Suggestions for making TWD alive again

[Pat Minotaur]

, 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.

People who dont play pub and have no intentions of playing pub shoud be in charge of 'fixing' pub. uh-huh.

Maybe the problem is that the pool of people who meet your requirements is so shallow? I mean thats the entire reason you need to 'fix' pub, right? To refill that pool?

[Fork]

- 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

Personally i would like the to the following changes to pub to make people play pub (getting people to play pub is the number 1 problem that needs fixing :P)- NOTE: they are not all my ideas (it shouldn't be about about who thought about what idea).

-Tutorial arena

-Unpredictable rewards at the end of the round (the same rewards happening every 3 minutes in a contributory factor to people getting bored. Unpredictable rewards are exciting because people don't know what to expect)

-Jackpot idea (not saying anymore) is the perfect example of an entertaining method that will do the above + get people out of spec

-New players being stronger/ harder to kill for the first hour or so of play

-An adaptation of wormhole surfers map- make this look more like the original pub map.

-Remove the buy options for things that heavily affect basing (epidemic etc)

-Old Levs back but make it much harder for them to penetrate flagroom (better flagroom wall protection)- people liked the LT games.

-You play 15 minutes of pub- u get a random set amount of spacebux (once per day)/ rewards increase if you log on the next day (miss a day and rewards reset to basic)

-INCENTIVE TO PLAY DURING INACTIVE TIMES- if turban was correct- im shocked and annoyed this wasn't mentioned. Why is it acceptable to allow 0 players playing for hours and not do a thing about it. ?Possible ways rewards for spacebux or w/e is increased.

-More things to spend our spacebux on to make spacebux worth collecting.


Ok done for now (run out of time).

[Exalt]

People who dont play pub and have no intentions of playing pub shoud be in charge of 'fixing' pub. uh-huh.

Maybe the problem is that the pool of people who meet your requirements is so shallow? I mean thats the entire reason you need to 'fix' pub, right? To refill that pool?

I never said people who don't play pub should be the ones fixing it. That would be counter-productive. The same goes for people who don't play leagues. How can they have any idea what the mindset of competitive players are if they've never been competitive in this game whatsoever? The same goes for Pub, although the large majority of players in staff are pure pubbers or pure basers. So I guess everyone can fuck things up equally, although I'd rather have SOMEONE with experience in leagues outside of like 3 people total in staff.

[Ephemeral]

Pat,
How the fuck does ?buy help pub when it so heavily favors experienced players? The very logic of it slants the playing field in favor of players who have spent more time in the arena and have built up a large amounts of money. New players already start at a distinct disadvantage in that they don’t know how to fly, shot, etc.

So explain to us how having more experienced players buying stronger ships and attributes does not make pub even more one-sided? If anything new players ought to be able to fly stronger ships and then the experienced players.

What fucking fun is it to run around and own new players? How does owning new players help the zone in any way at all? I guess if you are a selfish fuck and don’t care then you don’t care about new players. But even that kind of selfish perspective is a fail since without at least some new players constantly joining the zone attrition will eventually turn TW into another EG or HZ zone.

And yes, I play pub.
Eph

[Turban]

@ fork: fixing what is broken is far more important than adding more layers to the cake. it takes priority, and once those have been done we can consider adding things that are good for the public arena and do not break the gameplay of it. i would want to add something to make the new players feel "less abused" in a sense, but have no idea how to implement it properly. a good tutorial is one step to that direction, but there needs to be more i'm afraid.

[Exalt]

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.

What I'm saying is less about them wanting to help, and more about them having the capability to help. Do they actively speak and communicate with the competitive veterans of the zone? Do they play in those leagues? Do they have any relevant ideas outside of what you tell them to do? Are they even capable of having those ideas?

When you have your 3 hour meetings with staff, the large majority don't play leagues. How would they have any good input or say in what should be fixed/changed/whatever in the competitive aspect of the game, when all they know how to do is host .?go Pictionary?

