Bots July 14th

[Fork]

No there hasn't been much changes to pub in years... Apart from spacebux and buy system which would have worked well had there been items that's worth buying (doesn't ruin basing) which there hasn't been. These old players who are stuck in 1998-2002 annoy me when they think restoring settings to that era will get the population going again. It won't at all! I bet my life on it.

Well the problem is back in 1998-2002 online gaming was a new experience (not many online games out there) and the concept of online gaming appealed more to players than what pub had to offer= rise in the number of players. Pub could have been anything back then and still found people enjoying themselves from the weird experience of chatting to players\ killing them in an online game. Forward to today, there are so many online games out there that new players are used to this wierd concept (that you could play online with people) that was present in 1998 and instead look at quality of gameplay. Pubs gameplay isn't that good due to the lack of competition\ you win a round of pub- then what? There is no goals\ no incentive to keep constantly winning rounds... Noone gives a dam if you play well or kill 5 in a row... So how can you expect new players to enjoy this???

We need leaders who are focused on the future and not the past or tradition if we want to really newbies to stay online because atm pub is boring the shit out of them. Problem is, it won't ever happen so naturally the population will decline unless a new client is released improving the gameplay in pub.

[Ephemeral]

No there hasn't been much changes to pub in years... Apart from spacebux and buy system which would have worked well had there been items that's worth buying (doesn't ruin basing) which there hasn't been. These old players who are stuck in 1998-2002 annoy me when they think restoring settings to that era will get the population going again. It won't at all! I bet my life on it.

Well the problem is back in 1998-2002 online gaming was a new experience (not many online games out there) and the concept of online gaming appealed more to players than what pub had to offer= rise in the number of players. Pub could have been anything back then and still found people enjoying themselves from the weird experience of chatting to players\ killing them in an online game. Forward to today, there are so many online games out there that new players are used to this wierd concept (that you could play online with people) that was present in 1998 and instead look at quality of gameplay. Pubs gameplay isn't that good due to the lack of competition\ you win a round of pub- then what? There is no goals\ no incentive to keep constantly winning rounds... Noone gives a dam if you play well or kill 5 in a row... So how can you expect new players to enjoy this???

We need leaders who are focused on the future and not the past or tradition if we want to really newbies to stay online because atm pub is boring the shit out of them. Problem is, it won't ever happen so naturally the population will decline unless a new client is released improving the gameplay in pub.

Fork,
You missed the point. I have no idea if the configuration from 2000 would be better than the one we have now. Point is; none of us know shit. Why? Because no one forced people to do the work required to measure ANYTHING before making changes. No one forced anyone to actually test ANYTHING thoroughly before releasing it. No one forced changes into logical release groups (which could be rolled back if any problems arose) as opposed to just letting changes take place ad hoc and on-the-fly.

We keep covering the same ground. I see upper staff’s job as managing HOW the zone does things. I see their job as selling some non-popular things when required (no, the players don’t always know best). I see their job as being responsible for the staff culture and moral.

What Demonic posted above is like all the ideas you post. Game play ideas which concern ships, maps, arenas. We have had endless ideas for ships, maps, and arenas. Show me where they have helped the zone in the long run. Sure, some changes are well received, nothing wrong with that. But that is not what I am talking about.

Consider TW as a retail store. Throwing out ideas like, ‘hey let rearrange the shelves and move this product to the top shelf’ will indeed interest shoppers. But what good does this do if the store is being mis-managed anyway? How is coming up with good ideas helping when the store owners won fix the way the store buys new inventory or fix the hole in the roof?

I am imploring Demonic and M_M to consider making changes HOW the zone does stuff, I am not asking them to return the Pub configuration to 2000 status.
Eph

[roxxkatt]

and another reminder of the third possibility you all are ignoring: everyone is playing other games and nothing you do or dont do will matter with player count because you are working within the constraints of an outdated game

[Fork]

We haven't actually had many ideas tested apart from changing ship settings frequently. Spacebux was the only big change to pub and I couldn't say it was bad but with nothing to buy and options to ruin basing it became kinda useless. Here's one idea that was tested and made a fantastic impact: twd.

The ideas I mainly suggest are ways to try and keep people logged in longer or get more interest... We never have trialed these ideas out... So where you coming from?

[Ephemeral]

Fork,
Respectfully disagree regarding the scope and frequency of changes. Changes in TW over the decades have been significant; numbering in the hundreds if not thousands. I am speaking of every ship change, map change, bot change, arena change or rules/policy change. Let me give you an single example, the hockey event/arena. How are changes made? How are they tested? How are they implemented?

I’ll tell you based upon what I have experienced. Players exploit the ship settings and establish teams that consist of all the over-power ships. A few vocal players bitch and whine and eventually get Demonic (or another staffer who has the permissions) to consider changes. Demonic or another staffer goes into the arena and checks out the settings. They make a few ‘tweaks’ to the ships and gets a few players to test them out. No real communication of what was changed, no legitimate testing, changes made on-the-fly. There are pros and cons to doing it this way. On the good side, it gets done quickly. On the bad side, a bug may have been introduced that will crash the arena after playing in it a while. (Unlikely since this example is just a ship configuration change but stranger things have happened.) But how do we measure the effectiveness of the change? If the person who made the changes didn’t record them or communicate the change and logs off, how are others informed of the changes in event of a serious problem? How do we roll back the changes quickly if they are thought to be problematic?

IMO upper leaders of the zone are responsible for HOW we do this stuff and should be looking to make improvements there.

roxxkatt,
Point taken, but what is the value is discussing this issue? The client code is locked up and we can’t do anything about trying to get this client competitive. That seems to me to leave us with discussing thing that we can improve like leadership and the way we do things.
Eph

[roxxkatt]

well i dont know about you, but im writing a new client
so theres that

[field]

lol

[Fork]

well i dont know about you, but im writing a new client
so theres that

Do it but finish it lol

[roxxkatt]

as always, my interest is low and my pace is lesiurely

however it is a public project regardless of whether people care about the game enough to contribute to and those knowledgeable enough are free to contribute

[Crescent Seal]

lol

[Leland]

lol