TWL Season 24 Rules & League Changes

[Dwopple]

Heads up to all (interested) TWL Squad captains. I've had multiple conversations about the squad qualification requirements & associated TWL Roster limits for 1-3 division squads. This requirement is in place for a few reasons, one of which is to deter squads from "participating" in a division solely for the increased roster limit, without any intention to actually show up and play the matches. If a squad fails to qualify for a division altogether, an invitation will not be extended for that division. As a reminder, once the regular season begins, if a squad fails to meet the required players once they will be warned, if it happens twice they will be removed from that division.

Further to this I have updated section 1.01 - Roster Requirements (and edited my original post) to enforce a TWL Roster limit reduction to the appropriate size if a squad drops or is removed from of a division. TWL Ops will have a final say on what happens to players caught in any potential roster reductions. This includes situations both pre- and post-Hard Lock (week 3). 8.5.7

[Rab]

Or just look at the rosters and see there are 3 dookie wb squads trying to pass themselves off as basers and ban them for 6 months.

[bike]

Hi Friends :-)

First forum post...no idea how this works really. Looks like you all are having a good discussion though.

My 2 doge coin on the matter:

If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

Has the order been working fine? If so, maybe not worth changing it. Unless there is some foreseen great gain to be had from making this switching. Has anyone made a pros/cons list for this decision?

I saw the point about length of games, and how basing games are the longest, so perhaps most demanding in that way. Yet, consider that an elite basing team could go afk for the first 13 minutes of a match and come back to win the game vs a scrub team. That is not the case in the dueling leagues.
In the dueling leagues, every death is critical, and really every second (especially warbird) since the game proceeds at a more rapid rate.
warbird is perhaps even more exacting and precise than the jav, since ship and bullets move faster -- so arguably it demands the most attention & focus.
So i'd personally been all in favor for warbirds being played first.

additionally, as an anecdote, team Lion is considering playing the basing league, (would recruit a few more basers), but since warbirds is our top priority, we are leaning against since we don't want to be super drained and rekt'd after basing and javs...and bypassing 1 or both of those leagues would give us a distinct advantage since we'd be the most fresh. However, if basing was last, we'd be much more inclined to play that league as well, and hopefully pick up a few people to be relatively competitive.

OK...Love everyone :-)

[Dwopple]

OK I'm back with another division-ordering related update.

Based on community feedback, in one of my most recent posts in this thread I talked about changing the proposed new order of divisions

from TWLB > TWLJ > TWLD
to TWLJ > TWLB > TWLD.

After speaking with Wirah I was able to confirm it is VERY EASY to change the ordering of matches mid-season (back to the original TWLD first order) if this change is not welcomed, or fails to satisfy the original intention of this change. Because of the simplicity of changing the ordering mid-season, we will begin the season (Feb 28th) using the above "to" division order, and evaluate the change for any reasons to revert.

For transparency, I am intending to keep TWLJ > TWLB > TWLD ordering until at least the hardlock is in effect. This means 3-full weeks of matches using this order, barring any major complaints / reasoning from enough of the community. If the ordering is reverted, or changed, for any reason mid-season, I will be sure to communicate this out to all captains in advance. For now, though, I have updated the TWL Rules and original post.

QUICK GENERAL REMINDER:
TWL Squad Qualifications END 2 weeks from today (Feb 24th). TWL Squad Invites will be sent out Thursday, Feb 25th, and the season schedule will be generated once all invited squads have responded. I have a few more questions needing to be answered before making an announcement for when WEEK 1 TWL ROSTERS are due. Once I have these answers I will create a new post for a "TWL Captains Checklist" reminder on important dates and action items needed from each squad prior to week 1 matches.

[Spezza]

Just wanna say that I DISAGREE with making a player have to be on same squad for base/jav/wb, the rationale was.. to decentivize people from joining base so they could get more members on the squad? has this EVER happened? no????????????????????????????? THE ANSWER IS NO U DUMBASSES

[viop11]

r u scared 2 jav/wb 4 pindiri?

[Spezza]

I AM TREMBLING !! You only have a certain # of people in this zone and you are actively making lines worse/less competitive by doing this, the argument for it is extremely weak.

[Mythril]

I AM TREMBLING !! You only have a certain # of people in this zone and you are actively making lines worse/less competitive by doing this, the argument for it is extremely weak.

Yeah, not sure how this isn't a bigger topic. Strict roster limits were a cool idea, but forcing us to also combine TWLB rosters with LD/LJ rosters is a big step back. Some parity is achieved by the first change, but completely reversed by combining it with the second. When TWL was first brought back in 2019 after three years of it not being remotely feasible due to the population, one of the only reasons it worked was because Turban came up with the idea of having a separate TWLB roster.

