*cap thoughts for next DT

[Turban]

if you actually want to poll something you need to run it in-game asking manually people for their opinion. forum polls do not reflect public opinion accurately enough as only a handful of players actively browse and use our forums. it's some extra work, but most people are willing to give their opinion/vote on something. as an example i asked about 40 active high to mid level warbirds about their opinion resolution limits, asking them to vote between few options, and decided what twld resolution limits would be based on the given feedback and votes.

[Riverside]

if you actually want to poll something you need to run it in-game asking manually people for their opinion. forum polls do not reflect public opinion accurately enough as only a handful of players actively browse and use our forums. it's some extra work, but most people are willing to give their opinion/vote on something. as an example i asked about 40 active high to mid level warbirds about their opinion resolution limits, asking them to vote between few options, and decided what twld resolution limits would be based on the given feedback and votes.

For its Draft League, Chaos League uses Google Forms upon signing up to participate, as a method to gather answers about key decisions for the league: and to get a sense of an individual players expected activity for that League.

There are many free and time-efficient methods (socially & technologically) to effectively acquire accurate & pointed opinions, systematically, from a group of people (especially in digital communities).

Theres no need to reinvent the wheel, or do a shit ton of additional behind the scenes manual work, imo. Automate those components with proven solutions (which I estimate would take less time than 40 private e-conversations periodically), aim to do it transparently, and re-assess every once in a while.

[Dwopple]

I dislike stealth mode planning for these Leagues. Unless im missing something: some reasons to share early and often:

• Limiting re-occurances of what caused the last 2-3 month delay between TWDT seasons, despite the post-season HYPE that came with last TWDT
• Recruiting volunteers
• Overall community engagement (which helps with activity)

Fair points. The delay was unfortunately due to 2 failed attempts at organizing non-TWL leagues so as not to kill the zone for (likely) good heading into summer. That, and again a lack of willing volunteers (is there an echo?) to fill in the gaps. I asked many previous volunteers who understandably preferred to be players or captains instead. Racka was (justifiably) getting close to burnout from Op-ing, I was just coming off a large project with work, and subjecting myself to the very public and occasionally nasty wrath of a select few wasn't high on my "I want this" list lol.

I do this in an unofficial / semi-official capacity as far as coordinating leagues and ops, but the burnout factor is real (ask any former ops).

I'll encourage, support, help coordinate and provide feedback to anyone with an idea and the right level of motivation but I'm also not going to control how leagues are ran or scheduled. This is very much a community driven game, and the blunt reality is we could use more help.

Staff is willing to train and support, but it all takes time and we need more bodies.

[Turban]

For its Draft League, Chaos League uses Google Forms upon signing up to participate, as a method to gather answers about key decisions for the league: and to get a sense of an individual players expected activity for that League.

There are many free and time-efficient methods (socially & technologically) to effectively acquire accurate & pointed opinions, systematically, from a group of people (especially in digital communities).

Theres no need to reinvent the wheel, or do a shit ton of additional behind the scenes manual work, imo. Automate those components with proven solutions (which I estimate would take less time than 40 private e-conversations periodically), aim to do it transparently, and re-assess every once in a while.

sure, those are legitimate options to use but generally speaking a more hands on approach tends to yield better results at least based on my experience. nevertheless my main point was that forums tend to be the worst place to gather opinions and/or poll results from given how only a handful of people actively browse and discuss things around here, but am sure you already knew this given how few people responded or voted on your forum polls.

[Riverside]

and subjecting myself to the very public and occasionally nasty wrath of a select few wasn't high on my "I want this" list lol.

I do this in an unofficial / semi-official capacity as far as coordinating leagues and ops, but the burnout factor is real (ask any former ops).

That makes sense to me.

It's consistent with what I've seen, within this community and in other communities, digital or not.

Thank you for mentioning it pointedly & publically.

Im sure I'm not the only one who notices the unnecessary and questionable behavior that has been directed at you: from pictures of your life surfacing in inappropriate places, calling you names of "leaders" in American history as parallels to your method of contributions, to the passive aggressive shots in a broken form of English spelling & sentences (sintincis*) at every other thread you make or contribute to.

What the fuck is that?

FWIW: i mentioned what happened after last TWDT to avoid a repeat of consequences on the Zones activity, of the surrounding dialogue & decisions that come from a new league that Person X has been working on, without seeking new & direct input from the overall community.

