My proposal to give TWD purpose again - Best of TWD

[Grasps]

Greetings everyone. So yea..my TWL Season 23 proposal was a total bust, I accept that and have come to grips that I am an idiot and that it was too soon to suggest we bring it back this fall. My train of thought with TWL was that it be ran after TWDT giving us 2 TWDT's a year and 2 TWL's. Majority has it that we should do 2 TWDT's, 2 other leagues like ie. TWEL and 1 TWL a year. That's great and am on board with that. My apologies for wasting anyone's time with that thread.

Moving on.

What I am writing about here and am to suggest is not a so much a league proposal but incentive to keep TWD active and to give games played in respective dueling arena's purpose once again, creating more meaningful games because as it stands currently, they don't account for anything. Being 1st on the TWD ladder doesn't mean anything either other than for bragging rights, just like the matches themselves.

So.

Here's what I was thinking we could do that would bolster activity, give meaning to games played again and at the same time reward squads and players based off their hard work and dedication to TW.

To get this started:

• We'd start Stage 1* September 1st; Resetting TWD ladder points to 0 and player stats to 0.
• Games will resume like normal.
• After a stage* concludes in 4 months time, the top 3 eligible squads from each division; warbird, javelin and base along with the top 10 players from each division will be recorded onto a BOT's (Best of TWD) website or twd.org (whichever is easier). Note: Am thinking for base instead of going with the top 10 best players we could maybe be more elaborate breaking it down to the 3 best spiders, sharks, terriers? Just an idea though obviously it would be simpler to just use the top 10 players based off their ratings regardless of ship. We could definitely play around with how to determine the best 10 basers whether its done per ship or not. Would be great for some vets like Ogron to help us figure out the best way to go about handling base. I just want to ensure that achieving a podium spot in each division is fair for everyone in every ship.
• Squads/players who are eligible will be documented onto the BOT website or respective page/link on twd.org like I said above, forever showcasing them for those who earned it. This is to recognize the hard work of teams, the best players and acknowledge their dedication to playing Trench Wars. It's basically a "Thank you" for keeping this game active that offers not only bragging rights but neat rewards too.
• Best of TWD rewards after a stage concludes for players will go out to the Top 3 of the 10 and will depend on where the player landed on the podium with a pubbux reward of something like; 1.5 million for 1st place, 1 million for 2nd and 500K for 3rd.
• After the season ends and all 3 stages are concluded (1 years time), any players who made the top 10 during the course of the season will get a simple pixel medal on their profile to show off. The medal itself will be the same for all divisions and will simply say something like "Best of TWD - Season 1" or "Best of TWD - 2019". If a player made it in the top 10 in multiple divisions over the course of the season, a fancier pixel medal should be given to reflect that but maybe it should only be for those who made it in the top 10 for ALL 3 divisions at some point during the season, not just 2.
• Squads won't get any special rewards for ranking in the top 3 at the end of a stage or season, just the placement on the Best of TWD website. I'm open to ideas for squad rewards though. Could be anything from an A1 graphic in the respective arena's they ranked top 3 in, pixel medal or ship skins like we see in elim. My thought is more or less to focus on the players that make up these great squads and reward them for being active and dedicated to TWD.

*Stages* - A stage will be 4 months long and there will be 3 stages per calendar year. After 3 stages are concluded, the season ends and a new one begins with, you guess it; 3 stages.

Ideas on eligibility and requirements:

• Squads wishing to be eligible must have no less than 50 games in TWDD/TWJD and 30 games in TWBD. A stage is 4 months long, would only be asking to have at least 12-13 games a month for TWDD/TWJD and 7-8 games a month in TWBD.
• Players to be eligible for a chance at the Top 10 must have 25 games in either TWDD/TWJD and 15 games in TWBD (half the amount required that squads need).
• Players or squads that are inactive for more than 14 days will have their ranking placements frozen until they become active again. Point is to avoid players and/or squads ranking up then sitting on their rankings like we've seen years ago for TWL. Only active squads/players are to be rewarded. No exceptions.
• Borrowing will NOT affect squads that use them to rank into the top 3. Borrowing is a choice between both teams, it's not mandatory. It's up to the players of those teams as to whether or not they will allow them and allow who.
• Borrowed players stats WILL count towards their Top 10 rankings.
• Players who get banned from staff for whatever reason will become ineligible for the remainder of the stage. Once the stage ends and a new one begins, they are welcome to participate once more.

