TWL Season 13 Invitations

[herbalist yangyun]

talent level is so much lower in today's tw.

back then the great wbs could actually aim. guys like raspi, fieryfire, death row were some of the best wbs in the game.

but now wbs is a game of who can hold the Shift key the longest. wbs today just bum rush the opponent and hold shift for the entire game. the skill has reduced so much. im willing to bet if you took out the shift key all the "good" wbs today would suck.

[Dreamwin]

would actually be interesting to create arena where you cant use shift for wb/jav.

[tragiK]

would actually be interesting to create arena where you cant use shift for wb/jav.

no, it wouldn't. fuck you.

[tragiK]

the problem with this debate is that it's a matter of skill vs effectiveness given a certain situation. what is "skill"? is it ability to go positive? is it knowledge and sense of warbirding? or are you guys just talking out of your asses?

point is, you guys are arguing different things.

there's some good 1v1 wbs who suck shit in dd (lofty, top) and plenty of dd wbs who suck shit in duel (unabled, fst, duclover, all of wp). there's also the laggots (bfist, elven) who would be putting up warpath numbers if it wasn't for their 190ms (i give mega newbie a pass because he's actually good). then there's guys who find themselves in the right situations and look much better than they really are (annoyance).

and then there's a matter of style. guero isn't a very experienced wb nor is he versatile, but his aim is second to none so he puts up the numbers. valholy can't do anything but straight rush people but apparently it's quite effective on quicksand. deliver, killah, peru all had inflated stats on rape because they were the only non-suiciding wb in the lineup.

what is skill? burnt is very good at what he does - staying alive and aiming, but he's completely nullified when being chased. does this mean he sucks? perhaps burnt's skill is being able to join the correct squad that allows him to maximize his effectiveness. i would consider racka to be one of the best wbs in the game today, but quicksand always seems to fall short to squads that slow it down and grind it out.

and yet, if squads like rape didn't have that rush-only mentality, they would get annihilated on virtue of their lack of "skill". by suicide rushing as a team they are maximizing their effectiveness. which, i suppose, is different to "skill".

the way i see it, "skill" should be the amount of things one dominate in this game, whether it be twl, twd, duel, elim, whatever. against the top competition.

most siege players in the pre-res cap generation i have absolutely no respect for. you know the problem with good aim? it's easy to dodge, because you always know where the bullet is going. it completely blows my mind how easily slow-bullet players like burnt get kills, but that's probably because people aren't good enough to know how to dodge him, or give up too much of their own defense to penetrate his. you can always tell an old player from a new one - old ones focus on position, spacing, and aiming, whereas newer res-capped players focus on reaction time, prediction, and timing.

people didn't start getting "good" until the res cap was put in place, then all of a sudden the players who could actually play close range (blood, sika, raspi, fireballz, reaver, etc) started to distance themselves from the rest, while the other so-called "vets" are relegated to talking about their prior achievements as they continue to get steamrolled by the newer players.

basketball is a really easy analogy to use - you have guys who are really good at rebounding but nothing else, guys who can shoot the lights out but can't play D worth shit, and amazing dribblers that are wizards with the ball but can't find teammates to pass to. robert horry doesn't do much of anything, and yet he has a crazy amount of championship rings. none of these players are considered great players, even though they play a vital role on their team. i don't think most people will question that kobe has more "skill" than lebron, and yet lebron is quite possibly much more effective at running a team than kobe.

so who is "better"? who has more "skill"? it depends on the definition you use.

[Jones]

i'm a twdtd champ, true story

of course siege won 2 seasons in a row after the res-cap though =)

otherwise good post. personally, if i want to get better or fix something i'd rather duel instead of twding. i have always believed that dominance in 1v1 is the key to be the best player. 1v1 teaches you just about anything you can do in a situation, you will learn what to do at any given time, opponents will be easier to handle etc. but that's still not all, one who is "just" good at 1v1 won't do much in twl, he needs to be smart. knowing not to duel 1v5, being able to read the radar and follow his team around good enough that he defends them and attacks with them when it's needed, creating opportunities, not dying out and so on. There is more to this, and people who were on Sweet know i can post long essays about this. either way, it's still just my opinion and anyone can feel free to disagree.

Top may have not done anything big in twl recently but i still consider him as one of the most skilled players in the game to this day, i'm pretty sure if he came online and pracced a few hours per day he would easily destroy anyone from the top squads in a duel in a relatively short period, yes that includes you too exalt. =P

oh and this is pretty irrelevant to twd, since the gameplay is much slower, controlled and the teaming is different due to those facts in twl.

