Open Letter to Demonic and M_M God

[Vatican Assassin]

The game is almost 30 years old, you see any other games from 1996 with 100+ players daily? Stop thinking the game would still have moer players if we only limited TWD, your ideas are only going to hasten the decline. Stop trying to force players to play certain events at certain times, the only reason this game still exists is because you can log on any time and play a TWD game.

[Ephemeral]

The game is almost 30 years old, you see any other games from 1996 with 100+ players daily? Stop thinking the game would still have moer players if we only limited TWD, your ideas are only going to hasten the decline. Stop trying to force players to play certain events at certain times, the only reason this game still exists is because you can log on any time and play a TWD game.

VA,
Understood. But I did not intend to imply that limiting anything was the correct direction. The point of this thread was to see how many in the zone agree with thinking at a strategic level. The strategy of the zone could be many things;
- simply try to retain exiting players
- bring some of the old inactive ones back, maintain the zone like a retro legacy game
- try to bring new players into the game and retain them
- do what is done now, simply wake up and do whatever the fuck we did yesterday. Allow 1000s of ‘good ideas’ to bubble up from the grassroots level and see if anything works (aka be all things to all people)

I don’t give a fuck what the strategy actually is, just get it defined, develop a plan, and head towards the goal. But this shit of ‘being all things to all people’ is a cluster fuck and is clearly not working. The zone simply defaults to what it operationally did the day before. Leadership is needed that is willing to think strategically AND is willing to get out and sell the strategy (whatever it is).
So please don’t think that I advocate limiting this or that. I was asking for discourse at a strategic level.
eph

[Vatican Assassin]

You're overlooking the strategic decisions of consolidation that have already been made. We now have 1 large pub where everyone plays, pretty smart and successful decision if you ask me. Allowing 3v3 twd matches. We have to accept that the cookie is crumbling and try to save the core. It looks like we're already doing that. If you have a strategic idea, please present it.

[Bukkake Surprise]

Don't you mean "20 years old"?

I agree with making some ships "specialists", the way they used to be. There should be "fighting" ships and "specialist" ships. Lancaster, warbird, spider in the first category, everything else in the second. Make levis move slowly again, give them the powerful bomb, and to make sure private frequency LTs don't ruin the game, don't allow anyone to buy things outside of safe and reset bounty to 3 when entering a safe, at least for levis.

Also, make safe times for terrs be 3 minutes instead of 30, because fucking assholes go AFK in safe and people keep unwittingly attaching to them and wasting time (very bad when you're fighting desperately for flag room). Or just make it so people can't attach to a terr that's in safe.

[Vatican Assassin]

I was way off on that math there.

[M_M God]

I can only speak for myself here, but imho, simply put, we need to focus on the core aspects of this zone, pub/twd/twl and fun events around it. Go back to these core aspects of the zone and focus on retaining them and making them more stable for the future. We need to target new types of people (new countries?) to download this game and come into our zone, try to make them stay/feel welcome here and give them time to adjust to our settings etc (tutorial/basic game play training at start). Focus our efforts on displaying this game as a nostalgic, free to play, MMO online game. Where you have some fun and competitive play if you want, but can also make friends and use this more as a chat application type of thing as well. I also want to do some specific targeting of old (retired) players, try to get them to show their face in TW again and bring up some good memories for them and other (vet) players that remember them and still play up to this date. The most logical step for that would be a professional email newsletter (since we still have a database of old players email addresses). We need to stop trying/caring for adding new !buy futures and what not in pub for a while and all focus on the main aspect here, stop this game from completely dying out by focusing too much on all the less important stuff around our core aspects. We need new people coming into this game, we need to get them to actually download the client and not only visiting our site, we need to let them have some fun at their first visit, not scare them away..and while doing that we also want to focus on the future and keep a healthy relationship between staff and the players. Anyway, I could go on for hours, but it's safe to say we're all still very involved and care about this game, so let's stop talking about unbanning a player or not like we've done for the last few weeks and move on to bigger, better things.

