New plan for leagues

[Anubis]

@Anubis,
Are you planning to come back at all?

How dare you make me post off-topic MI!

TL;DR Version: Yes, but.. see PM.

[Aerox]

All these years, almost all the whining about a certain scheme came from the people who were new to that scheme.

Works both ways. Those who are great at certain scheme and have great success with it might be biased towards conserving the same things that allow him to enjoy said success, even if they are hindering the enjoyment / fairness of the scheme.

edit: that PM is an alias petition  

The schemes are getting sacrificed for many people according to your point of view of schemes.
For example, you are truly an expert in TTRR and you have dedicated a category for TTRR because you know it damn pretty well. (I do believe that TTRR needs its own category)

I think Mablak knows practical every scheme and he bases his opinion on gameplay and league logic as opposed to plain taste. But do correct me if I'm wrong.

On the other hand, I've heard the phrase "TTRR is just a small version of WxW" several times. I'm sure it makes sense to many people here. So why not make it RR/WxW then? The reason is that you know TTRR deep to your bone and you are sure it has nothing to do with WxW.

Thing is, you're going to hear many things, not all points are valid, opinions can be wrong. It's your job to judge.

[Dub-c]

Roper/WxW

Roper has nothing to do with wxw. RR and shopper have much more similarities to wxw.

Why not? Because there's crates with weapons instead of health crates? You're still doing the same thing, roping very fast from A to B and then try to get an attack in, and after that, you pile, not to mention how the skills translate, in real WxW maps (those that barely give you enough time to attack) usually the best roper wins, as opposed to the best shopper (who is a totally different scheme in which time is spent in strategically using the weapons as opposed from roping from point to point). And really, most of the attacks in WxW are not different from roper, you barely get there and attack with whatever you can. Surely you can punish mistakes easier because it's easier to pile worms together and break havok in WxW, but on high skill level, it usually come downs to roping skill and crate luck, the way you attack is irrelevant because most of the time you're only gonna get one worm and if you can hit with a zook you can hit with a sheep, the only difference in the damage dealt, which is what makes WxW luck based, in part, but all down to roping.

Now I do agree that the roping style might seem more similar to that in RR because both maps use straight lines but not really, as you're doing mostly kicks, spikes and scrolling at full speed, something not very present in RR. I do consider roper to be the best part of roping but you just can't ignore the similarities. It used to be very obvious in leagues like LW, were they actually had very high skilled WxW players, that were the same people highly skilled in roper, many of them couldn't elite or bng, they were very easy to beat in things like shopper with a bit of head.

I will agree to disagree. Its both our opinions and neither of us are wrong. However, the thought of roper being grouped with wxw makes me throw up a little in my mouth.

[Aerox]

However, the thought of roper being grouped with wxw makes me throw up a little in my mouth.

Don't get me wrong, this happens to me too.

[MonkeyIsland]

I think Mablak knows practical every scheme and he bases his opinion on gameplay and league logic as opposed to plain taste. But do correct me if I'm wrong.

Every scheme? No.
Does he have a very good tight grip of the game? Yes! Probably the only player that could gather this much experience combining all schemes.
Our taste are combined with our experience and logic. Ask 2 programmers about their main programming language compared to other languages and see how they will explain their taste with reason.

If I want TTRR advice, I will run to Mablak.
Hysteria advice? I could but there are much better choices.
Team17? Not a good idea.

To me Roper and WxW are closer than TTRR and WxW on gameplay, however in roping techniques, Roper is closer to TTRR. But I believe they each deserve their own category. I have a high chance beating Dub-c in WxW and a low chance beating him in Roper.

[ShyGuy]

I agree with Mablak on grouping schemes for points... his idea is a less extreme version of grouping all the defaults and roping schemes into their respective groups and making the points earned and lost kept in those two categories... so if you win a ttrr, you gain points in your Roping rating, if you lose a bng, you lose points in your Default rating... no more gaining and losing points based off individual schemes.

