Suggestions for making TWD alive again

[mtine]

Got any? Then please post them in this thread. We need to start them wheels rollin' again, else it's bye-bye TWD.

[Jerome Scuggs]

-pass a law making twd mandatory

[mtine]

Here's my suggestion:

Reset TWD every 2 months and let different squads compete in different cups.

For example:

Reset the TWD ladders after 2 months (starting in January) and by the end of February invite top 8 teams to participate in a TWD Cup. Then make a small tourny where #1 plays #8, #2 vs #7 etc., like an elimination tourny. The winner of each league at the end earns the title of a TWD Cup Champion with the corresponding medal on the TWD site (use a different color than for TWL, let's say green). This should finish by the end of March.

After this, TWD runs as normal again. Host TWDT in April and make it end by the end of May.

In June and July, people form new or old squads in TWD and start qualifying for another big event, namely World Cup. Only the teams from TWD can compete in this event. Top 10 teams make it into this world cup. Then divide the teams into 2 groups, seeded by #1, #3, #5, #7 and #9 in Group A and #2, #4, #6, #8 and #10 into Group B. After that, each team plays against all others in that group (4 matches) with the top 4 advancing to the semis. The winners of each league in the end are crowned World Cup Champions and receive another medal on the TWD site (let's say orange).

After this, in mid September, start the qualifying period for TWL. This should be done by the end of October, with only top 5 squads qualifying for it (since TWL is meant only for the best of the best). They play 4 regular matches in November (no pre-season, it is useless) and have the semis and the finals in the first 2 weeks of December, with the last weekend before Christmas being reserved for the All-Star Match. The corresponding winners ofc get their medals as per usual (yellow for LJ win, red for LB win, blue for LD win).

Something along those lines would keep the people interested in TWD constantly, with things to do and events to qualify for. Might actually add a few other events in between, which would take place during weekdays to spice the things up a bit, but this is the main path that TWD should be on.

[Summa]

Will say the same thing I said when I was dean of staff, and the same thing I said every time I was involved in TWL.

TWD in its current conception was designed to filter squads for TWL and provide daily competitive play. It was a good tool then. Why? Because there was an abundance of squads and players that needed the filtering. Today that is not the case for the most part. All you have to do in most cases is meet the game minimum and go approximately .500 (if that) and voila, you're through. There exists no reward, incentive, or level of competition to TWD and thus players put a lot less into it and are less active. It is a failure to re-design a league model that matches current times for a variety of reasons. So how do you solve this? Well in my opinion there are only 2 options considering we would require the work load to be light as staff production (for whatever reason) probably is not capable of a large scale project and a complete re-work of its systems.

Option 1: This one is very simple: Separate TWD from TWL. Make TWD its own league with its own rewards and re-define the qualifications for TWL to be something not entirely based upon TWD statistics. Then do a separation of medals for TWD championship medals and TWL championship medals, maybe some other stuff as well. The natural drawbacks I see to this are that there would basically be some form of tournament or championship going on at all times versus once a year which may diminish player interest in the game or the even worse result could be people not caring about TWD and since it has little to no impact on TWL now, abandoning it altogether.

Option 2: This one has a lot more wiggle room, but probably requires more work and a lot of definite and confident decision making (which I think there might be a lack of generally speaking): Merge TWD and TWL even closer together. That is to say make TWD have more of an impact on TWL than just qualifying you for TWL. There's a couple of simple ways I could think of this going down, although they are not fleshed out since it is no longer my job to flesh them out.

Scenario 1:
- Step 1: Convert TWL to a point system, rather than Wins-Losses; make it so wins give x points losses give y or 0. (could even do point based on margin of win/defeat if you wanna go wild)
- Step 2: Change TWL to a 2 round system. This would have to either elongate the individual days or the overall duration. However a point system in a 1 round system is hard to do. If it is at least 2 rounds you could do something like 2-0 = 3 pts t1, 0 pts t2; 1-1 = 1 pt each.
- Step 3: Generate some metric by which games played and placement in TWD standings at the end of qualification give certain teams a reasonable amount of points before any games are played in TWL. If there is incentive for both placement and activity as well as an increased impact on TWL; perhaps it would push up activity.