[sonlox]

and yet, if squads like rape didn't have that rush-only mentality, they would get annihilated on virtue of their lack of "skill". by suicide rushing as a team they are maximizing their effectiveness. which, i suppose, is different to "skill".

Whats wrong with different strats? I come into twl knowing that most squads are lob run and radar. Why not try something to counter the build. I don't get why people think the same shit will win every year. I am a MLG player so i know the best way to win games is to counter old styles of play with new strategies. So what we used rush cover, that was the plan.

[kthx]

People are stupid, its like saying precram basers were better than cram basers are now.

[Epinephrine]

the problem with this debate is that it's a matter of skill vs effectiveness given a certain situation. what is "skill"? is it ability to go positive? is it knowledge and sense of warbirding? or are you guys just talking out of your asses?

You have a good point here. Obviously being good at events, being good at elim, being good at duels and being good at TWL are completely different things. There are many types of players, but certain people are simply dominant in almost every situation.

There are a lot of players who are good only in certain situations. For instance, Mega Newbie in season 7 was considered to be by many the best wb in TWLD due to his awesome records, but he completely choked in the finals, when it really mattered. Using myself as an example, I pretty much sucked it up all season, but in the TWLD semis/finals in seasons 6&7 I was the clutch sub counted to not fuck up at that crucial moment and helped us win TWLD (I say sub because if I played the entire game I probably would have died out).

Similarly, players like Jeraden used to own up elim consistantly, but never played anything else (and what few dds/public team elims he did play he was a non-factor).

Finally, there are some players who may have had one or two years of glory but then never really did much after that (I don't name any names here, no point).

When it comes down to it, not many people are good in all realms. Not many people have managed to be consistently good for many years and never truly slip. This is what I would use to judge a player being one of the best, and I would say there are less than 5 people who actually fit this description.

most siege players in the pre-res cap generation i have absolutely no respect for. you know the problem with good aim? it's easy to dodge, because you always know where the bullet is going. it completely blows my mind how easily slow-bullet players like burnt get kills, but that's probably because people aren't good enough to know how to dodge him, or give up too much of their own defense to penetrate his. you can always tell an old player from a new one - old ones focus on position, spacing, and aiming, whereas newer res-capped players focus on reaction time, prediction, and timing.

people didn't start getting "good" until the res cap was put in place, then all of a sudden the players who could actually play close range (blood, sika, raspi, fireballz, reaver, etc) started to distance themselves from the rest, while the other so-called "vets" are relegated to talking about their prior achievements as they continue to get steamrolled by the newer players.

This is a bit of a weird point because fireballz used to be one of the best players in tw with his 2048 resolution. As well Sika was quite dominant before the res cap. Of course if you remember your history a bit, the res cap came into effect in the summer of 2000, which was inbetween seasons 2 and 3 of TWL, and as such all of the Siege TWL victories were post-res cap (and in fact Siege only existed for about 5 months before the res cap was implemented, and everyone on the squad afterwards who was on beforehand was still pretty good).

There's only about 20 pre-res cap players who were truly good (those of us back then can easily name them all) and of those I can't say any of them got significantly worse simply because of the res cap (as opposed to say being inactive more). Therefore it's a bit pointless to say that pre-res cap and post-res cap people play different.

I think what you're getting at is that people who have been consistently good for a long time (people whom you probably associate with 'pre-res cap') are people who have relied far more on tactics than simply on pure reaction time, if only because those people are now significantly older (and thus have worse reaction times due to having real lives and being older) and can't dodge and aim as well and must rely on using their brain to be good. As well, because they rely on their brain to do well, they aren't nearly as streaky as the one guy who suddenly gets really good because he can play 24/7 for a year and then flames out when he slows down. Thus these people rely on things like position, timing and so on.

basketball is a really easy analogy to use - you have guys who are really good at rebounding but nothing else, guys who can shoot the lights out but can't play D worth shit, and amazing dribblers that are wizards with the ball but can't find teammates to pass to. robert horry doesn't do much of anything, and yet he has a crazy amount of championship rings. none of these players are considered great players, even though they play a vital role on their team. i don't think most people will question that kobe has more "skill" than lebron, and yet lebron is quite possibly much more effective at running a team than kobe.

so who is "better"? who has more "skill"? it depends on the definition you use.

In the end it's a team game after all. Shane Battier is extremely important to his team, but not very useful if Yao Ming and Tracy McGrady aren't healthy.