However, i disagree with the way he grouped the schemes... I don't care if the best shoppa players are great defaulters (that's a ridiculous statement in itself which can easily be countered), that doesn't make shoppa and t17 as similar as Roper and wxw... not even close.

Also, I would consider myself well-balanced in all of the classic schemes, yet I have major problems with the fundamental makeup of most of the schemes and would like to see change.  T

he Tus shoppa scheme has the absolute worst crate options I think I have ever seen, same with WxW.  Also, no more city shoppas or other generic premade maps... you must learn how to make a good shoppa cavern and you should be playing on a new shoppa cavern map every time... it's really not that hard to make  

Team17 has too many hillbilly BIG EXPLOSION INSTANT KILL weapons that break the scheme, most notably patsy's magic bullet.  

Roper is the stalest scheme in the league - you hide in the same place all game, fetching crates like a mindless dog, over and over and over, plus rules like zook first turn and w2w at sd make very little sense... roper needs the most work on.  Even if you believe the current roper scheme isn't crate based, you have to admit it is the most mind-numbing scheme out there.

BnG needs to have no rules, the sheer amount of complaints involved with the scheme should be more than enough of a case for that change

Hysteria could use random worm rotation... also, the scheme should be played with AT LEAST a total of 6 worms per color... the creators of hysteria intended it to be 8v8, cut this 4v4 bullshit out, especially in clanners.. it just quickly turns into a rotate rape/ 1v1 darkside bore-fest... I thought the whole point of hysteria was to try to use a variety of weapons in the best possible way in only one second.... you're supposed to teleport around your enemy in potentially lethal locations, not find a pussy hide and throw a grenade or petrol every turn until you uncover their hide so they can just teleport and darkside again and again and again.  In my mind, hysteria played in a cavern map would be extremely interesting.

I would like to see ttrr changed on how times are scored.  play with 3 or 4 worms and add up your best two times... I would personally favor playing with 2 or 3 worms and adding up all of your times ... if you fall and end your turn, you pretty much lose unless the other guy falls, or you could make that turn's time equal to your worst time + 15 seconds or something.  i don't think the community would like that, however, i think it would be a better representation of skill than letting you have 3 tries to count just 1...  ttrr stresses consistency already, just not enough IMO...


Fixing the schemes and grouping them up like Mab's idea would be the best change for the league IMO

[twistah]

Leagues:

Classic League
Elite, T17, TTRR, Roper, BnG, WxW
And Just keep the league as it is. Maybe lower the seasons lenght.

Besides the Classic League you then got sub-leagues with all kind of schemes. The stats are not being reset, until you do it on your own (set it like 1 reset possible every 2 months or so). Not sure about the playoffs/season system yet though. But that way I would be motivated to even play a Battlerace match or what not, because I can report a win there. That scheme also is very skilled, but theres no really competition in it, since none bothers up spending much time on jumping around. A report in a league on the other hand makes sense. And I mean not like in the Free League where everything gets just summed up. Would be really cool to see in ANY scheme the top guys. Really <3. Would make much more sense to play anything every now and then. I'm totally specified on the Classic League schemes, because they are kinda the only schemes in a good league, or the only ones that are worth playing and spending his time on to get to playoffs. 

The Classic League would be the main league and those sub-leagues just get played if you feel playing a "special" scheme. Since the stats are being kept it really makes sense to me.

Please think about my 2 cents.

[Mablak]

Mablak this is my deep point of view about schemes from what I've experienced in these years. I have never had a favorite scheme and as chakkman says, the variation of schemes always keep me excited and I've played a fair amount of each whenever I had a chance.

