TWL Season 23 Announcement

[zidane]

As previously announced, TWL Season 23 is starting once our current TWDT season ends.

Start Date

The regular season will start on May 3rd. There will be no preseason.

TWL Operators

Zidane & Tiny

Qualifications

Qualifications for squads to enter TWL is now open, they will be closed on April 26th. Squads will have to play a minimum amount of TWD games (5) in the league that they would like to participate in. Squads will need to have a minimum amount of players on their rosters to be able to participate, more details to follow once roster limits are finalized. If your squad is interested in registering for the upcoming TWL season please reach out to Tiny or myself in game, or post here. Thunder and Rage have been invited to participate in all three leagues as they are the finalists from the previous season. We are hoping to have between 8-10 squads in LD/LJ and at least 6 for LB.

Regular Season

The length of the regular season will depend on how many squads have signed up. It is likely to be similar to the current TWDT format where squads face eachother twice during the season, with two games in each league every Sunday.

Playoffs

The playoffs will be single elimination in a best of three format. There will be at least one weekend for semi-finals, and one weekend for finals. Depending on how many teams register for TWL, it is possible there will be a week for quarter-finals also, where the top seeds would have a bye into the semis.

UPDATE - 3 weeks of TWL playoffs due to the amount of WB/JAv teams. 6 teams will make TWLD/TWLJ playoffs, 4 teams for TWLB.

June 7th - Quarter-finals of TWLD/TWLJ
June 14th - Semi-finals TWLD/TWLJ/TWLB
June 21st - Finals TWLD/TWLJ/TWLB

Rosters

The TWL rosters for TWLB and TWLD/TWLJ will be separated once again. For example, a player can LD/LJ on Paladen and then choose to LB with Accuracy. The player does not have to actually be on the TWD roster of either team. This means that each team can designate certain players to their LD/LJ roster, and not include them on their LB roster, or vice versa. The rosters for the TWL teams will be tracked in forums/sheets/TWL website. The projected roster limits as of right now are:

TWLD+TWLJ - 14
TWLB - 14
TWLD or TWLJ - 8

The roster limits are not finalized yet, it is possible they could be slightly changed depending on how many teams register for TWL. However, at most they would increase or decrease by about 1 spot, so squad captains should be aware of the low roster limits. The goal is to have more squads participating and to limit the amount of benching done.

Resolution Cap

There will be a resolution limit of 1920x1200 in TWLD. There will be no resolution limit in TWLJ or TWLB. Players found using an ineligible resolution will be considered cheating.



A rules post will be provided in the near future, that will include more details.



Let the season begin, it should be a good one

[Rab]

Rage and Thunder could just duke it out and have the whole thing over in a weekend. Same result, much less work.

[ogron]

Rage and Thunder could just duke it out and have the whole thing over in a weekend. Same result, much less work.

Pretty stupid argument when Spider, Spastic, and Monster could have won, and Monster was #1 in TWLD all year and favored to win.

Resolution Cap

There will be a resolution limit of 1920x1200 in TWLD. There will be no resolution limit in TWLJ or TWLB. Players found using an ineligible resolution will be considered cheating.

I strongly suggest making the limit 1920x1080... that 1200 vertical res means you have a 1440p or 4k monitor, that's only like 10% of gamers.

It's a legit advantage in TWLD, there's only 500 pixels between your ship and the edge of your screen towards the North or South, the small amount of players like Ease, beam, Lasenza, Caos and Pineapple Express who have those monitors have a small but significant advantage.

Having an extra 120 pixels vertically for only 10% of the zone seems antithetical to fair play.

[Rab]

I strongly suggest making the limit 1920x1080... that 1200 vertical res means you have a 1440p or 4k monitor, that's only like 10% of gamers.

A lot of 1920x1200 monitors were sold. Monitors used to be 16:10 aspect ratio before 16:9 took over everything.

[afghan]

Roster limits should remain at 13 in my opinion. From what I remember, nobody had issues getting full lines in any of the leagues with that limit.

[ogron]

A lot of 1920x1200 monitors were sold. Monitors used to be 16:10 aspect ratio before 16:9 took over everything.

the vast majority of monitors sold in the world are 1920x1080, if you're going to make limits, that makes the most sense.

anyone who WBs knows the most critical pixels are vertical, because when you only have 500 pixels to dodge a bullet coming at you from the north, extra space there is super helpful.

[Dreamwin]

Make the roster limits smaller

Who needs 14 players on a roster for DD JD? This means best teams will stack 6-8 top players each division. Lets not pretend that isn't going to happen.... I propose drastically smaller limits as I have every year. This means we will have a higher chance of getting diversity in the finalists as you have to carefully consider which division you want to focus on the most.

TWLD+TWLJ - 9
TWLB - 11
TWLD or TWLJ - 7

[Dreamwin]

Make the roster limits smaller

Who needs 14 players on a roster for DD JD? This means best teams will stack 6-8 top players each division. Lets not pretend that isn't going to happen.... I propose drastically smaller limits as I have every year. This means we will have a higher chance of getting diversity in the finalists as you have to carefully consider which division you want to focus on the most.

TWLD+TWLJ - 9
TWLB - 11
TWLD or TWLJ - 7

Being totally honest I would want shorter season and the following limits:


TWLD+TWLJ - 7
TWLB - 10
TWLD or TWLJ - 6

95% of the time its the same 5-6 people playing in dueling divisions anyway. Same 8-10 for base. Maybe have a emergency borrow pool for those who are not added into league rosters and are rated 7* or under in TWDT. Although, I guarantee you wouldnt need to use this often. Shorter season (1x season with 2 weekly games per division) and everyone can commit. Especially during the corona-era. This would create a whole new level of competition and excitement for regular season. 9 teams per division, playoff format semi-finals bo3, finals bo3. Takes 6 weeks to complete - 1,5 months. Hell, you could go 10 teams and 3 games per week and cut the season down to 5 weeks.(or hold quarter-finals=6weeks)

[Ricko]

6 player rosters for a one league squad is not realistic - we are all at an age where we have other IRL priorities and there will be weeks where you'll have 2 people unavailable, which immediately puts you at a disadvantage at 4 people max.

It should be at a minimum:

1 league - 7 or 8
2 league - 8 or 9
3 league - 11

[Majorcrisis2]

Just curious.. How u gonna do this with appeals? Since both of u league ops are Thunder..

[Tiny]

Just curious.. How u gonna do this with appeals? Since both of u league ops are Thunder..

We are the head ops, we will have other ops (tbd) for decisions and will recuse ourselves from thunder votes/appeals.

[MHz]

I'm really against this split squad system. It was hardly used at all last season, and I think it's really confusing and fracturing to the community. Borrowing has already resulted in crazy amounts of squad changing and moving. Feel like we need to reassert the solidity and rivalry that comes with multi-league, dynastic squads.

Tighten the roster limits for sure, but I believe players should have only one squad.

[zidane]

Hard part about one squad was setting the roster limits

[Efhat]

I agree with MHZ. It was hardly used last TWL. Maybe do a poll since were a distance away and see what the community thinks.
Stricter roster limits to spread the talent I agree with as well.
A lot of people have returned to play. It would be nice to spread the talent and not have everyone on 4 squads.

[Ricko]

as one of the only 2 players who was rostered on two squads for TWLD/TWLJ and TWLB, I enjoyed it as my dueling squad had no interest or capability to go into TWLB....but given there were only 2 of us who did so its not really something that can be argued for