Calling all real TW Players and STAFF

[Hakaku]

I think that a lot has to do with hosted arenas and types of events. Everytime I go on, it's either base, hockey or leagues. When events do get hosted, it's like [insert type of event] sprees with different arenas. There's simply no more creativity. Why should I play zombies in 3 different arenas in the same hour?

Host arenas that aren't hosted very much (or haven't been hosted in ages), even if they're disliked by some. Some doesn't equal the majority.

Host at different times. Depending on when I go on, during the standard north american times, there's a lot of things happening. During the other hours, it's dead and makes me leave because of shear boredom.

Basically, I like the idea of advertising TWDev to have certain arenas tested at certain times. This helps a lot the creator to know the flaws, unbalanced stuff, etc.

I also think pub map colors should be changed, they're just ugly and should be livened up a bit. I have trouble distinguishing between the red/brown and background.

[Shadowmere]

The ?host command used to be available, but was removed.. Perhaps theres a reason behind it such as spam, i think it should be brought back as-well.

Yes you are correct that there was one, however it was on a bot, and it only worked for staffmembers, so.. eh? (if I correctly remember)

[jeem]

more strikeball

[WuTang420]

There already is a map solely for warbirds.

?go wbs

ill be damned.. why have i never seen this?!?

[genes]

I just think we need some more <ER>s with more imagination.

Too many events are so souless now. They might as well be run by bots the <ER>s dont add anything to them...

Not all <ER>s are like this of course but i just wonder why some people wanted to become ER cos it should be about hosting some good shit, and mixing it up.

No one experiments in events nemore, well at least not in my timezone if i get drunk and play late at night dr. coiff is sometimes hosting and his events rox. No one else hosts anything like them.

Thats what i mean by <ER>s needing some personalilty. cos theres not many other <er>s i could name apart from barton <er> cos hes the only person who seems to host in euro timezone

read what I wrote, first page

[D1st0rt]

I think zh's should be much more creative when it comes to ?help responses, instead of just hitting some prerecorded generic "Your question does not apply to Trench Wars, stop abusing help" response.

[genes]

Jason is right on most things. ERs need to make their events more livly and fun but I don't think moving back to manual commands or removing moduels on the bots is the answer. Even though hosting and advertising that fact would be kinda cool. We just need to find some good people and move the right people around. I never wanted to be a ER because you could group me into the boring catagory. The 'silly' staffers need to be ZHs or Moderators, not ERs or Smod/Sysop imo. I can see these personailities in a lot of staffers, the truth is we can't get rid of them because they are useful and don't abuse so the best idea is to shift them around to where they best work and help the zone.

It doesn't boil down to recruitment or anything specific. A lot of these problems are caused by the community and where it has gone in the past few years. I think we've focused on efficency and productivity for a while now.. now that TWL is rolling and hopefully won't take a lot out of us we can begin to focus on publics, new events, new ZH/ER training.

Read what I wrote, first page

[genes]

DISCLAIMER: i apologize for the length of this post, but i had a lot to say and i wasn't about to leave anything out. if you're one of those people with a short attention span who can't manage to read all the way through a long post, please just skip over all this and don't bother to comment. if you do read through all of this, i would greatly appreciate your feedback.



i couldn't agree more with genes. he's hit the nail on the head. it doesn't matter how many new games you come up with or how many events are hosted per week. it doesn't matter how active your staff members are or how open you are to fresh ideas.

the biggest problem in the zone right now is that there's a serious lack of personality within the staff as a collective whole, a detachment of sorts, and that detachment trickles down into the playerbase making for a lackluster community.

i know that i, personally, hardly ever go to hosted events anymore. first of all, ads are key. ads are your hook. they need to grab attention and spark some interest/excitement in the event that's being hosted. i realize not everyone is going to be able to write catchy ads, but i must say that at least 75% of the ads i see these days are at best unimaginative and at worst downright stupid. a lot of them are full of inside jokes between some staff member i don't know and some other player i don't know. and many are something like "let's play javs ?go javs - so and so" which used to be okay back in the day. a simple, direct ad like that was fine back when we didn't have soooo many subarenas and the playerbase was smaller and more tight-knit. a guy like napalm sunrise i could say something like that and everyone knew about the arena already, and you knew going into it that it was going to be fun. remember though, there was personality back then.

moving beyond the ads, genes is also on the money regarding the absurd overuse of bots. yes, they make life easier, but easier is not always better. so many games are done by :twbot:!go <arena>, :twbot:!load <module>, :twbot:!start and then the host just sits back and says two words for the rest of the game. back in the days of manual hosting, hosts had to pay attention to the entire game, and as a result, there was more interaction between host and player. something as simple as having a host that routinely tosses up a few *arena messages commenting on the action in the game, something like that goes a long way.

