This discussions from ropa and D1 at this stage arn't really adding value to the problem. Its just discussing the the trends in who was better in certain era's compared to others. Obviously the game will evolve tho and people have naturally created new schemes, probably because classic never appealed and the activity of classic leagues has decreased, you'd naturally try something new. I used to enjoy the odd BR or CTF or that scheme cueshark made with cows and how far you could blast your worm. But i wouldn't join a BR and CTF league.

Anyway, this thread should be about what we can do to get more people back into classic and playing clanners and as Tomi and others have said, just reducing the limit for playoffs and winning ratio will make a difference.

Go look at season 1, and season 2 of tus. There was playoffs and some clans made less than 20 games. The games increased because the activity of tus increased, as the activity decreases, so should the PO requirements to reflect this. Unfortunately MI hasn't had time to code and make these updates when it was suggested a few times before this season and the fact there's been no playoffs for 4 seasons is what has demotivated players to search... I'd say thats the biggest thing compared to what type of schemes you like playing... there's enough people who like classic, they just don't have the time to find 70 clanners in a season and not enough clans to have 4 with 50% winning ratio. Addressing this will prompt people to play again and its already a plan that is in motion. Chill out and see if it works.

roperz has a point tho.

If people where taking the time to search, their would be more people to find clanners.

Things will be fine.

me and chu have spoken via pm but we do need to arrange a proper time and date instead of just suggesting days at eachother in short notice as you mentioned.

theres discussions of making the number of games required for POs to be 40 and removing the 50% winning ratio rule.

Hopefully this will give us playoffs again and easier criteria for more inactive clans to reach playoffs and bring some interested in clanning again as the lack of POs for past 4 seasons has probably been a negative factor in all this.

nice suggestions impossible. IF someone can set all of that would be great. Like KRD said probably best to avoid the actual advert on tus, doubt they would do it but could be worth a try?

I agree with the points made about choice and how this has split the community into small groups.

If there was just 1 classic league for singles and clanners it would be best. But there is demand for the tournies, the cups, the different 'free' style leagues.... If tus dropped all these features and the website was just a ladder league with downloads of maps would it effect the current level of activity? - [it would help with the design and layout and the focus of the website just being about classic league as less clutter on other competitions - but todays players want these features?]

Quote from: Anubis on August 25, 2014, 12:25 PM

Quote from: Chicken23 on August 25, 2014, 12:07 PM
Fair enough

But if we remove hysteria. Take away all cups, 1 scheme leagues, free leagues and all these misc scheme stuff..

Is that gonna be enough to make someone like you/anubis want to come back and play classic league and bring activity from old wormers back into the classic leagues to encourage new players to learn classic?

I was never interested in singles. W:A lost it's appeal to me because I could not play clanners 6-8hours a day straight without downtime. I tried many times with TUS to play clanners competitive, dt, Q. And most of the time you are stuck between a clanner for at least an hour, it is so boring to sit in #AG shouting clanner anyone and nothing happens. Compared to old times it was never that bad, you could easily find 10 clanners a day and proof of that is that we actually had max games per season and many clans reached that within the first few weeks. After that I usually played warmers and had fun with the warmer and alias community, which is not possible either. For me personally W:A is practically dead because of that. Then add to that dilemma hysteria and you will know why I have no desire to play this game.

Exactly. Its the time it takes to find a clanner which is why its so boring. But haven't we all made it worse? 4 months ago it wasn't this bad. I could find clanners and was playing with Peja and Baffo. You could find a clanner then but its just now that it sucks. I said back then that reducing the number of games to reach playoffs would make a difference because then we would have actually had playoffs and even people in TaG agreed.

40 games to reach clanner POs and remove hysteria. Lets see if that changes anything?

If all of us here were searching for clanners we'd enjoy it again. But currently it feels like you can't even win the clan league because there is nothing to win? Also if people don't like it why don't they change it. People talk about the death of TUS or whatever but no one is here talking the time to change anything and just relying on MI right?

Fair enough

But if we remove hysteria. Take away all cups, 1 scheme leagues, free leagues and all these misc scheme stuff..

Is that gonna be enough to make someone like you/anubis want to come back and play classic league and bring activity from old wormers back into the classic leagues to encourage new players to learn classic?

Quote from: Komito on August 25, 2014, 11:35 AM
]
I actually kinda feel like old people in the sense they still love all the old crap they grew up with, and don't really like modern stuff, I don't really like modern gaming (I have a Wii U, but only cuz it feels retro with better graphics to me...) I was playing Super Mario 64 last month, this month is Donkey Kong Country for the SNES... Few months back when M3ntal was here it was Super Mario World (SNES)...

Just can't beat the old classics lol, it must be an age thing??

n why did you wanna play those games and not wa?

maybe. but its about making black and white TV fun and cool.

im just thinking out loud again and going to argue against my own post..

It does feel that there is too much choice, when you count all the leagues and cups, free schemes etc... if there were less options then that 1 thing would be more popular, but people like the other leagues and cups and tournies etc.

Im going to throw out a radical idea.


What did wa have 10 years ago that we didn't have now?

Point based leagues with no other leagues, if there were scheme only leagues they were seperate like WEL.

