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forthcoming changes to the league
hey,
there is less than a month to go before the qualification period ends for the next season, and we are glad to announce that we have some changes in store for you this coming season.
structural changes to the league
we are lowering the regular season length down to four weeks from seven weeks and will be introducing a new playoff format which is aiming to allow every squad to experience the playoffs while still keeping the regular season meaningful for all the teams. the season will be nine weeks long with the replay and all-star weekend included.
the reason behind shortening the season is rather simple as long-running leagues kill the zone activity, thus doing more harm than good. the leagues will have eight teams each, as the league is supposed to be the premier competition of the zone, and only the best teams should be participating.
we may end up doing a qualification tournament featuring the bottom seeded teams in the ladder as it is very likely that teams will be win trading to screw up the ladders and rankings, and we are aiming to feature the best teams in the competition. the bottom seeded teams on the ladder would have to prove themselves worthy if we are going through a qualification tournament. the tournament would be single-elimination held during the pre-season week.
the regular season would run for four weeks starting on September 27th and ending on October 18th, followed by a replay and all-star weekend. after the all-star weekend we would start the four week-long playoffs with the championship games being on November 22nd. alternatively, we can cram the regular season down to three weeks if the players feel that November 22nd is too late of a date.
the teams highlighted with blue color are the home teams who are given the option to play in their home arena if they have decided to submit a map to the league operators following the map submission guide. the top four seeded squads, based on the final ladder standings at the end of the qualification period, will have four home games and three away games while the bottom four seeds will have three home games and four away games. there will be a separate thread for map submissions including a guide on how to submit and create a map for your team.
the rosters will be hard locked after week two. there is not going to be a soft lock period, but standard waiting times apply when a player joins a new team. you can read the current rules by visiting this link: https://goo.gl/QEIjPB.
the all-star weekend is still being planned and is likely going to be ran with the help of the the events department, but more information will be announced at a later date.
at the end of the regular season, the top four squads in each league will be placed to a double elimination winners bracket tournament where the winning team advances to the next stage and the losing team lives to fight another day in the losers bracket tournament. these matches are highlighted with a blue color in the playoff schedule.
the bottom four squads will be placed to a losers bracket single elimination tournament. the victorious teams will advance to the next stage while the losing teams are out of the tournament. these single elimination matches are highlighted with a green color in the playoff schedule.
the main playoff matches (meaning semi-finals and finals of losers bracket, and championship game) would be played at 2:00 PM (TWLJ), 3:30 PM (TWLB), and 5:00 PM EST (TWLD).
the grand finals of basing will be a best of three series featuring a time race to 15 minutes, but every other basing match will be a best of one series with a time race to 20 minutes. the losers bracket semi-finals, finals, and grand finals in warbird and javelin leagues will be a best of three series.
additionally, we will work on a statistical spreadsheet for the players to compensate the lack of stat tracking on our main website. this will likely be done by me as no one else seems committed enough to do such tasks, but at the same time i'm hoping to be proven wrong to save myself the time and effort.
changes to basing and warbird leagues
we have some quality changes coming for both the basing and warbird leagues as an attempt to balance out the competition and to eliminate some of the randomness from the games.
it is worth mentioning that lancaster was under our radar last season, but we ended up not touching it as the quality of the teams was high enough for it to not be a problem and only the selected few players were abusing the ship. however, we have identified the reason why the ship seems to be so powerful right now in basing, and that is reason is rather frustrating to tell the truth.
someone had modified the ship settings in TWBD which screwed up the balance in that arena. the lancaster was doing 1170 damage instead of the normal 1020 damage, and it also had other minor buffs that made the ship way too powerful. some other ships also had slightly different settings which annoys the hell out of me. anyway, we have now reverted the arena settings to standard settings taken from TWLB, and will continue to monitor the ship to see if it needs any changes.
additionally we are removing the burst greens from basing, but in return we will prize the terriers a burst every minute to compensate. this will add some strategic value to the ship and will eliminate some of the remaining luck factors from the game, thus balancing the competition and making it more competitive in return. there is nothing more frustrating than playing against a team that gets lucky with several burst greens within a short period of time, or for your team to never get bursts while the opposing terr gets everything -- there is essentially no counterplay against that right now, and that is why we are doing this change.
this change is very similar to the one we did several years ago where shrapnel was set to fly at a set pattern. this increased the level of teams and sharks, separating the good sharks from the great ones, and made the competition more competitive as luck was not as big of a factor.
