If I was in charge of Trench Wars 5-10 years ago...

[mtine]

Hey guys. I wanted to do this thread for a long time now and yesterday I finally completed it. If I was in charge of Trench Wars in any way, the zone and all the gameplay would have gone in a much, much different and fun direction. Wonder how? Have no fear; I will try to explain in more detail each area as closely as possible. So let’s just jump in, shall we?


First things first


Before proceeding to the actual list of things that I would change in Trench Wars, here is what I would definitely do first. I would get rid of all the annoying idiots and cheaters in this game like Jessup, Ogron, 24, Tower, LF etc. Ok, now we can continue with the more important stuff.

TW Staff

This is where our journey begins. TW Staff as we know it is a complete and utter garbage position in our zone. Not only is there way too many roles in staff but also way too many power-hungry people in charge who don’t do anything but abuse their powers. So how could we have changed this and made it more enjoyable for staffers and players alike?


Simple – less ranks and better recruitment techniques. First of all, all the idiots who just sit in staff chat and don’t do anything to help the zone grow in any way/abuse powers/act God-like or just want to be staffers because they already got it from a friend or in any other way and have contributed absolutely nothing to the zone would be removed from TW Staff immediately. Also, all the staffers that are inactive more than a month would be demoted as well. Then a close inspection of the remaining staffers would be made to assess the qualities of each individual and to assign or invite them to a particular area of the TW Staff hierarchy. Once all this would be done, we would go on and try to recruit a few outstanding players with knowledge of TW Staff areas that still need attention and help, like for example TWD, hosting and helping new players. They would undergo a series of tests and questions to evaluate their character and the ability to be part of TW Staff. Only after all this is done would the next step begin.

TW Staff Ranks

• · <Helper> - the 1st rank would be to get to know the commands and to help (new) players in any way possible (like <ZHs> are now). Taking help calls, giving advice to people in pub, helping new players settle in and generally keep the pub alive and rocking.
• · <Host> - the 2nd rank would be the players who just want to host. They would still need to go through the process of first being a <Helper>, but if they really wanted just to host, this process could be done much faster. Learn commands of a <Helper>, learn the bot commands and voila – you can host to your heart’s content.
• · <Moderator> - (or <Mod> for short) would be the people running the big picture. They would be in charge of different areas, like TWD, pub, trainers, developers (maps, bots, codes…), anything to help the zone grow and prosper. They would also have the ban powers as they would be the trusted leaders of Trench Wars.
• · <Sysop> - the 4th and final rank of TW Staff. The last line of defense so to speak. They would not do as much work as for example <Mods>, but they would be responsible for anything happening to the game – if the bots die, if the server dies, if people have problems logging in, etc. Anything relating to the fluidity of gameplay and the game itself.

The structure of TW Staff would have been more simplified, easier to understand and harder to obtain. It would give players the feeling that being a TW Staff actually has a meaning and purpose.

Websites

Before going on to do any kind of advertising and game changes, TW websites should have been redone in a more clear and concise way. This means that each website should have been revamped from scratch and made more accessible and easy to use. Here are a few pointers on how this would have been made:

• - trenchwars.org – our main hub. This is where all the magic happens. The website as we know it is dark, blend and without any character. Therefore, it should be changed in a way that new players and vets alike should identify it with Trench Wars and Trench Wars only. Simple yet understandable descriptions for new players, commands to use in game, a guide on what you can do in Trench Wars, how to participate in TWD etc. All the necessary information needed to get you started in one place.
• - forums.trenchwars.org – the second most important part of our community. This is where all the feedback, the rumblings, the staff information and news should come from.
• - TW Dev website – we used to have such a website but it has been down for a long time now. It would serve as a platform for developers to post their creations, where you could download add-ons for the game and generally help others with dev and issue related questions.
• - Subspace Banner Emporium – the website related to making and posting banners in Trench Wars. I would probably merge this website with the TW Dev website as to not make too many websites and too confusing for the players.
• - twd.trenchwars.org – last but not least, one of the most important websites we have. It should definitely be more colorful, have updated news, squad profiles from the past and the present (and their achievements, rosters etc.), a clear description of all the leagues and an updated free agents tab which would generally keep track of players joining/leaving squads, applying for new ones or just looking for a squad.

4 websites, redesigned from the ground up. That would be it. Sure, there would be subsections for other stuff, like cups, TWL, tournaments and leagues, but those could have easily been implemented on the original Trench Wars website and made into a new tab, like the Leagues one we already have yet is useless.

