Complete Automation = Complete Ruination?

[kthx]

Is automating the entire zone really a good thing? Every week there are new bots, new automated arenas, new automatic zoners. How much is too much and how is this affecting our zone, and our playerbase? I recently hosted some classic Trench Wars events such as ?go Journey. I was really upset at the lack of common sense some of our players have these days to be honest with you, what used to be a fan favorite, and an extremely fun game turned into an event where idiots couldn't figure out the simple rules of the game and then quit instead of trying to. I blame this partially on complete automation. Much like Rich Spoiled kids generally being useless on the workforce, pubbers these days grow up in an age in Trench Wars where they don't have to use any intelligence to play any games. The bots automatically change you to the right ship, to the right freq, or else pms you with what to do. And what the bot doesn't do, the host does for you, warps you to sides because people can't seem to follow simple directions. I am not sure if this is the quality of players that will eventually make Trench Wars a good zone, and I blame automation partially on this. The lack of staff to player interface is also bad, being on staff chat for awhile, I rarely see a ZH or ER take a few extra seconds of their time to talk to someone. I see staff using !tell commands more often than just pming someone. I think this results in a crucial part of being a staffer, which is being seen by the public to a certain extent, especially as a ZH/ER. Do you like calling a company trying to fix a problem with your say... computer and having to deal with 10 minutes of automated push 1 for so and so before you can actually talk to a real person? Not many people do, and I think alot of our new players feel the same way. I talked to a long time ex-mod the other day and he mentioned the fact that most vets don't even care about ?go tournament/javtourny anymore because ?go tourny is on all weekend now. Some of the things on this zone worked better the way they were before they became events that were hosted all day, for a few days a week. Basically I just think we should cut back on automation instead of going further and further into it, and it will make TW a better zone, and the players on the zone will be better in the long run, having to figure out a few things yourself really makes the difference between someone who quits because they never get better, and someone who sees himself getting better and becomes a long-term player.

- Wark (mind removing the tag if you read this forum mod?)

[Denon]

Bots should be there to help staff host & run more complex games/events but not completely automate everything.

So yeah, I guess I'm basically agreeing with you.

[Shadowmere]

Agreed with Denon.

Well, thinking more deeply, it'd be fun that tournament and javtourny meant something as it did year or two ago when there was no tourny. (EDIT: No this is not the only thing that bothers me on automating TW)

However some people might think that giving out advices to new players trough PM's is the way to go. In the end they become spoiled kids who dont know how to change arena, just like those rich kids Kthx mentioned who cant put a fork in their mouth while eating without help at the age of 27

[AnImoL]

Auto 2 team ?deathmatch plz

[Kolar]

ZHs shouldn't be using robohelp to send players information. For cheater calls it's just convenient sometimes to use !tell onit (especially if they start spamming ?cheater/?help) but rarely do I have enough information to go on without messaging the person.

I don't know about shutting down tourny and other arenas, maybe for short periods of time while it's hosted. We can't turn the clock backwards on the zone now, we need to develop the bots further so staffers are more integrated and participate more in the system.

[Sleuth]

I agree with wark. Also, I feel that staff could take another approach to who they decide to recruit. For example, you usually see a player who has played ss for 7 years get staff over a helpful but lesser "vet" player. I understand that the vet probably knows more rules, ss history, commands, etc, but they usually seem to be alot less helpful then the lesser known guys who get staff. I think <ZH>'s should be more helpful, and maybe save the vets for Mod positions as they don't work as much 1 on 1 with the TW population.

[Sufficient]

This game is so old that you can't really hope to attract a lot of new players. I mean new games come out all the time, how do you expect SS to compete with them? Naturally our population will go down as it has been in the past ... nothing, or very little that we do will make it rise 100+ more ppl than it is at currently. So when you say population is declining, realize that it's natural, expected, and has been going on throughout SS in virtually every zone. Making league perfect won't attract that many more ppl, having great events won't do it either.

As for automation (the above might be sidetracking the topic) ... it's fine. The only problem is when things go haywire and staff cannot smoothly continue the event/arena/whatever.