Scenario 2:
This one has less clear steps for me, and probably would be far too much work to actually accomplish; but it's a thought experiment so who cares. You want to merge TWD into TWL essentially. You would restructure the entire league structure of TWL; specifically getting rid of the every Sunday only system. You would push it more toward a Best of 3 or Best of 5 series played over the course of the week. This would give squads with a more consistent and active player base a boost, and TWL a more TWD-like feel. It would also increase player activity during the middle of the week as they would have to be present for TWL games during the week; which would presumably increase TWD games played and also encourage more time spent playing rather than just marking 1 day on your calendar.

These are pretty much all of my thoughts from a couple years back that I can remember. I made a huge well thought out post about it in staff forums or made a big stink about it in a staff meeting a long time ago, but I don't recall all of the specifics anymore. If people actually take this thread seriously, I would suggest you consider first before you post: "Is my idea realistic for a low man-power, low-production, volunteer only group to accomplish competently and within a reasonable amount of time?" Because many people make grandiose assertions and plans on the forums and spout nonsense that can never be accomplished.

[Summa]

Here's my suggestion:

Reset TWD every 2 months and let different squads compete in different cups.

For example:

Reset the TWD ladders after 2 months (starting in January) and by the end of February invite top 8 teams to participate in a TWD Cup. Then make a small tourny where #1 plays #8, #2 vs #7 etc., like an elimination tourny. The winner of each league at the end earns the title of a TWD Cup Champion with the corresponding medal on the TWD site (use a different color than for TWL, let's say green). This should finish by the end of March.

After this, TWD runs as normal again. Host TWDT in April and make it end by the end of May.

In June and July, people form new or old squads in TWD and start qualifying for another big event, namely World Cup. Only the teams from TWD can compete in this event. Top 10 teams make it into this world cup. Then divide the teams into 2 groups, seeded by #1, #3, #5, #7 and #9 in Group A and #2, #4, #6, #8 and #10 into Group B. After that, each team plays against all others in that group (4 matches) with the top 4 advancing to the semis. The winners of each league in the end are crowned World Cup Champions and receive another medal on the TWD site (let's say orange).

After this, in mid September, start the qualifying period for TWL. This should be done by the end of October, with only top 5 squads qualifying for it (since TWL is meant only for the best of the best). They play 4 regular matches in November (no pre-season, it is useless) and have the semis and the finals in the first 2 weeks of December, with the last weekend before Christmas being reserved for the All-Star Match. The corresponding winners ofc get their medals as per usual (yellow for LJ win, red for LB win, blue for LD win).

Something along those lines would keep the people interested in TWD constantly, with things to do and events to qualify for. Might actually add a few other events in between, which would take place during weekdays to spice the things up a bit, but this is the main path that TWD should be on.

I think this is a nice thought if you believe the current system of TWD and TWL is fine as it is, and still functioning properly. I, personally, do not. I think it is outdated and needs to be reworked at a very basic level. To me, this would be shining shit and calling it gold. These events would be nice, but they are a novelty. It is like dressing a turd up in an expensive Tux. It is still a turd. Again, this is all a personal opinion. I think your idea is fine if you assume that the current relationship TWD and TWL have is fine. This would bring novelty, and potentially inspire people to try for something (assuming you put a carrot on the end of that stick other than just a pat on the back). However, that is not my belief. So I simply disagree with your premise, not your ideas.

[Jerome Scuggs]

'twd cup' would be awesome

[Turban]

There has been several discussions about this topic, and these types of threads rarely bear any fruit for a few reasons.

We do not have unlimited resources at our disposal. This severely decreases the amount of steps we can take in our current situation. We are short-handed. The amount of volunteers we have has been steadily going down in the past 10 years, and it is unlikely that we are suddenly going to stop the bleeding of resources and recover. We need someone to grab that leadership mantle and reignite the burning passion our community once had.

I could come up with a hundred improvements to the leagues, impromptu, however it would be a wasted effort and it would only overwhelm our developers that are on the verge of leaving due to outrageous demands by individuals. We are limited to the amount of projects that can be done, and I have several ideas myself to improve the TWD activity and competition, but it is unlikely that any of them will happen in the near future.

I will make a better post once I get to work, not going to bother writing an essay on this phone.

[Fork]

There has been several discussions about this topic, and these types of threads rarely bear any fruit for a few reasons.

We do not have unlimited resources at our disposal. This severely decreases the amount of steps we can take in our current situation. short-handed. The amount of volunteers we have has been steadily going down in the past 10 years, and it is unlikely that we are suddenly going to stop the bleeding of resources and recover. We need someone to grab that leadership mantle and reignite the burning passion our community once had.

