Roster Limits -- Is it time?

[Heaven]

also, as previously mentioned a couple times, most rosters with 20+ are majority inactives. sure dice can cut down to 20 but those others never log on. this doesn't help "promote twd activity". aside from MAYBE rapid/spastic, no other squad has more than 20+ active players. if people are crying they can't find squads to play on, kicking 25ppl from dice is not gonna "open" up a spot for these newbies who cry on forums to join an active squad. it's a stupid idea and has failed every. single. time. it. was. attempted. in. the. past.

thank you for listening to my TED talk

[Heaven]

adding a roster limit on TWD has failed every single other time. why try it again now. it's an incredibly stupid idea that lowers TWD activity. check past history. I was staff when the TWD roster limit was passed the 2nd time and iirc it lasted a few weeks and twd was dying. a league started up which kept shit alive and the limit was removed when league started. it's a horrible idea and currently as it is, we're seeing 10-15+ TWD games a night. don't ruin what's currently working. TWD is for playing with friends not some supreme league.

[Kassius]

I agree with dwopple that there at least shouldn't be a physical limit. I can't see a way for that to bring us the result we want, which is more activity. There has to be a reason why there arent that many squads currently, and I doubt it's because there's no roster limit. If we force roster limits now we might just end up with loads of players who wouldve played were they on a large squad, but are now unwilling to either be borrowed or make a squad. One way to find out would be for the squads with a large roster to agree that they would either split up into multiple squads, or remove players up to a limit like violence suggested he could do on rapid.

Pubbux for winning team in TWD?

[Stayon]

If people didn't stack on the top teams we wouldn't need to regulate rosters but the truth of the matter is, everyone joins top teams and then sit in spec for months. If we force people to spread out, there will be more opportunities for players to not only be played but for squads to be able to find games.

This is a way to see it, however, its a complete missread. While the idea of people wanting to just be a part of top teams even if that was detrimental to their playtime, highlights itself more than lower squads..the issue isn't and never was about such squads. The issue is virtually every single squad that existed on this game with excess of players, which are nearly all of them in history.

The only time I remember the game to be nearly balanced in 'quantity' of players per squad was 2002-2003, when you had at one point 70 squads on twdd ladder, or nearly 30/40 in twbd, and even then most had too many players.

From good to bad, how many times there were average dueling squads with 30 members? When you need about 12-14 for dueling. How many times there were average, good or bad basing squads with 40+ members?

While on the past, "squad feeling/chemistry", joining someone to improve even if not playing, or just the people and the connections you make, it made way more sense back in the day... nearly every single squad that has played this game had an excess of players.

Thats really a mob mentality you'll never resolve, because we are humans and we like connections. I can't speak for others..but I would never waste time on a game to sit on the sidelines. It's a video game afterall, and even for me with my own opinion, the people I've met and cherished for 15/20 years and my old squad means way more than all the playing I did. I was just "lucky" to have the best of both worlds on this game.

There will always be benchers, but there was way to many people not "wanting" it enough to play, be part of a starting lineup and fell too much into one of the game's strenghts, its community and easy chit chat. Or even better, realizing they would barely play on 40 member roster as 95% of any given moment in TW's history, they moved on to newer games and let go of the old spaceship.

The responsability layed not on the players, but on who lead us..to "indirectly" show us a better way for the game's sake and enforce such rosters, so people would actually...participate more.

Those same connections and squad feeling created too much of a resistance, fear and denial...with nearly everyone rejecting such roster limits. The game is as dead as it was before I went on a 3year hiatus recently, and despite the COVID population spike and an interesting TWDT..things are about the same. Just a shame it took so long for people to actually want it. Now? Go ahead, but all these "solutions" for the game only serve to soften up the zone's obvious last breaths.

With this said, always been a big advocate of cutting rosters, with staff's enforcing for the greater good of the realm...we're just about 15 years late on this matter. I voted yes regardless.

[Grasps]

If people want to be on a squad, they need to be active. That's the whole point of this change.

As for borrows, personally I'd love for them to be cut back or even removed if this goes through. Very least bring them back down to 1-2 for dueling and 2-3 for basing to encourage squad play. Borrows were great for unregulated rosters, they'll need to be reassessed should this go through along with lots of other things. I don't think anyone just wants to cut rosters and call it good. This will be done with care and consideration for everyone involved.

