Trench Wars Leagues and what future holds ..

[Ravos]

good idea indeed.

In notice a fair amount of EG players is also starting to play TW.
Lots of em havent even heard of TWD.
And like lasenza said, they think pub is the skill measure.

[LaSenza]

That's actually a pretty good idea. Whenever a big event is going on make it the default arena just to get the new players exploring other arenas. Honestly a lot of new players don't even realize the skill difference between pub and twl. They assume that a good pub score=a spot on a top squad. Rather then entry onto the lowest squads.

[Rasaq]

Right now, literally RIGHT NOW, would be the ideal time to make TWDTD the default arena when logging in, as will the other two TWDT arenas at the appropriate time of the final matches. New players would automatically be put into spectating the competition and could even stir up convos with vets who are also spectating. Maybe even bring curiosity to how the league is ran and how they could take part in it.

[LaSenza]

That'd be enough for me. The ugliest thing about this game imo and the reason why it doesn't appeal to professional gaming communities as much as other games with a spectate function, is how blantant eating shots is. Visably seeing a shot that should kill someone but it doesn't. That BS factor makes subspace look bad from a spectatorial point of view. Anything we can do to reduce the number of eats happening in the game will be a very good thing. Also The draw distance of bullets/loading distance of bullets, would that also be affecting greens as well? I know it's not as important as it used to be, ie Invisable full charge greens. But if that problem can be fixed at the same time, bonus.

[Turban]

if bullets are replaced with bombs (otherwise same settings) there should be something like a bombseeradar thingy in the config file making it totally doable. i should know, since i used to shoot rocks in the 1.35 version while playing offline and manipulating the config files. wb's bullet speed is 5000 if anyone is interested

correct, but i don't think players would get used to hitting bomb key instead of bullet key and most wouldn't bother going through the effort of changing their key bindings. there is no other way to actually make the bullets show on the radar, unfortunately.

we can tweak the time bullet stays alive, and from how far people will see the bullets being fired (aka could probably prevent invisible bullets from ever happening), but that's about it.

[roxxkatt]

plus its impossible until new client is finished anyways

if bullets are replaced with bombs (otherwise same settings) there should be something like a bombseeradar thingy in the config file making it totally doable. i should know, since i used to shoot rocks in the 1.35 version while playing offline and manipulating the config files. wb's bullet speed is 5000 if anyone is interested

this is your only option, and you can go as far as changing the gfx to look like bullets, but in the end you will still be pressing tab

[Crescent Seal]

What I'd like to see are bullets being visible on radar, similar to how thors are as that would remove much of the luck that's involved in squads just lobbing at each other from r4.

this is something i would be totally against since radaring/sniping/straying is my thing, but since i've been forced to quit and will likely never log on again go for it!

[Ricko]

I dunno....I like the idea of seeing bullets on radar because I hate being R4'd by un-aimed shots and it eliminates that element that is beyond frustrating, but it might make the radar a bit confusing with shots constantly flying across it and differentiating between what is an enemy player and a shot. That and sometimes I like to fire a radar shot at someone who wouldn't be expecting one from me (based on my positioning) as they'd expect me to go for their teammate as a better option but being surprised and dying.

[Jones]

What I'd like to see are bullets being visible on radar, similar to how thors are as that would remove much of the luck that's involved in squads just lobbing at each other from r4.

if bullets are replaced with bombs (otherwise same settings) there should be something like a bombseeradar thingy in the config file making it totally doable. i should know, since i used to shoot rocks in the 1.35 version while playing offline and manipulating the config files. wb's bullet speed is 5000 if anyone is interested

[Mythril]

Maintaining the current player base that has history with the game and have been active for years upon years needs to be far more important than appealing to the new players that I haven't seen in the last 8 years. How many new players quit because they typed ?go twld and saw there was a res limit and uninstalled? Probably a grand total of zero. Once we get a notable influx of new players, then we can talk about res limits and how it affects their chances of being active players. New players stay in pub for months. Maybe we should figure out what's wrong with that arena instead of touching arenas newbies don't play and dismissing the opinions of the majority of competitive players who currently keep this game alive.

What I'd like to see are bullets being visible on radar, similar to how thors are as that would remove much of the luck that's involved in squads just lobbing at each other from r4.

