Dear Trench Wars (especially you basers),

[Cleve-YB]

Why dont they just take down ?go base and add similar bots to about 4 or 5 of the pubs. Except divide the teams into two and (I dont know how this would work) select 1 terrier 2 sharks and the rest are all the other fighters. Then after teams are set you play a nice, short, and sweet 10 minute base game.

Oh and I forgot to mention that your article thing was very good apok.

[Stabwound]

Trust me, I've brought up the issue of basing become stale many times. I'm the one that brought up the idea of the pure pub basing bot, thinking it would do a lot of good for the basing scene. It is still good as a pub game, but it is flawed in that it doesn't allow private teams, which doesn't really attract quality TWBD teams. No good teams want to play in pubs.

As far as Thix's "basing tourny" goes, it is pretty obvious why no one wants to help him run it. First of all, Thix's reputation is shot; no one wants to get involved with anything that has his name tagged to it. Look at the TWIB tournament; it was an absolute failure. Second of all, his exclusion of Spastic-- one of the promenent basing teams, as WELL as a team that has a number of prominent staff members. Bad idea. Sure, Thix got the ball rolling for this kind of thing. If staff is going to host anything like this, it will probably be by our rules and schedules.

I've heard that you were specifically talking about Spastic with your whole spiel about people not talking to others. So what? The biggest reason for this is because the better TWBD squads are very competitive, and pretty much hate each other. Why should someone have to talk to a random person? I care for the game and all, and I don't mind helping people out with various crap, but I personally couldn't give 2 shits about how your day went, and I know many others feel the same way.

Basing is elitist, sure. I'd go as far as to say that it's more elitist than any of the other leagues. A big reason for this is because TWBD/TWLB and even ?go base is so exclusive. You just cannot become good at basing or have a good TWBD team with little legitimate 8vs8 practice. A team of 5 random elimers or wbduelers has a fair chance sometimes of beating a decent squad. There is no possible way 8 random base pubbers can do this against a quality basing squad.

A lot of the time, a newbie's chance of playing in a good ?go base game are akin to the chances of a snowflake hitting the floor in hell. No one wants to lose in ?go base, and the best way to do that is to pick players that are known to perform well.

What we need is a way to get fresh blood into the basing scene. Dueling has elim and wbduel, which are ways that almost anyone can get some good practice in. Javs have comparable arenas that allow any player to do the same thing. Basing does NOT. The pub basing bot idea was great in theory, but in execution, maybe not so much. There just really isn't anything that would draw established players into the arenas.

We need a way to get new players basing practice. Got any ideas?

[Golden Sun 1]

rofl, cuz im readin tht..bollox

[Burzum]

Ask yourself, if you took down ?go base, what is the chance of all the players that used to play only base going to pubs and play there, as opposed to leaving SS and hugging another game like WoW? (Btw, I blame WoW for half of the current problems SS in general has, not just because of Pallies).

To be honest, I've often thought about how it would be if all of the bots (except TWD arenas) would just disappear. What is the chance of an elitist basing prick sticking to pub and not leaving SS?

And talking about events...what we have here in TW is still a hundred times better than any other zone. Imagine hosting armada in DSB and having 3 people come...that's just sad, for all of SS.

[bubbles19518]

I read about half of that then looked how long it was and stoped

That happen to me aswell

[genocidal]

Squads dissolve every season, people cry about how bad TWLB will be, but, of course, when it gets down to it the squads form because the player base is there to support it. Last TWLB season was pretty competitive and there is no reason to think next one won't. All of Mambo didn't just quit when it dissolved (maybe a few) but they're going to go to other squads and make new ones.

I quit reading once I got to the part about people in Spastic not talking to other players. I really don't care what you think about that and if some Spastic people think that it is a waste of time to talk to some of the idiots on this game then that is their own decision. It's better than a squad having its members running around spouting racism and "newbie" and "ez" at every chance they get (which is what a strange proportion of TWers do).

I don't know how your squads work out but the only real reason I still play this game is because I like my squad. Squad chat is generally fun everyday and we always get to play a few games which is also fun. I don't go out of my way to make new spaceship friends because I don't particularly want to and am happy enough with my squad. I'm not really mean to other players either so I don't see what the problem is with Spastic. If anything blame people like Thix, Everest, and Sumpson for being stupid and giving basing a negative image.

[Nethila]

i didnt read the whole thing.. but here is my two cents:

?go base now is absolutely the worst place to learn basing right now.. well.. serious basing anyways.. all you learn there now is shit talk, how to camp, how to get cap and jav yourself, or how to leave mid game if you dont get what you want.

pure pubs are actually a great place now.. IF we can limit the amount of javs, and no cloakers would be great too. if any new comers that would want to learn how to base, i'd suggest them to go to pure pub.

its true that old basing squads are dying, but there are new squads that are being created. we will see more once we get closer to twl.

[Dwopple]

all i see in pure pub arena is, people reccing outside of base anyways, what will make them change their ways?

