Suggestions for making TWD alive again

[Ephemeral]

To fix the staff issue, we need to replace those who do not inspire confidence, those who are inactive, those who are not leaders. The leadership of the zone should be turned over to those who can do these things.

First, no one has to lose their current precious ‘powers’. Having ban permissions or being able to hold an event has nothing to with running of the zone. Frankly only a 12 y.o. would care about that kind of crap. The REAL power sits with those who make decisions and can influence resources. Period.

So let’s separate the two and give them names for this discussion. ‘Permissions’ are what most staffers have now and ‘power’ is what sits with handful of those in upper staff. But their ‘power’ is greatly diminished because they have little influence over much. The few Dev people seem to march to their own drummer, the playing population doesn’t listen to staff. This means the only thing they can really control is the lower staff, and even there they have limited success.

The Council idea started off with good intentions but failed because the sweeping change that it needed was not done. Plus we don’t need a ‘group’, we need leadership. We need real elections with real leaders stepping up. We got very few leaders even running for nomination because no one was confident that anything was going to change. We needed Demonic and M_M to step forward and make it very clear that things were going to change, big sweeping changes. What we got was a luke warm, “we will creep towards change’.

We also need commitments from those who have previous left that they would be willing to recommit if thing were to change. People like LF, Qan, Summa. etc. Talk to them and find out who they do not have confidence in. Define the 3-4 leadership position that are needed and have REAL elections with REAL leaders (like those mentioned) running. The existing staff, those with ‘zone permissions’ will all report to them. Dev will report to them. They will do what they are told by these new elected leaders, no push back or they lose their permissions. The elected people will have 12 months to make changes they have outlined. new elections should be held every 12 months. Anyone who fails get replaced, those who have done a good job can be re-elected.

The leaders need to be active, very active. Like online 6 days a week or better. They need to be able to ‘sell’ and communicate very, very well. They need to be able to make the hard decisions and withstand the heat that will come along with those decisions, defending them in the context of what is best for the zone in the long term. Most importantly, the leaders have to know the difference between have a ‘right’ and doing what is right. Just because a player might have a ‘right’ to do this or that does not mean that they should be allowed to always do it. For example, a leader would know that know that someone has the right to build a mosque at ground zero in NYC but that does not mean that it is right thing to do. They would step in and make a hard decision.

The playing population needs to cut some slack to the new leader and understand that not every decision is going to go their way. They need to give the new leadership the time they need to get things turned around and not be jerkoffs and scream about their little ‘rights’ every time something doesn’t go their way. If they do, the leaders have to have the balls to say, ‘don’t let the door hit you in the ass as you leave’.

If we cannot do the above, the zone will never change. We can spend another 10 years floating ‘good ideas’ without any resources behind them as the zone slowly evaporates away. The only thing that it would take to make this happen is acceptance of the handful of the current ‘upper staff’. They can make this happen by simply agreeing to it and holding some elections. The only hard part is letting go and committing to this sweeping change; it only takes some balls and selflessness.
Eph

[Summa]

@Fork: I agree with turban to a lesser extent. I don't think all of your ideas are potentially bad. I think some of them are just plain impossible given the nature of resources available to us at this time. However, I think your fixes try to target the 2nd problem not the 1st. The 1st problem, in my mind, is that TWD is an irrelevant league that serves no purpose other than allowing people to practice when they want. That is what needs to be fixed first by changing the purpose of TWD and how it relates to TWL before we consider placing ornaments on TWD.

@Eph: I tend to agree a bit with your gloom and doom outlook on the state of leadership and the obstinacy of certain individuals over the course of the history of this game. I do not think that it will be fixed, hence why my early ideas are gauged toward making the highest impact with the lowest amount of resources expended.

