Open Letter to Demonic and M_M God

[roxxkatt]

with TWD to get more games taken place, make it so any member of team can challenge a friendly TWD game which would be non ranking, so even if no caps or Assistant are online they can still play a game.

this doesnt exist already?

[Turban]

i should have specified that i meant the lower staff, e.g. mods and hosts. for some reason once active mods get promoted to smod they quit doing what they are supposed to do: help the zone and its players. seen it happen way too often; wrong types of people in leadership roles. fk typing with the phone stinks, will edit this later and add my thoughts about other things as well.

[LF]

lack of quality/active european staffers

Probably more the former than the latter on this one. Every single "active" sysop we have is european, with MM being the only one that actually plays the game anymore. The is absolutely no "western world" (I wanted to avoid saying American since Canada is a huge part of our playerbase too) leadership in our zone. Hell even disregarding sysops and only looking at the rest of upperstaff:

Lefty: Head of bans...actually American and in a job that suits her real world skills (as a lawyer)
fis: Head of I have no idea...probably here just because. Extremely young and european.
Up in ya: American head of TWD - Doesn't even play TWD (Love the guy though)
Willby: Cashier at a grocery store, great kid and good worker but hardly what I'd consider "leadership"
Shaddow: public relations? I have no idea why this is a smod position, I consider it a product of HMS Syndrome
Reckful: Head of leagues, doesn't actually play any leagues.
ThePAP: Relatively unknown, but an absolutely fantastic coder and a real asset.
qan: Same as PAP, and probably the single best candidate imo for zone leadership
Dezmond: Was head of bans, now co-head? of a marketing team that hasn't done anything...ever. Probably HMS Syndrome
24: Also co-head? of marketing? What's even more amazing than this guy ever making SMod in the first place is how he has managed to keep the position this long while doing absolutely nothing...ever. So we have 2 SMod positions for a department that doesn't even really exist while MM does all the legwork in formulating an actual plan.
Kryn: Head of pub - while I disagree with his choices I think he's a good fit for the role

Without revealing anything I'm not supposed to reveal we have an overwhelming majority of european staffers compared to American/Canadian, especially given the playerbase that we have (Majority American/Canadian), and an entirely european "leadership" for a majority western population. Even worse we have all the wrong people in all the wrong positions (Not all but most). I will bite my tongue on highlighting the rest of the inner issues staff suffers from that could potentially make a huge difference but I'm probably going to get my ass reamed for this post as it is already anyways, if not axed for expressing my opinion.

tl;dr version: The issue isn't a lack of european staffers, its a lack of quality staffers and diverse leadership that actually plays the game.

[LF]

I think the TWD solution rests on the shoulders of everyone, as compared to those of staff alone. Just take a second to reflect on the current TWL season for reference. Each league had 8 teams. Each league was also only a 2 or 3 team show with everyone else just being filler squads just to have someone to play each week. You could have looked at rosters during preseason and KNOW that it was going to be dice/enemy/pandora in finals in LB, dice/pandora in LJ, and really just Fierce by itself in LD. Take a good hard look at the !myfreq listings for each squad playing today and I'll bet that every team involved (All 3 of them) has at LEAST 10+ players that could have been starters on other less "elite" squads this season. While granted my squad had a disappointing finish in TWLB due in large part to my own failure, how competitive do you think Fierce would have been at all in basing if players like me, diakka, myth and usoi had never joined in the first place, because any one of us could have joined and played for one of the top 3 squads in out respective division. The point is to stop joining squads that already have 25+ other capable starters on the roster and spread out the talent a bit. There's no reason you can't be on a chat with all of your friends, but are pixel medals so important that you have to stack as heavily as possible just to watch ease/megaman carry your ass to a medal each year? Spread out a bit and you will actually have people to play against, but god forbid you have to pewpew vs your "friends"

[Bigyin]

HI,

First of all haven't read full thread or played in awhie so sorry if I am repeating anything or things you have tried or are doing just now.

To get more people to play would it not be possible to put the game on steam or something like that? as im sure people would just download it and give it a go as its free, and sure a % of them would stay.

with TWD to get more games taken place, make it so any member of team can challenge a friendly TWD game which would be non ranking, so even if no caps or Assistant are online they can still play a game.

