Open Letter - Tough Decisions

[Dreamwin]

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.)

lol..?

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 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

With these I agree on.

[Rab]

Demo required to set direction for whole staff.

[Izor]

Kthx, then what is the first thing to tackle? Cause this thread is going in 20 different directions, and staffers that are in charge of their respective projects appear to be doing so pretty aimlessly with the exception of TWD. Depending on what you read here, redesigning a website, reducing infrastructure, creating a tutorial arena, and limiting hosted arenas are all being thrown out here. If you take something away that people like on this game, there are a certain percentage that will just stop playing. The math of 7 people in javduel and 7 people in ?go javs = 14 people in one or the other if you nix one doesnt follow.

[Star Fox]

basically this zone is running an infrastructure that was designed to scale up in complexity in response to what was perceived as a steadily rising population. the general consensus of what people want to see happen here resembles 2000-2004 tw an awful lot. considering this is a conversation that we've been having forever, i sure hope this thread results in some real changes.

...

tl;dr: tao te ching, verse 57

I like what jerome said. Too much infrastructure. The tough part is downsizing that infrastructure without limiting players. I think rotating an arena between wbduel, javduel, and base is a terrible idea. People should be able to do what they want to do. If they can't we'll just lose vets as well as new players.

...and nice TL;DR

[kthx]

Basically this is what I would do. I want to change something l, I talk to a few vets and upperstaff, we agree on something and we assign every member of Dev to it till its done. No second projects simultaneously no starting another discussion. One thing at a time hammered out back to back with no other random BS or distractions. Fix one problem and go to the next.

[Jerome Scuggs]

(also i refuse to believe kthx is warkwark because he was like greatest <ER> of all time and kthx is 5-time Annux Award for Trollery champion)

[Jerome Scuggs]

basically this zone is running an infrastructure that was designed to scale up in complexity in response to what was perceived as a steadily rising population. the general consensus of what people want to see happen here resembles 2000-2004 tw an awful lot. considering this is a conversation that we've been having forever, i sure hope this thread results in some real changes.

what drew me to tw was the killer hosts like kingz and milo who drove events on their personality alone, the bots they had were maybe good for spec locking and setting up team frequencies. tw's population was large enough to justify the crazy shit that happened like TWD, the new bots, and basically everything since like 2002. without writing an essay i'll sum it up by saying automation transformed tw but it's like you guys tried to automate the staff as well and it it led to all these bullshit "processes" and "public relations" and shit like that.

not saying devolve into tw anarchy or anything but i dunno, let some better <ER>'s have fun. free them from !zonerbot slavery and get rid of event queues and shit. get rid of quota and let good zh's get known by their work and quality responses and not their shift+F1 on it macro. biggest pet peeve when i was zh was always tanking the quota because i'd be in pub answering blue chat questions in blue chat before anyone had to even use ?help, meanwhile someone else rockin 200 calls because they rape the new player alert and spam a macro on how to use tutorial. just relax the rules a little bit, and if someone fucks up don't institute some new system or rule in response, just fire the dude and hire someone who isn't a jackass.

tl;dr: tao te ching, verse 57

[kthx]

Look, I would join staff again but I don't have unlimited time anymore, I gave a family and kids. So basically I would only join if I was in a position to straight up immediately change and fix broken shit. No two week conversations and circlejerks about things. A lot would change and some people wouldn't like it but it would be for the best. I don't mind some kids talking shit and would follow through with my big picture for this zone. That's the only way I would accept a staff position. The zone can trust that I know best and let me do what I'm going to do or just refuse my demands and let the higher ups argue about what to do as the zone dies. I have my vision for the zone, take it or leave it, its a limited time offer before the zone implodes to the point where its not able to be fixed.

[Zeebu]

have a single arena that always runs but continuously rotates between wbduel/javduel/base. no voting. just back to back to back in the same order. single population in one arena.

[fiS]

So far I've only read the first posts, and I'm surprised that this is now up for topic. When I joined staff I pointed out how our population is "everywhere", just not focused, and we're having everything automated and that this isn't the way to go. Hence I agree with disabling the automated events during the week. Weekend maybe is something else. This has 3 effects, and one will be all the people complaining about it being gone who fail to see the reason. Another effect will be that our ERs or hosts will most likely be more motivated to host events (and be more responsible for a good variety!) because, which brings me to the third effect: events or other then "special" things will be more crowded.

[Rab]

[...]stop being faggots
[...]That's about it.

Star Fox so smart <3

[Shaddowknight]

Most unfortunate Ricko... I would hope that communication about such will have improved since then. You should talk to beasty and poid again, they may also ask you to submit a staff app to be official andsuch though.

[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.

[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.

[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.