Official Warning: Steadman

[Smoking Blue]

I think its very important that we all remember when pointing fingers at Ogrons or Qan method of management that we remember how many hours of unpaid work they have put in for our entertainment.
I dont agree with some of the changes qan has made in pub and I wish he could think a little less base and more open map in some instances but honestly I think you guys are really the heroes for how much you have done for this game which has been mostly unthanked. Ogron and Qan.

Anyone could have done with ogron did tho. If tw didnt have ogron theyd have someone else, its that simple and unsignificant in reality. What qan does or other coders do is very different from league ops. Ive hosted games and tournies manually back in the day in redstarzone, so i know the value of a coder is actually of meaning, unlike that of a host who can be replaced by anyone in a zone with proper bots. Even without bots, anyone can learn to host manually within an hour orso, if well prepared.

Be real to yourself. Its the coders that actually kept tw alive as you can see that even skyforger and henry saari can host leagues, i havent noticed any difference from the leagues hosted by ogron or sky/henri. We get online and play the game, nothing changed.

If anything you guys should suck your dev teams dick for giving you a proper zone, something all other zones prayed and begged for but got let down in the end.

Be gratefull to what matters

[Attacks]

Some credit needs to go to Mastersword however and what hes done for Elim. People playing and actually caring about elim again, a few tweeks to be made to the ranking system but hes on that.
Elim much healthier for the game than javduel and wbduel.

[roro]

On the 8th alot of people logged on to find the game unplayable and log off again.. (what I did).. Judging by that graph (low-point on 5th says 80ish users online) I'd bet we still have 20 people afk'ing in pub/elim etc. That means we have about 60 bots in the game.

Which means...

4th peak: 70 players
5th peak: 110 players
6th peak: 70 players
7th peak: 80 players

Clearly DT is very important to the game and we need to find a sweetspot for running it as much as possible without people losing interest because it's too often...

PS. I love this game don't let it die

[Rab]

Most of the player count is bots. We're actually pretty close to zero. That drop on the 8th is when bots weren't online. Clearly you can't get below zero, so you get your wish sky lol.

[skyforger]

It might be noise, but actually it seems that the drop off in population has stabilized and not going lower. And if people come back in fall like before then its actually a slow uptrend.





So we should be able to have leagues and other exciting stuff for a good while. To turn the trend completely, we need to do a better job at retaining the low amount of new players that we do get. So getting pub and TWD right is super important. I would say both have been made easier for new players to get into, but still alot of room for improvement.

[Omega Red]

Both Qan and Ogron are/were huge assets to the game. Ogron is an idea guy that was willing to put in work and of course Qan is a dev (maybe the last?) willing dev to put in work. People aren't always going to agree with changes made by Qan or to pub but the reality is everyone is going to have a different opinion on what is good and what is bad. A lot of unfair blame is placed on the guys making changes because of the continued decline of the population. I don't believe this is due to the changes that people are leaving it is just this game is dying.

Truth is, this game is in severe decline and there aren't enough people left that care and want to do work.

I wish people would just get along because they could truly make great things working together (see TSL). Zid is right about leagues and the in between leagues are what is needed now a days. It is great we still have the quality of veterans willing to cap for TWDT and other leagues. These people should be commended as well for managing toxic personalities and putting in effort.

[zidane]

People acting like running a league is hard lmao.. what set ogron apart was the hot or nots, predictions, stats etc, which you don't need to be running the league or staff to do. No other person running leagues has put that kind of effort to create excitement. Tsl was fun while it lasted but it completely killed twd so whether it actually helped zone activity is questionable at best

The biggest change needed is smaller breaks in between leagues, like what was done for basingcup and twdt right now. Let's stop pretending staff needs a break in between leagues as if it's excruciatingly difficult to throw up a schedule and have zoners running for signups

[Efhat]

Ogron is hands down the most undisputed, organized, most successful league OP in the last 5 years and it’s not even close. Need him to run another league.

[Major Crisis]

People are giving Henry way too much credit here.. Yea, it's hard to put a periodic zoner.. Make a schedule.. Rules and many other content has been copied from previous seasons (no harm in that). I think some of the captains have put way more effort into making this TWDT happen than Henry has. Often I felt like Henry thought it would all happen by itself.

