TWDT Season 28 Announcement

[RageRitual]

I'm just wanting the most competitive of games. I guess being a dumpster trash newb, this participation league will be good for you. Ill be in chaos

The thing is, we need different types of leagues, the same ones over and over gets dull. It's good to have something like a star capped league, then an uncapped league back2back. Regardless of what you think about TWDT it has kept the zone alive for quite some time now. Nobody wants to have to play a 6* player, but honestly that is the captains fault. Don't stack your line so much you have to play 6s and you wont have to play them. The point of the *cap is to prevent stacking. TWL is for stacking. TWL also kills the zone. Leave stacking in TWL.

Cups are a good middle ground between TWL and DT.

[Geio]

Can we just get rid of the dumb star cap already? Sign me up. Show rate is probably same as tw cup 50/50

[wiibimbo]

I'm just wanting the most competitive of games. I guess being a dumpster trash newb, this participation league will be good for you. Ill be in chaos

You won't see me in TW anymore because I retired end of April, remember? And then you tried to follow me to HZ and ruin my fun but got axed from my team, remember?

GG kiddo.

[Vys]

The thing is, we need different types of leagues, the same ones over and over gets dull. It's good to have something like a star capped league, then an uncapped league back2back. Regardless of what you think about TWDT it has kept the zone alive for quite some time now. Nobody wants to have to play a 6* player, but honestly that is the captains fault. Don't stack your line so much you have to play 6s and you wont have to play them. The point of the *cap is to prevent stacking. TWL is for stacking. TWL also kills the zone. Leave stacking in TWL.

Cups are a good middle ground between TWL and DT.

Makes no difference to me, ill be playing a competitive league in chaos when this is running. I wish you all the best.

[Vys]

You won't see me in TW anymore because I retired end of April, remember? And then you tried to follow me to HZ and ruin my fun but got axed from my team, remember?

GG kiddo.

I left and joined vios team, I watched you in your match and your passing (aim) is dogshit over there too

[Dwopple]

Alright, keep the discussion productive please. Take the shittalking to discord or in-game. Everyone pushing for a no star cap TWDT, the answer is a hard "no". That's reserved for TWL and TW CUP.

Lee's proposed changes are definitely polarizing and have sparked some good discussion, which is great. Not every change will be 100% accepted. In past seasons we dealt with a large volume of "TWDT matches are too low quality". Will the proposed tier system improve or degrade the match quality? If you think the latter, what would you suggest otherwise?

Feel free to continue discussing objectively or subjectively.

However, keep this thread productive and avoid derailing with interpersonal trash talk.

Thank you in advance.

[Riverside]

I think it could be helpful if there were a set number of rating slots allocated for each *. I would recommend keeping the 0.5*s.

• Reverse the process when rating: do it by asking "okay who are the 5-6 rated 10 in this league? Who are the 8-10 players rated 9.5? Etc. To help get the number of players per slot, ask ChatGBT for options and/or consider it being % based.
• When rating players, I'd encourage consideration of MMR rating and previous leagues experiences
• Provide more players with opportunities to contribute their rating.
• If a person rating does not know the * of a player in a league, ask that they skip that player for someone who might. Margins often make a difference, especially for players who may not be as active.

[wiibimbo]

You want some constructice criticism, Dwop? Fine.

How about why you always only talk about 9 and 10 star players as opposed to 6 and 7 star players for which TWDT was meant to in the first place? Why isn't this draft tourny all-inclusive after all these years? Why do only a handful of people get to play while the majority just sits in spec and watches?

Fix that and a lot of other things and maybe, just maybe the game won't be as dogshit as it currently is. Though most of the nice people ain't ever coming up so maybe just keep it as it is and let us enjoy our forum banter with idiots like vys and zidane.

[wiibimbo]

PS. vys, how does it feel being recruited by a guy who can't speak his own mother tongue and had to invent his own language so he can function semi-moderately in a dysfunctional society? Hmm?

[Mythril]

I think representing this tiered system as moving away from the star cap is a pretty huge misunderstanding. There will still be a cap since the flexibility of lineups is something that will be preserved. Call it a salary/value/star/tier cap - it doesn't matter, there will still be a limit to how much value you can add to any lineup.

The only differences I see in this new proposal is we're replacing the word star with tier and reducing the number of tiers from nine to three - that is the problem. I'm not going to argue that nine is the perfect number to represent different levels of skill and impact in subspace, but I'm 100% certain the number is not three.

Placing players into three tiers would not make ratings more accurate, it would do the complete opposite. The skill gap which used to be represented in more than three tiers will not magically disappear just because the additional tiers to place people in longer exists. There is an obvious difference worth representing and balancing for in the rating system between a 9* and 10*. Same as 7.5* and 8.5*. Someone being .5* off in their rating has been enough to give a lineup an edge in the star cap era. If someone is a full 1* off, that's considered criminal around here. Yet this system has a 1* difference baked into every tier. How can you create an even playing field for all teams in a capped system if a 10* player, who has a higher expected output and impact on winning, pays the same cost towards the cap as a 9* player?

That's why I also don't see how this makes the league more inclusive. There is a massive disadvantage for players who arbitrarily sit at the lower end of each of these three tiers. They have to compete against players on their own team for playtime who may sit on the higher end of a tier, and then even if they do get playtime, they're expected to outperform their rating by what was previously considered a two-tier skill gap.

Playing lineups which are 2* below the cap has been a great way to lose games in TWDT. A three-tiered system would misrate more than half the playerbase to the point a 2-4* difference between lineups will not just be possible, it's going to be guaranteed. It's also a mathematical certainty that every team will not be able to meet the star number of the best drafted team in a snake draft. We now have more data than ever on who impacts winning with thousands of games played in MMR. I'm not sure why we would move to a system that implies we actually know less than ever about the differences in impact between players in the game, specifically for warbird and jav.

