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The following is what I would do if I was a Sysop in this zone, not saying I want or expect the position but maybe it will be a good guidline for our current upper staffers on how to fix this zone. Mixed in will also be some ideas for the community to be able to help fix the game as well from within.
Distension -
First off I just want to say that I know that I am probably this events biggest hater so I am trying to make it more fair while keeping the game fun for everyone else. Having three prime-time slots during the week is just flat out too much, if we end up getting lots of new players entering our pub, perhaps after work or school it will be during this game, and they will see an empty public arena.
My suggestion is simple, during peak hours public arena and twd should be prospering. Distension on Monday, Wednesday and Thursday needs to change from 5-7pm to two two hour slots between 1-3 and 9-11. That gives distension players an extra two hours a day to play, gives both Europe and America their own two hour timeslot and leaves the peak TW time open for new players to enjoy a full pub. On weekends I suggest keeping 2-4 but also adding a 10-12 slot on Sundays on non-TWL weekends.
All together this will add quite a few hours of distension for the people who enjoy it and I think is a fair trade-off for not having it run during peak time. The only other thing I would change about it would be to remove the distension periodic message as it appears too much and perhaps change it to something similar to base as in making it advert for the event at the start of a new distension round as long as it has been more than 15 minutes.
Public -
I think we all agree there is a problem with public arenas, the settings, the players, and the staffers. My first order of business would be to absolutely ban levi-terring while on a staff name, it causes strife between players and staffers and makes staff seem like douchebags when in public the players should be seeing a respectable staffing group who are there to help them.
As far as ship settings, the one pixel weasel is the worst thing thats ever happened to basing, it should be changed back to its original settings of having cloak and stealth but being a normal size. There is nothing more obnoxious than having three or four cloakers constantly entering the base from the one pixel holes to try to take pot shots at the flag and/or terriers. They need to be re-designed or simple changed back. As far as levis I have been thinking about this for awhile and I think the best solution would be to make the attach bounty for levis as high as 100-125. Sure leviterrs could still green their levis but it would take much longer and would probably make LT's quit after dying a few times instead of greening to 20 and starting again after 15 seconds.
Annoying players.. I think we have all been forced to sit around with tower spamming his garbage or other players, I think the solution to this is simple. New players aren't going to understand commands like ?ignore or know how to add players permanently to their ignore.txt. We need to instigate a polling system where players can vote to silence a player using a bot, and if enough votes are received a message is sent to staff so a mod can go and silence the player. This goes for macros and everything else as well as new players will be forced to sit around getting spammed and think thats how this entire zone is.
Add a section to the map next to the rules, with instructions on how to see the entire walkthrough for new players. Add things to the map such as what common pub abbreviations mean (FR, LT etc) a crude drawing of the map and where you are supposed to go, an explanation of what you are supposed to do in general, and a small description of each ship and what its uses are for basing or where it applies, dueling or jav dueling.
Staff -
The current staffing system is horrible, its been corrupted beyond repair and basically needs a complete rewrite to return it to its former glory. I have heard horror stories from former and current staffers about being afraid to say anything for fear of retribution for disagreeing with other staffers. I have seen upper staffers saying that staff chat isn't for talking and only for business, and I have had staffers having to PM me saying that they agree with me because of all the political bullshit that happens on staff these days.
My first step would be simple, anyone on staff has the right to his or her own opinion on matters and much like bringing a problem to your boss in real life about another boss they should be protected from retribution if they see someone doing something wrong and try to fix it. Anyone caught intimidating another staffer for these things would be instantly axed because not only is it just wrong to treat your subordinates like that but it shows that you are a shitty person who should not be in charge of someone or have a leadership position.
The quota system is garbage and it promotes the hosting of bot-ran events and it needs a major overhaul. Having a quota system in place is a good idea and it was originally good until you were able to host an entire event with the typing of three commands. To fix this I would suggest giving each event a certain number of points for hosting it. Also to fix the problem with starting events and going afk, anyone caught doing so should be axed instantly or demoted to ZH. If they don't have the time to sit for 15 minutes entertaining their audience they should be able to take the 5 seconds to answer a players question.