[Attacks]

I think its very important that we all remember when pointing fingers at Ogrons or Qan method of management that we remember how many hours of unpaid work they have put in for our entertainment.
I dont agree with some of the changes qan has made in pub and I wish he could think a little less base and more open map in some instances but honestly I think you guys are really the heroes for how much you have done for this game which has been mostly unthanked. Ogron and Qan.

[qan]

Thanks for breaking it down into points, heh. Makes this a lot easier.

1.) Ban Steadman. This behavior should not be tolerated and his punishment will send a clear message to others that we won't put up with it, period.

League Ops already made the call to issue a (final) warning. Some wanted him banned. If it comes up again he knows what comes after.

2.)Moderators of forums need to do just that; moderate. Police thread hijacking, bumping, double posting, ect.

We don't really have forum moderators. We hardly have a staff, to be perfectly honest. Most people just don't have time to spend 9 hours a day moderating a video game any longer. After I got back from my FEMA deployment for Katrina, I chose to stay unemployed, live off my savings and work for TW full-time as a coder and moderator. From the moment I woke up to the moment I went to bed. It rains a lot in the PNW winter so it wasn't a bad way to spend it, I guess. But there aren't many people who can do that anymore.

There is some light moderation but largely forums, moribund as they are, run themselves. We take care of the obvious bits. And yeah, thread derailing happens. Some dislike it, but I don't think that's such a bad thing. Organic discussion's not so bad. We basically don't have the manpower, and at any rate, there's barely enough activity to justify it. If there are any staffers reading this who might like to work on moderation, maybe we can look into it.

3.)People who run leagues/arena's should be actively playing in them.

You mentioned TSL. Posted a bit before that addresses some of that.

Regarding skyforger, people talk about him as having been "promoted." Officially he's a tagless ZH, brought on as staff for helping with leagues. He's also part of the leagues group, which helps plan league details. That group is pretty much open to anyone who's serious about wanting to plan leagues and are actively involved in playing them. (You may have noticed that official leagues posts are simply made by anyone who has the time to make them.) That's a surprisingly small group of people; by and large people just want to show up and play, and I don't blame them. Again, the days are gone when people can dump huge amounts of time into this game. We're all older. Many of the leagues planners are getting married, having kids, having to deal with end-of-life issues with parents, etc. Nobody has the time to be the frontman anymore, at least not consistently, for the long-term. We haven't had a steady head of leagues in literally years now. So for example, when Ogron said Henry is doing a fine job with TWDT, in fact, Henry's not really running TWDT (though he's putting in a lot of work! And serves as the moderator of the leagues group). Technically, nobody is actually running TWDT, except a group of people who, between them, have enough time to take care of all the loose ends. Not everyone likes this, but the alternative is to have a "head of leagues" that goes inactive after 2 months, mostly due to the massive amount of pressure, stress and outright hate that come with the job. Whenever a leagues head abruptly and inevitably quits, it causes all league momentum to die out, and we have to scramble to find someone -- sometimes, anyone! -- to replace them, even if it's a poor fit. It's not a good system. At least this way, we spread out the misery of such a thankless job a little bit. (And having said that, thanks to everyone who continues to work on leagues despite this. TW would fall apart without you.) Again, gone are the times when we have people who can dedicate huge portions of their lives to TW. We have to adapt.

3b) qan doesn't listen to people

I try to have as little input on leagues as is possible. My role is to coordinate, mostly. Make sure we are on track, make sure work is getting done. I try to leave serious decisions to others. Sometimes I give my opinion, and very occasionally can act as a tiebreaking vote. There are a few places where I do feel qualified to comment, though, which pertain more to game mechanics than league operations. Unlike most competitive players, I've been a game developer for over 2 decades. That's on and off, all amateur stuff, but I've made a lot of games, and I've done a LOT of work for TW. Hundreds of thousands of lines of code is not an overstatement. That's more than just working on technical details. There's a lot of the creative process that goes into it as well. People tend to write off developers as having any sort of opinion, and would prefer them to be the hand that acts according to their brain. But they ignore that such a brain is often their own brain, a single brain, which doesn't ask for the input of others. TW has a fair share of "idea men" who want things done exactly according to their specifications, do not care about the opinions of others, and want to do as little of the actual work as possible. Preferably none.

I've tried countless times to make TW more democratic (mostly failed, though the experiments were interesting). So it's a tad ironic that I've now become the guy at the top. It bothers me if people feel like they have no say in how things work.

