WDL Suggestions and Ideas From a Noob's Perspective

[Spooky]

Hey all. When I first joined the WDL irc I started a google doc in which I listed and explained ideas for possible changes as they came to me. I talked to some people, and I decided I wanted to share the doc with everyone to try and get some discussion going. You can find it in the link below. It's basically just a bunch of ideas and suggestions on how to help the community and the league grow even more. By posting this, I hope to generate a healthy discussion that will hopefully result in the league reaching an even greater potential (whether changes are actually made or not). Thanks for your time and your thoughts!

https://docs.google.com/document/d/118iWRK4Myz2CmUXCeYTihrldNukNOYa9CdE1Uq6QYVU/edit

[Zakken]

Hello, Spooky. Thanks for your input! I'll address your suggestions from the perspective of another player who has past experience in the board of both IDL and WDL. Don't take these as verdicts on your suggestions as I'm not in a position of power in the league, but I'll be adding context to your suggestions table so that you understand why I think your ideas would or wouldn't work.

From my understanding, WDL used to have invite only tournament seasons, which ended up being too restrictive. New people could not come in and play unless invited.

This is an incorrect statement. The WDL has always been open to anybody who signed up. The IDL used to have an invite list for most of their seasons, but it was mostly used to weed out no-names who signed up, yet never showed their faces on IRC or in-game, instead of barring players considered "not good enough." The active competitive community consists of a few dozen people as it is, and even if were larger, restricting interested players from playing in one of the community's premier leagues is awfully counter-intuitive when it comes to growth.

Tournaments consisted of the same handful of people every season.

Not necessarily a bad thing to have a "same handful of people" taking part in every season. The fact you'll often be seeing Ralphis, HumanBones, Jwarrier, Water and more in almost every season shows that the league has committed players with established histories and storylines in the competitive scene. This is not mutually exclusive with seeking an ever larger influx of newcomers though, so if that was your point to begin with, I apologise.

When the 2017 Winter season started, however, things slowed down. Predictably, I was not drafted. I never really expected to be. I had been playing for all of 3 weeks at the time, which is nothing compared to the near 20 years under some player’s belts. However, I was not the only one. There was a large list of players (many of them brand new, just like me) who were just as excited as me to play and  put their time and effort into the game, who were also not drafted. Despite the efforts of WDL to welcome and accept new players, and despite our willingness to play and improve, we were left to watch from the sidelines. Again, I’m not trying to say I’m salty because I didn’t get drafted, I’m merely pointing out that there are many players who want to play and help the league grow, but can’t.

Not being drafted does not mean that your hands are tied from doing anything for the league whatsoever. Ralphis says this after every single draft: don't simply give up on participating if you end up undrafted. Keep yourself active. Help other teams practise. Continue to improve yourself, and an attentive captain will eventually trade you into their team if they feel you've grown better than any of their current members. This case scenario happens during every season to some capacity, as it happened to me back when I was only barely good enough to be a sub player. You have to show your willingness to play regardless of what pinch you find yourself in! That's how you upgrade into a player that captains will want to draft.

On a side note, the increase in attendance for this season was larger than any other. The change from 6 to 8 teams was very much called for, but understandably there was still a big free agency. If numbers for the summer season increase anything like they did for this one, I imagine it likely to see another increase in teams to accommodate for as many players as possible.

If teams were not drafted, but formed in the preseason instead, this problem may be mended. Many competitive gaming leagues allow teams to be created outside of drafting. Players post on forums asking for teams, and teams post asking for players. Tryouts happen, bonds are formed, and legends are made. Teams will sign up for seasons, instead of players. Sure, you will end up with all star teams that may crush competition. However, this will (should?) create a drive in other players to improve. A team of brand new players will, yes,  eventually be paired up against a team of veterans and get demolished. At least they were able to play, though! Again, this will also help these new players get better. If a player or team drops out because the competition is too fierce, then hey, their hearts weren’t in it in the first place.

