Official DiSTENSiON Thread (Schedule)

[Shaddowknight]

LF, I have no issues with you teaching staffers how to host manually.

[Ephemeral]

IMO for each of the features there should be a simple risk/cost/benefit analysis (usually done before time/money is spent on developing the feature, but can also be used after the fact). This is not hard stuff, it is straight forward and easy to understand. First let’s look at a diagram to see just how easy this kind of analysis can be.



Very simple and self explanatory; you have to be able to answer some questions before you can have any kind of good understanding. This is where TW fails miserably, consider the risk/cost/benefit analysis foundation. There is no real historical understanding, multiple changes have been done by multiple people and no one really kept track of anything. What about analytical data? Nothing really worth talking about (a few metrics exist but nothing anyone wants to really trust). How about knowledge and experience? Many players/staff do actually have knowledge and experience; the only trick is to pull it unbiased by finding those who also don’t have other agendas.

Without the foundation we begin the analysis handicapped. But let’s pretend that we know what we are talking about and see if we can analyze the Distension feature.

What are the possible good impacts?
1. May increase zone interest and population

What can go wrong?
1. Code stability/cannot be run with certain other TW features
2. May be dividing population and negatively impacting other events

And how likely are these things to occur?
Everyone has an opinion, no one has any facts. So we get threads like this that just suck time while TW plows ahead without direction and without improvement. A lot of people weigh in with opinions presented as facts but truth is that no one really knows shit about the true risk/cost/benefit. Those that like/support/helped develop the feature jump in and defend it; those that do not do the opposite. Shit gets slung, forum participation goes up but the zone just limps along without meaningful change.

We don’t need engineering degrees to at least try to do shit the right way, we only have to have the desire and drive. We don’t need more ‘good ideas’, there has NEVER been a shortage of new, good ideas. In fact it is all the ‘good ideas’ that has gotten us to the point we are at now; a zone filled with things that half-work, things that represent huge amounts of wasted just in terms of debate, things that have a following and have player threatening to leave if they are changed/removed.

This is what happens when things are run from the ‘bottom up’ instead of from the ‘top down’. TW needs a ‘master plan’ and people who are willing to make it happen. The master plan should be comprised of smaller plans. Putting plans into place cost very little, it simply takes people with the proper strategic ‘top down’ perspective and some work.

Or we can keep pulling ‘good ideas’ form our asses, implementing them without the proper analysis and in a directionless ‘bottom up’ vacuum, and see if this approach yields different result that it has over the last decade.
eph

[Frightful]

Here's my issue though... if an event like hockey can run for 3 or 4 straight hours, and probably could have easily ran for another 3 or 4 straight hours after that as well...

why would you host an event that hurts that activity? Isn't it a GOOD thing that people enjoy something so much that they will play it and keep it active for 4+ hours (far more than that if not interrupted by distension, which happens to screw up the hockey bot)?

I don't know, maybe I'm using too much common sense here for a dying game that is badly in need of population and activity, but... this whole distension thing seems extremely counter-productive when it screws up one of the most active events TW has.

Why can't qan or whoever FIX distension already so it doesn't fuck up the Hockey bots? Nobody would bitch anymore if you actually did that. I mean, seriously, distension has been nothing but a headache since it was created. It used to crash the server everytime it was hosted, which was fixed. Now it simply ruins Hockey, which is the most popular arena TW has (and stays popular throughout the day). I simply do not understand why this isn't fixed, instead of mods saying "you can always find a staff member to host hockey for you" as if any staff member is actually going to host hockey for 4+ hours at a time to keep the population happy?



This is exactly true. Beyond that 1 hour a day thing.. hockey runs for hours and hours and hours. Seriously, the other night, it ran for at least 10 hours straight. It might've gone on longer, but I wasn't about to stick around to keep measuring it. Hockeybot is very important for Hockey to run smoothly, and very few (if any) ERs or Mods on staff either A) know how to host hockey B) want to host hockey and/or C) Care about hockey. They also don't want to host it for 10 hours. This is my point. Distension kills hockey because it kills the Hockeybot, which is complete bullshit if you ask me. No event should be ruining other ACTIVE events whatsoever in TW.