We can't put all our eggs in one basket here or it would be overwhelming and nothing will change. Even for roster limit amout, that should be voted on too. First, we need to get roster limits passed and then other changes will follow suit to ensure the intended results are working ie. more squads, more games and more activity. And as it's been said, if this doesn't work, it's a simple thing to revert back to. I think this is a great time to test it out especially between TWDT and TWL which is our lowest activity levels to see if there's a substantial boost.

There's more reasons as to why limits would be beneficial than not. Concerned you'll lose touch? Keep a ?chat that remains unchanged so when they log they can reconnect. We have discord, twitter, facebook and numerous other ways to keep in touch with friends. They don't need to sit on a squad to do that anymore. As for a bench system, I don't see the point. Just keep people on a dedicated squad chat--that in theory is benching as they aren't rostered but apart of the team. If they come back and want to be active, you can slot them in or they can find another squad that has room. It's not the end of the world guys. I say lets try it out for a few months and let the results speak before we completely throw it out.

[Rab]

If we ever rebuild that system, just add a "bench", then all the ppl can stay tagged but it's clear they don't rly count.

[LF]

Dice Roster.....

Captains 1 Dwopple 2 kess 3 megaman89 4 Stayon Assistants 5 a2m 6 Chief Utsav 7 CLARK KENTaro 8 Cripple 9 Draft 10 Dreamwin 11 maketso 12 Ro 13 Spawnisen 14 TJ hazuki 15 Turban 16 Vys 17 wbm

Players 18 Assembly 19 BigKing 20 bike 21 Burnt 22 Cape 23 Eel 24 Elven 25 EvilDeed 26 Frozen Throne 27 Groan 28 GUSHING 29 Hak 30 Havok 31 Jrahen 32 L S 33 LF 34 McVicar 35 Mess 36 Mikes 37 Necromotic 38 Oderus Urungus 39 Panama 40 paska 41 rucci 42 sheep 43 Smurf 44 Sumpson 45 TABARNAK!!! 46 Weak

So here's 46 players on our roster. In the month or so I've been back, 25 of them haven't even logged on even a single time.
Of the 21 that are left, 4 log on only on Sundays for TWDT.
Of the 17 left, 6 have played only 1 game.
That leaves 11 players who play with any measurable consistency (Stayon, dwop, dream, turb, wbm, me, gushing, l s, smurf, chief, TJ)

So counting every player (16) that's played at least 1 game in the past month, tell me again how it benefits the zone to either....
A) Axe every player that doesn't log on and replace them with active ones (Not gonna happen)
or
B) Force the 16 of us to join other, smaller squads and still play with the same clique of !borrow'd players anyway.

I may squad hop some on my own volition, I have in the past, but if Im forced to leave my squad of like 9 years then I can pretty much guarantee I wouldn't join another.

[Vehicle]

I agree with dwopple that there at least shouldn't be a physical limit. I can't see a way for that to bring us the result we want, which is more activity. There has to be a reason why there arent that many squads currently, and I doubt it's because there's no roster limit. If we force roster limits now we might just end up with loads of players who wouldve played were they on a large squad, but are now unwilling to either be borrowed or make a squad. One way to find out would be for the squads with a large roster to agree that they would either split up into multiple squads, or remove players up to a limit like violence suggested he could do on rapid.

It's exactly because there's no roster limit.

There's really no good argument not to put a cap on rosters, either. Want to play with your friends but not enough room on the squad? !borrow. Not enough room on the squad but still want to keep in touch with your mates? chat=.

And there is a good argument for having a cap: there would be more activity and a wider variety of players would play.

Maybe the shitty side effects are just much more noticeable in twbd than the dueling arenas.

[LucifersWarcraft]

I agree with dwopple that there at least shouldn't be a physical limit. I can't see a way for that to bring us the result we want, which is more activity. There has to be a reason why there arent that many squads currently, and I doubt it's because there's no roster limit. If we force roster limits now we might just end up with loads of players who wouldve played were they on a large squad, but are now unwilling to either be borrowed or make a squad. One way to find out would be for the squads with a large roster to agree that they would either split up into multiple squads, or remove players up to a limit like violence suggested he could do on rapid.

If people didn't stack on the top teams we wouldn't need to regulate rosters but the truth of the matter is, everyone joins top teams and then sit in spec for months. If we force people to spread out, there will be more opportunities for players to not only be played but for squads to be able to find games.

"roster limits might end up losing loads of players that are unwilling to play or join another squad"--that's a very grim outlook you've taken on what can happen with implementing limits. It could also be the exact opposite with more players becoming active and more games being played.

