TWL PROPOSAL

[Ricko]

I agree deth, and that's why I have proposed these changes to TWL - with how TW has been over the last few years TWL cannot remain the same as it has been as it will just drive people further away. This format for TWL involves more players of different levels in to it for a longer period of time giving everyone valuable game time. Whilst this is a TWL proposal I also see the fact that if we improve TWL and make people want to play it this will consequently increase TWD activity.

Increasing TWD activity definitely needs to take priority over TWL in our current state, making people want to be #1 on the ladder and giving individual recognition to top performing players/most active players in TWD will give people the motivation to play. I would rather see TWD put in to a healthy state over these proposals, I just thought by throwing them out there now we could get some clarity on what will become of TWL going forward.

Although I do not like the idea of TWL as a shorter elimination style contest - best to keep that idea as a TWD off-season tournament IMO.

[Azov]

I agree with Ricko here. TWD is more flexible given current circumstances. I agree that giving more attention to TWD is the clear way forward.

[iPad]

Increasing TWD activity definitely needs to take priority over TWL in our current state

Exactly what i tried to do...

[Rasaq]

As I said before, make TWL season best of 3 and playoffs best of 5. It may add a change in how squads play lines giving more people the chance to play. Your point system you've stated would benefit more from 3 rounds than 1. We play TWD all season, best of 3, just to log on for 15 minutes on a Sunday (no TWD activity.during TWL games) to play 1 round and be done.

[Rasaq]

You could also have TWD ladder.play a.role in your.point system based off a squads ranking.during TWL season. Itmay increase twd activity during.the week if a squad can gain points to their twl total at a weekly basis depending on their spot on the twd ladder. Maybe weekly reset? Fuck typing on.a HTC one

[Ricko]

I think best of 3 rounds for ld and lj all season is best, but I wouldn't increase playoffs to best of 5 rounds....that's too much of a marathon tbh. As for LB it's probably best to keep regular season to 1 round to 15 mins and then only playoffs best of 3 to 15 mins (given the potential 30 minutes a round, 3 rounds of lb every week is a bit excessive).

Ipad - I'm not saying we need to increase TWD by simply running a squad and trying to be as active as possible to get twd matches (which btw is admirable you do that, I try it all the time), the increase in TWD activity needs to be much more deep rooted than individual efforts....we need to find a way to make people WANT to TWD a lot; it's a great league system with great stats at our finger tips....it has purely died out due to people quitting over the years due to irl stuff or because the game has stagnated and people have been driven away, and we need to rectify this.

[Pressure]

I didn't get a chance to really read the post or through this thread, but I'm just throwing this out there.. if you drastically alter the way TWL is run, for the first time in 18 years it won't be the same "TWL." imo you'd have to call it something else.

[Rule]

I agree with those who say TWD needs to be revamped and focused on. With TWL basically all but done, heavy emphasis should be applied to TWD, bringing in more new squads and players.

Between now and January 2015 (estimated TWL start date), something needs to be created for squads to compete for in TWD, and we need to find a way to make it more competitive, fun and inclusive for the majority of trenchers to be involved in - as TWD activity is declining rapidly these days. Any chance of TWL being improved on, starts with overhauling TWD.

[Dethdefire]

Eph - the qan change 30 seconds before the match is still not relevant to this TWL proposal and in this proposal I clearly stated TWLB playoffs should be best of 3 to 15 minutes every round. By setting these rules early we won't end up with the same incidents such as the bot change last minute., plus 3 races to 20 minutes is way too long.

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Yes TW has struggled due to continual 'suggestions' that just keep on adding to the side of other issues, but TWL is a wing of the game, not the game itself. Formatting how TWL is run to benefit the zone is different to continual changes to the lev or weasel.

With the TWL site being re-structured/changed at the moment it makes complete sense to sort out what the TWL structure will be next year and the coding needed to make it run smoothly.

Check out my trench wars death match league idea and let me know what you think. I think it's not only a good new idea to get new players involved but also a way to introduce them to some semi competitive play

[Godzero]

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.

I think we need to realize that if no mentoring, or recruitment of new players into existing squads is done, if players continue to cluster on the same squads year in year out, the leagues will be finished soon. This season most of the caps I talked to who ran top twl tier squads simply could not name more then 1 player on their squad who would fall into the bracket "new". Those who genuinely love league play, and only login for it need to give back more to the system they enjoy - make it more friendly and inclusive to the rest of the zone. Recruit newbs, get players from other zones that are dying (EG, Chaos etc) and keep trench wars league rolling. .

