Trench Wars Pub & Zone REVITALIZATION - Need your feedback

[Kontrolz]

It's pointless Eph. Even though everything you said is dead on, the argument is as pointless as it always has been since Moot quit. Qan is the person you have to convince and he will never believe that limiting a player's options/freedoms is a step in the right direction. Even if that could mean a larger, persistent population in pub (like we saw during the Guanobot era, and the Pure Pub weekends years before it).

We should be focusing on finding ways to keep the public teams as big and as evenly matched as possible. Private teams and LT's ultimately hurt both of those things. It's frustrating because it's common sense to just about everyone who was playing pub daily before, during, and after the Pure Pub days.

[Ricko]

not a troll post - when are we launching on Steam again/whatever the term was called that's not a re-release? I've been woefully inactive but would still like to see the game pick up in numbers.

[qan]

If Pub is about basing and teamwork then private frequency LTs should be banned. If Pub is about selfishness and ‘who gives a shit about anyone else, I just wanna blow crap up’ then allow private frequency LTs.

I've always been against the idea that pub has been About anything. I used to argue with Moot a lot on this point. If you're going to say it's about something, to me, it's pursuing a goal you find enjoyable. For some, that goal is taking and holding the flag. For others it's spawnkilling in a WB. And for some, it's LTing. Spawnkilling and LTing work at cross-purposes to the flag game, but they still satisfy the purpose of what pub is arguably about, which is enjoying yourself.


Purepub worked very well when there was an option for a second pub. Those who wished to base could mostly hang out in the first pub, and those who wished to just screw around could visit the bedlam of 2nd pub. Without that option, restricting private freqs or LTs takes away a hallmark of the zone.


Meanwhile, LTs are quite weak compared to what they used to be. They have much less energy, slower recharge, much slower bombs, fewer toys, increased gun fire costs, have to use all their energy to fire a single bomb, and no longer receive team greens. As for what can be used against them: antiwarp is affordable, radar is zoomed out to more easily show where bombs are coming from and all ships can now see L3 bombs on radar, you can !deploy to the roof for free once per round (and then afterward, for a small cost), the hunter freq provides increased rewards for killing LTs, and you can always purchase a roof terr or purepub. There are many tools at your disposal to deal with LTs.


You're talking about teamwork being the core of pub, and yet teamwork is what is needed to take care of an LT harassing base. People seem to forget that controlling the roof used to be a huge part of holding FR. Calling out LT locations and having scouts patrolling to make their lives difficult. While not everyone agrees, I think this was a fun and interesting dynamic.


Is the idea to just ban Levis from private freqs, by the way? Or remove private freqs in general? I'm not sure pushing them to publics is going to help things; you'll just end up with a lot of Levis soloing and TKing, from what I've seen of private freq bans in the past.


One thing I can do is make purepub buys cost less, but last for a shorter time, with the ability to be purchased more often. Not exactly the dream situation you're looking for (a dream situation of banning private freq LTs, which would mean a lot of complaints to staff from players who I am guessing you don't believe are worth keeping around, because they don't subscribe to your specific idea of what pub should be). And if it's private freq LTs that bother you most, don't forget that you can buy sortapurepub, which only restricts Levis on private freqs, and is substantially cheaper. Work together with a group of people to keep buying these and you can effectively keep purepub going indefinitely. One useful quality about pubbux is it acts as a kind of vote, where you get to make decisions on sometimes controversial rules, because you have demonstrated that you have a stake in the zone.

[qan]

not a troll post - when are we launching on Steam again/whatever the term was called that's not a re-release? I've been woefully inactive but would still like to see the game pick up in numbers.

The lag issue that's plagued us for 3 months is now fixed. I still need to confirm with those who've been experiencing it, but bots are no longer lagging.

Was hoping to release during summer before I got busy again. But we have pretty much everything we need, so we're looking at sometime soon.

[qan]

If you could set up automated messages to ask for an anti-spid, a terr, some turret ships (wb, lanc) and offer money rewards, that may push people in the right direction. We already have some automated messages and rewards now, like for baseterr, and I think that's a good thing.