For example: My idea about converting TWL into a point system and having TWD activity and standings give teams points prior to TWL. This requires literally 0 change to TWD other than a copy/paste of the the TWL rule into the TWD rule page. On TWL end, it would require some re-writing of the rules, some decisions on season length, an editing of the W/L column on the TWL site, and decisions made regarding how many pts to give. That's about it. 2 people could accomplish that: 1 guy writing rules, and 1 guy who does a tiny bit of web work. That's the kind of expectations I have and the scale of projects I think can be accomplished by staff in it's current state. Sorry if I come off as negative and dismissive of many ideas, but I am operating under the assumption that with staff's current state; if it has to do with heavily modifying bots, or heavily modifying a website, then it probably won't get done. Minor mods to bots/web are a maybe to okay zone, rule changes are a yes, arena settings/map changes are a yes. Those are my expectations.

So like eph says, you have to address the resource issue or operate within your resources. I would love to see the resource issue fixed because it would open the doors for a lot of the more intricate stuff expressed here; but I don't see it barring someone approaching a competent sysop with a couple thousand dollars saying "I am willing to invest this, but you need to make changes" with a sincere offer. Unlikely imo.

[Fork]

to be fair, most of your suggestions are against the competitive aspects of this game and plenty of them are not even needed at this point in time. not to forget some are outright impossible to implement. they are low on the priority list for most of the part, especially the ones that make no sense.

what TWD needs fixing on a fundamental level. there is no point to add more layers to the cake when the foundation is not strong enough to carry the added weight.

we have a broken rating system in place, and with it comes a shitty qualification format for TWL although that one can be changed. there is no incentive to play in TWD due to its lack of competitive parts; there are no seasons and leagues to follow. there is no way for new players to get involved. hell, there is not even a schedule to follow, and weekdays are slow in terms of competitive games due to that fact.

short rant

Most of my suggestions are against the competitive aspects of the game? But do we really need more competition on this game because the level is already high with stacked squads. If you really wanted to increase the competition for yourself turban- join Paladen and face dungeon. Some of my ideas i try to base on common sense: increase the fun in TWD and you increase the activity= more competition. I hate when you shut my ideas down saying i'm just adding slices of cake on but when you suggest to turn twd into a seperate league of its own- i'm gonna say you just adding an extra slice of cake to twd and reject it equally.

Will type more when i get time.

[beam]

stfu tryhard f G t turban

[Turban]

nevertheless, my hands are tied and i can only express myself through words. i can't change much by myself, as it would be seen as me overstepping my boundaries. woe is me.

[Turban]

my reference about spilled milk was mostly sarcastic, as in its unlikely that the upper staff in charge wants to do anything productive.

no point expecting the unexpected, but i will try to make a change happen from within staff despite my lack of time. tomorrow is my first real day off in months, may as well use it properly and see how the cookie crumbles.

[Turban]

.. and now with my trip back home being extended by yet another hour, there is plenty of time to continue posting to this thread despite it derailing from the main topic.

this zone is a mess. we have an abundance of features and add-ons that are not needed, some of which are broken to the core and harmful to the zone. it is the time to take out our dusted vacuum cleaner and clean up our mess. no one should be forced to live in a dirty household, and this zone is no exception with its player base having to deal with this shit.

several former staff members have expressed their will to return if the leadership position is passed to someone useful. we have several upper staffers who have absolutely no plans for the curren time, or the future that we might not even have by the looks of it.

i want to remain positive, but it is darn hard to do that when looking at the situation from an experienced players perspective. thankfully our players are like cockroaches; hard to get rid of despite all our failures.

[Ephemeral]

Spilled milk?
Hardly. It is exactly what needs to be fixed FIRST. We have many years of evidence that trying to only do second layer fixes DO NOT WORK. That is the easy way out. Of course that is what everyone does, make some simple changes because they are easier than fixing the lack of resources. You are wasting your time dicking around with trying to implement shit with duct tape and baling wire.

Yes, you can strong arm a few things to ‘make them better’. But as long as the zone remains without sweeping changes in how it is run, nothing will ever really stem the tide of shrinking population. Christ, how many years of this have to be in place before people figure this out?

