Tweet
A bit of a dicussion on things
I've been dean for about 3 years now and I am shocked that i'm still here. Most people probably didn’t think I would have lasted this long and neither do I. I have hired 120 people including our current bang op and most of the staff. I don’t exactly know how well I have done and I think its rather difficult to judge that. I’d like to hear all of your opinions about the matter. My main goal was to be a dean who played the game(since I have always seen most upper staff didn’t play) and hire people who had the desire to help the zone. Sometimes I didn’t hire the most vet people(because most of the time the vets didn’t want staff and the ones who wanted staff weren’t quite right for staff) and that the people who weren’t considered vets seemed to want to help more and put the effort in. It’s true I did hire more basers, but I did try hard to hire duelers. There’s many things I think I could have done better and I do apologize for it but I don’t regret any of the past decisions. After all this I’d like to give someone a chance to takeover, with a fresh thought process and someone who can be devoted to it and not deal with the millions of other things that I had to deal with. This should free me up to do other things which I will discuss in alittle detail.
Trench Wars Today (in my words)
Many problems in this zone that I see right now lets start with staff:
It seems that staff is sorta lost in terms of the structure. ZH shouldn’t be a stepping stone to ER and to Mod because some people just like to help others while some like to host. And if you promote the people who are doing good at hosting than that becomes an issue. Also, there isn’t really anyone in charge per say. Some people say it lands on me but no official announcement about anything so it tends to be the same type of problem on the upper staff level. No one in charge of the Smods. When an Smod abuses , we need to have someone who can be able to enforce them. I don’t think theres a big problem in who gets hired but the new dean and pred can come together to discuss that. Another thing is that staffers and players alike need to know that theres many things they can be doing and just simple answering calls or hosting isn’t ever enough. We need players and staff that take initiative and try to create things. Need people to step up and ask to be a part of things. Not hosting the same stuff every day. Theres so many areas that need people to help out on even if you aren’t staff. I really have never turned down someone trying to do something that I thought would benefit everyone even if they were a ZH or player. I see glimpses of people doing this (crazi lately with some things planned with ect, nethila stepping up as twl op the beginning of the season) to name some. But theres needs to be many more people and on a consistant basis. We need staffers who have an opinion on the matter and not be afraid to say it. I think a different structure could help make it so people can be more creative.
Zone population:
The problem in the last couple years is the decline in population. This is probably most likely due to other games gaining popularity. But theres many things we can do to get our population up. We need to concentrate on the marketing campaign. The new website will help some as long as have a huge effort around it. We need to push a grass roots strategy almost a virus type of marketing where it starts with the players and the community since that is what makes this game fun. The actual game itself is half the value. Everyone knows that. We don’t have the best graphics obviously but we have a community that is unmatched in any other game I have played. I think this has been known since the beginning by the motto of “meet people from around the world and kill them” or whatever that was. It shows that we knew in the beginning that the people and competition between the community is what drives the game. So if anyone who is reading this is into marketing and wants to help out we need all the help we can get. We have someone paying for the server but we need the players to pay(in effort) to keep the game going and do whatever you can to promote the zone. So how can you help? Theres plenty of ways to help. Being completely negative and immature isn’t one of them though. For the zone population, you can help out by showing others the game simply or by using any talent that you have(ie. Making some flash advert thing). If you are at colleges there is certainly ways you can introduce the game to others. The myspace aspect could be a way to help . Other gaming sites…forums and forum sigs…the list is really endless. We have a marketing team that we just put together that will be trying to help figure this out. But it all starts and ends with the players helping just like how staff is comprised .
The zone itself (settings and the sort)
Everyone know there is problems with settings in various conditions. First, we have the public map. The map and the settings cause us to restrict certain ships and other things in the public arenas. Ideally we would want it to be the same throughout all but then it tends to eliminate LTing. Theres been several ideas brought up (new map, different settings for javs) Therefore I thought it would be a good idea to have a committee for the public settings and try to work out a viable solution. Not everyone is happy with some of the suggestions yet but we are pretty far off from coming up with a solution and I stress to everyone that the changes will be made if it will help fix the situation. Another problem with settings is in the basing arena itself. Cramming seems to have taken over and made all other ships useless. I know greven has headed a group of “veteran basers” about trying a few things out in that regard and see if we can have a bot that hosts each one of their test arenas out during their testing period . The last problem that I have noticed recently is the baseelim situation . I’m not too sure on whats going on with it but it seems like most people are playing javs instead and some people have asked for baseelim to be combined with elim again. The map changes people seem not to like so far and probably won’t remain unless general opinion changes. Maybe some jav people should make a group(chat, whatever to get you together) and discuss changes in this regard. I’m not a jav person so its hard for me to relate but you get the idea.