I understand like you feel you're being ignored on pub issues. I'm sorry that's been happening. Mostly my role is to try and aggregate public opinion, and go with that. Obviously, yeah, I'm going to need to make judgment calls, but I try to make those calls based on what I hear from people, not from what "feels good."

When you've posted ideas in the past, have you just posted a list of grievances? (Useful, though it's a single perspective.) Or have you put together a simple way to fix things, found people who've agreed with you, posted their names along with yours, and asked for others to support your idea? A single person's view is worthwhile. But it's only useful in the sense that someone like me can aggregate that with other views. It's vague and imperfect and much less impactful than some kind of proposal. And I don't mean the confusing mess that is http://trenchwars.org/TWPS/ ... I just mean, put together a single, clear idea and get some people to sign off on it, to show it's more than just you. Otherwise, it will always, ALWAYS be down to some guy like me to think about it and compare to other opinions, see if it agrees with what they've seen and implement or not implement based on that. There is no getting away from that unless you put in the work to show it's not just your opinion.

It's pretty easy to put in a vote for this kind of thing as well. Rather than relying on forums, which as you point out, almost no active players visit, we can get people to vote on issues in-game, and make real changes based on actual public opinion, rather than, again, "some guy" like me aggregating what he sees and hears. If you want to get beyond "some guy," you need to take initiative beyond a long forum post detailing what you, personally, believe is wrong. Because for almost every opinion you have, believe it or not, there is someone else who believes just as vehemently that things should be exactly the opposite, and that "some guy" is an incompetent idiot for not doing things exactly as he says. (With such extremes, you can imagine it becomes quite hard to find compromise.)

Regarding not playing pub enough, you're right, I do need to play more. Though over the years I've logged thousands of hours in pub. If I'm going to play, it's often going to be on an alias, because once I go in-game, I'm getting PMs, people talking in pubchat/teamchat, etc. You may not see me playing, but I do play. Just not enough. Japan time means weekend mornings are basically my only option, though I try to make time when I can.

By the way, the command to turn off the graphics all over the map is !helpoff. They're not meant to be kept on after you're familiar with the game. The bot notifies you of how to turn them off every time you log on, and there is information available in the center of spawn and at A1. As for greenspam, I've tried over the years to really drill it down to the absolute minimum, but we've honestly just got a lot of features these days, most by request/suggestion from players. Is what it is. Some parts you can turn off if you like. Have thought of a way to ignore the bot, such as having it send messages as public macros, and then players can Esc+I.

4.)Qan and Ogron would do best for the community to get along.

We should do our best to be civil, agreed. I don't think either of us has any interest in working with the other again, though.

5.)People on staff that are inactive need to be replaced. Staffers that are inactive for long periods need to start from the beginning of staff training ie. ZH to ensure they are competent and to reestablish with the community that they are staff.

We recently implemented a hard quota system in which every month, even veteran staff are removed if they are underperforming, barring a major life event, long vacation, etc. Old returning staffers are required to undergo retraining.

If you want people to be replaced ... well, replaced with whom? Very few people have any interest in joining staff anymore. It's not a great job. Applications are always open, but we just don't get many applicants. Few want to put in the time.

As for Mom and other billing ops being inactive ... yep. All I can say is that it's regrettable. They're not affiliated with TW and we have no jurisdiction there. I'm not sure if they trust anyone enough anymore to pass on the torch, either. Admittedly, if access were given to the wrong person, the results could be disastrous, and they don't have the time or interest to watch to see if someone will do the job well. It's possible we may have to suffer without billing ops for the rest of SS's existence. It's unfortunate that they blacklisted TW from having billing ops way back when, as it's totally cut us off from a lot of that backroom community, so that they basically have no idea who we are, and to some extent, vice versa. I don't think I've ever talked to Mom, and I've talked to Ghost Ship maybe twice. SpaceHiker of course I've talked to many times but AFAIK he isn't active as a billing op anymore (could be wrong). I don't have any solution to the billing op problem. Maybe someone else does? Any ideas?

6.)Thanks.

Thanks for taking the time to post.

