TWL Rules Modified

[Kim]

These rules were modified/added for the following reasons gathered from other TWL staff but mostly from the public:

- appeals are not handled promptly, and communication is not always clear
- loyalty of members will be tested much earlier to prevent squad dissolvings due to loss of players before the old "soft-lock"
- New playoff style allows teams to play more than just 1 game, savouring the feat of being able to make the playoffs
- At this very moment, only TWLD can be hosted without a bot (TWLJ requires the line of removal, and TWLB requires the timer). Allowing our TWBots to have such modules will be one of the bot-devs focal pending jobs. With TWBot fully equipped with the TWL hosting modules, we can have a second set of bots run off a different bot "pod" in case our primaries were to fail.

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2.05 Squads are only allowed to drop from the league on Sunday before 5pm EST. When the squad is dropped, we will announce this on the TWL site, in-game through zoners, and on the TWL forums. We will then pick the squad who is the highest ranked non-TWL squad on the TWD ladder (given that they are fully eligible).

2.06 TWL will now feature the Swiss Tournament bracket system. After the regular season games, the top 4 teams from each division will be ranked from #1 to #8 by their Wins/Losses, Head-to-Head record, and +/- in this order. These games are only 1 round. This is how it works:

Round 1:
#1 plays #5, #1 wins
#2 plays #6, #2 wins
#3 plays #7, #3 wins
#4 plays #8, #4 wins
Round 2:
#1 plays #3
#2 plays #4
#5 plays #7
#6 plays #8

The four teams with the best records based on Wins/Losses, Head-to-Head record, and +/- will advance to semi-finals. They will be re-ranked from #1 to #4. These games are best of 3 rounds. They will play each other to a single-elimination match-up in this manner:

#1 plays #4
#2 plays #3

Then for the finals, the winners of these two games will play each other to a 3 round match-up once again to claim championship.


4.01 Only in the instance where the game boots a considerable amount of people off at a time, which can only be explained as being a “server problem” will the scheduled game be post-poned to a later date.

4.08 In the instance where the TWLBot crashes, the host must Private Message a TWL-OP immediately and the TWL-OP will give directions to the host to either wait for RoboQueen to restart or use alternative bots to restart the game immediately.

5.04 to 5.07 will be removed completely due to the alteration that roster soft-locks are effective immediately upon putting in the first player in the first TWL game played. Pre-season TWL does not apply here, only regular season games count.

5.08 Is still applicable. Players who have come back from long vacations or have not played in a long time (which implies that they are not currently with any TWL squad, is still able to join a TWL squad up until the end of Week 4. This means the player can join the TWL squad before 6pm EST of that TWL weekend’s Sunday.

5.10 Players who have been axed from a squad for reasons not pertaining to bad behaviour to the squadmates, cheating, or double-squadding may consider speaking with a TWL-OP up to and including Week 4 and we may consider allowing you to join another TWL squad.


6.02 If your squad is planning to send an appeal for the game you just played, you must message a TWL-OP within minutes (preferably immediately) in-game that you are planning to do so. This appeal must be made in 1 hour after the end of your last game on the same day. No appeals will be accepted after this time.

6.04 All appeals will be looked at promptly at the deadline set by rule 6.02. A decision on the appeal will be made within 30 minutes to an hour from then. This decision will be announced in-game, on the TWL website, and on the forums. However, if the appeal requires us to check if a player is evading ban, we will announce that we may need additional time to gather the information necessary from our BanG-OP. If a player sends in an appeal that is disregarded for at least 48 hours (meaning no communication between the squad that is appealing and the TWL Staff), the appeal will go to the favor of the squad that is appealing. Outrageous appeals due to this last bit of the this particular rule will result in the suspension of the squad’s ability to send in appeals.

Section 7.xx may be completely revamped whether or not the public and TWL staff’s decision on whether we should separate the dueling and basing leagues succeed or fail.


Rules 11.xx will be followed by the method described in method in Rule 2.06.

[Spikester]

Looks good to me

[kthx]

Thanks for listening to the players concerns and problems with this TWL and working on ways to make the league stronger. Looks Good.

[Hero*]

Okay I don't completely understand some of these changes..can you clarify them for me someone?


2.05 Squads are only allowed to drop from the league on Sunday before 5pm EST. When the squad is dropped, we will announce this on the TWL site, in-game through zoners, and on the TWL forums. We will then pick the squad who is the highest ranked non-TWL squad on the TWD ladder (given that they are fully eligible).