When someone play a specific scheme over and over, he'll get more familiar with it, gain experience, get to know the not-to-do list and so on. (captain obvious)
All these years, almost all the whining about a certain scheme came from the people who were new to that scheme. I can't stress that line enough. Also you are a very good case/player to know this because you're pretty good in Intermediate. I've had enough debates about how noobish Intermediate is. You know how many times people pointed out that Intermediate is a lucky scheme because it has random placements. Many people never bothered to look one step ahead of random placements to see that actually one of the skills is to manage random placements.
That being said, these arguments happen time to time about specific scheme and always starting from people who are new to the scheme and get confused about the events in the game and before they start gaining a little experience they start suggesting tweaks to the scheme which is way too soon.

One of the majors flaw people see in schemes is losing while having more worms or leading the entire game. When they lose a game they were leading, most of the times they think it is a scheme flaw rather than their own flawed tactics.

An example for that is when people lead in Intermediate with more worms and health point thinking their opponent is darksiding because he is doomed and has no choice, then SD comes and all worms become 1hp, now they lose because their opponent was actually wasting time for this moment. At this point, they get mad and try to tweak intermediate to have no hp reduction at SD. It is reasonable though, they were leading the game and in 1 turn they lost. But what they don't see is that the reason they lost was "not considering SD timing". More a tactic flaw rather than a scheme flaw.

The more we play a scheme, the more we gain experience, the more we see these tactic flaws and ultimately, we categorize that as less lucky, more skilled. (Generally speaking, not obvious cases like TTRR)

Now when you categorize the schemes like this:

Roper/WxW
Elite/Intermediate
Team17/Shopper
BnG/Hysteria
RR

The schemes are getting sacrificed for many people according to your point of view of schemes.
For example, you are truly an expert in TTRR and you have dedicated a category for TTRR because you know it damn pretty well. (I do believe that TTRR needs its own category) On the other hand, I've heard the phrase "TTRR is just a small version of WxW" several times. I'm sure it makes sense to many people here. So why not make it RR/WxW then? The reason is that you know TTRR deep to your bone and you are sure it has nothing to do with WxW.
I wonder how much Dario would accept the Elite/Intermediate category.
Team17/Shopper is the worst combination you made but clearly drawing your point of view. You are putting WxW and TTRR together there because you think "Team17 is just some version of Shopper". The post has gotten long enough, I won't go into details why.

So my question is this:
If we gather all "experts" in every scheme to make categories, wouldn't our final conclusion be like dedicating one category for each scheme?

I'll reply to other posts later. This post is long enough :/
@Anubis,
Are you planning to come back at all?

MI, to say that I'm not a good resource on Team17 is silly, you've probably never seen me play it. I don't think Team17 is just some version of Shopper: these class pairings are partly designed with the idea of personalized scheme weighting in mind. And as far as similarity goes, imagine listing every possible scheme that could exist (ordered by similarity) and dividing it into 5 sections, I think the split schemes as listed would fall into the same broad categories. I'm not saying the split schemes are equivalent, they're simply within 20% similarity of each other. And I've heard many opinions claiming WxW is similar to Roper, which I didn't think was justified at first, but with the advent of more difficult WxW maps, there's not much difference anymore.

Currently, since there are eight schemes, they have an equally-weighted 12.5% contribution to your rating each, which I think is very inaccurate. And even with all schemes being equal, you're forcing your own viewpoint on others, we can't really escape that. But with the scheme classes, your own activity helps decide what kind of contribution a scheme can get. If you never want to pick WxW, BnG, or Shopper, then those schemes will probably have an effective weighting of under 10% for you, depending on what other people pick. It will certainly depend a lot on which schemes are popular, but I see it as an improvement.

To try and even things out, I think it would be best to have at least 2 schemes to start off with in each category, the RR class could have RR, TTRR, and maybe Tower RR. And it would behoove us greatly to have some kind of balance requirements that say "you have to be good in all 5 classes to be a good all-rounder", though I'd first like to see if people agree that the current scheme weighting could be improved.

