How to fix the zone.

[Oen Izan]

Every day pub player.

Oen Izan> ?find troll king Not online, last seen more than 10 days ago

babisnookumz> anybody know how to put up a banner
Oen Izan> go spec esc b
Oen Izan> if ya have banners in ya banner folder
babisnookumz> k
Ok I did my part.

My point is that staff should hold more of presence in pub and game over all. When I first started playing I would rather have spoken to a member of staff whose job is to maintain this game. The "everyday" player should be playing the game. Not being a "temp" staff member. There is how many <ZH>?. whats thier sole purpose? To "help the zone".

No where have I said that "everyday" players shouldn't attempt to help answer them, but they also should direct to ?help or a <ZH>. As most players do not know all the facts on this game. Though some <ZH> don't either, but for them it's there duty to learn it.

Maybe just do away with <ZH> since some of you seem to think "pub" players should take on their task. We do have more of a chance to have <ZH> presence placed in the pubs then to have "pub" players physically answer all new player questions. So why not give them that. It's what the position was created for.

[Scoop]

Before I post this, I want to let everyone know I am not trying to flame anyone, or anything, this is just my opinion on the zone, and how I think it could be ran better.

As I see things right now, there are a few huge problems, that collectively will make this zone have problems in the upcoming years. As of right now, the differance between the average "veteran" and the average "player" is too high, you are either good, or terrible. There really hasn't been too much of a shift in this for awhile, and it seems like every year this gets bigger. The reason why this is such a big deal, is when the current veterans slowly dwindle away due to time or real life, there aren't any players who can start replacing them. This causes a competition problem, when less good players are playing, then the current good players don't have as much of a reason to play due to lack of competition between squads. This will be especially noticeable in the upcoming TWL I think, but I think most people will agree, this has been a dreadfully boring TWD season so far, with only a few squads who are dding, dding the same squads every day gets old. Another problem is this zone doesn't have a checks and balances system, most of the SMODS are friends with one another, and although this is a good thing not having huge arguments on staff chat with one another. But the problem with this is, for instance if Pure_Luck decides to do something, then he doesn't have anyone to tell him why it is a bad idea, and if anyone does think that, I doubt they would tell him because they might fear retribution. This means that even bad ideas can be implemented because there is nobody at the same level of power with conflicting interests. Dock> and Priitk used to have the same level of power, and with Pure_Luck taking the sysop spot alone, it is going to cause some problems. Another large problem is the fact that most people in positions of power.. just don't care. When you work your way up in staff, you probaly have several ideas, that don't get adknowledged, ignored, or just flat out shot down. Eventually you just stop having new ideas, and by the time you get to be an upper staffer, you either 1. have the ideas that the people who had been running the zone had. or 2. don't really have any new ideas. Chao posted the ER hosted list, I noticed a big difference between the top 3, and under that. We can't really rely on 2-3 hosts to continually host all the events this zone expects everyday, from now on, but because most older players don't "respect" staffers as they are today, it is hard to recruit good staffers anymore, that would really look good for this zone. This has been a growing problem in the last few years, and it seems like now the problem is becoming even worse.

So anyone who actually read this is probaly starting to wonder if I really am just trying to flame a few people, and are also wondering well, what are your ideas to fix the zone. First off we need to start promoting people into higher positions of power that actually want to help the zone, not because they are friends with people that are higher then them. People with opposing ideas on the zone would be helpful, to keep changes fair for everyone on the zone, between basing, javving, basing, publics, and hosting. Also staff needs to start getting their reputation back up, so once again players who have experience and knowledge of this zone and therefore know how it should be ran would come into power eventually. And once staff starts making good decisions, and getting rid of the embarassments, people will once again start to respect staff and it will be something that good people want to join again. Instead of being seen as a police force only there to keep the peace, Staff should be seen a benevolent higher power, that is there to make sure the game is running in tip top shape, and to make sure that the peoples wants are answered. People also need to see that "how much you host" isn't the end all for ER's. Some ER's that host less are better then some ER's that host more, just for the fact that they bring their personality into the game, and make the event more fun for players, which once again reflects well upon staff. I know this idea has been shot down before, but I think that Some active staffers should be able to run (while doublesquadding) secondary squads, where they recruit people who want to know how to play in leagues, and teach them how to run squads, how to play well together etc. Not only will this raise the current generations skill level, and preparedness for TWD and TWL which will raise competition eventually, but it will make the future generation of TW see staff is a beneficiary instead of police.

Someone told me that The Pusher interviewed staffers, and asked them why they wanted to be on staff, how they felt about staff.. It would be interesting to see the results if that happened now. Also it would help if you actually followed through with the things that you start. Somebody tried to limit the amount of uses for the robohelp, with ZH's using it instead of PMing people nearly every time. But after a few days it just seems like it gets forgotten. You make changes and expect them to just happen naturally.

K my opinions. First of all this zone isnt broken. yes we have experienced a drop in population but we have 500 people online quite often. I think staff is being run quite well however you do have some valid points. If anything we need to get Continuum to get some sort of advertisement. there cant be less nerds today then there were 3 years ago .

If i could have one wish to help this game out it would be to get it advertised on some huge gaming website to get us an influx of players.

Considering the circumstances, I think we are doing fine.

P.S. Lets just jack some players offa some other zones.

[Toasty]

Scoop :turned: , we still have not addressed possibly the worst problem, the learning curve. Subspace is not something you can figure out in a few minutes or hours. And when someone just begins, they start in pub and the trash talk, lame weasels, etc. really ruins the game for them.

Lets say we get 200 people from advertisment, how many people will be willing to learn the game and commands? Most people will not regard reading
F1 as fun, if that is, they figure out the F1 key is avaliable to them. Perhaps a few dedicated people will stick to the game, but the majority will not. Sometimes, I even question why I kept on playing this game. Although I am not suggesting this as the universal solution but it will definitly help.