the third change to basing is a small one, but it allows us to play more basing games in the regular season as the main reason we did not do that last year was because basing matches often overlapped with the schedule, and having that happen twice would have been a headache for both the teams and league operators. we are setting the time race of basing to 12 minutes.
as for the changes to warbird leagues, they are quite minor, but they are still changes that should make the game more enjoyable for all the players while tackling some of the issues that players have had with it.
the first change to the warbird league is an attempt to eliminate the invisible bullet glitch which happens quite frequently and has bothered a lot of players. this glitch happens when a bullet is fired from a far distance (a certain amount of pixels off your screen), or sometimes when you are dead and about to spawn. we are increasing a certain value in the settings to hopefully eliminate the issue. keep in mind that this change would not get rid of the invisible bullets caused by high packet loss.
the other change is increasing the radar zoom by a slight amount. this change is a gain of approximately 150 to 200 pixels both horizontally and vertically, allowing teams to find their team mates and enemies slightly easier. below is a comparison of the radar changes with the left one being the new radar, and the right one being the current one.
the third change is an attempt to lower the amount of spawn deaths for the players by a small amount. this will be done by increasing the spawn radius of players ever so slightly as currently the most experienced and talented players will approximately know where you will spawn, and thus will take advantage of this knowledge to quickly single you out from your team.
these are the major changes planned for this season, although the details are still subject to change and some more may be added if there is enough player feedback and interest for other changes to happen to the league -- assuming it is within our power to do it. feel free to post your comments and thoughts to this thread.
the current TWL operator team consists is Ogron, Wax, Undercut, and me.
there is less than a month to go before the qualification period ends for the next season, and we are glad to announce that we have some changes in store for you this coming season.
structural changes to the league
we are lowering the regular season length down to four weeks from seven weeks and will be introducing a new playoff format which is aiming to allow every squad to experience the playoffs while still keeping the regular season meaningful for all the teams. the season will be nine weeks long with the replay and all-star weekend included.
the reason behind shortening the season is rather simple as long-running leagues kill the zone activity, thus doing more harm than good. the leagues will have eight teams each, as the league is supposed to be the premier competition of the zone, and only the best teams should be participating.
we may end up doing a qualification tournament featuring the bottom seeded teams in the ladder as it is very likely that teams will be win trading to screw up the ladders and rankings, and we are aiming to feature the best teams in the competition. the bottom seeded teams on the ladder would have to prove themselves worthy if we are going through a qualification tournament. the tournament would be single-elimination held during the pre-season week.
the regular season would run for four weeks starting on September 27th and ending on October 18th, followed by a replay and all-star weekend. after the all-star weekend we would start the four week-long playoffs with the championship games being on November 22nd. alternatively, we can cram the regular season down to three weeks if the players feel that November 22nd is too late of a date.
Code:
Regular Season Schedule Playoff Schedule . . September 27th November 1st TEAM 1 vs TEAM 8 A SEED 1 vs SEED 4 TEAM 2 vs TEAM 7 B SEED 2 vs SEED 3 TEAM 3 vs TEAM 6 TEAM 4 vs TEAM 5 C SEED 5 vs SEED 8 D SEED 6 vs SEED 7 TEAM 8 vs TEAM 2 TEAM 3 vs TEAM 1 November 8th TEAM 4 vs TEAM 7 TEAM 6 vs TEAM 5 E Winner of A vs Winner of B October 4th F Winner of D vs Loser of A G Winner of C vs Loser of B TEAM 3 vs TEAM 8 TEAM 4 vs TEAM 2 November 15th TEAM 5 vs TEAM 1 TEAM 6 vs TEAM 7 H Winner of F vs Winner of G I Winner of H vs Loser of E TEAM 8 vs TEAM 4 TEAM 5 vs TEAM 3 November 22nd TEAM 2 vs TEAM 6 TEAM 1 vs TEAM 7 J Winner of E vs Winner of I October 11th TEAM 5 vs TEAM 8 TEAM 6 vs TEAM 4 TEAM 7 vs TEAM 3 TEAM 1 vs TEAM 2 TEAM 8 vs TEAM 6 TEAM 7 vs TEAM 5 TEAM 4 vs TEAM 1 TEAM 2 vs TEAM 3 October 18th TEAM 7 vs TEAM 8 TEAM 1 vs TEAM 6 TEAM 2 vs TEAM 5 TEAM 3 vs TEAM 4 October 25th Replay & All-Star Weekend
the teams highlighted with blue color are the home teams who are given the option to play in their home arena if they have decided to submit a map to the league operators following the map submission guide. the top four seeded squads, based on the final ladder standings at the end of the qualification period, will have four home games and three away games while the bottom four seeds will have three home games and four away games. there will be a separate thread for map submissions including a guide on how to submit and create a map for your team.
