My thoughts on trench wars

[Foreign]

Well, everyone, I have been out of the picture in TW for about 5 months now. After coming back to be a "little" involved (getting into webdev, SOME actual gameplay), I think I may have an idea why trench wars numbers are dwindling. It all boils down to two things: too many options, not enough thought put into them.

It seems to me that every time we try to think of a solution to the decaying population of trench wars, we automatically assume that another event or league or tournament is going to draw in the masses. I think we need to re-evaluate this position.

No, I'm not being nostalgic.

I think we need to step back and take a look at the zone's strengths and capitalize on them. That said, here are what I think are the zone's strengths in order from most influential to least:

TWD
TWL
hosted events
pub
?go base, elim, wbduel, etc

TWD is great for a few of its characteristics:
1. Perpetuality. It never ends!
2. Accessibility. Anyone can play!
3. Competition. Since there are more teams in TWD than in any other trench wars event, competition is highest in TWD. You might think the competition is higher in TWL, but I say it's not. In TWD you are under constant pressure to keep your spot or you will lose it!

TWL is good for characteristics of its own:
1. TWL draws a crowd. This is the single best thing about TWL. The gameplay itself may be intense; the spoils, worthy, but the biggest benefit the zone sees is the amount of people that show up just to watch.
2. It keeps TWD alive. If not for TWL, TWD would be pretty hard to place much value on. Also, it gives TWD a nice surge of activity whenever TWL positions are being fought for.
3. Longevity. It keeps us old-timers at least somewhat interested in the zone.

Hosted Events are good because they add some spice to the zone that otherwise would not exist. Also Hosted Events (like TWD) have the benefit of bridging the gap between mere pubbers and the "elite" class of players.

Public Arenas are necessary for the player base ever to grow at all. If people don't like the public arenas, you can bet they won't make it as far as to look at anything else. Obviously the original pub design was a good one, because it drew so many of us in. I don't see any harm, though, in not having a "set" definition on pub settings. While pub is the place where newbies get used to the game, lots of people spend all their time in pub. Variety is a good think, and changing settings often has helped keep people playing. For every person that gets fed up about a new setting and leaves, I am betting there are several who, because of the new setting, become interested once again in the game. I say we should keep pub as a more dynamic aspect of trench wars.

?go base, (base)elim, wb/jav duel, etc are pretty much the same in concept. Their main use, believe it or not, is to give people a more organized way to talk trash. It also helps newer players mingle with the older players as events and divisions do. So, for those reasons these arenas are useful.

These are just some examples. The purpose I'm trying to get at here is that we need to look at what we have, find out what our strengths are, and replicate them in new and interesting ways. For example, starting a new draft league: BAD idea. Not because it wouldn't be fun or unique, but because it has proven itself not to work in TW. A new tw division? possibly a good idea. TWSD never took off, but so far overall TWD is batting .750.

So, the main idea here is again, let's focus on our strengths and use that to fuel our creativity. Coming up with new ideas is great, but we should keep in mind what has (and hasn't) worked in the past as a starting point.

[Lizard Fuel]

Well said mate. Only thing i can think of that was unmentioned is how about putting somebody in charge who gives a hoot. I can't remember the last time PL did something constructive for the zone, other than the occasional *recycle. We have enough knowledgable upper staff that would better suit the position.

[Ephemeral]

In agreement, I will beat the drum again.
For anything meaningful continuous improvement plan, metrics (measurements) must be utilized. This means the past and current population numbers should be harvested and analyzed. Then one change at a time implemented, then numbers gathered and analyzed again.

This will allow for a true evaluation of the change to be done. This will allow those making the changes to shut up the whiners who constantly argue from their own personal 'likes and dislikes'. This will allow the Zone to improve in a consistent and stable way.

[Foreign]

lol

i like how you just summed up my entire post in about 1/10 the time and space :P

[Sumpson]

Foreign you make some good points but I dont fully agree with you.

you say TWD and TWL is most important.

Pub is most important, since that is what brings people to TWD and TWL.

What do we want people to do?
How to keep people play?

The game isn't much but based on skill vs skill.

We need to make this game fun for competitive gameplay, and guide players into competitive gameplay.

how to do this?

Pub
add a clear goal in pub, when someone new enters the game and gets told what to do he needs to have a reward for it or some way to show off he succeeded. (statistics, capture flag 10min)

TWD / TWL
What does TWD / TWL need to succeed?
Succesfull squads.
this is not supported by upper staff, there are many ways staff could influent the players to encourage not squadhopping. However they think its not their problem. I think squads are the basis of the community and needs allot more attention.

