Intermediate and Classic league

[Ray]

No. No. No.

[NAiL]

wow this discussion again.

I voted no, I think inter should have its own league on tus like onl. The only way I can see intermediate working as part of the classic league is if you play bo1 with placement. Many will argue that placement changes the scheme too much (which I know it does), but placement is the only way inter can become a part of the classic league imo.

To those who say "placement takes too much time", no it doesnt, it only takes twice as long as it would to place 8 worms in elite, it really isnt that much more time and as far as I can see this would be the only way of successfully incorporating it into the classic league, although I firmly believe inter does not belong in the classic league for reasons that have already been discussed time after time in thread after thread.

Bringing back TNL seems like the best thing to do if inter is to have a home on TUS, or try "tweaked" inter, bo1 with placement. Bo1 without placement will not work regardless of the map, and without bo3 minimum you cant play inter consistently competitively.

[avirex]

What about random placement as it allready is...  But with a rule to not attack first turn... Giving each player 1 turn to hide worms as needed? That would help out placement luck alot

[Impossible]

all this remasturbating of inter scheme will give only bad result, imagine some dario join and see new inter rules like "dont attack on 1st turn", will he play it? he'll probably will laugh. I think its better to keep bo3, and if both players agree play as bo1. You know, when you see you are much better then opponent, or otherwise rly wierder, if you have some kind of brain or its parody you would like to suggest for bo1 at least just to dont waste your time, but if you are sameskilled opponents it will be pretty fun to play bo3 at least since it pretty challengive  

[Error]

imo, most of intermediate comunity will not play on new rules. there is onl, who want play inter can just go to onl and play exactly intermediate, but not cool/uncool modification...

i will say no more, other heroes will do this after me. only one thing: if u want ppl play your intermediate, not onl - keep the rules unchanged at all. try to get people interested in by something else...

[Husk]

inter shud be random placements and bo3/bo5. if classic league doesn't accept inter as it is, then it's not the right place for inter. tnl or keep in freeleague? xD

[HHC]

Difficult one MI. I think my vote also depends on what the new TUS is gonna be like and where Intermediate fits in there  
In TUS as it is now, I'm inclined to say 'no'. Most people who like the scheme play it for ONL, and they play pretty much only 'Normal' scheme. They won't play for classic even if it's there, because they probably won't enjoy the TTRR and s*it  


Here's another suggestion:
Instead of moving all the popular schemes into classic, why not split them up into 2 seperate leagues. One league for die-hard 'skill' schemes, the other for 'lighter' schemes.
For example:
Classic: Roper, TTRR, WxW - Elite, BnG + 1 more default scheme (Normal, T17 or hyst)
Light: Roper, Shopper, Hysteria, Team17, Normal, Moleshopper, Aerial, Elite (with crates?)

I'm not sure how well this would work out in practice, as each member probably has his own favourite schemes he doesn't want to play or doesn't want to give up. But in potential it could be nice for the old-school hysteria-haters, as well as for newschoolers and newbies who prefer easier, 'lighter' schemes.

The light league could serve as a replacement for FreeLeague. Of course that means a whole bunch of schemes will have to disappear, but the league itself would definitely gain more appeal (right now it's a league for schemes people don't play enough... you can't expect that to become popular can you?  )

[Mablak]

Guys, please stop considering manual placement as an option for intermediate. It wouldn't be even remotely the same scheme, every single worm would be hidden away and it would be extremely hard to get kills; people would just shotgun almost every turn. Most of the creativity in the scheme comes from dealing with worms in places you'd never intentionally put them. Most importantly, that would suck most of the fun right out of it.

Intermediate should use the NNNL scheme, which is what the most competitive players use. The competition continues to increase year by year with that scheme, so there's really no need to change it; it's already well-tested. I think it could work in the classic league like other schemes, as bo1 with optional bo3. This does change the scheme, because there are certain psychological elements of playing bo3 that you don't need in bo1, but the scheme would be equally fun, and still vastly more skillful/interesting than certain schemes (cough shoppa).

The reason it would have to be bo1 is just to make it playable, bo3 can last over an hour, which is going to be annoying for players who aren't all that interested in the scheme. To get more players to start liking inter, they have to actually play it; people who don't know or care about it might just not want to play if it's a huge time investment. But the level of interest is there, especially among a lot of newer Russian players who host inters constantly. If we could get some Russian-speaking wormers to get those new Russians to check out TUS, I think some might be interested and stick around, if they could play inter.

