Suggestions for making TWD alive again

[Fork]

I'm just saying. None of our ideas will ever be implemented with the staff currently in leadership. They never were at any point previously either. It isn't like this game died overnight, and staff did a great job before this. They've ignored ideas for 10+ years now. To assume they will magically become useful no matter how good the idea is a fallacy. Staff are as much a downfall in the current activity as the game being almost 20 years old has been. When you stagnate for 10+ years, of course things will die out. I don't see why anyone would be surprised? Be proud that the game even lasted this long. That in itself is a testament to the game being good. That being said, the idea that 'this is how we've always done it' will forever be a large reason for the game dying the way it has. People need change, and when you don't have the leadership ability to realize that, you turn into the Myspace of gaming.

Well little ideas can be implemented but only if the person in charge of that league/ or department allows it. See a change was made when twl staff allowed squad home arenas to be implemented again after years- this was a good move i feel because this allowed the number of games to be doubled on sundays- normal + home games- which spices things up in twl. The same thing could be used in twd...

It would nice if squads could play twd games in their own twd arenas too... That could create a tiny bit more interest haha. OK i'll stop with my ideas for abit haha- because that idea prob involves too much coding.

What ever idea i produce usually has to involve some coder to tweak something- mb but i don't no what idea doesn't involve no coding at all.

[Exalt]

I don't really care for the "home" arena thing, mainly because of what Fierce tried doing at one point. They added like a million rocks to their map for the first "home" game they had, which had to be pointed out for staff to even notice it. While Lasenza probably had an orgasm thinking about all the rocks he could bounce off of, it was pretty lame. If TWL mods had to be PMed repeatedly to notice it and take action, imagine how bad TWD would be, which no one really has authority aside from Up in Ya, and if he's not online/active, nobody will respond.

[Turban]

i had not reviewed the map at all and told my TWL operators that rock POSITIONS can be changed, but i clearly stated that making clusters of asteroids is not good. i had not checked the arena until the match was about to happen and told Fierce to play in a default TWLD arena for that week until fixed. my bad, trusting can sometimes be bad.

[Fork]

i had not reviewed the map at all and told my TWL operators that rock POSITIONS can be changed, but i clearly stated that making clusters of asteroids is not good. i had not checked the arena until the match was about to happen and told Fierce to play in a default TWLD arena for that week until fixed. my bad, trusting can sometimes be bad.

Its not really the point he should be making. The idea was implemented in twl and tbh, i feel its been quite effective/ its different- and i'm sure it created interest because a different thing happened in twl. Yes these maps should have been tested for perfection before using them in twl but its irrelevant in this thread.

[Exalt]

i had not reviewed the map at all and told my TWL operators that rock POSITIONS can be changed, but i clearly stated that making clusters of asteroids is not good. i had not checked the arena until the match was about to happen and told Fierce to play in a default TWLD arena for that week until fixed. my bad, trusting can sometimes be bad.

Didn't say it was your fault. I'm just saying you inherently can't trust most players with good judgement. Either way, I don't see how it would create more activity whatsoever in TWD.

Even if we had the playerbase that we did 10 years ago, this game would die out the same way, because TWD was implemented in 2003. It's been over 10 years, and nothing changed aside from lowering things to 3v3. Activity skyrocketed in 2003/04, because TWD was such a new, addicting, and cool idea. What new ideas has TW had in the past 10 years, aside from maybe Distension (which I didn't enjoy, but lots of other people did)? There has been nothing. Nothing new in TWL either. Nothing new whatsoever. It's been a huge status quo thing. Changing public doesn't do it for veterans either. What has changed in leagues and TWD? What new ideas have even been made to add something drastically new along the lines of what 2003 brought? Even ignoring the fact that staff probably wouldn't even read the idea, let alone implement it had we the coders/devs to do it, what ideas of this type have been put forth? Tweaking small things wasn't really going to do it. Anyway, this is all for naught with how things are ran and the low population, but you get the idea.

[Pat Minotaur]

Maybe y'all should just worry about TWL and TWD and leave pub the fuck alone, since none of you play it anyway?

