Separating the Dueling and Basing leagues

[Kim]

I remember a few people a while back people brought up the idea that we should lower the roster limit on all squads to something incredibly low like 15 just so that you can have a first line of players you would show to their respective leagues, whether it be basing, javs, or warbirds. This doesn't work out because basing league requires eight players, which is much more demanding considering that not all of the players can play the ship that the squad requires. What if, we were to separate the leagues so that it would work bi-annually, meaning in the summer you could have the dueling league running, and in the fall you would have the basing league running, never together. Roster limit for basing league should remain at 35, but should not be regulated during TWD ladder play. Dueling league squads can have a roster limit of 15 during leagues, 20 during TWD ladder play, just because the players who play in the squad can be with any other player without having to worry about ship set problems that will occur with basing.

Some advantages to this are:
1) Trench Wars is no matter how you look at it, a basing zone. When a new player comes to this zone, we will guarantee them that basing will have its own league specialized at what this zone is geared to do.

2) Less burden on the players and staff - Staff will have less problems with being short-handed on league weekends, and players won't be demanded to stay on for extended hours at a time to grind through 3 league games, week after week during league season.

3) Squads have too many "middle-ground" men who are not being put in the spotlight for what they are good at. There are too many players that are simply not in the spotlight when they are overshadowed by the players who MVP every game for their squads.

4) This gives a chance for players who are normally duelers to REALLY try out basing, and for basers to step into the realm of dueling -- I think this is one of the greatest advantages, because even though a 3 league squad will have players that will say that "I will try to Warbird this season", will never get around to doing it because the squad demands them to do what they are best at instead of wasting time away from practicing from what they are good at.

5) This gives our zone competitive activity all year round, rather than jumbling them all up together in a few months of hectic confusion and stress.

6) Squads who are currently basing squads that do not wish to participate in the dueling leagues will not be removed from TWD play nor from TWD ladders. However when it comes to league selection period, these squads will be omitted.

7) At the end of each league, all squads will be erased from TWD and must be re-registered. You may think this is erratic and bothersome for the captains but, this will benefit us all in a few ways:

a) Inactive squads will automatically be removed bi-annually through this process
b) It gets the captains to re-think their approach to the squad based on their previous league appearance if they like it or not. In a sense, its a nudge to every squad captain alike to rethink their squad's direction, which may be lacking in many squads.
c) This may tick off players who have been in their squads for years upon years without leaving, having records on twd like Apr 2003 - Current. Dates don't make a player, in retrospect, if your captain accidently removed you from the roster and had you rejoin the squad, your long-time record would be removed just like that. Plus, it is still evident from squad history that you have been loyal to a squad, but it will be displayed like this instead:

Pirates (Sept 04 - Jan 05)
Pirates (May 05 - Aug 05)
etc etc.

8) If Player A who is in SQUAD X of the basing league has just finished their basing leagues, and wishes to join a dueling league they MUST leave the basing league for the dueling season. This works vice versa, when a dueling player wishes to leave for a basing league during Dueling league's off season, must first leave their dueling league squad first.

9) There may be an option to include for squad captains to create their squad mainly for Off-season purposes. For example, if the players of Anti-Scrub, a basing squad, did not wish to participate in the dueling leagues, they can select "off-season" for their Squad's reregistration at the start of the Dueling league season. This would allow them to have as many players as TWD allows them to have, still play in TWD games, but not qualify themselves when Dueling League selection commences.

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Long read sorry, hope you find some ideas worthwhile, and perhaps even adding your own. In conclusion, leagues should be segmented, it savours the moment much more than having 3 leagues all jammed up together.

[Refer]

it's a decent idea, because i've recently have begun to try basing myself; but i am realyl a warbird, and this means i will have a bigger opportunity to try basing on a more serious level.

it also means that the staff can fully concentrate on the leagues, since there is a lot of abuse to the staff members, in particular, from the dueling league squads; as they feel that staff care more about Basing than Dueling. Having these leagues separate means that, with careful selection of the TWL head, that such views are removed from the game.


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On another note, if such an idea would happen, it does mean that TWL leagues will started on a more strict schedule. If i was not wrong, i believe this TWL should have been started in January; but did not until like April or May?

