Constructive Criticism

[Shaddowknight]

Not sayng that most arent doing their job, most actally are. The only thing thays been lacking is communication.

[Zeebu]

tittles in boxk

[Ephemeral]

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....

Constructive criticism? LOL LF should have named the thread ‘DOH’ instead. All the things that LF listed are common sense and right on; virtually none of them should have ever been implemented in the first place. But my question is this, how is it that this evolved into this cluster fuck in the first place and what is to prevent it from happening again if anything is fixed?
eph

[Ephemeral]

Not sayng that most arent doing their job, most actally are. The only thing thays been lacking is communication.

WTF happened to the staff 'communications' position that was announced last year? Sounded well-intentioned and a possible solution but it just withered and died after the person made 1-2 posts. Is this position still in place and who the hell is not doing their job? Was this idea just a bad one or was this just a failure of the person doing the job? Or?
eph

[project dragon]

Throwing suggestions for pub levi:
- Once levterr is created, pubbux system is disabled for them, or items have reduced limits (limit ports/reps even more)
- levi bty for attach requirements increase the longer a basing match progresses. Maybe an increased standard bty for the first 3 minutes (25? 30?), and then increase by 5/10 bty for every x minute(s) that the base game continues for.
- less holes for bomb entry, or at least more difficult spots for levterrs to get to to make the shots

Some issues is that I've seen some basing teams utilize a levi when base is in the larger setting, and it seems to help a lot. I don't know how to address this while we find ways to nerf the levi.


As for TWD/L, the difficulty I find is just lack of activity, and lack of teams in general. I think people are correct in saying that TWD is useless because, for the most part, all the teams that seem to be active will get into TWL. Maybe if there was an actual cutoff of squads into TWL that didn't allow all active squads to advance, it would help (just ignore people who whine about their squad not getting in and how they are better than squad x who did get in, and general trolls on forum). Will it reduce the TWL season? Yes, but it will give incentive for squads to perform well. If I devil's advocate myself now, this could mean recreating those stacked superstar squads again, and then people will complain that there are only ever 3-4 real squads in TW. But I guess not everyone can be winners and people need to realize this, and find other reasons to be on squads.

RambleRambleRamble

[Shaddowknight]

WTF happened to the staff 'communications' position that was announced last year? Sounded well-intentioned and a possible solution but it just withered and died after the person made 1-2 posts. Is this position still in place and who the hell is not doing their job? Was this idea just a bad one or was this just a failure of the person doing the job? Or?
eph

If I recal correctly , Iremember hearing that a number of (at the time) upperstaff didnt support the position (and therfore didnt provide WillBy with updates.) He had gotten assistants to get those updates, but too much resistance from some people who just dont give a fuck about telling the PR guy about whats happening or planned. Asking some people to do actual work can be hard at times.

[Ephemeral]

If I recal correctly , Iremember hearing that a number of (at the time) upperstaff didnt support the position (and therfore didnt provide WillBy with updates.) He had gotten assistants to get those updates, but too much resistance from some people who just dont give a fuck about telling the PR guy about whats happening or planned. Asking some people to do actual work can be hard at times.

So what has changed that now allows better communications? And is this position going to be revisited or is some other communciation solution envisioned?
eph

[WillBy]

If someone else would care to try, I'd give them my full support. As of now, I'll post about any changes I hear about, but rarely would they have any substance and honestly you could get the information just as easily from reading the the pub splash or reading the forum posts everyone else is making. If you guys would like my collections of links to all the updates, I'd be happy to restart, but I got 0 feedback when I stopped the bi-weekly updates way back when.

[Shaddowknight]

So what has changed that now allows better communications? And is this position going to be revisited or is some other communciation solution envisioned?
eph

Whats changed is that ive taken it upon myself to communicate what i find out normally, instead of trying to rely on other staffing departments to give reports and updates.

[Crescent Seal]

@ summa/lf

shaddow might come off as a nosy overachieving staffer but in a very long long time we actually have someone from staff who actively tries to address the concerns and questions of the community. his forum personality is just very rigid and to the point, but he means well i feel.

@ eph

very good point about the communication guy. guy made like 1 or 2 posts and never replied again. we need someone who is more active in this regard.

[Spock!]

kill macros all over the place

My kill macros bring a warm fuzzy feeling to all in pub, I should get an award.............