The last part of this is dedicated to the automation in the zone. Can’t stress enough how much we need people to help code our bots not only to make new things(which I know some people say ruins it but theres many things that can be done to help the zone and interesting ideas on stuff that I have and many others about bots that can be made) and also to just maintain and keep what we have going. That’s a huge thing that people tend to forget, how much effort it takes to just keep things running in general and with the bots themselves. Theres always issues that have to be fixed and changed and we really need people to help out. I also think that staff, players and everyone else needs to show appreciation for the amount of work the dev people put into this. Noone ever says anything to them unless its to fix this or fix that or complain about something not working right. Roboqueen was down for 3 days and we were pretty flooded with people complaining about that. The simple fact is that roboqueen server and tw server is owned by priitk. So he has say on who has access and who doesn’t . I’d like to think I don’t have access cause how the hell would I fix it? I don’t know how to code or fix bot type of issues. I think the access levels and the other stuff like that is way better now than ever. I remember when twd was down for weeks and access was even more limited. But we can always try and get more . It requires priitk to trust other players who play.
We also need to combine the devs and form one committee that oversees them all.(yes stealing your idea ikrit) . We need to be able to go to a person or to a committee and they should know what others are doing. Not everyone doin their own thing. We need structure in this regard too. On a side note, the maps need also to be more carefully scrutinized . We have too many maps that are being uploaded that aren’t good (to be honest). So have talked to the new maps person about this(f22). As the new dean takes his position he will also have other ideas that we need to talk about(this includes clearly defining the position of people that are in staff).
Closing Remarks
I've been dean for about 3 years now and I am shocked that i'm still here. Most people probably didn’t think I would have lasted this long and neither do I. I have hired 120 people including our current bang op and most of the staff. I don’t exactly know how well I have done and I think its rather difficult to judge that. I’d like to hear all of your opinions about the matter. My main goal was to be a dean who played the game(since I have always seen most upper staff didn’t play) and hire people who had the desire to help the zone. Sometimes I didn’t hire the most vet people(because most of the time the vets didn’t want staff and the ones who wanted staff weren’t quite right for staff) and that the people who weren’t considered vets seemed to want to help more and put the effort in. It’s true I did hire more basers, but I did try hard to hire duelers. There’s many things I think I could have done better and I do apologize for it but I don’t regret any of the past decisions. After all this I’d like to give someone a chance to takeover, with a fresh thought process and someone who can be devoted to it and not deal with the millions of other things that I had to deal with. This should free me up to do other things which I will discuss in alittle detail.
Trench Wars Today (in my words)
Many problems in this zone that I see right now lets start with staff:
It seems that staff is sorta lost in terms of the structure. ZH shouldn’t be a stepping stone to ER and to Mod because some people just like to help others while some like to host. And if you promote the people who are doing good at hosting than that becomes an issue. Also, there isn’t really anyone in charge per say. Some people say it lands on me but no official announcement about anything so it tends to be the same type of problem on the upper staff level. No one in charge of the Smods. When an Smod abuses , we need to have someone who can be able to enforce them. I don’t think theres a big problem in who gets hired but the new dean and pred can come together to discuss that. Another thing is that staffers and players alike need to know that theres many things they can be doing and just simple answering calls or hosting isn’t ever enough. We need players and staff that take initiative and try to create things. Need people to step up and ask to be a part of things. Not hosting the same stuff every day. Theres so many areas that need people to help out on even if you aren’t staff. I really have never turned down someone trying to do something that I thought would benefit everyone even if they were a ZH or player. I see glimpses of people doing this (crazi lately with some things planned with ect, nethila stepping up as twl op the beginning of the season) to name some. But theres needs to be many more people and on a consistant basis. We need staffers who have an opinion on the matter and not be afraid to say it. I think a different structure could help make it so people can be more creative.
