TWDT Format Discussion

[Pressure]

Spoke with beam earlier and he suggested I make a thread. To keep it brief, I loosely proposed:

- regular TWDT draft
- no star cap
- 2 caps per team
- each team plays all 3 leagues
- 1 team per player
- keep challenger league

The current format with 3 separate drafts/leagues could be great and I'm def down to play, but I wonder if it would be easier to have a formal TWDT draft, with each player being drafted to one team. To spice things up, have 2 caps per team and allow people to choose their co-caps.

[Vehicle]

According to beam's thread the draft is ~1 month away. Meaning Week 1 is about 6 weeks from now. There are less than 50 current participants (according to the signup thread).

I am all for trying new stuff and I am all for promoting competitiveness but my personal opinion is that the two-tier league system, multi-squad player drafting and elimination of star cap is not the way to go.

1) There is not enough population for a successful B league. You can call it whatever you want but at the end of the day you're hoping to host a weeknight league for mid-tier players. I just don't think there are enough players or enough interest for this to work. This isn't the beginning of the pandemic where people had nothing to do, it's the end where people are coming out of hibernation. It's also inevitable that this secondary league will be looked at derisively, as the sort of loser's cup. (I genuinely hope I'm wrong since this is the league I'll be in.)

2) Multi-squad player drafting might be a good idea in terms of balance but it's still a bad idea overall. From a logistical standpoint it's a nightmare and will lead to fewer players wanting to captain, your draft is going to take 6+ hours. From a narrative perspective it's doubly bad. A lot of the fun of this game is borne from rivalry, shit talk and general competitive spirit. Having all the best players be on different squads doesn't help build that.

3) Eliminating the star cap is catering to the same people who we ostensibly just had a league for. This league you're designing is the equivalent of giving your little brother the controller that isn't plugged in. You need to provide some room for lower-starred players the chance to participate on the main stage.

If you want to have a Draft Trench Wars League, that's fine, do that. But all your efforts at designing a consolation prize are just muddying the waters without generating any added interest.

Just do a regular draft tournament. If you want to be inclusive have a star cap. If you want it to be the most competitive possible league then don't. me and the rest of the B tier will log on when there's a reason to.

[ronaldinho]

-TWDT Professional and TWDT Development
-Classic draft
-No-star cap for Professional
-Strict star cap (36/36/58) restricted to 8 * and below for Development
-Remove the decimals from the stars
-The teams only compete once and the Development teams start each division
-Complete quarter-final, no quarter-final if less than 10 teams
-Classic play-off table like a conference in the NBA
-Professional teams qualified in the play-offs qualify the Development teams, but classification of the table adapted to their regular season
-Both levels play at the same time in play-offs
-No medal for winning Development teams, but on the in-game list for those who have played a role.
-Trade without restriction

Personally I am against the two level system but it can be interesting if a good number of low level players show up over time. But I'm all for letting Beam do what he planned.

[Rab]

I'm looking forward to not having to care about wbs or javs tbh.

[afghan]

Spoke with beam earlier and he suggested I make a thread. To keep it brief, I loosely proposed:

- regular TWDT draft
- no star cap
- 2 caps per team
- each team plays all 3 leagues
- 1 team per player
- keep challenger league

The current format with 3 separate drafts/leagues could be great and I'm def down to play, but I wonder if it would be easier to have a formal TWDT draft, with each player being drafted to one team. To spice things up, have 2 caps per team and allow people to choose their co-caps.

- No star cap is only going to work if you have 3 separate drafts under the current conditions of the league imo.
- 2 caps would significantly reduce parity unless you get 12 very good captains which is unlikely.
- I do like 1 team ideally but 2 wouldn’t be terrible. It would suck to be on 3 different squads for 1 league.

