On the subject of Trench Wars

[Jeenyuss]

Peanuts is on to something, and I was thinking somewhat the same thing. A pub where there are only a certain ammount of terrs, javs, wbs etc. allowed. Unfortunately it'd make a lot of people angry because they wouldn't get a chance to play their ship that they want to develop in, i.e. mainly terr and shark.

Soon is also on to something except not quite as harsh as that. 'Cause not all people want filtered text but if it were as easy as flicking on a light switch, then I think quite a few TWers would be pleased.

[Fluffz]

once again i have to say we need an overall solution. in my oppinion the pure pub did not increase basing in this zone in general but decrease it. while we have one or two semi good pubs at peak times the rest is beyone being awfull.
also removing the levi from pure pub is counterproductive. its a fun ship and its a tw ship. the problem lies within the number of levs and of course the leviterrs.
while i agree to mr. peanuts to make pub more base like i disagree to the idea of removing saves or any other removal. it should not be a must to base, just a suggestion (like a earwarp to lower). maybe we could have a pub base rating too, a mix of elim rating and the new base bot result.

now to epis post(s): i agree. those are some good points and they need some serious support. but someone has to DO something, its not enought to point at the problem at all

[Mr. Peanuts]

Yeah, could make a few of these pubs, 16 player max maybe, just like real basing.

There could also be a bot which can be activated to handle pub basing games freq vs freq on a time limit.

[Dim]

I think Epi has just said everything I could possibly want to say you so I shall not say anything other than the fact of Staff inactivity which I want to touch up on a bit..

As I am writing this I am constantly alt tabbing at every beep and asking if there is a Mod to take the calls that they're meant to take. I'm currently doing 3 jobs, attempting to put an event together to host, taking help calls and taking cheater calls.

There are 300 people currently in Trench Wars, Which works out as 12 staff members currently online. That's 5 mods, One <ZH> and 3 <ER>'s (I missed out SMods etc). There are only two people active at this time, myself and dyers eve <ER>. That's two people doing everyones job. Staff is disproportionalised, there's a nasty habit of people getting promoted to mod and being under the false stereotype that they don't have to actually do anything now that they don't have a <> tag at the end of their names.

I remember a few months back I read the staff stats that the top few <ER> hosters, were actually beating the Mods in calls. There had been more events hosted by one of the top <ER>'s than calls taken by the top Mod. It takes around 15 minutes to host an event, sometimes more. It takes probably 1 minute minimum, 5 minutes maximum to take a cheater call. And you thought hosting was bad?

There's two ways to fix this, none of which are easy.
1) Make sure we have proportionalised amounts of staff on at different timezones, even make people fill out forms or make a database of all staffers and what time zone they are in then search queries to see what we're missing out on.

2) Abolish staff system, No <ZH>, No <ER> just Mods. People that keep their names and do all three jobs. I can't see this working but who knows, I think people may have a tendancy to just take the calls they want to, and no-one would actually take the help calls because they are perceived as somewhat boring?

I would like to see correct amounts of staff at correct times so we have a good ratio of staffers to players so we can actually do our correct jobs. I'm an event referee, not a Mod. But I seem to be taking more calls than some of the Mods. And it's not just me, cool koen (now mod, but only recently) was in a similair situation, me and him sat on staff chat franticly taking calls as they came in being the only active members of staff chat.

I am also slightly suspicious of people who pretend to be AFK to avoid doing work at busy times, the excuse 'well I don't have to actually do any work, you can't make me, i'm a volunteer' is all very well and good, but we ask do we want these people in staff? We want people like Rodge and qan who incidently did give up a lot of their time and put the zone first.

[Kolar]

I'm sorry, why are we disscussing pubbing and client-server changes when the topic is restructing and restaffing Trench Wars? I really hope there are some threads on the private staff forums about this because I can't believe the public is so unfocused on the zone's problems.


Any client or server add ons would be something the whole of Continuum would have to decide on. This isn't something I think really matters here because staff has no way of implimenting changes and we are not the only zone that would be effected by this, this isn't the proper forum.

