【 TWL 】 mid-season review

[Turban]

I thought it would be nice to have a shortened mid-season review from my perspective regarding this season, and its current projects and state. This is my attempt to increase the staff-to-player communication as it is likely that most of our players are in the dark when it comes to our projects, and the biggest contributors from the player and staff side of things.

Hopefully this will serve as the first step towards more staff transparency, which I have always been a strong advocate of, as it is something that we have been lacking since the beginning of this zone. I am hoping to do more of these in the near future, when the opportunity arises, but currently my work schedule is looking quite grim. I also have other unscheduled plans that are interfering with my packed schedule, thus I can not guarantee anything at the moment.

Our story began with six brave men, although one of them got swiftly exiled due to his personality and lack of participation, and together we started working on numerous projects and ideas for the next season. This original team consisted of myself, Ricko, Undercut, KATC and Tsunami, and it really looked like a solid, balanced team until we noticed that that several members of the team were going to have issues in terms of activity and participation due to real life commitments. Nevertheless, we discussed together and after several meetings we came up with a great plan and season format which we decided to use this season. We could not implement everything we wanted due to certain issues with the development side, and most importantly some of the developers not gaining appropriate access levels. I would say that overall this season has been well received by the players, and most of our changes have been for the better, even though we still have several areas that need to be improved for the future seasons. I could not be as heavily involved in every area of the planning as I would have wanted to, as I was requested to get TWDT up and running with the help of Claushouse which ended up being a Cinderella story.

Tsunami requested to be replaced right before the TWL season started due to him landing a job and wanting to dedicate more time to it, and we also had a vacant TWL operator position to be filled which is why I requested both Shadowmere and ffe to join the team. They have both proven to be incredibly useful and active, although two weeks ago ffe asked for a leave of absence because of his desktop computer dying and him saying that he would be unable to show as often. This left us a vacant spot once again, and it was filled by 9th! who was added to the team as per my request. He has done a good job thus far, been incredibly active and a fast learner, and has shown signs if improvement despite not having any previous competitive experience. I would like to give a special mention to Shadowmere for being the most useful TWL operator, and has helped me with the coordinating of hosts and games, scheduling and other various smaller projects, although some of them have been done yet due to a couple of speed bumps. Thank you for sticking with me for this long, team.

We wan to have a Twitch streaming project up and running this season, however due to certain rules members are not allowed to stream or record any games on their main staff names, and unfortunately most of players willing to help with this project are staff members. Apparently we are not too fond about the idea of leaking help calls to the public, and this is what is currently halting the project until we receive a special permission or get help from our players. We have made an official Twitch channel which would be used by us, and anyone willing to help would be given a stream key to broadcast on that channel. I still want to get this project up and ready before the playoffs begin, and if there are any players that are willing to lend a helping hand please contact me or Shadowmere.

There was an apparent lack of web and bot developers during our planning period which was mostly caused by the paranoia of staff members with website access, and them not wanting to give the information to anyone for security reasons, and only two weeks before TWL was supposed to start we managed to find someone helpful that would help us tackle several problems. This included fixing things such as some of the bugs that we found on the current website, setting up the bots and testing them, and resolving any issues that would arise during the season. He also managed to solve the resolution limit checking in TWLD which has been broken in the past season. We could not implement everything we wanted, as several of the things we requested during the season would likely result in the site crashing, but I am hopeful that we will manage to get some of the better features implemented for the future seasons, although other areas of this game may take priority over it. It was extremely refreshing to see someone from the developer team to actually care about the competitive side of this game, and there is no way for me to thank him enough. Thank you a thousand times, zreqdf! Hugs and kisses.

We brought back the home arenas from Season 8, and while there was some minor issues (such as resolution limits in certain arenas, and one map being approved despite being illegal) it was well received by most of the players and captains. I would give thanks to JabJabJab for helping to get the home arenas uploaded, and he himself created a couple of maps for Cobra and Enemy both of which look stunning. I will further improve the map submission rules and will try to make this a tradition for the future seasons.