Turb, you are not the first one to come along and work hard for change on the second layer stuff. Many, many other have done the exact same thing. There have always been a few bright spots in the zone where people have made some improvements. But it is like an assembly line worker making improvements when the company management is making horrid decisions. What fucking good is it if an assembly line worker makes an improvement to manufacturer 3 more widgets per hour when the management refuses to fix the leaking roof or the sales department cannot retain a new customer?

But go ahead and go for it. Nobody wants to fucking listen or do the hard shit. Upper staff has laughed for years at people like you who have poured their hearts and souls into making the zone better while avoiding all the hard decisions. For them, all of this simply deflect the real issue away from them. Keep the minions busy with their little ‘good ideas’ and silly ‘lists’ while the hard stuff goes unaddressed.
Eph

[Turban]

its a sad, yet hard fact that this zone has indeed lost most of its resoures, and its ability to accomplish anything. i know dozens of developers who quit due to the lack of vision from the leaders at that time, and because they burned out mostly because of the vast amount of useless projects. then again, several devs were allowed to freely roam and do whatever they pleased which lead to all of these random, broken features we have right now. it also damaged the zone.

but eh, no point crying over spilled milk.

[Ephemeral]

There are two layers of problems; the first layer is ‘resources’, the second layer is the prioritized list of things to do.

The first layer is the most challenging and by far the most important. And this is where the staff issue also creeps into the picture. Many good people have left, there is no money to speak of to work with, time is critical. I have not seen many solutions offered to resolve these issues. Some of us have pushed for sweeping changes to staff in an effort to bring back some of the previous resources we have lost. But the staff culture has strongly resisted this kind of sweeping change so that is off the table. Some of us might be able to step up and offer some substantial amounts of money for development work but given the situation of the zone and game, who in their right mind would do this? Some of us have been trying to get the zone to change its course for the last 4-5 years, but to no avail and now we are in the 11^th hour. So we have few good developers left, no money t work with, little time to get anything done. Who fault is this?

So where are all the ‘great ideas’ for fixing the lack of resources? No one wants to, or has ever wanted, to deal with these hard decisions. Instead, we have folks that keeping pulling ‘great ideas’ out of their ass that only addresses the second layer, ‘features’ that might ‘help’. There has NEVER been a shortage of these ideas. Ideas for this layer are easy, any moron can come up with them.

So this is what we have done for years. Come up with second layer ideas without having the proper resources to get the job done. What was the result? A zone full of half-assed features, none of which works very well, many of which are full of exploits, few of which meet the zone’s overall vision and direction.

This is a lot like the economy. You simply cannot underestimate the importance of people having confidence in the direction and vision. When there is no confidence, no amount of ‘good ideas’ or well organized lists are going to raise the level of resources needed. In fact when there is little or no confidence it has just the opposite effect on resources. Fix the confidence (like some of us have been saying for 5 years) and the resources issue will lessen. Sit here and keep throwing ‘good ideas’ at the wall with the same way the zone is run and watch it continued slow death of 1000 cuts.
Eph

[Turban]

to be fair, most of your suggestions are against the competitive aspects of this game and plenty of them are not even needed at this point in time. not to forget some are outright impossible to implement. they are low on the priority list for most of the part, especially the ones that make no sense.

what TWD needs fixing on a fundamental level. there is no point to add more layers to the cake when the foundation is not strong enough to carry the added weight.

we have a broken rating system in place, and with it comes a shitty qualification format for TWL although that one can be changed. there is no incentive to play in TWD due to its lack of competitive parts; there are no seasons and leagues to follow. there is no way for new players to get involved. hell, there is not even a schedule to follow, and weekdays are slow in terms of competitive games due to that fact.

short rant

[Fork]

Why are we making suggestions for twd when we already have perfectly fine ideas anyway? The problem has always been how to code these ideas in... even with all of staff agreeing with the idea- if noone can alter the matchbot codes (because they are a confusing 10k or so lines of code) then your just wasting your time.

