TWL Season 22 is here! Here's what you need to know.

[Undercut]

The current TWL staff team is as follows:
Undercut - Head of TWL
Turban - TWL Op
Lockdown - TWL Op

Basic season information

• Our tentative starting date is March 24th for TWL.
• There will be no pre-season.
• There will be no bye weekend for Easter during the regular season.
• There will be no replay weekend.
• All teams will play each other twice during the regular season over the course of seven weeks in an eight-team setting, however we are willing to raise the amount of participating squads to a maximum of 12.
• Playoffs will be with a hybrid format combining both single and double elimination for the dueling leagues. We have prepared two different playoff brackets depending on the number of participating teams. Both variations will last for a total of four weeks. TWLB however will be single elimination and will use either the standard TWDT 6 team format or a simple 4 team format.
• Season will end on May 5th if the season stays at 7 weeks. Playoffs will begin on May 12th.
• Basing Games will start at 5 and 5:45pm EST respectively to allow enough time for all the games to start at a uniform time.

Changes to competitive league rosters, roster limits, and activity requirements

• We feel large rosters are generally unhealthy to the game and to tackle this issue we have decided to separate TWLB from TWLD and TWLJ. Our reasoning is that these unnaturally large rosters tend to lock players with more than enough skill and talent from participating in other leagues. Players on a TWLB roster may opt into joining a different squad for dueling leagues.
• To deal with the potential issue regarding separate rosters for different leagues and the lack of practice, we will be allowing players to form separate rosters for basing squads. These changes will be implemented soon.
• Players will only be eligible to be given an end of season title if they meet our following activity requirements. This is to further encourage players to find squads where they will get to play in competitive league matches. These are the following requirements in order to retain eligibility for a title:
• A minimum of three full games during the regular season
• A minimum of two full games during the playoffs or one full game in the finals
• A minimum of five minutes played in a match for count as a full game
• We are setting roster limit to 9 players for one league squads and 13 players for two league squads. Basing will have a separate roster limit of 13 players.

Other notable rule changes and updates

• There will be no soft lock for league rosters this season.
• Rosters will be hard locked after the conclusion of the third week.
• If a player participated in any league match and leaves their squad to join a new one, they will be subject to one week waiting period before being eligible to play league matches on their new squad.

Basing may be going through a few changes for this season depending on our testing. These changes can be found in a separate thread located at:
https://forums.trenchwars.com/forum/...back-required/

We are currently in the process of going through and updating the current ruleset for this season of TWL. The rules will be posted here as soon as we are finished.

[ogron]

1 month long playoffs, literally the dumbest shit that killed TWL 21 and you kept it intact, nice work man.

told you guys 100x the one thing not to do was make the playoffs interminably and unnecessarily long.

complete trash.

[ogron]

All you do is devalue the regular season letting almost everyone in. If you can't make Top 4, you don't deserve to be in the playoffs.

Top 4 teams, Semi-Finals, Finals... it's not complicated.

1:zidane> thats when the zone dies btw
1:zidane> during playoffs

Good teams get punished waiting for losers brackets and Quarter-Finals byes in a dead zone, then have to show up and play after 2-3 weeks off
and get trashed, all because Turban watches e-sports and "that's how they do it".

Double brackets and byes are shit in a game that struggles with activity. It punishes you for doing well. Everyone who is eliminated stops caring
and stops showing up. TWD dies.

Stop letting Turban hijack the schedule and playoff structure and destroying the game.

[Falconeer]

All you do is devalue the regular season letting almost everyone in. If you can't make Top 4, you don't deserve to be in the playoffs.

Top 4 teams, Semi-Finals, Finals... it's not complicated.

1:zidane> thats when the zone dies btw
1:zidane> during playoffs

Good teams get punished waiting for losers brackets and Quarter-Finals byes in a dead zone, then have to show up and play after 2-3 weeks off
and get trashed, all because Turban watches e-sports and "that's how they do it".

Double brackets and byes are shit in a game that struggles with activity. It punishes you for doing well. Everyone who is eliminated stops caring
and stops showing up. TWD dies.

Stop letting Turban hijack the schedule and playoff structure and destroying the game.

Did i really sound like this dumb retard when I trolled forums? I am sorry everyone qan especially.

[skyforger]

Looking good!

Beside roster limits, what are the reqs for squads to sign up? When is the deadline for that?