Staff chat should be fun, it should be entertaining and it should make people feel like they are actually missing out by not being a part of the fun of it, so no more frowning upon chatting in staff chat, its one of the benefits of being on staff, not one of the chats you are forced to have one because you are on staff.
Completely delete 95% of the !tells, don't allow ER's and ZH's to use the bot to send tells, make staffers talk to people and give them legitimate answers, if they don't know the answer they can find out from another staffer or player and will have that knowledge from then on. Nobody learns anything from sending a !tell, and staffers should actually be knowledge about THE GAME not the bot system.
As far as recruiting members of this zone to staff which I have heard has been a bit of a problem lately, I think having staffers acting professionally and gaining the respect of the zone back will go a very long way in making people want to join staff to help. When players see a bunch of unprofessional people doing very unprofessional jobs, hear bad stories about staff in general from former staffers in general it will be hard to recruit. Doing these things will eventually fix its image.
Leagues -
There are too many useless leagues out there, anyone who wants to start a league it seems like can actually start one. There needs to be a committee of people who aren't afraid to be mean and just tell people there is simple not enough interest in this zone for your idea, were sorry. We also need to cut down on several leagues, and with the ones we decide to keep we need to have them on a Calander that is promoted by staff. Several weeks before said league starts there needs to be periodic messages to promote it as well as forum posts to promote it.
TWL needs to start having a set start date at a better time, it seems like TWL happens twice a year these days and I am afraid that sooner or later people are going to tire of it, and it will lose some of its luster.
We need to have better communication between staffers/players about who is going to be doing articles and extras for TWL and offer as a benefit some extra titles. I am not talking about medals on the website but recognition for all the hard work people who write HoN, TWL articles, and the people who should be setting up and running TWLM do to make TWL that much better and that much more interesting. Put their name on the map under the winners as TWL Media, and let them become immortalized along with the players for something that makes this game better in general.
Players -
So the zone and staff is somewhat fixed and things are running better and more smoothly and now it is time for us to step up to the plate, and much like how shit falls down the mountain with upper staff to regular staff so it is the same with players and squads. People become successful captains in this zone for a reason, they possess inate abilities that not everyone has to get people to listen to them, respect them, and stick with them year after year. It is time to use some of this to get new players into playing in TWD and TWL. We complain year after year but still we do nothing, perhaps this could be the year if this game does get greenlit to finally do something.
My suggestion is for every captain of every squad in every league to promise to bring atleast five rookie players onto their roster and give them playing time in twd matches, when they inevetably play poorly and your squad jumps on their ass for losing a game tell your squad to shut the fuck up and tell the player if hes crying about it to man up. Tell them that this is how they get treated because they are a part of something good and everyone expects other members of the squad to perform well and try hard to make their own squad better. So you might lose a few more matches but who the fuck cares.. we all know its nearly fucking impossible for any decent squad to not qualify for TWL which brings me to my next point.
On top of this we need to stop stacking teams, this zone needs competition in its main league and its honestly fucking ridiculous to have a squad with a TWL bench better than 6/10 of the other squads starting five. We need to fix this shit instead of expecting staff to set some rule to force us to switch. We aren't children and most of us love this game for one reason or another. You guys know who you are.. start a squad and create your own core of players, play together for awhile, recruit talent from wbduel and pub, get some entertaining people for your chat and start your own dynasty.
Overall -
The main point here is for players and staffers to come together to do things to fix this zone, to make it what it once was during its golden age minus the population for now. If we don't solve some of these problems it doesn't matter if we get greenlit or not because its fucking done with anyways. Just remember to back when you first started.. what got you addicted to this game, what got you to play for 5 or 10 years? Remember that and share it with new players, tell them about some cool chats where people are funny as fuck, tell them about how its cool to get on a squad and start getting good enough to talk a little shit to the other guys finally, tell em about some of the badass events that get hosted or how you actually still get adrenaline from playing TWL in a 2d spaceship game. Anyways, late. -- Wark.