and now onto the ZHs/ERs/Mods themselves, this is something that's really hard to fix because your choices as to who to recruit as staff members are limited. that being said, there are some really boring/silly/asshole people holding staff positions right now. a staffer's number one job, and this goes before performing the tasks required of them, is to maintain good public relations. they are the face of the zone. they have direct interaction with joe-newbie on a day-to-day basis. let me run through a couple of hypothetical scenarios.

first we have the boring staffer:

joe-newbie> hey can you host such and such event?
staffer> maybe
joe-newbie> it'd be lots of fun and lots of people really like it!
staffer> okay
staffer> i'll think about it
joe-newbie> okay thanks!

(and then lets say the staffer actually decides to host the event)

joe-newbie wants such and such event ?go wherever - staffer

(and then the staffer proceeds to barely say two words all game long)

honestly, you can practically hear the staffer yawning repeatedly throughout the entire process. that kind of attitude puts people off. we have a lot of younger (relatively speaking) kids playing these days and kids need in your face pizzazz to hold their attention and to keep them coming back for more.

second we have the silly staffer:

joe-newbie> hey i have a question about such and such
staffer> okay let me help you! kekekekeke ^__^ P~ ::squeak snort cookie:: and whatever other randomness or random emoticon you can think of
joe-newbie> uhhh so my question is _________

it's okay to be enthusiastic. it's okay to be a little goofy some of the time. being completely over the top oddball silly all of the time puts people off. being completely over the top oddball silly all of the time shows a lack of depth in terms of personality which goes back to the original issue at hand.

finally we have the asshole staffer:

joe-newbie> hey can i get in the game?
staffer> nope already started
joe-newbie> but it hasn't been going long and i just want to play
staffer> too bad already started
joe-newbie> could you maybe host it again after this one?
staffer> listen newbie i'm not your slave
staffer> go back to pub

this kind of thing happens more often than i'm willing to bet any staffer wants to admit. we all have our bad days and sometimes a persistent newbie can certainly get annoying. this goes back to the public relations concept, though. being an asshole puts people off. some staffer is an asshole to some player, and then the next time that staffer hosts an event that player doesn't come to play. the more people the staffer is an asshole to, the fewer people are coming to play in events hosted by that staffer. in a worst case scenario that player has friends and he/she tells them to steer clear of events hosted by that staffer.

in summation: i realize everything i've said isn't the kind of problem that can be attacked directly. it's more of an abstract issue, and it will take a lot of work and effort to affect the amount of change we need to bring this zone back to what it used to be. and what it used to be was one hell of a lot of fun because of the fun and interesting people that kept things going behind the scenes.

And I quote "he's hit the nail on the head." Thanks for the recognition Jason

Even though Jason probably has more newbie-support then I do, please listen to him or me. He has been staff and knows how to staff and I have seen great staffers. TW has become fucking boring.

Make drastic changes: And the dorky staffer with the emotions? Get rid of ALL of these people. THEY ARE BAD FOR THE ZONE. No one is 5 years old and no one needs <3's in the game. Grow up a bit. Be smart about things.

If no one had an objection, I would LOVE to be staff for 1 week, and show staff how to host events, WITH PERSONALITY. Obviously I would never be staff because I have been banned for "racism", "teamkilling" little stupid crap, but see thats what is bad with this zone. You (upper staff) are not willing to take chances on players like me to be staff. I garentee I would draw more crowds then any of your current staff. Make jokes during the game (clean or dirty)....who honestly cares. Stop banning people for "TEAMING IN BASEELIM" haha this is a joke, who gives a shit. Obviously you should probably pm the players to stop it and make sure it goes on....but being a robot about it like *warn TEAMING IS ILLEGAL IN TRENCH WARS. CONTINUE TO DO IT AND YOU WILL BE BANNED - NEWBIESTAFF <ER>. This is rediculous. You don't think I know teaming in belim is illegal? Say something like *warn genes, the newbies can't win vs your teaming, stop ok? - I would honestly respect this staffer much more. But we are getting off the subject. Seriously....PL....if you cared about this zone, which I think you do, research who you hire before you hire them.

Do not hire them because they help people in .?go base
Do not hire them because they don't get banned or warned ever
Do not hire them because No one hates them

Hire them for personality
Shit, people don't like me, but who cares? What is the definition of staff? I garentee if I hosted a javtourny, plenty of people who wouldn't like me would be playing. Obviously I wouldn't abuse staff power, which is exactly what you think I would do, but you need to get over this fear. Not just in my case, but for everyone's case.
And I don't understand whenever I use .?help.....no one ever answers......so where are all these basing staff you recruited that you have "seen help others in .?go base" Cuz they sure as hell don't help me. Think it over.

