Constructive Criticism

[Shaddowknight]

Eph, as I said, I'm not an official communications spokesperson for staff, nor do I intend to make it so at the moment (but perhaps if enough changes occur that I feel it is worth doing, then perhaps)
Most are doing their actual jobs well yes, with the exception of communicating (which isnt something most of them have to be doing anyhow, mostly just department heads)

One thing I do agree with is needing good leadership. I've heard a few instances of people trying to get things done but being unable to because the people they need to contact are either inactive or dont check messages and whatnot. One of the issues with a leader keeping a tight ship is that you have to remember, we are all volunteers in this. I come home from work, and log into Continuum as my post-work relaxing and de-stressing, the last thing I would want is someone breathing down my neck all the time and continually telling me I need to get stuff done.

[Shaddowknight]

Not to say we need to run a loose crew, but a bit of freedom in our staffing work is good to have for morale.

[Ephemeral]

TW was created as a result of our thinking. It cannot be changed without changing our thinking.

Continuing to think that everyone is doing their job except for communications is like saying everyone on a squad is doing their job except for killing the enemy. You aren’t going to change the future of this game with thinking like that. No one is going to change the future of the game by adding pub bucks or getting it on Steam. In my opinion LF’s post was a list of things that are broken but more importantly it reflect the ‘bad thinking’ that got us here.

I hate to piss in your Wheaties but I see nothing in your posts that reflect any change in thinking. It is native to think that you alone can change anything if their isn’t vision, leadership, and teamwork. Many before you have done just this; they jumped in, worked hard, but then burned out.

I truly hope that you (and the handful of others who care) can make a long-term impact but am very doubtful that coming at it from the ‘bottom up’ is going to work. A top down approach would be to find a leader who can motive, organize, develop teamwork, and has a backbone. Then revisit the vision that Moot published for the zone and consolidate TW back to its core competencies for Pub 0. Use LF’s list for a bunch of other operational crap that also needs to be addressed.
eph

[midoent]

How about surrounding the base with a broken circle so levs can only attack going through the whole base

[Shaddowknight]

If anything has changed from me, its that Im tired of seeing some stuff not getting done, and just doing it and not caring if people have a problen with it. I may see about getting myself into other areas and gseing what else I can get done, but no promises on that.

[LF]

Eph is about the only person that has responded that can see my post for what its worth. While I may be a little rough around the edges when giving my opinions this was not intended as a bitch-fest but more as a sort of guideline to what I think we should be, as compared to what we currently are based on my experience in the game. Unfortunately, despite my 'almost' flawless record in staff leadership positions I am now blacklisted due to gross negligence and mismanagement by current leadership and essentially barred from contributing anything of substance so the best I have to offer is forum posts. It sucks that there is literally nobody left that can fix our biggest problem of a lack of active and competent leadership. Think we are up to 6 or 7 sysops now and still nothing ever gets done.

[LF]

Oh and in regards to "no pure pub because thats what ?go base it for".... pure pub is nothing like go base. In pure pub you can still do whatever you want in any ship (except lev) and come and go as you please...as compared to a game of base starting once every 15-20 minutes in which public players rarely get picked for anyways and when they are picked they are forced into only 1 ship, rarely a 2nd ship. Thats like saying no wbduel or duels in pub because thats what TWDD is for, makes no sense

[fiS]

Oh and in regards to "no pure pub because thats what ?go base it for".... pure pub is nothing like go base. In pure pub you can still do whatever you want in any ship (except lev) and come and go as you please...as compared to a game of base starting once every 15-20 minutes in which public players rarely get picked for anyways and when they are picked they are forced into only 1 ship, rarely a 2nd ship. Thats like saying no wbduel or duels in pub because thats what TWDD is for, makes no sense

I have just been pointing out that there is an option for "pure basing". Pub events with restricted levis and maybe a neat map change are likely to happen, maybe dedicating a certain weekday or every 2nd weekend to it. Something around that. It's just nothing that will be there permanentely, but very likely to happen with a schedule.

[BooBiesYaY]

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:

• 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

LF, how would 100 bounty work though? even though i think raising the lev attach bounty a bit wouldnt be a bad thing, are you suggesting that a lev would have to get around 15 kills in mid before attaching (or 100 bty)?

right now, theres usually about 3-5 hunters and spawners on levs even at 3 bounty, so if the requirement was 100 bty that would be impossible basically.

i mean, raising it to 30 or 40 i could see as a positive though, but then friends would just feed the lev to green in safe...


also, anti is pretty powerful nowdays. with the base design as it is theres more ability to "trap" levs on roof or in base with anti and its pretty far reaching. theres also always the impossible to escape anti-turret too.


i totally support your idea of some pure pubs here or there, if thats what basers want, i dont think that would be a bad thing at all. i just typically find the incorporation of levs to be a positive to the game. when one team is dominating the other or your outnumbered on a team, having a lev help clear base adds that extra something to the game (among other things).

*support the pure pub 2-3 days a week sure why not..
*100 bounty would be near impossible, maybe 30-40 would work but nothing over 20 would work without help from friends/safe given 3-5 constant spawners/hunters on levs in mid nowdays.

[Shaddowknight]

Levs helping ather team take FR isnt the problem, its priv freq ltaswho dont care about basing and juat want to kill everyone with no reguard to the central focus of this zone (basing IS the focus of this zone).