From an outsiders POV (in terms of impactful contribution to making leagues happen recurringly for this community): re-initiating a Zone's activity seems to be a lot more (volunteer) work than maintaining it.

[Riverside]

sure, those are legitimate options to use but generally speaking a more hands on approach tends to yield better results at least based on my experience. nevertheless my main point was that forums tend to be the worst place to gather opinions and/or poll results from given how only a handful of people actively browse and discuss things around here, but am sure you already knew this given how few people responded or voted on your forum polls.

To me, the way people responded to my & other people's forum polls was an indicator.

Not the indicator.

(Varied human insights + holistic statistics) is a recognized and successful combination in many industries, systems, situations and projects.

A lack of help, time & willingness due to other factors is a different & intersecting set of obstacles, with its own challenges & solutions.

[Zeebu]

could go about this the other way. set the cap of each league based on number of players and teams and set the ratings along a normal distribution. the only thing that needs to happen then is ranking each player in each league. we already have top to bottom ranks, theyd just have to be slightly refined within each 0.5* slot.

[RageRitual]

why not just run a straight draft without ratings.

The difference between TWL and DT is TWL caters to high level players. It's generally speaking the top few teams and the rest get smashed, so there really isn't a point for mid or low level players to even participate. DT is supposed to cater to mid level players, it's the mid level players that are usually the most active and keep the zone alive. If we completely remove the star cap this will simply be a drafted TWL or for the rest of us we call them cups (basing cup for example). DT is it's own division and it's by far the one that keeps the zone alive, removing the star cap would be a bad idea.

Per ship ratings. Per ship ratings would be nice, but would be busted. You have too many players that only play one ship in base that if you gave them a 7* in the other two because they never play it, could probably play them at high level with mimimal practice. Some recent examples are saiyan and even rucci in terr. It really isn't hard to play other base ships, if you pay attention at all in the game the experience transfers over from one ship to another.

1) Racka would rate someone in WB and Ogron would overrule him.

2) There's very few players in the game who maintain a high-level of skill in the game for all this time. Most players either get better or worse. Just look at Riverside

3) The other issue as I see it is that TWDT is always drafted in a way where 3 leaguers matter more than the best 1 leaguers.

4) get rid of the low * cap that caters to "new" players that don't exist (6* players should not be required to have lineups work in any game), and have a larger committee of relevant and smart players in each league to redo the * ratings with deflationary numbers that better match skillsets. .5 * difference isn't enough for a lot of player skill gaps, and frankly, a lot of players are rated too highly for their current skill level. There are way more overrated players than underrated at this stage, and it really hurts the league and those players themselves in many cases.

5) Edit: Also, if the MMR thing actually works as intended in the future, we can try a season with that as the basis as well. That remains to be seen though, so it's not really realistic to suggest it yet.

1) Ogron is our local historian that can bring stats up into the conversation. Stats arent everything I know but they play a role. I'm not saying he should overrule racka with warbirds, but I am saying why he has valid opinions on it. We probably shouldn't have anyone captaining rate people unless it's done by all participating captains, and I missed the stream but it should be done by at least 3 people per division.

2) I agree, but we have players that abuse the shit out of this and tank their ratings on purpose because well some people are dinks.

3) I ASSUME like this happened to avoid people just stacking one league and ignoring the other two. It makes being a captain more challenging.

4) As much as I'd hate to admit it, being a shit 6.5 Javelin myself, we shouldn't have to put in 6/6.5* players, they are awful. Here is just another off the wall suggestion, we could make a minimum requirement of 7* to participate. If someone is 6.5 6.0 6.5 they can't even sign up. There are many bad 7* players that at least practice over the years to try to improve, a 6* is usually unplayable player that either can't or won't get any better.

5) Initially MMR will probably suck but if we are patient with it, it might be a great idea!

[RageRitual]

way too much inflation in ratings based on personal bias. you honestly can't have this many 10-stars for instance. here's some ratings quickly adjusted based on my opinion, and yes i don't give a fuck if someone is butthurt about losing half a rating or more. star cap should be based on average rating of top 70 (or 75) players in a 6-team format which in this instance would have been somewhere around 69 to 69.5 star cap.

https://puu.sh/JazSm/049ea2860a.png

This is what we need, a few key people from the community to say fuck the egos and bring inflated ratings down.

Turban for president!
But not for shark fuck your tks!