13 roster spots for a 3 league squad is just completely unreasonable. TWLD, TWLJ & TWLB requires adding 18 players. At a minimum, you're asking players to never miss a single Sunday while also forcing at least five players to double league. How many players are 10* or 9* talent in more than one league? Recruiting a single-ship specialist severely hurts any other league your squad wants to participate in. This is then compounded by the fact that you can have the two best three-leaguers on one squad (i.e. Ease/Turban), and you're giving them a decided advantage in this format. Those two can stack in ways that no other team can, simply because they don't feel nearly the same impact of the roster limit. The incentive with this new limit is for the best multi-leaguers to join the same squad and dominate TWL while nobody else gets a chance to assemble a competitive roster to compete against them.

This is not what TWL is. The nuclear arms race that was hoped to be prevented by this strict roster limit still happened, but only two squads got to participate in it instead of the usual 4-5. I hope this decision gets some reconsideration.

[LeeRomeno]

Yeah, not sure how this isn't a bigger topic. Strict roster limits were a cool idea, but forcing us to also combine TWLB rosters with LD/LJ rosters is a big step back. Some parity is achieved by the first change, but completely reversed by combining it with the second. When TWL was first brought back in 2019 after three years of it not being remotely feasible due to the population, one of the only reasons it worked was because Turban came up with the idea of having a separate TWLB roster.

13 roster spots for a 3 league squad is just completely unreasonable. TWLD, TWLJ & TWLB requires adding 18 players. At a minimum, you're asking players to never miss a single Sunday while also forcing at least five players to double league. How many players are 10* or 9* talent in more than one league? Recruiting a single-ship specialist severely hurts any other league your squad wants to participate in. This is then compounded by the fact that you can have the two best three-leaguers on one squad (i.e. Ease/Turban), and you're giving them a decided advantage in this format. Those two can stack in ways that no other team can, simply because they don't feel nearly the same impact of the roster limit. The incentive with this new limit is for the best multi-leaguers to join the same squad and dominate TWL while nobody else gets a chance to assemble a competitive roster to compete against them.

This is not what TWL is. The nuclear arms race that was hoped to be prevented by this strict roster limit still happened, but only two squads got to participate in it instead of the usual 4-5. I hope this decision gets some reconsideration.

As sort of outsider, I have to agree on this. My reasoning is a bit different though. Maybe really tw ppl are that superactive that 80% show every week (i do not think I ever saw that in EG), but what this 13 limit really does, is leaving quite a bit of people just not able to compete in the league.
Just looking at my perspective, Ive been superactive in recent months (covid and stuff), basically I am online every day. I know i mostly suck and I do not expect to really start in important games anyways, but this limit will really make it pretty impossible for me to even get added to a roster for the league, because there are 13 better players than me on Accuracy.
I love the people there and they are a cool bunch and i understand if they need to cut me, but the limit feels quite unreasonable, because i see the same situation for pretty much any squad.
The leftovers, even if they gather together, will hardly find a decent terrier and sharks to at least have a shot in some basing games.
I am pretty sure there are other similar players like myself out there facing same situation.
Leagues are fun and at least in EG my goal as league op was always to get as many people as possible into squads and into playing. Surely there are always stacked strong squads, but how it looks at the moment, quite a few ppl will be just cut and we may still see squads not able to pull 8 ppl for every single base match. Which feels kind of ridiculous.

[Efhat]

I agree on the TWLB separate roster split. Game just doesn’t have enough people to do this.
and after the stunt you guys pulled on silence and the shortage there is on basers, we can’t afford having players who want to play LD/LJ have to sit out of LB because of these restrictions.

[ogron]

"The single worst decision made in the last 10 years of running TWL is ending the separation of base and duel rosters."

Someone wrote that in a chat earlier, and like eight people chimed in and agreed. It's really baffling to undo such a positive change that Turban instituted successfully years ago.

[Ardour]

TWL is a professional TWD. Why can't we be on separate squads per division? For the record that sounds awful. I join a squad and I want to represent that squad everywhere.

TWD is supposed to be squad versus squad. Your gang... who you ride and die with. You represent that team in this game.

The fundamental game is you are on a squad and you have to defeat the other squad. Just because we separate the battle rules doesn't mean you should be able to be on different teams otherwise you cheapen the point of squads.

The introduction of separating base and duel rosters is the single worst decision made in the lifetime of TWL.

[Heaven]

keep strict roster limits but split the rosters... do what's right and what 97% of the remaining population wants.

[Majorcrisis2]

I feel like last season twlb was such a success because of the seperation. Someone like mythril could make a twlb line better, but with his current squad its pointless to make a run for twlb. Like someone mentioned a squad with the biggest 3 league stars have such an advantage.

[Geio]

Myth brings a really solid point. I for one have not really played a basing match in a few years. 1 I’m really not even good enough to to take a roster space and that’s fine. However I would honestly like the idea to base more. Separating ld/lj is a decent idea given the current population. Especially with tight roster spots.