[Shaddowknight]

If someone else would care to try, I'd give them my full support. As of now, I'll post about any changes I hear about, but rarely would they have any substance and honestly you could get the information just as easily from reading the the pub splash or reading the forum posts everyone else is making. If you guys would like my collections of links to all the updates, I'd be happy to restart, but I got 0 feedback when I stopped the bi-weekly updates way back when.

Part of me wants to, but the rest of me knows that doing it officially is a waste of time...
So I'm just gonna keep doing what I'm doing with communicating what I already know.
If people want to throw info at me, then that's fine, but I won't go looking for it (unless it's something I have an interest in knowing myself anyway).

[fiS]

Well here's my reply and I hope I can clear up some of the questions further that I haven't been answering in my most recent topic (and I will explain why)
While I actually would love to quote you and make a clear post, I'm really struggeling and you'll get a "cheap" version because it seems like the forums, or at least the editor box is broken for me (cough cough).

Yes I am replacing pinkSTAR (still in the process of learning though) and I will try my best on keeping at least the public involved and up to date of changes. It is likely that some changes will be tested for a week (or a similar timeframe something around that) and then be decided on once we have the "poll bot" included in the pubsystem.

"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."

I know exactly what you are meaning with "Pure Pub", but that is actually pretty much ?go base. As I said in the post, I will be looking into an option to balance the LevTerrs more, but as of now the main concern with the LevTerrs are around the "weak" populated hours. A lev terr just belongs into TW's pub.
However, a final call or a test period can not be made right now, as I would love to personally find out more about the Pubbucks getting removed or not, since it would be a waste to develop something for the current system while we don't even know if it is going to stay, or if it will be changed. (And as we are lacking developers, that would probably backfire)

Once we have the poll system running, let's see what the public population things of having a day or two dedicated to "basing".

"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."
I do not believe that this is a solution to the actual problem, rather only making base-levs struggle even more than right now. A lev on a private freq will just get fed until whatever bounty is required to attach, hence I believe that it's a quite negative change. Options to limit that would be (as suggested) giving warbirds the ability to buy antiwarp or removing the !buy anywhere feature.

"I counted 84 kills in 10 minutes and I ended up losing killothon to some guy with 12 kills (Bot said I had 10)."

I will look into this and talk to dev people to see the reason for that and to get it fixed.

In regards to the quota system: I think you're partly right. But it's a legit system to compare, and that system seems to be needed and has proven to be useful at times.

Hires: Our deans are not only looking at the applications, they are also trying to find suitable people who didn't apply and you should know that.
Oh yeah and about fozzcat... Afaik Fozzcat was hired with the condition to limit the meowing, and that is being discussed.

Obviously, about TWL I can't say much. I see all the competitve stuff behind it, but I don't think humid did a bad job.

"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."
About steam: It has been a cross-zone effort. In case you want some names, (please don't be offended if I forgot yours or got your work wrong...), here is what I know.
Demonic, tmac and M_M have been trying to keep the group together and push everyone, also coming up with ideas and working on facebook. (I think that further work on facebook will be done by Hack and Krynetix(?), don't quote me on that)
KrynetiX, s_fcdb (EG sysop) and Dezmond have offered their webdevelopment abilities to help us with the site. As it looks, we will be updating the graphics (I made the current ones) and the site as a whole with LSD's graphic, as he has designed a whole new site (can't remember LSD's full name, I think he is from HS or HZ.)
K A N E has been originally coming up with all this and afaik he is still involved.
Navee from HZ has been making the video. He has not only edited it all, he also recorded the events/passages and made us a "how to install and get set up" tutorial too.
L O V E has been collecting the screenshots and has coded a system for people involved to rate them so we could chose the best ones.

I am pretty sure though that there is a lot more people involved into this than I have just listed.

[Demonic]

Well here's my reply and I hope I can clear up some of the questions further that I haven't been answering in my most recent topic (and I will explain why)
While I actually would love to quote you and make a clear post, I'm really struggeling and you'll get a "cheap" version because it seems like the forums, or at least the editor box is broken for me (cough cough).

Yes I am replacing pinkSTAR (still in the process of learning though) and I will try my best on keeping at least the public involved and up to date of changes. It is likely that some changes will be tested for a week (or a similar timeframe something around that) and then be decided on once we have the "poll bot" included in the pubsystem.

"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."