I would love to hear more expansion on these kinds of ideas. Not like in the past with "newb squads" that only have a vet captain, but just genuine mentoring, and a new attitude in the zone that this is what the top players should be doing if they feel like they have already "mastered" this game and/or their particular ship. They could prove their skills through other new people they've personally trained instead of whatever it is they think they're proving by getting a 10th medal next to a bunch of other 16-year veterans on an overly-stacked team, AGAIN.
Masters of trades IRL often will take on students to pass their knowledge onto them. IMHO, the mark of a true pro in this game's future won't be someone having a bunch of pixels next to their name (medals) earned by Walmarting teams, but being someone who is willing to create a squad that isn't 3/4 their friends/old squaddies, and take on protégés who aren't much more than raw potential to start with.

Probably doesn't need to be EVERYONE to make big changes, but If even a few of the top squads were willing to split and play with pupils, the competition in the game would go way up from there only being 2-3 actual teams in any given league. The natural tendency in games like this are to play with your friends, but if you are all in chats together already there is no real reason why you couldn't just keep the teaming together with your friends in wbduel, javduel, ?go base, and for TWD adopt a mindset of friendly rivalry like "my new apprentice will beat yours" or "mine will be good enough for TWL this season"

But it would be better if a couple serious vets took the initiative themselves and the rest followed suit ... instead of staff forcing it upon everyone and dividing up the top players like some sort of TW Draft Tournament-type of setting, since assigning players "values" gets a little messy to put it lightly.

[Rule]

I would love to hear more expansion on these kinds of ideas. Not like in the past with "newb squads" that have a vet captain, but just genuine mentoring, and a new attitude in the zone that this is what the top players should be doing if they feel like they have already "mastered" this game and/or their particular ship. They could prove their skills through other new people they've personally trained instead of whatever it is they think they're proving by getting a 10th medal next to a bunch of other 16-year veterans on an overly-stacked team, AGAIN.
Masters of trades IRL often will take on students to pass their knowledge onto them. IMHO, the mark of a true pro in this game's future won't be someone having a bunch of pixels next to their name (medals) earned by stacking teams, but being someone who is willing to create a squad that isn't 3/4 their friends/old squaddies and take on protégés who aren't much more than raw potential to start with.

Probably doesn't need to be everyone to make big changes, but If even a few of the top squads were willing to split and play with pupils, the competition in the game would go way up from there only being 2-3 actual teams in any given league. The natural tendency in games like this are to play with your friends, but if you are already all in chats together there is no reason why you couldn't just keep the teaming together with your friends in wbduel, javduel, ?go base and for TWD adopt a mindset of friendly rivalry like "my new apprentice will beat yours" or "mine will be good enough for TWL this season"

But it would be better if a couple serious vets took the initiative and the rest followed suit instead of forcing it upon everyone and dividing up the top players like some sort of TW Draft Tournament-type of setting, since assigning players "values" gets a little messy to put it lightly.

Well said Godzero. Mentoring for the sake of helping new players needs to be massively focused on if the leagues are to have any chance of significant growth. The reality is we need to balance the values that traditional vets appreciate - like remaking TWL a cherished event, while also realizing points like what Dethdefire has said: The time of TWD revolving around TWL is over. When one league runs 365 days a year, 24 hours a day (and the other 3-4 months) - we must enhance it and make it a competitive/fun league that is inclusive to newbs and vets - and gives as many people as possible the opportunity to play in leagues - on teams that are not completely unbalanced. We have to make it a friendly league for new players to be a part of, and you can't force existing players to play in some ridiculous style TW draft league, where teams are randomly chosen. And the newb squads with vet leadership for example Play, don't work as a long term solution as come TWL time the squads get dissolved and the caps/vets on them go back to existing squads. Basic truth you can't force caps or vets to do anything they dont want to do.

I think if a player has never played on a TWL squad he could be classified as "new" even if hes been pubbing it for five years, or playing chaos. Definitely going to be a wide variety of different skill levels of new players. I think if majority of existing active TWD squads (+ new post TWL squads) would take on 5-10 new players we would see immediate growth, and vets who are not interested in moving would still get to stick together with friends. Make TWD a competitive league, where caps are awarded and recognized for recruiting new talent, where rookies are given recognition etc and where squads actually have something to compete for and enhance TW. One idea would be score-resets: example Pub score-resets every two weeks, maybe TWD should score reset every x period (IE two weeks, one month, two months) with top TWD squads given recognition (IE Squad X - TWJD - 3rd place medal - Period May-July 2014). Then you reward squads for competing + create a more active league. Top it off with a TWD cup which is inclusive to as many active squads as possible, where the top 3 squads get recognition. I think newer players need to be part of squads that win something, as opposed to being on the squad that gets kicked around TWD every day.