I won't say this is an objectively bad system (although I'd imagine teams would be grossly unbalanced, given the amount of people and the skill gaps between them), but the auction draft is what makes the WDL what it is. Even if changes in the draft system could maybe happen in the future if Ralphis & Co. discover something better than the auction system (which is already really good in practise), the IDL/WDL were inspired by draft-based leagues in real life, and the idea of generating brand-new teams with unpredictable compositions is part of their charm. This idea you have could be applied to a new league/tournament, but I will confidently say that such a system would never be implemented into the WDL.

CTF is awesome, and really highlights strategy and team play. However, there are other exciting game types available to us as well. We have some of the best Duelers to ever play the game. Duel is very action packed and can be used to highlight specific players. I’m told that there are other leagues that focus on duel, and so we stay away from it. Why? Doom is more than just CTF, and so too is WDL. Team Deathmatch gives another action oriented game type that is fun to watch and can highlight new or different strategies and gameplay. During any given season WDL can have 2-3 tournaments, one for each game type, happening. You can have players make a name for themselves in Duel and then get picked up by a team for CTF in a later season.

The duel scene has a comparatively small active playerbase as it stands right now, and no one plays TDM on a regular basis. If new communities were built upon these gamemodes, I could see WDL-sanctioned tournaments on them being made, but even if that happens, sacrificing CTF seasons to promote other gamemodes is a foolish idea and would easily take interest away from players.

New players do not have access to a single source of Doom media content. When I first joined the IRC and tried to become competitive I had to do quite a bit of searching to find anything. We never know what channel the stream for the current match is going to be on (DevastatioN, DS, someone else?). Currently, the WDL youtube has one video that isn’t a WDL radio video (not saying the radio is bad, see below). There is plenty of other WDL footage, but it all exists scattered across multiple channels. Capo, DevastatioN, and others all have great WDL content that should be focused into one channel. WDL should have one Twitch channel that anyone can save and go to easly. Maybe captains are given access to the channel to stream matches? Maybe certain people are designated casters or refs that will stream whenever a match occurs? I feel this is one major issue that is holding WDL back from growing even more. Once a youtube channel and twitch channel are established with a decent handful of content, admins can start advertising matches on the Doom and video game sub reddits to create hype and bring in new talent.

This is a great point and I mostly agree with you here. I had an idea to unify all streaming content to a single Twitch channel at some point back in 2015, but since I left the scene for a while, that never came to fruition. Even as we don't have an unified Twitch right now, I'm sure it'd do wonders to create a "Twitch streams list" thread and sticky it in the season forums for all to see.

As for the WDL YouTube, I agree that it'd be good if somebody volunteered to save the Twitch VODs and then upload them there, for starters. New ideas for content in that channel would come up eventually, but we gotta start somewhere.

WDL radio is awesome, and definitely brings its own flavor to the Doom community. There is a TON of interesting and insightful content within WDL radio, and I appreciate all the work that goes into it. So, why not expand on this? Some ideas are…

These are all honestly great ideas. The main obstacle, however, is finding the people willing to create such content on a regular basis. I think these ideas would be specifically good to put into practise during the short off-season periods, so spectators will still have new content to look at while the WDL's taking a break.

Obviously this comes with its own set of difficulties, however, there are ways to generate some kind of cash prize. It really doesn’t matter how much, but some kind of incentive could help the community grow. This could be obtained through player/community donations, or through sign up fees (which would probably have the opposite effect that we want, but it’s an idea on the table).

I don't believe sign up fees will ever work in any online tournament. Donations could work if you're looking for plain prize pools. I believe Ralphis is morally opposed to the idea of having money involved in the WDL though, as it's more of a for-fun league that doesn't aim to go full professional Esports.