If activity is low and people are put off by rating and ladders, lets try something completely different?

point based league. Max number of games (no unlimited games - this let people don and play clanners when maxed out - 3 points for a win, -1 for a lose) this also gives a chance to scheme specialists... If we have less players why not think about trying an older system because all the different leagues and ladders is too much for such an inactive game. Then good allrounders still can play as the playoffs still exist.

I know this is off topic

But why did team17 forums close? This surely hasn't help because there was a community of wormers on those boards too who ended up learning about wa etc.

I'm still in ag on snoop now and see loads of people i don't know hosting crazy schemes.. its those players that have to carry the flame and keep the game going right? How can they get into classic schemes tho?

Theres too many variables in all of this to blame a certain reason for the decline in activity or skill. Its just a combination of all of these factors that has resulted in the reason why wormnet is like how it is now.

If we try to analysis all these factors then maybe there is an outcome that can be taken so maybe based on the arguments above i'll try and summarize what has been said so we can look at next steps to take.

Hysteria

People are blaming hysteria but i don't see this as the problem. schemes are born and schemes die, some schemes in the history of worms used to be in the leagues and aren't now because they gradually lost interest of the players. Fort and Pro for example, etc.

Games evolue and although there may be no depth to hysteria it is still a competitive game that some players are better at than others and i think its justified to be a league scheme as much as i personally dislike the scheme, taking away something that new players enjoy isn't the right answer, they are the majoirity and the hysteria era player (the people who learnt it as a first scheme) go on to learn t17, elite and other schemes because they play classic scheme. Your overall skill we prevail and theres a reason why Random00, Mablak and Almog are tough to beat in hysteria, because they are consistent top league players.

Tus features

Again, these cups and different leagues like HAL and whatever do draw attention away from classic league. But they are popular and it is what the new players of today want to play? I guess there has been a drop in classic league activity for long enough that these players are just interested in these other type of leagues.

Look at TUS league as a company and wormers are its customers, a company is going to have a range of products to offer to its customers and companies review their products from time to time and examine what is working and what isn't working. If there is demand for these leagues and cups then TUS is going to support them because its giving those players something fun to do. You can't blame TUS for supporting these sub leagues because its the market of wormers that wanted them as they have created demand for it.
So where is classic and clan league in all of this? its in decline and when a product is in decline is usually dies or something is done to add an additional feature etc to improve it. So MI and others have tried to improve features to do this but maybe it hasn't worked. But that isn't TUS's fault, its ours. We are the players that are interested in the classic league yet collectively we arn't as active due to many reasons that lalo has pointed out.

Perhaps there could be less focus on the cups and sub leagues and less trophies and awards. This just comes down to design and display and these features in the league. IF classic is the most important accolade in worms than represent this in a visual design aspect of the website.
How much time does MI have to create a new design, probably not much. You shoudn't remove features, but the design could be changed i guess... But in general its our fault for not playing as much and less role models for new players to look up to and play against. So its easy to play in a cup or whatever because you arn't learning all the schemes to try and beat the best allround players. But to remove the free league schemes to encourage classic league isn't the answer.

Or we could be exterme and do it to try and change that community and give them only 1 option of playing classic scheme.. It could go horriblely wrong and all those players just quit and wormnet is even worse.

life

We all grow up and have responsibilities, 9-5 jobs, university degrees, houses, kids etc. We've all grown up with this game and i doubt many of us older players can sit at home on an evening searching for clanners untill 4-5am like we once used to. Nothing can stop us getting older but the only thing that could make things better is the desire to play wa again. That desire isn't as strong because the league isn't as competitive but we all still have a passion for wa right?, we are a community because we all deep down love this game. This thread has about 6 players discussing a game we've all played for over 10 years and Anubis, ropa, fada. We've all grown up knowing eachother on wn, so if we love this game so much why arn't we in ag looking for games? Maybe we can't but wa won't die because people like us are still here debating and trolling threads lol

technology

Theres so many other new games, streaming, netflicks, you name it, loads of stuff to do in your spare time that isn't playing w:a. Because of this there is a massive decline in the amount of time us older players will spend on w:a but more importantly it stops new players coming into the game and learning schemes and getting into classic. Yet in ag now there are plenty of noobs, its just about getting them into league games.



So whats the answer? I don't know. not a single person can change it and solve this problem, it has to be collective, but if we are here concerned about the quality of classic leagues then that is a start because as i mentioned, the power is with us to log in and search for clanners again. If we can be bothered.



Quick fixes?

Reducing the number of games required to reach clanner POs would help.

Maybe a microsite for cups and free leagues can be placed on a second domain so the first thing you see on the homepage of tus is all Classic league related, then all the different sub games are placed on a secondary site, the design would them promote classic being the top accolade to a certain degree..

The power to change all this is only in our hands.. it means logging onto wormnet and searching for clanners.


The number of games required for playoffs should be reduced and i've said this about 4 times now over the past 3 months.

I do like the point and ladder system thought. But the inactivity does make it harder for players to get points off the top guys..

One thing i've already found interested is the seeding or ladder in tennis and snooker, how does this work in comparison to wa?

Some players have injuries and lose their top seeds because other players gain more points while those players are inactive. Look at Djokovic, Nadal, Federer and Murray (who's dropped alot). But also those top players are almost always forced to play so if they lose they'll drop down. Our top players arn't forced to play making the systems very different?