-genes

[Zerzera]

AUTOZOMBIE (So ER's can host real events!)



afk coding autozombiebot.

[End]

OK I've read all the posts and i see a number of ideas. I believe the problem lies in the EURO time zone, i can not think of an event hosted in the last week. Someone came up with a reall good idea of a website for base, BASE STATISTICS. This is such a good idea its not even funny. Id love to see my statistics in every ship, like games won / lost, my rank and stuff. Really cool idea.

TW RAdio i used to love listening to Russian Sniper, really cool guy lets get that back up?

More enthusiastic hosts id like to give hosts a few ideas for games, ill pm them online though.

[genes]

problem lies in the EURO time zone, i can not think of an event hosted in the last week. Someone came up with a reall good idea of a website for base, BASE STATISTICS.
TW RAdio i used to love listening to Russian Sniper, really cool guy lets get that back up?

More enthusiastic hosts id like to give hosts a few ideas for games, ill pm them online though.

NO NO and NO.
Who cares about base stats? Go look at twd stats? See....you don't give a shit. Honestly I could care less which newbie in .?go base can average 100 kills each game.........AND IM SURE MOST NEWBIES WHO PLAY GO BASE could care less. Not puttin you down, but .?go base is a PROBLEM in trench wars. Why would we make a website to encourage it?


TW radio wasn't that bad. I'll be honest.... but pallies ran shit in that area. They would always give shout outs, smoke weed, and make jokes about people. They spiced it up. Not sayin others didn't, but I really didn't listen to when DaddaKing or someone like this hosted it.

Like I said before, if staff went out of their way to ask popular people like "All of Dice" (merce, cape, mess, mega) to host at the SAME TIME.....I'm sure this would draw hundreds of people to an arena. But be creative. Make a top 10 list for them to read off or something. Get big name people to host radio.....newbies suck up to them all the time....they would obviously listen to them if they did radio............................................. or like I said up there ^, use their names in advertisements. Basically .?go twld/twlb/twld Look at the rosters. Hell even if they are not logged in.....say something like "So and So is a euro, and hes sleeping right now, but I know he would love to own you in .?go <EVENT>

how do i think of these things so easily? Staff, just pm me in game to get 10 more people in your event just by the Ad itself. I'll tell you what to write in green if you want too.

-genes

[End]

Wow Genes id just like to say your a moron. You don't even play base howd you know what we don't and do want. If you don't want to look at statisitics, don't go there. Base isn't a problem in tw, in my opinion elim is the problem. I do look at twd statistics, i often compare people and we tlak about it on our squad. Don't talk about arenas you don't know shit about.

[genes]

Wow Genes id just like to say your a moron. You don't even play base howd you know what we don't and do want. If you don't want to look at statisitics, don't go there. Base isn't a problem in tw, in my opinion elim is the problem. I do look at twd statistics, i often compare people and we tlak about it on our squad. Don't talk about arenas you don't know shit about.

Ok....this is how much you know about .?go base. I play at least 1 or 2 base games everyday. You think maybe there are SO MANY BASE GAMES PLAYED EVERY DAY THAT YOU DONT SEE ME? nahhhh couldn't be that.
Elim, baseelim, .?go base all are problems/have problems. I think there is TOO much stuff going on in trench wars. And by the way....elim was kicking back in the day, before the merge to baseelim.....back when .?go base didnt exist. ok you aren't the more vet out of the 2 of us, but this is not an arguement. Please don't turn it into one. .?go base is bad enough man, I don't understand why you want a website......more then half the games played there aren't "real" basing games anyways. What kind of stats do you think there will be? Spider Kills, spider deaths, terrier's kills, terrier's deaths. Shark's reps? I don't see why people would want to see stats about such a useless arena.

-genes

[End]

Numer of games played, number of wins to losses,Top 3 players most played with, Most played ship, number of times played each ship, Terr kills, Total kills, TOTAL DAMAGE, accuracy, effieciency, stuff like that.

[Stompa]

A lot of different people have responded, but I think it's important to keep in mind that it may not be representative of the TW population. There are plenty of people playing every night who never touch the forums.

In the past 6 months it seems like I've been less interested in events. I miss Dr. Coiff's freezetag events (well, most events that Coiff hosted). What happened to Matrix? Aim? Minotaur? Now all there seems to be are jav events and dm. Which aren't bad, I like them, but I miss the other events. There are so many of them.

Maybe I'm just not on enough, and it's cause I only play in the evenings and early morning US time. But I have been missing the variety of events. It was nice to see fishies back last night.