The same can be said when you talk about public. I don't play it and don't enjoy it. I don't know shit about what is good for pub and what isn't. The majority of my experience with pub is from 10+ years ago. I wouldn't be a productive member of the "fix public" meeting if I were staff, because I don't have a clue about what pure pubbers are thinking or want. That being said, how the hell can most of staff know the opposite? You, Ricko and Shadowmere are probably the only real staffers who play leagues. Maybe I missed some people, but the majority either don't play or haven't played in years.

So yeah, the helpers can be nice, but staff meetings full of helpers and people who are unqualified to give ideas doesn't exactly inspire much confidence. I'll agree that public has to be fixed first I guess, but I honestly don't think staff has ever had a big enough representation of the competitive players. It has never had that, and it probably never will with the people in charge.

If you are about "GETTING SHIT DONE" then staff would stop hiring the kiss-ass "nice" players and start hiring people who will tell it like it is. Leaders don't kiss ass, which is mostly the reason people get hired. They also don't hire players like J-B-Inc. I thought I'd like to put that one out there. Whoever hired him was either an amazing troll or really doesn't understand the mindset of the regular players.

[Fork]

Plus if any discussions/ meetings had to take place... it would prob be better on forums rather than in the game. If all staff put there opinions/ideas on the topics (mentioned by the syst-op) people would have time to think carefully about it (better ideas/ opinions would be said). Syst-ops would have time to read all the replies before coming to a decision based on what all of staff (perhaps public intervention too) have said.

[Turban]

i have talked several times to "respectable, and knowledgeable" players of TWL and TWD, and have heard them out. most of it can actually be found on these subforums and TWL subforums. some of the players are willing to help out, and some are not going to do jack shit and are all talk. you can take claushouse (TWDT) and mythril (TWEL) as examples of good players who can and want to get shit done, and have done so while being players.

staff has always been underrepresented when it comes to the competitive parts of this zone, but we are not in that bad of a shape. we have almost the same amount of event players in within our ranks, and several public players as well. some are great, some may lack the experience but make up for it by being useful and active, and some are beyond useless.

[Exalt]

you can take claushouse (TWDT) and mythril (TWEL) as examples of good players who can and want to get shit done, and have done so while being players.

These are two good names to start with. Why are players like this not on staff to begin with? Is there a justifiable reason? Maybe they don't want to help newbies with a ZH title, and maybe they don't want to host lame events, but is there any reason why staff hasn't been offered to players like that? I don't want to name names, but I can look at the list of staff and say without a doubt I'd take those two players over a large majority.

So what exactly stops staff from hiring players like that? Were they invited to this 3 hour staff meeting? If not, then you guys all wasted your time and should have called it a 3 hour meeting about Pub.

[Turban]

it's not about staff position not being offered to them, it's more so about the fact that they do not want to be staff or that it is not necessary for them to be staff to get shit done. i would make useful people such as claushouse and mythril exempt from the quota system altogether, meaning they would not be forced to become a ZH or host and take calls. this would probably make it easier to hire "useful" people to staff that could focus on one thing, instead of being distracted and forced to meet a stupid quota to prove activity. that is something i have already done with my TWL department, my team will not get axed from staff as long as they remain useful in TWL even if they do not meet the standard staff quota.

i would not mind having a meeting about the future of TWD and TWL when everything else has been solved, and would love to invite everyone that is knowledgeable and actually has a vision for the future of both leagues, along with solutions and ideas that actually can be implemented.

it is worth mentioning that the people involved in the discussions last night about public and marketing were knowledgeable about those topics. TWD and TWL was not the main topic.

edit: whoops

[Exalt]

Okay fine. Maybe they don't want staff. Staff hasn't exactly been the "cool" thing to do in tw for a long while now. People don't like quotas or anything really that makes it feel like an unpaid job, which is probably why even the humble ones take on the bazillion titles and take pride in that. I don't know what other currency they'd have from being staff, outside of a little bit of power.

