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Its pretty much 6AM and I'm sick as shit right now so as I was browsing old forum threads I was getting some thoughts about what I would do to change things around here. Certainly not all inclusive but given my pretty extensive experience in game I thought I'd scratch the surface a bit and see if we can get something constructive out of this. For those that don't want to read my entire book, I will put a TL;DR version at the bottom.
Pub
I don't know if any sort of announcement was made to the public or not, as the only reason I even found out about it was out of mockery but there is a new Sysop for pub and maps (Fis) to replace pinkstar. I trained fis as a ZH/ER/Mod when she started so I know what she is capable of and should be fine but only time will tell how she performs in the current position. My suggestions for pub are not baseless, as with very limited research one could find a million threads in these very forums with suggested changes all over the place, these suggestions include but are not limited to:
While I am a baser at heart and I prefer to base 99% of the time, once in a great while I'll taxi a lev around for 1 good streak (I still hold the record of 383) so I do understand the appeal for certain players. Instead I would suggest perhaps every other weekend be a pure pub weekend, this would include removing the !buy system for that weekend as well so pub could once again be like it was in the golden days. This way levs still get to be lame shits most of the time while the majority of the rest of pub would finally get some uninterrupted competitive basing.
I listed this separately from the above because I would suggest this be a permanent change. A half decent LT can ruin pub for 30+ minutes every single run, only to die to an eventual extreme turret hunt or lucky stray/burst...by "ruin" I mean they either destroy the 2 or more freqs fighting for base constantly without ever getting within radar range, or pull those 2+ freqs out of base entirely to hunt them. Either way it effectively and completely ruins any concept of competition inside the base. After a successful 30 minute hunt and maybe a couple spawns of the levi they fly to a safe, get greened 2 free kills for their 20 bounty and are right back at it again ruining it for everybody else in a matter of a minute or two. This is an extremely easy fix in the settings, just need to find a compromise that makes sense....off the top of my head I would suggest 100 bounty to attach.
This is for the duelers/spawners/hardcore basers. I think its great that spawnothon got moved into base, but the shit only works like 5% of the time. I played a good base game last night in a wb and counted my kills during a 10 minute killothon. Every single one of my kills was achieved inside base or mid-base. I counted 84 kills in 10 minutes and I ended up losing killothon to some guy with 12 kills (Bot said I had 10). Feel free to test this theory yourselves, Ive known about it for a while just never voiced it til now cuz I didn't feel like making the effort.
It's no secret that some people are just naturally more annoying than others (E.G. wiibimbo), and are easily avoidable, but consider the environment that we are harboring for the new players we are bringing in through this steam project. They log in and see Tower spamming random shit that he found on Wikipedia, Manco and his hugely offensive and constant subtle racism on one of his 500 aliases, kill macros all over the place (Guilty as charged) and people shitting all over every new player that DARES to ask a question out loud. An example of this would be recently I watched a brand new player I was working with ask how to ignore somebody that was spamming him in PM with "ez nig" and before I finished my reply somebody told them to Esc-Q to fix the problem, so he did and obviously disconnected and hasn't been online since. While it might be funny to do that to each other a newbie doesn't deserve it and now we have lost another potential player over trolling. I'm not asking to outlaw trolling and trashtalk because that is just plain stupid I'm asking the players to have at least a little decency and allow new players to join us, and for the staff to exercise a little common sense for once and some professional discretion in dealing with these people. These people need to be handled by staff without fear that Demonic is going to come crashing down on them for not following the rule book to a T.
Staff
Beyond the fact that the majority of you are unintelligent, greedy and self serving megalomaniacs, there are some good seeds among you and hopefully those are the people I can reach out to and influence because the chances are I HAVE been in your shoes and done your job and you likely will not find many (there are some) with more efficiency than me.