There has been 19 staff members contributing in the hosting burden of 130 games, which may be a record in the recent years as far as I am concerned, and the biggest contributors have been bwp, Shadowmere, 9th!, ffe and Undercut. Other staff members who have helped with the hosting are Field, Lena, Haze, Ricko, KATC, WillBy, Missa, Kim, Reckful, PinkSTAR, M_M God, Fis, and zreqdf. There has not been a single case where a staff member was forced to host two games at once, which was frequently happening in the previous seasons, and this would not have been possible without the help of all of you. I am keeping track of games hosted by the staff members, on a weekly basis, and will provide the full list to the public when this season ends with the end of season review.

We still have a couple of goals that need to be accomplished before this season ends, and one of them is uploading the rules which have now been completed thanks to the help of bwp, Tsunami and Ephemeral. They may not be perfect, but its still a definite improvement when comparing to the current set of rules. I have been informed that it will be easy to edit any rules with the use of Google Docs, and I will give the permission to edit the rules to whoever is in charge after this season. These rules should be up within this week, or next week, and I will make an announcement about it. You can review the current rules by clicking here. Other things that need to still be decided and discussed include topics such as the length of the regular season and qualification format which we had plans for this season, as I would like to see the leagues running more often with higher quality games.

The doubled amount of games in the regular season has been extremely well received by the players and teams, and from the looks of it we will likely have more unique players playing this season in comparison to the recent seasons as we already have 216 unique players having played thus far in 5 rounds of games. I have heard some pleas from the basing community that they would also want to play more games, and it is something that should be done in the future seasons.

We are not doing a replay week unless it is absolutely necessary, and any TWLJ and TWLB game that need to be replayed on a different date will be played during Round 8 as they have a bye week that day. If there is a need for a replay in TWLD during the final round, that match will be immediately replayed, and we will not delay the season unless it would have an affect on the playoff ladder positions. There has not been a single appeal this season, which may be worth mentioning, although several captains have been requesting our help and asked tons of questions related to TWL which is nice. In my opinion proactivity is a rare trait among our players, and it was refreshing to see that so many players care about the season.

There is going to be a bye week on November 30th due to the Thanksgiving Day being on that weekend, and once that has been said and done we will start the final weeks of the season. The finals are scheduled to be on December 14th, however we have December 20th as a backup week if our worst dreams come true. As a reminder, only four teams in each league will make it to the playoffs, and we are having a double elimination playoff format to have more games and the best teams in the finals.

Hard lock is happening after the final match of this week, and I will get the All-Star ballots set up on the following Monday or Tuesday with the player lists and rules, combined with zoners and attempt to get the updated TWLDM arena uploaded to the zone.

I would like to give a special thank you to Claushouse and Omega Red for providing some interesting statistics and reviews from the player side. You guys are doing an awesome job!

Our current TWL operator team is Turban, Shadowmere, 9th, Ricko, Undercut, and KATC, with ffe being on a leave of absence. Reckful and M_M God are monitoring and providing insight as needed, and will help with the handling of appeals if there is a need for it.

That is the short version and I likely missed several topics that I will gladly answer, and will provide statistics and a complete list of projects at some point although most of them can be found on the forums. Ciao, back to work.

[zidane]

Yeah... no problem for doing the hons ? freaking asshole, this is why people quit this game lol

[ogron]

Thanks for running the league this year Turby, doing a nice job! Keep it up x)

[Jerome Scuggs]

Yeah... no problem for doing the hons ? freaking asshole, this is why people quit this game lol

this thread is meant to stir controversy and start conversations lol

[Ephemeral]

Turb has basically strong armed the running of TWL this year. A good example of what a person can do if they are willing to pour a lot of time into it; so thank you for that. But this does not mean that it is in good health or is a good season. After 19 seasons it should not take this kind of effort that Turb has had to expend on it.

The overlap of TWDT and TWL qual, no HoN, no TWML, same stacked teams winning the same championships. Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. But there are some bright spots and improvements; fewer appeals and hosting has been very good. I also want to thank Turb for his lengthy posts; my posts are no longer the only tl:df posts on the forum.
Eph

[Crescent Seal]

tl;dr

[Fork]

...and a big shoutout to zidane for his amazing/ detailed/ world class hon's. Without his contribution twl this season would not exist. Gj. If I had 13 thumbs... ....