[RoDNeY]

Hey everybody shut up. SHUT THE FUCK UP
everybody SHUT UP
m_m is talking now
go on m_m

[Bukkake Surprise]

Awesome!

I take it back. I just "played" for 30 minutes after 6 months off, and I don't see myself playing this game anymore. It's simply not fun. Tons of people in spec, very few actually playing, and half of those were on private frequencies. Needless to say, there was a private frequency LT, even with only 18 people playing in total. About 5 were on the LT. The fucking parasites in question were the usual morons: Tone, Red X, spacedust, some other assorted trash.

Who the fuck changed the rocks? And why? What kind of fucking morons are running this game that they believe people are no longer playing it because the fucking rocks are not pretty enough? That's their priority? The rocks?

Here's my Krynetix impression: "But the original rocks are ICONIC!!!"

Why is there an annoying pop-up telling me how much time is left in the round? I'm not fucking blind, I can see the timer just fine. Why isn't there green text like before? Is there at least a way to turn off the fucking pop-ups?

Why did I get repeatedly spawned in mid base? Are the new players that we're supposedly trying to retain so fucking stupid that they can't find their way to the base?

Why are there still invisible walls? They're plain stupid. And why wasn't the map changed back to the way it was before some shithead had a nostalgia attack?

The LT ended up dying and it came back in a minute. Fucking assholes are willing to ruin the game even when there are only 8 people basing. Maybe private frequency terrs should not be able to have anyone attach to them if they're carrying a levi.

Also, someone couldn't resist fucking around with the weasel some more, cause it's small again. At least until next week.

Maybe it's in part because I'm tired, but I just couldn't get into the game. I had no excitement whatsoever. I didn't give a shit about whether I won or lost. I didn't care about my record, I didn't care about the pub bux, I didn't care about the base. My excitement at playing again after so long evaporated rapidly when I saw all the stupid, pointless changes and the fucking LT. It's the same shit as six months ago. I think the best way to revive the game is for every player to bring a person they know to it, but I only recommend quality things to people I know. A few years ago I would have recommended this game to anyone. Now, no way in hell. It's getting dumbed down too much and it's not fun.

[2pac]

If what you say is right Bukkake I hope they lifeban me since I'll trash any improvements Krynoobix has done. Don't fix the zone if it ain't broken what Wax said is right. Stop overdoing the graphics side people don't want annoying popup bullshit M_M God and Demonic or FiS has allowed this douchbaggery to continue.

Game won't be updated at all let it be how it was back in the day if it dies it dies there is nothing the staff can do to prevent the zone from losing population. Lets be realisitic here its 5-10% population decrease every year + 2% population added from noobies or vets who come back. Keep fucking with the zone you will notice more specs and less people playing cause it just isn't what people are USED to anymore.

[bkgmjo]

Hm, since you trashing settings instead of staff directly would be a refreshing sight and I still see you as experienced player I'll fill you in (as deviation from around 2003 settings since things change permanently):

General changes:
- On Low Population people spawn in midbase right in front of enemies
- Superweapons like epidemic, roofturret, flagsaver, baseterr, super, shield and whatnot keep coming and going, you can even buy "purepub" now
- The bots spam more than ever
- Pubbux are used instead of score to buy anywhere on the map, those pubbux are also rewarded for not even playing pub (other events) so retards can come over from elim and twd just to buy a few supers with shark or jav and bomb everyone including teammates or buy a shield to run into base on solo freq and be unkillable for some time
- Killothon is around and frequently killing basing
- Timed pub game which gives out pretty buggy and unbalanced awards such as Basing King which is mostly awarded to private LTs
- There are duel regions where you can challenge others to a duel for cash
- A slot machine named "!fruit" on the bot gets players addicted to losing their cash and is some last entertainment left
- Map has idk how many sizes of which none is really balanced or working correctly, hence the newbie friendly invisible wall bugs
- Staff restructuring led to most staffs not seeing pub ever and thus led to rampant tking and spamming in pub
- Asteroids are now "High Quality" which means they are much larger and do not occupy the same area of space as their graphics would imply, you can halfway sit in them or are blocked in flight by empty space
- A mysterious packet rewriter is attached to the server and officially only makes sure javs get shraps in pub when they actually would have gotten a full charge. Interestingly, such a packet rewriter on the server could also be used to enable reading of PMs, chats and so on but who would ever suspect anything like this to happen on TW? Oh ya, it could also cause some mighty lag increase (ever noticed S2C being much higher at times than C2S ? Ya that can have other reasons too but who knows?)

