Trench Wars Pub & Zone REVITALIZATION - Need your feedback

[IxaDor]

If staff and the experienced players had treated Pub as the springhead of the zone, the arena that kept the zone healthy and thriving, then perhaps the zone would be doing much better now.

My observations since I've been playing this game nearly 16 years ago is this; TWD kept the zone thriving, not pub. Even now, when there is nothing competitive happening, the numbers hang around 70-80 players during peak times. When TSL or TWDT is happening those numbers nearly double, been this way when we had multiple publics and 1000's on at a time. I think to fix pub, we need to fix TWD. Unfortunately we are seriously pigeon holed by numerous circumstances like the inability to fluctuate to the current times as far as changes to pub/leagues and the inability to change core mechanics because no one "owns" this game and is locked into it functioning a certain way (dos codes and dead zones). This game desperately needs an overhaul in terms of functionality, it is overly complicated by 2017 standards. Just creating an account/ship is enough to overwhelm new players, then they have to crawl through several dead zones before they figure out there is really only 2 active at a time (TWD/EG. Sometimes Hockey). Count any newcomers who enter EG gone for good, so we lose potentially 50% right there of any new players we'd get.

We can sit here and piss and moan on what pub needs until we are blue in the face but it's not pub's fault alone. Removing private freqs wont make the game more welcoming to a new comer, might make a casual baser happy but will do nothing to retain a newcomer. Removing levis/javs/weasals/lancs will be fruitless as well. The problem is the with the mechanics that we aren't able to change, this game requires too much for newcomers to invest in. We did it because back in the day, SubSpace was one of the first free to play MMO's available and one of the first free to play MMO's that took place in space at that. We didn't have much to choose from then, we weren't behind in "the times", we were new and fresh. Now we are in the "retro" category along side an overwhelming amount of free MMO's to choose from, which right there hurts us. Retro gamers like simple, drop in and out play (think Diablo 2 or even Donkey Kong). Today's MMO players like to jump right in and play, with incentives and a sense of growth for the time vested. We offer none of this, we only offer confusion and sensory overload. If they by chance make it through creating a profile, there first time into TW is a shitstorm of beeps, green walled text, awkward controls and spawn kills. What we need to do now is damage control, try to make this game as fun as possible for previous players to check back in every now and again to stay around, a resurgence in TWD would be a amazing but is a far shot.

I love this game but hate to say it, unless we can change the core mechanics (1 zone, 1 account that syncs to website, a tutorial that is fun and painless and an overhaul on how players have to operate to do simple things like changing arenas/ships/starting games/ect.) we are going to fizzle out into oblivion.

-IxaDor

[Ephemeral]

Hi Qan,
My primary concern has always been the new players and how Pub plays a role in the retention of them. So when any Pub topic came up, my perspective was always to try to consider what I felt was the impact to new players. Pub bucks? I have no issues with Pub bucks when used for things like betting. But allowing weapons and ship capabilities to be purchased put new players at a distinct disadvantage so I was against that implementation.

I think the issue which you describe, the selfishness of more experienced players who want to use Pub as their sandbox and have no consideration for new players is significant. But is that the ‘disease’ or is that a ‘symptom’? I think the underlying ‘diseases’ was how Pub was perceived; Pub became synonymous with ‘scrub’. Pub had few advocates, and new players had little representation.

Consider how the staff hierarchy worked for years. The staff hierarchy was designed to put ‘ZH’ on the bottom rung of the staff ladder. The hierarchy was geared to climbing the staff ladder by ‘growing’ to be an ER, if you didn’t do this then you were removed from staff. The more experienced staffers paid less and less attention to Pub. ZH’s were, in my opinion, the most important staff position; they were the ones who typically interfaced with the new players. But the zone considered ZH a lowly rank, something that you don’t want to be. When I joined staff I only wanted to be a ZH and help new players, but staying ‘only’ a ZH became a problem. I was pressured to become an ER. How does that make sense? The task of helping new players was ridiculed. I never understood why we did not consider retaining new players as one of the highest priorities, one of the most important positions.

And speaking of ERs, for several years I battled the moronic staff system which required a monthly event quota for ERs to retain their position. I do not know what Einstein came up with this system but what a cluster. In practice what happened over and over was this… Some random ER would approach the end of the month and need to host events to retain his status. They log in the last few days of the month and hold a number of poorly attended events just to hit the quota they needed. This often would empty Pub for a few hours at a time. Meanwhile some of us were trying to teach and support new players in Pub but had no answers for why no one was playing. The issue was that ERs were putting their own selfish agenda ahead of the health of the zone. It did not matter to them that they were splitting up a very minimal population at a given time, they simply needed to rack up the number of events for that month.