If you are to have a bi-annual TWL; then you have to make sure everything goes to plan so the whole season is not delayed

[eelam <tw>]

re

Great idea, will allow squads to have more focus and also allow full basing squads to allow their total attention to dueling leagues and hopefully get better at them. I know with Pandora, people were getting frustrated that we only jav'd and that is why we stopped playing javs totally and put our attention towards basing only. I think this idea will work i like it, what i said goes vice versa allows dueling squads to test out basing ^-^

[Jason]

should have done this for season 9

and better damn well do it for season 10

:]

[Windreaper]

Funnily enough, I had this discussion with someone (I think Greven) this week. Anyway, we agreed it'd be a good idea for the reasons mentioned above. Besides, this zone pretty much dies during off-season, so having leagues around the year would be nice. I don't however subscribe to tight roster limits as I think this would be counterproductive in the sense that mediocre dueleres (say, basers) in 3-league squadson would never get rostered. At least now they have a theoretical chance of starting . Ie. separate the leagues, but go with a fixed TWL roster, imo.

[Izor]

I was sorta against this till I read the advantages and noticed you plan on having a very strict roster limit with it. Still doesnt fix abusive head ops. What happened to us this season with scheduling should never be allowed to be repeated (and by separating leagues, it wont be repeated cause the time slots will be open more).

With 16 games during dueling leagues season, 7.02 (or 7.05, i forget which) can be enforced properly because you will never see 1400-1600 all filled on thursday. You arent getting my squad to play this league without a change of neth/pl, but this is a good start. And yes I realize we are only one squad blah blah flame on

[RATTY...]

You arent getting my squad to play this league without a change of neth/pl

There's 40 other squads to replace you with, who cares if a squad full of suicidal rushing kids doesn't enter TWL.

[Dwopple]

ok i admit i skimmed through this speech, but....wouldnt this idea ruin the fun of 3 leaguers??? and winning a triple crown? it would tear a line between the population


iono, again i just skimmed through the idea

[Kim]

As leagues have shown to us in the past 3 seasons (the only leagues that I have participated in), dueling squads have always stuck to one core line, even strong squads like Syndicate or -FINAL- or dice, more so Syndicate and Dice, who we have seen fielding the 4 players each match. The last player is usually replaceable, but will not be the game changing factor. In essence, squads don't bank on 2nd stringers, let alone 3rd strings, which you will undoubtedly have with a roster limit of our current size. Having a roster of 15 for TWL will give you your 5 core players for Javs and Warbirds with 2 or 3 exchangeable first line players that are ideally just as good and can be put up there in case one player cannot show. Also, this roster of 15 for TWL (20 for TWD) contains both javs and warbirds. So if your squad was to focus on only ONE of these, then you'd have 15 possible starters for Javs or Warbirds, which is quite overwhelming. This is, once again, the choice of the captain.

[bubbles19518]

I think the idea sounds good, I also think it needs some work. Im not sure what I would change but I dont think it would work out the way its proposed now. Very interesting and I think we should at least try it.

I think the roster limit of 15 should be raised. Even though you only need 5 wbs/javs and a few subs for league, you need more than that for an active squad in TWD. Those 15 players are not all going to get on at the same time each day and I think you need to have say 20 or 25 just so that you can have an active squad from a day to day.

Maybe only allow you to have a TWL roster of 15, while still keeping a full TWD roster?

[Dwopple]

yay for 1 elite squad with the top 15 duelers...not a good idea, will ruin TW to hell

[Stabwound]

I really don't like the idea of having all squads dissolved every 6 months. I think this will just cause more trouble than it's worth, and will definately be a huge pain in the ass for every squad out there. I don't really see why this is necessary. There are a lot of squads that have been around for years, and dissolving them would just be annoying.

Of the benefits of resetting all squads that you mentioned, inactive squads could be deleted through the database without killing all the active squads. Your second point about making squads have to rethink their direction is valid, but I don't see why squads should be forced to do this.

[Stabwound]

Anyway, I think the idea of splitting TWLB from TWLD/TWLJ could at least be given a shot. If it doesn't work out there is no reason why it can't be changed back again.

[Windreaper]

No separate squad types or separate dueling/basing rosters are necessary, imo. They would just complicate things further. Besides, I like ancient 3-league squads, that just stick around year after year. TW wouldn't feel the same if every squad would be a specialized affair, if I understood Kim's original idea correctly.

I think the main problem is the hectic pace of leagues followed by months of inactivity. Actually, someone suggested a 4/4/4 cycle for the leagues (ie. 4months per league from start to finish). I dunno if this would be a good idea, but worth a try imo. Otoh, it might be more reasonable to host base and dueling leagues separately, as suggested by Kim, and have the off-season during summer (heh, providing there are no delays when people have better things to do.

[Jeenyuss]

You don't understand, Dwopple. The point is to spread out the talent. This could be cool.