I could come up with a hundred improvements to the leagues, impromptu, however it would be a wasted effort and it would only overwhelm our developers that are on the verge of leaving due to outrageous demands by individuals. We are limited to the amount of projects that can be done, and I have several ideas myself to improve the TWD activity and competition, but it is unlikely that any of them will happen in the near future.

I will make a better post once I get to work, not going to bother writing an essay on this phone.

If we had the right leadership- we would use that donated money to get coders to implement the best ideas- twd is pretty much the main part of this game- if u made this more addictive: you will see an increase in population which automatically makes a better twl. The biggest obstical in improving the games population is the staff in control of change. I wish the systops would communicate to everyone about their visions/ ideas and we could all comment and adapt those ideas to suit as many people as possible. Do the systop ops even hav a vision? Wheres the dev team? If no dev team, why havent the systops told everyone about the situation and asked for more devs? Whats the plan with the donated money? This should be communicated to everyone because it looks like staff arent interested in improving this game. The game is getting more boring/ populations clearly dying and higher staff cant be arsed doing anything scared that if they alter anything- everyone will quit (when this is the wrong attitude completely as nothing will ever happen)

[Summa]

if u made this more addictive: you will see an increase in population which automatically makes a better twl.

I don't mean to poo poo on you and discourage your posting, but I think your post is in the wrong location. This is the only relevant piece. Regardless of mismanagement of staff, regardless of lack of leadership, regardless of if the ideas will be implemented. The thread is expressly stated to be about coming up with ideas to save/make TWD relevant. You say make it more addictive. How do we make it thus in a feasible manner (assuming limited resources)? Like you're suggesting an idea with no substance, which is just hyperbole. How would TWD be more addictive for you or others? How can it be made that way? Concrete things.

As for your opinions of staff, I share a lot of them, and a lot of high ups on staff have no love for me these days; but I would hope that you leave senseless whining to somewhere else and try to produce discussion of concrete ideas that could be implemented.

[Fork]

I don't mean to poo poo on you and discourage your posting, but I think your post is in the wrong location. This is the only relevant piece. Regardless of mismanagement of staff, regardless of lack of leadership, regardless of if the ideas will be implemented. The thread is expressly stated to be about coming up with ideas to save/make TWD relevant. You say make it more addictive. How do we make it thus in a feasible manner (assuming limited resources)? Like you're suggesting an idea with no substance, which is just hyperbole. How would TWD be more addictive for you or others? How can it be made that way? Concrete things.

As for your opinions of staff, I share a lot of them, and a lot of high ups on staff have no love for me these days; but I would hope that you leave senseless whining to somewhere else and try to produce discussion of concrete ideas that could be implemented.

Erm... after 10 years of pretty much 0 change- i think i'm allowed to whine as much as i want tyvm. I can share opinions however i want to share them- do i tell you what to type? This thread is about making ideas for twd... but i have mentioned in many threads a ton of ideas that should work/ would definitely increase the population/ would make things more addictive- why do i have to mention them all again? We all know the leaders will reject every idea anyway so actually what i'm saying is relevant to this thread: What ever idea you come up with/ you could literally have the best idea ever- won't make a difference with this staff. How i know this? I joined staff specifically to influence change/ discuss change and it was almost impossible to talk about anything- i don't think anyone was interested heh.

[Summa]

Erm... after 10 years of pretty much 0 change- i think i'm allowed to whine as much as i want tyvm. I can share opinions however i want to share them- do i tell you what to type? This thread is about making ideas for twd... but i have mentioned in many threads a ton of ideas that should work/ would definitely increase the population/ would make things more addictive- why do i have to mention them all again? We all know the leaders will reject every idea anyway so actually what i'm saying is relevant to this thread: What ever idea you come up with/ you could literally have the best idea ever- won't make a difference with this staff. How i know this? I joined staff specifically to influence change/ discuss change and it was almost impossible to talk about anything- i don't think anyone was interested heh.

I could copy and paste the threads i've made and ideas i've suggested to improve twd but someone will just troll me anyway because they are bored.

I been around dis game longer than most anyone here, and I have seen many threads go from productive discussion into whining about staff. I have contributed to them as well. I am attempting to do some good and keep a discussion focused on concrete ideas and real discussion rather than whining. Is implementation an issue? Yes. Does implementation matter if you don't have a concrete idea that people can agree on and a vision of how to get there? No.