[Turban]

for what it is worth, we had a meeting last night with several members of upper staff and have now set a battle plan that will hopefully be executed in the coming weeks, or at least before TWL ends. there is no absolute deadline, as some of the items on the list depend on the activity of certain members and we still need to do some planning in regard of marketing and such, but hopefully everyone involved will be proactive and get their shit done.

we are going to do an official announcement later when all the preparations have been completed. this is more-so a heads up that things are moving forward. hopefully more staff-to-player transparency will follow the announcement. alas, here are some of the items that we briefly (over 3 hours) discussed and agreed upon:

- bringing back the old public settings and ship settings; however, bullet damage will stay unaffected
- pure public weekends will make a return
- simple leviathan protection for flag rooms making leviathan a high risk-reward ship. it would be more fun to play, and more of a challenge.
- removing !buy feature for the time being. we can still figure out additional ways to "spend" the cash in non-harmful ways.
- return of ?buy feature; in safety zones only
- coming up with a solution to fix the new round warping exploit
- setting !warp off by default; players who want to base would have to toggle it on
- compiling a new installer which would include all the public maps and public lvz files to make downloads "instant" for new players
- finish the tutorial and set up a new player area in public
- starting our marketing plan (team assembled, discussion/meeting will happen soon)
- retraining of staff members to focus more on team killers and how to handle calls etc

these would be of higher priority, as i feel that fixing the public arena and getting a good marketing campaign is currently important.

however, we also discussed the league side of things to bring more competition and a meaning to play the competitive arenas. there would be a revived elimination with seasons and hard reset periods, announcing winners of each season to give recognition to the map and probably reward top player(s) with medals. no one would be able to !scorereset their way to a higher rating anymore, and the arenas may get separated again although that is still up for discussion and will depend how active elimination gets. TWD was also talked about, and there will be some quality changes coming (some which are to help the TWL qualifications, and some will help recruiting new players to a squad) when other things have been completed.

staff members have been assigned duties to complete in a timely manner, working in groups or as a solo effort. there was some talks about possibly revisiting the leadership positions of certain members that have been inactive or non-contributing in the recent years.

if there's anything else that needs to be changed and/or you guys want us to talk about, make me a list. i can't possibly know every area of the game, but i will try to compile a good list of things/improvements/changes/fixes required, and bring them up to discussion/decisions when we have another meeting this month.

[Pat Minotaur]

Removing BUY from pub isn't gonna get any of us pubbers to play your fucking TWL or TWD.

[Exalt]

While I don't really care about public enough to even give much of a say there, I'd say that if that's what the large majority of pubbers want, then let them have it. It can't be that hard of a fix to revert things back.

I still don't really see how that addresses the competitive side of the game, although bringing back elim may help tremendously in having players stay active for longer periods of time while waiting for TWD games. Please split the maps into elim and jav elim though. I don't care how active or inactive regular elim becomes. I'll never sit around waiting for a random wb elim to happen when 20 javs have the majority vote 99% of the time. Javduel was split from elim originally because WBs owned the majority of vote always. Javs complained. Then they complained when Javduel was inactive while elim was always active, so it was merged again. Now it's always javelim all the time, and that is really, really boring. If you're going to do it, make sure to split it again. At least test it.

I guess we will see what happens with the league-side of things whenever those things are mentioned, but it doesn't sound like you guys had much to say in 3 hours outside of the Pub ideas. Pub has gotten all the changes, and it frankly is NOT the reason this game is around still. I don't know why Pub has always gotten so much attention for so long, when legitimate proof is there to show why this game skyrocketed in activity and player levels at various times. TWL always adds population every season, which is a standard thing. TWD being implemented in 2003 showed such a drastic uptake in population that it should be a huge indicator for you guys, but apparently Public is still the major concern that it always has been. I've never figured out why. Nobody that plays this game for any long period of time stays in public as their main "arena" of choice. Nobody.