A set of physical trophies for teams or players can’t be too difficult to obtain (I think), and might be cool in place of cash. Other prizes could work, too. Medals on the WDL forums, physical products like books, headphones, movies, whatever. Prizes and trophies give players a sense of accomplished and justifies the time hard work they have put to put into the game to earn them. Just ask Demonsphere and DevastatioN!

I actually like this idea of trophies/medals more than just cash prizes. Hell, it doesn't even have to be a physical reward. I'm sure we could all fancy earning something to show off for our achievements in the league!

I have no idea how realistic this is, but adding a mini map (real time?) for spectators would greatly help spectators and casters watch or present the matches. Even just a real time map that casters can swap to in order to give the audience a quick look at player positioning would be great. Doom already has a map in the engine. Could it be modded to show all players during a multiplayer match? The player icons or faces could be changed to pictures of player’s actual faces when swapped to (Not sure if this is possible in game, but might be possible for a stream or video afterwards) and adds a more personal touch to the games. If I can see the face of the player I’m watching I can more easily connect with them as an individual and may want to root for them more. Players can more easily generate a fan base this way.

If Odamex ever implements features that make all of this fancy tech possible, I'm all in for it. I agree that it would be quite an attraction for viewers to see.

[Widower]

The current draft format alienates new players:

Well, As Zakken already said, and actually he even told me to join the WDL, so there diffintely is no bias to the people who join in on the league. I am happy that, if at any time there was a limited entry that there no longer is. WHy? Well it shows growth. Maybe when, and I honestly don't know if this is true, but, when, the scene was young perhaps spots were limited because having players that were known and could maket the competitive scene was the goal. Now that, as Zakken stated, WDl has these established players, that have shown that they will be a parto of every season, more spots are available.

The fact that you didn't get drafted, sorry ot hear this, but even that is a good scene, it shows that theres more sharks out there wanting in on the league, which helps expand it.

Second Topic: WDL should include more game types

Sure this would be ideal, but I think, or from what I have understood from the community, there is much less drive towards the duel scene here, tdm and what not, than in times past. As in, it's lot harder to find people to duel, remember this port is full of old players, who, either have a family, or have in real life obligations, and, find it hard to even, get in on there games. Yesterday as I watched the game wind down, I had a chat open, and as soon as  that person finished their game, they dc'ed from irc and left. So this is also a case. The community doesn't seem to be demanding anything but ctf, so why supply it?

3rd Topic:
There are too many streams / sources of content

Well I see both points here, but from a media stand point, the more resources the better, what do I mean? Well sure, in an ideal world, one channel for everything would be a great idea, but from experience, its super bad to do it this way, why? Well, what happens when DS cant stream of Dev can't, WDL etc.. do we lose an opportunity to watch the game? Most likely, so in my opinion, in this case, less is not more. Plus, from what I gathered the audience is short as it is, we don't want to make it shorter by offering the same set of options, remember, not everyone likes the same streamer, and options are always good!

4th Topic: Trophies etc

Well, this is quiet hard, but it would be nice, I know another port who actually in the map selection screen has first second and third place winners of last season, that could be implemented,although a lot cooler idea would be, a simple tag next to that persons name, singnifying that this person one such and such, or even a special marine color can be used to segnify this, whats the problem? Well, although its nice you also run into the issue of... players having to answer that question? What does such and such mean next to your name, also, who is going to develop these things, as I said previously it's hard these days to get doomers to work on projects like this.

As far as cash prizes, this is genrally a no go, for commuunities this small, why? Well, it will cost more money to the port than players? What do I mean? Well, the moneys gotta come from somewhere, and what have I seen in the past?

Streamers for example, getting that special number of followers so as to have a donate button, once they get it, the users bolt out the door, and pretend like its not there. I remember when nintendo banned smash from being competitive and cancelled a tournament and all that. What did the smash forums do, 24 hour stream to get the money, to the point where nintendo had to back down, and let it run. But, again, is the doom community that strong anymore?

