DYNAMIC LINK -> Between TWL and TWD

[BooBiesYaY]

this starts make sense good one apt. +1

dsb I love ya man, and I don't even know if its in your power or viable for you alone to help reshape the leagues, but the monopolistic hoarding of talent has to go at some point. you cant have the top 3-4 squads have a roster of 20-25 of all pure talent and vets and have most of the others mixed or pure novices.

of course its human nature to for groups of your friends which result in the top squads/talent but there have to be rules in place just as the government has rules on monopolies in business. otherwise, there really is no legitimate competition or fairness all around.

and I would highly suggest mods, upper staff, and their aliases, should not be running or associated with those top squads unless they are taking in both vets and novices alike, otherwise its an direct or indirect approval of the current monopolistic behavior in the leagues.

just my 2 cents.

[Conspiracy]

BooBiesYaY thanks. me and reckful are going to discuss and see what we can do but i agree with this roster cap thing. it should be max 20 per squad imo.

just to take those 2 cents for what im thinkin.

[Shaddowknight]

Its definately not too late to change roster caps, as the qualificatin period still leaves time for other squads to get their games in. (squads needing to meet game req would also boost twd activity). 5 weekends till first week of twl, changes can be made, but its gotta be now, we cant wait on it.

[Reckful]

Ok I had some talks back and forth with dsb and hes gonna come up with a plan to implement a 25 man roster cap in twd smoothly so this change should be done in the next few weeks!

[Ricko]

hasn't it been said a hundred times that limiting twd roster will just piss people off? Think of the more inactive players who come on 1-2 times a month and want to twd with their old ss friends....those people will now be off the roster and be unable to play with these friends so they won't bother logging on again.

[Reckful]

thats one of the reasons I dont want to do it ricko =p but seems the plan atm is to limit it during twl quals + season and open it up for off season again

[Ricko]

maybe it would just be best if we got someone to code it so that captains can highlight their potential twl candidates (max 25) on their twd roster so that their name's on the twd roster have green ticks by them. That way people will know if they are being considered for twl or not and they can stay/leave if they want to. Forcing people to leave a squad isn't the best way.

[Ephemeral]

Apt,
IMO we are dancing around the ‘hard’ questions.
Some people might believe that TWL brings vets back into the game; even if it just for 2 months. Is this due to the fact that TWL is considered more of a exclusive league than TWD? Or is it due to the fact that these players show up during the winter months? If there was just a single league would these players just go away and not come back? At what point does TWL go on life support and start doing more harm to the zone than good for the zone? Should the zone be making decisions and chasing population based upon players who only bother to play for 2 months out of the year?

Adding the functionality that is described in this thread certainly would not hurt, but will it really help? Is time best spent on something like this when things like the TWL rules are a cluster fuck that results in endless drama and appeals each year? Should any time be spent on trying to improve/salvage TWL or is it better to retire it while it still has at least a little bit of respectability?

IMO we need leadership who is willing to answer these kinds of hard questions.
eph

[Ricko]

The idea of killing TWL is just stupid, hence why no one has even bothered to answer such a question eph. Why would you kill the one league that brings back vets to the game? Get rid of the vets and you lose 60% of the current tw population and there would be no people left to speak of TW/subspace's history to newer players....one of the things that makes the game so attractive.

It's not hard to run TWL to coincide with TWD, or to run the leagues at the same time as pub....this is what you have different heads of staff for different departments for; so you can run multiple things at the same time. Slimming down on leagues such as TWEL and TWDT were good moves so that we could FOCUS on the ones that matter, removing the ones that matter and keep people here is just pulling the plug.

[Ephemeral]

Ricko,
Do you think that there will ever become a point in time that TWL should not be held?

Pretty sure that we all can agree that TWL no longer contributes anything in terms of bringing new players into the zone (not even sure that anyone can make the argument that TWD even does this). Has anyone heard any new player even espouse an aspiration to ‘make it into TWL’ in the last 3 years?

If not, is having only 2-3 competitive teams in a season a benefit for the zone (and not just the 40 players that come back to play)? And is anyone really sure that some of these guys wouldn’t come back even if TWL wasn’t running?

My point is that this zone has historically ALWAYS been considered ‘from the bottom up’ from those who make the decisions. And just like this current suggestion, the decisions are made in the context of ‘well, it can’t hurt so let’s try it’.