Distension -
First off I just want to say that I know that I am probably this events biggest hater so I am trying to make it more fair while keeping the game fun for everyone else. Having three prime-time slots during the week is just flat out too much, if we end up getting lots of new players entering our pub, perhaps after work or school it will be during this game, and they will see an empty public arena.
My suggestion is simple, during peak hours public arena and twd should be prospering. Distension on Monday, Wednesday and Thursday needs to change from 5-7pm to two two hour slots between 1-3 and 9-11. That gives distension players an extra two hours a day to play, gives both Europe and America their own two hour timeslot and leaves the peak TW time open for new players to enjoy a full pub. On weekends I suggest keeping 2-4 but also adding a 10-12 slot on Sundays on non-TWL weekends.
All together this will add quite a few hours of distension for the people who enjoy it and I think is a fair trade-off for not having it run during peak time. The only other thing I would change about it would be to remove the distension periodic message as it appears too much and perhaps change it to something similar to base as in making it advert for the event at the start of a new distension round as long as it has been more than 15 minutes.
Public -
I think we all agree there is a problem with public arenas, the settings, the players, and the staffers. My first order of business would be to absolutely ban levi-terring while on a staff name, it causes strife between players and staffers and makes staff seem like douchebags when in public the players should be seeing a respectable staffing group who are there to help them.
As far as ship settings, the one pixel weasel is the worst thing thats ever happened to basing, it should be changed back to its original settings of having cloak and stealth but being a normal size. There is nothing more obnoxious than having three or four cloakers constantly entering the base from the one pixel holes to try to take pot shots at the flag and/or terriers. They need to be re-designed or simple changed back. As far as levis I have been thinking about this for awhile and I think the best solution would be to make the attach bounty for levis as high as 100-125. Sure leviterrs could still green their levis but it would take much longer and would probably make LT's quit after dying a few times instead of greening to 20 and starting again after 15 seconds.
Annoying players.. I think we have all been forced to sit around with tower spamming his garbage or other players, I think the solution to this is simple. New players aren't going to understand commands like ?ignore or know how to add players permanently to their ignore.txt. We need to instigate a polling system where players can vote to silence a player using a bot, and if enough votes are received a message is sent to staff so a mod can go and silence the player. This goes for macros and everything else as well as new players will be forced to sit around getting spammed and think thats how this entire zone is.
Add a section to the map next to the rules, with instructions on how to see the entire walkthrough for new players. Add things to the map such as what common pub abbreviations mean (FR, LT etc) a crude drawing of the map and where you are supposed to go, an explanation of what you are supposed to do in general, and a small description of each ship and what its uses are for basing or where it applies, dueling or jav dueling.
Staff -
The current staffing system is horrible, its been corrupted beyond repair and basically needs a complete rewrite to return it to its former glory. I have heard horror stories from former and current staffers about being afraid to say anything for fear of retribution for disagreeing with other staffers. I have seen upper staffers saying that staff chat isn't for talking and only for business, and I have had staffers having to PM me saying that they agree with me because of all the political bullshit that happens on staff these days.
My first step would be simple, anyone on staff has the right to his or her own opinion on matters and much like bringing a problem to your boss in real life about another boss they should be protected from retribution if they see someone doing something wrong and try to fix it. Anyone caught intimidating another staffer for these things would be instantly axed because not only is it just wrong to treat your subordinates like that but it shows that you are a shitty person who should not be in charge of someone or have a leadership position.
The quota system is garbage and it promotes the hosting of bot-ran events and it needs a major overhaul. Having a quota system in place is a good idea and it was originally good until you were able to host an entire event with the typing of three commands. To fix this I would suggest giving each event a certain number of points for hosting it. Also to fix the problem with starting events and going afk, anyone caught doing so should be axed instantly or demoted to ZH. If they don't have the time to sit for 15 minutes entertaining their audience they should be able to take the 5 seconds to answer a players question.
