TWD v.2

[skyforger]

The next league should:

• return Squads into league play
• be inclusive to Steamers and current pubbers who for various reasons are not involved in leagues
• have a competetive outlet for current veterans

Introducing TWD v.2

• Use the existing functional TWD infrastructure

A problem with TWD in the past has been that the top players stack together and there is little motivation to involve novice players in successful squads. While we have seen new player squads form and be very active, they are devastated in the ladder ranking to a point where it is demotivational to continue beyond being a pub squad. Vet squads had little incentive to add newbies in their ranks. This needs to change, to retain new players we need them to have a good time in league and squad play – possibly the best aspect of SS.

• Tweak ratings mechanism for games

At the core keep TWD as it's always been - anyone can play anyone anytime. Need to strike a balance where TWD rewards not only skill but also activity in a way that TWD regular season in theory can be won by having a really active new players. Yet it cannot be so heavily weighted to activity, that a squad of mediocre activity veterans don't have a chance to make the playoffs. My initial idea for the rating system is simple: 1 point for participation, 2 points for winning.

Example:
$Flabby$ vs Elusive SCORE: 02:21-15:00 Rating change: $Flabby$ +1 point (participation), Elusive +3 points (participation + winning).

This incentivizes squads to TWD any time they have enough online regardless of lineup. This also incentivizes squads to recruit active pubbers and hooked Steamers to get in as many games as possible, at the same time still requiring elite level veterans for a chance of playoff success.

• Manager medals

Regular season champion. Playoff champion. The over-achiever (vote based or based on TSL rating of his playerbase). In the future - best new manager, etc. The point is to motivate captainship roles and creation of squads.

• Draft squads in the mix with classic squads

Run signups for a draft from squadless players and players that prefer a draft atmosphere to squadding. Run ads for this option like for TWDT. Draft squads and possibly attach a veteran player with a successful captainship record as a mentor. Point for this is again maximum involvement of every type of player and concerns about lack of existing squads.

• Scheduled games

Multiple options to go about this. Think wins should carry extra weight in points compared to impromptu matchups. Could require a round robin or a min amount of scheduled games played in a season or have no requirements.
Scheduled games as well as other perks can be worked out and added at a later point but a season should be kicked off asap for Steam Visibility at the latest.

• Playoffs (TWD Cup)

Top squads in each division qualify to playoffs. Number of playoff spots announced around mid season. With 6 competing squads – 4 spots. 10 squads – 6 spots etc. These would likely be hosted in a seperate arena. This will be the part where the veterans get to shine and hopefully xp something mimicking TWL for a weekend or three. The quantity and quality of competition will let us gauge the viability to re-introduce a classic TWL as a seperate elite league at a later point.

• Needed to get this rolling ASAP:

Go ahead from zone owners, changes to TWD ratings code by qan (crux), TWD site and forum news updates for a new season, support from staff for advertising, drafting and playoff hosting. Optional: volunteers for progress/hot-or-not writers.

[Wirah]

What do you think about relaxing the TWD alias checks? Personally I think it's ugly that a new Steam player may login, see a TWD advert and follow the !signup prompts and get blocked by some 'pending' state while TWD-Ops alias check them. Or do we auto-approve TWD signups if there are 0 aliases found?

Bottom line -> It would be great if we can massively reduce the time it takes to onboard a new player and get them actually PLAYING a TWD game.

I don't really care if vets want to play as a Legion Of Boom for whatever reason. It adds some mystery and drama, not always bad thing. Activity is activity. Plus, it's up to them if they want to go for a medal on a different name from their main - it won't be transferred over.

Of course a new player signing up in 20 seconds is fine, but they can't play without a squad. I think the draft idea could work. Could take it further and even auto-draft new players to a team. Not entirely sure how that would work, but caps may be able to register their squadpass & squadchat to the bot and newplayers get given the info after signup. Hm.

