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Why is there less teams in TWLB

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  • #31
    Why I don't like having tiered leagues:

    I'm one of the few people who actually played in TWL back when it was a tiered league, and I've also played in two other tiered leagues (Euro League SVS and Premier League SVS).

    Old TWL is a bad example because back then even in the upper tier there were only 3 actual decent teams (Elusive, Siege, -Final-), so I will use Premier league as my example as the same problems manifested in Euro League and to a similar degree in TWL.

    From my experiences with all three leagues, I never quite liked how it worked out. In my experiences, the tiers ended up being completely seperate leagues of their own. People in the 'upper' tier never really cared about the 'lower' tier and vice versa, even if they were in the same zone and saw eachother all the time, but just not in a league situation.

    In fact as the community slowly split apart the problems became even worse. It remains a fact that most people want to play in the upper league. Therefore over time, the stacking of squads in the upper league became worse and worse to the point where teams from the lower league had absolutely no chance of ever even coming close to beating the teams from the upper league. In fact there has only been a handful of squads that rose up from the lower leagues in Premier (and earlier in the Pro League/Amateur League system) that ever succeeded in Pro. And half of these squads were made up of disgruntled Pro league players (more on this later). The fact is, the split in the community was greatly highlighted in both social and skill aspects.

    The reasons are clear. Good players want to play vs the best teams. The best teams are only in the pro (upper) league. They can't play in a 'lower' team that has decent players and friends if they ever want to really have a game against the greats, or have a chance at a playoffs or championship that anyone actually cares about. Everyone also knows that teams try harder in TWL than in TWD. Magnify this by the fact that there are less teams to play, and suddenly every team in the upper league is not only skilled differently, but at a completely different level than the rest of the zone. No one else has a chance, and unless you're one of the few players that 'buy into' the upper stacked squads, you'll never get to play there either.

    This problem is further compounded, because the upper squads usually just shuffle players, it makes it much much harder for anyone to get noticed and actually rise up as a player. Even now people will say 'he's only good in TWD because no one cares about TWD', but at least someone can concievably do really well in a TWL game and 'get noticed' even if they are on a 'crappy' TWL squad. In a tiered league, no one cares about the lower league, and even if they did 'a good player in the lower tier means nothing'.

    Now you might say this isn't so bad for the teams at the top right? I mean now that the talent is concentrated, no one ever has to play a crappy, easy game. Well no. The fact is, even when you concentrate talent like this, the Elusives & Sieges of the world still end up winning most of the time. There is still just 2-3 squads that dominate and the rest can't keep up. But then again lower league can't even keep up with the rest that can't keep up with the top 2-3 because of my previous explaination in the paragraph before. Further that with, since there are so few teams, you keep playing the same squads over and over, league gets really boring fast.

    Now how about replacement squads? Turnover in TW is pretty high, even in the so called 'top' squads. You always need to replenish squads. But how do you pick them? The logical way is to ask the best team in the lower tier to 'move up', and then pick some other squad to fill the hole in the lower tier. But wait! The lower tier is in mid-season (and no do you seriously think that the leagues would run staggered, considering how long it takes TWL to get running now?). How do you pick what the top team is? And even if it's clear, didn't you just screw up the lower tier? I mean the champion of the lower tier is no longer the champion right? They're just the 2nd best team that didn't rise up right? You can see where I'm getting at. Basically you're making the lower tier completely worthless as a league.

    But that's not all. Over time, there will be upper tier pilots who get tired of losing all the time (or winning all the time). So they move to the lower tier so they can pick on 'easy' squads. And they do. Eventually a 'super squad' forms in the lower tier, a squad which constantly refuses to move up to the upper tier and wreaks havok on the lower tier. Is this actually good for any of the teams in the lower tier? Is this good for the upper tier, because now the squad that moves up is now the 2nd best squad in the lower tier, not the best, making them EVEN CRAPPIER, and more likely to be SLAUGHTERED in the upper tier and promptly request to be sent back to the minors.

    I'm not making this up. This has happened for 6 seasons in Premier League. I saw it happen season after season.

    Now here's where it gets bad. Eventually people at the top get really bored of playing the same people over and over, and the league slowly dies. No one from the lower league wants to move up, and while that league remains healthy thanks to an endless supply of newbie squads, the upper league slowly withers away, but is still too wildly skilled for the lower squads.

    This is when TWL starts really sucking. Actually if Crome started TWL as a tiered league in season 5 and it kept up, that's how TWL would be right now, I guarantee.