Lev:
- Bomb got changed to L2 and painted blue in hopes nobody would notice or something (actually to get it to the current strength someone must have messed with jav/shark bomb, too)
- 1 Rep, 1 Rocket, 1 Portal
- Bomb about 80% speed
- Can only buy in safe
- On Low Population spawns in normal spawn as the only ship, so can wander to roof, LT or attempt the long way into mid just to get killed by the next person to spawn in the tubes
- Pub welcome message claims those are "the ORIGINAL settings"
- Makes a joke of single lev LTs without guards as it is only possible to kill some fools sitting next to the wall. Since it is also target of staff changes to "balance" we have roofturret to instantly kill it, super cheap buy anywhere antiwarp with hilarious range(further than radar), a pubbux reward for laming the most levs in spawn, a punishment of losing bounty when changing freqs, no buys in base like any other ship so they can be cloaked with ease and staffs who decide that a lev tking accidently needs to be shiplocked to non-bomber but people tking a lev on purpose go unpunished.

Weasel:
- Cloak, no Stealth
- Fast and Small
- 1 Rocket, 1 Rep
- On the great new map with dozens of entrances permanently used to steal the flag with lagrockets on last second by solo freq(rewards 1000 pubbux) or lagrocket any ship in base and thus makes a joke of people trying to defend it. On low pop also the primarily used ship to kill the rest of the population off as it is hilariously easy to lagrocket + cloak every ship when they spawn in midbase.

The other ships are fortunately mostly untouched, but I wouldn't be surprised if someone went nuts on them soon as random ship- and gamesettings without any reason other than pissing off players have become the primary hobby of upperstaff and especially heads of pub (of which none actually play pub). Guess it is more fun than actually fixing existing problems.

[Ephemeral]

Again, the thread is supposed to be about strategic direction of the zone. Ship settings and arena configurations are NOT strategic. They are more ‘bottom up’ thinking, this is exactly what has fucked the zone up for years.

Ship settings and arena configurations are what you do AFTER you have a strategic direction and plan. Then, and only then, can they effectively be measured for success. Let me see if I can explain. I outlined a few possible strategic directions for the zone in earlier post;
1. simply try to retain exiting players
2. bring some of the old inactive ones back, maintain the zone like a retro legacy game
3. try to bring new players into the game and retain them
Of course there could be many other directions but these are probably the most typical ones. Is it not obvious to everyone that any ship settings and arena configurations would be contingent upon ONE of the strategic directions above?

Without a strategic direction and plan the zone simply ‘wanders’ about (like it has for years). Changes have been made in the context of the person who suggests them. So Player A comes up with an idea to make pub less boring (i.e. pub bucks) based upon HIS belief of what he thinks the direction of the zone is. This is great as long as the actual direction of the zone is item 1 above. But if the actual direction of the zone is item 3 above than the change actually sucks.

Without the leadership of the zone driving the strategic direction (and plan) we are fucking wasting our time. EVERY idea becomes ‘good’ because anyone can defend with whatever THEY think the zone should be doing. No ideas can be measured for success/failure because again, there is no context.

This zone has desperately needed real leadership for years. Real leadership would have driven the zone to define its strategy and then had the charisma to excite everyone (players and staff) about it. Real leadership would never have allowed the zone to slip into this directionless, cluster fucked melting pot of homogeneous ‘good’ ideas.

