How to Run an Auction League TWDT After TWL

[ogron]

A TWDT season should be announced soon, before teams start getting eliminated from TWL and players stop having a reason to log in.

Staff should ideally be looking for a candidate as we speak, after the great work by Mythril, Turban, Ease, Zidane, and Tiny these past 18 months running leagues.

Hulk suggested changing the format to an Auction Draft, as the Star Cap system has been run 4 consecutive seasons and is becoming stale. I've designed a new TWDT season from the ground up for someone else to run.

TWDT 2020 Summer (Auction Format)

A. Find a TWDT Head Op
B. Announce a start date
C. Get 8 Captains
D. 6 teams make the playoffs using the same playoff format as the previous two seasons (no bye weeks punishing the top 2 teams)
E. Make sure the schedule doesn't run over major holidays and plan ahead
F. Like one of the 2017 seasons, this format requires teams make the playoffs PER LEAGUE. No overall wins.

How It Works:

Each captain has a $200 budget for the WB draft, a $200 budget for the Jav draft, and a $320 budget for the Base draft.

1. The Top 40 WBs are auctioned off. You get the player you win in all 3 leagues UNLESS they are a 9* or 10* in another league, in which case they need to be bid on in that league's draft.

Example: If you draft Vys, you get him in all 3 leagues immediately. If you draft Ease, you only get him in WB. If you draft Racka, you only get him in WB and Base.



2. The Top 40 Javs are auctioned off.



3. The Top 64 Basers are auctioned off.



4. Whoever has the most money left over, gets to pick first in selecting 1 of 8 packages featuring the rest of the players (so the draft doesn't take forever). In case of ties, the weaker captains win the tiebreak.

You can see the example packages here.

5. For the Free Agency, captains get an estimated $100 budget, staggered by how strong each captain is. For example:

Banks ($100)
RageRitual ($99)
Mean Gene ($98)
Spezza ($97)
Stayon ($96)
Commodo ($95)
Dreamwin ($94)
Zidane ($93)

This prevents everyone from bidding $100 on the best free agent and causing a gigantic tie.

6. 90% of players will end up on the same team for all 3 leagues. A small minority of players will end up on 2 teams, and maybe 2-3 players will be on 3 separate teams. I don't really see this as an issue, it's not like there's some burning need to be on every TWDT team chat and the schedule is the same every week, you can just show up and play, and you make the playoffs per league.

7. There is no need for star caps or low star slots, given that the 3 drafts being separate automatically balance out each league.

8. The Google Sheet with all the work done can be copied here.

9. Either way, whether we go with an Auction format or a more traditional system (Star Cap or the old Low-Star slots), TWDT should be set up as soon as possible to retain as many players as possible.

[Majorcrisis2]

I dont mind running a normal season (this looks to confusing for me dumbo...)
And tbh, I didnt like the playoffs system of last season at all. Instead of 3 hours being online, it gets much longer. We were 'lucky' that server fkd up. We were already behind time schedule.. And base still needed to happen. And lets assume quarantine wont be there, or much less strict. So ppl will be much less likely to be wanting to be online for so many hours.

[death row]

Impressive stuff—love the intricate details into this format.

[ogron]

I dont mind running a normal season (this looks to confusing for me dumbo...)
And tbh, I didnt like the playoffs system of last season at all. Instead of 3 hours being online, it gets much longer. We were 'lucky' that server fkd up. We were already behind time schedule.. And base still needed to happen. And lets assume quarantine wont be there, or much less strict. So ppl will be much less likely to be wanting to be online for so many hours.

The problem is there's 2 co-existing factors:

1) 6 out of 8 teams make the playoffs to include as many people as possible
2) The #1 and #2 seeds getting a bye is a punishment, not a reward. The playoff format the last 2 seasons has avoided a bye, and thus made finishing #1 and #2 a reward

Traditionally, the top 2 seeds have gotten a bye to the semis and it is a complete fucking cancer... people haven't played in 2 weeks, players disappear, it ruins your season half the time.

