current status of the Steam project

[roxxkatt]

Great job Turban.



For the love of all things subspace please do not hire this guy again, especially with how he has acted over this debacle. The less power hungry chaps in staff the better.

yes, we know you are an idiot, back under your rock you go
also i think you are now the first person dumb enough to call me "power hungry", so congrats on that

[evil Broccoli]

TW is not newb friendly (not even close)
I'm sorry for intervening out of the blue, i haven't played much the last 3-4 years (nearly nothing) but i do have played well since... always, and i have to agree with Ephemeral, in terms of graphics we cant compete with the f2p´s of today steam (think dota, planetside, war thunder and a long list of etc) so what we can offer is gameplay, and even for a seasoned vet the pub is a yawn-fest in its current form, for a newbie who cant handle the ship its a frustrating confusing mess and will hit uninstall in 5 minutes, so retention will be much lower than you might think. Thats unless pub gets a mayor rework oriented to newbs or we can move the newbs into welcome zones or tutorials.... In planetside, for example, they throw you with players of your same level after the tutorial.... you kill you die but you get a hang of it before going up, that's what we are missing b4 going steam.
Again sry for coming out of the blue , will try to play more

[Ephemeral]

unfortunately i have not had the chance to talk with either cycad or hallucination yet. demonic is on the case, but as always if i can catch them online (or vice versa) then all the better.

we most definitely should look into adding the game officially to the Steam platform as soon as we are ready for exactly for that reason. however, before we can make that happen we have to fully set up the store page to make the game as appealing as possible for the new players. after all half the battle is getting the people interested of the game to actually hit the install button, and for that we need a good store page with quality screenshots of the game and its various features, such as map editor, trailer(s) that will catch the viewers' eye, good images and logos of the game, and other various items. the other half of the battle is obviously keeping the people around once they install the game, and that's where the real work begins.

as for your last question, it's definitely a possibility. all help is always appreciated.

Respectfully disagree with the analysis of 'half the battle'. Getting people to click a download link is not nearly the battle for player retention. Since it is free, getting people to click a download link is simple and easy. Player retention, with Pub in its current state, is nearly impossible. Hopefully the new tutorial is an outstanding piece of work but a decision on whether it is mandatory becomes paramount. The primary value in a tutorial is to get a person invested so they will not 'uninstall' so quickly. Allowing them to by-pass the tutorial defeats much of this.

Interfacing with new players is tricky. First, you begin asking questions of someone who you are not sure even speaks your language. This should be addressed (if it has not already been). New players would feel most comfortable if they are interfaced with someone in their native language. Second, we have to guard from it like being jumped on by an aggressive salesperson in a retail store. Some players just want to 'browse' and not be hassled by some aggressive staffer.

The staffer(s) that end up with handling new player responsibility will become the determining factor in the success/failure of the Steam effort.
Eph

[Mobey]

Great job Turban.

3) if you actually do get this on steam, i would be willing to join staff exclusively as a technical question answerer

For the love of all things subspace please do not hire this guy again, especially with how he has acted over this debacle. The less power hungry chaps in staff the better.

[Turban]

1) have you talked to hallu or cycad yet?

2) once you decide on store page gfx and get them uploaded list the game in the "coming soon" section in steampipe asap, this increases hype and visibility without needing to actually release the game, and i do have some limited experience with steampipe, i will do this for you if you cant figure it out

3) if you actually do get this on steam, i would be willing to join staff exclusively as a technical question answerer

unfortunately i have not had the chance to talk with either cycad or hallucination yet. demonic is on the case, but as always if i can catch them online (or vice versa) then all the better.

we most definitely should look into adding the game officially to the Steam platform as soon as we are ready for exactly for that reason. however, before we can make that happen we have to fully set up the store page to make the game as appealing as possible for the new players. after all half the battle is getting the people interested of the game to actually hit the install button, and for that we need a good store page with quality screenshots of the game and its various features, such as map editor, trailer(s) that will catch the viewers' eye, good images and logos of the game, and other various items. the other half of the battle is obviously keeping the people around once they install the game, and that's where the real work begins.

as for your last question, it's definitely a possibility. all help is always appreciated.

[roxxkatt]

1) have you talked to hallu or cycad yet?

2) once you decide on store page gfx and get them uploaded list the game in the "coming soon" section in steampipe asap, this increases hype and visibility without needing to actually release the game, and i do have some limited experience with steampipe, i will do this for you if you cant figure it out

3) if you actually do get this on steam, i would be willing to join staff exclusively as a technical question answerer

[Frightful]

mehh pac I could buy a new one but this one is fine for everything but this silly game heheh, I'm one of those if it ain't broke don't fix it people. but lol u got me

No, he was talking about himself. Believe it or not, pretending to be black on the internet doesn't pay money.

