Fix TWL

[Ephemeral]

When I look at the people who have posted in this thread, I see very few who have played any Pub in years. Pub is the food for keeping the leagues healthy.

I play a lot of Pub, but not because it is fun. I mostly played Pub because it was good for the zone. I looked at it kind of like the cost for playing and a way to give back to the zone. If player wasn’t contributing by being on staff, or donating money to the zone; then I always felt playing Pub was the next best thing. But I understand why more players don’t contribute by playing Pub; unfortunately dumbass decisions by staffers make donating time to Pub just about meaningless. (Like holding events when Pub is struggling just to stay alive with 9-10 players.)

Yes, stacking of TWLB squad is (and has been) a real problem. Having the guy who leads our zone, after giving a interview in which he blows a lot of smoke up everyone’s ass about what is best for the zone, jump from a struggling squad to a stacked one at the start of TWL Season 20 was incredibly demoralizing. This action epitomized the selfish kind of thinking that has always plagued this zone.

There is no ‘fixing’ TWL unless the zone management is also fixed. For the first time in 17 years I am very close to not playing the zone anymore at all. Who wants to contribute to the zone at this point? Look at how many good people have been burned out trying to help this zone and TWL. Of course contributing to a community full of selfish people is not something that many smart people would want to waste their time on. But it has been up to the zone leadership to address issue this over the years and obviously they have completely failed. This failure was not due to ‘not knowing’; there were plenty of people pointing out that there were few incentives for anyone (players or staff) to ‘do the right thing’. Hell, for years the entire staff structure was setup in a way that was completely counterproductive to the health of the zone. IMO the zone often ‘rewarded’ the wrong kinds of behavior. If this is true, who is to blame for the selfish thinking of many players?

TWL follows the zone. As the quality of the zone has contracted, so has the quality of the leagues. The solution for squeezing out some more years from the zone is for both staffers and players to reinvest in contributing to the zone in one way or another. (Obviously we have to rely the support of players who have previously enjoyed the zone along with nurturing a small group of new players.) Zone leadership and players need to be selfless and make all decisions in the context of what is best for the zone, not what is ‘most fun’ for them alone. But given the actions of most existing players and staff, this doesn’t seem likely at this point. This is most evident in TWLB now, TWLD and TWLJ probably have a few more years left in them since they can be done with fewer players.

It is like TW is a local community park with basketball courts, baseball fields, soccer fields, and nice walking trails. TWL is a annual league held in this community park. Is the expectation that it is fine for TWL players to show up once a year but never ‘giving back’ to support the running of the park? On the other hand if the park is being mismanaged and has fallen into disrepair, why would anyone want to contribute their time to it? Fix the management, support the right kind of behaviors, and TWL might be able to hang in there a few more years. Continue on the current path, and TW becomes just like the HZ zone. (Zone almost completely inactive with periodic leagues in which highly skilled players fuck with each other.)
Eph

[Ephemeral]

Sorry for the double post, can’t seem to edit the one above….

There are only a few ways to ‘give back’ the this zone.

1. You can donate money. Many feel this is not a great way to ‘give back’. First, there were rumors, justified or not, that previously some money was misappropriated. Additionally, how the donated money is to be used has always been an issue of contention.
2. You can join zone staff or league staff. This is ok as long as you do not burn out. Good luck with that. Very few people have managed to not burn out after joining staff. Some of this is natural, turning something that is fun into a job is almost always a good way to ruin the intrinsic value of something.
3. You can log in and be as active as you can. This does not mean sitting in spec, it does not mean only playing in a league once a year. It means actively playing in Pub, elim, events, etc. throughout the year.

But there is an additional way not listed above, move TWL to a paid service.

TWL moves to a squad structure in which each squad of 25 players participate in all three leagues (TWLB, TWLD, TWLJ). There is no qualification period but there is a $125 per squad entry fee. This fee is covered by each player on the squad paying $5 each. (Five bucks isn’t much, if players don’t want to pay to play TWL then they can always go play Pub which is free.) I suppose if a captain felt like it and wanted a top tier player, they could cover the cost themselves to entice the elite player to join and perform. Perhaps 1-2 captains might even cover the entire $125 themselves if they wanted to try to “buy” some icon rings. LOL

The money collected goes to pay the hosts and league management. Hosts no longer just type a few commands and just log the game. Instead, they are held responsible for the games they host. In other words, they make real-time game calls and decisions. If some game abnormality occurs, the host resolves the issue with a immediate judgment during or after the game. Assuming that there are 8 squads, the league would collect $1000 per season. $500 would go to pay the hosts, $250 would go to pay those who mange the league. The remaining $250 would go to either the winning squads or split between the top performing players.

People would then care about applying for hosting positions and running the league, it would reduce staff burnout and improve the efforts that are needed to run the league. If playing in TWL is not worth paying just $5 for each player, then it is hard to argue that TWL means much to that player. (The argument then turns into, “I don’t want to pay a few dollars, but I want everything to go my way for free.”) TWL would probably get renewed with this approach, becoming more active and more competitive as each stakeholder (league hosts, league management, players) then feels more invested in it.

[Crescent Seal]

lol? adding a money aspect to TWL would result in squads being more stacked which is against the entire premise of this thread.

[Rough]

lol? adding a money aspect to TWL would result in squads being more stacked which is against the entire premise of this thread.

Nah scumbag MM_God will pocket all the money like he has been doing lol.

[forwards]

I'm not gonna read any of that Eph but I'm going to take it as a sign you're getting better and this pleases me.

[Heaven]

Sorry for the double post, can’t seem to edit the one above….

