TWL PROPOSAL

[Dethdefire]

I think there would have to be some kind of incentive for the amateur playoff's to be appealing. Maybe in some way allowing the winning team of the amateur playoffs a spot in the TWL playoffs? Im not sure how it could be implemented with the league not being single elimination though. The only logical way would be to postpone the regular playoff season tell the amateur season finishes. Or maybe have the amateur season played within 1-2 weeks by having the amateur semi finals and finals on the same weekend/day?

I meant the "amateur playoffs" not "amateur season". Can anyone explain to me why the hell if I hit "Edit" or "Reply" all i get is a dam black box that I can't type in? This is annoying.

[Ephemeral]

So lets do ahead and walk through this. We invest in the ideas that are presented in this thread. The season goes well and then, a day before the playoffs, someone says 'hey lets make a 30 second change to the configuration'. The whole thing turns to shit since we haven't really fixed anything; just more good ideas sunk by having a horrible change management process.

The issue has never been that there aren't enough good ideas. 'Good ideas' are a seductive smoke screen that keep the players attention diverted while the truly broken underlying processes remain unaddressed. If we don't try to fix the broken underlying processes (things like how staff is organized, how people are held responsible for their decisions, how we make changes, how we plan, how we hire and promote staff, etc.) then throwing more and more 'good ideas' at the wall only means that they will not stick or be successful.
Council was a good first step but much more work remains to improve the zone processes. Council needs to do something, the rest of the staff needs to also become elected positions or some other way to ensure that dead wood is removed and people are doing the right things, change management needs to be fixed. If this kind of stuff was actually addressed you might find that some of those who previously ran TWL well might consider coming back. Then the time would be right to throw out league improvement ideas. But anyone who thinks for a second that simply tossing out a new idea is going to make TWL a success is clearly ignoring history. (And I mean RECENT history, how could it be any clearer?)
eph

[Dethdefire]

So lets do ahead and walk through this. We invest in the ideas that are presented in this thread. The season goes well and then, a day before the playoffs, someone says 'hey lets make a 30 second change to the configuration'. The whole thing turns to shit since we haven't really fixed anything; just more good ideas sunk by having a horrible change management process.

The issue has never been that there aren't enough good ideas. 'Good ideas' are a seductive smoke screen that keep the players attention diverted while the truly broken underlying processes remain unaddressed. If we don't try to fix the broken underlying processes (things like how staff is organized, how people are held responsible for their decisions, how we make changes, how we plan, how we hire and promote staff, etc.) then throwing more and more 'good ideas' at the wall only means that they will not stick or be successful.
Council was a good first step but much more work remains to improve the zone processes. Council needs to do something, the rest of the staff needs to also become elected positions or some other way to ensure that dead wood is removed and people are doing the right things, change management needs to be fixed. If this kind of stuff was actually addressed you might find that some of those who previously ran TWL well might consider coming back. Then the time would be right to throw out league improvement ideas. But anyone who thinks for a second that simply tossing out a new idea is going to make TWL a success is clearly ignoring history. (And I mean RECENT history, how could it be any clearer?)
eph

I don't feel like any of us are suggesting one single idea is going to make TWL a "Success." I do think what most of us our saying is that without adding not only more squads but also competitive edge to TWL it doesn't really matter what is going on with staff. In my opinion the underlying issue is the lack of TWD participation, which has really nothing to do with how staff is ran. If TWD, potentially the suggested twl roster limits and the suggested double bracket are properly addressed then TWL will certainly benefit from it. I think at best we believe that with changes such as these, along with properly trained staff as you suggested, we will see noticeable improvement the next TWL season. That in turn would certainly be a good start and put us in a position for future growth in TWL. From what I have seen, not including the council, there has been several changes with how staff is being ran compared to what it was when I last played.

[Ephemeral]

Deth,
As I said, a few minor changes have been made but clearly the zone is not ready to face the music. We just keep wanting to make improvements to the 'product' without fixing the factory that the product is manufactured in.

What good does it do to improve a product if your Purchasing department doesn't have the money it needs to buy the raw materials to even make it? What good is improving the product if the Shipping Department is allowed to walk into the Sales Department and make changes at will? What good does improving the product do if anyone in the company can sign for incoming shipments and takes the stuff and stashes it under their desk? What good does improving the product do if we have employee turnover that rivals McDonalds?

Many of the ideas for improving the product are great. But everyone seems to think that this is going to make a difference. It won't. We have a clear history that it won't. None of the ideas posted in this thread matter at all if you have someone decide to make a 11th hour change the day before the playoffs without testing.