Those squads underperform insanely hard. The new format of having the Quarters and Semis on the same day works twofold:

A) It turns finishing #1 and #2 into a reward instead of a punishment
B) It provides incentive to finish #3 and #4 so you start the Quarters up 1-0

It's a really effective system.

[renzi]

All these leagues back to back is getting exhausting and lowering the value of TWL. Since I’ve come back it’s been TWDT, straight into Basing Cup, straight into TWL, now straight back into another format of TWDT? It’s all just becoming one big blur of “now THIS league will be the best of the best”. We should come up with other events or tournaments or whatever that isn’t the same thing over and over in different formats. Look at the hosted events, for example. They still get a good showing on weekends. Why not some kind of hosted event tournament or marathons for a month or two? Like zombies marathon one or two weekends, prodem one or two weekends, etc (Idk just an example, I’m bad with the ideas). I’m sure there are quite a few people who would also like a break from all the super competitiveness to just have fun doing something else in game.

[Majorcrisis2]

The problem is there's 2 co-existing factors:

1) 6 out of 8 teams make the playoffs to include as many people as possible
2) The #1 and #2 seeds getting a bye is a punishment, not a reward. The playoff format the last 2 seasons has avoided a bye, and thus made finishing #1 and #2 a reward

Traditionally, the top 2 seeds have gotten a bye to the semis and it is a complete fucking cancer... people haven't played in 2 weeks, players disappear, it ruins your season half the time.

Those squads underperform insanely hard. The new format of having the Quarters and Semis on the same day works twofold:

A) It turns finishing #1 and #2 into a reward instead of a punishment
B) It provides incentive to finish #3 and #4 so you start the Quarters up 1-0

It's a really effective system.

I understand the reasoning man. But can you expect a #3-6 team to stay online like 5 to 6 hours? I mean there are many of us playing multiple leagues, I am sure it effects their game too if gaming for so long. I totally understand we want high quality games. Either way it effects a team.

[Gkyde1234]

I vote for a regular twl or twdt. If you want to change it up let captains recruit 3-5 players then everyone else who signed up gets drafted.

[Pressure]

Trench Wars Summer League (TSL) should be next.

[Rab]

You lost me at sometimes it's 3 leagues and sometimes it isn't.
I like the auction idea tho.

[Vehicle]

I kind of like the idea of this.

I know it would just be a very small subset of players but I don't like having multi-squad players. Why not just have a total budget and auction all of the top players at once? Randomize them between leagues and just have one large option. A cap might want to focus on one league and be willing to spend more on the block for a certain player, it could make the auction more interesting. And it would make it a lot less confusing.

I also think there would have to be real transparency to the creation of the lots too. If it's 10 people selectively chosen to divide up the players into groups, there will at a minimum be a perception of stacked packages and there will probably be some lots that are much stronger than others.I don't know the best solution for this but I think it could end up creating super lopsided teams.

It's a cool idea though and why not try something new.

[Vehicle]

A) It turns finishing #1 and #2 into a reward instead of a punishment
B) It provides incentive to finish #3 and #4 so you start the Quarters up 1-0

It's a really effective system.

The #5 and #6 seeds in basing also have to play a minimum of 4 consecutive winning games back-to-back with no break in between or go 1 and 4. I get that they just barely eked their way into playoffs but it definitely is a severe handicap for the bottom squads.

My opinion doesn't really matter much obviously, but that should be taken into consideration as well.

[mean gene]

could be interesting

[yoast]

if this process is easy do it up - thx og - but if its gonna complicate things dont and use all that energy on marketing the game and getting more ppl to dl.

idea: Make it so we can have 5s (brand new players) each squad has to have 2! we gotta do a better job at marketing this game

[viop11]

cud b intiristink howefir ripidish rdy 4 twl fall 2020

[ogron]

cud b intiristink howefir ripidish rdy 4 twl fall 2020

I mean that's definitely an option, there have been 2 double TWL seasons before in 2009 and 2014:



We also didn't run TWL in 2017 or 2018 because we didn't feel they would be up to the standards expected of the premiere league of the zone, so could be a nice catchup season.

Last year was the first time anyone ran three TWDT seasons in a calendar year, and I think that was excessive.