the rosters will be hard locked after week two. there is not going to be a soft lock period, but standard waiting times apply when a player joins a new team. you can read the current rules by visiting this link: https://goo.gl/QEIjPB.
the all-star weekend is still being planned and is likely going to be ran with the help of the the events department, but more information will be announced at a later date.
at the end of the regular season, the top four squads in each league will be placed to a double elimination winners bracket tournament where the winning team advances to the next stage and the losing team lives to fight another day in the losers bracket tournament. these matches are highlighted with a blue color in the playoff schedule.
the bottom four squads will be placed to a losers bracket single elimination tournament. the victorious teams will advance to the next stage while the losing teams are out of the tournament. these single elimination matches are highlighted with a green color in the playoff schedule.
the main playoff matches (meaning semi-finals and finals of losers bracket, and championship game) would be played at 2:00 PM (TWLJ), 3:30 PM (TWLB), and 5:00 PM EST (TWLD).
the grand finals of basing will be a best of three series featuring a time race to 15 minutes, but every other basing match will be a best of one series with a time race to 20 minutes. the losers bracket semi-finals, finals, and grand finals in warbird and javelin leagues will be a best of three series.
additionally, we will work on a statistical spreadsheet for the players to compensate the lack of stat tracking on our main website. this will likely be done by me as no one else seems committed enough to do such tasks, but at the same time i'm hoping to be proven wrong to save myself the time and effort.
changes to basing and warbird leagues
we have some quality changes coming for both the basing and warbird leagues as an attempt to balance out the competition and to eliminate some of the randomness from the games.
it is worth mentioning that lancaster was under our radar last season, but we ended up not touching it as the quality of the teams was high enough for it to not be a problem and only the selected few players were abusing the ship. however, we have identified the reason why the ship seems to be so powerful right now in basing, and that is reason is rather frustrating to tell the truth.
someone had modified the ship settings in TWBD which screwed up the balance in that arena. the lancaster was doing 1170 damage instead of the normal 1020 damage, and it also had other minor buffs that made the ship way too powerful. some other ships also had slightly different settings which annoys the hell out of me. anyway, we have now reverted the arena settings to standard settings taken from TWLB, and will continue to monitor the ship to see if it needs any changes.
additionally we are removing the burst greens from basing, but in return we will prize the terriers a burst every minute to compensate. this will add some strategic value to the ship and will eliminate some of the remaining luck factors from the game, thus balancing the competition and making it more competitive in return. there is nothing more frustrating than playing against a team that gets lucky with several burst greens within a short period of time, or for your team to never get bursts while the opposing terr gets everything -- there is essentially no counterplay against that right now, and that is why we are doing this change.
this change is very similar to the one we did several years ago where shrapnel was set to fly at a set pattern. this increased the level of teams and sharks, separating the good sharks from the great ones, and made the competition more competitive as luck was not as big of a factor.
the third change to basing is a small one, but it allows us to play more basing games in the regular season as the main reason we did not do that last year was because basing matches often overlapped with the schedule, and having that happen twice would have been a headache for both the teams and league operators. we are setting the time race of basing to 12 minutes.
as for the changes to warbird leagues, they are quite minor, but they are still changes that should make the game more enjoyable for all the players while tackling some of the issues that players have had with it.
the first change to the warbird league is an attempt to eliminate the invisible bullet glitch which happens quite frequently and has bothered a lot of players. this glitch happens when a bullet is fired from a far distance (a certain amount of pixels off your screen), or sometimes when you are dead and about to spawn. we are increasing a certain value in the settings to hopefully eliminate the issue. keep in mind that this change would not get rid of the invisible bullets caused by high packet loss.
the other change is increasing the radar zoom by a slight amount. this change is a gain of approximately 150 to 200 pixels both horizontally and vertically, allowing teams to find their team mates and enemies slightly easier. below is a comparison of the radar changes with the left one being the new radar, and the right one being the current one.
the third change is an attempt to lower the amount of spawn deaths for the players by a small amount. this will be done by increasing the spawn radius of players ever so slightly as currently the most experienced and talented players will approximately know where you will spawn, and thus will take advantage of this knowledge to quickly single you out from your team.
these are the major changes planned for this season, although the details are still subject to change and some more may be added if there is enough player feedback and interest for other changes to happen to the league -- assuming it is within our power to do it. feel free to post your comments and thoughts to this thread.
the current TWL operator team consists is Ogron, Wax, Undercut, and me.
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