There are only a few ways to ‘give back’ the this zone.
[LIST=1][*]You can donate money. Many feel this is not a great way to ‘give back’. First, there were rumors, justified or not, that previously some money was misappropriated. Additionally, how the donated money is to be used has always been an issue of contention.

you paying for staffs next summer vacation?

[field]

you paying for staffs next summer vacation?

Eph pay for my round trip to Jalalabad so I can punch heaven in the face n come back here.

[Ephemeral]

lol? adding a money aspect to TWL would result in squads being more stacked which is against the entire premise of this thread.

Only if you assume that the number of players in TWL will decline (in which case none of this matters much). It could also be assumed that the number of players will increase (due to the chance to win money playing the game, increased quality of league due to hosts and management caring more). If that happened, the number of competitive team would increase. Would inactive elite players come back if they had a chance to make some cash? If not, what do you suggest?

By the way, I don’t care if this solution is done or not. I was listing all the possible ways that players might be able to ‘give back’ to the zone. Since we now understand (after failed Steam attempt) that nothing is really going to result in increased new population, figuring out ways to help the zone stay active is critical. If anyone else has suggestions on ways to ‘give back’ to the zone or other solutions they think would save the league or zone, please feel free to jump in.
Eph

[Crescent Seal]

If not, what do you suggest?

I had a pretty good plan actually. It would involve marketing through product placement on an established gaming platform. If staff implements this, it would be very beneficial due to the fact that it would increase population by a large margin and it would be essentially free. Basically, we should launch this game on steam.

[kthx]

Its too late for any of this, I will tell you what we should have done.

Give every zone an ultimatum saying we are going to Launch a client on steam that only includes Trench Wars, either you combine your zone and players with ours or you die.

We tell SScouncil to eat a giant dick and stop being worthless sacks of shit and doing political posturing to see who controls the 500 remaining players.

We launch on Steam and instead of having 10 zones with a combined 500 players we have one zone with 1000 players and lots of different styles of play available that would make every zone better.

Have set months for each zones "league" events and every player could play in every style of league if they wanted to.

We don't have the leadership or the balls to actually try doing this though so the game dies instead. Instead of one big zone we have 10 shitty little fucking zones.

[MHz]

Sorry for the double post, can’t seem to edit the one above….

There are only a few ways to ‘give back’ the this zone.

1. You can donate money. Many feel this is not a great way to ‘give back’. First, there were rumors, justified or not, that previously some money was misappropriated. Additionally, how the donated money is to be used has always been an issue of contention.

I realise I'm just adding to the cacophony of competing voices here, but I don't think adding barriers to TWL entry will help. Like any 'tax' it will reliably reduce demand. A better solution to staff burn out would be to find a way of automating duties through the bots, and just have a league operator and one or two helpers overseeing it all and dealing with lag checks. What I've realised in my limited time hosting games is that the vast majority of games go without any problem and don't require supervision.

With that said, I like your philosophy of helping out in pub. Another thing I've noticed being on staff, is the volume of 'new IPs' coming into the zone - and converting these people from pub should definitely be our ambition. People playing TWL now likely first started when there was a diversity of sub-arenas, squads and busy pub matches to engage them. We need to find a way of creating the right conditions to get new players coming into the zone now hooked in the same way we all were.

The best way of doing this, in my opinion, is fast tracking people into TWD - so they get a chance to play the more competitive & fun games quicker. We've all seen a newbie come into a TWD arena and say 'can I get in.' My big idea is to auto-register all new IPS & squadless players onto a generic TWD roster, call it 'Everyone Squad'. This is capped by staff & responsible players - and can challenge squads in much the same way as a regular squad. You won't need to be squad joined - so sorta like javduel or wbduel, made up of auto-registered new players and squadless players. Currently the barriers between pub -> twd -> twl are just too vast for the average gamer to reasonably persevere with.

[Crescent Seal]

this fixes TWLD. its an insanely rough draft so chill. but it shows that creating 8 balanced teams is possible.

[PapaRaazi]

If i was forced to play with welt id quit this game alltogether.

In all seriousness tho u guys need to stop being pussies. Why the fuck would a competitive scene be made to give everyone a fair chance of winning?

If you arent a top player you shouldnt win. If you dont think your a top player you wont win. If you want the only competitive aspect of tw to be made so bad players are given a shot then your in for a real kick in the balls from the real world.

"stacked squads" are just the teams with the most skilled players. If you cant hope to beat them dont try to change the entire fuckin league to give hope to unskilled players

[Crescent Seal]

this is mainly to prevent people from benching. half of the wbs listed on that chart bench for fierce and burn LOL.

[Flew]

Let me put it straight for you all.

When the game dies in however many years from now, this includes the websites too. The 15 little medals people have accumulated on the game next to their name mean absolutely 0, zero, zilch, nothing.
Just enjoy the game we've played as kids and stay true to the friends youve met on the game. Titles mean nothing but friendships can last for life.
Over the years I've seen friendships over 5 years being torn apart of a none irrelevant league. People get all worked up and stressed about it. I can literally look at the squad rosters and tell you who will win the league and save all of you guys the 4 hours on a Sunday.
Remember, we're all like 23+ and people will literally have a breakdown over a game.
Ease, you have like 1039473902748 medals next to your name, anymore I'm pretty sure you'll crash and end the game. There's too much greed in this world, why not go and develop newer players, you don't need to try and prove yourself year after a year bro. This doesn't just relate to ease, its too all these stacked squads. Only 5 players can play league matches, but squads insist on 20 warbirds; from my calculations (I could be wrong) but it only takes 1 person to coord? 2 to sub? And 12 to boost the egos of the better players?

This poo post was very enjoyable

Have guns and travel subspace p

Heard vys is Donald Trump.