Official DiSTENSiON Thread (Schedule)

[fiS]

Official DiSTENSiON Thread

As you've noticed: DiSTENSiON is back up and running! :O

We've now come up with a schedule that we decided to try. We are aware that it's impossible to please everyone, but we hope to balance it out so that everyone can take part in these intense wars. It will be adjusted as needed, please comment - but give it a try, too.


Schedule:
Starting today, June 4th.

Wednesday: 6 PM EST
Saturday: 4 PM EST

Sessions last 1:30h - 2:00h
There might be unscheduled sessions too.


Please post bug reports here or contact qan (shhh... don't tell anyone, but they can also earn you RP if valid!)

Discuss the game, share your opinions and thoughts - distension is still being balanced.

Old distension thread here.


Enjoy and pew pew, pilots!

[Spock!]

Yay.

Sometimes I love you Fis.

[Ephemeral]

Not good news for TW hockey fans.
eph

[fiS]

Not good news for TW hockey fans.
eph

Hi Eph, I was already expecting a response like that. Try to see it from a disters point of view too.

I am really happy that hockey is really booming you might say since a couple months. It's running almost every evening for multiple hours - and since recently there's dist "disrupting" it with the random schedule. That's why we wanted and needed a distension schedule asap and that above is what we worked out. About an hour or an hour and a half of dist while in comparison there's multiple hours of hockey, that can be hosted any time should be fair enough, no? At least I do hope that it will work out. And if it's creating more conflicts than before, we can still try to fix it.

[Ephemeral]

Hi Fis,
Note that I didn’t say that it sucked, or was unfair, or not needed. I simply said that it wasn’t good news for TW hockey folks. The demand is there for Distension, it is being enjoyed by many and that is good for the zone. Hockey (as an event) allows only 12 people to play; Distension support many more players. It is a real shame that both cannot co-exist.

But just because I don’t play Distension and enjoy playing hockey is certainly no reason to question the decision; which is why I support this. I think it is the right decision but unfortunately TW hockey will be on the short-end of this stick.
eph

[fiS]

Yeah it's a shame. :/ Sorry for interpreting your post into more than you said then - however, I hope a schedule will help hockey, too.

[Exalt]

Yeah it's a shame. :/ Sorry for interpreting your post into more than you said then - however, I hope a schedule will help hockey, too.

I fail to see how. Would you care to explain where this hope comes from, or are you just blindly "hoping" for subspace to become better on it's own despite the contrary actions of staff?

Here's the problem with distension, which happens to not be a problem with TW Hockey. Distension is a novelty act that never has, and never will gain a sustainable population in TW. It isn't even a full event either. The ONLY reason it is still categorized as a shitty event is because that horrible 0 population Distension zone started by Cheese was a complete and utter failure. Let's not forget that. Let's not forget how large of a failure distension was when it was made into it's own zone. It does NOT gain trenchwars anything sustainable whatsoever. All it does is take away from everything that IS sustainable in trenchwars. Let's all agree on this fact.

Now... TW Hockey... how is that sustainable you may ask? Look at Hockey Zone. All it did for years and years was hockey (and football, i suppose) and it was one of the most popular zones in subspace for years. Why is that? Oh right... LEAGUES. Why is trenchwars so popular? Oh right.. LEAGUES. Making a lil bit of sense yet?

Why do TWD Ops continue with garbage like SPIDER League (that never took off and for good reason, because it always was a trash idea, but that's the kind of crap we got from staff back in the day, even though players had much better ideas), when we can create a TW Hockey League? No, it cannot be as advanced as RSHL or anything HZ created due to the limitations of subgame compared to ASSS, but we can do a TWD-type division thing for TW Hockey. We can do a TWL-type league thing for TW Hockey. Basically, there is MUCH more growth potential in a league environment such as TW Hockey than there EVER will be in a garbage event-regulated piece of trash like distension. Why are we still supporting it? It's a great novelty. That's obvious. It sure isn't something that sustains anything long-term for trenchwars though. So why are we putting more effort into that?