I'll be real though, and I wish you would too. People don't care about giving ideas whatsoever anymore, because a lot of people have tried and staff simply don't listen. I can give plenty of examples where the public opinion was hugely in favor of ideas, but staff simply said "nope, fuck that, if it's not my idea than NO idea will be implemented!" That's assuming they didn't ignore it entirely.

Staff acting as if players should run leagues is absolutely ridiculous. If you want a dedicated Hot or Not for TWL (for instance), hire a fucking staffer to be a dedicated writer. Hire Claushouse to be a dedicated TWDT Op. Hire Mythril to become a dedicated TWEL "advisor" or something. Create new staff positions. Remove old ones that are useless. Stop compartmentalizing things so much. Restructure the way people are hired. Stop having closed staff meetings that consist of things outside of pub when competitive leagues and other aspects of the game are largely unrepresented in them.

You can float the company line as much as you'd like, but people have been around the block a long time Turban. You may even believe in most of the staffers you work with, but if none of us do, what good is it?

[Turban]

i'm willing to listen to the ideas of anyone and attempt to implement them, as long as they are properly represented and thought of. hopefully others on the current staff are willing to do the same, but you have to remember that having ideas is vastly different from actually getting shit done. almost anyone can come up with an idea that is good on paper, but when it is time to execute that plan .. well, they vanish.

[Exalt]

i'm willing to listen to the ideas of anyone and attempt to implement them, as long as they are properly represented and thought of. hopefully others on the current staff are willing to do the same, but you have to remember that having ideas is vastly different from actually getting shit done. almost anyone can come up with an idea that is good on paper, but when it is time to execute that plan .. well, they vanish.

Regular players without staff support really don't have the ability to make ideas happen. Aside from that, the general support and attitude of those ideas working is largely not going to be there when staff aren't backing it, because people are not stupid. If it is a regular player trying to get shit done, people will ignore it until staff take "ownership" even if staff practically contribute nothing but the verbal support. Things aren't taken seriously until then, and based on history, there's a very good reason for that.

So what you're asking is people put in their time and work for no reward, because some douchebag upper staffer who sits in spec 99% of the time and doesn't actually DO anything can say "no" for no reason other than it doesn't fit their opinion on what Trenchwars should be. That's the player's faults? Then you expect those same players to try again, and go through that same retarded process, pandering to useless staff members who don't have a single clue about anything in this game other than the best time to host .?go Bug, if they can PLEASE MASTAH PLEASE READ MY IDEA?

Yeah... okay. I'm sure that will happen.

The mindset staff have is one that will never spark people to get shit done, because it's dismissive and acts like it's everyone else's responsibility when you guys are the ones in power. Do your jobs or let other people do it. If you guys let players do things for you, then you have no reason to be staff and should quit.

Also, if good ideas were everywhere on staff, then I'd say we would have a drastically different zone. Then again, if people on staff were able to "get things done" like you say, then perhaps so many ideas wouldn't "vanish" either.

[Turban]

the issue is that we still have several members of upper staff that do not have the mentality of actually doing anything, and are simply there for the position and fame and are not thinking in the best interest of the zone.

i know several players who got turned down by these "leaders" in the recent years, and they have offered nothing to the table. its an issue that will be revisited soon, i hope.

[Fork]

@ fork: fixing what is broken is far more important than adding more layers to the cake. it takes priority, and once those have been done we can consider adding things that are good for the public arena and do not break the gameplay of it. i would want to add something to make the new players feel "less abused" in a sense, but have no idea how to implement it properly. a good tutorial is one step to that direction, but there needs to be more i'm afraid.

Both are equally important: they both contribute to improving game-play. You could have a completely fixed game but could still have 0 players because the gameplay isn't good enough (lack of layers on the cake). When saying: "fixing broken stuff" it could cover everything: Pub is boring and needs fixing/ Pub has 0 players during inactive times and needs fixing... There is a lack of layers on the cake and needs fixing. Adding a tutorial is adding a layer to the cake and we all agree this should be priority yet we hate adding a layer to the cake... Its all bs- we just need to improve the game-play which includes what you have mentioned/ and what i have mentioned equally.