Okay, so you are saying that if my squad was going to dissolve, i had to do it on sunday before 5pm, but what if my game was at 3pm and i dissolved at 2pm. wouldn't this create a lot of confussion. How is it possible to get the other squad notified 2hours before their game to show their top line, or even enough players? Shouldn't it be on Sunday AFTER everygame has been played so it gives a full week to notify the next qualified squad?

2.06 TWL will now feature the Swiss Tournament bracket system. After the regular season games, the top 4 teams from each division will be ranked from #1 to #8 by their Wins/Losses, Head-to-Head record, and +/- in this order. These games are only 1 round. This is how it works:

Round 1:
#1 plays #5, #1 wins
#2 plays #6, #2 wins
#3 plays #7, #3 wins
#4 plays #8, #4 wins
Round 2:
#1 plays #3
#2 plays #4
#5 plays #7
#6 plays #8

The four teams with the best records based on Wins/Losses, Head-to-Head record, and +/- will advance to semi-finals. They will be re-ranked from #1 to #4. These games are best of 3 rounds. They will play each other to a single-elimination match-up in this manner:

#1 plays #4
#2 plays #3

Then for the finals, the winners of these two games will play each other to a 3 round match-up once again to claim championship.

Alright im just totally confused on this rule. How i see it is that the best team plays the 5th best team in the league, while the 4th best team plays the 8th best team, which is really the worst of them all. So if this is true, I wouldn't really want to come in 1st, id want to go in 4th or 6th 7th 8th. (Comin in 5th would result in me playing 1st which isn't so fun). If what im sayin is true...then somethings really gotta be changed. Usually the top teams are rewarded by playing the worst, not the middle of the pack.

Will someone clarify this for me?? I have no idea if im right...hopefully not. I just can't seem to understand it.

[Vatican Assassin]

Alright im just totally confused on this rule. How i see it is that the best team plays the 5th best team in the league, while the 4th best team plays the 8th best team, which is really the worst of them all. So if this is true, I wouldn't really want to come in 1st, id want to go in 4th or 6th 7th 8th. (Comin in 5th would result in me playing 1st which isn't so fun). If what im sayin is true...then somethings really gotta be changed. Usually the top teams are rewarded by playing the worst, not the middle of the pack.

Will someone clarify this for me?? I have no idea if im right...hopefully not. I just can't seem to understand it.

Its Swiss I guess, but I agree with Hero. 8 teams should play as follows:
First Bracket:
1v8
4v5
Second Bracket:
2v7
3v6

Assuming there are no upsets, the first place team will continue to play the lowest ranked team, team 4, in the semi-finals, and continue to have the best chance at making the finals. No more east v. west nonsense, which doesn't make sense at all for this games besides BWC, and no more randomly set up brackets. If everything goes to plan, 1 will play 2, and that's what the tournament brackets should favor to occur.

[Vehicle]

I think it's kind of silly to have a soft-lock before week one even ends, and I think it's even sillier to let axed players in good standing rejoin a squad. That's gonna cause lots of confusion between members who want to leave their squad for another and still participate in TWL.

[kthx]

soft lock before week 1 ends is a good idea, that way the players who got the squad to twl will be there to play for them for better or worse. As for the axed players rule, that is a good idea, it only lasts until hard lock is in place anyways, but it can't easily be abused, whats a player going to do, tell his captain "yeah im leaving your squad, but can you tell the twl ops that im getting axed because I refuse to cheat" it won't happen, chances are if someone leaves the squad that late in the season the captain is going to be fairly pissed about it.

[Izor]

Couple things:

Are we going to eliminate that week in the end of the season that happened this year to break a 3 way tie? I like the opportunity it gave us and I think we had a great game with -f-, but I dont think its economical to have a whole week wasted for one game.

Hero's concern is a good one. That playoff bracket isnt really logical. Plus I don't really understand it. :P Doesnt it make much, much, much more sense to do it like every single proffesional league and have conference semifinals, finals, and then league finals?

I see where half these appeal rules are coming from now haha, but did you rewrite the appeal rules to say that only server crashes are grounds for an appeal, or are you just defining the gray area known as 'server lag'? I mean even if people dont get disconnected..if their ping is 500+ with 20% ploss that has the same effect

Hm, hard lock I thought was week 6? Are you moving this down to week 4 and moving soft lock to week 1?

5.10 LOL, you mean like when I axed ivf for no real reason except that he was getting annoying after soft lock? Meh, like I'm ever going to give the legit reason that I axed a player like him and let him join some other squad that plays us

So anyway, are you going to be the next head op Kim? Whose job are you taking Nethilas or P_L's? :P

[Sleuth]

Izor for twl op.