And now we have simply added another layer or source of ‘good ideas’ up the top of this purposeless streaming pile of shit; the Council. The Council will be made of other players, all of whom have THEIR own understanding of the direction of the zone. Just like previous and past folks who have dedicated much of their time and effort, they too will burn out trying to win the ‘fight’. The issue is that no one know what the ‘fight’ is about.

We NEED top down thinkers. We need people who can motivate and generate some excitement. We need people who are willing to tackle the tough questions and decisions. Not questions and decisions about how the fucking weasel works or what to do with LTs. Questions and decisions like ‘what is Pub’s primary purpose’. The reason that no one is willing to do this is obvious; it is going to take some big balls and will be very hard. It is far easier to simply try to ‘be all things to all people’ and not piss anyone off by defining the direction of the zone (aka politicians). It is a fine line to walk between existing players and new players; the ‘safe’ approach has been to side with existing players. After all, new players have no voice. But we are seeing the results of this lack of backbone. Pub is a cluster fuck, league participation is down, staff has to scramble for warm bodies for events.

No fucking amount of ‘good‘ bottom up ideas is going fix this zone. The Council is not going to fix this zone. Good leadership and strategic thinking MAY fix this zone.
eph

[Shaddowknight]

Shark/jav bombs are the same as they were, the lvl2 "blue" bomb was made blue because it just didn't look right having the levi fire a yellow bomb (we made it look like what people were used to). This was done to make it less powerful without adjusting other settings like the bomb prox and stuff (as the bomb upgrade settings handle the increase, but only the once from L1 -> L2, instead of twice from L1 -> L2 -> L3)

As for the 'packet rewriter', I never could figure out what was causing that, that it would ONLY happen in Pub or certain other arenas (I think others anyhow). I had kinda thought it might be some settings cfg issue...

[Vatican Assassin]

Ephemeral types a lot and suggests nothing. We need ideas! We need strategy! We need leadership! We need players! Then you offer no ideas or strategy. The only idea you keep hinting at is to shut down pub so there can be more TWBD's. Don't cut off an arm to save a leg.

[kthx]

I have all of those things, except players I think. Fuck you vatican assassin. I offered my services one time. Eat shit vatican assassin.

[Turban]

ugh, i haven't really had the time to respond and/or read these forums thus sorry for my late response.

in my opinion the biggest problem that requires immediate attention is our european player base, although that may already be beyond help. we have suffered a drastic drop in our european "player base" over the years while our US population has only shown slight decrease in population, which is mostly caused by our lack of european players making the game seem less appealing. while this drop might be due to various of different reason, i suspect it to be mostly due to the lack of quality/active european staffers. there simply isn't enough "entertainment value" during the early hours which has resulted in several of our players quitting; also the constant changes in the public arena most certainly hasn't helped our situation. not to mention most of our current staffers don't seem too fond of the idea about hosting an event for only 5-10 players, so there's that as well.

i would love to revert all the changes made in pub and bring back the old pub arena, but alas that is unlikely to happen due to certain player(s) being in the upperstaff position. i think the only thing pub needed was a system which would show some sort of "recognition" to our most active and best players. it would have been nice to have statistics of players from the last pub reset monthly cycle (e.g. top 10 in a ship, points, kills, best streaks(s), k-d) shown above the base map. currently you can only access the statistics on the trenchwars.org webpage (under 'statistics') which is kinda hidden and not well known by our pub players. it could encourage players to be active for the chance of being mentioned, but idk. that's just an idea.

also when i mentioned squads with new players it was not about squads being only twd/twl. for me a squad is basically a smaller community, you're meant to have a good time together, chatting and playing various events. competing against each other in elim/duels and playing together in twd. sharing both good and bad times with each other. at least that's what squad is for me. i would quit the game on the spot if i only cared about twd. no one is going to follow a "schedule" set by staff -- just let us have our freedom; although i would encourage to have distension ran less often and focus on hosting quality events at all hours rather than just peak times. tbh, distension shouldn't be hosted during the "prime time" of weekends.

another random rambling post, rip. sowwy.