[Zeebu]

whoa there, exalt.

i rarely play distension either, but when you see an arena with 40+ people actually out of spec and playing, im not gonna knock it too hard. especially now that it has got its kinks worked out. by kinks i mean it doesnt seem to be crashing things anymore.

i will also agree that its completely ass backwards to the rest of the zone. but hey, so is life in a declining population. id much rather see something boost the popularity of twl and twd (that doesnt involve further alienating everyone but the most hardcore and active.)

but people are people. as a hosted event with a time to start and a time to end, i think its just fine.

[Exalt]

............
but people are people. as a hosted event with a time to start and a time to end, i think its just fine.

It isn't that I'm against distension being run at all. I'm not. I agree it is a great novelty act. It's a wonderful side-show with all the little bells and whistles and dancing monkeys that sideshows need to grab attention away from the main act. Does that main act get replaced by the sideshow though? Why not?

Sustainability is the only thing I really care about, and distension isn't going to create that. We have gained a lot of new players from HZ that enter TW just for TW hockey. They don't enter TW for distension. Trust me on that one.

Also, the only reason you see so many people playing distension is because EVERYTHING ELSE dies after distension is hosted. There is simply nothing for anyone else to do but either play distension, go afk, or log off. I usually go afk or log off, as does almost every other TWD player. Public empties into distension, so the pubbers that dislike distension also go afk or log off. What exactly does distension ADD to this game? It simply takes away from everything else. That's about it.

What I'm really against is all this effort being put into the side-show when the main event needs help with it's new act, aka TW Hockey. The priorities on staff are ass-backwards if this is the great new thing they've come up with. Something obvious stares them in the face, and they are unable to do anything about it, yet let's go grab that obscure event that constantly crashed the zone a billion times in the past, emptied every other arena, pissed off a bunch of veteran, and literally alienated everyone who disliked the event due to nothing else being playable after that event was run. Yes, let's go make that our great new project to spend our time on. Why waste our time with something that punches us in the face with how obvious it is when we have distension?

[Zeebu]

why the push for running it every day of the week though?

[fiS]

By hoping that the schedule will help hockey I mean that it's PLANNED, and hence not suddenly disrupting hockey as it has in the last weeks. It has a start and an end, and the sessions aren't running as long as they used to be. Distension uses to attract a huge crowd of people who wanna pew pew, who are addicted and can't wait to unlock new ships and ranks and abilities.
Agree though that a lot of people are biased in regards to distension and I can understand why - because you're right, it takes away from other things going on, but people enjoy it! Gotta get over it and try to find a compromise, which is what the schedule is for and supposed to help with.

[Exalt]

What I want to know is are staff at all actively approaching the TW Hockey situation or are they ignoring it and focusing only on things that don't help population growth or sustainability whatsoever like Distension?

Do staff think outside of the box on this one, or is it just "OH MY GAWD I SEE 40 PPLZ IN .?GO DISTENSION OH MY LORDIE LORD" kind of enthusiasm without actually looking at the reasons why distension has 40 people in the arena (while the rest of tw is completely dead)? Is it worth getting 40 people to have fun while you force 100 to log off in disgust? So let's just make this an everyday thing? It's bad enough that it runs on the weekends, which is the busiest time in TW. Let's completely destroy everything that TW does well and destroy our population on the weekends by running distension?

Why do staff even waste time pretending they know what the fuck they are doing anymore? Just admit you are clueless. Just admit you have no idea what is going on in this zone, because you don't play in it. The only staff members that do play anymore are the lower-staff ZHs and ERs.

Why have I seen absolutely nothing from STAFF members about ANYTHING to do with TW Hockey whatsoever? Explain this to me, because I truly don't understand how a group of people (albeit the ones that aren't fucking afk forever that somehow remain on staff for no good reason) can honestly not understand WHY TW Hockey has had such an insurgence of people. Have you not noticed that HZ is dead? Have you not looked at some of the players in TW Hockey and realized they come from HZ? Have all of staff not realized that TW Hockey is something that can be built upon, can be grown, can be worked with into making it better? Or does staff simply appoint people like Up In Ya!!! to TWD Op only because that's for staff members who are useless go to do nothing while still pretending to be important?

Seriously, I'd like to know what staff are thinking on all of these issues. How can you possibly ignore TW Hockey when it is the only thing that is actually gaining population in TW? Distension just loses population in the over/under. TW Hockey gains it, yet we ignore that aspect? Seriously, explain this to me.

