TWL PROPOSAL

[Ricko]

Hi all,

So as we have all come to realise, TWL needs a good shake up to re-invigorate people's interest in it be they the most experienced and talented player, an average joe or an ambitious up and coming player.
What I propose isn't overly ground breaking, but I believe if we changed TWL to follow this structure it could definitely make TWL more enjoyable for all of us and return it to being a sought after prize, as well as bringing more activity to the zone. This is not a rule revision (such as hard and softlock, player eligibility etc) but purely my proposal for a structural re-format of how the league could run.

TWL should remain as an 8 squad competition for now unless we really do see a spike in population increase between now and the next qualification period, but that should not overly affect this. Despite some people's reservations about even keeping TWL as an 8 squad competition per league due to some participating squads being considerably weaker than the top end squads I think this short proposal could combat this.

SO:

- I have looked at a combination of football (soccer) and rugby points systems to see how we could implement similar points systems in to our own league standings to make it more interesting. For too long a win = 1 point; this means at the end of many seasons we have had multiple squads on the same points meaning we have to work out tie breakers. Building in a different points system (as I will state below) will allow for a fairer representation of a squad's performance throughout the season e.g. if 2 squads finished the season at 2-5, they are viewed the same. What if one of those teams losses were all scores of 50-46 or 15:00-13:50 and the other lost 50-25 and 15:00-1:31 every match, is it really fair that they both share the same record? The same can be said for the top end squads; the stronger your team's performance in a match, the more recognition you should receive. I think we need to award squads with recognition of good performances which is why we should bring in a BONUS POINTS SYSTEM;

- A win = 3 points, not 1
- A win in TWLD/TWLJ by 20 or more kills = an additional 1 point
- A win in TWLB by 10 minutes or more = an additional 1 point

- A loss in TWLD/TWLJ by 5 or less kills = an additional LOSING bonus point
- A loss in TWLB by 2 minutes or less = an additional LOSING bonus point.

Advantages

Using this format of a points system opens up competitiveness to improve a team's league standings; if you know a blow out win is going to provide you with an additional point and therefore improve your chances at a higher seeding come the end of regular season, why would you not want to push for it? Throwing a bonus point on the cards might make a squad want to add a stronger lineup to give themselves a greater shot at winning and winning with a bonus point for 4 points (also might mean squads are less likely to stack as the regular starters might be used more frequently even vs weaker squads to ensure the bonus point). Given there are 7 matches to be played in each league throughout the regular season, that's potentially 7 additional points your squad could win.

The same advantage also applies for adding in a losing bonus point to our system; competitiveness. If a squad is losing 40-30 in an LD match, under the current system people would assume it's game over, 1 point for the winner, 0 for the loser and the losing team loses motivation to try for the comeback so the performance levels drop off. Under this points system if it is at 40-30 and the losing team knows they just need to hit 45 kills to at least gain a losing bonus point and not have their effort's wasted they will be more motivated to try to have something of a comeback and therefore will keep trying for longer - if you're down 40-30, the prospect of hitting 15 kills before your opposition hits 10 is much more motivating than having to hit 20 before your opponent gets 10 more. This will increase the competitive levels for the season and motivate the less favoured squads to still come away with something.


Disadvantages

Whilst improving competitiveness and providing losing teams/lower teams more chances at improving their league standings and points tally even if they lose, it is potentially even more demoralising IF we end up with teams that go 0-7 or 1-6 who show a points tally of 1-2 at the end of the season where a top end team like Fierce end with 25-28 showing the huge gap in performance levels between the 2 teams.

IMO this disadvantage is far outweighed by the inclusion of this proposed points scheme; it identifies team's performances much better than the current system and adds more dimensions to league standings and rewards teams for good performances whether they are victories or losses.


Playoffs

Rather than having 8 teams in TWL with 6 making the playoffs, what I am going to propose is another very simple change that is inclusive of both top and bottom teams, without lowering the higher playing standard that people expect come playoff time:

- The top 4 seeded teams go into the PREMIER playoffs with #1 playing #4, #2 playing #3 in BO3 rounds in all leagues. NOTE: LB should be BO3 to 15 minutes THROUGHOUT PLAYOFFS. By removing the 5th and 6th seeds we instantly improve the standard of the playoffs and remove a week from the schedule that is not really needed. Going from this season's stats we would have:

LD LJ LB
#1 Fierce #1 Fierce #1 Dice
#2 Pandora #2 Value #2 Pandora
#3 Value #3 Pandora #3 Enemy
#4 Wolf #4 Dice #4 Value

- The bottom 4 seeded teams enter the CHAMPIONSHIP/2nd tier playoffs (if there are more than 8 teams per league, it would be seeds #5 through to #8). Exact same playoff format of BO3 for all leagues with the highest seed playing the lowest seed etc.