To make things fair to balance out Pure Basing, It may be fun to have days where basing is less emphasised (disablethe flag game and have things like hunt and killothon running for a day as well, or limit freqs to 4 or 5 to make for some interesting basing games in pub.

Theres lots of options and ideas to be had, we just need to balance them so the lts dont feel too singled out and hated on. Have days where lt'ing (maybe limit to pub freqs) is easier for a few days. The only way to actually make everyone happy is to actually give everyone exactly what they want for a few days on some sort of rotation, with the times in between being largely neutral (mostly like whay we hve now with maybe a small change or two.)

[Bioture]

• 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?

This. It also limits the longevity of the mods - at least in my case when I modded a long time ago, I was still active but wasn't on long enough to make quota. Usually the ?help calls are first come first serve, with the quota being around 30-40 ?help calls a month. It's not bad until people start fighting for it, and most of the mods have regular lives and get on at the same time. I simply couldn't make quota for a few months due to a new job, and left staff. I was still active, just not enough to make quota.

[Viruk]

Re:Pure Public Arena

Pure pub for alternate weekends sounds good to me.
May annoy some who only find time at weekends though.


Re: Increase attach bounty for levs

Leave it so you could attach to a FR terrier and detach with current bounty. I don't see excessive numbers of FR levs about.
Make the bot warp your lev off a terrier and lower your bounty if you stay attached unless you have achieved a more stringent target (e.g. high number of kills with TKs heavily penalising you).
When there are low numbers of active basers (even if lots of other players), the game should not allow LTs at all.
Make all lev restrictions known to newbie levs and make an additional !lev bot command to show this info and your progress.


Re: Fix Killothon

I would change it so that both killer and victim have to be in base (providing the bot can do this without taking too much system resources).
If positioning is uncertain I would rather see it err on the side of denying a Killothon death rather than creating out-of base Killothon camping spots for players to abuse.


Re: Public Chat

The vocal TW playerbase is easily the most offensive and annoying I have ever encountered on any online game. Sometimes I am surprised any new players hang around at all.

I share a little responsibility for this as I have always been tolerant of dubious behavior and rarely report it or verbally confront it. In the interest of having a good time I content myself with quietly ignoring (or ignore.txt-ing) players like Tower, Manco and their suspected aliases. At least this avoids feeding the trolls and starting political debates in a place unsuited for it.

I don't have all the answers to this problem. Expecting everybody to grow up, behave and be nice is never going to work.
I believe the rule book should allow staff a fast-track way to handle players who have previously repeatedly offended in the exact same way, been warned and should know better.
Ideally they should be able to identify aliases by technical means and by patterns of behavior.
A silenced player can still play and should still be able to appeal against any unjust or excessive punishments. It should always be made clear why a player was silenced and what they can do to appeal.


Re: Staff Quota

I would hope any quota system takes account of TW's current population. Opportunities for hosting have surely diminished since 15 years ago.

I think quotas are needed to ensure that new staff give something back to the game after staff have spent time training them. At a minimum a new staffer should expect to go through a long probation period where their performance is monitored. This would help to deter status-seeking time-wasters. After this though, you might as well hang on to a trained, trusted staffer as long as they seem likely to give back more than it costs to administer them over the long term.


Re: Staff Selection

Perhaps it is too much to expect staff to always act as exemplars when messing about in Pub. If staff cannot relax and enjoy the game as much as anyone else they are likely to lose interest.
Can staffers ever be respected by everyone when TW is such a fragmented community? Does playing skill translate well into staffing skill?
As long as they obey the rules and are doing their job properly, let them be.
But, having staff run something they know little about isn't usually the best way to get the job done properly.

However, if we have volunteers who are exemplary everywhere AND possessing common sense AND technically competent AND highly active AND great communicators AND inspiring leaders can we please elect them as president or something rather than getting them to fix a spaceship game?

[mtine]

I totally agree with Shaddow. The pub should be made more fun for everyone, and for that it needs diversity.

My suggestion would be (since fis wants me to put more time into forums and come up with ideas) to implement things we already have in TW (hunt, pictionary, dm) into TW pub somehow. I'm not saying these maps should be put instead of the TW pub map, just a small map added inside the pub so people could play them whenever they wanted something different without bugging staffers too much. Example: add a small hunt map into TW pub arena, include a bot command for it (!hunt) and let the bot host it every hour or so. Such a map can then be changed on a daily basis with a similar map (pub + pictionary, pub + dm etc.). Just a thought for u guys to chew on.

[Ricko]

The staff quota system definitely needs reviewing - over a year ago, probably nearer 2 years, I was a zh for a few months and my quota performances were fairly high in comparison to most zhs but I went away on holiday for 2 weeks and came back (having mentioned I was going away) to find I was no longer staff due to not meeting my quota. The issues here are that I was online actively as a zh for 4-6 hours a day and took as many calls as possible; which wasn't many calls at all to be honest and yet I go away for a few weeks and I get let off. Why would you axe me who has been an active trenchwars player nearing on 12 years of twd/twl and pub experience due to not being online for a few weeks and let staff fill up with morons such as fozzcat? Surely my experience outweighs a few weeks of inactivity- and I wasn't even warned/spoken to on my return from my holiday I just came back and was axed from staff. Basically what I'm getting at is each staff member should be looked at individually as opposed to following a strict quota

[Jones]

if you want to make pub more enjoyable to play in we need to go back to the era of pubsquads