[Supreme Authority]

That's not alwasy true sleuth, im not surehow long for instance bounty*killer layed (or pandagirl) but bounty is a nice pubber ^-^

[kthx]

SufficiE(sorry didn't sleep)nt - I understand the this game is really old and we aren't going to attract alot of players, but that is the reason why things like what I am talking about are important. The value of nearly every player that is new and enters TW is beneficial to the zone. The chances of that player staying really depend on how comfortable they get with the game, if they get hand-held through everything and never learn on their own, never gets good, and never squads chances are they will quit. The reason most of us older players still play isn't because of how fun this game is really. It is basically a social game, I play because being on Quicksand is fun and I used to enjoy hosting. Automation hand-holding newbies to the point where they never learn how to play this game on their own, or learn commands, or how to figure things out for themselves have less of a chance to join squads in the future. So basically lets just get the newbies knoweldgeable enough about the game to get hooked on the crack that is squads, and we have a player for life.

Kolar - We don't need to move ahead, we are always thinking about the next big thing, the next super cheater detecting bot that has streak modules and boob tassle jpegs loaded into it. We need to STOP advancing bots, stabalize the bot system we have, and get people back into doing some things for themselves, simple things like instead of warping people in games, make them go to where they are supposed to go or spec them, it is tough love but the zone will be better for it in the future, and so will the player. Trust me I have seen what becomes of coddling people to the point where they have been playing for a year and don't even understand the game, it isn't pretty. I guess what I am trying to say is, no matter how far we advance the bots, and with our current Dev team it seems like we could advance them pretty far, this games code is still 10 years behind todays games, we can't compete with new games by making it amazing, we have to rely on social interaction and the refreshingly simpleness that has kept this game alive for all these years.

Sleuth - I wasn't really getting into we have a problem with staff issue, I actually got along with quite a few of the newer ER's, and I don't really mingle with the ZH's but I think it is a good group. But we need the people training these staffers to really step up their methods. Telling ER's "these are the commands, just make macros and host" doesn't make good staffers. Tell them to get involved with their players, tell them to interact with players, that is what makes good hosts great hosts. That is why some ER's get 100 players for an event that another ER would only get 50 on.

Supreme - I had my doubts about Pandagirl also.. I was thinking "Wtf" honestly when I saw her on staff chat. But she corrected my grammar and knows some stuff about html I think so I stopped thinking badly about her. Bounty.. well hes just been playing forever. :P

[Kolar]

There are ways of developing our bots so that we can have all of these small conviences like mass warping while keeping Event Refs still involved. It's a pipe dream to expect tournybot to be removed, for ERs to stop using Twbots entirely or for ?go base to be completely staffer controlled.

I agree we need to stop working on big events and focus on making things more stable but what I am talking about is adopting a development methodology which doesn't rely entirely on the bot to return information and do everything, for the bot to work with the host more then being a "dumb" machine used by the host.

[kthx]

Hmm read what I added to my last post on your part btw Kolar --

I see what you are saying, and I wasn't suggesting the ?go base zoners to be removed or anything, but now that it is being zonered staffers really should stop Zonering for it, that would be like Asmodeus adverting for ?go elim because there wasn't enough players there. Maybe you could even make ?go base zoners once every thirty minutes or something. Maybe there is a way we can combine what you are saying and what I am saying, by making bots more physically interactive with players. Like creating games that require bots, but also require the player to have to use his brain to win. I had an idea for an event earlier that I talked to someone on TW dev about. It was like, A server - and there was a team of Hackers and a Team of Sysops, and the arena would be like several layers of decreasing in size circles with doors all around, and the bot would Pm the players with "challenges" like typing back a word the bot spits out to him/her in a time limit to hack past the door, and the sysops would be doing the same, with killing going on also. And if the hackers got to the server they would win the game (within a certain time limit) I think we could combine new bots with basic human interface to really make proactive games in this zone instead of just trying to overkill with .lvz's and super-bot modules.

[Hakaku]

Automation is the exact reason I've been turned away from Trench Wars. Sure, I like it for an arena such as ?go base, and zombies is hard to host without a bot, etc. Bots have become a necessity, but that doesn't stop staff from actually engaging conversations with regular players. I've noticed the difference in some zones is that staff encourages you to play and participate, instead of staying in spec. Obviously TW doesn't have a lack of players, but I'd like to see more staff playing then speccing. -Little things like staff-player interaction help, and actually boosts population. Over time, TW could pick up a more significant number of players to be noticed. What do we have to lose?

I also don't like how there's ?go elim, ?go tourny, ?go base and something else that all run at the same time. Staff should be the ones starting these, because they should be events, not all-the-time use.

[pascone]

mootland farmer said this already

[kthx]

Well that didn't accomplish anything, obviously we need more whining. And maybe different and more peoples opinions will be stated in this thread.

[Richard Creager]

Fucking signed, if you guys are going to do multi freq and hunt or whatnot in there all day, you'd might as well make the original automatic.