Open Letter - Tough Decisions

[Fem.]

MegamanEXE said:

Honestly I think it's silly that people think that the way to move the zone forward is to set the zone back a decade. Yes, the playerbase has fallen to extremely low levels, but simply changing around arenas and bots and things doesn't address the root cause of the problem. The problem is, of course, no new players are sticking around after trying the game for the first time.

In order to improve this game reasonably, logically, and not-all-at-once, but in steps, the first thing to do is to see how a new player thinks, and what it looks like to a new player. If the game itself doesn't have a flow and a sense of organization to it, and some of its features don't make sense simply because it's not organized, or clear, then a new player would be less likely to stick around if it just doesn't make sense, or is difficult to understand. So rearranging arena names, reorganizing bots, adding bot scripts, clarifying things via auto-bot commands makes the game easier to understand, and it is a first and doable step that can be made in the right direction to lay a foundation for bigger improvements later. If the game itself could use flow and logic improvements, if those improvements get made now, it makes it that much easier for bigger overhauls because any improvements would need to integrate the structure of the game as it is to make it useful, otherwise, it will be of no use.

Start where it's doable, and it will be easier in the long run, basically.


So I agree with Ephemeral and MegamanEXE on this one, we need to be focusing on the NEW player experience.

And to Lefty_Eye and Shaddowknight, if there are game features that cannot be fixed by the people asking for suggestions, can we have a list of the things that cannot be edited at this time due to access to source code?

Because honestly, most of the issues that need to be fixed for a better new player experience would need to be fixed in the place that cannot be accessed yet. We need a new version of Continuum.

So can we get a list of parameters, please?



Shaddowknight said:

Most of your idead are thongs we can not control. As for 1. We staffers were players once, we still play with our friends, and want to continue playing with them. I am always on my staff name, and saying i need to pause my staffing duties to play with them is just stupid.

You, as staffers, may want to continue to "play with friends" but I imagine being a staffer comes with certain responsibilities and limitations when more game controls get handed to you. Just because you want to "play with friends" doesn't make it fair for everyone else. It is not unreasonable to ask that a staffer use a non-staffer name to play TWD games, and it is not "stupid" because TWD is an official gaming system, with official ranking and scoring. That is important to the fairness of the game. This is not about what is convenient for you, this is about what is best for the players and the game.

[LF]

Fem.,

Staffers can't even do anything to impact the outcome of a TWD game unless they are SMod+ anyways, and literally nothing at all as an ER or a ZH and even if that SMod+ did do something to change the outcome like prize themselves it would be grossly obvious and they would be immediately removed from staff. It would be insane to think that somebody is going to risk a position of power in the game for the sake of winning a few TWD points that don't actually mean anything anyways. If I was still staff and they tried to force me to TWD on a separate name I simply would not listen because its flat out stupid. However I applaud you for having a voice on the rest of your opinions

[Frightful]

wanted to edit my post but this forum is broken in chrome...krynetix makes some decent points about SSC and ASSS but those things dont fix a game thats been dicked with to the point that its not fun for everyone. Perfect example is that streak bot resets when you visit safe now so people like me will just not play pub. Was this really a prudent change? There are a lot of people who like to play this style, and if they feel like theyre getting bullied by bots to play a certain way theyll just stop playing. The first impression this game makes to people is by far the most important. Right now it just isnt making a good first impression.

Yeah, tube mining is definitely a great way to make a good first impression.

[Izor]

you gonna tell me that fis is making wise decisions now?? automatic !warp really smart for new players? and the new weasel settings??

[Fem.]

