Bots July 14th

[Pummel]

I just recently started logging in again and from the events of today it is already very clear to me why the game is dying. Elim had 45+ players and the big base was open for javs for probably the first time in years and the bots were taken away with no warning. If you're going to do this kind of thing then A. give us plenty of warning and B. don't do it during peak hours. Ridiculous.

[Ephemeral]

I just logged in, and bots have been down for an hour and there were 5 players in Pub. A week or two after Steam and this is what we have? Seriously? Which Einstein made sweeping changes to Pub without testing it properly just before Steam? (Tell us who is responsible for this fuck up so that even if you can't fix it so we can ridicule them!) Are there any plans to learn from this? Or should we be resigned to accepting that TW will continuously make this same mistake until it crushes it to death?
Eph

[forwards]

I just logged in, and bots have been down for an hour and there were 5 players in Pub. A week or two after Steam and this is what we have? Seriously? Which Einstein made sweeping changes to Pub without testing it properly just before Steam? (Tell us who is responsible for this fuck up so that even if you can't fix it so we can ridicule them!) Are there any plans to learn from this? Or should we be resigned to accepting that TW will continuously make this same mistake until it crushes it to death?
Eph

I'm in EG. EG is fine.

[Demonic]

I just logged in, and bots have been down for an hour and there were 5 players in Pub. A week or two after Steam and this is what we have? Seriously? Which Einstein made sweeping changes to Pub without testing it properly just before Steam? (Tell us who is responsible for this fuck up so that even if you can't fix it so we can ridicule them!) Are there any plans to learn from this? Or should we be resigned to accepting that TW will continuously make this same mistake until it crushes it to death?
Eph

Funny the bots was down for less then 20mins in total, as, as soon as they dropped I manually hosted elim and didn't have time to finish it before they were back. While I agree the timing for the server upgrade wasn't the best, to state it was down for over an hour is just a load of BS to be honest.

[2pac]

idiots cant manage to keep a bot up, they always crash blame the sysops in charge they don't have the balls to pay for a expert bot guy to keep that shit stable, told these idiots to !settile they cant even do that

[Ephemeral]

Funny the bots was down for less then 20mins in total, as, as soon as they dropped I manually hosted elim and didn't have time to finish it before they were back. While I agree the timing for the server upgrade wasn't the best, to state it was down for over an hour is just a load of BS to be honest.

I cut in half the announcement time (which was that Bots would be down about 2 hours.) But way to avoid the question. Let me modified the question so you might be able to answer it. Who was the Einstein who made the decision to allow Pub sweeping changes without proper testing. Whomever it was ought to be fired immediately. Really we really so incompetent that we cannot even consider a root cause and make improvements?
Eph

[Rough]

Why aren't we asking the big question here...Who is the idiot that proposed the steam launch on July 4th weekend LOL


When this game crashes and burn which it will soon, I just hope that we all remember that Japanese anime wannabe Turban screwed all this up.


Also, big props to The_Block for attempting to progress this zone by himself.

[Slum]

LOL

[Demonic]

I cut in half the announcement time (which was that Bots would be down about 2 hours.) But way to avoid the question. Let me modified the question so you might be able to answer it. Who was the Einstein who made the decision to allow Pub sweeping changes without proper testing. Whomever it was ought to be fired immediately. Really we really so incompetent that we cannot even consider a root cause and make improvements?
Eph

What sweeping changes to pub? it was a bot server upgrade nothing to do with pub. The announcement in terms of how long bots would potentially be down for I assume was a worst case scenario, and as I stated were brought back very quickly. I know who performed the upgrade, but whether they initiated it or not that I don't know. I do know it wasn't zreq however.

[Crescent Seal]

Just terrible planning like usual. I'm not sure why these types of things still surprise people in this game lol.

[Leland]

lol

[Ephemeral]

What sweeping changes to pub? it was a bot server upgrade nothing to do with pub. The announcement in terms of how long bots would potentially be down for I assume was a worst case scenario, and as I stated were brought back very quickly. I know who performed the upgrade, but whether they initiated it or not that I don't know. I do know it wasn't zreq however.

Why do you pick out minutia in a post and avoid the important questions? First you took issue with my classification of the length of time, then you take issue with my use of an adjective "sweeping". Coding changes were done without proper testing or having enough time before the Steam launch to wring out the bugs. <-This is the important issue and demands improvement if anyone gives a shit about this zone. Instead we deflect the issue and dance around the question. I really don't give a shit about the developer who pulled the trigger without proper testing. All developers cut corners if they can get away with it, they want to create, not plan or test.

Planning is a leader task. Enforcing proper methods that do not damage the zone are leadership tasks. Requiring proper planning including leaving enough room to test is a leadership responsibility. Yet this zone has historically and continually stepped into the same hole for decades. How fucking stupid do we have to be that we make the same mistakes over and over without improvement?