Lastly you have to create a better connection between squads and pub. Need to strengthen pub as much as possible. Back in the day we actually used to see vets playing pub more. Its the first recruiting ground for any TWD squad and before many newbs can make it to TWD they need to develop and learn the basics there.

Then come January 2015 you have a stronger league system, more established squads (newbs, newer players can grow alot in active leagues over a period of 7,8 months) and you run TWL for the 3-4 month period with way more new players involved (ideally including as many active TWD squads as possible), while still keeping the strengthened TWD system in place. I like the idea that come TWL, squad's also have a minimum number of players in training, then you don't end up with what we have had for many seasons now top tier squads with 0-1 newbs. Give squads a separate 5roster spots in TWL for example for players in training that way no squad is "forced" to play ppl they don't feel are ready yet in key TWL games, but all squads are still training players and boosting twd activity.

Then put some of the ideas that are out here like Ricko's to a vote and see if the majority of active TWD/TWL players want a different point system, or prefer the traditional one.

[Turban]

we could always implement a mentoring system where a captain could basically reward his/her hardest working new members for being active and improving as a player. there's a lot of ideas that could be implemented, but not all of them synergize with each other and most would require a lot of hard work from the coders. i don't want to overburden them, but we do need something to make the process easier to run newbie squads. i've always wanted to have some sort of training system implemented to TWD, but that's probably something that'll never happen.

nevertheless, all things considered it would still be up to the veteran players to actually do all the hard, dirty work. creating a squad and actively recruiting members, trying to keep everyone happy and giving them tips on how to improve as a player. that's a lot of hard work to actually making it a success and not everyone is up for the task. alone you can't do much, we would need several people participating in this project that actually have the motivation to see it through. at the moment we currently have a couple of things that are kind of preventing any kind of "mass recruiting" of new players, such as the 35 roster limit rule (which should be scrapped or at least temporarily removed until twl qualifications begin) and double squadding rule. i would love to help multiple squads to grow, but without a change in the rules i'm technically limited to one squad.

our current twd structure isn't really newbie friendly. that's a fact. if we can recruit hundreds of new players into TWD while getting them involved in this whole "squad community" thing, which imo is something we can still do even at the current state of the zone, our activity levels should theoretically grow. if our new recruits stay in the zone for longer than they usually would, and log in more often, then our population should also see a steady growth over time.

just my morning thoughts.

[Turban]

oh, this thread had a second page already.

[Dethdefire]

I like the idea of playing each squad 2 times, i think weekday games would be a mistake as there would be a lot of no shows which would probably jeopardize the quality of the games severely. I also believe that TWLD/TWLJ games should be a best of 3 rounds like it is in TWD, no reason to make it 10 minutes of gameplay. I'm sure someone has already suggested these 2 ideas, I'm just agreeing that i think it's good

Weekday games would be a mistake if they were scheduled. However I strongly feel that if two squads have the line and ability to play a game, by the choice from each squads captain, at any given point of the week they should be allowed to do so. We have nothing to lose by having one bot available per league during the week to support this. Obviously a staff member would need to be available and present. This may in fact reduce the demand for bots on weekends and help things run not more smooth but more flexible, without shutting down twd.

[Dethdefire]

I agree with those who say TWD needs to be revamped and focused on. With TWL basically all but done, heavy emphasis should be applied to TWD, bringing in more new squads and players.

Between now and January 2015 (estimated TWL start date), something needs to be created for squads to compete for in TWD, and we need to find a way to make it more competitive, fun and inclusive for the majority of trenchers to be involved in - as TWD activity is declining rapidly these days. Any chance of TWL being improved on, starts with overhauling TWD.

Why not allow players to be in a separate squad per league? If you are in just a one or two league squad but can compete in two or three leagues why in the heck should you be prevented from joining a different squad in another league. All three leagues are "combined" per squad in the terms of competition. Why not treat each league as a separate entity for the purpose of twl. I think this would help spread around competitive players that find themselves dormant in leagues they could participate in with less stric roster rules. Just an idea.