Pretty good idea overall, and easy enough to put in. Will add it to the list.

That is why I propose things like video tutorials, safe tours, active moderation, maybe a practice arena with bot instructions and quick recharge for practicing positional shots.

There's a couple of video tutorials that are now linked after you install via Steam, and can optionally be opened in a web browser. They're the same ones that are on Steam. If anyone wants to make a more concise one I can add it to the Steam installer as well. The practice arena idea has been proposed many times but is outside my current level of time/commitment. If someone wants to take it on as a project, it would be a nice way to intro players. We could even have it as a separate zone, and then let them choose a zone to go to after. Safe tours would be easy enough for anyone to take on. With the Steam update round, players interested in helping newbies can join some of the new player channels and could do some tours with them. I can put in something to that effect. Gotta check what the channels are, though.

That's when players still gave a damn, that's when people in higher positions in staff just made people quit. PH, Turban... both quit because of some weird in-game politics. They were probably the best TWL op's we had.

We never got an updated TWL website, we never got a more automated newbie-friendly baseprac arena. we just saw multiple threads of people with the best intentions going literally ape-shit at how upper staff were handling things... Reckful is a good example.

This has always been a big problem, yeah ... I've quit staff quite a few times because of scumbags, those who excel at telling people what to do but are essentially incompetent themselves, or all but. Unfortunately, sometimes those people rise to the top, simply because in order to be that incompetent and lazy and still survive, you have to become extremely good at manipulation. Aside from learning the art of playing people against one another and feeding vague, unverifiable lies to various channels, it also means keeping anyone who will put in work from getting too far, so that you can continue to give them orders and squeeze that effort out of them, while taking credit yourself, ideally. I'm sure you've all seen this same effect IRL in the workplace. There are some low-quality people in the world.

But many things can still be done here. Bottom line is that if there's enough support for something and someone's willing to do it there's no reason not to put it in. But the support for an idea is often far from universal, and it's extremely hard to keep people around who will put in huge amounts of effort for a very old video game, no matter how dedicated the community is. That problem is fairly intractable.

[Ephemeral]

I've always been against the idea that pub has been About anything. I used to argue with Moot a lot on this point. If you're going to say it's about something, to me, it's pursuing a goal you find enjoyable. For some, that goal is taking and holding the flag. For others it's spawnkilling in a WB. And for some, it's LTing. Spawnkilling and LTing work at cross-purposes to the flag game, but they still satisfy the purpose of what pub is arguably about, which is enjoying yourself...

Hi Qan,
And how is this approach working out?

I am not sure how long you have been involved but back in the heyday (1998-2003) Pub was not as you described. It was about teamwork and capturing the flag. Sure there were new players shooting in spawn, but they quickly found they needed to attach to a terrier. By supporting teamwork in this way, Pub became the training ground and foundation of league play.

But instead Pub got totally trashed by those who thought they had bright ideas. Pub became a test bed. People wanted to spend several hours on coding and then roll it out, so Pub became a 'catch all' for every stupid or badly implemented idea. Most of these 'good ideas' favored experienced players and the new players had a harder and harder time breaking into the game.

But hey, good news. No one did shit as far as ever measuring how the changes helped or hurt so anyone can now argue over the spilled milk. Instead they can comfortably just say 'the 1995 graphics suck' and pretend they did not selfishly help accelerate the decline of a once decent zone. But the cow has left the barn, Pub is trashed and is no longer the 'cover to the TW book'. The biggest idiots here are people like me who still bother to spend time posting stuff like this.
Eph

[qan]

I've been playing TW since 2000ish (SS around 97), and got involved with staff around 2005.

As early as 06, people were starting to get sick of flagging just to receive more points for kills. Engagement was going down, including in pure pub. Somewhere around then is when I added the timed flag game to Guanobot in an effort to re-focus the game around the flag. It worked, and we once more had huge and intense flag games, like back in the day.

So, yes, we had to change and adapt in order to keep things going. You're right -- adaptation is necessary.

