Open Letter to Demonic and M_M God

[Dethdefire]

Is it possible to make an app that would allow captains to send out limited amounts of text/email chains per day, to rally players on their squad for TWD games?

[Raver420]

[bkgmjo]

TWD-RPG, sounds interesting though.

[Pressure]

Quick idea to spice things up with TWD (this seems to be the thread to speak about innovations since M_M and Demonic are directly involved in it, so I'll post it here):

If you gave players another thing to 'achieve' in TWD they would play more. I think you should add some sort of prestige system where every player has a little banner next to their name on TWD site, maybe the first one would be a circle or something, and everytime that they get, say, 100 kills overall in TWDD, the symbol becomes cooler. Maybe there could be something like 50 levels of prestige (like in CoD).

I also think on each TWD page roster there should be leaderboard for warbird, javelin, terrier, spiders, and sharks. So if you’re in top 5 highest killers on your squad in one of the fighter ships, it’s plastered on the roster. I think that can be tied into the prestige system as well. If you are on the leaderboards in top 5 for spider on your squad for over 2 weeks, you get points towards the prestige, for 1 month, more points. The prestige medal stays with you from squad to squad so if you are squadless and a captain wants to see how effective you really are they will know based on your prestige if you are elite (or active, even) or not. For shark/terrier it can be average RPD and average kills/deaths for terr. Or games won. Or both.

There can also be prestige system for captains. When a captain accepts someone to roster it should be logged, to show in the future if that player is a good recruiter or not. If someone accepts games, it should be logged, to see if that person could potentially make a good (A) or (C) in the future. If I have a player on roster but I don’t know much about his leadership history, I cant really make a judgment call about promoting them. Once I see that they are a good recruiter or a good assistant who gets games maybe I’ll know they're worth promoting (or even recruiting). This gives some incentive to bad players to be involved, or spectators, as well, and also gives them purpose on a squad. Someone can be recruited solely because they’re willing to get games or because they’re good at drawing/recruiting other people. Maybe making a recruit who has a high prestige could count more towards the leadership/captain prestige as well.

[Ephemeral]

The reason for this change is solid, but the change itself would cause more damage than good. If I log on and TWD isn't happening, I log off. The less incentive I have to log online, the less I will log online. You don't want players who are addicted to the game to devote less time to it because they know something won't be running at a certain time. We want to add incentive to play, not remove it.

http://forums.trenchwars.org/showthr...urs&highlight=

Understood and agreed, I intentionally used some extreme examples in hopes of getting some context. Interestingly enough the TWL and Pub map debacle has basically epitomized exactly the point I have been trying to make. The zone needs to figure out what it wants to do, which features are most important, fix them, fix the processes that surround them so that once fixed they don't get screwed up again with someone making 'running real time changes on-the-fly'. But if we don't fix the processes, anything we fix now is likely to get trashed by the next few 'good ideas' that come along.
eph

[Pressure]

Perhaps TWD shouldn’t be run 24/7/365? Perhaps a plan to better organize/schedule things so players can be online when the things they enjoy are running? Would consolidating some things and not spreading the zone’s population so thin keep it healthier?

The reason for this change is solid, but the change itself would cause more damage than good. If I log on and TWD isn't happening, I log off. The less incentive I have to log online, the less I will log online. You don't want players who are addicted to the game to devote less time to it because they know something won't be running at a certain time. We want to add incentive to play, not remove it.

http://forums.trenchwars.org/showthr...urs&highlight=

[Shaddowknight]

Agree with at least 95% of that Eph. I am hoping the Council and the rest of staff can get ourselves straightened out.

[Ephemeral]

Ok, so we now have two very good examples of what happens when there are problems with one of the core processes in the zone; a broken change request process has now adversely impacted the zone twice in the period of one week.

First we had the TWL playoff decision to make changes bite us in the ass and then we had someone decide to change the pub arena to a April Fools map. I do not want to drop the discussion into one that assigns blame or discusses how good or bad these decisions were; that isn’t the point at all. I want to focus on how the change request decision making process is not working.

Some may feel that since the zone is basically a volunteer organization there is little value, or it is impossible, in do things correctly. Change management is just one of the processes that is being affected by this attitude. I don’t think it is unreasonable to think that doing things correctly is more difficult in this kind of volunteer organization, it probably is indeed the case. But let’s examine this process a bit closer.

