Town Hall Game Discussion

[Maverick]

I agree with most what you say, Lemmin. Your points are correct and complete, we, as staff, should try to take them to heart and fulfill them.

Still, maybe Distension doesn't work well for new players trying to start mid-season but it sure is addicting - the reward for playing is great because you can upgrade your ship for each kill you make. This is something that makes Distension so fun and popular in the relative short time it has run.

[roxxkatt]

I've been thinking about this for some time, was going to post this when I retired from the game in a few weeks, but since the topic is open I'll post my thoughts here.

(Executive summary for those unwilling to read a 2000 word essay can be found near the bottom of the page)

First up, you have to try and think like a new player. What is the experience a new player sees when they first come to TW? Is the game rewarding? Is it fun? Obviously the answer is they see pub, and probably what will happen is that they will die 10 times for every one kill they get - so not very fun or rewarding.

The problem is that as the population gets smaller, we are left primarily with veterans - even a lot of the pub players are long-term pubbers. I play pub a lot, and I can spot the new players - they die easily. Many of them will get sick of this and leave immediately, never to return.

What I would suggest is some way of protecting new players, or giving them more of a chance to get kills. Could we work up something with the pubbots so that any player with less than, say, 20 hours of playing time (not AFK/spec time) gets some extra ability - increased turn rate, or faster recharge or something to give them a chance against veterans?

A lot of other online games have protected areas for new players, so they don't become easy meat for veterans - we don't have the population for seperate pub arenas.

Please note that distension is the opposite of this idea. I suspect the only people who are playing it now are those who were there at the start, since they have the fully specced ships. I tried to play it, and found that I was dying all the time and not getting any kills - so I gave up. Distension is NOT the answer to pub problems, despite the praise some people give it. If you reset dist regularly to give new players a chance, the veteran players will get sick of losing all the hard work they put into it.

I also think it might be nice if a whole-zone bot system was to PM suggestions to new players. So after, say, 35 hours of playing time, they get a PM saying "now you've got the skills, why not try your luck in elim?" After 50 hours of playtime, they could get a PM from the bot saying "have you considered joining a squad? squads play team games against each other.. " etc. This idea is also borrowed from other online games, which try and slowly lead you into the game.

Maybe you could even consider some kind of suggestions or "missions" - a player PMs the bot with "!mission" or something, and it could reply with a number of suggestions of things the player isn't on record as having done already - play in elim, play belim, play wbduel, join a squad, request an event etc etc. Once they've done it once, that thing doesn't get suggested again. That way the player will get introduced to everything at their own rate. Obviously requires some pretty advanced bot-work.


The second problem, as I see it, is player attitude. I've seen several comments on this thread saying "you can't do anything about the nasty people on the game." Well, I disagree - in fact, I think you HAVE to do something about the nasty people, otherwise everyone else will leave.

I've been playing this game for nearly 12 years, and I've made the decision to leave soon mainly because, after trying some other online games recently, I've realised that a lot of people who play subspace are utter c*nts. For some reason its become acceptable, maybe even "cool" to swear, pick verbal fights, troll and bully other people.

The "rules" are well known - staff seems fixated by racism and the "n-word" and ban people for even thinking it, but ignore people who just try and be nasty. I've been in pub and watched one or two players (often in spec) systematically bully, harrass and abuse anyone who will respond (often new players who don't know how to ?ignore or ?cheater, and especially anyone who might possibly be female) until they log off. If you bring this to staff attention, the usual response is "well, they aren't being racist".

The solution? Well, for a start, any solution needs to begin at the top. Staff need to lead by example, and be polite, professional and personable at all times. I've often done a ?help call for some simple reason, and while I often get a polite, friendly response, I sometimes get a condescending or downright rude one. Some of this is surely because I've been staff in the past and some new ZH feels the need to show they are better/bigger/uglier than me. However, I've done help calls from aliases, and got similar responses.

I'd also suggest having less tolerance of bullying and harrassment. Maybe staff could try looking for intention rather than content - just because someone isn't saying the "n-word" doesn't mean they aren't being nasty and putting another person off playing ever again. Even people saying "ez" all the time can be intimidating. How about a 24/7 on-duty staff presence in public arenas? There aren't many any more, so someone could just be in there (non-AFK) and keep things pleasant. Staff have the power of *shutup - suggest you use it on anyone being disruptive? No warning, no notification - that way they can carry on talking to themselves, but when noone is responding they'll soon give up.