[Turban]

Turb has basically strong armed the running of TWL this year. A good example of what a person can do if they are willing to pour a lot of time into it; so thank you for that. But this does not mean that it is in good health or is a good season. After 19 seasons it should not take this kind of effort that Turb has had to expend on it.

The overlap of TWDT and TWL qual, no HoN, no TWML, same stacked teams winning the same championships. Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. But there are some bright spots and improvements; fewer appeals and hosting has been very good. I also want to thank Turb for his lengthy posts; my posts are no longer the only tl:df posts on the forum.
Eph

I would want to argue against the claim that we have the same stacked squads winning in every league, as TWLB and TWLJ have not been this competitive in years which can be credited to the scattering of Dice and Thunder members. However, TWLD is still in a fairly poor shape, but has shown signs of improvement (Sweet and Cobra are stepping up their game) despite two teams still being the heavy favorites. TWLB and TWLJ will have a tight race for the final playoff spot and that is going to make the last regular season week (in those two leagues) very exciting, and I would say that there is no clear winner in either league.

There was not much that we could do about the overlapping of the leagues as we had already planned everything for the TWL season, including its starting date (to ensure that we would finish before Christmas) and qualification period which was supposed to be around two months long. TWDT started out of nowhere, but I think the benefits it brought to the zone were greater than what you give it credit for, despite it overlapping with the TWL qualification period and indirectly hurting the TWD activity. Nevertheless, in the future these overlaps should be avoided and it can be done by shortening the qualification period, as an example, and proper scheduling and communication between league operators.

I would rather not see TWLM running in the future TWL seasons until it has been completely fixed, and that is something you agree with as well. It is infested with bugs, and the design is flawed as it gives incentive for squads to do foul play and an edge to captains who know the lineups they are fielding.

Nevertheless, I have been briefly thinking about the future TWL seasons and I do believe the right step to take at the moment is to reduce the total amount of squads participating in the season down to six (or even four if we were to take it to the extreme) to shorten the season, and to add more competition. There should be a shorter TWL qualification period, and we still want to implement a new rating system (coupled with a seeded qualification tournament) to determine which squads would make it to the next season. I feel that it would benefit the zone to have more shorter competitive leagues in one calendar year, although something would still have to be done with TWD to remain relevant when the TWL season starts.

It was regrettable that we could not find HoN writers this season, but you can not have it all and I would have wanted to spend more time on that area. There was plenty of other things that I would have loved to have this year and some changes that I did not dare to make in such a short notice.

[Ephemeral]

Turb,
Ok, I misspoke by saying ‘same teams’; I should have said the same players. I am sure Claus could run some numbers on this and they would show that the same players win season after season. Which squad name they happen to play with each year is not really important. Note; I am not saying that this is abnormal. Of course, TWL is supposed to be about the best players in the zone. But as the zone shrinks and gets older, seeing the same players win year after year is getting pretty old. It makes the argument for the shortening or downsizing of the TWL season.

And TWDT? Look at those who have won (and play) it. Same players. I would concede that each year you might see a handful of newer players who manage to get in a little playing time but allowing the same top 10% of the zone’s skilled players dominate the teams when it was SUPPOSED to be about bringing in new players is just stupid. And it has a chilling effect on lesser squads trying to get in practice time for TWD/TWL. Again, run the numbers of TWD games while TWL/TWDT is running. They drop off substantially; it crushes newer squads. Yet we wonder why their are no 'pub teams'? Doh. They cannot compete for playing time with these better established leagues.

Ask yourself if TWDT would fly if it was held during off hours. Let’s face it, anything that is held during Sunday primetime would probably ‘work’. So it comes down to a question of robbing one league to run another league. (Same with the holding of frequent events, we simply rob the population in one place to support it in another.) I see no value in dividing up smaller and smaller pieces of this pie when what we really need is a bigger pie. In fact, this actually has damaging results as the zone population declines. I’ll agree that TWDT is working well the day I see that there are actually a lot of newer players getting game time and we don’t see the team rosters filled with the same players who have TWL metals.