Not gonna flip you any more shit if you wanna whine about staff, I will just vacate the premises and apologize for trying to be helpful to the game.

[Fork]

I been around dis game longer than most anyone here, and I have seen many threads go from productive discussion into whining about staff. I have contributed to them as well. I am attempting to do some good and keep a discussion focused on concrete ideas and real discussion rather than whining. Is implementation an issue? Yes. Does implementation matter if you don't have a concrete idea that people can agree on and a vision of how to get there? No.

Not gonna flip you any more shit if you wanna whine about staff, I will just vacate the premises and apologize for trying to be helpful to the game.

Ok then discuss these ideas i suggested for twd.

http://forums.trenchwars.org/showthr...ENGE-THE-WORLD!

http://forums.trenchwars.org/showthr...light=quitting

http://forums.trenchwars.org/showthr...CK-ITEMS-SHIPS

http://forums.trenchwars.org/showthr...g-In-One-Match

http://forums.trenchwars.org/showthr...o-TWD!-Go-Twhd

http://forums.trenchwars.org/showthr...Feature-please!

http://forums.trenchwars.org/showthr...-Squads-vs-A-I

http://forums.trenchwars.org/showthr...any-IDEAS-here

[Summa]

Ok then discuss these ideas i suggested for twd:

http://forums.trenchwars.org/showthr...ENGE-THE-WORLD!

http://forums.trenchwars.org/showthr...light=quitting

http://forums.trenchwars.org/showthr...CK-ITEMS-SHIPS

http://forums.trenchwars.org/showthr...g-In-One-Match

http://forums.trenchwars.org/showthr...o-TWD!-Go-Twhd

http://forums.trenchwars.org/showthr...Feature-please!

http://forums.trenchwars.org/showthr...-Squads-vs-A-I

http://forums.trenchwars.org/showthr...any-IDEAS-here

I can tackle a couple of these now, maybe address a few later. The links got cut off in your post, but you can see them when you quote it....dunno what that's about.

I would like to preface this with this: a lot of my comments are going to be based on realistic expectations of what I think can be accomplished in a 3-6 month period by staff as it was when I was last a part of it. To give you some context, during that time I would say that there were 2 fairly competent and active individuals working on dev/bots and 1 fairly active individual doing web work (another was doing some huge project that i am not sure if it ever amounted to anything). So essentially the legwork of most of the programming from a dev and web pov was being done by 3 people primarily, with some peripheral help.

3 teams in TWD match: Would require a new arena and new bot module, as well as potentially changes to the TWD website interface. I don't know how extensive the bot/webwork would be. Depending on how extensive that work is, this may or may not be feasible. If it is a lot, then this is just nixed right away; if it isn't some consideration could be given. The other issue is 3 squads playing means you need 50% more people than before which is slightly easier now that 3v3 is enabled, but still. I don't see this in and of itself driving population up or making TWD more relevant, but more as a novelty thing.

Add hockey to TWD: Again, I don't know the extent of the bot or web work this would require, let alone a separate ruleset (as I am sure we can't just plagiarize HZ's). However, I feel like HZ has a setup that is superior to ours in pretty much every single way if we started building right now simply by virtue of having been around and working on it longer. We would potentially only be splitting the population of players with HZ. I mean, I don't know how open they are to it or if there are system setting issues; but discussing merging HZ into TW and making Hockey into a league seems not terrible. Dunno if it would be included in TWD and there's probably a lot of big-wig talks, egos, and server hosting stuffz behind that which I have no idea about.

Item unlocks in TWD: This one was unclear to me. I assume this is kinda like CoD style? Like killstreaks = prized something from the bot? It would depend on the prizes I suppose and how diminishing they are to the skill of the game. It also seems against past precedent for leagues in general: i.e. the removal of shrap from jds, the regulation of shrap angles in bds, etc. Seems to be forcing away from random stuff happening and more toward aim and skill. Perhaps shrap on killstreaks in jds could be okay? But something like a thor in a dd......stupid.

Squads vs AI: Just straight up not possible without hiring someone to program and AI. If we wanted to invest that much money, I think it would be better served elsewhere.

That's all I can get to for now. I think like the other guy, you operate on a premise that TWD is fine as it is now and simply needs spicing up and novelty added to it. I disagree with that premise, I think TWD activity has gone down because TWD has 0 relevant impact on the game. It's not necessarily that it's not fun (although it has diminished) it is that TWD is inconsequential in almost every way. I think a change in overall league structure needs to make it more consequential. Hence the make TWD impact TWL more directly or separate the two entirely suggestion.