[Jones]

It's just basing giving people headaches again

[RageRitual]

It's just basing giving people headaches again

Not the intent with the post, I am not here crying about losing some match somewhere, you win some you lose some. I am opening up a dialogue to hopefully gather some ideas to help improve future seasons of the only TW event I enjoy participating in.

[Jones]

you win some you lose some

It's all a game to me! \m/

[Exalt]

The difference between TWL and DT is TWL caters to high level players. It's generally speaking the top few teams and the rest get smashed, so there really isn't a point for mid or low level players to even participate. DT is supposed to cater to mid level players, it's the mid level players that are usually the most active and keep the zone alive.

This is the main complaint about this current TWDT format though, as the mid-level players are the ones benching right now in favor of 10*s and 6*s. I realize there are a couple of teams that play all mid-level players, but the majority of the mid-level guys are not getting playtime or getting very little. The lowest-tier players are getting disproportionate amounts of it right now in leagues they largely don't even enjoy. These aren't guys that log in during the week to practice that ship they are playing every Sunday either, so this isn't suddenly encouraging basers to play dueling leagues or vice-versa. It's simply happening because the low * cap and low amount of teams combined to create a huge bottleneck where the majority of the playerbase can't play. 10*s aren't going to be put in spec, but adding them means 6*s have to play to compensate. These are spots taken away from players that actually enjoy these ships and are thus higher rated, rather than the 6*s who clearly don't. It just seems counter-productive to what the league is "supposed" to be about if what you said is true.

The reason having no * cap makes sense is the other reason TWDT exists, which is to force talent to be spread around, rather than everyone stacking on one or two teams like TWL. For whatever reason, the playerbase in this game cannot stop themselves from stacking when given the chance, so TWDT makes that not really possible to do. With enough teams and competent captains (and seperate drafts for dueling/basing), * caps shouldn't even matter. If there are 8 teams and 8 10*s in each league, and you stop drafting for 3 leagues at once and separate them, then hypothetically each 10* would land on a separate team. Problem solved instantly without needing a * cap. No ratings of players needed to begin with. The only players this would hurt are the true 6*s and such who otherwise would get plenty of playtime in a * cap league, yet frankly, they aren't new players so the fault eventually lies on them for not improving, right?

[apt]

It's just basing giving people headaches again

unfort basing is the most complicated system in tw. javs and wbs are pretty straight forward, from the gameplay to the position count.

like comparing 5 players playing a game of HORSE vs 10 players playing a game of basketball.

[RageRitual]

This is the main complaint about this current TWDT format though, as the mid-level players are the ones benching right now in favor of 10*s and 6*s. I realize there are a couple of teams that play all mid-level players, but the majority of the mid-level guys are not getting playtime or getting very little. The lowest-tier players are getting disproportionate amounts of it right now in leagues they largely don't even enjoy. These aren't guys that log in during the week to practice that ship they are playing every Sunday either, so this isn't suddenly encouraging basers to play dueling leagues or vice-versa. It's simply happening because the low * cap and low amount of teams combined to create a huge bottleneck where the majority of the playerbase can't play. 10*s aren't going to be put in spec, but adding them means 6*s have to play to compensate. These are spots taken away from players that actually enjoy these ships and are thus higher rated, rather than the 6*s who clearly don't. It just seems counter-productive to what the league is "supposed" to be about if what you said is true.

The reason having no * cap makes sense is the other reason TWDT exists, which is to force talent to be spread around, rather than everyone stacking on one or two teams like TWL. For whatever reason, the playerbase in this game cannot stop themselves from stacking when given the chance, so TWDT makes that not really possible to do. With enough teams and competent captains (and seperate drafts for dueling/basing), * caps shouldn't even matter. If there are 8 teams and 8 10*s in each league, and you stop drafting for 3 leagues at once and separate them, then hypothetically each 10* would land on a separate team. Problem solved instantly without needing a * cap. No ratings of players needed to begin with. The only players this would hurt are the true 6*s and such who otherwise would get plenty of playtime in a * cap league, yet frankly, they aren't new players so the fault eventually lies on them for not improving, right?

Uncapped is the wrong direction to go, we already have this in another event, that is what cups are for. We have too many inflated ratings and not enough difference between them. If we can get the ratings to work better, then we can decide on a proper star cap.

There is no way hulk is only half a star better than mark. I mean everyone loves mark I get it, he's a great guy but that doesn't mean he should be rated 9.5.

Ratings should be based on how well the person can help you win the game not a popularity contest. Can anyone think of a good reason to not allow 11 and 12* for players to create a larger gap between the players?