so far to say that squads like NC17, Ossify, WhiskyJack and Syne are just newbies that get beaten down by "veteren" squads. Each one of those squads is capable of fielding a line that could beat the top teams, it just isn't going to happen nearly as often as they'd lose. Also, none of those teams you mentioned are anal about picking lines and teams to play: they'll let anyone who wants to play in, and play just about any squad. hell, if you made a 5 man line with the best ppl from those squads, you'd probably win at least a few in TWL. Quite the opposite from not learning, these squads do more to teach people how to duel than any of the "top 5" or w/e squads that are composed of players who've been around for ages. Many of the "veteren" players on these "newbie" squads would do well in DT.. but they aren't going to get picked b/c of the rating system and the caps who want to win every game.

And they're surely getting better/worse all the time... Ossify's #7, Whiskyjack's #13, and NC17 is #14... whereas at any point in time ossifiy/nc17 could be at the bottom of the ladder. They are capable of winning quite a lot of games if they play their top lines, which isn't a priority for them. To say they can't learn anything is pretty short-sighted.

JD is even worse with the difference in skill. I think that getting some of the newer players to play alongside of the older veterans would benefit the zone as a whole, as they could take a lot out of the league, which doesnt mean anything to the older players anyway (who really brags about winning TWDT other than the captains?)

agreed, javelin is probably the hardest ship to learn to duel in, and it takes some practice to be good in it. that being said, you're not going to see any newbie javs get picked, simply because the skill gap is so wide between the top and bottom players.

For some reason, the captains want to win at all costs, and that includes playing the same 5 ppl for every game if they can. I don't realy know how you're going to be able to make it where it's still a really competative event, yet allow lots of newer players to play. It's a conflict of interests where the captains generally aren't going to let thier egos deflate to teach some newbies or at least let them play.

[Izor]

And thats why I posted on here the problem with that. I would like for the newer players to get experience by playing alongside some of the better ones, but I'm at a roadblock on how to do it.

You're right that people will learn over time how to get better at their ships, but playing with the best on their team will accelerate that process a lot. I'm not trying to get into an argument over that really. I'm trying to come up with a solution for more people to play that sign up. In TWL you choose your squads and people more or less know if theyre going to be playing or not.

Btw, captains ego would inflate a lot more than deflate when they assemble that team of middle-tier players that team very well together. Perhaps giving captains the ability to have scrimmages during the week in various DT leagues that are off the record? A lot of people might not have enough to play a TWD game on their TWD squad, but with the roster sized in TWDT they should almost always have enough people on for that. Ideas are more than welcome for this issue, trust me...

[kthx]

I am thinking some sort of bonus multiplier for every player under X value playing in the game you are playing in maybe.. if we get the pricing on players right and also figure in the cumulative cost of keeping players over Y value that maybe it would be impossible to keep all your best players without playing some lower valued players.

So lets say you play all your best players (highest valued) against the other team who you ar eplaying then if you win you get lets say... 1000 dollars in your teams account, however if you played 3 of your highest valued players and two of your lower valued players then maybe you get a 10-25% increase in value per low valued player you have in the game. So instead of getting 1000 dollars for the win, you get 1500-2000 even. And if you have 3 players who might cost an additional 500 dollars a week to keep on your team then unless you played some lower value players with your higher valued players then you couldn't afford to keep all your higher valued players for the week. At least this is what I am leaning towards doing to increase the chances of non-pro players getting in to play.

[DankNuggets]

Btw, captains ego would inflate a lot more than deflate when they assemble that team of middle-tier players that team very well together. Perhaps giving captains the ability to have scrimmages during the week in various DT leagues that are off the record? A lot of people might not have enough to play a TWD game on their TWD squad, but with the roster sized in TWDT they should almost always have enough people on for that. Ideas are more than welcome for this issue, trust me...

I think that would be a great idea, the scrimmages, and I think with enough time to prepare and plan for it, it can be done with minimal work.