Also with TWD possible of adding a non squad member into a game, could limit it to say one? and just in non ranking games? reason for this would help more games played as would help make up the numbers if you don't have enough online, and also helps to try out players for joining the squad as you can see how they play with the team before they join.

I don't think Limit times when you can play TWDs would be a good idea, but you can do things to help them play when you want them to, like power hours? get more points for a win when you play in power hours etc

Idea for twd again, same idea of money you can earn in pub, put that into twd? so you can buy things like extra subs, swap life's with players as in someone starts with 11 lifes and other starts with 9, timeouts dureing the game as in no one can die from any team so gives time to regroup, Team energy recharge etc

[bkgmjo]

Would this also involve re-instating the res-cap in pub and limiting arena size to 35 again? Or are we suggesting a pick and mix version?

Make a collection of things that were generally liked. Timed basing and pubbux are part of the game in pub now while pubbux could easily be spread over the whole zone allowing to buy being the starting zombie in events, auction being the cap in ?go base, betting on all kind of matches and event outcomes and maybe even buying specific events happening. But still, the pubbux system in pub needs to be reworked. It is heavily unbalanced and the buy anywhere system is pretty good at destroying games. Best would probably be to remove it or multiply costs for buying outside of safe by 10 and adding a 5 second timer before the item arrives as this is simply against the all players are equal thing that made TW be the most successful zone. Res-cap for actively playing people wouldn't hurt, but higher limit for specs to allow videos and watching the game.

For all the people asking for pub to go back to previous settings, there is an equal number complaining about lev and weasel being over powered and ruining pub.

This is not true for the lev as you can see on the forums, in general chat in pub and if you care also in !comments. A little summary if you do not feel like reading through all of them: http://pastebin.com/CSQPzbQi
If you look at who complains about levs, it is always the same very few people and if you look even closer: changes to the lev keep making people who haven't commented on forums for a long time come back just to make clear this is wrong.

As for the weasel: A big majority of people beg for it to finally be big and not a basing killer anymore. It is a fun ship in small for dueling each other or the typical cloak hunter ships but it does not belong into pub as it replaces the cloaked surprise terrs and javs would lookout for with their radar with some barely visible, guided lagrocket missile that can come in from the tiniest holes of flagroom and kill ships or steal the flag faster than anyone can be warned.

TWD itself needs a complete rework in how it works, and needs to be independent with an actual goal to stand a chance of retaining players, as with nothing to aim for, people will go.

It is not only that, what happened the past few years is always trying to turn everything into some kind of TWBD. ?go base is theoretically hosted all day, pub puts people into rounds with only two teams like TWD matches and even warps them into base and even worse: resets peoples bounties, which they often worked on for quite some time. High Bounty has always been an important element in pub. Current pub also heavily punishes every ship and play style that does not belong into the TWD scheme. This makes pub and the whole zone be some kind of homogenous mass with little variety. Work out the differences of what should happen in each area and make a cut between pub, base and TWD and build on this as a strength, not a weakness. Or in case you think it should all be the same then put it all into one arena as different ones do not have any justification of existence anymore then.

One thing that might work to revive TWD a little is to make it mandatory to actually be on a squad to have base or ship duels and for that shut down 24/7 ?go base, elim and similar events. This wouldn't work the way it is now as elim is pretty active even in dead hours but if you made quick squadchanges legal with a rule that forbids abuse to feed a squad there might be a chance and it could offer making elim be something with a meaning again, you know like the big event as it used to be with the possibility of bragging to be the best for a week or month or whatever, not the monotonous collection of score to be on top of the list. Don't nail me on this though as I do not play those games and people who do would probably be better on rating this thought.

Also since hockey is becoming increasingly popular there could be a KO-system championship every weekend. Well, weekly or monthly championship with KO-system for squad games could also give new players more chance to play and give people something to look forward to and to log on for.

3) Marketing/Advertising - Very important, but kinda need 1 and 2 fixed first or pointless

Just make sure you know what to advertise for. If things keep changing constantly most advertised promises might be void when players arrive.