The answer here is fairly obvious. Downsize these leagues to something shorter and that don’t overlap. Figure out one league (TWD I assume) that is the primary league which consumes the majority of the months in a year. Shorten TWL to a tourney which is held across a few Saturdays or other off hour times as a ‘retro’ or ‘throw back’ kind of thing. Do the vets who already have 15 rings really need to strut their stuff more than that?

I assume that there are a few vets who will bitch and moan about this. ‘I’ll quit playing if TWL was downsized’ kind of thing. Who cares? Does having these kinds of players show up only for TWL help the zone in the long run? If they are only willing to grace the zone with their presence and for the sole purpose of adding another ring icon next to their name then the zone isn’t really losing anything. The majority of players who care about the zone will simply move to playing more TWD.

Of course none of this is ideal; frankly it sucks. Ideally the zone would be healthy with a sustainable population that could keep the leagues fresh and vibrant. But at some point we have to face the music and acknowledge that this is no longer the case. Look at the HZ zone; sitting empty 98% of the time except for a few times when RSHL or one of the tourneys are running. Frankly if we put our egos aside for a few minutes the reality is that all zones should have consolidated and downsized into a single zone one 4-5 year ago. Instead selfish and short-sighted players keep promoting stupid ‘new’ disjointed ideas which they falsely believe will turn things around. Leadership should be outlining the a downsizing plan that would allow the zone to at least be sustainable for 5-10 years instead of limping along like it is now. We have run out of resources and good people to get things done, this is not going to improve on the path we are on now.
Eph

[Turban]

We actually took steps towards promoting TWDT to lesser known players with little competitive experience, and will continue doing that in the future. That was my only condition for me to help setting up that league, and it worked well although it was not perfect.

We have a fair bunch of players who have not won anything in the past seasons that have a great chance to secure a title this season, along with new recruits on these so called top squads stepping up. The situation is not as bad as you make it sound like, in fact I think that the competitiveness is slowly increasing.

TWL should remain as the premier competition, but made more exclusive and shorter. TWD needs something too, such as seasons (?) and short playoffs to encourage squads to play actively in that league. I feel that too many players would be upset about TWL taking a big hit, and I don't want to risk losing several players or squads.

That is at least what I think at the moment.

[Ephemeral]

Turb,
A ‘fair bunch’, what is a ‘fair bunch’? 3%?

Look at Claus summary of the top ten or finals…
TWDT-D = Apok, Ease, Lasenza, Jamal, Racka, Turb, Aprox, Cres, tripin, Lee
TWDT-J = ease, Apok, Turb, Zidane, Aprx, Wax, Steadmen, Dreamwin, Stayon, Bueno
TWDT-B = Bong, El Pedo, jamal, Dreamwin, Diakka, Mikkiz, Davy, Kate, Zidane, Myth, Sol, Staon, ease, Rab, VA, Pressure, Cintra, Henry Saari, Commando

Come on, who you trying to kid? That list reads like the ‘Who’s Who’ list of TW vets.

Ditto with TWL finals. Look at your very own list of players for MVP. Again, a list of nothing but vets. At BEST you might be able to name 4-5 new players who have managed to break into these lists and leagues; a small fraction of all players who got a small fraction of the playing time.

If we want to keep holding the same leagues every season with the same players so be it. But don’t be trying to bullshit anyone into thinking that this is anything more than the same big fish in the same small pond. Unlike sports, players don’t really lose that much with age. If something does not change in facilitating new players into the zone and the leagues we will be looking at the same lists of players 5 years from now (IF the zone lasts that long).

Of course we have to retain these vet players. No one is saying run them off; they represent the backbone of the zone. But tailoring every league to them while having obstacles in place that make it difficult for a new players to break in will slowly cause attrition and shrinkage of the overall population.

There is a balance somewhere where the zone can support both vet players and newer players. TW is far from that balance. We have let the vets control and influence most of the decisions and no one is minding the new player perspective. This has not been some subversive and coordinated conspiracy, it simply evolved this way in the vacuum of good leadership and vision. In other words, we took the easy way out and avoided the hard decisions. Imagine that. We need to balance the zone back out and support new players much better, both in Pub and in the leagues.
Eph

[Turban]

I have this feeling that you did not pay close attention to the way we were running the last season of TWDT, as it was a huge improvement to the previous seasons and we have great ideas to further improve it for the next season.