You are better off wasting your time arguing about a schedule for when to host TW Hockey than when to host distension. Also, if it seriously took effort to create a shitty schedule for distension... and you guys certainly act like it was a huge deal to be able to figure this out... then allow me to know this so I can abandon you all in your uselessness. I don't feel like going down with your sinking ship, and I certainly wont let my name be attached to the death of TW like all of you will be. It's sad that you even need the TW Council idea, which is mainly because staff have finally realized that they are unable to do anything productive due to infighting and political bullshit that anyone with personality could cut through with a knife (and has in the past), yet staff hire people like Lego <ZH> who would never be a threat to the status quo, because he doesn't even know what comes after <ER>.

I don't know why I even waste my time pointing out the obvious, because some other dbag will get credit for following step by step instructions that naturally people like zeebu or me or kthx or ph or ephemeral (etc, etc, etc, etc ,etc) will be giving to that staff dbag, and he will still manage to fuck it all up somehow.

[Ephemeral]

IMO TW hockey is stuck in limbo right now. Demonic tried to sync something up with HZ zone months back but it didn't happen and doesn't appear likely that it ever will. RSHL is starting in 2 weeks so it would be difficult to try something right at this moment. IF we get a new biller server perhaps some new opportunities will then open for either getting the Distension/Hockey to co-exist or even doing something with the HZ zone.
eph

[Exalt]

IMO TW hockey is stuck in limbo right now. Demonic tried to sync something up with HZ zone months back but it didn't happen and doesn't appear likely that it ever will. RSHL is starting in 2 weeks so it would be difficult to try something right at this moment. IF we get a new biller server perhaps some new opportunities will then open for either getting the Distension/Hockey to co-exist or even doing something with the HZ zone.
eph

Why do we need HZ's approval to do anything? Their zone is fucking dead. I don't count their maximum of 10 players during peak times as being alive anymore. I'm sorry, but I've seen that in TW before and that's why I quit for 4 years to begin with. I was quite surprised to see TW was a lil bit less dead than before when I came back (although that could be due to TWL), so I stuck around. At this point, all I care about is making the game either A) keep it's current population to stop the bleeding or B) gain some population in any way it can. I also think outside of the box, because I didn't waste the last 4 years of my time playing Trench and not understanding how to make it better whatsoever (like it seems is the case for most staff). I dislike the status quo, because it hasn't done anything but help this game die. There is a reason I am so supportive of new ideas like that Council or whatever else Demonic desperately is debating, even though it probably will never happen (such as a new biller/ASSS/etc).

I don't give a fuck how we do it, but I want to increase TW's population in any way possible, and I personally don't care if we piss off HZ to do it. Sure, we don't need to do things during RSHL, except that RSHL is going to be a complete failure anyways. Who is HZ to tell us we are wrong for stealing their ideas when they can't keep a population to use those ideas? We are keeping their legacy intact if anything, and personally, the egos of all these zones for not merging already is beyond retarded to me. It is complete insanity for them to not have done it already, but hey... every internet moron with a chip on their shoulder has to feel important somehow, right?

Like I said, the only reason things have stagnated is because we seem to give a fuck what any staff member from HZ thinks, and if they were any good at being staff, their zone wouldn't be fucking dead right now. They can keep their dead zone and their useless opinions, but we certainly don't have to give those opinions any credit whatsoever. Their opinions helped create the mess they are in right now. They never had a model that would allow for new players, and in the end, they alienated the vets as well. They destroyed all credibility they might've had in the past by letting their zone die. That is THEIR problem. It should never be ours.

[Frightful]

Also, the only reason you see so many people playing distension is because EVERYTHING ELSE dies after distension is hosted. There is simply nothing for anyone else to do but either play distension, go afk, or log off. I usually go afk or log off, as does almost every other TWD player. Public empties into distension, so the pubbers that dislike distension also go afk or log off. What exactly does distension ADD to this game? It simply takes away from everything else. That's about it.

Actually, the only reason you see so many people playing distension is because...they enjoy it? Are you serious? I don't see anyone in there saying "I'm only playing because nothing else is going on". People request it, so please stop talking like we play it out of pity. Don't let your personal biases cloud your judgement. It's popular because people like it, not the other way around.