[2pac]

Well ideas are there en masse, wanted directions are there too. KrynetiX' goal for example is to reduce the LT threat, Tiny wants to revive TWD(mostly the basing part) if I got that right, Demonic wants to improve the ban system and allow freedom to players, M_M God and Dezmond are on the lookout for possibilities to bring in new players and all of them tried the one or the other thing of which some were good, some were bad and some cause for heavy discussions. In the end what matters is doing the best for the zone and for that it is simply necessary to have a plan of what is supposed to happen by changes. If this does not happen or if even backfires then it should quickly be reverted and not replaced by a hasty quick fix. Guess that makes sense to everyone.

But here is the problem: Goals keep getting lost, plans do not really exist in more than an intention on what should happen and data anything could be rated on is simply not getting collected. Often there are even changes put in place without a backup being made so it is simply impossible to revert to a previous state. To top it what usually happens after someone broke something is the person suddenly disappears and nobody really knows what was changed and how. We had this experience idk how many times now and there is still no log of changes, fixes and breaks anywhere. This keeps causing chaos and makes new staffs put in the same things which already failed a few times over and over again. Also keeping everything in secret and even trying to forbid lower staffers to voice their own opinions in public (not giving names) will just make the whole thing worse and make staff look like a bunch of solo people going wild on settings.

I have to agree to disagree on that.

[Wax]

Being that Demonic brought up the subject of elim...

For starters (though perhaps I'm the only one who feels this way), I think it would be good to revert back to when elim had a single #1 player. I think people enjoyed playing a bit more when it was for the overall ranking compared to how it is now. I personally cared to play a bit more when it was just !rank namehere and it said the persons rank. Now you have to do ship specific rankings. We don't have enough players to really justify that first of all, and secondly, it is less prestigious. In some cases, having a single overall ranking encourages people to branch out into other ships and perhaps take them more seriously. More importantly, you need to play a bit more actively to KEEP that rank you worked for in the first place.

[Vatican Assassin]

So Ephemeral, let's focus on strategy #1:

1) TWD - Giving existing players something to actually do, without sitting in spec bored 24/7.

What ideas can we throw at this one?

[Demonic]

i think our best chance to "revive" this game is to simply bring back the classic public map, remove this shitty cash system and start hosting events during off hours. if we can keep our public players entertained they'll keep coming back rather than quitting after a short while. i helped to pick out around 40 events for fusha to host that work really well with a small amount of players, it's really easy to build up a crowd even if the game seems dead as long as you keep doing it with quality and care about your players.

if we have access to the list of mails from old players.. well, it's about time we used it to our advantage. why haven't we been sending emails on a monthly basis to everyone or every three months? it should be about welcoming players back to the game and give some information of changes that have happened recently with the zone, staff and its players, mention leagues that are running for them to watch and/or participate and some other random stuff. you can't focus on getting new players alone, we need to get back the old players as well. sure, you can't please everyone but i believe most of us enjoyed the good old trench wars. it was simple, fun and enjoyable. now it's just confusing, stupid and lacking in entertainment value. i would do my part and help as a member of staff if given the chance again, but there's no way i could meet a silly quota due to being a full-time employee.. so whatever.

fact is that we still have an influx of new players joining on a monthly basis; unfortunately they don't stay for long enough to fully learn or enjoy the game. this could be fixed if we had enough staffers willing to give them advice and entertaining them with events and making sure they have a good time. too bad we lack the manpower to fully accomplish this and i have no free time during the earlier "euro hours" to help.

What's old pub? We talking 1999 pub settings, 2001, 2002, 2005, 2006 or 2013. With the exception of the period between 2005ish to 2013 pub was fairly static, obvious exception being pure pub, but I try to forget that element. Would this also involve re-instating the res-cap in pub and limiting arena size to 35 again? Or are we suggesting a pick and mix version?

Don't get me wrong, I pretty much agree with everything you have put there. I think most of us preferred the pub's, with the "traditional" lev and weasel, but people really need to make their mind up. For all the people asking for pub to go back to previous settings, there is an equal number complaining about lev and weasel being over powered and ruining pub. There can be no real compromise, as everyone is so set in their beliefs on what they think is best on this.