Why bother with 2nd tier playoffs? It gives the bottom half of the table matches still to play for each week rather than their season ending early; this increases zone activity and competitiveness and is also a good platform for newer players to shine and to improve in more important matches and to be potentially recruited to higher squads based on good performances in this division. It also reduces the risk of squads dissolving mid season if they believe they will not make the standard playoffs as they now have the 2nd tier playoffs to work towards. Some form of recognition for the winner is IMO, a must. Maybe somewhere on the new TWL site should be a 'TWL CHAMPIONSHIP' (or what ever we call it) history section to give recognition to the winning squad? You could argue recognition in this league could underwhelm winning the REAL twl, but if it is made apparent that it is the 2nd tier tournament then I see no problem with this, recognition drives motivation which drives competition.


Additional Proposal, take it if you will

Okay so this is more of a give or take idea that Mythril previously touched upon and deserves some expansion on it. What if we made it so that in TWL you play every squad twice during the regular season? This does not mean the season is twice as long, it means we play MID WEEK MATCHES every week; one match Sunday, one match on a Wednesday/Thursday. This would drive activity in the zone as more people will log on to play matches mid week so we do not see a drop off in activity during the week.

How do we battle potential issues with squads showing 5 for LD/LJ and 8 for LB for mid week matches? We allow 4s and 7s FOR MID WEEK MATCHES ONLY.

Issues:

1. If we cannot find a way to allow TWD to run at the same time as TWL the midweek games could be a pest for people wanting to TWD. If both are allowed to run at the same time then there is no issue here.

2.Playing mid week games would mean squads would probably be more inclined to try to stack their roster to ensure they have solid lineups twice a week meaning the talent could possibly not be very spread out as we have seen in the passed few seasons, damaging overall competitive levels for TWL. How ever allowing squads to play 4s or 7s for mid week TWL matches is a small way of countering this.

3. Playing 14 regular season matches and therefore the top squads being forced to play the bottom squads twice as much could annoy people.

Benefits

1. Increased mid-week activity (by a long way).

2. Increased interest in TWL - also combined with the bonus point system could make it more interesting.

3. More chances for squads to practice and play against other squads; for squads like Lightning strike playing Fierce once in the entire season isn't going to help them improve, playing 2 matches (and potentially these being best of 3 round matches if people wanted that) would help player development.

4. Gives people more TWL game time each season - rather than just 7 rounds of your chosen league a season it could potentially be 14 (or 42 if BO3).



So these are what I propose - largely the Bonus point system and split playoff format between the top 4 seeded teams and the bottom 4 seeded teams. The mid week 2x as many matches season proposal is one I care less about but could potentially also be used to really change TWL. I'd love as much input as possible from everyone, please be open minded and really think in to how these ideas could boost TWL and make it more competitive and fun again.....these are purely my ideas and they can all be worked on and adapted if necessary. Apologies for the lengthy post, but these matters are important and need the necessary detail.

[LF]

I'm sort of impartial to most of your suggestions here. I don't hate any of them but none of them give me any sort of epiphany either. I do like playing twice as many games, thus prolonging the season instead of shortening it. IMO the single biggest thing we could do as a zone is to stop stacking squads in specific divisions but thats nothing new. If pandora's 25 LB benchers, 10 LD benchers and 10 LJ benchers, as well as Fierces 20 LD benchers were to have split among the less competitive squads we'd have ourselves a hell of a good season instead of 1-2 powerhouse squads in each league and a bunch of garbage like we do every year. There's no way for staff to enforce this though, its on the general playerbase to be part of the solution instead of continuing to contribute to the problem.

[Ricko]

I understand what you are saying LF, these aren't going to suddenly bring in 800 new players for TWL but personally these are positive changes;

- we will see higher activity levels throughout the week
- a lot more TWL matches being played with a greater purpose and drive to win them or at least to compete strongly (bonus points)
- the higher end squads are given a more elite playoff system with less/no weak squads and the lower end squads get to continue competing in a highly competitive atmosphere and don't have their seasons cut short by an entire month compared to the Fierce's and the Pandora's of the world, meaning we have greater activity during the season and more interest for more people to keep playing.
- bringing in the 2nd tier not only provides lower end squads with more game time it also could allow newer players to gain exposure to the rest of the zone and therefore allowing them to play amongst better players.