[Jones]

either way, the resolution limits (or lack thereof) should be announced long before twl starts

[Ivf]

Put roster limits in to play. 20 man roster max through the zone. And stick resolution up in warbird

Problem solved (no need for essays)

[Turban]

Im interested in what degree of a change will be done to the radar. I'm sure you are well aware of the range that bullets become invisable to others. I think if you plan on increasing the radar range you should also look into fixing the problem with bullets not being loaded for people if they aren't close enough to the person that fired. Otherwise youll have a ton of blanks being shot at r5 at each other.

there is actually a setting that would enable we could mess around with it -- it's called "Routing - CloseEnoughBulletAdjust", granted i haven't verified whether it works as intended. most of these bullets being invisibile is due to them being fired while one is dead, thus their "ship location" being set to A1 meaning they never register the bullet packet being fired by a player when they spawn. this is often the case when a player is in that "sweet spot" just outside the area where ones ship would otherwise get the bullet packet, resulting in invisible bullets. it is sometimes also caused by player packet loss (even 0.1% has a chance to make your bullets invisible for some players) which is something we can't fix unless we were to move to a more stable server, and every player used a top-tier connection.

alternatively, we can change the bullet alive time as it is currently set to eight seconds. this value could be slightly lowered to prevent some strays from happening, i suppose.

here is an example of current radar zoom in TWLD settings with the coordinates being in the middle of the map (512, 512), and below is what the radar zoom could be in the next season. it is roughly a vision gain of ~33% for the players which would help teams to group up better, or find lonely targets these values can be tweaked slightly, but this amount of zoom seems good. we could try it out in TWD for a month and see how the players like it, and if it's a noticeable difference.



what it could be:

[Turban]

Turban, you describe the double-elimination as a success -- what is your measurement/basis for this? Personally, I don't like it, and I strongly dislike the idea of starting a Finals down an entire round. None of the major sports feature starting a round a full game down. Just make the quarter-finals and semifinals the same format as the Finals like the NHL and NBA and MLB are (i.e., best of 3 instead of one 20 minute game for base, etc.)

Your concern of a team fluking a round would be eliminated by simply having a more robust game format in the earlier playoff rounds.

it is irrelevant to compare major league sports such as NHL, NBA and MBL with an online game such as this one. all of these aforementioned leagues have far greater player depth and a larger amount of teams participating which results into longer seasons, this leads in a more accurate seeding system for the playoffs. on top of that, these leagues have been using the same league format for playoffs with nearly no changes for over sixty years and that is unlikely to ever change. we could even argue that using a playoff format is incorrect to determine the champion as arguably the most popular sport only has a regular season to determine the eventual champion, granted they do have their own cup tournaments during the regular season to add some more competition to the league. however, none of these leagues are even remotely related to an online gaming league, and thus you should have used major online leagues as your example. the fact that nearly every major electronic sports league, whether it is for playoffs or qualification for the regular season, uses a double-elimination format to a relatively great success -- this is the current norm, and it is here to stay.

the fact of the matter is that we do not have an abudance of teams or the luxury of running a long regular season to accurately gauge the strength of each team thus having a good seeding system for the playoffs. we do not even use a promotion/demotion format (or prizes scaling based on the placement of your team) at the end of season which increases the overall competitiveness of a league. in these leagues every match still matters, even if you don't have a chance to make if to the playoffs or qualify for a top level competition.

there are advantages and disadvantages when running a double-elimination format, but in our case the pros greatly outweigh the cons. here a couple of examples that first come in mind;

- the seeding is always incorrect in our leagues. you may take TWEL as a recent example with several top-tier players being placed in a lower seed than they deserve, thus resulting in a tournament format filled with potential upsets in the early rounds. thankfully a double-elimination format solves that problem we have in our leagues.

- we will have a way to determine third and fourth place finishes without the need of a consolitation match. these games rarely, if ever, get played and even if they do there is no interest for either team as we do not have any third place rewards for the teams.

- the teams get to play at least twice, and three quarters will play three or more games where as in a single elimination tournament, half of the competitors will be eliminated after the first set of games.

- at least twice the number of games have to be conducted when running this format. this can be seen as a disadvantage in some cases.

we could have skipped the teams being down one match in the finals in our league, as only a handful of professional electronic sports use it, but in hindsight it ended up working great and i would not have changed it if had i known how the playoffs were going to play out. my reasoning behind the decision was to make each game matter more, as teams would try harder to gain that advantage in the eventual finals where as the team who managed to get out of losers bracket would have to prove their worth if they wanted to challenge a title. we can still change that one for the next season, but the double-elimination format itself is here to stay unless we get a sudden influx of hundreds of competitive players.

[roxxkatt]

Turban, you describe the double-elimination as a success -- what is your measurement/basis for this? Personally, I don't like it, and I strongly dislike the idea of starting a Finals down an entire round. None of the major sports feature starting a round a full game down. Just make the quarter-finals and semifinals the same format as the Finals like the NHL and NBA and MLB are (i.e., best of 3 instead of one 20 minute game for base, etc.)

Your concern of a team fluking a round would be eliminated by simply having a more robust game format in the earlier playoff rounds.

this is a good idea because it enforces consistent gameplay, but 2 flukes is still statistically possible