I know exactly what you are meaning with "Pure Pub", but that is actually pretty much ?go base. As I said in the post, I will be looking into an option to balance the LevTerrs more, but as of now the main concern with the LevTerrs are around the "weak" populated hours. A lev terr just belongs into TW's pub.
However, a final call or a test period can not be made right now, as I would love to personally find out more about the Pubbucks getting removed or not, since it would be a waste to develop something for the current system while we don't even know if it is going to stay, or if it will be changed. (And as we are lacking developers, that would probably backfire)

Once we have the poll system running, let's see what the public population things of having a day or two dedicated to "basing".

"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."
I do not believe that this is a solution to the actual problem, rather only making base-levs struggle even more than right now. A lev on a private freq will just get fed until whatever bounty is required to attach, hence I believe that it's a quite negative change. Options to limit that would be (as suggested) giving warbirds the ability to buy antiwarp or removing the !buy anywhere feature.

"I counted 84 kills in 10 minutes and I ended up losing killothon to some guy with 12 kills (Bot said I had 10)."

I will look into this and talk to dev people to see the reason for that and to get it fixed.

In regards to the quota system: I think you're partly right. But it's a legit system to compare, and that system seems to be needed and has proven to be useful at times.

Hires: Our deans are not only looking at the applications, they are also trying to find suitable people who didn't apply and you should know that.
Oh yeah and about fozzcat... Afaik Fozzcat was hired with the condition to limit the meowing, and that is being discussed.

Obviously, about TWL I can't say much. I see all the competitve stuff behind it, but I don't think humid did a bad job.

"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."
About steam: It has been a cross-zone effort. In case you want some names, (please don't be offended if I forgot yours or got your work wrong...), here is what I know.
Demonic, tmac and M_M have been trying to keep the group together and push everyone, also coming up with ideas and working on facebook. (I think that further work on facebook will be done by Hack and Krynetix(?), don't quote me on that)
KrynetiX, s_fcdb (EG sysop) and Dezmond have offered their webdevelopment abilities to help us with the site. As it looks, we will be updating the graphics (I made the current ones) and the site as a whole with LSD's graphic, as he has designed a whole new site (can't remember LSD's full name, I think he is from HS or HZ.)
K A N E has been originally coming up with all this and afaik he is still involved.
Navee from HZ has been making the video. He has not only edited it all, he also recorded the events/passages and made us a "how to install and get set up" tutorial too.
L O V E has been collecting the screenshots and has coded a system for people involved to rate them so we could chose the best ones.

I am pretty sure though that there is a lot more people involved into this than I have just listed.

We do have the ability to prize every ship anti warp while outside base, but remove it when they enter base, just a thought

[Ephemeral]

Whats changed is that ive taken it upon myself to communicate what i find out normally, instead of trying to rely on other staffing departments to give reports and updates.

Part of me wants to, but the rest of me knows that doing it officially is a waste of time...
So I'm just gonna keep doing what I'm doing with communicating what I already know.
If people want to throw info at me, then that's fine, but I won't go looking for it (unless it's something I have an interest in knowing myself anyway).

Not sayng that most arent doing their job, most actally are. The only thing thays been lacking is communication.

So you are saying that while nothing has changed with the staff and its level of communication, and you aren't willing to be proactive in trying solve or improve the situation, that everyone should feel that communications will improve? And you think that 'most people are doing their jobs? Do you not think that a staffer has any responsibility to proactively communicate?

... My philosophy is "do your job well and correctly and thats what matters most."

So 'not going to look for information' is consistent with doing a communications job correctly?

Perhaps a big part of the issue is that many people have set the community's expectations but failed to deliver. Perhaps part of the problem is that well-intentioned and motivated individuals have been hired but burned out quickly when they realized that the only change they can really affect are small sections of the game that they have influence over. Shadow, nothing has changed. You are just another in a long line of volunteers who is cheerleading the community into thinking that ‘change’ is possible when the SS ship is just drifting in space.
But to set expectations by talking out of both sides of your mouth isn’t helping anything. People who fall into the hole of “well I can’t get shit done so I will just do my own thing here in this corner of SS” are fracturing the game into pockets of self interest ‘features’ and attributes. No one is going to help the game by themselves. It is going to take a leader who has a vision, someone who has the ability to bring the staff together, someone who can set expectations correctly, someone who is not afraid of making the hard decisions, someone who knows that ‘majority rules’ isn’t always what is best for the game, someone who has little tolerance for those who are not team players and go off in a corner and do their own thing by themselves.
eph