On a similar note, theres a lot of verbal harrassment and abuse that happens from other zones. I'm sure that at any one time, about half the pop of 17th parrallel is banned TW players spamming chats and individuals using hard-to-?ignore names. Either implement a policy of banning cross-zone spammers/harrassers, or else disable cross-zone chats. I don't actually know anyone who legitimately plays in another zone, so whats the point in letting people use them to annoy? Theres probably lots of arguments for dropping the shared biller and going with a TW-only biller...


The third problem is staff (this is where I make myself unpopular). I briefly mentioned staff attitude towards players above - this is endemic of the problems within staff as a whole. I admit I haven't been staff for nearly a year, so it might have changed, and what I am going to say does not apply to all staff, nor even a majority, however...

I think the current system is flawed. From the point of view of a new member of staff, the upper staff seem very inaccessible (and I think a lot of them cultivate this image). If you try and ask a question, you will often be ignored, or got a brush off or a snappish reply. This is probably part of the reason that ?help calls get answered in an unprofessional manner - ZHs are just behaving to players as some upper staff behave towards ZHs. Noone should be on-duty as staff unless they are happy and ready to do their job. If you are busy, angry, playing in TWD or whatever, you should be on another name and not on staff chat.

Staff quotas should be scrapped, and the staff "onit" league tables on the staff website should be removed (or at least hidden from lower staff). The current system encourages competitiveness between staff (especially lower staff), and you end up with a call-center mentality - quantity over quality. "How many calls can I take in the next hour?" "How many easy games can I host?" "Blah <ZH> has more calls than me, I need to get another 10!" Staff should be looking for quality instead - if the calls aren't being taken, hire more staff - theres certainly no shortage of applications!

Everyone knows about robohelp, and the fact that it should be scaled back. Robohelp is a nice idea, but it either needs massively improving so it gives genuinely usefull help, or retired entirely in favour of humans.

Upper staff? Well, its been a while, so I can't really comment, but I feel theres a certain lack of effort from some. Rudy is great - just the right level of fear and friendliness for a bang op, but the deans of staff and TWD staff seem a bit ineffectual. Bot development seems to happen, and happen well, but maverick seems very busy. When I was last on staff I volunteered to help with bot development, but got a big fat "meh" for my trouble, so dropped it again - theres plenty of talent out there that could be used though. Finally, right at the top we have Pure_luck. Great guy, hes done some fantastic things for the zone, however he has a habit of addressing any problem by forming a committee to assess them, and holding meetings and consultations. These are all classic techniques to stop anything actually getting done! I like the democratic ideal behind it, but a dictatorship is a more efficient method of administration. How many times have we had meetings to discuss the declining zone population? How many of them have resulted in concrete action?

(continued in next post - too long for the forums :P)

quoted for the people who didnt read, if you havnt, read it.
i remember you, lemmin <zh> =)

and i agree with almost everything you have said.
and yes, i read every word ;D

[Lemmin]

Still, maybe Distension doesn't work well for new players trying to start mid-season but it sure is addicting - the reward for playing is great because you can upgrade your ship for each kill you make. This is something that makes Distension so fun and popular in the relative short time it has run.

Its obviously fun - for a lot of people it seems to be the only thing keeping them here. I wasn't clear in my original post - I'm saying that something like distension shouldn't be considered for pub. I've seen a few posts from a while ago saying that dist should be the future of TW - I was trying to show that its impossible to enjoy as a newcomer (as you say, mid-season), and so shouldn't be the thing that new players see first. Unless you can find some way of protecting new players from the veterans...

Strangely enough, dist is a bit like the rogue trader zone in cosmic rift (which was an SS clone, created by the same people who made SS, and looks a bit newer - last I heard they had made it free on Sony Station). The rogue trader in cosmic rift allowed you to mine and bounty hunt for points/money, which you could spend on ship upgrades, new ships, and even on automated defense turrets you could place around areas of the map... it was very cool, pity noone played it when you had to pay.

LEM

[Ricko]

if distension becomes pub....no.

[Attacks]

I agree with lemmin about all the issues hes addressed, and i'd just like to say mate you will be missed, take care my ever faithful friend

[Money]

Think positive, all that negative thinking is bringing the zone down.