Edit: I take that back. Apparently, there is a very small minority of players like Pat Minotaur that will play public forever. Either way, pandering to them, while ignoring the large majority of players who enjoy the competitive aspect of the game far more (along with things like squads) seems like a bad idea. It's been done over and over and over again with no results. I'm not sure why this is always the case.

Edit #2: Oh right, yes I am sure why this is always the case. Public is always the main focus of Pubbers, and who are the large majority of players on staff? Turban, you're one of the few that isn't a pure-pubber or just a baser. Seriously, think about the large majority of staff members in this game's history, and what do they almost always have in common? They liked public and/or base more than anything else, if they even played the game at all.

[Pat Minotaur]

Nobody that plays this game for any long period of time stays in public as their main "arena" of choice. Nobody.

Speak for yourself.

TWL populations are shit so go fuck with pub?

Pub isn't dead. There are good games in pub every day. There are loads of people who only play pub and don't give a fuck about squads or teamchats or any of that other shit.

[Turban]

as i have said in the past, and will continue to say in the future, TWD and TWL are still in a need of restructuring and we have to revaluate both leagues. however, our public map is by far the most important part of this zone. it is the key for our success, as that is where all the new players will go to when they start playing the game, and while some may stay, others will eventually start exploring the other parts of the zone. these players will likely end up checking out events and elimination arena, depending on their interests. naturally having public squads and competitive awareness in the public would help, but that will require the players efforts as well.

it is of utmost importance to fix the public arena.

[Turban]

i will be more heavily involved when we have the resources and time available to focus on the competitive parts of this zone. there is no reason to have too many irons in the fire. we have to tackle the current issues one at a time for us to be the most effective.

i have some plans for TWD and TWL, although i'm only "responsible" for the latter one, but they will have to wait for a better time. we can't start marketing the game when we have an incomplete, and broken, public arena.

[Exalt]

i will be more heavily involved when we have the resources and time available to focus on the competitive parts of this zone. there is no reason to have too many irons in the fire. we have to tackle the current issues one at a time for us to be the most effective.

Okay, so here's an idea: Instead of you having to do all the work when staff finally fixes pub, maybe staff should stop hiring Pure Pubbers all the damn time (or total newbies who are just as clueless about leagues), and hire some more TWL players or something. Hire some active TWD players. Get some veterans in there that might be able to help you with it.

Cuz I'll be honest, if it's only you doing any work for leagues Turban, I don't see it working out no matter how much effort and time you put into it. I also don't see how 90% of this list http://trenchwars.org/index.php?v=staff have a damn clue about TWD or TWL. Be real here. How many of those players are even remotely considered knowledgeable of leagues by the veterans?

I mean, even the TWL Ops have players that don't play TWL. I mean, seriously????

[Pat Minotaur]

Removing ?buy from pub in 2014 = more new players for TWL?

Ha!

Good luck with that.

Thanks for punishing the pubbers for your inability to keep the parts of the game you like up and alive.

Changing pub in order to get these mythical hoardes of new players to NOT like pub and have to join TWL to get anything out of the game is so stupid it just might work. But I doubt it.

[Turban]

i will not be doing things by myself, fuck that. it is going to be a team effort.

TWDT, TWD and TWL will take priority after other issues of greater importance have been been fixed and implemented. we have open positions for staff in every department, and players themselves also have to step up and show that they are willing to help. we can't magically make people appear out of thin air, players themselves need to be proactive.

as for the current TWL operators, i am fully confident in their abilities as some of them have prior TWL operator experience and have shown to be willing to help with this year in various different projects. i have personally trained the remaining ones who were lacking in experience, and they have been doing a good job. it's not like they are running the league; TWL operators (aside from the head position) are more so supportive roles. nevertheless, there isn't that many players that have this get shit done attitude and actually want to help with the running of leagues.

as stated, TWD and TWL still need a real purpose. TWDT was a success this year, but also requires more work to increase its exposure to the newer players.

@ public: public has to be an even playfield. there are too many variables that break the game and make that arena a joke; such as the !buy feature to win base games with the abuse of epidemic, super and shield. i would want to have more healthy features to that arena, such as real-time leaderboards and monthly winners/top players.