Open Letter to Demonic and M_M God

[Turban]

i've given several suggestions that should improve our quality of life in the zone, but it's up to someone more "qualified" to do the changes. most of them were just directly told to someone on staff, but i've posted a few on the forums as well as done ?help calls. ideas are easy to come by, it's just that we lack the ppl to accomplish and do the right shit.

[Vatican Assassin]

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.

I really like this idea, It would be nice if ?go base and wbduel had a top 3 killers or MVPers of the month as well.

[bkgmjo]

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.

[Ephemeral]

VA,
LOL, obviously you don’t think that having a strategic direction and plan is a solution. I don’t know how to make it more plain so that you can understand. Some people see things for what they are on the surface. Other people see the connections between those things. Both ways are valuable, neither is the ‘right’ way. But to suggest that my post was not about a solution is total and utter bullshit. If you can’t understand something just either don’t comment or ask for a better explanation.
And for god’s sake, why are you stuck on me ‘shutting down pub’? WTF? Do I think that pub should be targeted at retaining new players? Yes. Do I think pub should be exclusively for new players? No. But these are personal opinions which go along with my belief that the zone should be trying to attract and retain new players. But my personal opinion is simply that of a single player and I certainly recognize that fact. I have repeatedly said that I don't care what the strategy ends up being, just get one. So please drop the bullshit about this being about me trying to get pub to be this way or that.


bkgmjo,
I concur completely. Without a plan and someone to drive it the TW ‘ship’ is just drifting. But as you can see from many of the responses, people VA don’t think that suggesting the ‘ship’ decide upon destination as being a solution. It is far better to offer ‘solutions’ like choosing what song the band should play as we sink.
eph

[Turban]

how about this: bring back the old pub and then send a newsletter, well-written, to everyone to experience the good old trench wars. make promises of events and keep those promises. recruit euro staffers that want to help. that should be a good start.

[Ephemeral]

how about this: bring back the old pub and then send a newsletter, well-written, to everyone to experience the good old trench wars. make promises of events and keep those promises. recruit euro staffers that want to help. that should be a good start.

Turb,
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. That is very close to my beliefs too. So let’s, just for the sake of the discussion, assume that this is the direction the zone decides to follow.

What are the best solutions or ideas that will now fit the strategy above? Obviously pub could be configured at either end of the scale; it could be reverted back to stripped down arena without any features at all (best for a brand new player) or it could be loaded with every bell and whistle there is (best for more experienced players). We have to decide on which it should be OR some other solutions.
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. Of course there are many, many other solutions that could be developed to meet the strategy that you are suggesting. But the one solution that we KNOW doesn’t work is the ‘try to be everything at once’ that we have had over the last 2 years. The current pub simply fails with new players.

But understand that just because you and I happen to agree that the zone strategy should include attracting/retaining new players and try to recapture inactive players it doesn’t mean that the zone should/will do this. Some feel that new players are a lost cause and if the strategy is to not actively pursue them, then one of the above matters. It could be that SS is so far beyond its shelf life, and that other online competition is too great, for the zone to make new players a priority. If this is the case, then decisions about pub would be made much differently.
eph

[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.

[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]

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

[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]

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

[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]

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?

[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.

[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.