The main issue, one I also seem to find a lot, is complete boredom. TWD has nothing exciting to it currently, squads are stacked on the whole so any players not on those power squads have the fun of getting smashed regularly, which is obviously motivation to stay for more. Those guys at that top get bored as there is no challenge, so also disappear. TWD itself needs a complete rework in how it works, and needs to be independent with an actual goal to stand a chance of retaining players, as with nothing to aim for, people will go.

I think I have stated numerously before, we have e-mailed old players and are working on it to happen again, but with more regular occurrences. That said, so far it's not really organised, with no strategy beyond crossing fingers so their is definite room for improvement. We need someone who has the time and enthusiasm to do it, which as with most things staff (and player) wise seems to last a week then die a death. Events are not the issue, although it does compound the issue, when I was a new player I stuck in pub for probably 2 months before I started going to events, starting with DM then onto Elim. It was pub that originally kept me entertained, mostly trying to keep the shield by my name and getting irritated when players like fantus would steal it from me. I don't think I spoke to a staff member at all in the 1st year, as it was hardly needed. Keeping new players is important, but whats the point if we cant retain the old players, so there is no point just focusing on pub like that will perform a miracle and give us 300+ players. Personally my focus is:

1) TWD - Giving existing players something to actually do, without sitting in spec bored 24/7.
2) PUB - Maintaining existing players again, introducing new players with retention
3) Marketing/Advertising - Very important, but kinda need 1 and 2 fixed first or pointless
4) Events/Elim etc - This comes last, again if 1 and 2 are fixed it will keep players on.

[Vatican Assassin]

dsb has or had a great tutorial which should be copied, I remember talking to PL about this and showing it to him and him agreeing

like 5 years ago

[Ricko]

Glad turban is on the complete same page as me, I've said it so many times now; put pub back to the original settings. These were by far the most successful settings and the one that kept players hooker for so many years. Why are we struggling and spending hours trying to find stupid short term solutions to lev/weasel etc, our best, simplest and quickest solution is to ditch all these ridiculous changes over the last few years, get back the original pub settings, scrap the pub bux (or limit them) build a tutorial map for new players and work on sending out emails to all old players and getting sound marketing plans in place and spending our damned donation money to advertise this game.

[Vatican Assassin]

Pretty funny our listing all these ideas with no coders left.

[Turban]

i think our best chance to "revive" this game is to simply bring back the classic public map, remove this shitty cash system and start hosting events during off hours. if we can keep our public players entertained they'll keep coming back rather than quitting after a short while. i helped to pick out around 40 events for fusha to host that work really well with a small amount of players, it's really easy to build up a crowd even if the game seems dead as long as you keep doing it with quality and care about your players.

if we have access to the list of mails from old players.. well, it's about time we used it to our advantage. why haven't we been sending emails on a monthly basis to everyone or every three months? it should be about welcoming players back to the game and give some information of changes that have happened recently with the zone, staff and its players, mention leagues that are running for them to watch and/or participate and some other random stuff. you can't focus on getting new players alone, we need to get back the old players as well. sure, you can't please everyone but i believe most of us enjoyed the good old trench wars. it was simple, fun and enjoyable. now it's just confusing, stupid and lacking in entertainment value. i would do my part and help as a member of staff if given the chance again, but there's no way i could meet a silly quota due to being a full-time employee.. so whatever.

fact is that we still have an influx of new players joining on a monthly basis; unfortunately they don't stay for long enough to fully learn or enjoy the game. this could be fixed if we had enough staffers willing to give them advice and entertaining them with events and making sure they have a good time. too bad we lack the manpower to fully accomplish this and i have no free time during the earlier "euro hours" to help.

[Vatican Assassin]

So if I understand correctly and extrapolating your post to a strategy level; you believe that the zone should move forward by attracting/retaining new players and try to recapture inactives.

It's settled, our strategy is to get new players and keep the old ones, genius, I hope staff is listening.

One possible other solution could be something like declaring May as ‘new recruit’ month ad revert configuration for that month coupled with other marketing efforts to attract new players to try the game. June could then be declared as ‘bring back the old players’ month and the pub settings changed to more of a retro config and perhaps some legacy events.

It's nice to see a concrete example of an action plan, that's what I'm talking about Eph.