[mtine]

Advertising

Advertising has brought nothing but pain to the zone and the players. Not only have we missed on a big opportunity with Steam but we also didn’t retain the players that actually bothered to log in and play for a while. Why? Let me explain.

The first obstacle in advertising is to know how to do it and where. Ok, Steam was a good launching pad for us, yet we didn’t utilize it as we should have. The first factor to blame for this is TW Staff. Their decision making in the advertising process was poor, the manner in which they progressed towards acquiring new players was abysmal and the handling of new players when entering TW pub was almost non-existent. Here is how I would do it:

1. Assess the platforms where we can advertise our game in a non-monetizing way to best of our potential. Examples: Steam, Abandonia, MyAbandonware, maybe even Reddit.
2. Contact the people in charge of each website platform and find the best solution for both parties.
3. Advertise on all aforementioned websites simultaneously or individually after a period of time (after assessing the situation and player retention models).
4. More involvement with new players entering TW pub and trying to help them in any way possible.
5. Extending the ongoing advertisements or looking for newer possibilities to expand the growth of the game (MAC, Android, chat-clients).

Game changes

Now here’s a very broad topic that we need to discuss. There is so much wrong with this game that I actually don’t know where to begin. But I guess we should start with the thing that most players encounter when first entering Trench Wars. Yes, you are correct, the pub.

Pub

The most important part of Trench Wars. At least it should be. But sadly it is not. It is a disgrace of what happened to the pub during the years I’ve played Trench Wars. Dumb decisions ruining gameplay, ships being unbalanced for years now, no incentive for vets to play pub with other players, no rewards/competition of any kind, just the same repetitive gameplay.

The problem is pub at its core is actually not bad. A 2-freq PvP style Capture the Flag game where you need to control the flag for an X amount of minutes to win. Not bad, right? Wrong. After you do it 5, 10, 50, 100, 500 times…sure. But what if you do it 10.000, 100.000 or even more times? It just gets so boring that you don’t like it anymore. And that’s what happened to all the vets in this game. They just got sick and tired of it and moved on to either TWD, elim, other zones or just quit the game entirely.

So, in order for pub to work there should have been made many changes in the past which should then in turn evolve or make some progress in different areas to keep the pub fresh and players engaged, especially the vets. I have played many MMOs in my life and thus know that repetitive gameplay can lose you a lot of players. Therefore, the mods in other games similar to Subspace always make new content or just spice up the gameplay every now and then to make the players enjoy different aspects of the game.

What would I change in pub if I was in charge of it? Well, quite a few things actually. But let’s start at the beginning:

• Ship balancing – this has been a factor even in the past. I would dedicate myself to be in Dev with a few others to try and find the best possible solution for each ship. May it be giving some ships rockets/repels, increasing their speed but lowering their bomb power (leviathans), reducing their bullet rating (spiders), give/remove invisibility and/or other important stuff.
• Gameplay changes – by this I mean mostly stuff to do and how/where to do it. Pub is a huge area where you can do so much, yet so much potential is lost in the process. For example, I would try to spice it up by listening to players’ ideas and giving them what they would like to see and play. Could transform the pub map every Friday or so and make the same map, but with roads and traffic lights to give it a racing feel. Or use golden old maps that were hosted a lot but almost never used in pub, like ?go boki. Also more stuff outside of the basing map for people to do and explore like maybe a small racing track, hockey ring, a lower base with a different design etc.
• Pubbucks – this, for me, was one the major updates in this game. I loved it when they decided to introduce a currency to the game. But once again, it was very poorly implemented with no decisive path on how or what they were going to be used for. I mean sure, you can buy some stuff from the bot, but is it really worth it? I don’t think so. Even now there is not much cool stuff that you can buy, only like fireworks, purepub and maybe beer/shoutout. There should be more cool things to buy like: events (it works now, but didn’t back then), jokes, poker, gravitation (it reverses your commands for an X amount of time), games (different variants of games you can play within the pub map, even word games for spectators like trivia and boggle), items (different items that you could store somewhere (like make or buy an inventory first and then store cool items inside), for example medals, food, ship improvements etc.), and so on. Only the sky is the limit!
• Achievements – this was actually discussed shortly after I joined Trench Wars but never realized. It could potentially make a huge difference to the players who devoted their heart and soul to pub day after day. Just think about all the things you could do with it! Here are a few examples of achievements: Welcome (when a new player enters the game for the first time, he/she gets this achievement), Not a newb (when you learn all the commands and scroll through F1/F2, get in the game and fly around), I am so pro (make your first kill in pub), Kill achievements (for like 10, 50, 100, 250, 500, 1000, 2500, 5000, 10.000, 25.000, 50.000, 100.000 kills and so on), Win streak (streak of 5, 10, 25, 50 etc. kills in a row), Winner (win 5, 10, 25, 50, 75, 100, 250, 500 etc. games in pub), achievements for duels, exploring the pub map, buying stuff, killing LTs, even for losses and playtime. Each hard achievement could also net you a very nice prize (we will discuss this in the next point). It could have been so much fun!
• Titles/rewards – this could have been done either with a bot to give you a title or by allowing you (after completing a hard achievement) to play on a new name with the title in the brackets <>. For example, after killing 100 ships of each type, you earn the title <the All-Arounder> or something. Then you can leave the game, make this new name for yourself (the bot would reserve it for you) and come back and continue where you left off while all your progress from your old character would be transferred to the new one. Brilliant! The other one is rewards. What if you could do achievements and after a while you could unlock cool new stuff like different color variations of ships, different colors of bullets/bombs, different models of ships (like cars, humans, pets etc. – basically skins), fonts in the game just for you, all in all cosmetic stuff that would make your game unique without influencing the balance of gameplay. I’m pretty sure many people would love doing this, especially when nothing else would be going on.
• Exploration – I know this would be a bit tricky, but still, the bot could track your progress when you first entered pub and if you explored all corners of the map, you would get an achievement and maybe even a reward!
• Friday Crazy Pub – you know that thing when you go bowling on a Friday night and it’s Disco Bowling? Right on! Make one Friday pub shiny and glittery, the next a whole new map for it (like in the example above – a race track), experiment with ships and gameplay (give everyone the same amount of speed/recharge/bombs/etc.), crazy pub objectives (Don’t get killed for 10 minutes while in Flagroom, Kill the same player 10 times in 1 minute, Duel all the players that are currently playing pub, …), other ideas from players.

[mtine]

TWD/TWL

This is a very sensitive topic for many veteran players but the truth is it was tempered with unsuccessfully so many times that some common sense should be made and more strict rules implemented. I don’t mean going full Ogron on this one, just some regular stuff that all the players should have obeyed and played in the good spirit of participating in rated matches with their squads.


Here are a few tips and tricks that I would do to make TWD/TWL enjoyable for both veterans and exceptional rising stars as well as newcomers alike:

• - Ladder/ratings – the first ladder and ratings worked fine, the only problem I see is that it took too long to end a season. There should be more incentive to play TWD, more rewards and more things to look forward to. For serious competitive play like TWL the rules should be set down for each individual season (tweeks and improvements), the reset should start 1 month before the actual start of a TWL season so the squads could plan accordingly, same for a TWD Cup season which I totally would’ve loved in between each TWL season to give also the smaller squads the chance to participate and have fun if they didn’t make it into TWL. The ladder situation for this particular cup would be a bit different, like let’s say start at 1000 points and the first to reach 2000 gets instant pass in the 1st round of the TWD cup. Losses would not give you any points at all, but the ratings would be a bit less restrictive: for each loss against any squad you would lose 10 points, for each win you would gain 20 points. So in total, if Paladen for example played Fierce and lost horribly, they would still lose 30 points to them in total. Not too much, right? And if they won against them next game, they would be equal again. Kind of fair if you ask me. There could also be a special ladder/ratings season where you could play literally against and with anyone (!borrowing) and at the end only the top 4 squads would be invited while you could still borrow players during the tournament that actually played/got borrowed with your squad during the regular season. Of course, many things would need to be considered here to balance the things out (like player ratings and such), else it would just be a disaster like TSL or the modern TWD Cup. Last but not least, another special type of TWD League where all the squads would participate but the ladder ratings would be simplified: everyone starts with 0 points, each Sunday you play 2 matches in each division, if you lose you get 0 points, for a win you get 3 points, if you win 2-1 you get 2 points, if you lose 1-2 you get 1 point. After 1 month of such a league the top 3 squads would be rewarded with a trophy/medals and other cool rewards.
• - TWD achievements – similar to pub achievements, you would earn this as a squad by winning a certain number of matches (or losses for fun achievements), killing a certain amount of players, getting X amount of 2fers/3fers, killing a specific player X amount of times, getting MVP in a match, getting a specific rating in TWBD matches (terrier kills, flag touches, reps per death etc.), playing X amount of games with/against a squad and so on. Again, endless possibilities!
• - TWD Madness – every Thursday there would be a catch-up mechanic for lower tier squads. Let’s say there are 10 squads on a TWD ladder: the last 5 squads could play on Thursday the whole day and earn 2x the points they normally get and 0 points for losing. If the top squads would refuse to play that day, the lower squads could just battle it out amongst each other.
• - TWD Crazy Fun – ever think what it would be like to play a DD in a JD arena? Oh, I did countless times. Or maybe play a BD match in an open DD arena with the flag in the middle? Yup. There would be special days to do such things which would or wouldn’t (depending on the feedback from players and capabilities of bots) count for the TWD ladder or not. It would still be fun to play it though!