Ideally, there'd be a TWD style arena where you could challenge another DT squad to a scrimmage. The problem is that you can't use TWD bots because they're tied to squads (i think) so you'd have to have every person in DT drop squad tags and join the DT squad. THat's be a major pain in the ass. It's a great idea, but we'd need bot work and that's probably not going to happen. Without bots, someone would have to do it manually (or maybe we could use a wbduel bot or tourny bot).

I think the best way may be to dedicate a wbduel arena (or javduel/base) for DT practice (hey maybe even the DT arenas). Give every captain bot powers in that arena, so that they can start scrimmages. Problem here might be that it's illegal to host squad practices with bots, but maybe it could be ammended for DT.

That would solve the problem of people never getting to play, but i'm not sure it will assure that they get in an actual game or get drafted. It's a good start though, and keeps people from just playing pilots they're familiar with.

I am thinking some sort of bonus multiplier for every player under X value playing in the game you are playing in maybe.. if we get the pricing on players right and also figure in the cumulative cost of keeping players over Y value that maybe it would be impossible to keep all your best players without playing some lower valued players.

So lets say you play all your best players (highest valued) against the other team who you ar eplaying then if you win you get lets say... 1000 dollars in your teams account, however if you played 3 of your highest valued players and two of your lower valued players then maybe you get a 10-25% increase in value per low valued player you have in the game. So instead of getting 1000 dollars for the win, you get 1500-2000 even. And if you have 3 players who might cost an additional 500 dollars a week to keep on your team then unless you played some lower value players with your higher valued players then you couldn't afford to keep all your higher valued players for the week. At least this is what I am leaning towards doing to increase the chances of non-pro players getting in to play.

I kinda like where this is going. It sounds to me like you want to change the entire ranking system away from straight W-L to something point based (or currency based) a la TWD.

You could even take it a step further: instead of having bonuses for playing with a weaker line, you could implement it akin to TWD, where playing a squad that's "supposed" to win would earn you more points for the win, and fewer for the loss.

It would even throw in a dynamic where teams could intentionally field a very weak line if they knew they'd lose, thereby not losing a lot of points. They'd be less willing to risk playing with all the top guns, for fear that if they lost, they'd lose a lot of points. And unlike TWD where you can pick and choose not to play games with a lot at stake, you'd be forced to based on the lineup you submitted.

In that case, you'd base it off of the ranking system. say you had five 8* players, then you'd have 40 pts at stake. The other team has five 7* players in for a total of 35 pts at stake. From there, you could figure out an equation to relate the relative team values like in TWD (not sure of the equation right off hand, but i'm sure we could think of something similar).

It'd be a deviation from the normal W-L way of playing, but it would make it more interesting IMO.

[kthx]

Hmm that sounds pretty good also dank, but I need to talk to Ardour about about some of that, because god willing most of our ideas are going to take little to no new coding and will be very simple for Ardour to adapt the twlm site for TWDT's use.

[Summa]

ideas are starting to get very complex, i hope you know what you guys are doing...these mathematical formulas for generating such values aren't exactly the most simple of things, plus there isn't any groundwork to build off of in terms of rules that I have seen....

no offense i think you guys have a whole lot of wonderful ideas right now, you just need to focus them and have a definite direction established and start laying some groundwork or else you will run into the same problems i did.

[Izor]

I agree with summa, the ideas are becoming too complex and in depth at this point to implement shortly after TWL. My idea of scrimmages was just to keep people active during the week and to let people play while in the TWL offseason a lot of squads arent super active. I didnt want to translate that into a point system based off wins and a very difficult mathematical formula that will calculate rating increases based of those scrimmages.

[kthx]

Well I agree, but also if we want TWDT to be something that pros and newbies play together, and that newbies will be able to actually take something away at the end of the season than I see most of these ideas as almost a necessity. Even if we kept last years rules besides the trading structure we can be assured that the league will at least be fun, but then again it becomes pretty much a watered down TWL with another name.