I am fairly wealthy (retired) and could afford to donate substantial monies to this zone but I have refused to until I saw some actual leadership with leadership skills. So far we have not had this, we have had a half-assed leadership which fucked away opportunity after opportunity and wave off the repeated mistakes with deflection and excuses about the difficulty of working a volunteer staff. Yes, there have been a few bright spots over the years but they all surround 1-2 people who pour their lives into the zone before they eventually burn out.

Now we have the 'Steam fiasco'. This follows the decision to start TWL qualification while TWDT season was still active a while back. And then we had the infamous 'lets change the TWL code' just before the finals were started (changing the game duration time). The list goes on and on, it a joke that we continue to make the same mistakes and no one is ever held responsible.

So when this zone eventually crashed and burns for good, I hope the leaders (those who made these decisions) will at least understand that THEY contributed to the decline of this good community. They will make excuses about how the game graphics suck, competition from better games, and the aging of the population/game; but if they have any balls they will at least accept partial responsibility for the decline of this zone.

Its probably too late to make the changes to staff that needed to be done. Simply put the staff organization should have been changed to an elected group that would have been held responsible for their decisions. We tried a half-ass attempt at this with the 'Council' but it never got off the ground because the upper leadership either refused or was slow to communicate that the Council would actually be making all the final decisions. (By the time that a few of the upper leadership defined this it was too late, many good candidates already saw it was a lost cause and refused to run.) Again, poor planning and bad leadership was the root cause of this failure. but then again, I am sure we will see a response which places the blame anywhere/everywhere except where it belongs.

Frankly, no matter what the excuses, 'the buck stops with the leadership'. Nothing worse than a leadership which points fingers at workers, customers, or some nebulous reasons for the failures. Step up, be a man and take some ownership for the decsions that were made.

Eph

[Demonic]

Why do you pick out minutia in a post and avoid the important questions? First you took issue with my classification of the length of time, then you take issue with my use of an adjective "sweeping". Coding changes were done without proper testing or having enough time before the Steam launch to wring out the bugs. <-This is the important issue and demands improvement if anyone gives a shit about this zone. Instead we deflect the issue and dance around the question. I really don't give a shit about the developer who pulled the trigger without proper testing. All developers cut corners if they can get away with it, they want to create, not plan or test.

Planning is a leader task. Enforcing proper methods that do not damage the zone are leadership tasks. Requiring proper planning including leaving enough room to test is a leadership responsibility. Yet this zone has historically and continually stepped into the same hole for decades. How fucking stupid do we have to be that we make the same mistakes over and over without improvement?

I am fairly wealthy (retired) and could afford to donate substantial monies to this zone but I have refused to until I saw some actual leadership with leadership skills. So far we have not had this, we have had a half-assed leadership which fucked away opportunity after opportunity and wave off the repeated mistakes with deflection and excuses about the difficulty of working a volunteer staff. Yes, there have been a few bright spots over the years but they all surround 1-2 people who pour their lives into the zone before they eventually burn out.

Now we have the 'Steam fiasco'. This follows the decision to start TWL qualification while TWDT season was still active a while back. And then we had the infamous 'lets change the TWL code' just before the finals were started (changing the game duration time). The list goes on and on, it a joke that we continue to make the same mistakes and no one is ever held responsible.

So when this zone eventually crashed and burns for good, I hope the leaders (those who made these decisions) will at least understand that THEY contributed to the decline of this good community. They will make excuses about how the game graphics suck, competition from better games, and the aging of the population/game; but if they have any balls they will at least accept partial responsibility for the decline of this zone.

Its probably too late to make the changes to staff that needed to be done. Simply put the staff organization should have been changed to an elected group that would have been held responsible for their decisions. We tried a half-ass attempt at this with the 'Council' but it never got off the ground because the upper leadership either refused or was slow to communicate that the Council would actually be making all the final decisions. (By the time that a few of the upper leadership defined this it was too late, many good candidates already saw it was a lost cause and refused to run.) Again, poor planning and bad leadership was the root cause of this failure. but then again, I am sure we will see a response which places the blame anywhere/everywhere except where it belongs.

Frankly, no matter what the excuses, 'the buck stops with the leadership'. Nothing worse than a leadership which points fingers at workers, customers, or some nebulous reasons for the failures. Step up, be a man and take some ownership for the decsions that were made.