A lot of cool stuff just for TWD and TWL. Also one more thing that I didn’t include above are the schedules and rules: this just means that if the rules are set appropriately, you just can’t break them. Same goes for schedules: they would have to be strict; especially for TWL as then others would have to wait for you not showing up. If something important did come up and your whole squad wouldn’t be able to show up for a scheduled TWL match, you could then play it during the week before it was scheduled in acceptance with the other squad/TW Staff if allowed. But other than that it shouldn’t have caused too much trouble in the long run.

Elim

When there were enough players to have separate arenas for warbirds and javelins (namely elim and baseelim) there was no problem at all. But if the player base started dropping, it would be wise to test it out in the same arena to see how the players would react. Especially in elim the player feedback would have been invaluable.


Regardless, elim is and always was the next step up to glory from pub, yet it didn’t get all the credit it deserved. If I was in charge of elim, this is what I would do to improve it immensely:

1. · Arena – ever wondered how we have the option to change the size of the pub according to how many players are playing it while not being able to implement this feature in elim too? Same here. It would make the games not as long as runners wouldn’t have anywhere to go but to fight. Might in the process of it all made them decent players overall. But I guess we will never know, will we?
2. · Options – the options to play all the ships was great back then, but it was poorly done. The reason for that is that the maps just don’t work for all ships. For example, dueling in the warbird arena as a leviathan or weasel? How does that even make sense? For that reason I would have made separate places for each ship (or similar ships) to make games more interesting and fast-paced.
3. · Ratings – the ratings should reflect the capability and skills of a single player, just like it was tried in TSL. They should also reflect on how good someone can cope under pressure when playing either veteran players or newbies – according to that your rating would change. If you killed many veterans in an elimination match, your rating would increase more than if you just killed new people from pub with no experience of TWD/TWL of any kind. Would have made for some fierce battles and a better learning curve for each ship.
4. · Seasons – only lately have we started doing seasons in elim while it had so much more potential in the past with hundreds of players participating. There could be let’s say 4-5 seasons per year and by the end of it the top 16 players (or 32) would be invited to a best of 3 showdown until the final against each other. There could also be a special elim season, where all the players could choose their own ships and play each other in a madness elim, changed maps or different ship settings. Just to also cater to the more relaxed and not so pro players of Trench Wars and to ensure that also vets can play elim once in a while, not try and still have fun doing it.
5. · Prizes, rewards, achievements and titles – just like in other games, after winning a certain number of games, defeating an X amount of players, winning games in different ships, being number 1 in a ship on the ladder, winning a season etc. could net you some nice rewards and achievements, not to mention titles. If you won a season, you could get the <Gladiator> title or give you the option to unlock a special tint of your favorite ship/bullets, purchasable in pub.

As you can see elim had so much more to offer yet none of the above ever happened. When elim was full of players and there were hundreds of games played every day, it was just a repetitive process of killing others without any other objective than to just win and be the best of the best. No rewards, no pubbucks, no seasons, no gameplay/map changes, nothing. The list above, in my opinion, would have spiced elim even more and made it more newb-friendly while also being interesting for vets to gather achievements and work towards rewards they wanted.

[mtine]

TWDT

TWDT was one of the best tournaments introduced to Trench Wars. Why? Because anyone could participate, even if he/she was a total newb. It was so simple that it was almost perfect. But the corruption of TW Staffers and Ogron made it totally unplayable in the end. I saw a few people trying to make it bearable in the end with the ratings and trying to let more new players play but failing miserably.