I have set up topics before about how to work on this but you probably are not able to see them because they are in TWdev, if you want to hear the idea's I will share them here.

anyway, I think changing settings is a very bad way, however it does not matter to fix the problems I believe.

[Pummel]

Well said mate. Only thing i can think of that was unmentioned is how about putting somebody in charge who gives a hoot. I can't remember the last time PL did something constructive for the zone, other than the occasional *recycle. We have enough knowledgable upper staff that would better suit the position.

That'll get you that staff position you've been wanting.

[Lizard Fuel]

I was being gentle, in hopes of still getting my ZH

[freddie]

This game doesn't appeal new players simply because this is old. Or because this isn't counter-strike. Kids plays games with much better graphics etc etc. Of course people played this 10 years ago because this was new then, and they didn't have Gears of War or w/e.

I'm not saying that you should stop trying to improve the zone, not at all. But keep in mind that it's hard to compete with games made 10 years later.

[Jeenyuss]

I was being gentle, in hopes of still getting my ZH

i thought you quit.

well said, foreign.

[Blood]

This game doesn't appeal new players simply because this is old. Or because this isn't counter-strike. Kids plays games with much better graphics etc etc. Of course people played this 10 years ago because this was new then, and they didn't have Gears of War or w/e.

I'm not saying that you should stop trying to improve the zone, not at all. But keep in mind that it's hard to compete with games made 10 years later.

This game hasn't appealed to new players because of graphics or anything like that for about 8 years at least now. It's been hard to compete with newer games ever since. But yet we manage.

[Cylor]

My Thoughts on Trench Wars

Uhh...

[Dabram]

To be honest, I rarely think about 'will ss stay alive' or not.
But I guess if our population is really declining, instead of increasing events and making everything automated, making the leagues more prominent could be a wise move. Sometimes less means more. Especially for new people it's most important to see what the point of the game actually is. Right now the game really lacks clarity. Let me give you an example.
When i wandered around in pub 7 years ago, it took me a few months before i got into the arena called elim. Not much later I discovered squads had a reason because there were leagues.
Right now however I can imagine a new player would wander around in pub for a few months, then ends up playing the most ridicilous events, that might be 'fun for a while' but won't keep him interested in the game.
In the end our strength is the high competetion of the leagues, you can easily see this by the enormous rise in population we get whenever it's TWL-weekend. However new people need to get an introduction before they start playing, so instead of wandering around they know what their goal is: to become a succesful league-player.

Suggestion, make an introduction, and you might want to give it an 'rpg' touch, since there are so many different things to do in TW people should be guided to choose, since only a handful of players can hold their own on the highest level (TWL). So first explain the different ships (point out wb/jav have there own leagues, and how that differs from basing), then that there are different options: pub (easiest, free-for-all kind of play), elims/duel (solo), leagues (TWD/TWL), deathmatch/?go base (team-events / practise for leagues), side-events (something different for when you get bored with the rest).
(of course work it out a lot better than i just did)

[Purple Heart]

Foreign is a very wise guy, well said bud.

Something else we can do to help improve, something that may seem quite trivial to all of us, is to get off some of these squad's backs.

GiantTiger. So they may have 130 ppl on their roster, but these guys are giving new blood a chance for competition, which may get more players interested before they quit the game all together. Lately there have been a couple of threads targetting this squads roster, about how it's too big and how it's hurting TW by stealing players. All it's doing is giving new players a chance. Perhaps we should forget about how big their roster is, and actually see the advantages of having a squad almost anyone can join to get experience.

I agree with what you said Foreign, perhaps the staff should work on (along with the help from it's wonderful community) a way to make what we have at the moment, even better. For example making TWL far more stable than it is right now, however that may be accomplished.

Lately the Event Staff have been doing some great things like JD squad tournaments and DD squad tournaments, I really think this keeps people interested, and gives us sometihng else to do. Awesome job on that!

[Jerome Scuggs]

i don't like new blood half the time it has aids anyways

anyone notice that the thread about TW's population jump occured around the time i actually logged on to subspace?

looks like all tw needs iss a little jerome in its life

edit: sub-question:

if a vampire bit a dude with aids...?

[Facetious]

In terms of getting new people to come, I'd rank the importance as:
Pub
Events
TWD
TWL

People will download the game, play for 30 minutes, and decide if they like it or not. If they don't, they'll never come back. You don't manage to get on a TWD squad by then.