Staff chat should be fun, it should be entertaining and it should make people feel like they are actually missing out by not being a part of the fun of it, so no more frowning upon chatting in staff chat, its one of the benefits of being on staff, not one of the chats you are forced to have one because you are on staff.
Completely delete 95% of the !tells, don't allow ER's and ZH's to use the bot to send tells, make staffers talk to people and give them legitimate answers, if they don't know the answer they can find out from another staffer or player and will have that knowledge from then on. Nobody learns anything from sending a !tell, and staffers should actually be knowledge about THE GAME not the bot system.
As far as recruiting members of this zone to staff which I have heard has been a bit of a problem lately, I think having staffers acting professionally and gaining the respect of the zone back will go a very long way in making people want to join staff to help. When players see a bunch of unprofessional people doing very unprofessional jobs, hear bad stories about staff in general from former staffers in general it will be hard to recruit. Doing these things will eventually fix its image.
Leagues -
There are too many useless leagues out there, anyone who wants to start a league it seems like can actually start one. There needs to be a committee of people who aren't afraid to be mean and just tell people there is simple not enough interest in this zone for your idea, were sorry. We also need to cut down on several leagues, and with the ones we decide to keep we need to have them on a Calander that is promoted by staff. Several weeks before said league starts there needs to be periodic messages to promote it as well as forum posts to promote it.
TWL needs to start having a set start date at a better time, it seems like TWL happens twice a year these days and I am afraid that sooner or later people are going to tire of it, and it will lose some of its luster.
We need to have better communication between staffers/players about who is going to be doing articles and extras for TWL and offer as a benefit some extra titles. I am not talking about medals on the website but recognition for all the hard work people who write HoN, TWL articles, and the people who should be setting up and running TWLM do to make TWL that much better and that much more interesting. Put their name on the map under the winners as TWL Media, and let them become immortalized along with the players for something that makes this game better in general.
Players -
So the zone and staff is somewhat fixed and things are running better and more smoothly and now it is time for us to step up to the plate, and much like how shit falls down the mountain with upper staff to regular staff so it is the same with players and squads. People become successful captains in this zone for a reason, they possess inate abilities that not everyone has to get people to listen to them, respect them, and stick with them year after year. It is time to use some of this to get new players into playing in TWD and TWL. We complain year after year but still we do nothing, perhaps this could be the year if this game does get greenlit to finally do something.
My suggestion is for every captain of every squad in every league to promise to bring atleast five rookie players onto their roster and give them playing time in twd matches, when they inevetably play poorly and your squad jumps on their ass for losing a game tell your squad to shut the fuck up and tell the player if hes crying about it to man up. Tell them that this is how they get treated because they are a part of something good and everyone expects other members of the squad to perform well and try hard to make their own squad better. So you might lose a few more matches but who the fuck cares.. we all know its nearly fucking impossible for any decent squad to not qualify for TWL which brings me to my next point.
On top of this we need to stop stacking teams, this zone needs competition in its main league and its honestly fucking ridiculous to have a squad with a TWL bench better than 6/10 of the other squads starting five. We need to fix this shit instead of expecting staff to set some rule to force us to switch. We aren't children and most of us love this game for one reason or another. You guys know who you are.. start a squad and create your own core of players, play together for awhile, recruit talent from wbduel and pub, get some entertaining people for your chat and start your own dynasty.
Overall -
The main point here is for players and staffers to come together to do things to fix this zone, to make it what it once was during its golden age minus the population for now. If we don't solve some of these problems it doesn't matter if we get greenlit or not because its fucking done with anyways. Just remember to back when you first started.. what got you addicted to this game, what got you to play for 5 or 10 years? Remember that and share it with new players, tell them about some cool chats where people are funny as fuck, tell them about how its cool to get on a squad and start getting good enough to talk a little shit to the other guys finally, tell em about some of the badass events that get hosted or how you actually still get adrenaline from playing TWL in a 2d spaceship game. Anyways, late. -- Wark.
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