Just stop it already. It was a problem before I became staff, while I was in staff and from what I hear long after I was gone from staff. Its no secret that staff has 3 main groups of people from ZH all the way up to the top. Over-achievers (Shadowknight, Willby, Fis, etc), Quota Chasers (Children, Johnie, A I) and deadweight (Pure_Luck, Poid, 24). I understand you need a system in place to measure the work that is being done and by whom but it is such an outdated system. You shouldn't be able to host bug and levirace repeatedly until you reach X amount of points, or do nothing for 29 days and on the last 2 days get your squad to request javufc 15x via ?help for the 15 points and host it 15 times for another 30 points. While I personally think your Deans of Staff are morons, obviously the powers that be don't agree with me so how about they actually do their job and exercise some common sense in determining who belongs and who doesn't instead of a quota system from 15 years ago?
This doesn't just apply to new hires or rehires, but since I'm on the topic who's bright idea was it to hire a guy that does nothing but meow, purr and spin? Rhetorical question because I already know who made that call. And who the fuck are X-Demo and rushed <ZH> among others? I give these people the benefit of the doubt until proven otherwise and I'm sure they are actually nice people and deserve a chance but why doesn't anybody get hired that people actually know in this game or have some sort of respect in the community? Remember I was staff for a long while too so I am aware that there has been total shit to choose from, so maybe consider choosing from outside the list of applicants? Maybe the general consensus of staff wouldn't be so terrible if it wasn't made up of never seen veterans up top and never heard of newbies at the bottom. Toss in some spice and get some people with actual respect in the mix, actually reach out to people that you want to be a part of the team instead of waiting for them to come to you. On that note, something needs to change in the way you guys choose people to run shit. Think back to season 14/15 when flared was running twl and Paul/myself were there to back him up. Shit went smooth. Same with ph and his seasons, you can go back as far as you want. You had people that were respected by the community and actually played in TWL at a competitive level running things and it went fine. Since then we've had Aura and humid and look how terrible this shit has become. Same goes with HMS Stargazer running TWEL? Or Reckful? When is the last time either one of them has played in a single duel? Keep in mind I actually like both of those people but cmon, why not get a dueler to do it? I could give more examples but the bottom line doesn't change. Stop picking people that don't make any sense to run shit they know nothing about. If you don't have any good people to pick from who's fault is that? Refer to the start of this paragraph for a solution.
Leagues
I just touched on this briefly already so I won't go crazy here but this clusterfuck we had last season can't ever happen again. This 6 in LD 25 in LJ and 11 in LB shit was just beyond retarded and how he managed to get away with that at the beginning of the season is just beyond me. Or nobody setting up the TWL bots for playoffs in LB and having to play 2 different games (Sweet vs Cobra) while making up the rules as we go because none of the TWL Ops and/or hosts actually knows the rules. You guys knew EXACTLY when they playoffs would start months in advance and not a single person took 5 seconds to message wingzero to remind him or make sure it was done in advance or to actually read the rules regarding a playoff match...or allowing cougars to scoot through so many loopholes that they had like 6 LJ games on the final week of the season. That was a pathetic excuse of a season and the results showed with the amount of interest lost during and throughout the season. You've had a player in good standing tactfully offering to revise the rules for years now and still nobody has taken him up on it (Ephemeral). Offer the dude a few of the dollars that 24 stole from us and see what he comes up with and for the love of god stop picking newbies that don't play or don't know how twl works to run it (Ease was a good choice and i already know why he quit [forcing him to work with people he didnt want to work with])
In closing this steam thing has been a great thing so far, I have no idea who in TW in spearheading this thing but whoever it is keep up the good work. I am not so vain to think that all of my ideas are the 100% guaranteed solution to everything. However, they are all backed with solid evidence and years upon years of experience of playing pub, TWL and other leagues as well as my time in staff at every position from ZH all the way up to SMod. I understand that not everyone likes me, much of it deservedly so but I wrote this essay with the best of intentions because as much as I despise many of you I sincerely want nothing but the best for this game I have put so much of my time (and money) into. I hope that the majority of you can look past the fact that I am cocky, sometimes a troll and the many mistakes I've made over the years and realize that I only want to serve in any capacity that I can and I DO know what I am talking about
TL;DR Version
Pub
I don't know if any sort of announcement was made to the public or not, as the only reason I even found out about it was out of mockery but there is a new Sysop for pub and maps (Fis) to replace pinkstar. I trained fis as a ZH/ER/Mod when she started so I know what she is capable of and should be fine but only time will tell how she performs in the current position. My suggestions for pub are not baseless, as with very limited research one could find a million threads in these very forums with suggested changes all over the place, these suggestions include but are not limited to:
- Pure Public Arena
While I am a baser at heart and I prefer to base 99% of the time, once in a great while I'll taxi a lev around for 1 good streak (I still hold the record of 383) so I do understand the appeal for certain players. Instead I would suggest perhaps every other weekend be a pure pub weekend, this would include removing the !buy system for that weekend as well so pub could once again be like it was in the golden days. This way levs still get to be lame shits most of the time while the majority of the rest of pub would finally get some uninterrupted competitive basing.