Whilst stacking squads is an issue, there is no way we can enforce set rules on people without turning TWL into a TWDT style competition, or by pissing off a lot of people. As you say it's down to our playerbase to not stack on squads.... I can't think of a way that we could enforce anything that wouldn't end up more detrimental than positive.

[Turban]

alright,

while i've always liked the idea of TWL running like a real league (with playoffs after regular season), there's a couple of problems we have to tackle before we can make it a reality. first of all, we really shouldn't have mid-week games. most of us either have work and school during MON-FRI period, meaning if we want more games to be played (which is definitely a good thing) then one of the games has to be on Saturday and another one on Sunday.

i'm also worried that we won't have enough active squads to support this new structure; something has to be done in TWD to encourage players to join new squads rather than sticking together with the same group of players every single season. what if we were allowed to be on one "fun squad" to play together with our old friends while competing in TWL on a different squad - if you get what i mean.

lets use Fierce as an example. squad captains of Fierce could tag the squad as "fun" which would mean they can no longer participate in TWL with that roster and their point gain in TWD would either be halved or completely removed. you could stay on that old roster with your friends and play TWD games with them normally. however, now that you're on a squad tagged as "fun" that means you could also join a different squad that could compete in TWL. if people actually want to make TWL more competitive and scatter around to different squads then this system could work. there should be a boost in TWD activity, because you have almost double the chance to find a game on either squad. you wouldn't be allowed to join two "fun" or two "real" squads, just one of both.

that's something i just thought up, i'm sure that has several loopholes but it could work. i think it's time we allowed double squadding in some form to boost squad / twd activity.

edit: fuck wording, typing when sick sucks. it's almost like my brain is malfunctioning.

[Turban]

that was probably a bad suggestion. feel like i worded it out in the worst possible way too, hopefully ya got my point. rip.

[but...why...per...]

Well one possible suggestion I have is a '10 match rule' for eligibility to play TWL, for instance an individual player should have played 10 matches (no forfeits) in order to be eligible to play for their squad (ideally in the qualifying stage before TWL starts). The details can be ironed out, but effectively this has some potential benefits:

Reduces squads stacking teams last minute.
Drives up activity in twd matches (especially for those joining late).
Forces players to contribute to the squad and be somewhat active (10 matches in 2 months is not a big ask).

Possible reason against:
How feasible it is for staff to check each player has 10 'legitimate' games. (Could maybe made a little bit easier if caps submit game ID's with their players)

People likely to oppose:

Benchers - ' I contribute nothing to TWL/TWD but I deserve my medal because my squad won.'
Inactive vets - ' I've played this game 10+ years, I never had to do this to join TWL before'


Note- 10 matches wouldn't necessarily have to be for league the squad is qualifying in, just any 10 matches.

Suggestions / feedback?

[Ricko]

Turb - TWL is already run like a league with playoffs at the end just with a different points system currently

Aye, that's why I put mid-week matches (twice as many games) as more of a side suggestion as it would probably be too problematic given work/school and different time zones.

[Turban]

what i meant to say was that in a normal league system you don't play a team once during the regular season, it's usually twice or thrice at least. at the moment there's just not enough games for it to truly be called a "league" imo, may as well run TWL as a round-robin tournament.

[Ricko]

gotcha, nice use of the word thrice too! I think playing each squad twice regular season would be much better and as you say, it makes it more of a league. If you lose to a squad once, it'd be great to know you have another shot at beating them in a months time for the repeat match. This would also allow for teams to show how they have come on during the 2 month period....say a squad lost to wolf 50-45 but then beat them 50-40 in the repeat fixture it would show to everyone that they have been putting in the effort and are a good squad.

Our issue is where would you put the other 7 matches for regular season? Mid week is an issue as already discussed but putting it on a Saturday AND a Sunday would be no more beneficial - don't think many people would give up their Saturdays for TWL.

[Turban]

how about just having two games on a Sunday? we could change the time slots a bit (1PM - 7PM EST) to allow more wiggling room for scheduling; i'm a bit worried that this could overburden staff, but at least most of us could show this way and it should be more fun to watch/play more games. it wouldn't fix the mid-week inactivity problem and that's probably something you wanted to change.

we could always try to running a TWD cup during TWL that would run from Monday through Friday, i guess.