Literally squads being allowed to challenge the world should happen because squads struggle to find squad matches and they leave. People who want to vs a squad would come and team up with people they don't normally team up with to try and tackle them. They don't simply go to ?go javduel because its a public area/ doesn't count to anything/ 0 competition. If my squad could challenge the world- it would keep our squad logged on until we get real squad matches.

Although many staff like the idea (minus turban coz hes anti with all my ideas) qan/ thepap tells me it would take too long to mess with the matchbot codes- the codes would need to be re-written because over a period of 10 years- people have added more and more codes too it that have made it too confusing for anyone to mess with without breaking the function of these bots.

[Turban]

it would include things (ranging from minor to major) such as;

- fixing the public map download size by removing useless LVZ files that are not even being used
- removing several or most of the items from the public cash shop
- minor bug fixes and features to enhance the public game play (such as warping to base)
- removing those big asteroids in public or scale them down to "normal size"
- clearer objectives in public to complete; new players have no idea what basing is or how it works
- leviathan problem still needs to be addressed
- when leviathans fixed, address the anti-LT protection
- weasels are dumb and do not need a repel for gods sake
- bringing back pure public weekends (friday night - monday morning)
- include a tutorial area to the public arena, ranging from simple to advanced
- create a bot for the tutorial areas to assist players
- figure out how to handle a large amount of new players if marketing goes well; battle plan required
- solve our marketing issues; we have an inactive marketing staff
- figure out where to advertise, and how to advertise, and communicate where it is being done
- retraining of staff members about how to handle calls
- hiring more staff members for additional activity, especially during off hours when no one answers help/cheater calls
- teaching staff members how to host events properly and when to host them
- a rigid schedule in terms of hosting (weekend events, normal events, hockey) and leagues, and more communication on that part
- more staff to player communication in general; less secrecy
- monthly staff reviews for the players
- new leaders to several staff departments
- removing sysop position from useless people who are there for the name only
- one leader with a clear vision and get shit done attitude
- rehiring of former staff members that are passionate and want to help; need "get shit done" attitude as well
- actually having a league department for discussion between TWL/TWD/other leagues; atm everyone does their own thing
- fixing elimination arena (separate to elim/belim with idle areas like it was for a while)
- restructuring of TWD and TWL; integrate and figure things out from there
- need more competition in both leagues
- outsource some projects using a bit of our donation funds, but no more of these 24 fiasco shit please
- more communication about projects, what is going on, what is "stalled" et cetera
- more statistics and graphs to TWD
- bug fixes to our websites (TWD/TWL/TWDT/TWEL)
- fixes to tourny (website, bots) with a schedule to follow, perhaps disable elim for the duration
- implementation of friendly and ranked matches in TWD
- continue the TWPD project before we can even consider achievements

there's the first ones that come to mind, but there are plenty of others without getting too much into detail.

edit: forgot something important, but there's your short list.

[mtine]

it wasn't meant to be interpret like that, wark. thanks for the laughs, and you surely noticed that i said achievements would not be a priority at all, especially when we have about 40 other things that needs to be completed before that can even be considered as an option. they could be something to further enhance the gaming experience once everything else has been fixed, but with the current structure (in terms of leagues) and other shit that is broken, it would not work out.

advertising is not happening anytime soon from the looks of it, although i have heard that our tutorial is progressing fairly well on the dev side of things. they are apparently waiting for that to be completed before doing anything, but whatever.

Could you make a list plz? Am curious to see what those are.

[Turban]

it wasn't meant to be interpret like that, wark. thanks for the laughs, and you surely noticed that i said achievements would not be a priority at all, especially when we have about 40 other things that needs to be completed before that can even be considered as an option. they could be something to further enhance the gaming experience once everything else has been fixed, but with the current structure (in terms of leagues) and other shit that is broken, it would not work out.

advertising is not happening anytime soon from the looks of it, although i have heard that our tutorial is progressing fairly well on the dev side of things. they are apparently waiting for that to be completed before doing anything, but whatever.