Zone population:
The problem in the last couple years is the decline in population. This is probably most likely due to other games gaining popularity. But theres many things we can do to get our population up. We need to concentrate on the marketing campaign. The new website will help some as long as have a huge effort around it. We need to push a grass roots strategy almost a virus type of marketing where it starts with the players and the community since that is what makes this game fun. The actual game itself is half the value. Everyone knows that. We don’t have the best graphics obviously but we have a community that is unmatched in any other game I have played. I think this has been known since the beginning by the motto of “meet people from around the world and kill them” or whatever that was. It shows that we knew in the beginning that the people and competition between the community is what drives the game. So if anyone who is reading this is into marketing and wants to help out we need all the help we can get. We have someone paying for the server but we need the players to pay(in effort) to keep the game going and do whatever you can to promote the zone. So how can you help? Theres plenty of ways to help. Being completely negative and immature isn’t one of them though. For the zone population, you can help out by showing others the game simply or by using any talent that you have(ie. Making some flash advert thing). If you are at colleges there is certainly ways you can introduce the game to others. The myspace aspect could be a way to help . Other gaming sites…forums and forum sigs…the list is really endless. We have a marketing team that we just put together that will be trying to help figure this out. But it all starts and ends with the players helping just like how staff is comprised .
The zone itself (settings and the sort)
Everyone know there is problems with settings in various conditions. First, we have the public map. The map and the settings cause us to restrict certain ships and other things in the public arenas. Ideally we would want it to be the same throughout all but then it tends to eliminate LTing. Theres been several ideas brought up (new map, different settings for javs) Therefore I thought it would be a good idea to have a committee for the public settings and try to work out a viable solution. Not everyone is happy with some of the suggestions yet but we are pretty far off from coming up with a solution and I stress to everyone that the changes will be made if it will help fix the situation. Another problem with settings is in the basing arena itself. Cramming seems to have taken over and made all other ships useless. I know greven has headed a group of “veteran basers” about trying a few things out in that regard and see if we can have a bot that hosts each one of their test arenas out during their testing period . The last problem that I have noticed recently is the baseelim situation . I’m not too sure on whats going on with it but it seems like most people are playing javs instead and some people have asked for baseelim to be combined with elim again. The map changes people seem not to like so far and probably won’t remain unless general opinion changes. Maybe some jav people should make a group(chat, whatever to get you together) and discuss changes in this regard. I’m not a jav person so its hard for me to relate but you get the idea.
The last part of this is dedicated to the automation in the zone. Can’t stress enough how much we need people to help code our bots not only to make new things(which I know some people say ruins it but theres many things that can be done to help the zone and interesting ideas on stuff that I have and many others about bots that can be made) and also to just maintain and keep what we have going. That’s a huge thing that people tend to forget, how much effort it takes to just keep things running in general and with the bots themselves. Theres always issues that have to be fixed and changed and we really need people to help out. I also think that staff, players and everyone else needs to show appreciation for the amount of work the dev people put into this. Noone ever says anything to them unless its to fix this or fix that or complain about something not working right. Roboqueen was down for 3 days and we were pretty flooded with people complaining about that. The simple fact is that roboqueen server and tw server is owned by priitk. So he has say on who has access and who doesn’t . I’d like to think I don’t have access cause how the hell would I fix it? I don’t know how to code or fix bot type of issues. I think the access levels and the other stuff like that is way better now than ever. I remember when twd was down for weeks and access was even more limited. But we can always try and get more . It requires priitk to trust other players who play.
We also need to combine the devs and form one committee that oversees them all.(yes stealing your idea ikrit) . We need to be able to go to a person or to a committee and they should know what others are doing. Not everyone doin their own thing. We need structure in this regard too. On a side note, the maps need also to be more carefully scrutinized . We have too many maps that are being uploaded that aren’t good (to be honest). So have talked to the new maps person about this(f22). As the new dean takes his position he will also have other ideas that we need to talk about(this includes clearly defining the position of people that are in staff).
Closing Remarks
Comment