We shifted the focus to getting more new players participating in the draft tournament, and over 40% of the players in every lineup had close to no TWDt experience, or at the very least no TWL experience at a higher level of play. Our plan is to make the rules even stricted by implementing a rating cap for lineups, forcing captains to add even more new players if they are planning on adding these all-star level players, and while ratings are not perfect, they are good enough to have a decent balance between new and old players.

Not to forget that this TWL season has several players who have overperformed, and some who had no prior TWL experience yet are doing pretty damn well, and if this keeps up then we could have even more competition starting next season. There are 4 teams that are top level in TWLB, and several starters in each squad (with the exception of Thunder) have some fresh names that have done damn well. That can also be said about TWLJ, and thus I think the overall competitiveness of the league is going up, as delusional as that may seem.

/tired

[Ephemeral]

Turb,
Your reply sounds a bit defensive and like it is coming from someone who is pretty invested in the TWDT/TWL. Please understand I am not being critical of you, you have poured huge amounts of time into this stuff and I agree improvements have been made. I am sure everyone is thankful that you, and a handful of others, have done this. Thank you.

But let’s stop talking around the issue and get right to the point. New players are at a distinct disadvantage in this zone and leagues. Small ‘strong arm’ changes that you have made notwithstanding, the zone culture has not changed. We can give all the lip service we want to new players but if they don’t get playing time then they certainly aren’t going to hang with the game for very long.

Take an example like Markmrw <ZH>. Guy is a newer yet competent shark playing on a non-competitive squad in TWLB (Lego). He shows up for every game, but I think he has been played maybe a total of 8 minutes all season. Now if he was on a competitive squad he would never get one minute of playing time. How is he supposed to get better? Do you not see how hard it is for a player like him to break into the leagues and become competitive? Fuck the ‘go play pub’ crap, we all know that isn’t going to make anyone competitive. Again, go look at the ‘MVPs’ of both TWL and TWDT and show me any new player presence. I am sure we can all name a few new players who have managed to break into the zone over the last few years but it is a very, very small minority.

We have stacked the odds against a new players, or new squads, from getting quality playing time. If you deny this then you truly are delusional. We have to figure out a way to make the playing field more balanced if we ever want to retain new players. So I while l agree with you that you are trying; we are still a long way off from seeing it actually happen. It is like arguing that we are doing well in this football game just because we have made a first down on the 30 yard line in a drive. The goal line is still a long way off and whether or not we can win this game is still a huge unknown.
Eph

[mtine]

Turb,

Take an example like Markmrw <ZH>. Guy is a newer yet competent shark playing on a non-competitive squad in TWLB (Lego).

I beg your pardon? Since when are we a non-competitive squad in lb? We are almost there, currently in the race for the 4th spot that will get us into the playoffs, so plz, learn about the truth before u speak.
And no, he has played a lot more than that and he plays many bds with us because, as u said, he is a very good new shark and we are very happy to have him onboard.

[Turban]

um,

we have several good examples of people performing above their expectations, and even breaking through this year which may help them to land on a "higher tier squad" in the future. players do not get suddenly top-tier over one season, it takes both practice and experience to reach that point, although some of these lesser known players have already reached that point, or are extremely close to it.

as a few examples in spider: henry saari, davy, trance, jammu, thewadorooster, reckful, producer, jatt, skatarius and katc all have done well this season, and some of them easily have the potential to play on a top level squad in the future if they wish to do that. not to forget that Enemy has several players that aren't that renowned yet they are undefeated in this season. we have a couple of sharks as well, but when you start comparing them with the top-level players, well, they are getting there, but the gap is still rather big. offender, markmwr and rodney have done a good job in their respective squads. javelin is also in a good shape, and some warbirds have done very well as well (e.g. wiibimbo, qpr) despite the expectations.

you can call that defensive if you want, but i think they have the potential to be great and there surely are other "gems" out here that, if given the chance, could truly shine in this zone. sure, there are still those core players on dudgeon, thunder, royal and other squads, but you can't expect them to stop playing the game. if they are the best available players at that time for the squad, the squads will add them to the match.