[franz]

combining schemes into grouped ratings makes no sense. I understand that all this started from people disliking hysteria, but grouping hysteria into another scheme's rating is not the solution. nor is grouping every other scheme just because you can; that's just making more of a mess for what seems to be no real benefit. if we go by scheme popularity, I can see the case for removing a scheme like Shopper, and maybe that should be argued, but I wouldn't want it to just be bundled into another scheme's rating just because it's unpopular -> it should either get removed or somehow fixed.

and that's what I'm thinking: just remove a scheme due to popularity, or try to fix the scheme itself. right now BNG and SHOPPER are the least popular and deserve some sort of action. BNG right now is just unpleasant to play. Games are often long, played on flat maps making them repetitive and less exciting, and the rules try to make games fair and balanced, but all they do is make everyone feel uneasy and feel 'cheaped.' BNG could do with a lot more excitement, just removing rules and playing on more creative maps, and at least go up to 2 worms each, if not more.  SHOPPER? I'm not a great shopper mind to figure out how to make it more competitively appealing to everyone, so if anyone has a great idea, we probably could really use it. SHOPPER needs a lot of help. And if nothing can be done, maybe it should be removed from classic.

ROPER by the way, I also believe needs to go up to 2 worms each. That's how it is in clanners, and it should be consistent.  Just like how in ELITE, you don't just double the amount of worms per player in clanners making it 8v8.  I believe ROPER singles also benefits from the added strategy of having 2 worms, such as piling, and it also makes those far crates more interesting if there's another worm pile on the other side of the map (try to unpile or not?).  this is getting long enough, so I'll stop here for now.

[Mablak]

And to respond to the idea of individual leagues, I love it. It would increase the overall skill level of WN, make things more competitive, and allow for more accurate league systems. But it wouldn't be best for the game. Currently, we just don't have enough people to make it work, it would be hard for people to find games when everyone is just looking to play one or two schemes.

The good thing about an all-round league is that people compromise and play schemes they normally wouldn't play, and this is also where a lot of people grow to love schemes. And there are actually some schemes that only work in an all-round setting, that people only want to play occasionally to show their skill diversity. For now we need to continue with a reasonably populist approach to the main league, or face the game dying out.

[Aerox]

and this is also where a lot of people grow to love schemes.

How many of you started to love X scheme because you got play time on it by having opponents pick it in league games?

[HHC]

and that's what I'm thinking: just remove a scheme due to popularity, or try to fix the scheme itself. right now BNG and SHOPPER are the least popular and deserve some sort of action. BNG right now is just unpleasant to play. Games are often long, played on flat maps making them repetitive and less exciting, and the rules try to make games fair and balanced, but all they do is make everyone feel uneasy and feel 'cheaped.' BNG could do with a lot more excitement, just removing rules and playing on more creative maps, and at least go up to 2 worms each, if not more.  SHOPPER? I'm not a great shopper mind to figure out how to make it more competitively appealing to everyone, so if anyone has a great idea, we probably could really use it. SHOPPER needs a lot of help. And if nothing can be done, maybe it should be removed from classic.

I don't agree with your SHOPPER stance. It's pretty popular in cups. Also very popular on wormnet in general. TUS Classic is nevertheless the domain of the 'skilly' wormers.
You can throw shopper out cause it's unskilly, but you probably won't stimulate newbies to enter the competition when you remove one of their fav schemes.

I agree with BnG. The 1rBnG is pretty good though, as much as it still won't be my fav.

ROPER by the way, I also believe needs to go up to 2 worms each. That's how it is in clanners, and it should be consistent.  Just like how in ELITE, you don't just double the amount of worms per player in clanners making it 8v8.  I believe ROPER singles also benefits from the added strategy of having 2 worms, such as piling, and it also makes those far crates more interesting if there's another worm pile on the other side of the map (try to unpile or not?).  this is getting long enough, so I'll stop here for now.

It's pretty hard to think for 2 though  


The schemes-thing is a real problem though IMO. I was playing clanner with Peja today and I was wondering what scheme I could pick that would make a great fun match. Now that i've kinda gotten tired of the lameness in hyst... only T17 somewhat made the cut.
We decided to go for freeleague schemes instead.  