[Turban]

I have thought about this topic numerous times in the recent years and feel that I have a fairly good idea about what needs to be done in the near future if we want to attempt recovering the squad activity in TWD and increase its competition to a higher level. I would go on for longer, but have a limited 30 minute break.

There is a need for more features that would further enhance the gaming experience to provide more entertainment to our players and squads, however as stated above we are lacking both in terms of motivation and useful personnel which is preventing anything from improving at this point in time. We already have a plethora of projects that will never be completed due to the shortage of skilled manpower in our zone and we are not helping the situation by adding more unrealistic suggestions to an already long list of things, and it seems like our only real option would be outsourcing some of the projects to another body of developers. Thankfully, our situation is not hopeless as we can come up with a battle plan to tackle this ongoing problem in ways that do not require as much work from the developer side of things, although in return it will force the non-developers to work harder until a better solution has been thought of.

We have a fork in the road with two different paths to walk with the first one is shifting focus away from the competitive parts of TWD, and attempt to make it more fun while sacrificing other parts of the league. This, however, does not seem that appealing to me and it would require far more work and effort to actually accomplish. I would rather attempt to increase the competitiveness, to make TWD and TWL more relevant and competitive.

As it stands, TWD is an irrelevant place only used for random bursts of practice and there is absolutely no incentive to keep playing it from a players' perspective when there is a TWL season is running or when the qualification period to has ended. There has to be a reason to for players continue playing and competing in TWD. It is in a dire need of something to make it more relevant, as there is currently no milestones or objectives for squads to accomplish and no clear goals to strive for. It is obvious that we are currently struggling to even stay afloat, which could be attributed to the existence of TWL seasons in both its good and bad ways, despite several players thinking that TWD is self-sufficient and not in a need of any help. In my opinion, we should attempt to integrate TWL with TWD to provide a meaning to the latter one, and to hopefully increase the competition and activity in both leagues. This can be done in a multitude of ways, but keep in mind that several suggestions are implausible because of the reasons stated above.

I would start by abolishing the way TWL seasons have been ran for the past 18 seasons and take some drastic measures to rejuvenate the leagues by forcing more squad activity and have a new structure for both of the leagues. This would likely be taken with a lot of negative criticism from the players as our community is not too fond about any major changes.

There would be a new thing called TWD seasons where every single squad would participating in. It would use the current TWD website and bots, and would as our secondary league even though, in theory, it would be the most active one. It would act both as an amateur league with a playoff format and as the main pathway to the primary league which would be a short TWL season. There would be a completely new rating system, which would factor things such as squad activity (total games played, recent activity, activity of the squad members), average rating of your opponents, amount of players playing in a match along with some other factors which would be calculated in the squad rating of a league. Yes, it would be a rather complex algorithm, but this would be easy to implement to our website. There would be a set date for the season to end and top four teams would be invited to a short TWL season where as the remaining TWD squads would continue to play in TWD for a chance to make it to the TWD playoffs which would be played during the same time as the TWL playoffs.

I would shorten the TWL season down from 12 weeks to 4 weeks which could be done with an extreme schedule with regular season lasting three weeks with a four team league. Each team would play against each other once every week, meaning three games a week, with the regular season lasting a grand total of three weeks. Two of the games would be played on a Sunday, and last one would have to be played on a weekday, or Saturday. The TWL squads would also be required to play a certain amount of games in TWD to remain eligible, and would have the possibility of gaining slight advantages (such as extra points or an additional roster spot in TWL) through activity in TWD or when reaching a certain milestone in TWD after the TWL season has started. There would be a new point system based on the match results, something similar to what Summa proposed, and the top two squads in each league would get to the playoffs.

After this, the top two squads would remain in the "premier league" for the next iteration of it if they wish to do that, but would have to maintain their eligibility through activity in TWD. The bottom two squads would have to go through a series of relegation matches or a tournament, and we would pick the winners to be the next participants in TWL.

I would explain in greater detail, but I am running out of time. Ciao.

[Turban]

note to self: don't rush your text.

That was one of the many suggestions, in its simplest form, to make the leagues more active. No details, and I could easily come up with alternate ways of doing it if looking from a competitive perspective. There could of course be some added features, like achievements and graphs, more statistics and squad options, but nothing that breaks the game.