- Increase attach bounty for levs
I listed this separately from the above because I would suggest this be a permanent change. A half decent LT can ruin pub for 30+ minutes every single run, only to die to an eventual extreme turret hunt or lucky stray/burst...by "ruin" I mean they either destroy the 2 or more freqs fighting for base constantly without ever getting within radar range, or pull those 2+ freqs out of base entirely to hunt them. Either way it effectively and completely ruins any concept of competition inside the base. After a successful 30 minute hunt and maybe a couple spawns of the levi they fly to a safe, get greened 2 free kills for their 20 bounty and are right back at it again ruining it for everybody else in a matter of a minute or two. This is an extremely easy fix in the settings, just need to find a compromise that makes sense....off the top of my head I would suggest 100 bounty to attach.
- Fix Killothon
This is for the duelers/spawners/hardcore basers. I think its great that spawnothon got moved into base, but the shit only works like 5% of the time. I played a good base game last night in a wb and counted my kills during a 10 minute killothon. Every single one of my kills was achieved inside base or mid-base. I counted 84 kills in 10 minutes and I ended up losing killothon to some guy with 12 kills (Bot said I had 10). Feel free to test this theory yourselves, Ive known about it for a while just never voiced it til now cuz I didn't feel like making the effort.
- Public Chat
It's no secret that some people are just naturally more annoying than others (E.G. wiibimbo), and are easily avoidable, but consider the environment that we are harboring for the new players we are bringing in through this steam project. They log in and see Tower spamming random shit that he found on Wikipedia, Manco and his hugely offensive and constant subtle racism on one of his 500 aliases, kill macros all over the place (Guilty as charged) and people shitting all over every new player that DARES to ask a question out loud. An example of this would be recently I watched a brand new player I was working with ask how to ignore somebody that was spamming him in PM with "ez nig" and before I finished my reply somebody told them to Esc-Q to fix the problem, so he did and obviously disconnected and hasn't been online since. While it might be funny to do that to each other a newbie doesn't deserve it and now we have lost another potential player over trolling. I'm not asking to outlaw trolling and trashtalk because that is just plain stupid I'm asking the players to have at least a little decency and allow new players to join us, and for the staff to exercise a little common sense for once and some professional discretion in dealing with these people. These people need to be handled by staff without fear that Demonic is going to come crashing down on them for not following the rule book to a T.
Staff
Beyond the fact that the majority of you are unintelligent, greedy and self serving megalomaniacs, there are some good seeds among you and hopefully those are the people I can reach out to and influence because the chances are I HAVE been in your shoes and done your job and you likely will not find many (there are some) with more efficiency than me.
- Quota
Just stop it already. It was a problem before I became staff, while I was in staff and from what I hear long after I was gone from staff. Its no secret that staff has 3 main groups of people from ZH all the way up to the top. Over-achievers (Shadowknight, Willby, Fis, etc), Quota Chasers (Children, Johnie, A I) and deadweight (Pure_Luck, Poid, 24). I understand you need a system in place to measure the work that is being done and by whom but it is such an outdated system. You shouldn't be able to host bug and levirace repeatedly until you reach X amount of points, or do nothing for 29 days and on the last 2 days get your squad to request javufc 15x via ?help for the 15 points and host it 15 times for another 30 points. While I personally think your Deans of Staff are morons, obviously the powers that be don't agree with me so how about they actually do their job and exercise some common sense in determining who belongs and who doesn't instead of a quota system from 15 years ago?
