The Decline of SS and TW is real

[mtine]

i'm afraid that we will not see the leadership positions change for the better until it is too late. bravery is hard to come by everywhere, but if none of the leaders willing to step up, it is no wonder that the some of the players have lost their hope.

as for my inactivity on staff years ago, it can be single-handedly credited to the way the staff organization was ran by the people in charge at that time. it effectively made me not want to be a part of it. wrong types of people, with no vision or will to improve anything, were promoted to a leading role for their immense activity. there was no clear goals, and knowing that i would have to make staffing a full-time job to get any recognition. honestly, it did not sound that appealing. this is still happening, but to a lesser degree. i will complete this task that was assigned to me, and see how much free time i have to contribute after everything in TWL has been said and done. i will try to work on a smaller project, which is about staff to player transparency and communication, in the coming weeks until my vacation.

only time will tell what happens, but if none of the players responsible are coming forth then it might be time to throw the towel and enjoy our remaining time. i hope that i am wrong, and that things will turn for the better.

morning phone rant rip.

Golden words there my friend. You just read my morning mind.

As for Eph: you are right in some parts, but we don't need a general leader atm, just a pub-leader so to speak. Someone who is willing to listen to vets/new players alike and make appropriate changes to get pub more interesting, more fun and a more easier arena for new players to conquer. Once we achieve that (and that's the biggest IF if I ever saw one), then we can start talking about having a leader that will find ways to entertain/connect us and make us feel like we are really part of an ever-growing community which atm we are not.

[Ephemeral]

LF is right, leadership is the key to getting the zone back on track. Leadership is about having a vision and then having people around you who can do what it takes to get it done. A great leader is really a salesmanship job. You not only have to define the vision; you have to SELL it to the other staffers and players. It is your job to keep everyone on the same page. In other words, you review every lower decision and make sure it ‘fits’ within what the mission/objectives of the zone are.

So let’s say Kyn is responsible for Pub. Obviously he has to have the autonomy to make the lower level decisions that impact Pub. Upper staff shouldn’t not be interfering IF he is making decisions that fall within the objectives of the zone. In this case Pub is acknowledged to be the front door to the zone and critical in keeping new players coming into the game. So a leader would be reviewing decisions such as Pub bucks with Kyn and asking the hard questions like, ‘why are we putting new players at such a disadvantage?’. Leadership is the check and balance against ‘good ideas’ gone wild; keeping everything on target and always headed towards the same direction.

But a leader simply doesn’t sit on top of the pile and do decision reviews. They interface with all staffer/players and make sure that everyone understands those decisions. This is the ‘selling’ art. Some decisions suck, some are painful, some will piss some players off. But a leader’s job is to get out there and make sure everyone knows that it was done in the best, long-term interest of the zone. Sell it. Convince people that the vision/direction/objectives of the zone are being followed. (And make damn sure that they are.)

IF this leadership was in place then the staff culture would finally change. Instead of a group of individuals all doing ‘their own thing’ and working in a vacuum and in a myopic fashion we would have a culture of teamwork and the potential to get things done correctly. But by having small pockets of unrelated, disjointed productivity over time, they would be a solid combined effort with decisions that don’t work against each other. It might even bring back some of the burned out people who have previously walked away.

One final note, leadership has ZERO to do with zone ‘powers’. Having banG access should not be related to being a leader in this zone. banG access, being able to hold an event, or being able to send a zoner has absolutely nothing to do with being a good leader. The only thing those require is a level of trust so they are not abused. Period. Those powers do not automatically give a person the skills to be a good leader. But for decades this fucked up zone has had these two things tied together. The real empowerment is in having the ability to make decisions that impact the long-term direction and health of the zone, and THIS is what everyone should be concerned about. How do these people get this empowerment? How do we go about changing these people if they aren’t doing their jobs? The truth? It’s a ‘good ol’ boy’ kind of thing. This TW ‘royalty’ is passed from one person to another via some secret handshake or something; I’ve never figured it out. Someone like PL decides he has had enough and ‘hands off’ this leadership to some he likes? There certainly is not any kind of election or vetting process.

I tried to address this issue by promoting change in staff structure like the Council. But Council was doomed as soon as it become clear that the Council would not be replacing the existing ‘royalty’ but rather run along side of it.

[Turban]

i'm afraid that we will not see the leadership positions change for the better until it is too late. bravery is hard to come by everywhere, but if none of the leaders willing to step up, it is no wonder that the some of the players have lost their hope.

as for my inactivity on staff years ago, it can be single-handedly credited to the way the staff organization was ran by the people in charge at that time. it effectively made me not want to be a part of it. wrong types of people, with no vision or will to improve anything, were promoted to a leading role for their immense activity. there was no clear goals, and knowing that i would have to make staffing a full-time job to get any recognition. honestly, it did not sound that appealing. this is still happening, but to a lesser degree. i will complete this task that was assigned to me, and see how much free time i have to contribute after everything in TWL has been said and done. i will try to work on a smaller project, which is about staff to player transparency and communication, in the coming weeks until my vacation.

only time will tell what happens, but if none of the players responsible are coming forth then it might be time to throw the towel and enjoy our remaining time. i hope that i am wrong, and that things will turn for the better.

morning phone rant rip.

