Thank You.

[Demonic]

Since Shaddow brought up making changes…..

IMO TW staff, and the zone itself, is not solution orientated. In the time I have been playing I am not sure that I have ever seen a single real solution implemented. Rather TW staff and zone are ‘reaction’ orientated. An issue is identified and a reaction is formulated and applied.

There is a big difference between a solution and a reaction. A good example is SIDS (Sudden Infant Death Syndrome); the leading cause of death among infants 1 month to 1 year olds. There is no solution to this horrid problem but there is a reaction (reaction = that infants younger than 1 year old should be placed on their backs to sleep — never face-down on their stomachs). This seems to help reduce the issue but bottom-line is that no one knows what causes SIDS and there is no real solution. No one is any smarter and the issue is not resolved.

True solutions are always better that reactions. Solutions mean that a root cause is identified, a possible resolution devised for that root cause, and then tested for correctness. Never in the history of this zone has this ever happened. What we have instead is a bunch of reactions (usually from the bottom up) to issues. No one has ever gotten smarter from these reactions, no one can say for sure if the reactions really resolved any issues.

While it may seem that working towards real solutions takes more work and time but it is false economy to think that reactions are better. Not only do solutions it put to bed the real issue but it also removes all debate/whining over that issue for years to come. If anyone questions the results, they can simply repeat the testing used and/or develop new theories for consideration. Point is, there real quantified baselines to work with, not opinions, lip flapping, and uncertainty. (Imagine the value if this had been done for the last 15 years, 15 years worth of real data and understanding of the changes that had been made.)

So why didn’t this happen and why is this not being pursued now? Because it is ‘easier’ to just wing a reaction than to actually do it right. If I have an idea and have influence than I only have to find someone to do the dev work and I can get it implemented. No checks, no balances, no way to really understand if my idea has addressed the actual issue or not. I can rely on ‘casual observation’ to justify my idea (for example, vets feedback on this forum or some informal bullshit ‘poll’); basically allowing me to slide on ever proving that my idea was effective or not. A reaction approach is also ‘easier’ since it doesn’t require teamwork, I can go off into a corner and develop a reaction by myself and don’t need other to buy in.

In my opinion the lack of real solutions is has always been a upper TW leadership problem. They controlled the staff culture and had the empowerment to drive the zone to find real solutions. Lower staff had no real way to change the way things were getting done, it was up to someone like PL (who certainly was intelligent enough to know the difference between a solution and a reaction) to put the staff on the right track. A new issue should have been assigned an owner and that owner should have been required to assemble a team responsible for finding the solution. No delusion as to the possible root cause, no long winded debates from the playing population, no self-righteous idea owner who blows off all challenges to his idea with a wave of his hand. Only quantified and qualified data that can be used to explain and understand the solution with the ability for anyone to revisit the issue at any time.

This reaction culture has also prevented some people (like myself) from feeling like they can be productive on staff. If the zone is not going to benefit by getting wiser then I have a very hard time justifying investing my time in it. Even if the zone fails a person could feel good about their participation in a solution-orientated organization. But how can anyone feel good about their investment in a reactionary organization; the zone fails and they walk away with only speculation about having made a difference?

Is it too late to change to a solution orientated zone? IMO it is never too late to do things right. Dump the current dumbass staff organization and reorganize without the 1:1 relationship to zone permissions. Build teamwork, hire, fire, and promote based upon a single simple concept, is this person contributing to the improvement of the zone (and not the silly ‘if you host a lot than you are a good staffer mentality’). Only upper staff can do something like this, and there is no way to do this without drastic change (IMO Demonic’s style is to take things slowly and not make sweeping changes).
eph

Heh your not wrong, while sweeping changes have a place its important to get the buy in from player base and staff base or it falls flat. An example would be res limits, where I made a sweeping change to the way the zone works but based on player opinion was forced to put it back on.

As for the rest of your points, your correct - I have always disagreed with a system where power is based on position rather then needs, however that's how it is hardcoded into the game (*1). The fact there is a lot more upper staff now is due to needing powers to do their job rather then the aged old I have played the game for xxx yrs so I should be smod etc... Still giving ppl the ability to alter settings etc doesn't sit right with me off the cuff.

So yes after that long winded answer, the basics is - I am changing things slowly as I think its best to take the slowly slowly approach in those circumstances.