Fem.,

Staffers can't even do anything to impact the outcome of a TWD game unless they are SMod+ anyways, and literally nothing at all as an ER or a ZH and even if that SMod+ did do something to change the outcome like prize themselves it would be grossly obvious and they would be immediately removed from staff. It would be insane to think that somebody is going to risk a position of power in the game for the sake of winning a few TWD points that don't actually mean anything anyways. If I was still staff and they tried to force me to TWD on a separate name I simply would not listen because its flat out stupid. However I applaud you for having a voice on the rest of your opinions

I am not saying that this happens, because it may certainly not for the reasons you stated, as it would be obvious to affect the outcome of the game, but that it is possible. Now I am not trying to be accusatory here, because I certainly am not implying that these things happen, but from a possibility's standpoint, regular end-users don't know what staff is capable of doing, and not doing. Users don't know of exploitable bot flaws, users don't know if there are ways to affect the outcome of the game before the game starts, or affects how bots are implemented, in what order, etc. I mean, come on, the possibility of deception doesn't always happen in obvious ways--this game has been around much too long to have the only possible exploitations as being obvious ones. Others have said that the bot system does have some flaws, and some of which may be too fundamental to do without needing fundamental changes, and with flaws comes the possibility of exploit. However, the point I am trying to make is that it is not the most honest thing to allow, because like I said, you cannot expect non-staffers to know the ends and outs of bots, little tricks here and there, and I would certainly not expect them to disclose that information to anyone.

Forcing you on a separate name on TWD would be the fair and professional thing to do. It is a display of honesty. This may be a free game that doesn't have many players anymore, but simple fairness for the sake of other players doesn't cost anything, either, and a new player that sees staff themselves following rules such as these for their sake is what would make a player feel like TWD is worth something more than ranks and prizes.

How staff is conducted represents part of the community of both TW and Continuum. It's not like regular players get to elect staff, and it's not like players really have that much of a connection with staff aside from forums interactions. What kept me a loyal player for nearly 9 years now is not the game itself, though I love the Physics of it, but the community and how I was treated when I first started playing. If that is what kept me a loyal player, then I assume that is what would bring in, (by recommendation) other players, and what would keep new players in the game.

Thanks for the kudos otherwise, LF.

-Fem.

[KrynetiX]

If there are game features that cannot be fixed by the people asking for suggestions, can we have a list of the things that cannot be edited at this time due to access to source code?

I'll try my best to explain. We can't make ANY client-side changes, because we don't have the source code to Continuum. We can't add anything NEW server-side because TW uses a closed-source server. It is what it is, and was over a decade ago.

We have bots that can make actions as either a player or staffer whenever a certain trigger occurs (or on a timer). Things bots can do include executing staff commands like *setship and *setfreq to control games, send out zone messages, record player data, gather banners from users, etc.

An example of things we can do:
Change ship settings to pretty much anything imaginable. For example, giving a specific ship stronger bombs, or more shrap, or lvl1 bullets instead of lvl2, etc.
Change the graphics / maps to pretty much anything imaginable. For example, making the healthbar green instead of blue, changing what the asteroids in pub look like, etc.
Use a bot to control the public map based on population. The current pub bot adjusts the size of the base based on how many people are playing. It does this by looking at how many people are playing and then executes a few staff commands to turn on a specific set of doors, and a specific set of graphics.

An example of things we can't do:
Add another ship (ship 9).
Add the ability to login via Facebook.
Add weapons.
etc..

We can't change the client or server in any way. They are both closed-source. We can only work with what we have.

[Rab]

I find the TW website a bit baffling in some areas.

e.g.

"I'm trying to find an appropriate squad to join".
1. Go to tw.org
2. Click Squads
3. Receive Dropdown, have no idea what to do with it, quit

or

"I'm trying to learn about leagues"
1. Go to tw.org
2. Click Leagues
3. Receive list of acronyms, have no idea what to do with it, quit.

[Fem.]

An example of things we can't do:
Add another ship (ship 9).
Add the ability to login via Facebook.
Add weapons.
etc..

We can't change the client or server in any way. They are both closed-source. We can only work with what we have.

Excellent. This clarifies this a bit, and I'd hope this game never integrates with Facebook, like ever. However, I'm guessing default settings (radar, chat, etc) can't be set to something different on fresh install can they?