- Staff Selection
This doesn't just apply to new hires or rehires, but since I'm on the topic who's bright idea was it to hire a guy that does nothing but meow, purr and spin? Rhetorical question because I already know who made that call. And who the fuck are X-Demo and rushed <ZH> among others? I give these people the benefit of the doubt until proven otherwise and I'm sure they are actually nice people and deserve a chance but why doesn't anybody get hired that people actually know in this game or have some sort of respect in the community? Remember I was staff for a long while too so I am aware that there has been total shit to choose from, so maybe consider choosing from outside the list of applicants? Maybe the general consensus of staff wouldn't be so terrible if it wasn't made up of never seen veterans up top and never heard of newbies at the bottom. Toss in some spice and get some people with actual respect in the mix, actually reach out to people that you want to be a part of the team instead of waiting for them to come to you. On that note, something needs to change in the way you guys choose people to run shit. Think back to season 14/15 when flared was running twl and Paul/myself were there to back him up. Shit went smooth. Same with ph and his seasons, you can go back as far as you want. You had people that were respected by the community and actually played in TWL at a competitive level running things and it went fine. Since then we've had Aura and humid and look how terrible this shit has become. Same goes with HMS Stargazer running TWEL? Or Reckful? When is the last time either one of them has played in a single duel? Keep in mind I actually like both of those people but cmon, why not get a dueler to do it? I could give more examples but the bottom line doesn't change. Stop picking people that don't make any sense to run shit they know nothing about. If you don't have any good people to pick from who's fault is that? Refer to the start of this paragraph for a solution.
Leagues
- TWL
I just touched on this briefly already so I won't go crazy here but this clusterfuck we had last season can't ever happen again. This 6 in LD 25 in LJ and 11 in LB shit was just beyond retarded and how he managed to get away with that at the beginning of the season is just beyond me. Or nobody setting up the TWL bots for playoffs in LB and having to play 2 different games (Sweet vs Cobra) while making up the rules as we go because none of the TWL Ops and/or hosts actually knows the rules. You guys knew EXACTLY when they playoffs would start months in advance and not a single person took 5 seconds to message wingzero to remind him or make sure it was done in advance or to actually read the rules regarding a playoff match...or allowing cougars to scoot through so many loopholes that they had like 6 LJ games on the final week of the season. That was a pathetic excuse of a season and the results showed with the amount of interest lost during and throughout the season. You've had a player in good standing tactfully offering to revise the rules for years now and still nobody has taken him up on it (Ephemeral). Offer the dude a few of the dollars that 24 stole from us and see what he comes up with and for the love of god stop picking newbies that don't play or don't know how twl works to run it (Ease was a good choice and i already know why he quit [forcing him to work with people he didnt want to work with])
In closing this steam thing has been a great thing so far, I have no idea who in TW in spearheading this thing but whoever it is keep up the good work. I am not so vain to think that all of my ideas are the 100% guaranteed solution to everything. However, they are all backed with solid evidence and years upon years of experience of playing pub, TWL and other leagues as well as my time in staff at every position from ZH all the way up to SMod. I understand that not everyone likes me, much of it deservedly so but I wrote this essay with the best of intentions because as much as I despise many of you I sincerely want nothing but the best for this game I have put so much of my time (and money) into. I hope that the majority of you can look past the fact that I am cocky, sometimes a troll and the many mistakes I've made over the years and realize that I only want to serve in any capacity that I can and I DO know what I am talking about
TL;DR Version
- Pure pub every other weekend. This means no levs and no !buy
- Increase attach bounty for levis (Suggesting 100)
- Fix Killothon...bot only counts a small amount of kills actually done in base
- Find a fix for public chat in pub... The environment now is not conducive for bringing in new players
- Get rid of Staff Quota
- Choose better staff, meaning new hires/re-hires and those chosen to run leagues and/or departments
- Bring the glory of TWL back to what its supposed to be
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