Or are people just here to play meet some cool people and just chill, well I think this is the case, which is somethign  I actualy like, sure I give my services, but because I want to, A lot of the things are just time consumers.

But eh I like the ambition of writing the post. I am always will to help, and good write up !

[Rude]

Ill have a go at it

Ill start off on your first assesment that the league format alienates new players.  You are correct!!  One season we had 10+ people not get on teams LOL !! Ok not funny, but this IS how draft leagues go-  some people just wont be picked.  Its not an issue with bigger games like QLive for example where theres so much going on, you dont give a shit if you dont get drafted.  But here, yea, you have to wait 3-6 months before you get another chance.  Id like to see some sort of remedy to this. 

And then like the hero on the white horse that you are you mention pre-made teams.  This is really a great idea and more in line with current esports league formats (ESEA etc).  I would be all for having the draft one season and then pre-mades the next.  A pre-made season may also draw vets that only want to play with certain people.  Premades is your best suggestion- and I think Ralphis and co. should seriously consider implementing them somehow

For media, yes yes we need more.  The BONESTAB show is dope as hell, but its not going to hold the attention of anyone new.  Plays of the week, weapon / map vids all great ideas.  And yea it should all stem from one place, wdl yt imo. 

All in all top suggestions from a self proclaimed noob

[Zakken]

As far as cash prizes, this is genrally a no go, for commuunities this small, why? Well, it will cost more money to the port than players? What do I mean? Well, the moneys gotta come from somewhere, and what have I seen in the past?

As far as raw possibilities go, I do believe we could gather a not-too-shabby amount of money through donations if we really wanted to implement it on the league, but as said in my previous post, I seriously doubt Ralphis would want to have prize pools in play, and I sympathise with his point-of-view.

I remember when nintendo banned smash from being competitive and cancelled a tournament and all that. What did the smash forums do, 24 hour stream to get the money, to the point where nintendo had to back down, and let it run. But, again, is the doom community that strong anymore?

You're most likely talking about EVO 2013, and that's not exactly what happened. They had the last game in their line-up be decided by which game had most donations made towards breast cancer research, and Smash Bros. Melee won in the end. It was only mere days before the tournament that Nintendo wanted to ban them from streaming it online on Twitch.tv (not the tournament as a whole like you said), and after massive community backlash, they went back on that decision. Nintendo did so not because of how much money the Smash community rallied, but purely to salvage their PR.

Or are people just here to play meet some cool people and just chill, well I think this is the case, which is somethign  I actualy like, sure I give my services, but because I want to, A lot of the things are just time consumers.

There is no competitive scene that survives on money alone. If there is enough passion coming from the community's flagship members, top competitors, community managers and content creators, any community can thrive, money or not.

Its not an issue with bigger games like QLive for example where theres so much going on, you dont give a shit if you dont get drafted.  But here, yea, you have to wait 3-6 months before you get another chance.  Id like to see some sort of remedy to this.

I can't remember who pitched in this idea, but someone brought up a side-event idea where free agents would play each other on a given week's map, mainly so that not only free agents find something to do, but also for player exposition to captains.

And then like the hero on the white horse that you are you mention pre-made teams.  This is really a great idea and more in line with current esports league formats (ESEA etc).  I would be all for having the draft one season and then pre-mades the next.  A pre-made season may also draw vets that only want to play with certain people.  Premades is your best suggestion- and I think Ralphis and co. should seriously consider implementing them somehow

As much as I can see the fun in it, it wouldn't really be WDL without a draft now, would it? At least I personally wouldn't want to see such a drastic change in a fundamental part of the league's structure. If somebody hosted a different tournament/league with that system, though, maybe...