To put it plainly, Distension is fucking broken, and until it is fixed, it needs to be scrapped. It was broken back when it crashed the server every time it was hosted, and it is still broken. Either fix it, or drop it. Why are you still hosting a broken event? People like it, so you feel you HAVE to host it? People like Hockey too. Why are we catering to one while screwing over the other? Hockeybot doesn't fuck over distension or any other arena/event, or I'd say scrap that too until it was fixed.

I'm also not mentioning how distension tends to ruin other arenas too, because there's simply no point. Nobody will listen or care. I just know that it does, because I see it every time. I'm ignoring that fact due to the possibility that distension is so popular (with it's 20 players) that everyone that would be playing other arenas decide to either A) play distension or B) Distension simply has bad timing and those players would've gone afk and/or left during that time period anyways. Who knows. Therefore, I'm focusing solely on the idea that Distension is broken and needs to be fixed, if it can be fixed.

Exalt, I'm curious why you think hockey should take precedence over Distension. As you said, hockey runs for hours and hours. Distension runs for an hour a day. Why exactly do you deem hockey more important than Distension? Just as there is a group of people who only play hockey, there is a group who only play Distension.

I will, however, agree that it's crazy that DBot and HockeyBot can't coexist. I know nothing about code, but it would be great if someone could investigate the issue and figure it out. That being said, last time Distension was played, I believe it was Fusha who came in and manually hosted hockey during that time. People kept playing and everything worked out. It's only a band-aid to the real issue, but it works for the time being.
fri

[roxxkatt]

why is everyone listening to this guy jerking off into his own mouth
hes just whining that hockey doesnt run 24/7

he even said himself hockey ran hours longer than dist did, and dist had more players than hockey
zone gained more players, both events ran long enough, case closed

[qan]

Kill RP earned while the basing game is active

With the interest of placing more focus on basing and less on simply making kills, I've decided to make some fairly large alterations to how RP is earned while holding/not holding the flag. The idea behind this is to get players thinking about whether or not the ship they are playing is the best in order to win the base. It's no longer all that beneficial to simply make kills on the attack without taking base, and saying to hell with the win. Remember, you can change ships in the middle of a round without losing your participation as long as you aren't about to win; use this to your advantage and change as necessary to a ship that will actually help take base, rather than complaining when your all-bombing team loses yet another round.

• +40% RP bonus per kill while holding base in 1-flag mode.
• -35% RP penalty per kill while not holding base in 1-flag mode
• +125% RP bonus per kill while holding both bases in 2-flag mode.
• -75% RP penalty per kill while not holding either base in 2-flag mode.
• SUPPORT SHIPS (except Weasel) are immune to ALL penalties. (Remember, this includes Levi.)
• If teams are imbalanced, no bonus or penalty is applied.

Teamkilling changes:

• RP penalties for teamkilling have been increased and scaled according to level in response to an excess of teamkilling. Please watch your shots, especially if you do plan to rank up at some point in time. Sharks continue to receive a significantly smaller penalty for TK due to their role in the game.

[Shaddowknight]

so winners win more and losers lose more? This seems like a horrid change IMO. It is going to create an imbalance, and will only get worse and worse, causing continual teamshifting to even it up every week.
If you are losing, the other team gets stronger faster, and you get stronger slower, and fall so far behind that its impossible to catch up unless youmiracle a full day or two of team wins, or need to have host babysit the team balance and fuck with it more than should be needed to keep it fair.

[Exalt]

why is everyone listening to this guy jerking off into his own mouth
hes just whining that hockey doesnt run 24/7

he even said himself hockey ran hours longer than dist did, and dist had more players than hockey
zone gained more players, both events ran long enough, case closed

Cry more

[Ephemeral]

FYI, yesterday Distension was run and pub dropped to <10 players. I stayed and tried to support pub for 2 rounds but finally said ‘fuck it’. Very few brand new players attend events of any kind. When a new player comes into the game and sees no one playing in Pub they leave and rarely come back. IMO the number one priority right now should be Pub and new player retention. This priority could change if we manage to get a sustainable new player population again.