TW has several existing tools they could use to control changes; change management isn’t a new thing nor is it rocket science. Anyone can develop simply tools and document the process of how changes should be controlled. Anyone who is around development has been exposed to various systems, tools, and procedures. But a lack of tools and understanding of change management isn’t the problem with TW; tools exist and some people clearly know how the process should work.

So why is the current status of the change request process in TW a total cluster fuck? We have multiple people making multiple changes in a vacuum and without anyone serving as a ‘check and balance’ and with incredibly bad communications. This has lead to someone making a decision about changing TWL playoff format without understanding the potential risks. Another person made a decision about changing the pub arena without communicating ANYTHING to Kyn, the guy who supposedly is responsible for and controls pub.

I assume that whomever made the April Fools map decision was thinking that they were helping; same for the TWL playoff idea. But the intent is not the problem. The problem is that people think that their intent trumps everything else, after all they are volunteers and have the best interest of the zone in mind. There justification normally also follows something like ‘it’s too hard to get a consensus, takes too much time, and/or that Kyn guy has been AFK for the last day’.

TW culture has to change from this kind of thinking to towards one where change decisions are handled better. If the ‘idea’ is to change to some holiday map then this should be discussed 2 weeks before the holiday arrives. If the ‘idea’ is to change the TWL playoff config why in the world could this not be thought through weeks/months before hand? Why make these kinds of decisions in the 11^th hour all the time? Of course there isn’t enough time to test or get buy-in from people of you are making on-the-fly decisions in real time. These aren’t some fucking impulse decisions you make about buying a candy bar at the checkout line counter; this shit can adversely hurt the zone and the community. The road to failure is paved with good intentions; having a good intentions is not enough.

So the solution is to first stop allowing multiple people from making running, real-time changes. The ONLY thing that should ever be changed on-the-fly is something that is so bad it is immediately threatening the zone. Everything else, every single good ‘idea’, needs to be vetted and justified. It should be communicated and others have a chance think it through, consider its possible impact, cost and benefits. The guys who will end up having to actual do the work are the only ones who should be estimating the scope of work; and that SOW should include what it will take to make sure it works properly. It should also include estimates on what it will take to maintain the new feature including a rough estimate on handling the inevitable exploits players will seek. If someone comes up with a million dollar idea that HAS to be implemented right away, it’s just too bad. It doesn’t matter how good an idea is if it comes with a one hour decision requirement; it gets rejected.

Ideally Dev will be able to work the change requests into logically grouped revision or releases. Or perhaps the zone decides that on the 15^th of every month will be the day that new stuff is rolled out. Doesn’t matter how it is done, just that we move away from the shit of constant running changes done in stealth mode. Everyone needs to have some discipline here, players cannot expect the zone to implement changes in real time and those making the change decisions need to communicate the ideas, get them vetted, and then get them into the queue to be prioritized and done.

And a note about prioritization. This is a key part of improving the change management process. The zone leadership, whether it be the upper staff or the Council, needs to be the one who oversees and makes the prioritization calls. It is their responsibility to ensure the changes and their priority matches the zones objectives. So if the zone ends up spending all kinds of time and resources on developing a feature like pub bucks over doing a new player training feature, we know who is responsible. They are the ones who have to meet or exceed the zone objectives and we measure their success/failure based on this. They are the ones who are responsible for balancing both new players and existing player features (IF that is what the zone’s objectives truly are).

But this is the kind of thing that really has to accompany the new staff structure (Council). Just adding an elected Council will not make much difference unless the zone also improves the way it does things (like change requests).
eph

[BooBiesYaY]

Why would I wanna be staff at trenchwars that makes no sense at all. What you smoking on Eph?

i said over my dead body lol. i like my hair i dont want 1/2 grey.

[2pac]

Why would I wanna be staff at trenchwars that makes no sense at all. What you smoking on Eph?

[Bukkake Surprise]

We're not pointing fingers, just talking. Who was it, what happened to him, and who else can do it?

Never underestimate the NWO slime.

[bkgmjo]

@Bukkake:
I have no proof of a packet rewriter but go try and find fullcharges with a jav, then ask a mod to do *watchgreen and it will claim you got fullcharges when you actually got a shrap. So, if the server does not know of anything then there must be something else changing the data packets and since I doubt the client does this in only tw pub and nowhere else and I seriously doubt the NSA fools around with games it must be something on server side modifying them. Of course it could be this thing does only that and nothing else but the possibility for a lot of abuse, spying and bugs is given. Also since current sysops claim to not have server access (and I am tempted to believe this) it must have been set up by someone who had access, not many people are left for that and one specifically was often accused of reading PMs. But then there is no proof of this so no point in pointing fingers.