Recap - TL'DR Version of what I am trying to get going here with TWD.

• Squads/Players duke it out to get on the Best of TWD list.
• Each season has 3 stages. Each stage last exactly 4 months.
• At beginning of stage, ladders and player stats are set to 0.
• Squads wishing to be eligible to cement their name on the "Best of TWD" list must play at least 50 games in TWDD/TWJD, 30 in TWBD.
• Players wishing to be eligible to cement their name on the "Best of TWD" list must play at least 25 games in TWDD/TWJD, 15 in TWBD.
• At the end of a stage, Top 10 players from TWDD/TWJD/TWBD are immortalized on "Best of TWD" website/section for that stage in the season.
• At the end of a stage, Top 3 squads from TWDD/TWJD/TWBD are immortalized on "Best of TWD" website/section for that stage in the season.
• At the end of a stage, Top 3 players from TWDD/TWJD/TWBD are rewarded with pubbux for that stage in the season.
• At the end of a stage, ladders and player stats are set to 0 and the next stage begins.
• At the end of a season and all 3 stages are concluded, ALL players who placed in the Top 10 during ANY stage of the season get a pixel medal. Players who placed in the Top 10 in multiple divisions get fancier medal.
• At the end of a season, a new one begins with the next stage starting.

The nice thing about this is that there are no finals, no messy playoffs and is something people can count on to always be going which is great when in-between leagues. This also encourages people to get together with their buds and play games and have fun. TWD would have purpose once more and there is great incentive for people to be actively playing games.

Anyways, that's all for now. Think I got most of it but I may add more if I realized I forgot something. This is more or less a rough draft of what I am thinking. Hopefully this suggestion goes better than my previous ones but we'll see. As always, I welcome your input and value your opinions. Hope everyone is doing well. Thanks for your time in reading this over. Cheers.

-Ixa

[Bosshawk]

as soon as u make something worth playing for... things will get abused.. .as it is borrowing is massively over abused..... because certain players only get borrowed onto teams they think are going to win and they are going to show good records to begin with.....

you should incorporate a slight penalty on points earned... since its all a math equation anyways... something like (And im grabbing these out of the air...) if you borrow 1 player its a 10% pen.. 2 players 20%.. 3players 30% ect...

as much as borrowing is in demand for games.. it has basically made twbd a glorified ?go base for top players to exclude ones they dont want.... and twdd and jd arent much different from wbduel and javduel...

we had a DD the other day where the squad we were playing against had 0 players from their squad in the game...how does this get allowed? utterly ridiculous and makes a joke out of the league....

I would love to see TWD mean something.. i mean it does give organized type play and structure.. but there was a time when twd meant something... its too easy to chalk it up to drop in pop.... players dont want to put themselves out there and run a squad and work on building and encouraging people to get involved.. they want a nice tight little elitist league they can control and stack squads in huge... and then those top squads borrow top notch players while only approving weaker players for weaker teams.... im a firm opinion that borrowing while increasing activity is truly horrible for TWD... especially when its abused and teams are borrowing players when they have players in the same arena on squad that could be playing...but they want to use better borrows to try to steal a win... its simply not squad vs squads anymore...

[Rab]

Twd doesn't matter because we're not 15 anymore.

[Exalt]

as soon as u make something worth playing for... things will get abused.. .as it is borrowing is massively over abused..... because certain players only get borrowed onto teams they think are going to win and they are going to show good records to begin with.....

you should incorporate a slight penalty on points earned... since its all a math equation anyways... something like (And im grabbing these out of the air...) if you borrow 1 player its a 10% pen.. 2 players 20%.. 3players 30% ect...

as much as borrowing is in demand for games.. it has basically made twbd a glorified ?go base for top players to exclude ones they dont want.... and twdd and jd arent much different from wbduel and javduel...

we had a DD the other day where the squad we were playing against had 0 players from their squad in the game...how does this get allowed? utterly ridiculous and makes a joke out of the league....