IMO simply making ‘bottom up’ changes in the context of ‘at least when we make changes it makes people feel like we are doing something’ has not reversed the shrinking population and slow death that is occurring. Frankly we also have other examples that we can learn from, the HZ zone epitomizes what this zone will look like if we keep the refusing to face the hard decisions from the top down. A zone that is dead 80% of the time and is maintained strictly for the experienced players who have played it for decades.

Of course the default behavior is to do what has always been done. Perhaps I am wrong, perhaps adding things like some check marks on the web site is not a BandAid and will ignite renewed interest and help the zone grow. Time will be the judge.
eph

[Ricko]

Maybe TWL shouldn't be held in the future if our population continues to shrink, but if we see a rise in population from new player retention then killing it is pointless as these players will eventually develop to become good enough to enter twl. There are still 4-5 solid squads in each league who can compete for the title really, has twl ever really had more than 3-4 squads who can compete for the title? Yes twl used to have 16 squads per league but the vast majority weren't good at all, and people seem to forget this.

Killing TWL kills the only real competitive aspect to trenchwars, and with it a lot of people's motivation to log on - I myself wouldn't continue playing if twd and twl were removed. There has to be something for new players to build towards, for the game to really have an objective for players to push for....if pub was the only playing option then what would be the point of new players sticking at the game? To continue playing the endless cycle that is pub? (Yes it is fun, but only for so long). Yes there are pure pub players that just want to pub and nothing else, but these aren't the majority.

[Ephemeral]

Ricko,
Understood. And frankly I am not that adverse to this specific idea but just feel that this thread clearly demonstrates how the zone has traditionally worked. Allow me to elaborate on ‘bottom up’ vs. ‘top down’ thinking…


Bottom Up thinking
“Hey we have Joe over here and he says he can develop a new app that will allow some people to log into the TW chat on their mobile devices so let’s do it and see what happens.” Or, ‘let’s hold a zone meeting and ask for player input and ideas’.
We make decisions without much context and no way to ever understand if their implementation is successful or not. The zone simply exists with no one being held responsible for bad decisions (other than having the occasional flame in this forum like ‘hey, how is that Descension going?’). We make decisions and implementing things just because we can and they sound like a generally good idea.

Top Down thinking
Our objective is to keep the zone alive and perhaps even grow. Before any idea or new feature is implemented we figure out a way to measure its success or failure based upon this objective. Doesn’t matter if Eph or some other ‘vet’ likes it or not, doesn’t matter if the decision means that someone loses popularity, doesn’t matter if it means closing down something that was once a great feature. People can be held responsible for their decisions since it would become possible to determine if they made the correct decision or not.


We have allowed this zone to be run for years with ‘bottom up’ thinking. People come up with ideas and they float upward. The traditional ‘shot gun’ approach of consuming peoples energy and goodwill in hopes that SOMETHING might work out only works when you have an abundance of resources and mistakes can easily be absorbed, I do not see how anyone can say that we should stay this course.
IMO the window of opportunity for changing to ‘top down’ thinking is closing; the population level is very close to passing critical mass. But targeted ‘top down’ thinking is far better suited when you have precious few resources to work with and any major mistake has the potential to drive home the death nail.
eph

[Crescent Seal]

the foundation of this entire zone is twl. start from pub, progress to twd, and then finally to twl. back in the day, twl would keep the old players interested and give new players something to work towards. it worked fine when the population was booming. now however we have giant gaps in skill and experience. it is almost impossible for new players to close that gap since most of the active twl players have an average experience of 7-10 years. a newbie would probably have to play the game for hours and it still wouldn't be enough. say what you will about this game but I believe it has one of the hardest learning curves ever. even if you go afk for a week, once you return you will need to "unrust" to do well. newbies nowadays do not have the time or patience to get decent because their initial opinion of the game is "wtf a mad old 2d game in space y bother?". if you get rid of twl then twd will have no purpose and i do believe many people will quit. i myself do not enjoy playing in pub for more than 5-10 minutes. we need to find a way to keep the old players competitive and the new players interested in getting better. at this point it is too late to do anything. staff has had that donation money for over 3 years now and nothing was done when player interest to make big changes was at its peak.

[Shaddowknight]

The problem is, there aren't enough vets to make twl look worth it for newplayer, when other fairly new players are able to play (due to not having enough active higher skilled players to actuall fill all the twl rosters). If more vets came back to fill TWL up, it would have more appeal to both pubbers and TWD'ers. Diamond's hold the same appeal when anyone can get them easily at the corner Seven-Eleven.