Trench Wars Government

[Tone]

I would to introduce a new System to Trench Wars. This system is designed to make changes or add and remove things in Trenchwars. There will be three bodies within our system. They are as follows:

Trench Wars Community

This group consists of 4 Trench Wars Players for each of the following 5 categories:

Basing Community - Seats B1, B2, B3, B4

Javelin Community - Seats J1, J2, J3, J4

Warbird Community- Seats W1, W2, W3, W4

Publics Community- Seats P1, P2, P3, P4

Events Community- Seats E1, E2, E3, E4

3 of the 4 members will be voted in by the general public. The 4th member will be appointed by Trenchwars Staff. This person will be responsible to make posts as to what is going on with the group. Each Seat will be assigned a number(I.E. B1 , B2, B3, B4) so players will run against eachother in that specific Seat. In order to run for this position you will need a petition signed by a certain amount of people. Terms for the position will be 3 months each term.

The total number of seats will be 20. For a bill to pass this Body it will need 11 votes. This concludes the TW Community Body.

Trench Wars Super Moderators

This category includes the following people as of now:

Aquatiq
cool koen
dads revenge
Dameon Angell
h.m.s. stargazer
Kolar
MMaverick
riistar
SpaceHiker
Mirrorrim
WorstPlayerEver
o.m.g.
mootland farmer
Rudy
Kim
qan

The total number of seats is 16 . Smods will be required to vote on the bills in a timely fashion . For a bill to pass this body it will need over 50% of Votes.

Trench Wars Sysop

This category includes the current sysop of the zone, Pure_Luck. Sysop can veto or pass a bill. If a bill is veto'd, It can be revoted on by the entire two bodies and would need 25 votes from the possible 36 to override .

Examples of how a bill makes it through

Publics member jabjabjab(LOL) creates a bill, "Raise resolution limits in TW to 1440 x 1280." Trench Wars Community votes and fails to pass. A suggestion is made to change the bill into "Raise resolution of public arenas to 1440 x 1280." The community votes and pass's with 15 out of 20 votes. It would then be voted by the smods. Smods pass bill by 14 of 16. Pure_Luck accepts bill and promptly changes resolution on all publics.

ah hahahahahahhahaaaaa

are you trying to teach people who play this game, and obama voters how constitutional republic governments are supposed to work?

[Kontrolz]

No, he's going to teach us about aliens and their elaborate conspiracies.

[veetee]

I will vote and praise whoever who does anything towards expanding the res cap to 1440x900 so widescreen users (like me) don't have to play blow roster cap + windowed mode. Please note it is still less pixels than 1280x1024.

Also i can help with warbird commitee if needed, i'm active.

[Liquid Blue]

Poopface do you think your surveys in-game were successful enough to continue using for this committee?

PD, Kontrolz, Jeenyus- would you guys be interested in helping out as well?

[CaptainPoopface]

DankNuggets and I are in the process of collating our results and will report soon.

The questions we asked are pretty good, but

• we weren't uniform about what was asked or how
• it is difficult to get consistent feedback verbally - players are distracted, many don't respond, some don't speak English well, etc.
• it's a pain in the ass to do it manually, one player at a time
• it's hard to maintain the motivation and keep putting in the time when there is not a hint that the results will ultimately affect anything

Conclusion: An automated solution is needed for quantitative feedback, whether it be a polling bot in game (my preference), a web page where every player can vote, or a poll here on the forum (last resort). I think agreeing on a good way to poll the players should be the first order of business.

Qualitative feedback is still valuable for its depth and open-ended nature compared to a poll though. We'll see what shakes out. If you'd like to ask more players for their input, go ahead. Just keep a log file of all the conversations.

[Reaver]

I guess this is just as good a place as any to put this:

I comfortably make the statement that staff has never been worse in TW than it is right now. I make this statement based on numerous areas of disappointment.