[BIET]

Looks solid, but I can?t help to think the excitement will be less when all that you work towards (playoffs) is giving you yet more chances. You already play yours two games against every other team so your placement in a final playoffs bracket should be pretty accurate. Give us as players and spectators the excitement of winning and losing it all on the spot. Have teams actually battle to get to their seeding in the playoff bracket and let it mean something. Maybe I?m getting mixed messages by reading claus? posts and ?a hybrid format combining both single and double elimination?. What was so wrong with giving the #1 and #2 seed a bye in the first playoff round? IMO let #3-#6 play first, then add #1 and #2 to the two winners of that round. This should be done in a single week, the next week you get the semis and finals.

[Undercut]

Looks solid, but I can?t help to think the excitement will be less when all that you work towards (playoffs) is giving you yet more chances. You already play yours two games against every other team so your placement in a final playoffs bracket should be pretty accurate. Give us as players and spectators the excitement of winning and losing it all on the spot. Have teams actually battle to get to their seeding in the playoff bracket and let it mean something. Maybe I?m getting mixed messages by reading claus? posts and ?a hybrid format combining both single and double elimination?. What was so wrong with giving the #1 and #2 seed a bye in the first playoff round? IMO let #3-#6 play first, then add #1 and #2 to the two winners of that round. This should be done in a single week, the next week you get the semis and finals.

I'm very open to feedback here and I appreciate posts like these. The playoff format is up for discussion as we haven't even begun to accept squads into TWL yet. If there is enough push to bring back single elimination playoffs then that is a very real possibility. So please guys, if you have anything to add to this or anything you would like to ask me about please feel free to leave a post here or ?message me or any of the other league ops in game.

Looking good!

Beside roster limits, what are the reqs for squads to sign up? When is the deadline for that?

It will likely just be based on a signup and be active basis. We're not entirely sure how many squads will want to participate as of now, and if more than we anticipated start to sign up then we may have to change how this goes.

[Turban]

To clear up some misunderstanding from our community, we are more than likely going to use a single elimination for TWLB as it will have far less teams involved and the difference of roster strength tends to be much greater in the league. Our proposed playoff bracket is only for TWLJ and TWLD as we expect the competition to be fierce, and thus we feel there is no way such a short regular season could accurately determine which teams are truly the strongest in these two leagues.

To give further information about the hybrid playoff bracket below would be our proposed format. For our example let us use our 8-team playoff format which we would be use in case there are 10 to 12 teams participating in the regular season. We have also an alternate playoff format featuring 6 teams in case we only have 8 teams participating in the league, and it would be of same length.





To follow the bracket, teams who won their matches are highlighted with a light green color where as the losing teams are highlighted with light red color.

Matches A, B, and D are a part of the upper bracket where we are going to use a best of three format. After the conclusion of regular season, top four teams will be placed in the upper bracket which features a best of three format. The winner of these matches would continue advancing the upper bracket where as the losing team would drop down to the lower bracket.

Matches C, E, F, G, H, and I are a part of the lower bracket where things work slightly differently. Teams are placed in a do-or-die situation where one loss will eliminate them from the tournament as all of these matches are in a best of one format. Teams truly have to claw their way up for a chance to win a title. We might end up still changing match I to a best of three format, but this should clear up most concerns and actually allow players to provide feedback.

As an additional question to the players, what are you thoughts about giving an advantage to the upper bracket finalist, such as being up by one game in the series? Is it fair or too punishing to the lower bracket teams?

[Rough]

Good work Under, Lockdown, and Turban for taking the charge on this monumental task...

Love the double elimination bracket, claus go take some pills man lol...

[ogron]

I still feel this is too long, should be 2 or 3 weeks long.

Also, even if TWLB is single elimination... it means basers have no games for several weeks? The schedules don't align, it means huge stagnation and not playing for weeks... similar issues that plagued TWL 21.

[Turban]

We do not have to run all three finals on the same day, so there's not really an issue of having to wait for schedules to align.

[Jessup]

I'm confused .. so since twbd is separate from dd and jd does that mean we can double squad on basing squads or what?

[Turban]

Essentially, yes.

[afghan]

I?d like to recommend a separate thread where captains can post their rosters or intent to lead a squad for twl. Also, is there a definitive plan on roster limits?

[Undercut]

I?d like to recommend a separate thread where captains can post their rosters or intent to lead a squad for twl. Also, is there a definitive plan on roster limits?

We will have signup threads starting when TWDT has ended. The roster limits are listed in the initial post at 9/13 for LD/LJ for one and two team leagues, and 13 players for LB squads. These numbers aren't final but I don't expect them to change much if at all before the league starts.