[Jessup]

mehh pac I could buy a new one but this one is fine for everything but this silly game heheh, I'm one of those if it ain't broke don't fix it people. but lol u got me

[2pac]

Great news!! If this is true I'm very happy and good job. I hate to be cynical but I'll still believe this when I see it. Hopefully that will make me look like a pessimist once we do get on Steam. I'd like to be ZH when this happens to help welcome new players. Can I just apply for staff here? The old tutorial wasn't so bad.. Is this new one easier? We just need at least 2 staffers manning pub at all time to welcome new players. I wish we could use the 1280 and 1400 res limits of old lol in the launch but w/e . I know there is a long standing debate on this issue. Its just how the game was meant to be played but I know its 2015 sigh. My monitor is from 2001 lol and can't use anything but 1280. Really good news though. Thanks Turban!

?find job
?buy monitor

[Jessup]

Great news!! If this is true I'm very happy and good job. I hate to be cynical but I'll still believe this when I see it. Hopefully that will make me look like a pessimist once we do get on Steam. I'd like to be ZH when this happens to help welcome new players. Can I just apply for staff here? The old tutorial wasn't so bad.. Is this new one easier? We just need at least 2 staffers manning pub at all time to welcome new players. I wish we could use the 1280 and 1400 res limits of old lol in the launch but w/e . I know there is a long standing debate on this issue. Its just how the game was meant to be played but I know its 2015 sigh. My monitor is from 2001 lol and can't use anything but 1280. Really good news though. Thanks Turban!

[Turban]

we will make a separate thread tomorrow, or Tuesday, to add more specifics about Steam and how you can help us to achieve a more successful launch, but long story short we need a new trailer (likely setting up a competition), some high quality (1920x1080) screenshots and help with some other lesser items.

[Turban]

the problem is that the game in its current state, while sufficient, is something we do not own and legally can not launch on steam.

to correct this one, we can legally launch on a platform such as Steam.

however, the original developers do retain the right to take the game down if they so wish which is very unlikely to happen as Priit already knows about the Steam project and has taken zero steps to prevent this from happening. he was last involved two months ago when we were having problems with the trenchwars.org domain, and he had to physically be the one to change the A records to it back up and running. it is safe to assume that he has read our other emails, especially the ones about Steam.

either way, we are not in an ideal situation, and a backup plan should be worked on, but it is still better than nothing.

[Turban]

and i would 100% rather see this done correctly and permanently without sacrificing due dilligence for late haste, because its far easier now while its dead than it would be with more people, and the only reason 6 months have gone by with no action other than my own is because apparently noone gives a shit about the game


and a reminder that all delays on this project are delays exclusively based on lack of effort
the biggest trend is people sitting waiting for other people to do work, while they themselves refuse to do anything

I agree that this should not be done in haste, but at the same time we can not risk losing most of the current players. This whole project could, and should, have been managed way better from the get-go, but there is no point to cry over spilled milk.

There are several pros and cons with the project that you and SSC are working on, and while on long-term the pros do outweigh the cons, we currently can't afford waiting too long for a miracle to take place. The transistion phase from the current client and biller to new ones would not be a painless one, and it is something that we have to consider as well.

[Turban]

time to be the bringer of good news,

Steam has given us their seal of approval allowing this game to launch on their platform now that the paperwork has been completed. We are currently aiming to launch in early July as there is still a lot of work that needs to be done to ensure as smooth of a launch as possible for the new players.

The work on Steam itself is not going to be too time consuming, but rather preparing and getting everything set in game is going to prove to be the true challenge and time sink of this project.

We need the extra time to prepare all the zones and their respective staff for the launch date, which for Trench Wars means updating the current public arena, promoting the competitive scene for the competitive players, setting up a new tutorial for the new players, figuring out launch events to keep players entertained, hiring additional staff members to help with the launch day, and other various projects. As always, we are looking to hire experienced players to the staff team.

We are going to start working on the store page, starting this Monday, and we would greatly appreciate all the help we can get from the community to make the store page as appealing as possible for the new players. This would include adding quality high resolution screenshots of the game, including images and various banners using the original Continuum logo, a good description of the game, writing an announcement about the launch on the greenlight page, and more. There is a fair amount of resources available from the past, but as always there is room for improvement. If anyone feels that they are qualified enough to help, let us know and we will fill you with the details of the work.

When everything is ready to go, we can set a launch date and submit the game to get the final approval from Steam.

Sorry for the six months of delay, this all could have been handled much better. I will continue answering questions about everything related to Steam both in-game and on the forums.

[Crescent Seal]

yeah i just see this as a half-ass attempt (which will probably never even happen) by staff to put something together and get on steam. lets say we do get on steam for hypothetical purposes (lol). has anyone thought beyond that? we have no tutorial whatsoever and this game has a massive learning curve. player retention rate would be extremely low if any. steam is basically life support for this game at this point. its just a temporary heal that i doubt would significantly contribute to this games survival.

i 100% agree with roxcatt because he is looking at a long term strategy. If we can somehow become legally independent then it would give us the ability to adapt and meet ever-changing player demands. the only downfall to this is that we lack competent staff members for this. our staff is so pathetic that if we went with a plan like this, the game might actually die before we were even able to finish it. time is a factor here.

all of this should have been set in motion years ago but our upper staff is beyond garbage. this game will die and its too late to do anything about it so just figure out a way to use that donation money so one of those fgts doesn't use it to buy a blow up doll.