Complete Automation = Complete Ruination?

[Revolve]

i agree with wark

[Ikrit]

I agree, mostly because it makes my job so much effing easier

[Rab]

well twd has to be automated, twd is awesome.

but as far as other things go... delete all the bots for the win. PUBBOT = HOMO!

o and Wark u suck, but ur right.

[kthx]

Meh I am sorry Ikrit, I am not trying to say what you are doing isn't helpful, you guys do a hell of a lot of good work. I am just saying we should work on the stuff we got. :P

Oh and Ghetto C-Rab, Im not Wark anymore, call me by my new name, TheStafferFormallyKnownAsWark. I am pulling a Prince on you TWers

[genocidal]

Fatty paragraphs.

[Epinephrine]

I've been arguing against this ever since the first bots came out.

Basically I've never liked automation, and I never will. Yes it does have some very useful benefits (?go base is a good arena, elim is awesome and TWL would be very hard to keep consistant without automation. TWD is fun too) but I think it has been overboard for a very very long time.

Sure I played prodem like everyone else when it first came out, but with all due respect to my good friend 2dragons, prodem represents everything wrong with staff. Well that and the helpbot.

I've had many, many arguments with DoCk> in the past about the helpbot, but he just wouldn't give it up. Kept telling me about all these stats, about how many tens of thousands of times the bot messaged someone and how it made the zone a much better place. Then I had a lot of arguments back in the day with Cpt. Guano who kept adding about 10 new !tells every day until there was literally a !tell for everything you can possibly imagine (but yet none of it really all that helpful). Eventually the number got cut down, but it's still quite lazy.

The way I see it is staff needs to get back to basics:

1) Remember the old days when people would manually host games? I know I do. I used to host Zombies manually, it's completely possible! Sure there are useful things the bot does (lagouts, spec at 10), but there are also a ton of other things the bots do which make staffers so incredibly lazy, they assume that pressing !on and !off means they're making the zone a better place. It doesn't. Everytime I see a promising new ZH become an ER, I remind them, TW never used to be about 24/7 automation. Think of new games if you can. You don't need a map, you don't need special settings, you don't need a pre-programmed bot. All you need is some imagination and some smarts and you'll give people something truly unique.

2) Remember the old days when people would ask staff questions and actually get to talk to a staff member? I'm sure a lot of staff still do talk to people with questions, but so many are so freakishly lazy with the !tells, that it's been out of hand for a long time. It's gotten to the point where people do useless !tells, then ignore the problem. I yell at them on chat, and other staff will just ignore this as well. It should not be like this.

3) Events non-stop? Crazy! I've ALWAYS been against this. In fact when I first created the zombies game in TW, it became quite popular quite fast. They wanted the game hosted 24/7 because everyone kept asking for it. I specifically petitioned the sysops to only allow the event to be hosted on weekends, and they accepted the logic. What fun is a special event if it's not special anymore?

Unfortunately these sensible ideas eventually became lost as people stopped caring or just got lazy and new all too eager staff who didn't know about why certain things were a certain way started to complain and do it anyway. Why not host games non-stop they would think?

Why not have TWD run during TWL weekends, or events during TWL? (answer is to make more people care about TWL)

Eventually these attitudes cropped up to the bot developers and game developers themselves. Armed with a backdoor way of getting what they wanted (their own bots, their own access), tournaments became 24/7. Special games became 24/7. And new games became old games on a new map because that made bot programming easier.

I think we need to go back to basics. Have special events only on weekends. Keep how we have a premier special event once a week of course, but have most special events only on weekends. Turn off 24/7 tournament. And only run come crappy events 24/7, while keeing the good stuff for prime time only.

And finally why can't we run stuff 24/7? Well the more we run it, the less special it becomes, and the less people who will show up. The less people who show up, means the crappier the event, and then the crappier time for all.