[qan]

>

I'm sorry for the cheap shot; it wasn't necessary. But it can't be denied that you have a knack for rubbing people the wrong way. That's not the only reason you're a target of spamming, but it certainly does contribute. To be clear, that doesn't mean it's justified or OK. I'm still happy to take a look at logs/screenshots. But in the past instances we honestly did not have enough to go on. It's much easier to handle when it's actually happening. But if it's afterward, if you don't have connecting alias information, or a way to access info in the other zone, it's pretty much impossible to prove who is doing what. I can't remember how long the ban system itself holds player info but it's surprisingly not that long, so after that's gone, you're looking at only a nameban, unlinked to other info, which is next to useless.

As for my distrust of you, I'd argue it's really not unwarranted. Nearly every other week there was yet another point of contention between you and someone else, and always there was the question, "Has Ogron overreacted again, or is he in the right?" It's extremely difficult to trust a person with a temper. Do you trust yourself? I don't need to go into detail about what happened just before you left with the forums. After that, do you still believe yourself worthy of trust? I don't mean to disrespect you by saying this, but I don't think it would be prudent for anyone to ever fully trust you again.

I'm not saying that you'd lie outright. But I do think you are prone to certain kinds of errors of judgment stemming from your temper.

I also (of course) make errors of judgment. I can't say for certain why TSL trailed off. But from what I understand, the two biggest issues were 1) a lack of real competition, with games feeling too uneven, and 2) a lack of any satisfying conclusion. Possibly a third would be activity playing too big a role in the final standings.

The first issue I certainly have some hand in, having changed the matchmaking algorithm so that it didn't simply put the best available players in. The league was being billed as inclusive, yet it was anything but, and the complaints were pretty regular from players who were excluded by it throughout S1. Including complaints about some ratings being tweaked to prevent people from playing, i.e., ratings that did not reflect their real skill but were instead put in as a kind of punishment. Perhaps TSL just should have been rebranded as not inclusive, but instead as matchmaking for the best players who could show, and everyone else should expect to be benched/maybe not bother to show up. Anyhow. The final matchmaking algorithm, which attempts to create the most balanced possible teams given the possible players, and will make 2 tiers of games with better and worse players split up if there are enough to do so, may have worked well IF we had been able to start there out of the gate. But the numerous matchmaking changes in between resulted in matches that just were not all that competitive or satisfying, and some vets stopped playing. Meanwhile, TSL had brutalized TWD; this happened from the very first week of Season 1, if you check games played... IIRC dropped to about 30% that first weekend, never recovered, and by August 2017 TWBD was basically dead.

For the second issue, for some reason we had finals, when it makes no real sense to do so. That was an existential problem that plagued TSL from S1. Can anyone say why TSL has ever had finals? It wasn't thought through well enough. When they were cancelled due to lack of interest in S3, and when the decision was made to not even include recognition on the map for winning finals starting out of the gate in S1, we all made it clear finals were completely meaningless from the get-go. Simply having a cutoff date like Elim and rewarding those with highest value would probably have been the better move, rather than trying to pretend finals in a league based on personal performance should have any weight, and ending every season with an increasingly more anticlimactic "final" that nobody cared about playing.

For the last issue, activity having too big a weight, I'm guessing that one could be fixed by carefully adjusting the number of games that count. Rather than making hard jumps from 20 to 15, 15 to 10, 10 to 5, etc., could also experiment with numbers in between that give solid results. There's a spot in there where skill is rewarded and people are motivated to keep playing in order to improve their worst score, but you can't bruteforce a spot as an average player by playing every match.

As to anything else, such as staffing, etc., I'm never blameless. We're all just doing the best we can, working with who we can to do what we can. That's all we can do. I usually spend about 2 hours a day working on this game in various places. It's honestly pretty exhausting, and like you with TWDT, the main reason I do it is because nobody else is going to. Not because I'm some kind of genius at it.


(I'd saved this post up from yesterday. There are some things I'd like to reply to you, ixa, but just wanted to get this posted.)

[ronaldinho]

tldr it's finally Ixador who gonna bring the 3rd Reich to Trench Wars, i'm agree on most things.

But concerning Steadman, he should not be banned, he has the potential to be the best javelin so he is an important player. It's up to mythril to be a good coach and make him understand that he has to prove on the field if he wants to behave crappy and play all the games. If Ease arrives late and claims to enter immediately, he enters, that's normal. Sunday, Legio confronts Power, it is the perfect time for Steadman to prove that he can afford anything, or not?

[Rab]

tldr

[Tiny]

<Insert mic drop gif>?