[Izor]

would make sense, at least I know wtf I'm doing LOL

[Kim]

I'm gonna try explaining this using Season 9's TWLJ standings going into the playoffs:

1.	Syndicate	10	0	500	250	250	30
2.	Pirates	7	3	451	340	111	21
3.	BoZ	7	3	451	375	76	21
4.	Disoblige	7	3	438	373	65	21

1.	dicE	8	2	485	333	152	24
2.	-FINAL-	8	2	484	367	117	24
3.	Sk8	7	3	470	325	145	21
4.	Shinobi	7	2	414	348	66	21

Let us re-rank these teams (not gonna probe through your records plus shinobi's last game didn't show anyways):

1.	Syndicate
2.	-FINAL-
3.	dicE
4.	BoZ
5.	Pirates
6.	Shinobi
7.	Sk8
8.	Disoblige

Okay so

Round 1:
#1 plays #5, #1 wins
#2 plays #6, #2 wins
#3 plays #7, #3 wins
#4 plays #8, #4 wins

I don't think anyone can disagree that these games will be anything short of being favoured to the higher ranked team as you can see by the rankings. This system allows more for the #3 and #4 ranks to possibly lose their seedings due to upsets by the lower ranked teams.

Round 2:
#1 plays #3
#2 plays #4
#5 plays #7
#6 plays #8

Still once again in Round 2, the Number 1 and number 2 seeds don't meet, but they don't get free tickets into the playoffs. It makes the playoffs more interesting to watch, what can I say. Constantly pitting the 8th place team against the 1st place team is boring.

[Kim]

I think it's kind of silly to have a soft-lock before week one even ends, and I think it's even sillier to let axed players in good standing rejoin a squad. That's gonna cause lots of confusion between members who want to leave their squad for another and still participate in TWL.

People worried about this one, we do look at which player is being affected and given their history with our community of players. It is a failsafe to ensure that if players were to be axed prior to week 4 in an attempt to screw a player over out of playing in TWL, then it allows us TWL-Ops to have a hand in it, basically. Hopefully these players realize it quick enough, because after week 4 there will be no changes of player rosters whatsoever (except removals, never addings)

[death row]

Constantly pitting the 8th place team against the 1st place team is boring.

Depends on who you ask. The #1 team deserves to get the best matchup possible, since they earned it. Thats their reward. They'll still have to wint he games, and there is no guarantee that they will. Any team can get hot at any moment, thats what makes it fun.

[Vatican Assassin]

Depends on who you ask. The #1 team deserves to get the best matchup possible, since they earned it. Thats their reward. They'll still have to wint he games, and there is no guarantee that they will. Any team can get hot at any moment, thats what makes it fun.

Agreed, ths first week should be boring for the first and second ranked teams, to ensure that the next 2 weeks AREN'T.

[Hero*]

I'm gonna try explaining this using Season 9's TWLJ standings going into the playoffs:



Round 1:
#1 plays #5, #1 wins
#2 plays #6, #2 wins
#3 plays #7, #3 wins
#4 plays #8, #4 wins

I don't think anyone can disagree that these games will be anything short of being favoured to the higher ranked team as you can see by the rankings. This system allows more for the #3 and #4 ranks to possibly lose their seedings due to upsets by the lower ranked teams.



Round 2:
#1 plays #3
#2 plays #4
#5 plays #7
#6 plays #8

Still once again in Round 2, the Number 1 and number 2 seeds don't meet, but they don't get free tickets into the playoffs. It makes the playoffs more interesting to watch, what can I say. Constantly pitting the 8th place team against the 1st place team is boring.

Round 2:

Okay, #1 and #2 don't meet and they don't get free tickets into round 3 but your saying team 5,6,7,8 (two of these) are goin to go to the next round...kinda silly to me. Why should team 8 even advance lol. Like others, do it like professional sports. 1v8 2v7 3v6 4v5. If you watched the NHL playoffs you'd know that the 8th seed beat the 1st, which eneded up makin the finals.

Okay i still don't understand the 'swiss tourny' concept. I wrote a few paragraphs but had to erase them because they just contridicted themselves totally. I would just like to ask the rest of the TW community what they would want. This Swiss Tourny or the Other One? I don't really care because Im most likely not going to be able to make them cause of hockey and school, depending on schedule. But I just don't understand this still hehe, sorry.