In any old order: The general demeanor of staff in general is isn't good. I believe it would be good for staff members in TW to spend a little time in other zones and take note that the staff in almost every other zone is a bit more humble, sociable and especially more fun towards the population. I don't think that smods need to fulfill this role, they are not entertainers(it wouldn't hurt sometimes though), but virtually everyone else should. The next point is agreed on by some of the best (in my opinion) leaders of past TWL squads that I've spoken to. I urge you, if you do anything focus on these things: Make TWL less of a joke(I could write a lot about this and indeed I have, if you search some of my past posts you'll find it, if I need to elaborate on this I will in another post), don't hire terrible <ER>'s (I could name names here, I really could, but it would defeat the purpose and invoke some drama I'm not after), fix pubs. By fixing pubs I mean get someone on pubs that can actually poll the players, without putting up a poll, since many people won't vote. Also, get a tutorial arena rolling on pubs. I've said get a tutorial arena rolling pubs for awhile now and to my knowledge there still isn't one, it doesn't necessarily have to be arena.

I don't want to be all negative so I will say positively that I think Wark knows how to host events and be entertaining, not like every <ER> should copy wark but wark and crazi are two hosts that stick out in my mind as creative people that knew what they were doing. If it means less events hosted then so be it but drop the bad <ER>'s (it doesn't matter how many events you pump out a month, host it right and put some enthusiasm in it).
Also, the paypal tournies P_L has been doing have been a pretty big change in the zone, not just the fact that it's a couple dollars but the fact that it's never been done before to my knowledge (some have said they'd do paid tournies and never stuck to it). Changes like this are good for the zone and more changes would be good. Anyone remember when Dock used to increase the attach limit in pubs on certain days and there would be 6 person turrets flying through pub? When was the last time staff as a whole played vs the other freq in publics?

And just so that we're clear: I honestly think that there isn't any one single thing that's killing this game, but more a culmination of problems. If you start tackling the problems one by one then you can turn it around.

[Downfall]

well since this thread is turning into a "whats wrong with tw" kind.

1. Huge mother f'n thing we need is a TUTORIAL that explains basic gameplay. How to apply for twd and how to change arenas.

Dsb has an amazing tutorial system and I went through it once and it helped a lot. if a mod wants to check it out and get some hints. ?go tutorial2

There are bunch of pubbers out there who are lost. A few i talked to thought they were in an official squad by just being squad tagged with no other squad members or TWD.

[Kolar]

Most of the tutorial work was abandoned. There are some materials remaining which I'm going to convert into an LVZ set. If anyone has some material (graphics or written form) they want added PM it to me.

Roughly completed:
1: Explain energy + basic movement
2: Explain and identify HUD features (freq bar, stats bar, radar, chat area)
3: Explain bullet weapons
4: Explain bomb weapons
5: Explain mines

Future:
6: Special weapons (not really important to TW, basic ones like repels..)
7: Explain Arenas
8: Explain chats and chat types
9: Explain league play

Suggestions would be appreciated.

I think the deployment would be simple, have the zone entrance message read something like "If you're new to TW type ?go tutorial", with the sendto command we could even have the bot move people when using !tutorial in public chat in pubs. When someone enters the arena the bot would begin the script using the screen objects material.

[CaptainPoopface]

I had just joined bot dev to work on the tutorial arena, when the server was hacked and access became much more restricted. Unfortunately I don't have the resources to put up my own server for testing; I agree that a tutorial is sorely missing.

The DSB tutorial is too long and verbose. You fly by massive walls of text that provide too much detail at once. Life in the modern era is all about instant gratification. To be successful, it must be brief.

I was thinking the tutorial would be broken down by ship, so people could choose to only undergo the tutorial pertaining to the ship they want to learn. Warbird and spider should be singled out as the first recommendations for a beginner because they have no bells and whistles. Flight mechanics, how the ship compares to others, tactics, use of radar. The jav part should include special instructions for avoiding TKs. The terrier part would teach how portals work, some basic portal tricks, good scenarios for bursting, etc.

I had wanted to do all these things with bot feedback to the player, but at this point, I think they could be condensed into a short (90 seconds), tightly edited video for each ship, or possibly a flash animation, with annotations, subtitles and/or audio commentary. I'm planning to produce them but have not yet figured out the best way to put them online. I'll do the first one or two and maybe post them here for feedback.

Someone could make an arena obstacle course with a timer bot to teach people how to navigate effectively in the ship of their choice. Secondary to that would be basic chat commands.

[Arobas+]

I agree with Liquid Blue that pubs need help. But I think it's not by adding/removing/changing features. We have to tell to those players, what TW really is (?go belim/elim, ?go base, TWD, TWL, etc..). A lot of them don't know about the other side, that they can join a squad and challenge other squads with an automated system, etc..