[mtine]

I must say I finally agree with LF on something. Tho I'm not trying to do anything here mate, let alone get back on Staff. lol

So yeah, ideas are good, too bad tho nothing will ever happen. This discussion is going on since I started in 2009 and look what happened...absolutely nothing. I actually, for the first time since I started playing, can't wait for TWL to be over so I can quit this game and play some other, nicer games and come back for next TWL.

[Crescent Seal]

could have a pub oversight committee with seats open only to players that are in the top 10 of time spent in ships and not in safety

just let tw council do it. they have been doing a fantastic job.

[roxxkatt]

could have a pub oversight committee with seats open only to players that are in the top 10 of time spent in ships and not in safety

[LF]

This thread pains me because the biggest change we could make to improve things is to replace the current leadership with people who actually play the game and have a different set of views. MM is fine and irreplaceable but aside from him which of our sysops/leaders actually have some sort of vision or short and long term goals for our zone? Your job is to lead the charge, not supervise everyone else failing to do so. I could single handedly take steps that have been desperately needed for years now to improve the public arena and the zone in general but my hands are tied by people who don't even matter because they don't like me. Somebody like eph could single handedly provide leadership and vision and guide those driving for change. Turban suddenly seems useful after years of inactivity on staff. Instead of have Demonic who must remain in charge simply because she says so (and her banG access) but doesnt actually contribute anything, we have krynetix in charge of a worthless pub who doesnt even play pub (or anything else it seems) and like 15 other sysops who combine for 4 hours of playtime per month. Some of the ideas in this thread are very good (turban) and some are awful (wiibimbo) but none of them will ever matter as long as we have the current inactive leadership holding the reigns. I believe that is step #1 to fix before implementing anything else, but just my opinion.

[Jerome Scuggs]

rofl newb... if pure pub was still around we wouldn't even be having this conversation

not gonna lie when i started playing pub the only thing the bot did (if there even was a bot) was ban people who used the 'n-word', i don't keep up with all the newfangled technology you newbs grew up with

[nuketheyanks]

is 'pure pub' still around??

rofl newb... if pure pub was still around we wouldn't even be having this conversation

[Jerome Scuggs]

Can TW grow some balls and just get rid of public? It's garbage. Nobody has fun in public for longer than 10 minutes max. Get rid of it already. Be creative and do something entirely new or stfu and let the game die. Fixing a shitty pub map isn't goin to do anything at all. Use some common sense.

i have to respectfully disagree, but i will qualify my disagreement by saying i'm a 'late night pubber', and during the wee hours of the night there's usually at least one pretty serious basing game which is usually 6v6 with people leaving and coming every so often, sometimes its an hour and sometimes im up til the crack of dawn. however that being said the late night pub game has been getting smaller and smaller as the years go by...

i havent played pub during the (american) daytime in forever, i've always been a fan of latenight pub because there's less weirdos spamming the chat, less !buy abuse, and it seems alot of my ss bros are night owls or european. is 'pure pub' still around??

[Fork]

Speaking of Staffers: Azov just killed a 10v10 epic battle going in pub's flagroom by buying epidemic and everyone left. Oh, and Shadowmere defended him HARD.
Just ruined my fun to play TW till Sunday's TWL. GG TW

I got a screenshot of him killing pub.

[mtine]

Speaking of Staffers: Azov just killed a 10v10 epic battle going in pub's flagroom by buying epidemic and everyone left. Oh, and Shadowmere defended him HARD.
Just ruined my fun to play TW till Sunday's TWL. GG TW

[mtine]

- retraining of certain staff members who are incorrectly doing their volunteer job.

And which staffers would that be? I've made countless help calls over the past two weeks (with many other players I've talked to) and nobody ever answers. So I think it's only u left turb.

[Vatican Assassin]

Exalt is onto something! I mean, he has nothing to replace it with, but fuck it, let's delete pub! This will attract new players I betcha.

[olde]

I go into pub and macro stuff such as "pubber so an so got owned EZ" . I contribute it really stirs things up gets everyone fired up , I get like 5 or so people hunting me, even makes pub chat fun/funny. Then they start spamming with duel challenges. But it puts life in the pub. Ofc they get destroyed in the duel, I take there pub bucks and call them EZ. Because I'm the absolute greatest even on your best days newbies yes, that includes u fork.

-Old Motha FukkN E the OG