But there are other examples of how Pub was a ‘door mat’ of the zone. I recall one year when a staffer changed the Pub map to the holiday Christmas a full 20+ days before Christmas. When I asked why this was done so early the staffer replied, ‘I am not feeling the holiday spirit so I thought that the holiday map would help get me in the mood’. This epitomized selfishness with little or no consideration of the zone or new player retention. It was all about them, or the more experienced players who had influence with them, then about protecting and nurturing the arena which ultimately feds the entire zone with a player base.

I cannot tell you how many times I saw senior staffers playing Pub; but only if they could fly a private frequency LT and trash great, competitive basing games that were going on. Again, putting selfishness ahead of what was best for the zone.

So slowly but surely over the years Pub became looked down upon more and more, it became an insult to call someone a Pub player. Very few of the experienced players would support it and even fewer perceived it as being one of the most critical parts of the zone. If staff and the experienced players had treated Pub as the springhead of the zone, the arena that kept the zone healthy and thriving, then perhaps the zone would be doing much better now. Perhaps there would be more players now signing up for the leagues.

I view the additional of new features and tweaks to Pub has treating a symptom, not the disease. Treating symptoms makes things feel better for a while, but long term it really does not matter if the underlying disease is not ever addressed. You have my eternal gratitude for all your efforts and contributions, you probably have single-handedly kept the zone going more than anyone else. But all of the above is water under the bridge, the damage has been done and the disease is now terminal. I am pretty sure that the only course of action left is to treat the symptoms. I see no way to get the handful of remaining experienced players and staff to rethink how they perceived Pub and support new players. So please do not burn your time on Pure Pub stuff and/or suffer selfish experienced players wrath for ruining ‘their fun’; it’s not worth it.
Eph

[qan]

Has taken me a while to reply, but wanted to say, thank you for taking the time to write that out, Eph. And sorry for the harsh words before. I did take the post before a little personally, it's true. The reason is, it hit home. Honestly, much of the work I've done has been "shoot first and ask questions later," so some of the blame absolutely does rest with me. It's pretty hard to get much of anything done any other way in TW. I try to do my best to listen to people, to not go looking for solutions to problems that don't exist, and to sort of aggregate what the public thinks is the best way to go in a very inexact and sometimes misguided fashion. I try to take out code or policy when it doesn't work, even if I've spent a lot of time on it. I've made a host of mistakes over the years, and while I'd like to think that I've been an overall net positive for TW, some days I'm not so sure. So, yeah, it hit the mark a little.

It's probably quite selfish of me to work this way, to not be doing rigorous testing, but honestly there's just not enough time in the day.

We still could look at trying alternating weeks of two settings (no levis/privates 1 week, standard settings another), though my ?msg box, staff ?help calls and !comment would fill up with hate for 7 days. Again, selfishly, part of not wanting to go this kind of extreme route is not having the energy to deal with the pure hatred that comes from some minds over this sort of thing. Maybe purepub would be better for population overall. I don't know. We've never properly tested it, and we could. But honestly, I don't know if I could personally handle all the bile that would come from it. Eventually, it wears you down. And that's when you just stop caring and go do something else with your time. I don't want to get to that point again.

So it's selfish, sure. But much more than someone running a company making controversial calls, I'm personally responsible. I'm part of the community, and it comes back personally. I can listen, I can apologize, I can explain what we're trying to do. That doesn't stop it from being a little depressing when someone tells you you're a piece of human garbage, an incompetent idiot, etc. We've heard it all before from some of the less-developed human beings that play SS. (I've caught a bit of it for not seeing a convincing case for purepub, too.)

Maybe an experimenter would like to try their hand at some tests, and to take the brunt of the hate. Personally, my heart would not be in it.

[6x.]

Instead of elim just introduce a king of the hill style elim in pub.

I've played in a zone before that had yellow squares beside a player's name so you could see who was still in it. Once they're killed they're out.

[Tone]

Another Advertisement and Demo

Why the fuck did i not connect the dots and think of this one very early on in the series ??

[Tone]

[IxaDor]

I do notice GOG is VERY light with MMO's. They usually seem to have these single player type games. I think we would be such a great fit. If someone else would like to try and talk to Jacek Niemojewski <jniemojewski@gog.com> it couldn't hurt. Any ideas how to improve the hype or anything would be appreciated. I did mention Steam was carrying us and tried to use that as a selling point. I wonder how much they really considered it. I went through the online submission category they had on the site but perhaps direct emails to him and maybe a bunch may get his attention.

