Fiddling with arenas and events constantly...

[StarKitty]

There seems to be a large amount of ongoing "fiddling" with arenas and things lately in an attempt to make certain arenas and such more popular again.

I see new thread after new thread being created with various ideas to improve certain arenas (as well as seeing arenas change lately) in order to increase their popularity.


This seems kind of pointless - let me explain why.

Fiddling with all the arenas and making them better improves the arenas. Yes. But it doesn't mean that more people are going to be in those arenas, we still have the same number of people in the zone - in order for one arena to gain popularity another arena has to decline - this is causing constant changes. Sure, a change to an arena will attract some people for a while due to it's novelty but they will return to their normal haunts when this wears off. - Both arenas return to their previous popularity and everyone is still complaining.

Shouldn't we be doing something about increasing the population of the zone if we want more people in our various arenas? Isn't this the core of the problem everyone is wanting fixed?

I want to know staff. Is anything actually being planned or done to address this issue? Because all I see are a lot of gimmicks and arenas being toyed with - which only seems to subdue people's complaints for a short period of time - if that.


What do the rest of you think on this matter? - Wouldn't you all rather see the zone population at 700+ again? With 4+ full pubs? 30+ in Elim and Belim at a time again? A constantly full ?go base? ?go wbduel and ?go javduel full? And 30+ people turning up to EVERY event?

[Galaxy Turbo]

An ongoing effort is being placed on arenas. By removing arenas and accommodating those players into an already existing arena (e.g. ?go javs into belim) isn't something you can call a short term fix.

Once arenas are focusing more players instead of dividing populations, there will be more activity, and it can be expected that more activity will come from that.

Marketing the game is easier said than done, considering this is a game which has been alive for many years, we're just trying to do everything we can INSIDE the zone to control and maintain population, before we think about bringing in more players from the outside. If 1000+ players were brought to SS today, it would be pointless if the game wasn't capable of keeping the interest...

This is what we're trying to do, make sure we can maintain interest within the zone by making the best decisions. We're working with what we have, and that's a population of 300/350 players average.

Everything we do to arenas and making sure players are happy will have a consequence on the survival of this game. We put so much thought to ideas before we apply them, and there's a lot happening that players aren't aware of, staff want the game to be back with more players just as much as you do, we're trying our best.

I will personally be looking into the marketing issues in greater depth, following it up and helping to take the appropriate actions.

[Ayano]

I for one demand more fiddling and improvements rather than long withstanding upgrades and contributions.

Who needs LONG term improvements anyhow? We need another bubble!

:up:

[StarKitty]

An ongoing effort is being placed on arenas. By removing arenas and accommodating those players into an already existing arena (e.g. ?go javs into belim) isn't something you can call a short term fix.

Doesn't this actually mean go javs needs to be removed then?
People need to understand how to work the bot properly in belimbeta(and everywhere). Most people still haven't even realised they can play while others are already in a game. Or that they can just play in the casual arena by using the bot.

Marketing the game is easier said than done, considering this is a game which has been alive for many years, we're just trying to do everything we can INSIDE the zone to control and maintain population, before we think about bringing in more players from the outside. If 1000+ players were brought to SS today, it would be pointless if the game wasn't capable of keeping the interest...

It's kept all of us playing for nigh on 11 years.

This is what we're trying to do, make sure we can maintain interest within the zone by making the best decisions. We're working with what we have, and that's a population of 300/350 players average.

And how many of those are bots?

Everything we do to arenas and making sure players are happy will have a consequence on the survival of this game. We put so much thought to ideas before we apply them, and there's a lot happening that players aren't aware of, staff want the game to be back with more players just as much as you do, we're trying our best.

Hmm... May I suggest a staff member with the position of directly liasing with the community? Keeping us informed of the inner workings of staff? A dev blog/diary would be nice. - Something to allow the community to feel more involved and informed (rather than completely out of control)

I will personally be looking into the marketing issues in greater depth, following it up and helping to take the appropriate actions.

I'm glad to hear this. This isn't just an issue for tw. It's an issue for ss as a whole. We wouldn't simply be benefiting ourselves here. Every zone has suffered a slow loss of players over the years. - DSB used to be number 2 in pop for example.
It would be amazing to get back the tw we had at it's peak. When everything ran smoothly and full events were commonplace. I'm sure everyone has ideas on how the population could grow again.. People just need to speak up.

[TagMor]

[IMG] [/IMG]

[Galaxy Turbo]

Doesn't this actually mean go javs needs to be removed then?
People need to understand how to work the bot properly in belimbeta(and everywhere). Most people still haven't even realised they can play while others are already in a game. Or that they can just play in the casual arena by using the bot.