So what does this mean? IMO scheduled or not if an event will suck the life out of Pub then it should be not be started. Scheduled or not if Pub active players drops below XX amount of players the event should be halted.

I know this sucks, I know this means that we may lose some existing players. But not having a zone at all should trump these concerns. Mark my words. If we keep catering to events/existing players and allow pub to be the shit hole that it currently is, this zone is doomed. We only have to look at other zones to see what happens when you don’t prioritize new player retention.

Perhaps there are other ways to encourage Pub play. How about a system where a player has to have XX amount of playing pub time in the previous week or two before they are eligible to play an event?
eph

[qan]

We only have to look at other zones to see what happens when you don’t prioritize new player retention.

Only problem: TW is one of the few zones that (AFAIK) actually monitors new players, and I hate to say it, but we just don't get that many. We're talking fewer than what you can count on one hand in an entire day sometimes. I don't know the full stats offhand, but we get a notification anytime someone new comes in. It's just not enough to base how we run the zone around it to the detriment of any other part. In my opinion.

Even pub players are playing at such a high level that in general, newcomers can't really compete. Add to that the fact that our game looks and especially sounds like crap, and most people are out of here the moment after they come in. Telling dedicated players that they can't play Dist because they need to play pub so that on the off-chance a new player comes in and will see 11v11 instead of 6v6 just doesn't really seem fair.

Now as for getting more new players? We have a head of marketing that is literally just sitting on the money (sorry 24, but that's not cool, man -- I don't care if you are working hard IRL; that excuse works for no-one but sysops, AFAIK. Step down and give your position to someone who will use it). The last time we advertised for this game was in September 2012, quite literally almost a year and a half ago. I was the one who had to make the inquiry to get it going, too. Go to http://trenchwars.org/donationdetails/ and then click on the red amounts in the Money Spent row to see the details. (The cash events detail is misleading; we did have a cash event about 4 months ago. This is of course the one that requires the least effort to spend.) I'm not sure how we get new players except by luck/download sites/oldgames sites where we're indexed. It's certainly not through advertising.

Last but most obviously: I've seen pub drop to this level without Distension running in the middle of the day. Sometimes people are just doing other things. You of all people, who are so in favor of gathering and comparing real data, should know that arguing from one data point about the more general case is not useful or even convincing. That said, even if Distension does cause pub population to drop, if there are 34 people playing it, 8 in queue to play it, and many coming online specifically to play it, I honestly don't really see a problem.

And why is that? Me of all people, who loves pub on the whole more than Distension? Because my focus is on old player retention. I don't know of many other people who seem to consider this as important as new player retention, but to me it's much much more important. We are staying alive mostly because we're decent at keeping the current playerbase and continuing to attract back older players who once played and would like to come and see some friends again. People who play every now and again and have for the last decade or more. We just don't have a lot to offer newer players ... it's an archaic, unwieldy, and admittedly ugly game that mostly appeals only to those who are used to its many quirks. Let's not cut off our nose to spite our face here.

[Exalt]

I have an idea, that may be a horrible one, but I always have ideas running through my head at all times, yet I usually just keep silent bcuz most of them are pretty bad and have no actual reference to anything involving subspace in general (they usually involve awesome places in which I can get my non-adventerous GF to have adventerous sex with me, like for instance she has a 3 hour break during her college classes every Tuesday/Thursday, and sometimes I go visit for lunch, and wanna sneak into a classroom and fuck her on the desk. I plan on trying this tomorrow actually).

Anyway, back to my point. I get ideas. Here's an idea that works around people's love for Distension while also removes people's concern for public dying.

Why not try for ONE TIME at least, on a TRIAL BASIS type of thing, just ONCE, maybe an hour on a random day... to run distension INSIDE PUBLIC. Like make it a PUB EVENT. We do pub events sometimes, right? Can this happen? Is this viable? Qan, you would know. Is this a bad/horrible/impossible idea? Or could this work?