Therefore, I would have made some significant changes because in the end it really doesn’t matter if you run a semi-pro tournament if all the players (even the new ones) don’t have fun playing it:

• Player ratings should have been done according to your TWD record (for veterans and players who play TWD). For all the others that didn’t play TWD and just came from pub/were new, the rating would be done using pub stats or just given the lowest possible rating until they proved themselves. Ratings would change like they did in TSL after matches on a weekly basis to make each new week more interesting.
• Teams should have been even more balanced. Example: you could play a vet (9-10 star), a 8-star player, a 7-star player, a 6-star player and then a total newb (5 stars and below). Also, if you played a match you couldn’t play the next one. That way all could play and have fun together. Exceptions would have to be made with 8-9-10 star players as there weren’t so many, but it would have been manageable.
• The website should be directly connected to TWDT bots, presented like the TWD website (more colorful of course) and other things related to it. It should also be monitored closely by a few trusted TW Staffers and vets that would know what they were doing.
• Strict rules and maps for each ship – if a game is scheduled for Sunday at 3pm EST, it cannot be changed. If you don’t show up, you can’t play. If a captain doesn’t show up to a certain amount of games, he gets warned or in the end can be replaced by another player of the same team.
• TWDT would have been hosted in between TWL seasons and at the end of a TWD cycle, usually during some holidays or across summer to give people a reason to log on and play Trench Wars.

As I said before, TWDT was a very good tournament; it just needed a few tweeks here and there to make it perfect in the eyes of newbs and vets alike. I am pretty sure that if people didn’t want to just play all the time while leaving new players and people they didn’t like benched all the time, this tournament would still be going strong. Sadly, it didn’t pan out this way and now TWDT is part of the past, just like TWL and a few other leagues/tournaments.

Base/javduel/wbduel

Base, javduel and wbduel were arenas made to have fun with whomever you wanted on your team. I remember a time when there were 2-3 wbduel or javduel arenas being hosted at the same time while some people were still benched. Epic!


But as so many things listed before, there were problems even in these arenas. Some of them almost never got hosted due to players being idiots and just wanting to play/host their preferred arena (like 24 and his precious javduel) while others didn’t get the love and attention they deserved.


For keeping these arenas going strongly I would make a schedule on when they would have been run by Staff to give players incentive to log in and play a few games of either base, javduel or wbduel. They would be hosted either on the same day at different times or on separate days at the same time.


Lastly, if I was in charge of these arenas, I would make sure that everyone could play, even if they had to wait maybe a round to do so. We could have increased the cap of games to make even more epic battles (and the maps would increase accordingly), run separate arenas at once (even wbduel and javduel at the same time, why not), make basing more fun from time to time and allow special ships and so on.

Radio

Radio was an integral part of Trench Wars for a long time. Even I was part of it for some time with a few other players from the old days – danyell, Dral, fis, even Dezmond helped us with some stuff. We did so much stuff I don’t even know where to begin – song requests, TW and other news, trivia, talkshows, shoutouts etc. The only problem we had was that it was poorly connected to Trench Wars and not many people knew about it. There should have been a tab on the main Trench Wars website letting players know who and when is hosting some radio fun for Trench Wars players to tune in, listen and have fun with it. At a point we even tried commentating TWL/TWD and TWDT matches live for players who couldn’t watch or for everyone to just enjoy some fun bantering via radio. All this and much more could have been done if any effort from TW Staff would have been made. If I could handle TW Radio, it would still be running to this day. Trust me on that one!

[mtine]

Hosted events/other leagues and tournaments

Picture this: there are 60 people playing pub in 2 pub arenas, some playing elim, even a few in wbduel/javduel. In total around 500, right? What is missing here? Hosted events for players to have fun! YES!


And this is where my hero of Trench Wars, Dral, comes in. Guy single-handedly owned hosting with his masterful skills and hosting marathons. Guy would literally host for hours on end without even stepping out for a smoke. What a guy!


More staffers would have been needed to do this kind of stuff while also doing special events on a particular day, like we do now on Saturdays. But instead of just doing 2-3 events, they should be run on that day for like 4-5 hours with different hosts if need be. They could even prolong it and do a small break every 2-3 hours for people to go and do other important stuff in real life.


