If I were SysOp

[Dral]

as far as pub voting for pure pub, I could see that going kinda like the shufflevote does now - 2 people vote for hours, resulting in no restrictions, until a levterr starts owning base. Once that happens, everyone votes for pure pub to make the LT go away.

voting to silence players though, as Shaddow said, would be abused and we all know it.

As far as expirementing, qan, I'm all for you going gung-ho with whatever it is you want to test out for short term and allowing it to be reviewed and feedback delivered, you're reasonable enough.

[Ephemeral]

Wark’s post, much like LF’s post in other thread, is a good summary of ideas that have been floated before by many people. Nothing new here except perhaps that the times have now become more desperate.

But these posts leave the most important question remaining; is TW willing to make a sweeping change to the way things have traditionally been done?

Debating ‘bottom up’ details (or ‘features’) is the way that things have always been done. It is a approach that time has proven will not help TW retain or grow population. We can get all wrapped up talking about ‘bottom up’ details like silencing players or ‘charging’ them pub bucks for chat but doing so will have as much effect as it has previously (zero).

IMO unless TW is willing to stop doing this same old ‘bottom up’ thinking nothing is going to ever change; this is going to take ‘top down’ thinking. Stop with the good ideas done in a vacuum. Stop thinking that someone is going to stumble on a good idea that is going to save the game. We have a 15 year history of evidence that ‘bottom up’ thinking like this is not going to work.
eph

[paradise!]

I don't understand the the duel system in pub and having a ?go duel in another arena and then having ?go tourny and then having ?go elim

too many elim arenas. Just make it all into pub. Make the map bigger and shit. I know there's space in that blackness beyond the rocks.

there is 1 elim arena. duel2 is basically the new ?go tourny. Just combine duel2/duel/tourny into one arena. Leave everything else intact.

[BooBiesYaY]

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.

I dont know how you would get this to be feasible though. Theres constantly 4-5 spawners or lev hunters in mid 24/7. Spec hunting is taken care of swiftly when reported, but you cant stop all spec hunting and someone will definitely spec hunt a few times if you ever get close to that attachable level.

Furthermore, even if there werent those spawners/lev hunters, you could really get 15-18 kills in a row in a lev in mid, unless you shoot from near safes and use portals, might take 20-30minutes lol.

Under this scenario a lev couldnt attach to a base terr either until 100-125 bty, which would make it purely killing things in mid which I dont think would be feasible at all.

I think aspects of the lev could be changed a bit but this high bounty thing (100+ bounty) would in essence make LT's extinct, unless someone fed them 15 kills near safe.

[BooBiesYaY]

Distension -

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.

AGREE

Public -

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.

I understand the perception of this but I really cant side with people that are that sensitive. Staff (on my freq) will always stop lting and help anyone that asks for it, often going afk when im terring them to help someone out. I understand the perception but I think staff deserves to have fun to. Staff is always basing also...

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.

I agree but at the same time its also kind of fun to add that element to the game. Still, Id have to agree that it probably isnt a good idea to let a ship zerg flag with rockets or reps or whatever they have nowdays anyway. But its still kind of fun dodging them at least when im BT.

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.

No preference on this. I agree sometimes people spamming political views or other stuff is super annoying and I can see new people not knowing ignore function, but as for me if its annoying ill ignore it. Agree with the points though.


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.


You certainly know about staff far more than I do. Ill just say that some staff is really bad, and some are really nice and go out of their way to be awesome. I cant speak more than that because my only exp with staff is those that I call friends.


Players -



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.

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.

Couldnt agree more but when you have 10 years of a situation where this exists, players are basically disenfranchised and convincing any non-"leet" player to engage in TWL is a monumental task. They will be skeptical they can "exist" in the TWL world, where a few teams or popular people make their squads with friends and then dominate the entire league. This is why lotteries exist in sports to prevent teams from having players that are the best in the game and so forth.

Plus, i have no clue if it is still this way, but in the past lag abuses/exploits have ruined TWL for some people. Who wants to compete in a tournament when one guy can exploit his lag and eat 10 bullets then go 23/10.. lol

[Demonic]

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.

If only that easy eh? One thing you learn is, you cant please all groups. If pub is quiet due to distension, it tells you distension is a bloody popular event, so why would you restrict/remove it? Ofc your point re: pub is perfectly valid, and I think I will need to check numbers on that. As for the public section, I cant argue with any of that. Absolutely spot on!!. Staff section - Ok here is where we get a bit of rubbish tbh, corrupted? gimme a break lol, your staff chat is not for "talking" is actually an old one, one that was enforced when I joined staff in 2001 by priitk and dock, now days couldn't shut these ER/mod's up even if we wanted too lol!! there are times as with any chat it goes to far, and becomes spam which is tough while dealing with server msg's etc, but that's a rarity. As for afraid to speak, again I doubt this highly. Infact just looked back over last 6 months of axing, and there has not been one axing for retribution of any sorts, so that info seems a bit old. Obv poid and beasty control the removal of staff, and if any staff had an issue with them it would come to me or M_M so theres plenty of options. Your section on quota's I do agree on, never liked it, never agreed with it - but its an archaic system, that clearly staff want else you may have completely inactive staff. League/players section, again absolutely spot on. Some great points/idea's in their wark tbh, some things I am already working on which includes if I get it agreed an tw staff/non staff role in a council form of changes for the zone. That and a better communication, as I feel (as has been the case for many a year) that it is the real issue that needs to be resolved before a lot of things can move forward, and I don't just mean staff to player communication.