IF this could work, why not try this once? Just do it one tie as a trial basis. If it fails, so what. it's one hour and its only for one day and a trial. If it works, then u could do it more often.

What do you say?

Add to that the fact that our game looks and especially sounds like crap, and most people are out of here the moment after they come in. Telling dedicated players that they can't play Dist because they need to play pub so that on the off-chance a new player comes in and will see 11v11 instead of 6v6 just doesn't really seem fair.

You know what would be great? If we could somehow pull a Evony-style SEXY UP SUBSPACQ kinda campaign. Every1 loves sex, and it sells, right? What we we turned public into one big porno show in the background? We could find some fake subspace female (there are plenty! Hell, we cud even find a real one that isn't rly hot but maybe cud pretend like PrettyMadness) to cybersex any new player that sticks around for a week. Sure, you'll get a ton of creepy weirdo pedophile-type faggots who generally deserve to die in a fire, but I mean, te world is full of those kind of people and that's why we have things like seedy XXX video stores with those little peep-show things that truck drivers go to when they can't find a good truckstop whore to give them a BJob.

Hahaha, just a joke, but at the very least, we could do an advertizing campaign Evony style. Why not? What do we have to lose? Dignity? What Dignity? This game is like 50 years old. It's a broken down stripper that struggles to earn $10 during her dollar dances and only manages to get $ off of really drunk guys and/or college kids who do it as a dare to their stupid friends. Fuck it. Let's use that advertizing $ and advertize Subspace like Evony.

Hell, even Panda Bear said she'd do it in some form or another in one of these random forum threads that I can't remember which. Put her in a subspace thong/bra and let her fake titties do the talking with writing on it like "Play Continuum to have fun, kill ppl in 2d spaceship warfare, and to chat with me in person!" sorta deal. Let's do this. Sex sells baby! Yes, I just got laid, so it's on my mind, but stll. Sex is a gr8 thing, and Subspace needs MOAR. Too many nerds play this game to NOT at least get SOME attention from something like this. Plus, any1 that donates like $50 to the donation fund gets to get a 5 minute cam show with Panda Bear and see her fake titties in person. OR if you are a creepy/weirdo type that likes BBW's, we could always get Goddess to do it too. Or Demonic. I heard she was a female still and hasn't come out of the closet as being a man like Left_Eye did yet (sorry Demonic, that's a joke).

Because my focus is on old player retention. I don't know of many other people who seem to consider this as important as new player retention, but to me it's much much more important.

On a slightly more serious note, I am one of those people as well Qan. This is because we have what very few people in the world do. Common sense. I find it ironic that it is called COMMON sense when it isn't very common whatsoever, but still. I agree wholeheartedly with you on this point. I'm in your corner bro. OLD player retention is the only viable way to regain our lost population.

This is a dream that will never, ever happen... but imagine if we could somehow manage to get all the old players who USED to play and love subspace back again? We'd have no population trouble anymore. None at all. Thousands of ppl have played and loved this game before. I quit for years and came back. Why can't we focus on getting old players back?

This may be impossible, and not entirely viable either, but what about sending emails/fliers to all the people in the subspace database who added their REAL emails to their player names they create for ?Lostpassword purposes? This would fail for players like me, due to all my names being registered under a fake email like A@A.COM bcuz I was always too lazy to write out my entire real email, but still... is this possible? Why not try?

[qan]

so winners win more and losers lose more? This seems like a horrid change IMO. It is going to create an imbalance, and will only get worse and worse, causing continual teamshifting to even it up every week.
If you are losing, the other team gets stronger faster, and you get stronger slower, and fall so far behind that its impossible to catch up unless youmiracle a full day or two of team wins, or need to have host babysit the team balance and fuck with it more than should be needed to keep it fair.

This is very much in the forefront of my mind; this wasn't an easy decision. However, bottom line, I've seen too many teams lose because people want to play "their ship" and are happy to simply earn the kill RP (which, if done right, can add up to quite a bit more than any end round bonus).