The best squads are squads that realize that different players will fill different roles within each match, from the guy who lures, to the guy who rushes, to the guy who snipes, to the guy who aims well, to the guy who's only around to sub, to the guy on the bench that can direct a team with good calls (yes this is actually an overlooked but highly important thing, esp in javs). The most capable captains will even realize that certain players are only to play against certain teams and not others.

Any squad that has too much of the same thing will eventually suffer for it, if only because they lack variety and can only do one tactic well so that if ever they play another squad that knows how to neutralize that tactic, they will surely lose.

[Exalt]

Unfortunately you need a little lesson in history. In seasons 5 and 6, there were multiple contenders for every league. History proved who won in the end, but it was not nearly so clear while it played out.

Let's see, Siege, Light, Elusive, Rampage, Grapevine/Melee, Disoblige, Cripples, Shriek, Pallies, whiterabbits, Camisade, Sk8, Value, Spastic, Mambo, etc, etc etc.

This season is looking to be pretty competitive too, so it should be fun for all involved.

I don't think you got my point at all. TW may have been dying for years now, but none of the players who were good back then are even close to decent nowadays (and I'm talking about LD not LB or LJ, meaning leave light whiterabbits caisade mambo etc out of it, because I don't give a shit).

Where are the "amazing" players from back then? They are not good anymore, and while it is true a large majority of old players consider ourselves better years ago, most didn't get so terrible that we quit the game forever.

I'm positive that everyone playing TW has some type of real life going on too, and we still maintain it. Even still... its amazing to me how terrible 99% of the old vets are now. They are just beyond bad.

I've quit this game for a year at a time a couple times actually, just like many many others have... usually it takes about a week to get the rust off... but that's it. You never lose a certain part of your game...like dodging or aim (whatever you are good at) when you come back. It sure as hell seems like the old vets lost everything though.

Is it a coincidence that the old top vets don't play anymore and/or suck now when they do play? I doubt it. It doesn't take long to unrust... yet they never seem to be able to do it.

There are only 2 options regarding that:

1. It is a huge coincidence, and their real lives stop them from being as "amazing" as they once were.... or

2. The level of competition and talent has evened out enough over the years through the TWD system that parity is more likely now... meaning the "amazing" players from back then that fed off newbies are now shitty because those newbies learned how to play. Whatever made them good back then is negated now, and they cannot adapt.


Get my point now? I'm sure it is a mix of both options, but I tell you this: If tw is still alive 5 years from now, the newbies in public that barely go 10-10 will become experienced players who are playing TWL. The best players of today will have problems with those players in the future...

What makes a great player is someone that is still amazing throughout the years no matter what... not just amazing when TW had a huge majority of new players and very few players with lots of experience.

TWD changed the entire landscape of Trenchwars, and negates all credit from any player that became shitty a couple years after TWD was implemented (around late 2002 if my memory is correct), meaning 2004-2005 is when you saw a huge influx of talented players... because a couple years of TWD made them better.

Anyone that was not good after TWD, yet was good before that... should never really be considered much of anything... because being good pre TWD days just means you fed off newbies throughout your career... and could not beat anyone after those newbies learned how to play.

Epi... what does this say about yourself? Maybe you can bring up more history and pretend like it matters some more.

[Squadless]

these discussions are too deep for a space game where ships go boom
i have 38 infractions on this forum.

[Ephemeral]

The following is presented as my opinion and not as factual.

I define skill in this game as being comprised of two parts, experience and execution. Experience includes a good knowledge base in ships, arenas, and other players. Execution includes things under the control of the player such as aiming/flying but also includes things not under the control of player such as teammates, opponents and lag.

Regarding the question of the skill level required to play now vs. the early era (1998 – 2000). I think it takes more skill to play the game well now. During the early era, everyone had about the same level of experience. Execution-wise, it was easier to break into TW as a new player and it was easier specialize in a specific ship/arena. The lag/inducing factor has become huge in the last 2 years and this also makes it more difficult to play in TW now. Wireless and to a certain extent cable connections have introduced greater variability in lagging. During the early era a lagger could be more easily compensated for, once you got used to his lag you could deal with it. But in today’s game you see players with wide swings in their lag and it is harder to execute well against this.

Regarding the skills required to excel in a single ship arena vs. a multi-ship arena. I think it requires more skill to play in a multi-ship arena. The level of experience required to play a multi-ship arena is greater, a player needs to be able to assimilate and process exponentially larger amounts of information. For example, when facing an enemy you have to know how they play in any one of several ships instead of a single ship.