[LeeRomeno]

Some comments on the topic. The proposed changes to draft league are not there because of just doing something different, but rather possible solutions towards fixing some issues that have been constant in previous draft leagues. I do realize there cannot be a perfect system and each system fcks some target group, so the goal is to find some sort of compromise.
So lets look at them again:
tier system - the constant theme about complaints has more or less been related to vps and freq vp limits.
People who have been rated too high (and its quite common, especially in lower tiers, but happens elsewhere as well), will face very difficult times in getting any gametime.
People who have been underrated (usually reasons are people coming back after inactivity, but there are other reasons, some people actually do get better still) will have sort of free spot on freq. As caps always want to max out (its psycological i guess) the vp limit, this also mean 8 star player who can be actually better then 8.5 player or similar skill level, will have much higher chance of sitting in spec, just because someone rated him 0.5 vps less. Lower the ratings go, higher the issue goes, in reality, as i stated, the biggest issue in 6-7 vp players is their unstability and performing game in game out with good result. Low vp player can on a good day pull a great performance, while 7 star player can sometimes easily suck as 6 vp on.
So this made me think maybe low tier players should just all get 1 rating and its up to them to prove their worth vs someone else in same tier, but at least its dependant on their skills not if they are rathed 6.5 or 7.
But misratings happen in other groups as well, so that brought me to think that in reality there are 3 tier pilots in tw: a) the game deciders, who everyone wants on their freq b) good fillers, who dont play in twl finals, but otherwise are useful and can hold their own (aka mid-tier) and c) liability people everyone hates playing with on same freq in mmr, but who occasionally can surprise and pull decent games.
Draft leagues always have 2 biggest values - they include more people then no rating based leagues and they are generally more interesting competitive wise as skill is spread out equally.
So in my eyes, the tier system will be upgrade in this, there is 1 slot reserved for that low tier and rest divided equally, so that majority of top players get to play no matter if they are rated 10 or 9.5 or 9. What group some player belongs, i truly believe this can be discussed within the vet community of the zone. Ideally, the number of top tier would be dividable between the number of squads, so that each team gets those 2 or 3 top tier pilots making the league nicely equal in skill. This will eliminate the situations where top players have to spec, just because that 6 star or 6.5 star player doesnt show, which are clearly very annoying. It will also solve the issue that top players always argue in having higher freq vp levels, while that would exclude the bunch of low stars in getting any gametime.
Also dividing the leagues means that players can sign up to the leagues they want to play, so that we dont have base teams having to play jessup or yogi just because he is only one with correct vp available currently or forcing mouse into wb for same reason.

it is valid concern that what happens if 10 star cap gets to pick first and gets another 10 star. Previous system would mean this freq needs some really low player to compensate, new system not necessarily. BUt there are ways to counter it. For example giving handicap to caps who are not in top tier, also doing draft for each tier separately. So after top tier is drafted, mid and low tier are drafted in reverse order, so cap being last in order will at least get to pick the best from mid-tier/low-tier bunch.

[zidane]

respectfully you don't know what you're talking about and you should not be making changes like this without consulting the players, and specifically the people who have ran TWDT.

lets think about a hypothetical example... Ease (6K MMR) same tier as Draft (4.5K MMR) in jav. what do you think is going to happen in these games? The idea is complete ass and introducing new handicaps during the draft to solve a problem you've reintroduced doesn't make the idea any less terrible.

[Rab]

Almost 2 weeks since the announcement, I'd like some more detail:
- how many of each tier can a team have?
- what is the "change of game order"?
- are we meant to have separate base and duelling signup lists?

[wiibimbo]

The only thing I actually miss in TW is playing with Mythril. Those games were so much fun. One of the best players to ever grace this game. Period.

[LeeRomeno]

respectfully you don't know what you're talking about and you should not be making changes like this without consulting the players, and specifically the people who have ran TWDT.

lets think about a hypothetical example... Ease (6K MMR) same tier as Draft (4.5K MMR) in jav. what do you think is going to happen in these games? The idea is complete ass and introducing new handicaps during the draft to solve a problem you've reintroduced doesn't make the idea any less terrible.

First of all draft is 8* player, ease probably 10, they wouldnt be in the same tier by any logic?

Secondly, this is a draft league where there are at least 8 teams hopefully. Last draft league we had exactly 5 wbs 9.5 or above and 7 javs, league before that the number was around 10-11.
The logic of setting tiers is very simple. Lets say we have 8 teams, this means 16 top players will be considered top-tier, 2 per each squad. This means freq has also 2 top-tier slots.
We can also go with 24 top pilots and guarantee 3 top-tier slots on freq. (Base will have separate logic here). After we make the draft for those top pilots, we reverse the draft order. So 8th picker in first round will get theoretically the best pilot from mid-tier. So i do not see your scenario happening in real life.

Tier system will guarantee that the best players in zone, who have signed up, actually get to play and are not dependant on low stars showing (this is constant theme in draft leagues).
But it still gives chances for other tier players to play part in the league. Reverse draft for mid and low tier should balance the freq composition, but of course, in the end caps choices will have big part to play in successes.

Who belongs to what tier, this will be purely based on zone and top player contributions. In EG we used a system where around 9-10 top pilots rated each participant. We then made a sheet, where we removed the highest score and lowest score and took average of rest and then made sorted list from highest to lowest player. Would be ideal to use something like this for this league as well, mmr scores can be also taken into consideration, although especially among players who have not played it much, it can give some false indications.

So what exactly am i missing here, also i have talked about this with people who have hosted before, i didnt beg to host this, had actually no plans for it, but was noticed and offered, if i could run it as I had been throwing ideas about how the league can be improved.