Dear Trench Wars Community,

[Kuukunen]

P.S.S. Up to this point I have a wordcount of 1416 which is probably a longer essay than most of you have ever written and thus implies that I am a gigantic nerd but that's ok because I'm happy with me.

It's written "P.P.S." AHAHAHAHAHHAAHA

[Bawls]

Apocalypse WOW! i know who you are, and i agree with you, i think

I read about halfway down until I realized that there was a lot more. In conclusion...

Yeah Same....

[Apocalypse WOW!]

It's written "P.P.S." AHAHAHAHAHHAAHA

Edited for kuuk's pleasure.

[geekbot]

The man is just asking for a little civility. I'm down with it. If you don't want to be, that's your perogative.

I probably would have chosen fewer words for the target audience but, hey, whatever.

[Voth]

This is a 2d spaceship game, not a social gathering. Play the game and understand that it's just a game. Social tolerance and acceptance in Trench Wars will not happen, and asking for it is pointless.

[Theif of Time]

Voth: its both. who says one can't be the other?

[Kolar]

I'm not for making staff regulate conversations and break up childish fights when people can grow up, ignore RandomAsshole242 and play the game and understand the competitive nature of publics and dueling parts of this game breed the kind of langauge and stupid fights. We could add commonly used words to the obscene list which are annoying but no one is going to be banned or warned for being who they want to be on this game within the rules. If it goes beyond that with harrassment then staff wil step in.

[Apocalypse WOW!]

This is a 2d spaceship game, not a social gathering. Play the game and understand that it's just a game. Social tolerance and acceptance in Trench Wars will not happen, and asking for it is pointless.

And it is for this reason, and this attitude, that people get frustrated and leave. It is this reason and this attitude that make me want to leave. I've been hearing a lot of people say "its pointless" or "you're batshit insane"... Listen: this is a problem that I think exists and doesn't get discussed.

And its really pretty easy to say there's no solution when no one has done a thing about it or even discussed it.

People want discussion on how to improve TW, here is my two cents.

[Voth]

People want discussion on how to improve TW, here is my two cents.

It's a good thought, but unrealistic, sorry. I'm not saying I wouldn't like it better if people were always jolly and respectful to everyone else, but I don't let it get in the way of me playing this game. Try ?ignore or ?lines=0.

[Kolar]

When the problem is the game the solution is to??? kill it? It's not a serious problem, a bunch of kids spamming fuck you or calling each other easy, people grow out of it much like they grow out of playing publics. Staff is not going to be social police banning everything from 'shut up' to 'ez' or dealing with every person who gets told where to go for some other non illegal action.. you can't make people nice over the internet, it would be nice but it will never happen, that's why we have ?ignore, ESC F5. This is not allowing it to happen or agreeing with it, it's the reality of the situation.

[Kuukunen]

It's written "P.P.S." AHAHAHAHAHHAAHA

Nah, just kidding. :P

Now let me show you something that will explain many things you don't like about TW:
http://penny-arcade.com/view.php3?date=2004-03-19

From your language I'd guess you're not a kid and/or your ego isn't the size of a house, but you have to realize that this is interent, and lots of people are like that. Also, they can and will show it. There really is no way around it, you can't just go around banning people who say "ez newb %killer" after their every kill. Only solution I can see is to learn how to tolerate them. Most important thing is that you don't go with them and start flaming them. (Which I'd guess you don't, but this is for everyone.) That will just get them happy and they'll start doing it with twice the enthusiasm. Well... from time to time I enjoy starting a trash talk war with someone. I never throw the initiative though.

Some details then. When capping in base, people will ask for ship. When you say "no", they might start whining. Here, too, the best way to avoid the whining is to ignore them. I doubt most people will continue messaging you if you don't answer back. Anyways, in this case you have to remember one thing. In base, people are there to have fun. If someone really doesn't like playing spider, you should listen to him. I'm not saying you should jav everyone who asks for it, but at least some.

Most good warbird and javs do not ask to be in any ship in Base

I think you're wrong here. Or, if there are good special ship players who never ask for ship, they won't get to play that ship. People who cap in base are usually rather new, all old players have had their share of capping. The caps simply can't remember all warbirds or javelins. I consider myself as at least decent basebird, and I really do ask for ship, otherwise people usually spid me. And I hate spidding, I'd rather play any other ship, including shark, than spid.

You also have to consider new people who would want to learn to play wb in base. They can practise hundreds of hours in pub, but no one will still pick them as wb in base if they won't ask for it. And if no one will listen to requests, they're kind of in trouble. If I cap, I mostly ignore people asking to be put in (everyone wants to be in) but if I'm already picking someone and he asks for ship, I might listen to him.