And why an in-game tutorial? It's so more easy to do a simple webpage to explain the concept. And, you will bring those users to the official website. They will see what else we do, etc.. Bots are cool, but don't use it for everything!

Reaver has a lot of good points.

To stay focus with the topic, I don't agree with a government. Keep it simple guys, it's not by adding another layer of complexity that it will help the cause. TW is not dying but the population is less active. First question to ask, do we care? who cares? People who care should get promoted to help us.

[Maverick]

I had just joined bot dev to work on the tutorial arena, when the server was hacked and access became much more restricted. Unfortunately I don't have the resources to put up my own server for testing;

CaptainPoopface, the tw dev server wasn't hacked, it was shut down because the host stopped hosting zones. Until we have a tw dev server again, you can easily host a subgame server on your own computer (any computer can do this).
Let me know what further problems you have developing bots.

To keep on topic, I don't think Trench Wars need a government like Pure_Luck has proposed. Nonetheless, it would create priority amongst the many ideas that staff has received. When we have priority, it would be much easier for the developers to work on things that are needed the most.

[Exalt]

I guess this is just as good a place as any to put this:

I comfortably make the statement that staff has never been worse in TW than it is right now. I make this statement based on numerous areas of disappointment.

In any old order: The general demeanor of staff in general is isn't good. I believe it would be good for staff members in TW to spend a little time in other zones and take note that the staff in almost every other zone is a bit more humble, sociable and especially more fun towards the population. I don't think that smods need to fulfill this role, they are not entertainers(it wouldn't hurt sometimes though), but virtually everyone else should. The next point is agreed on by some of the best (in my opinion) leaders of past TWL squads that I've spoken to. I urge you, if you do anything focus on these things: Make TWL less of a joke(I could write a lot about this and indeed I have, if you search some of my past posts you'll find it, if I need to elaborate on this I will in another post), don't hire terrible <ER>'s (I could name names here, I really could, but it would defeat the purpose and invoke some drama I'm not after), fix pubs. By fixing pubs I mean get someone on pubs that can actually poll the players, without putting up a poll, since many people won't vote. Also, get a tutorial arena rolling on pubs. I've said get a tutorial arena rolling pubs for awhile now and to my knowledge there still isn't one, it doesn't necessarily have to be arena.

I don't want to be all negative so I will say positively that I think Wark knows how to host events and be entertaining, not like every <ER> should copy wark but wark and crazi are two hosts that stick out in my mind as creative people that knew what they were doing. If it means less events hosted then so be it but drop the bad <ER>'s (it doesn't matter how many events you pump out a month, host it right and put some enthusiasm in it).
Also, the paypal tournies P_L has been doing have been a pretty big change in the zone, not just the fact that it's a couple dollars but the fact that it's never been done before to my knowledge (some have said they'd do paid tournies and never stuck to it). Changes like this are good for the zone and more changes would be good. Anyone remember when Dock used to increase the attach limit in pubs on certain days and there would be 6 person turrets flying through pub? When was the last time staff as a whole played vs the other freq in publics?

And just so that we're clear: I honestly think that there isn't any one single thing that's killing this game, but more a culmination of problems. If you start tackling the problems one by one then you can turn it around.

Reaver is spot on. Staff need to listen to him far more than they do.

[Downfall]

off topic: in the tutorial we dont need things like tactics and hwo to get good at the ship.

But things like .... How to enter the arena in a ship and change arenas. How to talk on chats how to add a chat. How to be a captain in ?go base/?go wbduel the commands n all.


edit: on topic: no for government

[Exalt]

oh ya... and what happened to the offline tutorial that subspace client had?

i think it was around in like... 2000-2002 but got removed with the continuum client update....

[HateTheFake]

CaptainPoopface, the tw dev server wasn't hacked, it was shut down because the host stopped hosting zones. Until we have a tw dev server again, you can easily host a subgame server on your own computer (any computer can do this).
Let me know what further problems you have developing bots.

To keep on topic, I don't think Trench Wars need a government like Pure_Luck has proposed. Nonetheless, it would create priority amongst the many ideas that staff has received. When we have priority, it would be much easier for the developers to work on things that are needed the most.

isnt this why we have tw core?