    So to sum up, why is a tiered league bad? Well there are only so many squads, so the upper league is small. A small elite league, makes the squads overpowered, and sucks talent from the lower leagues. Teams in the lower leagues slowly stop caring about the upper league until they don't even want to move up. The upper league slowly dies, while a 'super squad' of former upper league pilots dominate the lower league making that league kind of stupid too. But then again, hey no one cares about a league where teams are constantly being 'moved up' in theory to something better, so really you just end up with one 8-team league called TWL and a overglorified TWL-reject league.


    I think this makes clear why TWL should stay non-tiered. TWD provides an equal opportunity for all squads to play eachother, and for newbie squads to train up. Having a larger TWL allows many more squads to be able to ENJOY playing. It also allows for new talent to more easily be identified, and for new squads to more easily have a go at it. Without a tiered system, we've had Spastic (a newbie squad at the time) win TWLB. We've had Rejected Basers and Mambo show they aren't half bad instead of being raided by talent by older squads which just happened to be in basing first. We've had replacement squads like -Solstice- introduce some of the best players in TWL today to the league. We've had TWL recieve increasingly record spectators for playoff games, games where most people there have played against these people and can fully participate and share in the experience.

    For the record, while I've personally had squads that dominated TWL, I played for a great number of seasons for last place or lower half teams in Pro League. In fact I was a captain of a newbie squad in Pro League Season 1 when the league had 20 squads. Yet I never felt like I wouldn't have a fun time. In fact the whole challange for me and a great number of other squads was to show that we too could tangle with the big boys, and our 5-5 season showed that that season.

    Imagine if half the people who posted on the TWL forum stopped coming. Half the people who played TWLM stopped playing. Half the people who watched games stopped watching. That would suck, and it will happen if you split up the league.

    In conclusion I'm completely against 14 squads in TWLB or TWL as I've stated in other threads. 14 is already decreasing the population unnecessarily, I think 16 is perfectly fine. But even more so, I'm completely against TWL ever turning into a tiered league because I think that would be end of the league as we know it. Don't let people convince you that having games against the same 8 teams all season is more fun for all... it isn't.
    Last edited by Epinephrine; 01-14-2005, 08:39 PM.
    Epinephrine's History of Trench Wars:
    www.geocities.com/epinephrine.rm

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    • #32
      ack, sorry Epine, didnt get to finish the whole post... too long. :fear:
      As for the teams, I believe Juice is a competitive squad, BUT Teks dont deserve a spot for TWLB... 14 teams sounds fine for TWLB right now.

      IF at any point in the future, more people are into basing, then we should consider 16 TWLB teams once again. But for now, 14 is good enough to let in all the squads that deserve a spot.
      AcidBomber <ER> ^-^

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      • #33
        brevity is an understated quality in people
        To all the virgins, Thanks for nothing
        brookus> my grandmother died when she heard people were using numbers in their names in online games.. it was too much for her little heart

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        • #34
          i've had one too many beers to read all that epi

          the words keep floating together

          mind summing that up?
          jasonofabitch loves!!!!

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          • #35
            Originally posted by Jason
            i've had one too many beers to read all that epi

            the words keep floating together

            mind summing that up?
            Epi says: Tiered leagues are bad. Players squad hop between leagues creating powerhouses. Powerhouses make the league boring. People in the upper league get bored and make powerhouses in the lower league. Both leagues get boring. In the end, he says 16 teams are best for all leagues by spreading out the player base, so there's underdogs to take down the favorites.
            True quote from forums:
            Originally posted by Erathia
            and I agree with Abatis.
            True quote from ?go base:
            Spamon Xa> Abatis isn't bad

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            • #36
              EDIT: Abatis did a better job summing up

              Basically less teams in TWL suck because:
              1) Less people get to play
              2) The same teams win anyway, as always happens
              3) Less teams = less new talent = less people who care about league = bad

              Tiered leagues suck because:
              1) No one cares about the lower tier, it becomes a joke league.
              2) The upper league needing replacement squads ruins the lower tier's standings (unless you have a squad playing in BOTH leagues at least until the lower tier's season is over)
              3) The upper league inherently becomes much more skilled than the lower league so that new teams that enter are destoryed completely
              4) The upper league stagnates
              5) Because the league is split into 2, you basically divide the community. Half the people watching games, playing TWLM, caring about the league sucks.
              6) playing the same people over and over is boring, esp since the same teams always win anyway
              Epinephrine's History of Trench Wars:
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              www.animeslice.com

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              • #37
                How do you respond to the fact that the best way to determine who gets to go to playoffs is if each team plays one another Epi? 14 teams then makes sense in that we only hafta play 13 games rather than 15 if we have 16 teams total.

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                • #38
                  I say 16 teams and just use conferences like the past how many seasons. Works fine.