If you think they trash talk in pubs, go to elim. Sometimes it's amazing, it's about 1 message per second and 95% of those can be considered as utter trash. As a side note, most people consider basers as more mature than duelers, but I think part of it is the type of game. Dueling is more competitive and when you die, it's a lot more frustrating than in base. I once visited a pub of Hockey Zone and was wondering why there was no trash talking of any kind. Dunno, maybe it's just that some type of people like some type of games or maybe it's the games that cause people to act like they do. This really didn't have anything to do with anything, but I was just writing out some of my observations.

Then about sharking. First, I still think the terr of the losing side is still the one who gets most of the trash. And when I shark and I think the shark partner did good, I try to thank him.

I once thought of this metaphor of basing as football.* Scoring a goal is killing a terr. Terrs are the goalkeepers, javs and warbirds are attackers, spiders are midfielders/attackers and sharks are defenders. In theory if the goalkeeper is just amazing, he can save the game by himself, but practically, that's not the case. And if the team loses, you can always blame the goalkeeper and the defenders for not doing their job, it's not the attackers job to defend, right? On the other hand, when attacker makes a goal, he's great and should be praised. Defenders rarely get the praise, except maybe in the rather rare case they score. But in the end, most (or at least some) people who play really do notice the defenders even if they don't say it and have this warm feeling that says: "thank you for being there". And at least the scouts looking for good defenders carefully watch them.

And yes, I agree many people won't be reading these kinds of texts and much less care about them. This is still a lot like TW in-game where people just have the time to write a bit longer witty retorts than just "ez newb stfu". But not unlike TW, there are people who really do try to act mature. I just hope those people don't drown in the sea of the louder people. Oh well, sometimes typing your thoughts out is fun. That's why people have blogs.

In summary: Battle against idiocy over internet is doomed, don't even try. Your only option is to create an internal filter so you don't get annoyed by it. I'm afraid only way to do that is to expose yourself to the thing you hate. Yea, you can learn to eat food you don't like and eat it every day. It still doesn't taste good, but you can learn to live with it. Same applies here. On the other hand, when you DO find yourself in a group of people who are mature, it's fun.


*All Americans (as in USA mostly, I think) and likes: You can call American football soccer if you wan't. Honest, you can have that name. But when I say just "football", I'm talking about a game where you touch a BALL with your FOOT.

P.P.S. I like to do long posts too. Just recently I wrote in a levi thread a post long enough I had to cut it in two parts. :/ EDIT: Apparently this post has too many images. (?)

[Ilya]

Dear TW Community,

I know we haven't talked much, but I think its about time we had a little chat. I'm Apocalypse WOW! and a lot of you probably don't know me and that's ok because I probably don't know you either. Now judging by the rest of the threads in these forums, I expect half you to not actually take me seriously - which is also ok because I'm venting my frustrations about a little online internet game which may or may not be a serious endeavor at all. But then again, you're all looking at these forums so I reckon you must be sort of interested in this game.

I've been a happy pubber since '00 under various names and a fairly dedicated baser since last year -- all in all I think I kind of fit into the TW "average joe" player and community category. I was on TeKs, which was nice for me because I made a lot of friends on it but I'm sure most of you don't really care, which is ok because I don't really care what squad you're on or have been on either. I think its fair to say that I've got a good handle on this game and a lot of the players in it.

TW Community, I'm getting frustrated with you. I'm not frustrated with the ship settings or the tile sets or how TWD or leagues and things are set up. I'm not frustrated that I was on a squad that didn't win a lot, but didn't lose a lot either. I'm not frustrated with the way mods host events. Really I think its rather nice that some people have taken their time to make such an enjoyable little game free. No I'm not frustrated with these things, TW Community, I'm frustrated with you.

I'm sure every once in a while I'm sure one of these threads pops up, but I feel that its my duty as an average joe TW Community member to say my piece. TW Community, the things you are doing are making me not want to play this game that I enjoy anymore. Recently there's been a lot of talk about doing things to help increase TW population and a neat proposal system has been introduced to help innovation. I think this is great, but I think you guys are missing the forest for the trees when it comes to solving TW's problems.

When I randomly play in pub, its usually a fair bet that if I get shot, somebody's going to say "ez" or something like that. Its also usually a fair bet that I'm playing on a team with 10 of the best javs to ever have graced this game with their holy presence - except for the 10 javs on the other team who could surely "pwn" God Himself should He decide to pub it hardcore - but whatever. The amount of trash talk and insults exchanged in pub are staggering. The amount of civility between players tends towards nonexistance.