For people concerned about luck when it's bo1, here are some stats from some of the better players in NNNL (I think this covers the past year, not sure on the time frame):

Player	% cave rounds won	% island rounds won
Mablak	70	74
Dario	67	68
Kayz	59	65
Koras	65	69
FaD	55	59

As you can see, the best players in NNNL typically having winning ratios around 60% or higher in bo1, which in TUS would definitely translate to something like 80-90%, at least until the community gains skill. That seems pretty comparable to elite, where the top players in TUS classic tend to have winning ratios between 70% and 90%. It has the right level of skill, I don't think luck is nearly as big of an issue as some think.

On the idea of forcing caves in bo1, I don't think it's necessary, people will probably agree to them about half the time. Also, caves might be luck-reducing, but they might also be skill-reducing. Good players tend to have more wins on islands. Either way, it wouldn't be good to force one kind of map, since intermediate is about map diversity, and being good on both caves and islands.

TNL would be a decent idea, but only because it would allow inter clanners, the singles league wouldn't be necessary due to NNNL. Some 2v2 action might genuinely get some of the NNN folks over here. Still, it would be nice to see a more default-oriented main league, and inter would definitely raise the skill level, even with bo1.

[franz]

I'd play inter if I had to, to learn. but yea, at the current rate I think a lot people may never even attempt playing it just because how exclusive it is right now.

[Kaleu]

Bring TNL again.

[Crazy]

Nice post Mab! I changed my vote to a yes. I joined the NNN league about three years ago I think, as I was interested in learning intermediate. In those three years, I have played one game in the league. I found it difficult being active in both XTC/TUS and NNNL.

I'm a bit surprised that the small community at NNN is still going strong, it says a lot about what a dedicated group of wormers that plays in that league. Worms has changed over the years,  for example shoppa is not as popular as it used to be in the league and I belive intermediate atleast deserves the chance as a classic scheme. It's such a shame that so few of us knows how to play it (well). I also think adding intermediate to the classic league can bring the two communities a little bit closer.

I don't know how we should add it to the league, but talking about changing the scheme is nonsense. You can't change the scheme to make it fit into TUS. Take the scheme as it is, or leave it.

[lacoste]

For people concerned about luck when it's bo1, here are some stats from some of the better players in NNNL (I think this covers the past year, not sure on the time frame):

Player	% cave rounds won	% island rounds won
Mablak	70	74
Dario	67	68
Kayz	59	65
Koras	65	69
FaD	55	59

As you can see, the best players in NNNL typically having winning ratios around 60% or higher in bo1, which in TUS would definitely translate to something like 80-90%, at least until the community gains skill. That seems pretty comparable to elite, where the top players in TUS classic tend to have winning ratios between 70% and 90%. It has the right level of skill, I don't think luck is nearly as big of an issue as some think.

Those are overall statistics, but if you split it into who starts and vs who you play (in your case vs equal opponent) it would be pretty much in favor for who starts (also depending on placement - if its balanced then everything can happen). And as you said best of 3/5 has that psychological element which erases the luck factor of having only 1 game. Of course TUS would have to evolve first to notice differences between players who barely played it competively and having even bo1 is a good start to make people believe in the scheme and let them notice the awesomness. Not to mention the comparision to some other schemes in classic league, where Inter definitely stands above them as in fun to watch/skillful to play. So id say yes for popularizing the scheme in TUS classic at the cost having non balanced bo1 instead of having separate TUS league and risk in small activity again.

[Kayz]

I agree with lacoste, the stats you brought, Mablak, are only because the top of onl mostly plays bo5 and bo3, and have close games like 3-2, 2-1 etc.
If we only played bo1, those stats'd look a lot different.

Imo bo1 is the dumbest thing you can do on Intermediate, everyone will complain about triple kills on islands etc, and you'd have a lot of complains and luck blaming.
I very often had games with Dario, where it was 2-3, or 3-2, depending who started. For example: I start, big advantage, after the first two turns, high chance on win, and vice versa (especially on islands).
On caves this chance is lower, but then I know some people playing regularly on TUS who hate caves, because they consider it boring, though for me epic close cave matches are far more interesting than just island bashing until someone makes a mistake, but that's different for everyone .

As far as I recall the classic league, Intermediate doesn't really fit into it, since it's way more fast-paced.
I don't think that people who don't know Intermediate that well have the motivation to play a bo3 game.

Since I am no TUS league player, I won't vote here, just wanted to show you the point of view of a passionate Intermediate player

[Hussar]

if intermediate bo1 have no sense as u said so we have an answer here i think.

bo3 games just dont fit completly to classic league.

[huskov]

if intermediate bo1 have no sense as u said so we have an answer here i think.

bo3 games just dont fit completly to classic league.

i agree with this