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Well before I go off on this let me just say that I know that while I am not against some automated arenas, I think that the player base in this zone has shrunk to the point where we need to start both taking out some of the automated arenas and also combining a few of them to bring more players to each arena instead of spreading them out. I have heard the argument that we as staff shouldn't tell people what to play and when to play it but I honestly disagree. It is like two kids at school who go out to recess, one kid goes to the tether ball pole, the other kid goes to the see saw. So we have one kid trying to make the see saw work and the other one hitting a tether ball back and forth to himself. So this is where the teacher (staff) should step in and say "How about for the first 15 minutes you both do the see saw and the other 15 you both play tether ball". This might piss them off to a certain extent but then both of them have more fun because they can actually play their games the way they are made to be played.
This recent bot crash hasn't been a bad thing in my book, sure it was sometimes a pain in the ass hosting manual events where I had to manually change every ones ship, and every ones frequency, and warp people to the correct location 1 by 1, and spec people at certain deaths without a bot doing any of this for me, however at the same time I felt a much more personal connection with the players by doing so. I think not only were the events hosted during this bot crash better as the staffer actually had to sit there and watch the game the entire time, but the players had more fun as well.
Without 20 arenas being open and being played in by 5-10 people, there was a huge group of players in ?go elim, and ?go javs, as well as more pubbing action then I have seen in this zone in ages. And the turnouts for hosted events were that much better because of this as well. Besides the player base being more concentrated in a few arenas instead of randomly spread out among many, there was also much more talking between players, much more staff to player interaction as there were no bots to respond to help calls, and people didn't have any events to play in where they didn't have to talk to other people. I honestly think the last two days were a flashback to when this zone was at its peak of greatness four to five years ago.
My question to everyone is: Who had more fun playing in this zone the last few days then they have in years? Who had more fun playing javs with 40 people, and elim with 50 people, and going to events where 50-60 other people went to? Are all these bots really helping this zone, is giving players 20 choices in arenas to play 24/7 really good for this zone or is it more of a hindrance? I understand that there are some people who only login to play TWD and TWL, but honestly I saw a lot of these players having fun in other arenas, and in other aspects of the zone then I have in a long while.
Now I don't think we should scrap bots all together, obviously TWD 24/7 is something that will be here to stay, and there are other events that are automated that are always going to have a place in TW now that they have become a part of it. But do we honestly need all of this stuff on all at once, now that I have seen what the zone is like without any of it, I personally think the zone is a better place without most of it. The community was better and more talkative, new players had to experience the game and learn for themselves and not be controlled by a bot. Players had to follow rules from a host and not automatically be warped by a staffer, ER's had to host better events, and focus much more attention to their events than they have to with bots. There was better pubbing, better elim, better javs, and overall it was just a much better game without bots than it was with them.
So my suggestion is that we need to get rid of some of these automated arenas that are always on to consolidate the player base. We make wbduel/Javduel/Base 11pm-1pm EST Monday-Thursday, We make Base/Tourny from 11pm-1pm Friday-Sunday (-twl/weekend events), We consolidate javelim and elimbeta back into ?go elim and set an arena limit on ?go javs. We take out all of the restrictions in our pubs to promote real player growth and learning experiences, instead of bot controlled everything which will lead to better players in the future. We take out all but 2 TWD arenas in each league (during the off season anyways we can raise it when we are doing TWL qualifications) because when there are 30 squads dding/jding/basing it really cuts down on the fun factor for the rest of the zone. All of this might sound kinda harsh, and I know everyone here is looking at that and saying "but the only reason I log on is to play X event" but you need to look at it from the analogy I made earlier with the kids on the playground... Someone else only logs on to play Y event and both of you suffer from the lack of players in the event, and the lack of competition created because of this.
I think that this is the time to make this decision because honestly we have tried the whole 20 automated arenas and the zone itself has rotted and decayed because of this. I would like to try this out at least and see if we can't revive the community that was once so great in this zone, and make it fun to play again.
- Wark <ER>
P.S. This is now the second that I have posted this kind of thread.. almost two years ago we had a sorta discussion about this.. has the zone gotten better or worse in the last two years? Think about that. http://forums.trenchwars.org/showthr...ete+automation
This recent bot crash hasn't been a bad thing in my book, sure it was sometimes a pain in the ass hosting manual events where I had to manually change every ones ship, and every ones frequency, and warp people to the correct location 1 by 1, and spec people at certain deaths without a bot doing any of this for me, however at the same time I felt a much more personal connection with the players by doing so. I think not only were the events hosted during this bot crash better as the staffer actually had to sit there and watch the game the entire time, but the players had more fun as well.
Without 20 arenas being open and being played in by 5-10 people, there was a huge group of players in ?go elim, and ?go javs, as well as more pubbing action then I have seen in this zone in ages. And the turnouts for hosted events were that much better because of this as well. Besides the player base being more concentrated in a few arenas instead of randomly spread out among many, there was also much more talking between players, much more staff to player interaction as there were no bots to respond to help calls, and people didn't have any events to play in where they didn't have to talk to other people. I honestly think the last two days were a flashback to when this zone was at its peak of greatness four to five years ago.
My question to everyone is: Who had more fun playing in this zone the last few days then they have in years? Who had more fun playing javs with 40 people, and elim with 50 people, and going to events where 50-60 other people went to? Are all these bots really helping this zone, is giving players 20 choices in arenas to play 24/7 really good for this zone or is it more of a hindrance? I understand that there are some people who only login to play TWD and TWL, but honestly I saw a lot of these players having fun in other arenas, and in other aspects of the zone then I have in a long while.
Now I don't think we should scrap bots all together, obviously TWD 24/7 is something that will be here to stay, and there are other events that are automated that are always going to have a place in TW now that they have become a part of it. But do we honestly need all of this stuff on all at once, now that I have seen what the zone is like without any of it, I personally think the zone is a better place without most of it. The community was better and more talkative, new players had to experience the game and learn for themselves and not be controlled by a bot. Players had to follow rules from a host and not automatically be warped by a staffer, ER's had to host better events, and focus much more attention to their events than they have to with bots. There was better pubbing, better elim, better javs, and overall it was just a much better game without bots than it was with them.
So my suggestion is that we need to get rid of some of these automated arenas that are always on to consolidate the player base. We make wbduel/Javduel/Base 11pm-1pm EST Monday-Thursday, We make Base/Tourny from 11pm-1pm Friday-Sunday (-twl/weekend events), We consolidate javelim and elimbeta back into ?go elim and set an arena limit on ?go javs. We take out all of the restrictions in our pubs to promote real player growth and learning experiences, instead of bot controlled everything which will lead to better players in the future. We take out all but 2 TWD arenas in each league (during the off season anyways we can raise it when we are doing TWL qualifications) because when there are 30 squads dding/jding/basing it really cuts down on the fun factor for the rest of the zone. All of this might sound kinda harsh, and I know everyone here is looking at that and saying "but the only reason I log on is to play X event" but you need to look at it from the analogy I made earlier with the kids on the playground... Someone else only logs on to play Y event and both of you suffer from the lack of players in the event, and the lack of competition created because of this.
I think that this is the time to make this decision because honestly we have tried the whole 20 automated arenas and the zone itself has rotted and decayed because of this. I would like to try this out at least and see if we can't revive the community that was once so great in this zone, and make it fun to play again.
- Wark <ER>
P.S. This is now the second that I have posted this kind of thread.. almost two years ago we had a sorta discussion about this.. has the zone gotten better or worse in the last two years? Think about that. http://forums.trenchwars.org/showthr...ete+automation
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