Now, I don't pub much anymore since I discovered real basing in ?go base, where usually only 1 of those best javs ever gets to grace each team. I'm not much of a jav or wb player so I don't really do those elim arenas - but they're all veritable meeting places for TWD squad players and the principle is the same - more challenging gameplay.

I've become something of a regular shark in ?go base, which seems to be largely regarded as the equivalent of a janitor who pushes things around a lot. Thats ok because believe it or not, I enjoy playing that big fat ship because I think it takes a degree of skill that most players don't realize. I like my ship because it is much more than counting to 4 and pressing "shift control" a lot, I'm in a "helping" ship that sometimes gets to make stuff blow up which is always cool, but I digress.

As a regular shark, it is rare that a game goes by where I don't get told "omg rep" or "SHARKS WTF!!?!?" even when it clearly isn't my fault. Without fail, a shark will be yelled at or insulted for single mistakes, also without fail, a well sharked game is rarely acknowledged and is taken for granted. If other ships make errors, they don't generally get called out on it, unless the spiders as a whole are sucking big time, the jav is tking, or the terr is spinning around or whatever. Civility is not a priority between players at these moments I've noticed. As a shark, nothing less than perfection is demanded, and even the best of us make mistakes - I try to own up to mine as much as possible, which I think is a good lesson for life in general.

Sometimes when I'm captaining for base, I'll want to put players into spiders, because spiders are important when you want to win a basing match. Often I find myself in the presence of the most ultimately awesome javelin players ever who absolutely refuse to not play their most awesome javelins or whatever. Heaven forbid I sub you out for refusing to spid, I don't tend to take orders very well from little lines of internet text. These players also tend to have very nimble fingers, and tend to be in the squads that win lots of their matches.

Now let me be clear: I'm not saying that I should never refuse to shark, because sharking all the time does get tiring. I'm not saying that a regular player of some sort of ship should have to be that ship in base. I'm not saying that a lot of those players with really nimble fingers should have to play with people who have not as nimble fingers in their go base scrimmages. I'm saying that if you would not like to be a sort of ship you should ask the captain politely and not demand it because you've won OMG THIS MANY TWL TITLES. I'm saying I have noticed something along the lines of rampant and arrogant elitism and a complete lack of civility for many of your "average joe" TW players.

TW Community, your complete lack of civility is driving me away. Everyone takes for granted that one person can say utterly demeaning things to another person because its OMG ANONYMOUS TEXT MESSAGES. Come on. I think one of the things that is affecting TW quality and population is the utter indifference players have towards actually building some sense of community here beyond their squads or special chats. We all have our friends and nemeses and that does keep things interesting. But TW Community, you seem to be taking it for granted that it is ok for people to treat others like absolute dirt.

Here is a place where I do think that TW staff and <er>s and <zh>s have dropped the ball completely. By simply ignoring this sort of rampant behavior you are not only encouraging this problem but are allowing the degradation of TW as a community. It is that community that you want to try and build just as much as you are trying to make cool new tilesets and ship settings and arenas, because it is that community that will ensure the longevity of this zone and this game. I guess I'm just trying to get some dialogue about this going and to vent my frustrations. I guess I just expect a little bit more from a gaming experience where we see a lot of the same players consistently.

I'm sure a lot of you will be say something along the lines of "yeah well this is how things are and you are unrealistic in your expectations" or "apoc you are a weak minded idealogue" or "be very quiet you player who is new to trench wars" or "this is too long and I didn't read it because I'm an internet superstar" or "laugh out loud". To these, and similar comments that lack conversational merit, I imply something along the lines of "please go initiate sexual pleasure with yourself" or "attain puberty please" etc because this is what I think so I'm saying it.

Yeah so in a nutshell, try and stop being complete douches to each other.

Yours truly,

Apocalypse WOW!

P.S. Spastic, you guys should recruit Sarger because he is Icelandic and you are probably lacking in the Icelandic department.