Nevertheless, I wouldn't recommend TUS to go all drama and fix pretty much every scheme out there. It's more of a duty for the community perhaps.

Again, I haven't said this often enough. If it were up to me I'd throw out all the old schemes and think of new ones that are:
1) complete (no 2-weapon games, but schemes that make use of as many weapons as possibly can without f*ckin up the game balance).
2) FUN
3) competitive: noob can stand somewhat of a chance vs the pro's.
4) easy to understand (no long lists of houserules and unwritten cheapness laws).
5) challenging and unpredictable (!).

The current scheme-issues are the fault of the players who keep on urging for more 'skill-based' play. They have stripped every scheme to its very core and removed all things that could make it 'unpredictable'. The logical result: 1) 2-weapon games; 2) no-fun; 3) not competitive; 4) hard to understand; 5) predictable (games follow the same plan all the time) > boredom.

If only people would realize that.  

But yeah, that's a question of mentality. And as long as I'm the only one who supports my fun-approach, nothing's gonna change.

Therefore, TUS should stick to what we have now. And like I suggested just add elite to the TRL and use the TEL league for experimental stuff (freeleague trl; different allround combo's, etc.).

[Mablak]

combining schemes into grouped ratings makes no sense. I understand that all this started from people disliking hysteria, but grouping hysteria into another scheme's rating is not the solution. nor is grouping every other scheme just because you can; that's just making more of a mess for what seems to be no real benefit. if we go by scheme popularity, I can see the case for removing a scheme like Shopper, and maybe that should be argued, but I wouldn't want it to just be bundled into another scheme's rating just because it's unpopular -> it should either get removed or somehow fixed.

and that's what I'm thinking: just remove a scheme due to popularity, or try to fix the scheme itself. right now BNG and SHOPPER are the least popular and deserve some sort of action. BNG right now is just unpleasant to play. Games are often long, played on flat maps making them repetitive and less exciting, and the rules try to make games fair and balanced, but all they do is make everyone feel uneasy and feel 'cheaped.' BNG could do with a lot more excitement, just removing rules and playing on more creative maps, and at least go up to 2 worms each, if not more.  SHOPPER? I'm not a great shopper mind to figure out how to make it more competitively appealing to everyone, so if anyone has a great idea, we probably could really use it. SHOPPER needs a lot of help. And if nothing can be done, maybe it should be removed from classic.

ROPER by the way, I also believe needs to go up to 2 worms each. That's how it is in clanners, and it should be consistent.  Just like how in ELITE, you don't just double the amount of worms per player in clanners making it 8v8.  I believe ROPER singles also benefits from the added strategy of having 2 worms, such as piling, and it also makes those far crates more interesting if there's another worm pile on the other side of the map (try to unpile or not?).  this is getting long enough, so I'll stop here for now.

Scheme classes do make sense once there are too many schemes, it's not that confusing. Still, this idea is only assuming most people don't want to abandon any schemes, but I'd fully support removing shopper as a start. That would bring relative weight of other schemes to a more respectable level.

Hysteria is still a major problem, it's too damn hard to get rid of without some suitable replacement. I think in the end, we have to let it stay until we can find something more worthwhile. But for most of us, playing it feels like flipping a coin, so I think the hate is going to continue.

[Statik]

and this is also where a lot of people grow to love schemes.

How many of you started to love X scheme because you got play time on it by having opponents pick it in league games?

Before I joined mm, I wasn't going to play any schemes but rr/roper, but now I'm up to play almost every scheme, even if I'm not good at them. I think people should have a chance to try all schemes, otherwise they will lock themselves in the 1 scheme cage... just boring

[franz]

HHC nice words, you bring interesting ideas. you're definitely bigger picture than I think anyone is so far, so I applaud you for that.


"It's pretty hard to think for 2 though" --> not quite sure what meant here though, on my 2worms ROPER idea ;p