Eph

I wasn't aware of any coding changes eph which is why I asked what changes to pub, the only change to pub that I am aware of was an accidental one, by me as it happens involving the lanc. As for TWL well I was retired during that period and barely logging in so fair enough.
As for the Steam Fiasco, as it is called, what exactly was expected really? I think when steam was initially announced I said we would have a surplus but we would be lucky to hold onto maybe 10 players with pub in it's current state, as it's just dull and in terms of numbers I am not far off the mark as logging in over the last couple of days the overall pub numbers don't appear to have changed much at least in my time zone anyways. I can understand why the likes of HS got a large bump, as it has a goal, something to aim for so to speak with regards to ship upgrades and becoming the top ship. Our base resets every couple of mins, so once a team has won then what? Warping into the flag room removes any challenge of trying to take the flag where in bygone era where a team took hold of the base you actually had to work to get it back, which at least gave more of an aim. We also had a decent pub ranking and the #1 pub status was something people actually went for, yet again we have nothing.
Maybe if (similar to elim) we introduced a pub scoring splash with top 10 players by points, maybe if we made all ships useful so it had variety then it would have gave it that aim, but what do I know about pub

[Ephemeral]

Demonic,
Are you implying that Pub had no changes before Steam was released? Seems to me that the ?buy system was modified. It also seems that the way the map/FR was changed (the way the FR was shrinking/growing based upon the number of players in the arena). And then I think we had the some ship configuration changes. There certainly may have been changes which I am unaware of; obviously something was changed since the Bots became unstable and started acting up.

Note: I am not lamenting the changes. I am sure they were all done with good reasons. I am also not being critical of developers and others who work hard to make this an enjoyable game. I am simply saying that the Steam Fiasco epitomizes one of the underlying root causes which have plagued TW for years and that this is a leadership issue. I understand that leadership in TW has been a constantly evolving entity. Some leaders inherited a legacy and culture which was broken and dysfunctional; they often did the best they could with what they had.

As previous discussed a ‘fresh’ start and complete reorganization of staff, and it’s culture, was obviously called for if significant changes were desired. Some progress was made in the dissolution of the silly power structure and hierarchy which previously existed. But the old culture was tenacious and proved hard to overcome (the ‘old ways’ culture still exist in some ways). And of course we still have a large group of players who feel they all have the ‘answer’ in the form of ‘good’ ideas.

It is these ‘good’ ideas which have deflected addressing the real issues in the zone. There has always been a flow of ‘ideas’ coming from the players; all of which insist they have THE solution to fixing Pub, the weasel, LTs, etc. For decades we supported these ideas with developers adding in various additional features can they felt they could code. (i.e. ?buy system). The ?buy system is a great example of the breakdown and lack of leadership oversight. It was added without proper oversight and planning. While I am sure that someone worked hard on this coding, we ended up having to address many new issues that the change introduced. Even to this day we are trying to go back and undo some of the things like ?buy win. And at its core, its very premise (which was to give experienced players an advantage in Pub) was clearly ‘anti-new’ player. It was designed with a simple theory, the more a player plays the game the more bucks he gets. Where was the leadership at the time with the oversight which asked, ‘hey wait a minute, is this something that is best for the arena/zone?’

Ditto with the current issue of changes without better revision control. I really don’t know if all of this was done intentionally. A cynical person might think that not doing these things was an approach intentionally used to simply skate by without having to do the difficult leadership procedural issues. You know, ‘keep the players busy with offering up ideas and making superficial changes to appease them while we never really having to address or fix the real hard issues’. Hopefully this wasn’t the case but at this point it probably doesn’t matter; no matter how it went down the result was the same. I think we dropped the ball again with the Steam opportunity; Pub wasn’t ready, TW wasn’t ready to take advantage of the new influx of players. (Despite warning from many folks that this might happen.) The very first thing that TW leadership should have latched on to was ‘what is worse case scenario with the Steam opportunity’? It would have been, ‘gee, it would really suck if we worked hard in getting on Steam but then ended up with TW Pub not being ready and/or crashing.’ Leadership should have been drilling developers to manage the changes (whether coding changes, ship configuration changes, or map changes) into logical release groupings, with test plans, and ways to measure their impacts. The plan should have then become a scheduled project with timing to include getting it done before the Steam influx, including proper testing time.

We would have been better off NOT making any changes if the alternative was that we would end up having to recycle the server and troubleshoot problems like we have had.

Sorry if I am being negative about leadership. It frustrates me leadership seems to always walk away with the ‘well, I worked hard and gave it a shot so it’s not my fault’. No doubt that many great people have burned out and walked away; currently The Block and Turb seem to be the ones whom are pouring their lives into the zone and making it better for the rest of us. But we don’t have to burn them out too; upper leadership still has time to make improvements which change the core way we do things.

Your post has some more ‘ideas’ at improving Pub. Again, there has rarely been a time when we didn’t have plenty of ‘ideas’ to consider. But what the zone really needs is for you (or M_M or whomever is making the upper level zone decisions) to manage the way TW does stuff, we don’t really need more ‘ideas’ which simply tweak ships and/or arenas. Producing more arena ‘ideas’ at this point comes across as not wanting to try to fix the procedural level things that TW does incorrectly.
Eph

[roxxkatt]

keep in mind the people that put in the pubbux system actually were quite clear in their intentions to prevent monetary inflation and the core system did not have silly things like epidemic that were obviously bad for gameplay

they were eventually ignored and those things were added later