I would love to see TWD mean something.. i mean it does give organized type play and structure.. but there was a time when twd meant something... its too easy to chalk it up to drop in pop.... players dont want to put themselves out there and run a squad and work on building and encouraging people to get involved.. they want a nice tight little elitist league they can control and stack squads in huge... and then those top squads borrow top notch players while only approving weaker players for weaker teams.... im a firm opinion that borrowing while increasing activity is truly horrible for TWD... especially when its abused and teams are borrowing players when they have players in the same arena on squad that could be playing...but they want to use better borrows to try to steal a win... its simply not squad vs squads anymore...

I think you're generalizing a bit with saying borrows are excluding people. I'd say the majority of the time, squads borrow anyone available, which aren't always the best players around. It's just that certain types of players frequent twd arenas far more than others. I've also seen squads bench better players for weaker ones to increase the game difficulty and/or to make it more fair. Maybe they wouldn't do this if TWD meant something (idk), but to say they don't at the moment isn't telling the full truth. Many do add weaker players and give everyone a chance, even if not everyone does this.

As far as elitist assholes are concerned, that's been a staple in this game since as long as I've been around (early 2001), and I'm pretty sure others from before then have said the same occured even during the game's infancy. While I agree that it's bullshit, and it protects egos more than actually shows real skill, that's just how it's always been. Some players like being surrounded by elites, and they would quit before doing anything else. I just chalk it up to fragile egos and an inability to change. It does suck though, because some players absolutely could be leaders in this game and help spread talent around far more, but they dont do it for whatever reason. I commend those who try though.

[Grasps]

Just wanted to say that after some consideration I'm thinking instead of recognizing the Top 10 players in each division, we'd do the Top 20. I was also thinking of bumping the Top 3 players tier to being the Top 5, just to make more room for everyone to have a shot.

Also would change Top 3 getting a Pubbux reward to the Top 10 getting a Pubbux reward with the Top 5 getting much more Pubbux.

Squads would stay at being the Top 3 squads to be recorded into the Best of TWD though.

Medals I am thinking if we were to use Top 20, Top 10 and Top 5 as being the tiers that we'd go about it like elim making the pixel medals Bronze (Top 20), Silver (Top 10) and Gold (Top 5).

Medals would stay the same though in that they won't specify which ship they used to get into contention as well as the idea of making a special medal to symbolize being in the top 20 of ALL 3 divisions since multi-shipping is uncommon, those players deserving a special medal to reflect their mastery.

Overall the more I think about it the more I am digging the idea. The fact that the effort of players takes precedent over the squads is awesome, it allows everyone a shot at recognition, no matter the squad. We all know there are some talented folks that play on squads that rank low on the ladder, those guys have a chance to shine. I figured increasing the Top 10 to the Top 20 should make it a little better for everyone stacked squads or not to have a shot. Top 10 was pushing it, think 20 is better. Should see a nice mix of folks hitting the mark if this goes up.

As far as the website goes, if Wirah is too tapped out, I am willing to pay someone to do it for us and then hand it off to someone like Wirah for the quarterly maintenance (every 4 months putting stats up and stuff up onto it.) We'll see though.

I'll comment later on borrowing, ran out of time for now. Cheers.

-Ixa

[Kim]

As long as borrowed games are included in your formula, there is no way to do this as fair as possible. Just like how we have stopped using twd rankings to determine twl invites, borrowed players will skew your squad rankings as well as the players' individual stats. If you were to exclude all borrowed games from being ranked, it might work. However, Twd only lives with borrowing for a reason. Squads dont usually have 6 or 7 people online at once to play games together. The incentive to get people to play on only their squad is essentially what twdt is. I dont know if you can get squads to play during the week, maybe 2 squads max? The activity might pick up for the weekend. If you can promote the hell out of this, it might gain some traction, but 4 months a stage is pretty long too.

[Bosshawk]

maybe a borrowed win in twd should have a penalty for points.... such as you lose 10% on your gain per player borrowed.. or more... just throwing a number out there... or any borrowed win only gets half of its points it was going to get...

if the borrowing is to have activity.. then the points dont really matter anyways.. i guess that could be a pro and con for both sides lol... just food for thought..