[PH]

Basers got an attitude?

Like I said, I don't want to mention names. But yes, a few of them make some of your dueling crowd look pretty tame. :P

The thing is, the only way those problems can be fixed is if people with experience go back to pubs. The attitude of those people if they return to pub may have harmful effects on pub, but that's nothing compared to the damage they've inflicted by not playing there at all. If Moot's suggestion goes through, their attitude won't kill pubs; they're already killing pubs by not playing there at all.

Yes, there might be some growing pains, but they'll just have to suck it up. Things will have to get worse before they can start to get better.

They don't HAVE to do anything, and with their "if we aren't winning, I'm leaving" attitude and the state of public arenas my bet is that they WON'T do anything but hit Esc-Q or go to baseelim or something along those lines. Honestly, I'm a pretty reasonable person about my team losing, but the state of pubs is so shot right now that even I would probably have to do things I normally would never do, like turn ?nopubchat on or just stop talking altogether, just to save myself the stress of having to try to teach players to stop blindly firing bombs. They don't listen. Period. They think a "sorry" makes it okay to be an idiot.

Genocidal has a good point, sometimes it's better to be silent than yap your head off for nothing. I personally have no problem with Spastic being a generally quiet squad in public chat. That doesn't mean they don't talk period. I'm on chats with a few of them and they're really nice people.

In any case, it shouldn't have to come down to the players fixing things, that should be on upper staff's shoulders. And frankly, Apoc, in my opinion writing this letter to the community because of this BD tournament is asinine. If Kim hosted a TWJD tournament and has planned a TWDD tournament, what do you think would have been next? The thought never crossed my mind that Kim would just ignore the basers; he's not that stupid (which is more than I can say for some staffers, so I do understand your problem with staff here).

I just woke up and I doubt I'm making a bit of sense here, I'll write more later or come back and edit this or something.

Two hours later, I think I said pretty much all I wanted to say. Just because Kim isn't a baser people incorrectly assumed he wasn't planning to run a TWBD tournament. I may have crossed swords with Kim a few times, but I know he's not the type of staffer who would limit himself to doing things only for duelers or only for basers. This divisive mindset of duelers and basers is not helping the community, so I'm glad a staffer finally stepped up and tried to breathe some life into all three divisions. Props, Kim.

Thix, instead of throwing a tantrum and arranging your own tournament out of spite, and only inviting squads that you like instead of squads that are actually competitive, perhaps you could have asked questions before making the assumption that Kim was not going to run a BD tournament? Just a thought.

I realize a lot of you are on the "staff sucks" bandwagon, but consider this your wake-up call. Not all staffers sit around all day scratching themselves. Players need to stop pointing the finger at staff when one of their own is doing just as much damage, if not more.

[Troll King]

all i see in pure pub arena is, people reccing outside of base anyways, what will make them change their ways?

Did you expect a 15 vs 15 battle in the flag room? There will always be people not basing. The point however isn't to get everyone to do it, but to provide an environment where it is more likely to occur, and with better quality.

[Fire Blade]

lol but it wouldnt be 15v15 in frq, not every player that comes in tw will be a baser >_>

[moltenrock]

Jebus

Apoc, I think a lot of people tried to give the same message before. I don't think it sinks in to a lot of people. Like, the people that read half way and stopped. The people that leave the stupid comments, the "attempts" at sarcasm. A lot of things need to change in TW, remember all those threads by staff that were leaving staff a couple of months ago, they all had good points. Those problems still haven't been fixed all that well. And now new problems pop up. I wouldn't blame all the problems on staff though.... some people have serious attitude issues. Things might be a lot better if when someone suggests some changes people actually considered it instead of just shooting it down.



If you think about it in a different sense, kinda makes you wanna laugh, all this happening in a 2D game. ^-^

[End]

I totally agree with apoc i have noticed basing is going stale in base and twbd. Although i like your idea mooty i can see the basers just going #arenas again and it wont really solve much. I think some serious thinking has to be done and some plan of action made. Ill try to play pub more and get more pubers to play in go base by picking them. Ill pick a pubber a game.

[Ashlee]

Last night when I tried to read this I didn't understand it, but now I do.

I don't really feel like I can comment since I haven't really been here long, but that was well-written and I agree with a lot of it just from what I've seen/heard in the past few weeks.

I don't feel like it's my place to criticize the majority (as in, not all) of staff because I've never actually really talked to them or seen them do something that's actually worth my criticism- but then again, that was one of your points of argument, so.

Why don't I see <zhs> in pubs playing and, you know, zone helping? I think that would make a huge difference.

I've seen a few regularly going to pubs and watching in spectator, but no, not actually playing.

Since I read the first post, my head is too tired to read and fully comprehend all of the other long replies, so if this has all been said then oops, I guess I agree with them.

[Dwopple]

well w/e, i dont want to be playing with a bunch of people who dont know how to base, call me an asshole, but i dont like teaching people