I think that both me and Izor want to make sure that TWDT becomes almost a cross between a fantasy draft league and a TW Intermediate League so that in the upcoming seasons of TWL we might have some new players who actually gained some skills and knowledge from playing with players they would normally never associate with. This of course includes not only skill in the ships but some sort of personality to understand where this zone came from and how to interact with players who have been playing for much longer so that they can be on a chat with them for more than five minutes without getting axed for being stupid.

Anyways, I know the formulas are pretty complex right now, but we still have quite a few weeks before TWL is over, and probably another month or two after TWL until this league even starts drafting so there is plenty of time to lay out the rules, the league structure, and the drafting/trading/point structure of the league. If anyone wants to take on the task of figuring out the math it would be great, and it would definitely save me some time so I can work on other aspects of it. I never intended for this to be a three man show between me, Izor, and Ardour and from the looks of people who actually are pointing out potential problems and adding their own ideas I don't think it will have to be. There is a difference between actually running the league IE making schedules and handling trades and draft proposals and being the sole co-authors of a completely new TWDT league structure.

[DankNuggets]

I agree with summa, the ideas are becoming too complex and in depth at this point to implement shortly after TWL. My idea of scrimmages was just to keep people active during the week and to let people play while in the TWL offseason a lot of squads arent super active. I didnt want to translate that into a point system based off wins and a very difficult mathematical formula that will calculate rating increases based of those scrimmages.

that's not what i meant by the point formula

by definition, a scrimmage doesn't count for anything.

the point totals wouldn't be hard to figure out, it's finding an equation that normalizes the values enough to make sense that will take an ounce of work.

For example, a team that's got a 1250 rating plays a team that has a 1100 rating in TWD. I don't know how much you'd get, say it's 30 for winning, and 20 for losing, but we can agree it's not a number that's hard to reach. We can in fact use the same formula that's used for TWD to predict outcomes anyway.

It would then be a matter of scaling the line's value (the total number of *'s) to a number that fits the TWD s equations. Or, just make the equation where it fits the scale of the team ratings. I don't think it would be very hard at all, assuming the equation's only variables are TEAM1 rating and TEAM2 rating. It's just a matter of scaling down the coefficients in that case.

In fact, I think it would make the ratings make more sense (1250 is a rather arbitrary number if you aren't familiar with the ladder, whereas total *'s anyone could relate).

It is more compilcated than doing shear W-L, but this way you also have a much smaller likelihood of having to use tiebreakers too.

I'm willing to help with the math in that extent. I just need to decide if we want to adapt the TWD win/loss point formula or make one that works similarly, just not with the exact same numbers.

If we just want to use the exact TWD numbers (1000 base rating, max 50 pts for win) then I need to figure out a way to scale up team values to match those of comparable TWD ratings (ie five 10*'s = 50*s = 1500, five 7*'s = 35*s = 1200, etc).

Or, I can just base the win/loss points off of the player values (maybe scaled up a bit) and make them fit a curve of sorts.

The win/loss points would be added to a base rating BTW, not the actual rating of the line, as that would change from game to game. IE if you have a 50* line, and win 5 pts, you wouldn't then have a 55* star line-- you might have $500 in kthx's point system to either use to purchase/trade, or rank teams (most $$ wins).

Still a lot of things to consider, and I think i've gotten ahead of myself just tyring to convice everyone (myself too) that it's feasible. We'd still need to iron out some things before becoming set on the final numbers.

[Izor]

Well thats too advanced for the discussion that should be taking place now, which is more of a 'mission statement' for the league. To me, its to keep the zone busy during the TWL off season when things normally are slower, and to get newer players a chance to play alongside the veterans so they can truly learn the game. Assuming we can use TWLM, and stats will be easily trackable, Pure_Luck has inspired me with his pizza/paypal tournies to lay down $100 myself to be split among people at the end of the season such as the highest rated wb/jav/baser, the highest rated overall player, best captain, most improved player, biggest game changing performance, etc. This will not make the league pay to play, but I havent donated anything to this game so far after playing it for so long and I figure that'll make up for some of it.