Besides the normally hosted events there used to also be other leagues and tournaments that were loved by players and staffers alike. A few of them were Basing World Cup, Trench Wars Leagues Manager, Trench Wars Racing Cup, Trench Wars Hockey Tournament, Trench Wars Extreme League, even ?go tourny. They could have been run alongside other leagues to make for a variety of games being hosted and played during the week and to spice things up even more. The Basing World Cup for example could have been done every 2 years where the top basing players from TWD would have been invited while others could have fought it out for the remaining free spots for their own country/continent. Another cool idea was to make the Racing Cup engaging during the whole weekend, similar to real life racing: Free practice sessions on Friday, Qualifying for 1-2 hours on Saturday and then a race on Sunday.


Me, Dral and a few others even made a few other cool maps so that we could host other special events when they occurred in real life. Such events can be found in ?go athletics, ?go curling and others. We also listened to players’ wishes and encouraged them to give us ideas for events/maps to create and for TW Staff to host. Sadly, as I wasn’t in charge of this department and Dral could only do so much on his own, we fell short of achieving greatness while also being pressured and bombarded by idiots on Trench Wars Staff like LF and 24.

Schedule

Every game that wants to be successful needs to have a schedule of events going on, else it just becomes chaos and players lose interest if everything is a clusterfuck. This is an area in which Trench Wars definitely fell short. The only events kind of organized and scheduled were TSL and TWDT while everything else was just done on the go and with no particular organization and schedule.


A normal schedule that I wanted to make for some time would look something like this:


Monday – TSL and base/ javduel/wbduel, Radio
Tuesday – Hosting marathon, Hockey, Zombies fun
Wednesday – TSL and base/ javduel/wbduel, Elim fun
Thursday – TWD Madness Day, Word games, TW Staff fun with players
Friday – Crazy Pub Day, Radio, Player’s wishes
Saturday – Hosting marathon, Racing Cup, base/javduel/wbduel
Sunday – reserved for TWL, TWDT, TWD Cup, TSL finals, Radio coverage, Racing Cup, Hockey Tournament, Leagues Manager, Special events (see above)


This way there would always something be going on; no matter the day you had the time to play. Players could also plan ahead, see that TW Staff cared for them and had a vision, offered a variety of things to do and cater to everyone. Sadly this didn’t happen and Trench Wars is today where it is – at the bottom of an endless pit.


Conclusion


As you can see from all of the above, I would have made many cool changes to the zone and also a lot of fun stuff for players to do on a daily basis. But power-hungry people prevailed over the normal players with a vision for the zone and this brought us to the downfall of Trench Wars as we know it. Now only a handful of us remain in the game, chasing Jessup for 30 minutes per TWD round while also trying not to lose our sanity.


I had so many ideas in the past, was driven by the passion for the game and the love for it. I tried to help as much as I could but if you are not in charge there is not much you can accomplish. I told this to many people who run the show but they always replied that you don’t need powers to achieve greatness. Well, on that part I actually agree with them because all the people that ran Trench Wars over the years brought nothing but misery to it and its’ players. It would have been much better if they just stepped down and let their power-hungry needs aside for the greater good of Trench Wars. That way the people that really cared for it and had ideas on how to improve it in different aspects would have been able to step up and do the job as it was supposed to be done. But, as I said it before and I will say it again, this sadly didn’t happen and Trench Wars started declining ever since I joined in 2009. I just wish that the majority of people running Trench Wars weren’t such egotistical idiots with no idea of what they are/were doing. I guess a man can dream though, right?


I’ll leave you guys with this “small” project that I have been working on for quite a while now to show how Trench Wars could have gone in a very different direction had I been in charge of it. I had many ideas, many things to implement to make the players love this game even more and a lot of stuff and free time to offer. But I guess I will have to leave you in the good hands of Henry “Salami” Saari, Jessup, 24 and Geio. May the Gods smile upon you!


Thank you for reading my thread and have a good day in Trench Wars!


wiibimbo


PS. Skyforger, this is the project I was talking about. I hope you enjoy it!