[Izor]

Anyone wanna enlighten me on how this conversation relates to retaining players? Rab, we're not getting players interested enough to even visit the website. They download, play, and quit immediately right now because the product is bad

[Rab]

Anyone wanna enlighten me on how this conversation relates to retaining players? Rab, we're not getting players interested enough to even visit the website. They download, play, and quit immediately right now because the product is bad

You don't know who uses the website and what they use it for, neither do I.

We generally seem to be saying that getting people into squads helps retention - so it's relevant because somewhere you need to publish which squads are recruiting and which of those would be best for you to join. See this for more of my ideas on this http://forums.trenchwars.org/showthr...nd-of-the-year

[Ricko]

Lots of good points being made here. I'm now leaning more towards the fact we need to retain new players interests as opposed to trying to revert too much back to how we were 10+ years ago. That being said we do really need to cut out excess leagues and features such as TWDT and distension and making hosted events more rare to make them feel more special and worth winning.

I'm glad lefty agreed with my point to try and get wark re-instated to staff.....I haven't spoken to him at all that was just my opinion out of the blue.

What needs to happen:

- Focus our efforts on what new players will want, create a tutorial for new players when they enter the game for the first time.

- Kill off our excess leagues of TWDT, Distension etc and focus on making TWD more desireable and host TWL once a year only for the top players.

- Try to re-instate Wark and LF to staff; these guys are very experienced and know their stuff....even if you have to slightly beg them you should....

P.s. I would happily take up a Zh spot again on staff and do what I can to help out TW as I have a lot of spare time atm and in the future outside of work hours. As long as I wouldn't get kicked off staff for disappearing for 10 days like I did both other times

[Shaddowknight]

The process of a tutorial arena is in the works right now. Also Ricko, all you need to do is let the deans know you're going away and it shouldnt be a problem.

[Ricko]

The process of a tutorial arena is in the works right now. Also Ricko, all you need to do is let the deans know you're going away and it shouldnt be a problem.

I did, and they forgot, both times.

[Izor]

I think it would be nice to have metrics on new player alerts, and then how many of these new players we're retaining to help figure out whats wrong. IMO if people are installing, playing for 30 mins and uninstalling hosted events and leagues arent ruining anything but spreading our existing playerbase too thin. Gameplay trumps all this other crap when you try a new game. For example, lol is very new player unfriendly...you start out vs bots you might be able to handle with little to no tutorial of any substance, but the game is fun. The first 20 games you play youre playing with quitters seemingly against professional smurfs but they have no problems retaining players. I know its a different game, but dumbing everything down for new players isnt really going to help retain anyone when the game they come into just isnt entertaining. This game is stacked even worse against new players with a store that has unlimited currency except to the newbie that doesnt even know how to use it and warps whenever they start feeling comfortable just flying around. It's hard to put yourselves in the shoes of a complete beginner but with the way I played this game 12 years ago when I first started I would have probably uninstalled also.

[Star Fox]

Oh my god, I wrote a really long detailed post and it's gone because I timed out my login. I'm pretty mad.

Well here's a TL;DR.

Fix our web presence so we don't have 10,000 orphaned pages and subsites for entire leagues that haven't had a news post in more than a year (this is a project)

Remove BWC, TWRC, TWDT, TWHT, TWT (this even a league, or an event?), TWEL merge with pub and all dueling rated in pub, but fix wb arena to rectangle not gay circle asteroid shit

Remove staff quota so less hosting in general, but more scheduled events on Friday nites/Saturdays so people know ahead of time that it's gonna happen

Don't force anyone to play pub (Except forcing staff is ok imo), they'll just leave and not play, then you'll REALLY kill the zone

DO limit number of levs in play at once, making some of these people join the action instead of lobbing blues while touching themselves

Fix our mentality as a zone (if you're grabbing pubbers for ?go base you're doing it wrong, get your asses to pub and join the fight instead. want a "serious" game? bd. don't have enough? recruit some pubbers.)

Fix our attitudes/stop being faggots (stop disparaging people on Paladen/Attach, stop getting your whole squad to back you up down-talking some newb who just went 3-10, and generally stop acting like 12 y/o CoD kids. seriously.)

That's about it.