[Ephemeral]

Ricko
I am a bit surprised that anyone would propose any kind of significant expansive changes after coming off the current TWL cluster fuck. Obviously the zone does not have the resources to run it the way it existed. Qan isn’t a moron. He clearly stated why he made the requested changes he was asked to; he is stretched too thin to test anything. He is a guy who has poured huge amounts of time into the zone and cares a lot about it. Yet here even with what appeared to be a simple request ended up marring TWL for a long time to come. This season will always have an asterisk next to it and the reason is simple; the zone didn’t have enough resources to do shit right.

The approach to keep adding more and more features to the zone has not proven successful. It takes a lot of resources to manage a ever growing ball of code, configuration settings, and web sites. The zone already has run dry and the danger of burning out the existing resources is significant. We do not even have the resources to generate and develop the most basic features of a new player training routine so a brand new player feels somewhat invested. But your post which includes things like 'disadvantages' and 'issues' doesn't even mention this???

So what is the scope of work here? Get Qan to tell you what it would take, in man-hours, to get this developed. Go back and look at his reply on what it would have taken to test even the minor change he made and then figure out what this would take to test your suggestions. Then compare the SOW to the possible benefits and ask yourself if this holds water.
eph

[olde]

ss isn't getting any younger! atleast try sumthing new!

Anyway I mean lets face its time for change, the last few seasons have been terrible and embarrassing to the zone/game. Its to the point its taken as such a joke the veterans don't wanna play, I can't tell you how many ppl I had say no to playing twl. Becuase its in such bad shape.. ITs been the same for over a decade I've changed the world has changed. Change is for the better now lets change the game to make it more fun , exciting , skillful , and strategic. BECAUSE right twl is dying people are bored with it , if you chose to do nothing with it and run it the same as this year it WILL die...... time for change catch up with the world !! Everything changed , every sport has changed you have all changed since the beginning of twl season 1. Let the game change.. it couldn't get any worse then this year! .. jajaja sorry for typo's if any typing this on my phone well taken a shit! Save twl and save ss!!!!! Pz

[Turban]

i think we wouldn't even need much coding, to be honest. this point system could easily be done manually with someone adding the points after the games are finished to the current standings. we could even have the standings posted on the forums if we can't get a new website.

more games would require more staffers and that's the biggest problem we would face. almost every season has a lack of twl hosts, forcing the TWL ops to host 2 or even 3 games at once - which is never a good thing - and fixing that should be a high priority for staff. we could get volunteers to help out with the hosting that aren't staff; this was suggested before and i think it could've worked just fine. basically league referees that aren't staff, just regular players, trained by staff just to host games.

it seems that we have plenty of people that are willing to dedicate some of their time to make the next TWL a success. unfortunately we also need to make some changes in the league structure to make it more fun and competitive, the old system is just too plain and unappealing.

[Ricko]

1. A new TWL website is already being developed

2. Given how good guys are like qan at coding, not really sure why coding that 1 win = 3 points instead of 1 and if it's a win by over 20 kills it would be 4 points not 1 point would take up that much time? I can't imagine anything I've suggested is that far out of what we already have set up....you're making it sound like I just suggested turning SS into a 4d game? Playing twice as many matches = creating twice as many matches on the twl site, not difficult.

3. Given the 'cluster fuck' that was TWL this season it CLEARLY is one of the top things on our agenda other than new player retention. Coming up with a new structure for TWL is necessary, if you think we need to leave TWL as it is then you are mistaken.

4. This is a proposal for people to discuss if they think these changes would be good for TWL or not, and it's also being done way in advance of next season (TWLD final hasn't even happened for this season yet). When would be a better time to discuss the necessary TWL changes to motivate people to want to play it?

5. Not really sure how qan changing the bot to a 20 minute game instead of 15 minute and it going wrong is really relevant to proposing a new structure for TWL next season.

[Shaddowknight]

Instead of 8 squads in each league, just do 8 squads. Period. Increase roster caps to allow for squads to dedicate spots to basers, wb, and jav, and force squads to compete in each division. As we sit now, we would have a better time/twl experience with 8 squads compared to 18, with only 2-4 actually having any resemblance of a chance of winning. If you want to make it more competetive, thinning players out by force is a bad way to go. Sure, not everyone will get on a squad or get to play each week, but you know what, THATS WHAT IS SUPPOSED TO BE FOR AN "ELITE" LEAGUE. None of this bullshit "everyone gets to play" teeball league. Its laughable as a premier league right now, so that is what needs to be worked on. Why bother watching or caring when its Pandora faceraping another half-asses squad who got into TWLJ with a 2-27 record in twjd?