But you know what we didn't do? Throw out the baby with the bathwater. We didn't tell people they couldn't do WB duels at bottom safe. We didn't tell people they couldn't roof or spawn or LT, or just fly around the rock ring if they wanted. (Did you ever do any of those things? Has pub always been about "hardcore basing" to you, from the moment you began playing?)

TW has always thrived on freedom, in a world where games are increasingly more rigidly-structured. Pub is not every other e-sports game. It's something quite unique in gaming, and I think it's something worth preserving, even if that means you get hit with a bomb and have to chase an LT every now and again. Because that's part of the game. It's always been part of the game. (Note that Shark might not be the best way to deal with an LT.)

There have been some ideas that have been rolled out thoughtlessly, but most of what I've put in I'd like to think has been done with some consideration. I'm not one for rash changes. Some of the things may have been considered rash, such as allowing people to warp into FR at round start. But that was in response to seeing basing games fall apart after the round ended and a new one started, and the losing team just gave up trying to take the flag. And many people hate the midbase warp during low population times. But that was in response to watching games consistently die and turn to nothing after getting to around 4v4. It's not great, but the alternative was nobody playing at all. I'm not a fan of pubbux, but when I came back one time after ragequitting over staff politics yet again, there they were, and now we have to do what we can within that framework, as it's become part of pub, and in some ways it gave a new way to play a game when people were starting to get tired of the old.

Almost everything I've done with pub has been in line with the philosophy of supporting opportunities for basing, but without sacrificing the core concepts of TW and the freedom to play as you wish too much. I don't think it's been so selfish.

So I get what you're saying, but I think there are better ways to handle LTs than just banning them outright. I know you've got to have ideas that are more nuanced than "get rid of things I don't like, because if you don't, everything's over."

[Ephemeral]

Has there ever been any changes where the desired effect was defined up front? A change where measurements were taken before the change was made and then remeasured after the change to see if the predicted effect was achieved? If not, then no one should be arguing that change managment was done correctly. And I know that you have more experince and intelligence than to argue that Pub changes were ever properly tested.

I concur that ‘freedom’ was a huge part of the Pub change history of TW. But this was not some democratic freedom of the player base; it was developer and staff freedom. Freedom for developers and staff to do whatever they thought was a good idea.
Pub bucks is a good example, it was flawed by design from the very beginning. It’s design favored experience players and put new players at a distinct disadvantage.

TW Pub has been run exactly as you describe, trying to be everything to everyone. I am not aware of anything in life where this approach has been successful. The decline of the zone certainly does not indicate that this approach has worked. TW certainly can support multiple iterations of SS but it does this through different arenas, leagues play, and events. But trying to accommodate many things in a single arena in which new players are introduced to the zone has always been the problem. The best designs are when there is nothing left to remove, not when there is nothing left to add.

More ideas? This forum is full of ideas going back over a decade. Every attempt to suggest that TW develop Pub correctly was rejected. I know you know how to develop correctly and that if TW had been a business developers who did crap like this would not have lasted one week. Of course we can just fall back on the 'its just volunteers' justification.

But debating this is fruitless; the real judge will be time. If Pub is done correctly than over time it will give the zone the best chance at growing. Even if many of us are not playing Pub anymkore, we will watch with interest to see how time judges.
Eph

[Ricko]

without trying to be too much of a negative nancy, it's going to take an absolute miracle for SS population to grow again.

[Wax]

without trying to be too much of a negative nancy, it's going to take an absolute miracle for SS population to grow again.

Thank you for the valuable insight.

[Ricko]

Thank you for the valuable insight.

just keeping it real

[qan]

...

I can't speak for everyone, but in general, whenever I change something, I do it for a reason. I don't go looking for problems that don't exist. No, rarely are a range of hard measurements taken, other than pub numbers. To be able to correlate population numbers with specific pub changes is nearly impossible. There are just too many factors to account for -- seasonal changes are a big one, for example. "Someone" could normalize for population over time, using past data, yet even that would be murky at best. You might see trends emerge but it'd be a big project. One you have volunteered to take on many times before, I'm assuming?