[afghan]

2) Multi-squad player drafting might be a good idea in terms of balance but it's still a bad idea overall. From a logistical standpoint it's a nightmare and will lead to fewer players wanting to captain, your draft is going to take 6+ hours. From a narrative perspective it's doubly bad. A lot of the fun of this game is borne from rivalry, shit talk and general competitive spirit. Having all the best players be on different squads doesn't help build that.

i think at the least the idea someone came up with in an earlier thread should be incorporated to reduce amount of squads/chats and reduce the amount of time for a draft:

If you draft someone then they automatically added to your team in other leagues if they are 7.5* or below. The likelihood of that person getting drafted high in other leagues are low.

examples:
1. Zidane drafts pressure in 2nd round for twdt-b then he gets added for wb/jav for Zidane.
2. Ease drafts Racka in 1st round for wb and gets added to ease for base. Racka would still need to be drafted for jav since he is highly >7.5*.

[zidane]

the main issue with beam's idea is that it requires excellent captains, and more work than usual from the captains. having run dt recently getting these captains is the hardest part... so going to be very interesting how it all turns out

no star cap is obviously a nice idea. maybe an easier idea is to just increase the cap so much that a 6* will almost never ever be added. I think that's what everyone is sick of.. being forced to add a 6* who is absolute shit and shouldn't be getting to play because there are no excuses to be that bad in a game that's almost 25 years old. this will give off the illusion that dt is still inclusive but will be more of a TWDT Pro.. this would cater more to our TWD/TWL/DT players and stop forcing people to add pubbers

edit:

it seems unlikely we have the playerbase or the time slots (when are all these games going to take place??) to have two active leagues running concurrently

[Vehicle]

Agree with zidane 100%. Increasing the star cap is a more balanced solution than removing it. Just don't make it 80*.

[Rab]

the "no limit" star cap is just what would happen if a perfect draft happened. i.e. every cap picks the highest rated player available.
it stops someone being able to get all the 10 stars if nobody else picks them.

[Pressure]

I disagree afghan, I think having two caps per team would make it easier to find captains since they'd be able to run the team with a friend and also split the work with them. It's actually more likely I'd want to cap if I can have a partner than if I wouldn't, since it's a lot of work to be a captain.

[Vys]

If you up 2 - 3 stars to each league and then you're able to have 2 10* players added in a line, without having to add a 6*. This has been the issue for so many seasons.

[Riverside]

I personally appreciated the friendships that came from most of my TWDT seasons. Maybe im part of the minority, but I used to have convos once in a while on the twdt chats. Every TWDT season you see a couple captains who take it more seriously and create TWD squads (which is pretty good for twd activity). Separating the leagues to me dilutes comradery by quite a bit.

In the season after this one, consider doing a TWL/TWDT hybrid where there's a salary cap for the roster and the amount of stars you can have in. Gives people a chance to play w friends and maintains a competitive advantage.

Spend more time on ratings this season. Figure out a way to make it reasonable to assess people without rushing through the list or forcing them to sit for 3 hour intervals. We spend more talking about how to improving the rating system instead of actually putting the time in rating people.

[Poseidon]

covid is ending, let people get out a few months during summer before trying real league on sundays

look at # of signups

consider first maybe basing cup, dueling tournies

[viop11]

i haf to say that if sum1 is 6* in a league, they pribibly don't gif 2 much fks about playing in that league

i definitly think u should make it so two 10*s cud vs in ld/lj and not b forced to add sum 6* scrubmin

twd exists for girpigemin who just want to haf a sk8 n not care 2 much about winnink/losink

organized leagues should b about competitition, n u shouldn't haf to sicrifice insirtink mastir playirs to allow sum scrubmin p1ssb0i in a league they pribibly dont gif 1 singil fk about becuz if they did they wudnt b a 6* in the first place

should b abil to add for exampil, 10* 10* 8.5* 7.5* 7* in twdtd/twdtj if u wish, or 10 10 9 7 7

vs viop wintwirth 8 sifin sifin cish niw

8 sifin sifin cish niw

8 sifin sifin cish niwwww

[Vehicle]

Season needs to be delayed if you want to have something with even a modicum of success. Maybe run a BWC again or something over the summer. TWL basically sucked the joy out of the game and, with Covid ending, activity has plummeted. (At least according to the "games-starting" Discord as I've been too busy with work to log on recently. Miss you.)