This modification of RP earned was in the game before; it just wasn't as pronounced. One reason I'm making this change is so that people are aware of it, and so that it may influence their decision to play Only Their Ship, even when the team is about to lose. A lot of people play Distension, a team game, as a solo endeavor. That is, what's best for them is what drives behavior. This is unfortunately natural; it's a game that's meant to be addicting by allowing you specialization over your ship and possible advantage over other players. So it follows that possibly the only way people are going to have more of a vested interest in basing, as opposed to allowing their team to lose by sticking with their chosen ship, regardless of if that ship choice will allow them to take base, is if they are personally affected by their inability to take base. It's not simply "teams are unbalanced." If a top squad played a low-ranking squad, but had a horrible lineup, they'd probably still lose (hard). We wouldn't say that teams were unbalanced (i.e., that the low-ranking squad was better) -- we'd say, wow, what the hell was with that lineup? Are they insane?

There are instances where changing to Spider, Lanc (if they have it unlocked) or even Warbird are going to make the team much more likely to take base, even if those ships are rank 0. Will people bite the bullet and change, like they might in a good game of pub basing? It depends a lot on the Distension crowd, really. But with the +5% bonus for every ship over rank 20, I'm hoping it will be sufficiently incentivized to play something other than your main in situations where what you're playing just isn't working.

[qan]

IF this could work, why not try this once? Just do it one tie as a trial basis. If it fails, so what. it's one hour and its only for one day and a trial. If it works, then u could do it more often.

Well, problem is, it would mean recycling the zone every time we'd want to switch it out. You'd have to change both the pub map, settings, LVZ .. (The download is pretty huge.) Plus, Distension is confusing as hell to anyone starting out -- SS alone is really confusing, much less all the nonsense Dist adds in -- and I'm not wild about Distension ever replacing pub, which could possibly end up happening if there were enough support for it.

Hahaha, just a joke, but at the very least, we could do an advertizing campaign Evony style. Why not? What do we have to lose? Dignity? What Dignity? This game is like 50 years old. It's a broken down stripper that struggles to earn $10 during her dollar dances and only manages to get $ off of really drunk guys and/or college kids who do it as a dare to their stupid friends. Fuck it. Let's use that advertizing $ and advertize Subspace like Evony.

Took me a sec, and then I remembered the kinds of ads you've seen. I think they might be a little bit disappointed once they get in, though, and it's a bunch of spaceships. At least Evony I believe has some 3D model avatars. We might try replacing the ship graphics with naughty bits, though?! (Oh, wait, we can't even have tiny banners with breasts, because apparently that's porn!)

This may be impossible, and not entirely viable either, but what about sending emails/fliers to all the people in the subspace database who added their REAL emails to their player names they create for ?Lostpassword purposes? This would fail for players like me, due to all my names being registered under a fake email like A@A.COM bcuz I was always too lazy to write out my entire real email, but still... is this possible? Why not try?

We don't have access to that DB, but while scouring TW's database tables for fun (hey, you may now be getting it on the regular, but it's been almost a year for me, hahah) I located a nice little treasure trove: emails for those who have signed up for TWD, and those who have signed up for forums. (Forum-associated emails are especially likely to be valid.) Now of course, mass-emailing all these people *might* be considered a little imprudent ... but then again, we could personalize it, and at the very least, some of them might get through/be appreciated. Just a "we're still kicking" message. A lot of other games do this.

[Exalt]

I located a nice little treasure trove: emails for those who have signed up for TWD, and those who have signed up for forums. (Forum-associated emails are especially likely to be valid.) Now of course, mass-emailing all these people *might* be considered a little imprudent ... but then again, we could personalize it, and at the very least, some of them might get through/be appreciated. Just a "we're still kicking" message. A lot of other games do this.

Qan... Fuck the imprudence part you mentioned... you just hit a GOLD MINE my friend. This is exactly what I'm talking about. We don't need the database for new player name emails when we have Forum/TWD Emails!!! We are Trenchwars anyways, and the people who are most likely to come back and play Trenchwars are THOSE players who sgned up for TWD and TW Forums.