It's what YOU make of it, nothing is wrong in TW.

The only fact is everyone is getting older and has other more important things to do so they don't play tw that often anymore.

qft

[Money]

I get it for free. And it is the only high speed internet available to me. It goes over a 15 km distance of water wirelessly to get to the ISP.
It's either this or dialup.

lol where u live??

[andrewabcd]

lol where u live??

Countryside with a city on the other side of the water.

[dads revenge]

in the states we call that an island

[Pure_Luck]

I appreciate your post lemmin. I think theres many things that need to be addressed and hopefully with the help of the community and staff we can correct the problems of this zone and game itself. Acouple things that alot of people are mentioning and I'd like to discuss. There are many fronts we have to attack in order to get the game moving in a positive direction. It starts with getting people introduced to the game. On this front we can advertise, go after game review sites, get some influence in news stories maybe and a few other ways. But before we can go that route we need to fix some problems in the process of getting the game installed to the actual gameplay. First off, if we can get a custom installer for trench wars only or even convince priitk to help us make the game easier to install and get started. I sent a link to a friend of mine the other day and asked him to try the game out. I don't think he coulda installed it without the help of me going there to actually show him all the steps to getting into the game itself. After getting into the game, we need to figure out ways to get newer players involved in all aspects of the game.Acouple ways I think we can do this:

1. Bots report people with small amounts of usage to a certain chat. Staff can then talk to them and show them "the ropes"
2. go tutorial arena
3. Squad participation in bringing new people in (maybe to continue bot idea and have participating squad captains talk with newer people
4. the missions idea of lemmin's is a great idea

Let's take advantage of the web and how well it interacts with our game. We could have a chat on our website that interacts with the chat in ss. If someone goes to our site we can have people to interact with visitors to get them to download the game. (this hits upon the first stage of getting people to download the game)

After this whole cycle of getting people into the game and able to play it, We then need to address the gameplay itself for everyone else. League stuff, elim stuff , hosted games, staff attitude, zone attitude, pub updates, and other stuff like that. I look forward to hearing a response from you lemmin.


Acouple other points quickly,

Since I been running stuff as dean and so on, I have tried to convey the idea that any player in this zone can freely develop, bring up new ideas, and bring about change in this zone. I try and talk to everyone who comes up to me and I never take anyone's opinions lightly. Same goes for staff , if anyone in staff takes initiative i would do anything it takes to make it happen for them. Noone is restricted to what they are doing. The whole community, staff need to help with the change. I can't do it by myself and neither can upperstaff, staff itself . This needs to be community wide. Once again thanks to everyone who has helped out and wants to help out.

Thanks,

Pure_Luck

Theres more stuff but I need to get to a few meetings then I can maybe add some more to this. Thanks

[roxxkatt]

We could have a chat on our website that interacts with the chat in ss.

has been done already by a few zones...
good idea.

[Matorian]

Same reason why I've been playing this game for so long. It's been apart of me since 1997. But now I just don't have a lot of time to do anything. Full time job, 40+ hours/week, GF, gym, college. It all adds up, I'm a long time vet of TW but a lot of people don't see me playing anymore. I refuse to give this game up until it dies because it means a lot to me. I really don't know how to revive it, I just think a lot of people are going through what I am, they are to busy with real life now.

....or we could just propose the game to Microsoft and they can totally remake it heh....funny.

[Dreamwin]

....or we could just propose the game to Microsoft and they can totally remake it heh....funny.

lol, we actually could TRY that.

Do what lemmin says in his post. That's some things that we need.

[Duke Dimi]

i dont know if anyone here uses xfire, i do and i cant find many players on there that play continuum, maybe we can make the game more popular by turning on our xfire and getting the rank of the game up, so some people might actually notice it and try it aswell. just an idea, u can delete my post if it's crap

[PrOnEsSim]

i dont know if anyone here uses xfire, i do and i cant find many players on there that play continuum, maybe we can make the game more popular by turning on our xfire and getting the rank of the game up, so some people might actually notice it and try it aswell. just an idea, u can delete my post if it's crap

Thats pretty decent idea, we need some sort of a market strategty. How bout a team of market startegy for the game/zone.. Ideas to get the population up, etc. Illt ry to make it.