P.P.S. Up to this point I have a wordcount of 1416 which is probably a longer essay than most of you have ever written and thus implies that I am a gigantic nerd but that's ok because I'm happy with me.

i didnt read any of that

[Ilya]

Nah, just kidding. :P

Now let me show you something that will explain many things you don't like about TW:
http://penny-arcade.com/view.php3?date=2004-03-19

From your language I'd guess you're not a kid and/or your ego isn't the size of a house, but you have to realize that this is interent, and lots of people are like that. Also, they can and will show it. There really is no way around it, you can't just go around banning people who say "ez newb %killer" after their every kill. Only solution I can see is to learn how to tolerate them. Most important thing is that you don't go with them and start flaming them. (Which I'd guess you don't, but this is for everyone.) That will just get them happy and they'll start doing it with twice the enthusiasm. Well... from time to time I enjoy starting a trash talk war with someone. I never throw the initiative though.

Some details then. When capping in base, people will ask for ship. When you say "no", they might start whining. Here, too, the best way to avoid the whining is to ignore them. I doubt most people will continue messaging you if you don't answer back. Anyways, in this case you have to remember one thing. In base, people are there to have fun. If someone really doesn't like playing spider, you should listen to him. I'm not saying you should jav everyone who asks for it, but at least some.

I think you're wrong here. Or, if there are good special ship players who never ask for ship, they won't get to play that ship. People who cap in base are usually rather new, all old players have had their share of capping. The caps simply can't remember all warbirds or javelins. I consider myself as at least decent basebird, and I really do ask for ship, otherwise people usually spid me. And I hate spidding, I'd rather play any other ship, including shark, than spid.

You also have to consider new people who would want to learn to play wb in base. They can practise hundreds of hours in pub, but no one will still pick them as wb in base if they won't ask for it. And if no one will listen to requests, they're kind of in trouble. If I cap, I mostly ignore people asking to be put in (everyone wants to be in) but if I'm already picking someone and he asks for ship, I might listen to him.

If you think they trash talk in pubs, go to elim. Sometimes it's amazing, it's about 1 message per second and 95% of those can be considered as utter trash. As a side note, most people consider basers as more mature than duelers, but I think part of it is the type of game. Dueling is more competitive and when you die, it's a lot more frustrating than in base. I once visited a pub of Hockey Zone and was wondering why there was no trash talking of any kind. Dunno, maybe it's just that some type of people like some type of games or maybe it's the games that cause people to act like they do. This really didn't have anything to do with anything, but I was just writing out some of my observations.

Then about sharking. First, I still think the terr of the losing side is still the one who gets most of the trash. And when I shark and I think the shark partner did good, I try to thank him.

I once thought of this metaphor of basing as football.* Scoring a goal is killing a terr. Terrs are the goalkeepers, javs and warbirds are attackers, spiders are midfielders/attackers and sharks are defenders. In theory if the goalkeeper is just amazing, he can save the game by himself, but practically, that's not the case. And if the team loses, you can always blame the goalkeeper and the defenders for not doing their job, it's not the attackers job to defend, right? On the other hand, when attacker makes a goal, he's great and should be praised. Defenders rarely get the praise, except maybe in the rather rare case they score. But in the end, most (or at least some) people who play really do notice the defenders even if they don't say it and have this warm feeling that says: "thank you for being there". And at least the scouts looking for good defenders carefully watch them.

And yes, I agree many people won't be reading these kinds of texts and much less care about them. This is still a lot like TW in-game where people just have the time to write a bit longer witty retorts than just "ez newb stfu". But not unlike TW, there are people who really do try to act mature. I just hope those people don't drown in the sea of the louder people. Oh well, sometimes typing your thoughts out is fun. That's why people have blogs.

In summary: Battle against idiocy over internet is doomed, don't even try. Your only option is to create an internal filter so you don't get annoyed by it. I'm afraid only way to do that is to expose yourself to the thing you hate. Yea, you can learn to eat food you don't like and eat it every day. It still doesn't taste good, but you can learn to live with it. Same applies here. On the other hand, when you DO find yourself in a group of people who are mature, it's fun.


*All Americans (as in USA mostly, I think) and likes: You can call American football soccer if you wan't. Honest, you can have that name. But when I say just "football", I'm talking about a game where you touch a BALL with your FOOT.

P.P.S. I like to do long posts too. Just recently I wrote in a levi thread a post long enough I had to cut it in two parts. :/ EDIT: Apparently this post has too many images. (?)

didn't read any of that either.

[Rudy]

The game is a much more pleasant experience without other people in it. Type ?lines=0 to make them all nothing more than "bots".

[Dameon Angell]

As a fellow flagroom janitor, I feel the pain. But the best way to go about it is just to do what you do best. Welcome to the real world, and I'm sorry it can't be all sunshine and lollypops, but staff can't enforce an all smiles policy on players. People act like assholes and douchebags, and you just have to put them out of your head and stick to the people you know.