Could take it further than really promote activity by having captainless pseudo-squads that consist of new players who were drafted in simply by signing up. How does a squad work without a captain? Well, rather than a captain typing !accept Envy you may see the following:

TWDBot> 24 is challenging you to a 3v3 TWJD match vs Envy. Respond with ::!p to show interest.
Steamkid22> ::!p
Newdude> ::!p
Justgothere> ::!p
TWDBot> A game of 3v3 vs Envy will begin in ?go twjd. Game accepted by (Steamkid22, Newdude22, Justgothere)

Interesting idea. Not sure if it would work but let me know what you think.

Definitely like the idea that captains receive a Captain Medal. That can prompt people to start squads. We can also backtrack and award them to previous league caps so it feels like more of an established thing.

Your ratings sound cool, although who wants points, or $ values. Give me TWD Coins!

[skyforger]

Very good point on the alias checks, you are absolutely spot on imo. Don't know how alias checks work tbf, but the goal should 100% be to get new players rolling without hiccups as soon as they !signup. Could still do the alias checks of !signups, but not block players meanwhile its ongoing. If it happens that someone has felt the need to get on 2+ squads simultaneously, have a talk with them and some backup rules along the lines that league staff can disable one of their names at discretion. Also could do more throughout checks for playoffs.

The pseudo-squads are indeed an interesting and ambitious idea. Though, no idea how challenging/feasible it is to code that for our devs?

Give me TWD Coins!

Pub pop loves their pubbux. Give a decent pubbux prize for signing up to TWD and also pubbux for playing/winning!

[skyforger]

That pseudo-squad idea got me brainstorming, could do it like this for the 1st time:

Have squad(s) made for new players specifically. Have ZHs mentor/cap these squads (they will be allowed to double squad for this purpose if need be). Additionally, allow other squads to volunteer to take in and mentor a Steamer. When Newdude22 sees an ad for TWD in pub and !signups, bot replies:

TWDBot> Thank you for signing up, Newdude22! You will be contacted within xx hours/mins by a Zone Helper to get you going.

Bot spits out a list of recent !signups to ZHs when prompted. They message the new players who have expressed interest by a !signup and help them properly signup, squadjoin and use a chat (this comes harder for newbies than we realize). This can be done in part by copy/pasting a link to a howto to get them started as hopefully we get a lot of new players.

[qan]

The rating change would be an easy one with big consequences. We all remember those sad weeks before TWL in the past when the highest-rated squads would stop accepting challenges in an attempt to hold on to their places. The fact that not playing has ever been beneficial to placement in a league should have raised red flags for everyone, but somehow, the mentality of "that's just the way it's always been" overcame our ability to think about it rationally. Some have proposed ratings decay for inactive squads, but I think it's smarter to simply have every game played increase your rating, rather than trying to attach it to some idea of ELO. We're far beyond the point where we use TWD ratings to judge who is the "best" squad. (And it's quite easy to simply stack a squad, which is what's happened.) Don't think anyone would really have a problem with rating rewarding activity if it means more games are played. Any time people hesitate to play because they're afraid it will negatively affect rating is a problem.

Currently ratings work like this: you lose as much as the other team gains. If the difference in rating is high, the higher-ranked team earns next to nothing for winning, and risks losing close to the maximum 50 rating points if they lose. Vice versa for the lower ranked team. (For the most part, this means it's not ever worthwhile for a high-ranked team to battle a lower-ranked one.) For a 500 rating difference, the point gain possible for the high ranked team is less than 3. And almost 47 for the low-ranked team.

A new system could be used, but we should keep it somewhat close to what we use now -- at the very least, starting at 1000 and going up from there. A minimum point gain would work, regardless of win/loss status. Then a win bonus added on top that scales based on how far apart the ratings are, with ratings losses removed entirely. I don't think this would cause any problems and could be pretty easily dropped in.

[qan]

For signing up, in most cases TWD ops should not have to force-register a name or do any alias checks. Even if you have a hundred aliases, as long as they're not registered, you're fine. If one is, you can log on and reset it yourself without help from an Op. If you lost the password, an Op can reset it manually. I don't think there's much of a barrier here, except possibly in the case of Linux/Mac players. But most people running on Linux/Mac are seasoned vets anyhow.

Draft squads would be tough to pull off, though cool. MatchBot code is a gd mess and totally built around the idea of a squad structured the way it currently is. Might as well just do squad v world in javduel/wbduel/base; the draft squad wouldn't be able to affect rating anyhow.