The reason javs hasn't been removed yet is because elimbetas are still in beta. Once the bots are right, javs should be replaced.

And how many of those are bots?

That's irrelevant, the point is that there are way less players to deal with now than there was a few years ago.

Hmm... May I suggest a staff member with the position of directly liasing with the community? Keeping us informed of the inner workings of staff? A dev blog/diary would be nice. - Something to allow the community to feel more involved and informed (rather than completely out of control)

Addressing the public with every issue is time consuming, ideas would constantly have to be ran by the public every time. Anything that we feel the public should have a say on is posted in the forums, if the public have something to tell us or want to raise an issue for public awareness, it can also be done via forums, just like you've posted this thread. I personally don't see a problem with this right now, maybe I'm wrong? I don't know.


Anyway, whatever steps can be taken to improve population, we'll consider it, and take the right precautions and act accordingly. All that's left is to be practical now, if there are ideas, start posting them, I'll be listening.

[Vehicle]

I think everything we're doing, for the most part, inside the zone is good. The population isn't decreasing faster as we fiddle with all these arenas and hopefully the changes will aggregate players and make the game a bit more competitive.

With that being said, I notice on the top right of forum we have a blank space for a banner ad, can't we use google ad words or whatever to get some revenue just from forum trolls? We could then take that revenue, coupled with donations, and run our own google ads campaign. I dunno, to be honest I haven't looked that far into how much these things cost to set up, but if we can do it, I think it's our best bet for getting some clicks to the SS download page.

[StarKitty]

Addressing the public with every issue is time consuming, ideas would constantly have to be ran by the public every time. Anything that we feel the public should have a say on is posted in the forums, if the public have something to tell us or want to raise an issue for public awareness, it can also be done via forums, just like you've posted this thread. I personally don't see a problem with this right now, maybe I'm wrong? I don't know.

Oh i don't think everything should be ran by us.. But a member of staff (maybe not even an empowered one in game) allowed inside the ranks of private chats/forum areas? - in order to journalistically keep the general public informed on the inner workings of dev and staff ideas/workings. A staff member purely dedicated to keeping the populous informed of what's going on behind the closed doors. A position dedicated to improving relations between dev/staff and disgruntled members of the population.

The idea is (because the rest of staff are too busy and don't have time) to have a dedicated position for it. Public Relations?

Out of interest, is there a code of personal conduct staff ought to abide to as senior members of TW's population? (example setters)

I think everything we're doing, for the most part, inside the zone is good. The population isn't decreasing faster as we fiddle with all these arenas and hopefully the changes will aggregate players and make the game a bit more competitive.

With that being said, I notice on the top right of forum we have a blank space for a banner ad, can't we use google ad words or whatever to get some revenue just from forum trolls? We could then take that revenue, coupled with donations, and run our own google ads campaign. I dunno, to be honest I haven't looked that far into how much these things cost to set up, but if we can do it, I think it's our best bet for getting some clicks to the SS download page.

I agree with you whole heartedly Vehicle. I've been suggesting banner ads for this reason for a while now.

[RiiStar]

I think everything we're doing, for the most part, inside the zone is good. The population isn't decreasing faster as we fiddle with all these arenas and hopefully the changes will aggregate players and make the game a bit more competitive.

With that being said, I notice on the top right of forum we have a blank space for a banner ad, can't we use google ad words or whatever to get some revenue just from forum trolls? We could then take that revenue, coupled with donations, and run our own google ads campaign. I dunno, to be honest I haven't looked that far into how much these things cost to set up, but if we can do it, I think it's our best bet for getting some clicks to the SS download page.

No one has access to modify this Vehicle, its doCk>'s personal copy of VBulletin that he paid for and guards, its on its own shell account that no-one but him can access...
And theres an Admin level on this thats basicly like being a mod seeing a few extra menu's that do nothing... Which i have...

You have to manually add in "Super Admins" into the forums config file to get
all the setup options and templating stuff etc etc... yes... we've asked on multiple occassions...

[riske]

in order for one arena to gain popularity another arena has to decline

Entirely not true. I rather do something else online that I like, than play in an arena/event I dont like. So if something is changed that will make me like that arena now, I will be playing it, and it wont mean I'm decreasing the play in another arena, it means I'm decreasing the playing of something else online entirely different than this game.

And most of the changes arent really changing anything, they are moving/improving.

here is the difference, moving go javs into belim, isnt a 'real' change, the same things are playable. However closing an arena to make people play events, would be 'fiddling' around and doing what you are saying. My point is not ALL of the changes are 'big' changes.