[kthx]

About the staff thing that people are freaking out about I am not saying that staffers would be banned from lting period, only while on their staff names.

[Spock!]

I agree 100% with putting the Weasel back to it's original settings. Me being and avid X player, I know from experience that is is WAY too easy to grab the flag, especially if there is only 6 or less players defending base.

Anyway, It would be awesome to have the Stealth + Cloak back on the Weasel.............

And Bounty should be raised for levs to attach. Or, maybe make it so Levs can;t stay attached, and that once they attach they automatically detach from the terr.

That way Levs can still get around from place to place, but will not be as hard to kill or as overpowered like the LT. Amen

[qan]

>Anyway, It would be awesome to have the Stealth + Cloak back on the Weasel.............

No-Drain Cloak+Stealth 2013!

Loved that. Permanent Midnight.

[Oranje]

>Anyway, It would be awesome to have the Stealth + Cloak back on the Weasel.............

No-Drain Cloak+Stealth 2013!

Loved that. Permanent Midnight.

But also the small weasel, right? not the big annoying one

[Viruk]

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.

Like any other event, Distension needs to be scheduled when there are people available who want to play it. Since most TW players are americans, this means peak time for americans most of the time. Scheduling at radically different times would probably kill it, regardless of the number of hours available. If it didn't kill it, Distension would have a worse affect on a pub with a lower population.
I would support changing one weekday slot to one good for australasians but I fear that TW doesn't have enough to get the game going at the moment. Maybe we can recruit some if less fussy about lag in pub arenas as suggested in other threads?

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.

LTing is part of the game. As long as visible staff act helpful when asked for help and are not breaking the rules, let them play as lamely as they want.
A better solution would be to make LTs harder and less rewarding to play, while offering basers more reward. That way a new player would get the 'right' idea as to what they should be doing (basing) and quickly understand that the staffer is just messing around.
It might deter potential rulebreakers to see staff names in the list too.

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.

How about three or four LTs constantly nuking the FR? Or 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, rocketing about madly and then repping away the combined firepower of the base defenders?
Personally I have always liked the small weasel as its base infiltration gives a frequency another anti-shark option when no-one wants to play shark. It also doesn't need specialist ships to detect and kill it. Everyone can have a go.
Requiring more specialist/skilled ships in a low population arena is a mistake IMO. Shame really as this reduces teamwork.

In addition it is fun to have a more challenging target to shoot at as a warbird.

Just don't let it ever have reps. Reduce (plus disallow chain-buying of) rockets.

Maybe let a single weasel at a time have stealth (rare prize or limited safe-buy) instead of rocket (never allow both), only when there are a large number of active basers (and therefore multiple FR entrances anyway), just for the diversity and resulting teamwork.

If weasels are still a problem with low populations I would rather see ship limits.

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 could, and probably would, be abused, but as long as the final decision is left to the mod, with some sort of appeal process against bad staffing decisions, it might work. Some of the time... When players are not too lazy to vote.

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.

Good idea. Most will be too busy with multiple new things, or too bewildered to look, but a few may read and others can be directed to it by helpful players.

[Kahlan]

Good post, wark.

Big thing to keep new players in would be to have elim popular again. 10 years ago elim was the happenin' place to be.

New players would play elim, have a good game, and get recruited to a newby squad. So if we get elim popular again, players will have something to shoot for. Elim can be won by a new player without much skill, so it would keep the new guys trying to achieve something attainable.

[Kim]

You could set up a game-type rotation with the pubbots to allow for shenanigans like levterr, but don't promote traditional basing objectives when levterrs are in play. We could use some player input on this matter and have the "levterr rounds" have different team objectives. I can't think of anything concrete at the moment, but something like turretwars with smaller freqs with a bigger area for the flag might make for a fun change in pace, while still appeasing the LT crowd. Just like how the map can change based on the size of the arena, so too should the arena change based on the game type. Rotate this with "pure pub settings" where levterrs are completely barred from play.

[sonlox]

this shit broken?

[Ricko]

I never understand why elim died out...people tried so hard in it to be pro and for me personally and others we aimed to try to win games and mvp as a way for good teams to see our potential as a player so we could get recruited. Plus it is a good way to scout out any up and coming player.