[Epinephrine]

I don't think you got my point at all. TW may have been dying for years now, but none of the players who were good back then are even close to decent nowadays (and I'm talking about LD not LB or LJ, meaning leave light whiterabbits caisade mambo etc out of it, because I don't give a shit).

Light was a top wb squad, they went 10-0 in regular season TWLD in season 5.

Where are the "amazing" players from back then? They are not good anymore, and while it is true a large majority of old players consider ourselves better years ago, most didn't get so terrible that we quit the game forever.

Dice - a2m, da1andonly, fieryfire, raspi
mad - bhang, blood, death row, Deez Nuts
rapid - poseidon
thunder - burnt, ease
fatal - foreign, medic

Man that wasn't that hard was it? Some of these guys have been playing since TWL season 1.

By the way, people don't quit this game because they suddenly suck and can't compete anymore, perhaps you will realize why people stop playing video games when you get older :fear:.

I'm positive that everyone playing TW has some type of real life going on too, and we still maintain it. Even still... its amazing to me how terrible 99% of the old vets are now. They are just beyond bad.

I've quit this game for a year at a time a couple times actually, just like many many others have... usually it takes about a week to get the rust off... but that's it. You never lose a certain part of your game...like dodging or aim (whatever you are good at) when you come back. It sure as hell seems like the old vets lost everything though.

Except you aren't that good? Seems like you're the only one that thinks you're good.

Get my point now? I'm sure it is a mix of both options, but I tell you this: If tw is still alive 5 years from now, the newbies in public that barely go 10-10 will become experienced players who are playing TWL. The best players of today will have problems with those players in the future...

There's new good players all the time. Some old good players will suck now, some current good players then will suck in the future. That's just common sense. 99% of GOOD old players who still play don't suck unfortunately for you, not even close. Your levels of exaggeration are pretty funny.

TWD changed the entire landscape of Trenchwars, and negates all credit from any player that became shitty a couple years after TWD was implemented (around late 2002 if my memory is correct), meaning 2004-2005 is when you saw a huge influx of talented players... because a couple years of TWD made them better.

2004 is 5 years ago... that's kind of a long time ago isn't it? Who exactly are you talking about here when you're talking about 'vets' that suck?

Like Droog?

Most people who played back in 1999 haven't logged into this game for eons. Those who have, still play and are pretty decent for the most part (or only log on here and there to chat), and many are the captains and assistant captains who run most current TWL squads.

Anyone that was not good after TWD, yet was good before that... should never really be considered much of anything... because being good pre TWD days just means you fed off newbies throughout your career... and could not beat anyone after those newbies learned how to play.

People who were not good after TWDD started have been bad for 6 years. What's your point exactly?



In the end we return to the beginning when all I mentioned was that Burnt was one of the best ever and you suddenly spazzed about how 99% of people who played 'back then' (whatever that means) now suck.

Burnt won TWL last season as a starter, and when I said he was one of the best ever, you instantly thought about not only of his accomplishments last season but in previous seasons as well and even way back on Elusive and Rampage... maybe that says something about your own insecurities.


To sum up:
1) Exalt bitter he didn't win TWL last season
2) Exalt jealous of people who others consider 'better' than he is
3) Exalt fancies himself one of the best players in TW and is bitter no one else thinks so

Therefore

Exalt tries to disparage the 99% of everyone who started after 2004 (which basically implies everyone but him) as being sucky.

Pretty simple psychology there.

[Delectable]

Epi mowin' em down. Nice :thumbsup:

[Exalt]

I was more talking about how you are not a good player epi.

I don't really care what you think either, nor do I care what others think of me. I merely stated that you are not good.

I also never said 99% of ppl that started after 2004 are bad. I dunno where you got that from. I said people that started before 2002 when TWD was made, and then sucked after TWD shouldn't be considered good.

Are you mad that you are a terrible player epi? I don't think the past matters when you are so shitty for so many years NOW. Maybe you and ignite can hook up and be best friends thinking you were the best captains in the world.

Oh, and the rest of what you said is just angry banter from a shitty player... so I'll just ignore you on those false statements. Maybe you should think before you type.

[Exalt]

I'm glad you can name 13 players, but lets be honest here as well. None of those players aside from a few are even CLOSE to what they once were. I don't expect a player like yourself to understand this concept, but the truth is the truth. People get worse as time goes by and new talent comes up.