The measurements go more like this: see or (much more often) hear about a problem from someone. Brainstorm some solutions. Then implement the best one and pay attention to what happens. Don't attach your ego or your self-worth to it, because that doesn't matter worth a damn. The only thing you can think about is whether or not it's good for the zone. Listen to feedback from people. Revert it if it doesn't work at all. Tweak it if it has problems that can be identified. And then pray you made the right choice.

The timed game is a good example of this. Before I put it in, the flagging activity was fading. After, there was a big, noticeable uptick in FR activity/basing. (How much greater? I don't know. It was significant enough for many people to note it.) It needed plenty of tweaks over time, but it worked well enough. A problem was identified, a solution was constructed to address it.

The decline of the zone doesn't indicate whether or not any of the attempts over the years have worked. Literally unmeasurable. You're playing with hypotheticals. Meanwhile, there are hundreds of thousands of online action games now available. When SS came out, it was really something special. It still is, of course, but now it's got a lot of competition. It's incredible it's made it as far as it has. Look back on forums, and people have been predicting the imminent demise of SS for more than a decade.

"Every attempt to suggest that TW develop Pub correctly was rejected." Read that one again. How full of yourself do you have to be to believe you know how to correctly develop pub? Is there anyone else on these forums who believes they know without a doubt the correct way to develop the zone? (Especially without the hard data to back it up that you claim is so important...?) Before you were giving lip service to making a more democratic system, when it sounds like you'd just like to be the guy in charge. You do know I've tried time and time again to make this zone more democratic, right? Back in the day with TWPS, which fell apart, and Council, which, well, fell apart. We learned something from both, sure. The problem is, not many people are actually willing to commit serious time and energy to the process of improving things. Not when it means working with others, at least... Most are only interested in giving orders, because "they know how to do it correctly," and if anyone disagrees with them then they're part of the problem, they're selfish, they're irresponsible.

Look. I really do try to listen to people and put in what we all agree is good for the zone, barring anything that requires a lot of development with minimal return. I've never been in this for myself. It's not about freedom to do whatever I want and ignore everyone else. I absolutely do not matter. If clearly something is a problem, let's identify it and come up with a solution. If someone would like to take it on, we could even try to measure data, despite the difficulty involved. (Maybe alternating weeks of different settings would give us something to work from?) But if all you're interested in doing is insulting me by insinuating that I'm just in it for personal gain, Eph, you can go to hell.

[Ephemeral]

Wow Qan, you are taking this way too personal. My criticism is mostly with the ‘management’ over the last 15 years and was not directed towards any one person; certainly not you. But your response clearly indicates that you are emotionally invested in the zone; this is good and bad. Good in that you care and have contributed so greatly to the zone. Bad in that you might be too close to be objective.

My experience in developing cycle comes from being VP of Engineering at a technology company for two decades where we designed and manufactured embedded devices. I had a large staff of software, hardware, and industrial engineers; participated in over a hundred development cycles for multi-million dollar technology projects . I started my career as a contractor and worked my way up the ladder. I do not think that I implied that I ‘know it all’ (I’ve made some huge, high dollar mistakes in the past), but I do ‘know a lot’. If this experience comes across as me being ‘am full of myself’ you certainly can just disregard my opinion and instead listen to others in this zone.

Of course no one can control all the variables that contributed to the decline of the zone, that is stating the obvious. And I am sure that the zone would have declined naturally due to external factors that no one had control over. Do I think that this gives a license to just ignore good zone management? No. The beauty of the bullshit management over the years is the diffusion of responsibility; no one has ever been responsible for shit. Now during the sunset of the zone everyone can point fingers in any direction and no one has any fault. Everyone can just walk away, blame others or even just blame undefined variables. Great.

