What's up kids

[Depre]

Just installed SS again, after like 4-5 yrs! What's new

[Shaddowknight]

Lots of new things. Map looks a little different, as happens every few years. Lots more to duel, with dueling and such in pub, but other arenas are pretty sparce these days. TWD is still crawling along, with TWL coming up in a week.

[Crescent Seal]

staff now bans people for having pixelated banners of breasts

[DKFett]

A while ago, one guy used antiwarp to chase staff who were LTing and ruining pub for basers. They went into the spawn area and immediately banned the guy for "using antiwarp in spawn." As you'd expect there was an uproar on forums and even some staffers agree it was wrong but the other staff were like "it's MY decision. If you don't like it you can stop playing."

A little while before that staff got pissy that some players had a lot of pubbux and staff felt as though their power and influence was compromised while players stored millions, so they completely reset the in-game currency and said "this increases competitive play and helps bring new players. If you don't like it you can stop playing."

[Ricko]

If that's your view on why pub bux were reset then you're obviously just
a staff hater with no real depth behind your arguments. Try the fact people were prizing themselves every minute as they had so much money built up it was completely ruining game play and there was a serious case of inflation occurring. A reset needed to happen and will do so on more of a regular occurrence to avoid similar situations again.

[Ephemeral]

If that's your view on why pub bux were reset then you're obviously just
a staff hater with no real depth behind your arguments. Try the fact people were prizing themselves every minute as they had so much money built up it was completely ruining game play and there was a serious case of inflation occurring. A reset needed to happen and will do so on more of a regular occurrence to avoid similar situations again.

Ricko,
I certainly do not have the ability to determine what another’s persons motives are, but I think that we can all agree that there is an underlying ‘theme’ to most all of the issues that have plagued this zone. Horrid leadership.

‘Ideas’ (like pub bucks) were implemented without being thought through and with absolutely no way to measure the impact of the solution. In some cases they are solutions looking for a problem (read as, ‘hey’ I know how to code something and am willing to do it so here’s a good idea we should do’). The ideas were often half-assed solutions with little or no consideration given to the primary objectives of the zone and need to keep new players coming back; if a single person had enough influence and ‘friends’ they could get their idea sold. No one was held responsible for their decisions; ideas like pub bucks has had a detrimental effect of pub but no one was ever held responsible for the half assed way it was implemented.

The entire staff structure was built upon zone permissions; having the ability to do zoners, being able to silence players, being able to ban people, having access to certain commend line ‘powers’. So instead of having a staff full of people who joined because they wanted to truly help the zone, we ended up with a staff full of people who mostly valued their ‘powers’.
The system for determining if a staffer was doing their jobs was badly broken and flawed. The most important aspects, that of providing help to new players and servicing the player base, was considered a lowly <ZH> job. <ZH>’s are at the bottom of the staff ladder and by association the most important things staff do was redefined as not being important. Then the staff system rewarded those who hosted events by mandating they host X amount of times per month. At the end of every month there was increase in hosting as staffers logged in and tried to complete their quotas. This meant that they would hold events even when it dropped the number of active players in Pub to 6 and new players entering would just leave. It also meant that many events were under attended and resulted in even more players leaving.

The hand full of good staffers, those that did not care about the empowerment and simply wanted to help zone faced huge challenges including being flamed when they had no fault. At some point someone thought that having better player input and ‘votes’ would somehow help (it didn’t).

The leagues competed against each other even when the zone population shrunk below supporting levels; no one had the balls to pull the plug on any of them for years. No one bothered to consider that the true value of any of the leagues was to give something to newer player to aspire towards; they evolved into nothing more than dick-measuring by vets who like to think that shooting a digital bullet across a screen is something to be proud of. Even the one league that was originally developed to introduce newer players into this aspect of the zone turned into a ‘vet-fest’. The annual turnover in the management of the leagues was inefficient and resulted in little continuity between seasons. The only thing that anyone was willing to tackle is what they can get done in a few weeks, there was no long term solution for anything (like rewriting the rules to avoid the drama and endless appeals every season in TWL).

And as the population shrunk the smaller subset of inconsiderate, selfish players became more predominate. They ran around in pub and own new players, they push the rules at every turn. With the zone population being so close to critical mass, it became even harder to make decisions that would run players off.

Then about a year ago there appears that some in staff began to understand some of this; if nothing else they understood that something needed to be done differently. Some strides have been made to correct some of the above but only time will tell if it has been enough or if it was in time.
eph