Scheduled games getting a ratings boost would be possible, but we'd need some kind of automated scheduling system if so. Best we have is the TWL one, which we could use to schedule TWD games and increase activity. Would be tricky to have it affect ratings, though, unless done manually by a mod. That would have its own problems, requiring oversight.

Newbie squads have been tried in the past with limited success. Might be worth a shot if someone's interested. This sort of thing requires interest and passion. Attaching it to staff would almost guarantee it fails. Best to create one squad and focus on it if it's a project you're interested in.

To support such an effort, a more accurate free agent list would be useful. Posted in the TSL thread about it but it'd be great to have some kind of "looking for squad" list that players could easily join after signing up in TWD or playing TSL. Bot could nudge them every so often to do so, if they're squadless. Then any cap can check the list and recruit. Could include their TSL rating in the list as well, if available.

[IxaDor]

I just wanted to throw an idea I have to ensure high ranking squads don't refuse to play in effort to place hold position on ladder. I was thinking that if you reward activity, you should also punish inactivity. I was thinking top 2-4 squads have a weekly quota to play (x)amount of games (or to build hype, top 2-4 play 2-4 scheduled games per week), which not only generates activity but also gives top squads an additional challenge to overcome. If they fail to meet the activity quota for the week, they get docked enough points to set them outside the top 2-4 squads. Just an idea. Point is to ensure every squad is active, more so the best ones since they are the most challenging and fun to play against as well as learn from.

Also, something has to be done to make squad joining easier for new comers. TWD website could use some love too. I mentioned this before, but is it possible for players who join a squad in game that is registered on website be automatically be placed on roster removing the process of having to log in to website to join one? I'd be done to do it manually for people if someone can show me how. There would just have to be some way for mods to know that people ?squadjoined so we can hop on site and roster them asap.

I got to run but appreciate all the suggestions/ideas posted here. Can't wait to start working with you guys to ensure this happens! Take care.

-IxaDor

[qan]

is it possible for players who join a squad in game that is registered on website be automatically be placed on roster removing the process of having to log in to website to join one?

The TWD website is absolute, pure 100% misery to work on, but I think I can see an easy way to do this. There's no way to see when a player ?squadjoins unfortunately. But if a squaddie is walking them through it, we could have a TWDBot command that applies them to the squad they are joined to automatically. The cap would then log in and approve their app.

This would be most easily accomplished by removing the 6 hour rule (can't change squads 6 hours after joining one) which might be outdated anyhow. Does this rule serve any purpose in 2018? Can it be abused?

[skyforger]

This would be most easily accomplished by removing the 6 hour rule (can't change squads 6 hours after joining one) which might be outdated anyhow. Does this rule serve any purpose in 2018? Can it be abused?

It's obsolete since we have !borrowing anyhow, should get rid of it if it helps making the process of joining more streamlined.

Speaking of !borrowing, it's another thing that needs to be considered depending on how competitive minded we want an actual season to be. a) keep it as is b) reduce the rating for borrowed games c) borrowed games don't affect rating d) scrap borrowing. My vote is to keep it as is since squads aren't forced to accept !borrow requests, maybe the rating multiplier can be changed from .66 to .5.

[mtine]

No it doesn't. Not at this point anyhow. And automatic signing up to a squad without having to go through all the trouble on thw TWD site would be a welcome thing. Especially for new players.

[IxaDor]

This would be most easily accomplished by removing the 6 hour rule (can't change squads 6 hours after joining one) which might be outdated anyhow. Does this rule serve any purpose in 2018? Can it be abused?

I am in favor of it's removal and really like the direction in your thought process on how to handle new players as well as old joining a squad. To add to this, I have noticed that a lot of captains aren't as active and that accepting applications can be a lengthy wait most times. Can we make it so Assistants can accept applications on website? If a captain can't possibly handle the newly accepted player (rare for 2018 I am sure) they can always remove them. Idea is to ensure people are able to join a squad and play with their squad as soon as possible, preferably right after they join, rather than days later having to wait. Thanks!

-IxaDor