[Ephemeral]

So here we are after a cluster fucked TWL playoffs. A great reminder that the zone population drop means more than just fewer players in the game. It also means that all resources, like staff and dev, are stressed.

Surely no one would argue that leagues like TWL or TWD are healthy and doing well. Running this stuff takes a fair amount of experienced players to step forward and donate a lot of time; this shit doesn't simply 'run itself'. We throw a new set of people under the bus each year after they have dropped the ball trying to manage a league for the first time like THEY are the problem. First, is it not obvious that the pool of available good candidates to run a league is shrinking? Second, is it not obvious those who have previously managed leagues leave for certain reasons and don't come back (and that we need a way to retain these people)?

We already have an incredibly large 'ball' of code to maintain. Dev guys are busting ass and doing a great job but they can only do so much with the resources they have at hand. People come up with a new 'good' ideas and the expectation seems to be that we simply have to code it up, roll it out, and let the zone test it for bugs and exploits. (Coders will always prefer to work on a new piece of their own code than go back and try to fix someone else’s ball of spaghetti; they aren’t going to say ‘hold up, we already have too much stuff that doesn’t work right.’) Yet we continue to ask them to add to it without a lot thought about the risk/cost of introducing new issues and bugs.

So what will TW look like in a few more years? 98% of TWD will be JDs and DDs; BDs will have all but disappeared. TWL will continue on its downward decline (the Head of TWL will probably be someone like PeePee). Events like Distension and hockey will remain handicapped and never reach their full potential. Staff will have to really scrape the bottom of the barrel for anyone who is willing to invest a fraction of the time it takes to really do the job (people like 2pac will be Mods). We will have a new TW Credit Card feature in pub so players can charge for things that want to use to ?buy win (but this will crash the server periodically when someone defaults on their payment).

Yet even with what is outlined above we still have many people insisting that in the face of the zone shrinking we do not have any need to become more efficient, we do not have any need to start to think about consolidation, and/or we do not have any need for intelligent scheduling or rotation of features, we do not have the need to do things well. In other words, just stay the current course with the expectation that everything will work out on its own. Who knows, maybe someone will be able to figure out that secret Lev setting that will bring a lot more players into the zone.
eph

[Bukkake Surprise]

"Willby: Cashier at a grocery store"

AHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Man, Health Care would get a kick out of that.

"suits her real world skills (as a lawyer)"

Lying, thieving slimebucket with no morals? The only thing that should be filled by lawyers is mass graves.

"HMS Syndrome"

Is this Hypermobility Syndrome or something else?

Thanks for the details, bkgmjo. I noticed a lot of those things, like the rocks not being where they're shown. Nobody has told us why the rocks were changed.

"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?"

You mean the mods (and maybe someone else) are reading our chats and PMs? That should be removed at once.

How do you know about the rewriter?

I saw the weasel is back to "super fucking annoying" settings, the ones it had a year or two ago, when it could rocket into base, kill the terr, sit on the flag and repel everyone who tried to get the flag back, resetting the timer. I don't mind so much that it's small, but it shouldn't have both a rocket and a repel.

I've played a bit more since my last post, including just now, and the map has been changed to the one that was around...I don't even remember when. There have been so many changes over the past 10 years I don't really remember what the "original' settings were. Without a private frequency LT around and with six or more people on each team, the game feels like Continuum again. That's good. The bot was down right now, so I didn't get the annoying time-displaying pop-ups that stupidly replaced the green messages.

The whole ?buy system should be moved to the safe zones only, so people can't spam Burst and Full Charge.

"Superweapons like epidemic, roofturret, flagsaver, baseterr, super, shield and whatnot keep coming and going"

These should be removed.

I don't know why the Pub Bux were ever introduced. There doesn't seem to have been a clear vision of what to do with the Bux, but "hey, let's add features to the game because more is better". Wiping out the Bux made Alanon and SkyMan's (and maybe others) quit, because they primarily wanted to hoard Bux.

"a pubbux reward for laming the most levs in spawn"

Why not? Keep the assholes from getting on a terr. I'd kill them even without the reward. I never consider it when killing them. It's just the smart (and satisfying) thing to do. I like to hear them cry.

I don't see why a lack of European staff members would stop Europeans from playing the game. I don't give a shit where the mods are from, as long as they do their jobs. Lizard Fuel should be in charge.

What does "Lizard Fuel" mean?

[Bigyin]

not sure as i said in my post not played in a long time so still to work out what's changed