[Ralphis]

Great post spooky. Thank you for taking the time to write down your thoughts. I actually shared this with many of the captains and people that help keep this thing going the night you sent it to me and we talked about it for a while, but then I went away for vacation over the weekend. I'm gonna respond to your thoughts here, but most of my responses apply to our community at large:

The current draft format alienates new players

This is a tough issue and not as clear as it looks. Firstly, the WDL has never required an invitation - but its predecessor league, the IDL, did many years ago. It wasn't to exclude players at the time, but to keep out trouble. The culture was much more negative back then.

It's true that, unfortunately, not everybody will be drafted. It's the nature of the game. But, being honest, some players don't deserve to be drafted or make a team. That sounds like a pretty counter-active statement to make for a league looking for growth right?

Some of the current free agents who went undrafted come from other corners of the larger Doom community and expect that putting their name on a list is good enough to get them drafted to a team. Post-draft, one player in particular complained in IRC that it was BS that "worse" players than him made teams and he didn't. Why didn't he make a team? Because he played for maybe two hours in the preseason. Another player who did make a roster rarely plays at all and pretty much never showed up for practices - he was subsequently dropped for someone more active. Some of the players who signed up played in private CTF 0 times between their signup and the draft. If you WANT to play, then you NEED to play.

Then take someone like Souler who, after the draft, continued to help teams practice every day. In the 8 team formats, practices are happening constantly. Last week, all three servers were filled with teams practicing. There are ways to stay involved and Souler did that. Not only was he picked up by a team in week 2, he even got to play in a game immediately that week. The WDL, as much as we try to promote fun and be inclusive, is still a skill and merit based league. If you want to make it here, you need to put in some effort.

The auction draft even solidifies this more by having the "market" dictate the "value" of a player at draft time. It forces captains to select players that have, in most cases, earned a spot on a team. This past draft, it was assumed by many that Caution would draft Fran because they are good friends, even though Fran never played during the preseason. In the old straight draft format, I would venture a guess that Fran may have had a better chance at making that spot. An instance like that will rarely happen under the auction draft because it requires captains to start competing with each other on draft day.

My main point here is pretty simple: stay involved and you will become more involved. We've seen it since we started this league and we will probably see it until its dying breath. Look at Alt_Stab, in his first season he was an unknown and a 4th on his team. Now he's a captain that's taken his team to championship games and shows us his beautiful face every week on WDL radio. Stay involved and you will become more involved.

If teams were not drafted, but formed in the preseason instead, this problem may be mended.

I'll just nip this in the bud off the bat and say that our main WDL league will never switch to a format like this. The draft is what makes what we do special and it's our bread and butter. Many of the games in the WDL are closely fought because of our format creating (generally) balanced teams. In a world of whole teams signing up, this will go away - and quickly.

With that said, I don't know that it's a bad idea to run an event like this. Rude has been an advocate for this - so the offer is open to basically anyone that wants to run something like this. If you want to run an event in the WDL offseason with this sort of format, show us a plan of what you want to do and if it is well thought out then I can setup a forum for you to operate out of. It's very easy to talk about what will work and what the WDL should do, but much harder to take action and make things happen. Someone step up and do this and we can find out just how good of a format it can become. Maybe it will become so popular that we can have events running year-round.
 

WDL should include more game types

I think you would be hard pressed to find people that would disagree with you - there should be more events and activities happening under the WDL umbrella. We have actually hosted duel events and tournaments in the past (NADA, DDL) which had varying degrees of success. I will again repeat what I said in the last paragraph of the response to the last question. Someone step up and do it.

I'm in my late 20s, am married, and have things that I need to do outside of Doom. The same is true of many of our other main contributors, whether it's those that work on our website like Tony, or people like Bones and Stab who commit to doing a cool video about the league every week. These things eat up a ridiculous amount of time on top of practicing and playing our games.

There are plenty of people around who have expressed interest in a duel league or other events. DemonSphere, our resident Duel god, has been one of them. To anyone that wants to see it, come up with a thought out plan, show it, and then let's make it happen. It's easy to complain about what we don't currently have, talk about what will work and what the WDL should do, but much harder to do it.