Automation has a lot of uses in the zone, but the ubiquitious 24/7 automation that we've seen has hurt the zone. For all those that say, even if we change it more people won't play the zone... well so what? It's not about forever getting more players, but instead it's about giving the player base we have now a best time as possible. More human interaction, more events that are truly special, and more things done at the human level are things which can make this zone more enjoyable for all who still play.

[Kolar]

Why not have TWD run during TWL weekends, or events during TWL? (answer is to make more people care about TWL)

I agree with you Epi on most everything else but I think TWD was taken down, now one bot per division is left open, so the bot server doesn't crash.

A good first step imo is to rework robohelp and gut it of all these things that are not needed.

[Epinephrine]

I agree with you Epi on most everything else but I think TWD was taken down, now one bot per division is left open, so the bot server doesn't crash.

A good first step imo is to rework robohelp and gut it of all these things that are not needed.

You sure that's why it was done? I asked P_L about this and his reply was 'oh so two squads can practice up' and I said 'well that's not really fair for all the other squads right?' and he said 'good point'. Then we asked the staff to make sure TWD was down.

[cacoethes]

Sorry Epi and thestafferformerlyknownaswark, but automation fucking rules.

Why does it rule? Well, when you're an event participant, the most important thing besides having fun is that you have a game where all of the rules are consistant and honored. I've hosted deathmatch manually. It sucks. Not because I have to do tons more work with manual hosting--I'll willingly do it. It's because that one time you don't spec someone soon enough after X deaths and they get an extra kill. And the person who got killed complains that they were unjustly killed, which they were. That kind of inconsistancy ruins events for players.

Games like hunt, conquer, prodem, cloaks, and deathmatch--all of which are fully automated--are fun, simple games, where new and experienced players can play with a minimal learning curve--a player only has to play the game one time before the rules are pretty obvious.

More complex games like matrix, battleship, and starcon benefit greatly from automation, but must be expertly hosted as well. Those types of games are where ERs really shine (or fail miserably).

So you must ask yourself: do you want the ERs taking up all of their time manually hosting deathmatch? Or hosting bigger and better games mixed with classic games? And I have nothing but love for any host that wants to host whatever game they want--manual, automatic, hybrid--just so long as they're hosting often and fairly.

Automation--and with it, the variety of sub-games and hosted events within Trench Wars--is the reason we're the biggest and best zone in SS.

And keep this in mind: even with the high degree of automation that we possess in this zone, there are still over 90 staffers, as well as an entire development crew.

_\m/

[Doc Flabby]

Automation is good for the most part, I dislike robohelp though, its never "helped" me once. i'd like to see some more imaginative hosting using the bots and a combination of bots and manual hosting, i'd like to see some different strange events hosted sometimes, even if they go wrong. hunt isnt fun the 100th time i play it. I love the random events and things that are hosted in arenas i havnt visted before. There are like 600+ arenas in tw yet the same 10 or so seem to always be hosted....

[D1st0rt]

Complete automation is a huge fucking pain in the ass to get working correctly, so I'm all for not having to do it

[Ephemeral]

Automation, like macros on a PC, are only good for 'exactly the same' repetitive tasks. And since tasks like helping people and hosting are never 'exactly the same', they should be not used. Epi is right, again.

[kthx]

Caco no offense, but you haven't exactly been playing for a long time so it is hard for you to argue fairly for either side of this. The game was much better before the recent automation debacle. And I see what you are saying epi about the zombies, im sorry for messing that up.

ER's taking up their time manually hosting? It doesn't take any longer for an ER to host manually than it does with a bot. Having a *spec x2 macro when someone hits 10 death doesn't take any longer than having a bot spec a player at 10. But it does make the ER actually sit there during the event instead of being able to host something and go afk (which I have seen). Eventually ER's that just let bots do everything for them, and don't have any fun with their players, are going to not get any players to their events. Hosting is one thing, Real Hosting is another thing. Real Hosting is what we need to make this zone better.

[D1st0rt]

No human can do what the battleship bot does. It even can't do it some times

[Denon]

Battleship? No great loss.