                  Bosshawk:i said that b4. We got squads like A-s with like 40 members for 1 league. No squad needs that many ppl not even a 3 league squad. If rosters were cut down then more squads could be formed, or some current squads could improve (much like BC did this past season)

                  I also think the more squads who we let in league is better. There are 16 capable squads for this season so let 16 in. Look @ last season everone was like "BC lamed tehre way into TWLB and they'll do horrible" in the end they did fine and improved all throughout the season and now they are being talked about playoff material. Who says TeKs isnt the next BC? Or Ancients or juice? We dont know that. The only way to tell is to give them a chance. It will help the league expand.
                  _o_2NASRALLAH

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                  • #39
                    Originally posted by Sufficient
                    How do you respond to the fact that the best way to determine who gets to go to playoffs is if each team plays one another Epi? 14 teams then makes sense in that we only hafta play 13 games rather than 15 if we have 16 teams total.
                    1) Playing every other team is of course ideal. But that's never going to happen because every season multiple squads drop out. Once there's a SINGLE dropout squad, the entire schedule is RUINED, and is no longer absolutely fair. In which case any other system can be just as fair if worked out right. The current system works out right.
                    2) 13 games is too many games. See point 1) for why this is so.
                    3) To ensure that every squad played eachother, you'd need like maybe 8 squads total and pray none drop out before TWL is over. That sorta sucks.
                    Epinephrine's History of Trench Wars:
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                    • #40
                      How would you divide the teams into each conference in the best possible/fairest way then?

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                      • #41
                        i say we get 50 teams

                        1 person from each team competes in a BRAWL HALL

                        winners takes all
                        NOSTALGIA IN THE WORST FASHION

                        internet de la jerome

                        because the internet | hazardous

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                        • #42
                          Originally posted by Sufficient
                          How would you divide the teams into each conference in the best possible/fairest way then?
                          I had an idea, about seeding the conference and letting teams pick their own like this:
                          Anti-scrub won last year so they pick a team that qualified through twd to put in their conference. They want someone easy so they pick Ancients. Pallies was second and they want someone easy too so they pick Sk8. Then's it A-S's turn to pick a team. Continue this until all the twd qualified teams are picked, then the teams that were in playoffs get to pick which conference they want. Incuria going next since they had the closest finish to those teams get to pick which conference they want in first. They think Pallies picked the weaker teams and choose to join their conference. Then the next team gets to pick which conference until one conference is full, then all the left-over teams fill the other one.
                          This balances out confernces, by letting the players pick, then they have no one to blame but themselves.
                          If anyone doesn't understand this, but they actually want to anyway, post which part is confusing and I'll try to straighten it out.
                          True quote from forums:
                          Originally posted by Erathia
                          and I agree with Abatis.
                          True quote from ?go base:
                          Spamon Xa> Abatis isn't bad

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                          • #43
                            I would have to say Juice definately deserves a spot in TWL, they are capable of beating every squad, i have seen them beat Dice, not surea bout spas, but they have as much of a chance as RB to beat them.

                            THey would be a great contender.
                            k8> (both my dad's are gay :( )

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                            • #44
                              Originally posted by Abatis
                              I had an idea, about seeding the conference and letting teams pick their own like this:
                              Anti-scrub won last year so they pick a team that qualified through twd to put in their conference. They want someone easy so they pick Ancients. Pallies was second and they want someone easy too so they pick Sk8. Then's it A-S's turn to pick a team. Continue this until all the twd qualified teams are picked, then the teams that were in playoffs get to pick which conference they want. Incuria going next since they had the closest finish to those teams get to pick which conference they want in first. They think Pallies picked the weaker teams and choose to join their conference. Then the next team gets to pick which conference until one conference is full, then all the left-over teams fill the other one.
                              This balances out confernces, by letting the players pick, then they have no one to blame but themselves.
                              If anyone doesn't understand this, but they actually want to anyway, post which part is confusing and I'll try to straighten it out.
                              That actually is a really cool idea. Still ... I don't think that ops would want to have it so dependent on the winning squads from last yr ...esp if those squads dissolve or totally different from the previous season. I think one way would be that every squad that is in the league gets to submit their ranking of the entire league so that in TWLB we'll have 14 different rankings. Then the op will avg out each team's rank and create their own final rankings from the avg list. Perhaps ops can even submit their own rankings so that we avg 15 total rankings together. In this way, every squad (and maybe even the ops) get to contribute to who is in what conference.

                              If there is a tie (which I would doubt since there are 15 diff rankings avged together) then the ops decide who is the higher ranked team.
                              Last edited by Sufficient; 01-15-2005, 06:39 PM.

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                              • #45
                                why the fuck would we have 14 teams to make TWL more qualitive if we have a shitty qualification system like TWD...
                                Cig Smoke> He spelled since "sinse" LOOOl


                                YTRE> i wish newbs likes you who think they are vet like hazuki wouldn,t talk like necro

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