Thing is, we've never tried and I don't think it would hurt to give it a shot for a few months to see if there's a positive impact. If there isn't, we simply revert back. Let's not kid ourselves, TWD is not nearly as important anymore. TWDT is arguably the sole reason for activity followed by TWL. The whole point of this is to give TWD a spark of life which at this time it has none. But if it doesn't work out (which I don't see happening) this game is not going to die or anything terrible so long as our leagues are running. Worse that will happen is some people will step away because they can't sit on stacked squads but am not even sure we'll notice because those kind of people haven't been actively playing to begin with.

[BIET]

I agree with dwopple that there at least shouldn't be a physical limit. I can't see a way for that to bring us the result we want, which is more activity. There has to be a reason why there arent that many squads currently, and I doubt it's because there's no roster limit. If we force roster limits now we might just end up with loads of players who wouldve played were they on a large squad, but are now unwilling to either be borrowed or make a squad. One way to find out would be for the squads with a large roster to agree that they would either split up into multiple squads, or remove players up to a limit like violence suggested he could do on rapid.

[qan]

Well, as far as I know, you're currently the only person I've heard opposed to it, Jessup. TWD is mostly used for practice these days. It's always struggled to define itself on its own terms. If you've got an idea that doesn't require a ton of development, or an idea that does + can get a developer to commit, put it forward, get community backing, and lead the charge. The division between staff and community has never been more narrow than it is today. We're all just players keeping the game going. Meanwhile almost all players are now full grown adults with busy lives. We share responsibility to the degree that we each have time to put in and the interest in doing so. Personally I've not had a lot of time since quarantine started, as it's added a huge amount to my workload, and I'm not looking at taking on any new projects aside from a few that are essential + the usual occasional bugfix. I spend enough time as it is maintaining the status quo and making small improvements as I can. That alone is quite taxing. Any radical development is largely out of my hands these days as necessitated by hours available in the day (long gone are the days when I quit my job and lived off savings to develop for TW nearly full time) but I'll gladly support what the community decides is the right way to go.


Beam, there might be some problems with being able to borrow a cap/asst, as those players could affect how the other team functions. Haven't taken a detailed look at it, but it's good to know that's an issue.

[Jessup]

This was removed a couple of months ago. There were concerns about the possibility of game-throwing, but as TWD is pretty low-stakes and activity is more important, the rule was nixed. If we start to see game-throwing as a result of it, it'll need to be re-introduced.

Qan , This has to be the dumbest thing I have ever seen. Can you explain to us why TWD is even being maintained and why squads are still part of the game if you are letting people from opposing squads play against each other? Why not just close down TWD all together and just have wbduel going? That would make more sense than this sillyness. What is the point of a squad if squads can no longer even compete vs each other properly? Why have TWD at all? , why have an active ladder? How would you enforce making sure a squad playing their own squad members aren't throwing games? It's impossible..you can't. I'm really baffled how allowing squad members from opposing teams can help make the zone a better place. It defeats the purpose of TWD and squads completely.

I feel like I'm living in some alternate dimension where up is down and left is right. Cmon dude .. you are better than this. It's depressing to see such nonsense being allowed. There is ZERO justification for it. If population and activity is you concern there are much better options. Use a TSL type format and remake TWD completely where squads are removed and we all compete individually if you want to bark up this tree but to try and keep TWD viable and allow cross competitions between peoples own squad mates is really bizarre and makes zero sense.

Cmon . Staff can do better than this. We need competition with some meaning.. not a w/e as long as a game happens mentality. There are like many options that could be developed to allow for a meaningful setup with meaningful competition on a daily basis in this Zone and this is the worst option of them all being implemented. I implore this be halted immediately.,,,,,

[beam]

This was removed a couple of months ago. There were concerns about the possibility of game-throwing, but as TWD is pretty low-stakes and activity is more important, the rule was nixed. If we start to see game-throwing as a result of it, it'll need to be re-introduced.

don't really care about roster limits but you still can't borrow players from the enemy team if they are assistant or captain seems like this isn't intended so may be something to look into

[Dwopple]

i'm game for this if the roster limit isn't a physical restriction to current twd squad rosters (dicE has a ton of inactive vets), and instead a digital one to tag 20-30 roster members as "active" for twd, with a 24hr cooldown (or other restrictions, to limit quick switching your actives).

I'll put a tentative vote in for yes based on my suggestion 8.4.3

[Vehicle]

I think some people are missing the point. The point isn't that this isn't necessary because TWD is active. The point is that this is necessary because the same 30 people play every twbd game.