There are too many streams / sources of content

Agreed. WDL content is too spread out. We have started taking steps toward moving as much content to the WDL YouTube channel as possible. Some of our casters are already taking steps to stream right to the channel, I still have to consult with people like DemonSphere and Dev who probably don't want to lose the viewers on their own twitch channels. Some way to move the streams to our YT would be great. Tony also probably has some ideas of how we can further integrate these sorts of things into our new website which should be rolled out for next season.

If all of our regular streamers would come together and agree to stream to our Youtube channel, that would be great. If any of them read this before we have an opportunity to speak, please get in touch with me.

If anyone wants to become a regular streamer for us and you have a decent enough setup to do it, get in touch. Game times are always posted on the site days in advance. We'll talk.

More types of media: Interviews, highlight vids, analysis

I love these ideas. They're great and I've always hoped that one day we would get here. Again, it comes back to time. Who is going to do it? I cannot do it. Spooky, for someone that wants to get/stay involved, this is a perfect role for you while you practice up and improve as a player. The same goes for anyone else that is interested in this sort of ESPN style content. If it is quality content, then we can find a place for it on the site, our YT channel, through FB posts, on the radio show, etc.

"No cash prizes or trophies is a small issue" & sign up fees

Cash prizes just aren't going to work here. Many of us that are "at the top" so to speak already invest time and money into this and don't have it to just throw around. We barely hit our donation goals every year as it is. Furthermore, after running these sorts of things for over 20 seasons, I can tell you right now that introducing cash will also introduce a lot of foul play. It's something that I, personally, have no interest in becoming involved with. If someone else wants to offer up their cash, get in touch.

Sign up fees would kill the league so that's a non-starter.

However, trophies. One idea I have been floating around over the past few months are engraved dog tags that have some sort of combination of the WDL logo and/or the name of the league on them. I've priced some out before and have considered producing a run of 100 of them (usually the minimum). Then I would send them to any prior champions and any future champions while we have them in stock - that's 4 per season. It's a small physical token but it's an object that you can hold in your hand and say that you earned. They are also much cheaper than championship rings :)

Needs to be easier to watch!

I agree that the learning curve for Doom CTF may be fast for new viewers. A lot of your suggestions, unfortunately, would require a programmer to swoop in and help us. Maybe that can happen one day but right now I'm not sure that we have that person.

One thing that I think would help dramatically would be, as referenced before, a more dedicated broadcast team. One that can explain to people what they are looking at and why it's important, while also keeping an energy about. We basically have two broadcast styles out there right now - one is the broadcast team and the other is the "open mic teamspeak chat over the game" style. Both are good in their own ways, but I can see how the first would be much more inviting to a newcomer trying to learn. Finding that broadcast team is a different matter entirely.

Conclusion

Ultimately, you raised a lot of valid points and concerns and I think that you will find that many agree with many of your thoughts. What most of it boils down to is time and effort. There were 44 signups for WDL this season and many others floating around in IRC who play duels, privs, and more. Growing the community cannot rest on the shoulders of a few and it doesn't have to. The WDL and past successful leagues like the IDL and ZDDL didn't just magically appear and exist for years - they required a lot of hard work from teams of people.

Sometimes we can be perceived as stubborn or afraid to make changes. This opinion is just untrue. We have spent a decade building and refining a structure that we know works, while evolving our "game" around the core 3v3 Doom CTF format. The WDL of 2017 is a well-oiled machine compared to the IDL of 2007. We've been able to build a community of very good players, great people, and real friendships while playing highly competitive CTF games.

We have gone outside of our wheelhouse over the past 10 years when trying different events. However, a small group of us cannot do everything and so I'll return to my thesis. Stay involved and you will become more involved. Anyone that has well thought out ideas and a solid plan for new content or new events - STEP UP AND MAKE IT HAPPEN.

Thanks for taking the time to post your comments and thanks for reading.