Also a big shoutout to all my peeps from Mellow and Potenza: Dral, Steep, fis, stung, Iron Survivor, okyo, Attacks, Melody, forces, olde, Tarnish (Olaf), Raanta, also Wirah, skyforger and Markmrw. You guys rock and I love you all! <3

[Rab]

Banning Cheaters
- totally agree

Staff
- people need to stop viewing ranks as something they should progress up, instead:
- if you prefer helping, ZH
- if you prefer hosting, ER
- if you prefer enforcing zone rules, Mod

Websites
- some sort of simplification would be good

Advertising
- via steam we have got a lot of new players to try the game, the problem is they don't stick around

Pub
- you've seen my pub thread

TWD/TWL
- shorter seasons are good
- people worry too much about ratings formulas
- Problem: is the small number of squads left in the zone
- Solution: is to do everything possible to promote squad participation

Chats
- finding and joining chats is a big social feature in the game, use it

Elim
- I'm happy with the stuff Mastersword is already doing

TWDT
- We defo need a better way to do ratings, which doesn't require having people make the ratings manually (because they'll get flamed for it). I proposed using TSL-like ratings, but updating them based on TWD, TWDT, all, matches played.

BJW (base, javduel, wbduel)
- seems to be competing with elim for players atm.

Radio
- adult Rab doesn't care about tw radio like teenage Rab did.

Hosting
- I think it's just the lack of players.
- The better events require more people, e.g. turretwar2, deathmatch

BWC
- Died because there weren't enough players left in some regions. E.g. there could be no Britain team now. Once you restructure it, it's basically: US v Canada v Europe v Nobody.
- The Basing Cup we're doing now is very similar, just doesn't have that problem.

Schedule
- There is a schedule website being built at the moment. A lot of people were getting confused by all the league announcements.

Conclusion
- I think staff generally agree with you, but just because we want something to happen, doesn't mean it can.
- There are practical limitations due to dev time required, so we really have to deal with one change at a time. Prioritisation is very important.
- The reality is that new players try the game and then quit, that's nothing to do with who's in charge or how they run things, it's because the game is old and there's a massive skill gap between them and existing players. On accepting that, we can rule out any project that's dependent on having a bigger population.
- A lot of our players aren't logging on daily anymore. I don't know what's so important about Sundays, but it would help if players were active other days too.

[mtine]

That's all good Rab, but you should really read the titel before you do a reply next time. You'll thank me later.

[Rab]

I can read thx. What matters is what we can do today.

[mtine]

I can read thx. What matters is what we can do today.

Then you are writing in the wrong thread. Besides, nobody gives a shit about today's TW, at least not the smart people. And I have joined them by fulfilling the project above.

[Soldier13]

Did ya forget about the Ban Operator, for those times when the javelin team kills the whole team over and over and it goes unreported. This might have been in older times too but...it might be important not to have not 4 but 5 or more rank level of staff!

[mtine]

Did ya forget about the Ban Operator, for those times when the javelin team kills the whole team over and over and it goes unreported. This might have been in older times too but...it might be important not to have not 4 but 5 or more rank level of staff!

That is a no-brainer man. All the people with "mod" status would have the ban hammer to deal with tking idiots in pub or elsewhere.

[Ricko]

TW radio was actually huge way before the time period you mentioned wii - I'd say around 2001-2006 it was huge for the game and player engagement (I'd say there was at least 200 listening at some points when it was run, probably more) but the problem was it was killed off quite suddenly from memory, and it tailed off and didn't re-emerge for many years which killed off the impetus of it being a big connection between the player base.

When it was brought back a number of years back with Danyell etc it was pretty much a dedicated listener base of about 8 people who were in the same friendship circle and was more of a side commodity/form of a group chat for them than a main feature of the game, but either way it was a nice feature to have back if not too late.

[Steep]

Yo I found out your real name, add me on fb you perv
for remembering mellow

[LF]

Where to start lol...