[Crescent Seal]

Is it too late to change to a solution orientated zone? IMO it is never too late to do things right. Dump the current dumbass staff organization and reorganize without the 1:1 relationship to zone permissions. Build teamwork, hire, fire, and promote based upon a single simple concept, is this person contributing to the improvement of the zone (and not the silly ‘if you host a lot than you are a good staffer mentality’). Only upper staff can do something like this, and there is no way to do this without drastic change (IMO Demonic’s style is to take things slowly and not make sweeping changes).
eph

gr8 post +1

[Crescent Seal]

Heh your not wrong, while sweeping changes have a place its important to get the buy in from player base and staff base or it falls flat. An example would be res limits, where I made a sweeping change to the way the zone works but based on player opinion was forced to put it back on.

yet it was still discussed at that player/staff meeting lol. huge waste of time. but i agree that aggressive changes need to happen with player approval.

[War]

This is clearly the fault of staff. Dissolve Trench Wars.

[Izor]

LOL every time I see Eph post I wonder why hes not in Demonics spot. Clearly he has some sort of vision or at least a sense of organizational structure that this game and/or staff has needed for a very long time. Unfortunately, people who get in a high position on staff on this online game seem to cling onto it for unknown reasons. I'm fairly positive saying that if Ephemeral was in charge of pub for instance, you wouldnt see ship settings every other week seemingly at random depending on which players squawk the loudest. And he wouldnt approach the lev as though it was some new problem for the pub game.

Every time a half baked change is implemented, you lose people as a result. Take a look at the threads and see the immediate aftermath of all of them recently. Also, allowing the players to vote on things then basing decisions off the majority is a godawful policy. These staffers are kinda new, so I'll refer back to pure pubs and the majority decision to start eliminating levs from the pub game. It was popular among the people that played, but the game overall lost a sizeable minority of pub players that couldnt play the way they wanted to and had no interest solo freq wbing or pub basing. I actually felt like the new lev was balanced and proved to be the one bright spot in a series of terrible decisions made during fis's tenure. I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that people either didnt like basing with the new lev's tk potential and wanted it eliminated or wanted to try and LT again, so thats why the vote went the way it did. Now there's a subset of players who feel pubs with the old lev is unplayable (they've felt this way for 10 years), and it is going to be this way no matter what choice is made. Indecision on the issue is going to prove to be worse than making a decision one way or another. The current staff problem solving model will be polling players, who will vote to go back to the new lev based on the whining. You dont know if players who quit are going to come back, and there will be players who quit that enjoyed playing the lev. It's long past time that some changes were made to the top of staff to include some people who understand these basic concepts behind managing things. The current crew hasnt been getting it done for quite some time and they're proving to have learning disabilities. The game's lost more players in 3 months than I've remembered it losing in a year.

[roxxkatt]

seeing all the threads lately only makes anyone realize that we are moving forward in the correct direction and are only getting rid of the cancerous trolls

additionally i wouldnt want to give a job to anyone that doesnt have the mental capacity to realize their name appears next to all of their posts

[Oranje]

It is you who will get c.
additionally i would want to say Hi Cres! Hi Sir Spider! Hi Wazzaaa! Hi Mom!

[kthx]

Leave it to the guy who thinks 4 people constitutes running a zone to think the fact that there are like three threads talking about changes in trenchwars currently that things are actually being fixed.

[roxxkatt]

seeing all the threads lately only makes anyone realize that we are moving forward in the correct direction and are only getting rid of the cancerous trolls

called it

[the_paul]

Basically no, but when you get into more things it will, of course, get more complicated. When you have ideas for certain change that you want to see done, you generally have to be prepared to fight tooth and nail walking through the snow uphill both ways.

I had my hand in basically every area of staff except for anything associated with hosting because events are gay. It's still not that complicated, at all. It's a copout for a lot of people, but it's a very, very simple job.

[WillBy]

I had my hand in basically every area of staff except for anything associated with hosting because events are gay. It's still not that complicated, at all. It's a copout for a lot of people, but it's a very, very simple job.

I think he means "getting people to cooperate is difficult"

Also, since you dont log in anymore, Hi tp. How them broncos doing?

[the_paul]

Sup Will, hows it going buddy? Broncos are good, lets face it, every other team is just playing for 2nd place at this point

[Fit of Rage]

tots my goats