I know you are smarter than to think that the management of this zone over the years can be defended. It can’t because the management was broken and full of dumbasses who had no clue, some of them were simply people looking to feel powerful. Your comment about me wanting to be in control is simply wrong and has zero factual basis. In fact, I was asked to become staff repeatedly over the years and avoided it like the plague. If I was like you accuse me of being, I would have gravitated towards staff and tried to change things from the top down. TW was my stress escape, my way of not having to work, to have some mindless fun. Why would I want to make TW a job? That makes no sense.

In rereading my comments I am mystified as to why you would think that I accused you of being in this for personal gain. Which part of my posts did you get that from? Is all of this over the one comment, "Every attempt to suggest that TW develop Pub correctly was rejected."? I was referring to the fact that many times development was done without any testing, testing was done by releasing the code and allowing the zone to find the issues. This happened over and over throughout the years, many times with developers other than you (I think). For example, I recall that we had major disruptions in league play due to changes being made in almost real-time and without proper testing. I distinctly recall many people pleading with staff to not allow this to happen but for whatever reason(s() it occurred across multiple seasons. Is that not "Every attempt to suggest that TW develop Pub correctly was rejected."? In retrospect my word choice of ‘ever’ was poor and overstated, it would have been more accurate to say ‘many’. Is this what disturbed you?

But nonetheless, I am also truly sorry that you took my comments so personally, they were not meant that way. I think you indeed tried very hard to listen to people. I think your coding was solid, your coding logic very good, your contributions unequalled. But that does not make your perspective and opinion about Pub flawless and it certainly says nothing about your position in the TW management over the years. You and I disagree on the Pub objective and that is a pretty big gap, but I do not think that I insulted you on this topic.

You were a part of the management, one of the parts that actually did work, actually cared, and actually helped. But you acknowledged that the majority of the management around you was dysfunctional, I do not understand why you feel insulted but my comments. If you and had had been on the same management team, and given the autonomy, I am sure that we would have agreed on ways to improvement the TW development cycle. If I had been in your position, surrounded by many clueless staffers, I would have responded the way you did (just go off and develop and ignore the madness).

In simple terms TW is like Thanksgiving with your dysfunctional family. You, as one of the cooks, might have delivered a great turkey but this does not mean that anyone is going to say that Thanksgiving was great if many of the other people around the table were assholes. In fact, many in the family might not even attend future Thanksgivings. Does that specifically reflect badly on you and your cooking? No. But am I not going to refrain from having an opinion of the Thanksgiving holiday (and might even mention that the potatoes had a few lumps). If this makes you want me to go to hell, then sorry you feel this way.
Eph

[Jessup]

I love all you guys......... Chalk it up to frustrations the games population is disappearing and it upsets us all. Lev Terrs used to be in 1 pub and then we had pure in others. On top of that most of us laughed at pub after a few years and knew TWD squadding was where it was at. We can't do any of that now as we just don't have enough. Even staff is sparce and we miss calls and stuff as there just aren't enough of us to moderate everything these days. Everyone here on this thread has done a lot for this game so it saddens me to see us fighting over little stuff that isn't all that big a deal. Levi's are part of the game and always have been part of pub.

What needs to happen.... well.. I wish Priitk would either help again and do a revamp of the game or give up the rights for it. The game is for sure a classic which deserves to live on but the player based survival is coming to an end unless we have multiple launches on gaming sites. I personally would like to see some company buy it and use it as freeware spotlight game or something but I'm probably dreaming. I still see it as a marketable game with the right exposure and some basic reprogramming but ... ya sigh I can't do anything about it myself. I tried to get us on Gog.com and the marketing director said it was not the type game they were looking for.. Still scratching my head over that as it is a GOOD OLD GAME sigh.. We need to find a company who can have marketing connections to help us some way or another....

[paradise!]

qan is one of the few people who has put in honest to god work in keeping this game alive. can't tell you how many power hungry staffers there have been who couldn't write a single line of code or contribute anything besides banning people for shaky reasons.

all you critics and naysayers need to pick up a fkn book and write code or I don't care about your opinions on what should or shouldn't be implemented. you know nothing the scale, the time commitment, nor the manpower required to pull of anything that you suggest.