As for the way this conversation is going now, dont get me wrong, the idea of having an underrated squad get rewarded for beating a squad with players rated much higher than them is very intriguing, but you would need to break it down into an individual league rating for that to work. Using TWLM we want to do player values as a combined 3 league total for what they're worth. They still would retain a value for each individual league, so it is quite possible to figure out something that works. The math would have to be played with quite a bit though, so thats why I'm saying this is for later on down the road.

I would really like to hear from some staffers if 2 games a week can be done per league. With 4 games in 3 leagues x2 it would be 12 games on saturday and 12 games on sunday. Given the participation we've had so far in coming up with these ideas, I think we have enough people willing to host on a regular basis. The problem will be having an smod to check and make sure that no one is logging on their teammate's name to play twice in the same weekend.

[Summa]

Well thats too advanced for the discussion that should be taking place now, which is more of a 'mission statement' for the league. To me, its to keep the zone busy during the TWL off season when things normally are slower, and to get newer players a chance to play alongside the veterans so they can truly learn the game. Assuming we can use TWLM, and stats will be easily trackable, Pure_Luck has inspired me with his pizza/paypal tournies to lay down $100 myself to be split among people at the end of the season such as the highest rated wb/jav/baser, the highest rated overall player, best captain, most improved player, biggest game changing performance, etc. This will not make the league pay to play, but I havent donated anything to this game so far after playing it for so long and I figure that'll make up for some of it.

As for the way this conversation is going now, dont get me wrong, the idea of having an underrated squad get rewarded for beating a squad with players rated much higher than them is very intriguing, but you would need to break it down into an individual league rating for that to work. Using TWLM we want to do player values as a combined 3 league total for what they're worth. They still would retain a value for each individual league, so it is quite possible to figure out something that works. The math would have to be played with quite a bit though, so thats why I'm saying this is for later on down the road.

I would really like to hear from some staffers if 2 games a week can be done per league. With 4 games in 3 leagues x2 it would be 12 games on saturday and 12 games on sunday. Given the participation we've had so far in coming up with these ideas, I think we have enough people willing to host on a regular basis. The problem will be having an smod to check and make sure that no one is logging on their teammate's name to play twice in the same weekend.

See this is more appropriate talk for the time being in my opinion. What wark and dank are discussing is like buying a TV for a new house that you haven't even built the foundation to yet. It sounds wonderful and if you can get it to work, that's amazing, but a basis needs to be established first. Sorry if I sound like a broken record, but maybe the features you speak about are a season or 2 down the road, I would prefer a guaranteed smooth running league that is significantly more simple than one that is a clusterfuck but has some nice features either practically or ideologically.

As for an opinion on your idea of two games a week...I am not sure. It would take a lot of dedication from caps and players and fairly overwhelming staff support which wasn't exactly this league's strong point last time (due to left_eye). But if you can get the committed hosts and caps then go for it.

[kronic]

Wow giving kthx and Izor the power to run a league? Fuck this zone is desperate now lol. TWDT will be a failure with these 2, just like Quicksand.

[kthx]

Thats funny, I don't see you doing anything useful when it comes to running a league, perhaps you could toss out your own ideas on how to run this over Izor who knows more about leagues through sports than most people on this zone and has played this zone while running a squad for three years, and myself who has about 5 years of staff experience, an equal amount of time playing a game and also has ran a squad for several seasons. Of course instead of reading through the thread and looking at even the people we usually argue with on the forums having a discussion about how this league should be ran you would rather make a dumb comment.

[Ardour]

An idea to allow more players to take part:

Every week there is 1 match in each league like last season, but a player cant start in more than 1 league a week. This warrants such a need for big rosters (that we currently have).

This would give it a different feel than TWL where the same people feature in all divisions week after week.