Pure Pub shows people within the pubbing arenas a place where they do not have to scamper around trying to take down levi terriers or spawn lame idiots to actually defend the flag and have fun. To me, that's progess towards bring in new basers to ?go base, twd and TWL and for making the pure publics more fun.

If we are to add something else for public arenas it would be within the pure public system. You can not change map and setting elements for one specific public such as removing safe zones or altering ship attributes. I think putting the ship restrictions for Guanobot would be a good course of action and a great addition to the already improved game play there.



Now the levi

Is it effective in a basing sense? 8vs8, develop tactics to defend and the hold flag within the base. By that note, yes. Any TW ship, with TW settings could be used to hold the flag room.
Is it effective in removing/challenging all ofensive and defensive tactics to date? you bet
Is it right to have such power in a basing match? Read on..

Now when something this powerful is an option in a basing game, it is left up to chance that this ship will not be destroyed before having a target solution or that a shark will respawn .000001 seconds after needed and boom!, you lose your match.

Now picture this, you've got your levi setup in the flag room, you've got the flag, you're all hiding like pussies in the flag room since you have the levi, not setting up any kind of defense, leaving mid, the base enterance and flag room greatly without any tactical protection. The opposing team does a quick warp with a lev-terrier and sends one of these suckers at your entire defense. Your levi surviving has the ability then to wipe out the opposing team, thus holding the flag. Does this not make sense that all other tactics, ships and everything that is basing that we know and relate to is gone at this point?

Why isn't the Levi wanted as a basing ship? Simple, it's over power beyond belief and leaves the ability to take, hold and defend the flag up to chance. Theres no sound tactic, skill or experienced, complete chance with this kind of power.

Now if you ever want the blue ship used in a real tactic and league sense then it will need to be remade, no question about that.

[Mr. Peanuts]

Well I thought it was a good contribution, while everyone was adding to a list of things they think are wrong with Trench Wars.

[Fluffz]

yea, epis writing is more or less a todo list than a lets talk about post.
also i was trying to point out, that the root of the problems epi talks about in his first post is not only the staff system.

besides no1 talked about client server changes, blocking saves could be done by doors? guess that is what peanuts ment, may it be a good or bad idea. and while we r at it resizing pub doesnt get my vote either

[Dim]

Kolar my friend, we are also concerned in staff and there are plenty of threads on both Yahoo Groups and the staff forums.

[Kings]

Kolar my friend, we are also concerned in staff and there are plenty of threads on both Yahoo Groups and the staff forums.

yahoo groups? yish, how gay.....

[Dim]

Yes, I can imagine how using a Yahoo group could be deemed homosexual.

[Galleleo]

Just gonna touch the pub section here:

Back when I started, 3/4 years ago, not sure. There was no pure pub, but yet in the peak times, so evening for euro's there was always a pub to found with good basing in it. Why? because the levi wasn't abused as much, people respected basing, there weren't much levi's and levi terrs flying around, there were like 3/4 at most at the same time in that arena, and mostly, when the basing was really intens, they couldn't ruin the basing either.

Nowdays, the pure pub IS needed, levi abuse has gone up, you see lts everywhere if they get the chance, and in no arena was the any possibility to try and start/set up basing.. hence pure pub was born. And it's more a problem of the people playing in pubs then pubs itself, becuase nothing changed about pubs, but back in the day pubs used to be lots of fun, now we needs bots for it. IF anything should change, it's the levi, mainly the power of it's bomb.

[ogron]

great post epi, thanks for the insight.

personally i agree on pretty much all of epi's points. as to whether anything can be done, we'll see.

[Randedl]

To sum up what Epi was saying in 5 words or less. . .

He agrees with me.

[jeem]

to sum up what i'm thinking about after reading this thread in 5 words or less. . .

frankie says relax

[GuruMeditation]

Re : Everyone complaining about Levi.

It's been brought up before. It'll never change. Nothing to be done. You can always say "Why don't we do this?" and "Why don't we do that?" but face it, we're stuck with it.