• "I'd get rid of all the idiots and power abusers by abusing my powers and getting rid of all the people I don't personally like" I wish this was feasible.
• "I'd change the staff ranks by using the exact same ranks already in place and just change the names" ????
• "I'd get the websites fixed" Great. Assuming all the same people from 10 years ago were still playing, who would have done it that we didn't already recruit to do just that? Are you better connected than the zone owners from 10 years ago?
• "I'd have done a better job in advertising" You're failing to consider the human element. Who's gonna do everything? You? We had dozens of people working on this over the years. All more friendly and more knowledgeable in marketing than you.
• "I'd fix pub" What makes your opinion on ship settings any more important than anyone else's opinion? Whether it be qan now, or Witness/Mootland Farmer/others in the past...We've been taking input from the population on what pub could/should be far longer than you've been playing subspace. People generally always get the changes they ask for within reason. Whether changes are made by consensus or unilaterally, there is ALWAYS a large group of VERY loud players against it. Make your suggestions in the current pub thread so they can be discussed. A large portion of them aren't even realistic/able to be performed by the client. Also...Bots can't "make usernames".
• "I'd fix elim" It sat idle for too long I agree...but MS is doing good work with it these days.
• "Have you ever wanted to play a BD in the center of the giant DD arena? Or a DD on the jav map" No.
• "I'd have hired more people to spend all day every day hosting stuff!" We had plenty of these people already....ala Stargazer who hosted lots and lots (24 hour hostathons, levi elim to 500, etc) but was really really bad at it. A few other examples could be flibb, punk, Chao, pinkstar, myself, etc. There was certainly no shortage of event hosting 10 years ago. Also, guess who trained your lord and savior Dral? Hint: It starts with an L and ends with F.
• "I'd turn EVERYTHING into a league!" Hockey (with decent settings) didn't even exist in the zone yet and everything else listed was already happening.
• "Long live TW Radio!" While there were others who did it first (THE PUSHER, Pallies Radio in general) I was the first one to make it a zone function. I was the first one to broadcast TWL games with live commentary. Peoples taste in audio entertainment varies wildly. I did not/do not have the quick wit that PUSHER was gifted with but to this day my simultaneous hosting of radio and WW3 (With Left_Eye) as a weekend event holds the population record for HOSTED events in the zone (183 tuned into radio and the arena capped at 500 with people blowing up ?help cuz they couldnt get in) No matter what was played on the radio, SOMEONE would whine (Fuck skrillex I wanna listen to metallica! Fuck metallica wheres the power rangers theme?!? Power rangers are gay play some emo or Im not listening anymore, etc) As mentioned it just turned into small cliques where certain people could listen to a very specific genre that nobody else liked.

Conclusion:
A vast majority of your suggestions are either A) not possible due to bot/client limitations, or B) Require significant and capable manpower which is not only NOT available now but has never been available. This zone has not always had very good leadership, but all of them commanded respect by making significant contributions and sacrifices for the zone in one way or another, which is something you've never been able to do. You let your personal bias interfere with your judgment at an uncomfortable rate which is sad because you do have a couple good ideas and you're not wrong about EVERYBODY on the current staff. 10 years may have passed in your hypothetical scenario of running the zone, but you're still the same annoying kid now as you were then. If you had ever been able to act like an adult for more than a few minutes at a time you could have had more of an impact on our zones future, then who knows where we might be today? For somebody who claims to want to "remove the power hungry staff", getting axed recently for abusing your powers and making an opening statement in this very thread of "I'd get rid of power abusers by abusing my powers" doesn't bode very well for what the zone COULD HAVE BEEN under your rule. I'm not a fan of everyone that has sat in the sysops seat, but I am counting my blessings that none of them were ever you.

Disclaimer: You may not like me and I don't care. While I have made my fair share of mistakes (Still don't regret banning Nethila), I have willingly volunteered countless hours of my own time (and money) for the attempted betterment of this zone, even though often times it feels like most don't deserve the effort. So as your blood begins to boil and your fingers type faster than your tiny slovakian brain can process in an attempt to tell me to "shut my muddafuking cunt", understand that I speak from a position of experience.

[Major Crisis]

Where to start lol...

• "I'd have hired more people to spend all day every day hosting stuff!" We had plenty of these people already....ala Stargazer who hosted lots and lots (24 hour hostathons, levi elim to 500, etc) but was really really bad at it. A few other examples could be flibb, punk, Chao, pinkstar, myself, etc. There was certainly no shortage of event hosting 10 years ago. Also, guess who trained your lord and savior Dral? Hint: It starts with an L and ends with F.

Those times with Chao, Pinkstar, me, Tres and HTF were insane imo. It was a fight to be able to host even.

But yea there was no shortage of event hosting when all these ppl were around. Ofc it was also much easier to host, since u had people coming to events back then. Last few years the zone has been dead if it comes to events. I have experienced that myself a lot when I wanted to host or when I was Head of Events.
The problem was that the people who actually liked to host got promoted way too easily often cuz they did a good job as ER, especially in the latest years (last 5-7 years). And they often stopped hosting as mod+ cuz it wasnt their job anymore.. And that you see a lot in staff with all positions. If promoted to ER/mod, why take newbie calls? Its for ZH... If u are smod, why even bother taking calls? I am untouchable anyway! Thats how it often went imo..

But hey its always easy for anyone to think they know better. Everyone has his own idea of whats the best.. And everyone makes mistakes.