THE ACTUAL PROBLEM WITH TW: THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN GAME STRUCTURE, TIME, AND ENERGY
I've liked TW since it started.
The premise of it is wonderful, bringing a team dynamic to the game that's sorely missing.
The other modes like raids and TB either have guilds competing internally for rewards (fun in a different way) or pulling together against a set challenge.
As with any game mode, these things can get stale. None of these modes are immune from the inevitability that over time you end up running largely the same comps, the same way, over and over again. New toons, different bonuses, etc. all work to keep things fresh and prevent the game from feeling like a drain or chore.
But TW is a drain and feels stale for a very distinct reason that none of the proposed or past tweaks have addressed.
As someone who likes the mode and helps manage it in my guild here is the real problem:
It is way too time consuming to take seriously, and becomes a drain on energy, morale, and motivation over time. This is true even if you're like me and love PvP and would probably do it without rewards - just to play the game and get bragging rights.
In every other mode, from solo PvE events, Grand Arena, Arena, raids, etc. you can take these modes very seriously and play to win within time windows that fit into your real life, or that you can plan around.
Trying to take TW seriously, whether for rewards or the competitive thrill, can be a 24 hour event. As someone who manages it in a competitive guild this is what it means in that context: you keep logging in to check when a territory is down, you keep rallying people to get in, the map is so expansive and so reliant on enough people having to actively participate that you are rallying people or having to dive into the game the entire 24 period offense is open.
It is structurally too demanding, and de-emphasizing it as a zone of real competitive and instead making it a place of "fun" is a contradiction in the format. You have to knock down territories to keep having "fun," competition and playing the game is fun, and as a microtransation game the sense of fun is all wrapped up in building or buying things and using them. If you do that well, you get rewarded, and the rewards are disparate depending on who did it best. Creating a sense of disorder with faction bonuses (or more controversially eliminating toons from use) help deal with some of the naturally occurring staleness of any game - clearly faction bonuses that let you use new toons or shift the standard defensive/offensive logic are more popular. But none of that fun sense of disorder deals with the fact that this mode is way too demanding to sustain a high level of interest from most players over time. Even dramatically increasing the rewards would only provide a short-term activity boost that would ultimately be defeated by the fundamental flaws of the game mode. Even now, my sense is that many of the competition oriented guilds are already divided between a smaller group of TW diehards and other competitive players who take every other game mode very seriously but have lost all sense of romance about being invested in the 24 hour slog. This is not because they don't get to use their Lobot they geared two years ago anymore or because they don't think it's fair to face toons they haven't acquired. It is not even because it can be boring to battle the same comps over and over again. It's because the mode is at odds with the kind of relationship people want to their phones, their own time, and the game.
HOW TO FIX IT
The structure of the event itself needs to be changed. Changes to toons and factions are important in dealing with the mundane problems that come with making a game interesting, and should continue to be discussed, experimented with, debated, etc - but TW has foundational problems in its design. No amount of toon tweaks will keep this mode alive or stem its growing dispopularity over time.
I personally think it should be fixed rather than scrapped, we need a competitive teamwork mode in the game.
I'm sure many people can come up with better solutions than what I'll suggest, so take it only as a template that gestures in the direction of the actual problem.
1. Use the exact same time format (24 hour preview, 24 hour defense, 24 hour offense).
2. Use the exact same map with the same number of territories.
3. Have the game randomly assign members of the guild to specific groups of territories where only they can deploy, and have those same groups randomly assigned to offense territories.
4. Let the chips fall where they may and total up all the offensive and defensive points each guild has earned overall and the guild with the most wins.
Ships would take a little more thought, but it wouldn't be hard to come up with something that helps achieve these goals and lets people use their fleets.
All of the sudden, like every other game mode, you can log in at a specific time, spend your half an hour or hour or two hour - however somebody serious about the game already spends their time - do your battles and be done, you can schedule when you'll do it ahead of time as one may be doing with raids. No more ongoing slog within a 24 hour period. Just like every other mode.
The guild as a whole can still come up with guild-wide strategies for defense, suggestions, etc. and still get be invested in how their friends battles are going. Individual rewards are still dependent on how your team mates do, and all the incentive to pull together and coordinate and have all that lovely banter is still there. All of that good stuff while maintaining the exact kind of relationship to the game and one's phone a gamer already has for every other game mode.