Can we do this? Please? Seriously, let me join staff for a week just for this purpose. I will write the emails (I write professionally anyways, and I can be professional when the situation calls for it... even in subspace). Hell, I will even use proper grammar!

Seriously though, Qan... this is a fucking GOLD MINE. I can't believe you didn't mention this sooner. This is the best advertizing material we have at our disposal, and best of all, IT IS FREE. All it takes is some time and someone to write the emails up. Fuck, if you want, I'll write them up, run them by the proper channels (aka staff members that aren't douchetards, meaning you and demonic and company). I can even personalize them if you'd like. I'd even include various personal things that each player has accomplished during their time in Trenchwars, such as winning TWL, or TWDT, or fuck.. even Basing World Cup that used to go on back in the day.

We need to do this ASAP. Why has the marketing team not thought of this already? I should apply for staff, because this is ridiculous that our marketing team didn't try this already. I gave a random fucking half-witted joke of an idea (mostly anyway), and you came back at me with a fucking priceless treasure of an idea that could at the VERY LEAST give us a SLIGHT boost in population. Also, who DOESN'T want to see some of their old friends/old names re-enter subspace and play again? Seriously?

How amazing would it be to see Pallies come back? Cripples? Onix? Anti-Scrub? Rejected-Basers? British Squad? Who doesn't want to see Banzi come back and try to own all these egotistica new generation WBs that think they are God's gift to ship 1 in Subspace???

Seriously, if even a FEW of those old players come back, and that information gets out... all of our AFKers on these forums that don't play anymore would start playing again as well. All kinds of good things could happen through this.

Qan.... FUCK IMPRUDENCE. Let's get this done. I'm not kidding. If you need help getting shit like this done, let me know and I'll apply for staff right now just for this. Stuff like this is why you are the best staff member TW has, and why losing you would not only be one of its biggest tragedies, but also probably spell doom for the zone (I include Demonic in that list as well, due to her being able to think outside of the box and her ability to do things differently without the power-trip crap that we've always seen in the past).

Qan... you are a genius my man. Seriously, will TW Staff do this???? Say yes and I'll go apply right now and actually spend my free time writing professional/entertaining/eye-catching Emails. I'm not kidding here. I write TWLD Hot or Not for fun and that shit alone is hard work, but that is because it is boring and is thankless in all forms. I get people telling me thank you in game, or people post "great read" or whatever which is nice, but overall it is thankless and sucks as a job. That's why I never wanted to join staff. It also doesn't actually do anything to promote the future of Trenchwars or make it much better, beyond stroke egos of TWL players. If TW Staff are serious about this Email thing and about trying to regain old players back.... I'm putting all my chips on the table and going ALL IN.

[but...why...per...]

I'm pretty sure a mass email was attempted before as it is what got me back playing Trench Wars a few years ago.

[qan]

This is the best advertizing material we have at our disposal, and best of all, IT IS FREE. All it takes is some time and someone to write the emails up. Fuck, if you want, I'll write them up, run them by the proper channels (aka staff members that aren't douchetards, meaning you and demonic and company). I can even personalize them if you'd like.

Just checked the stats ... we have around 4K emails from the forums, and 1.4K from TWD. (Most are likely to overlap, of course... might have 4.5K or so uniques.)

Personalization for a few people would be cool, though. For example, we could set it up so that if people wanted to leave a personalized addition to an email of a particular individual, we could let them include it on the bottom of the email. "Here are a few messages from people you know who are still playing and would like to see you come back!" That kind of thing. Actual personalization could work if people wanted to send their own emails, but would probably need to be on a case-by-case basis.

We need to do this ASAP. Why has the marketing team not thought of this already? I should apply for staff, because this is ridiculous that our marketing team didn't try this already.

Yeah... heh. No offense, again, but marketing is famous for doing as close to nothing as possible without being fired. I tried about a year ago to light a fire under them by showing a breakdown of the donations available, and some possible uses, but to no avail. Like I said: last advertising was around 1.5 years ago. No kidding.

But don't join staff! Damn! I need you on Council!

Let's talk about this in-game. We could do a lot with this idea.