GOG is very selective in what they want to back and they are as you mentioned, single player focused. GOG has very high standards for their customers as far as quality content while at the same time are much smaller than Steam in nearly every way. GOG is most likely concerned with the inability to monitor/control their customers experience playing MMO's or any competitive online games in general. Steam has put a lot of money into Valve Anti-Cheat (VAC) to help identify cheaters and are fairly active in monitoring their popular online games/MMO's. I do think we would do well if we could convince GOG to carry us but the chances are quite slim. A large part of the problem that I can't help but see is the lack of ownership for Continuum, we all know who owns this game and unfortunately he doesn't seem to care about it or the current player base. If the game was owned by Qan for instance, the possibilities would be limitless. The current situation we are in has many boundaries on what can be done from the outside in, example adding more ships/customization options or simply just changing the behavior of the game. I think we should focus on petitioning for a change in ownership right now over anything else. That is my 2 cents. Have a great day. Bye!

-IxaDor

[Jessup]

https://www.gog.com/games/shooter?pr...ularity&page=1

This is their link for free shooter games they currently have... it is some old style bs like early duke nuke'em stuff sigh. Subspace Continuum would blowup as a free shooter game here imo. Their list is pathetic lol.

[Jessup]

It's been over a year since I made contact with Gog.com. This was the replay I got...

RE: Indie Game Submission (Supspace Continuum)

JN
Jacek Niemojewski <jniemojewski@gog.com>







Reply
|

Sun 5/22/2016, 12:19 PM
You




You replied on 5/22/2016 1:45 PM.


Hi,

Thanks a lot for your submission and your interest in GOG.

We’ve taken a look at your title, it seems like an engaging game with
some cool features.

Unfortunately, however, we feel that it would not be a good fit for
GOG. Right now we are fully focused on releasing titles that are going
to be a perfect match for our users. Because the number of the new
game releases grows, our release schedule is already packed, so we
need to have a special consideration for our curating system.

I am afraid that your title does not match our criteria, so we need to
pass on it.

But please be aware that if anything changes, we have your contact and
we will definitely get in touch. Should you have any other games in
the future, please don’t hesitate to submit them as we’re always on
the lookout for great gems.


All the best,
Jacek
Business Development Specialist
www.gog.com

It did seem like a standard denial in a way.. no real specifics as to why ect.. plus it did say as of now.........but.. throwing this out to the community. Perhaps it would be worth others trying to submit the game again and put some pressure on them. I do notice GOG is VERY light with MMO's. They usually seem to have these single player type games. I think we would be such a great fit. If someone else would like to try and talk to Jacek Niemojewski <jniemojewski@gog.com> it couldn't hurt. Any ideas how to improve the hype or anything would be appreciated. I did mention Steam was carrying us and tried to use that as a selling point. I wonder how much they really considered it. I went through the online submission category they had on the site but perhaps direct emails to him and maybe a bunch may get his attention.

[Scar Trek]

Thank you Qan for your replies. I agree that pub is about pursuing your own goal. This is what makes it fun and unique. Do think people, including myself, can get stuck in their own little goal too much and not make an effort for the greater fulfillment of cooperation. Especially when the mood turns sour. That's why I think mechanics to encourage cooperation is a good thing. Like bot messages/rewards and flag timer.

I had many good times with LT. Also basing, LT hunt, roofing, turret terr or just wbing in the open. It was all part of the game and that made it so interesting, varied and dynamic. Yes, levs are weaker now and it's hard to survive the wbs out in the open and get to a greened state. Not to mention few people LTing now.

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.

You mean chat channels? Like the red one (squad chat or what do they call that)?

I checked the Steam page, there's some stuff there to get newbs on the way. That written beginner's guide looks pretty good. Video guide would have to be condensed, to the point and in bite-size chunks according to theme, instead of one long boring video. But would take a lot of work and somebody has to do it.


So often I turned on the game without ever giving it a thought of all the hard work put in by others to make it possible. Just playing selfishly for my own enjoyment (or frustration if things didn't go my way ;-) ). So I'd like to thanks everyone who put in their personal time and genuine effort. You know who you are. We as players owe it to you.

And yes, sucks that GOG isn't interested. Or mainstream gaming in general. It's a multi-million dollar industry, so there's a lot of competition and it's hard to catch some of the lime light from Big Money. Would be sad to see this game go, but at least we had what we had. This was a really great game (still is).

[Crescent Seal]

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.

Gulp.

[Wirah]

Too much talk. I think we want to genuinely make positive changes to pub and have them implemented we need to write an RFC and discuss it (not on these forums). Outline the problems, proposed solutions etc

Take this for example: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1...Wyy86U3gI/edit

Happy to help debate and make improvements.

[Jones]

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.

my book can't compile code. pls help

[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.

[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....