Throwing out new ideas is easy. Fixing the broken processes is not. Take the simplest of things; keeping a list of current staff members posted. We can't even get this right. Instead of assigning a single person that can be held responsible we allow 4 different people to update it. And none of them communicate with each other. Now consider who runs Pub (Kyn). Instead of having Kyn have full control (and responsibility) you have many others who can make changes at will; and again without Kyn even being in the loop.

And on and on...this is how most of the zone operates. A complete diffusion of responsibility. The staff culture fully support this, it actually encourages it by forcing each staffer to learn everything from the ground up. So you might have a guy who is a marketing wizard but if he wants to ever get in a position to help the zone he has to first be a ZH, then host a bunch of badly run and poorly attended events. Then maybe, just maybe, and as long as he doesn't burn out first, after a year or so he might be in a position where he can have SOME control over marketing. But note that even after if finally gets into position, at any time 2-3 other people might also be able to make marketing decisions.

So I have zero confidence that grassroots ideas for changing the TW product will have any meaningful impact on the zone until HOW the zone does stuff is fixed.
eph

[Godzero]

Deth,
As I said, a few minor changes have been made but clearly the zone is not ready to face the music. We just keep wanting to make improvements to the 'product' without fixing the factory that the product is manufactured in.

What good does it do to improve a product if your Purchasing department doesn't have the money it needs to buy the raw materials to even make it? What good is improving the product if the Shipping Department is allowed to walk into the Sales Department and make changes at will? What good does improving the product do if anyone in the company can sign for incoming shipments and takes the stuff and stashes it under their desk? What good does improving the product do if we have employee turnover that rivals McDonalds?

Many of the ideas for improving the product are great. But everyone seems to think that this is going to make a difference. It won't. We have a clear history that it won't. None of the ideas posted in this thread matter at all if you have someone decide to make a 11th hour change the day before the playoffs without testing.

Throwing out new ideas is easy. Fixing the broken processes is not. Take the simplest of things; keeping a list of current staff members posted. We can't even get this right. Instead of assigning a single person that can be held responsible we allow 4 different people to update it. And none of them communicate with each other. Now consider who runs Pub (Kyn). Instead of having Kyn have full control (and responsibility) you have many others who can make changes at will; and again without Kyn even being in the loop.

And on and on...this is how most of the zone operates. A complete diffusion of responsibility. The staff culture fully support this, it actually encourages it by forcing each staffer to learn everything from the ground up. So you might have a guy who is a marketing wizard but if he wants to ever get in a position to help the zone he has to first be a ZH, then host a bunch of badly run and poorly attended events. Then maybe, just maybe, and as long as he doesn't burn out first, after a year or so he might be in a position where he can have SOME control over marketing. But note that even after if finally gets into position, at any time 2-3 other people might also be able to make marketing decisions.

So I have zero confidence that grassroots ideas for changing the TW product will have any meaningful impact on the zone until HOW the zone does stuff is fixed.
eph

Not sure what the average player can do to fix the factory. We aren't the "factory owner", and we aren't the "foreman", and most of us as you mentioned don't want to be burnt-out, minimum-wage grunt workers just to possibly get a shot at changing something about the product/business many painful years later.

As far as I know, through regular players there are no elections/impeachment processes to replace those with the ability to change these things, and willingly choose not to deal with the headache. Nor is there any voting to change these things directly, and especially not quickly.

All we have is the new council (our HALF "workers union"), and none of them (at least from what I've heard/seen) have shown any interest in changing anything extremely fundamental to how the zone/staff operates from what I have seen so far, just the usual "make this change to pub or TWL".

It is a shame your ballot for the position in the council was withdrawn for w/e reason Eph, you might have stood as a sole "voice of reason" in the group. Now you are stuck in more of a "write to your local congressmen and hope they actually give a shit" type of position. But you never know, maybe one of them is secretly a revolutionary and could really get behind some of the ideas for your cause (tw's cause). Guess you/all of us could PM them, and see what happens when they finally get a few first meetings in after the server finally comes back online, assuming they can make any real change at all.

[Rule]

1. Get the zone up and running
2. Restructure and improve staff, create stable and strong structures: via TW council, recruiting more people who care about the game to help out, and giving existing staff clearer guidelines to follow. Create a system of accountability where everyone knows their roles.
3. Reward people for enhancing and contributing to the game - whether it be players, staff etc
4. Improve events and the leagues - focus on building key areas that matter to the majority, ignore and put other issues and events on the backburner.
5. Improve the way the game is marketed, get an enthusiastic larger focused team to do it. Make TW a more friendly place for new players.
6. Improve existing squad structures, and hold people accountable
7. Kill off aliasing and mass trolling. Promote competitive but friendly spirit for league play. Work on creating a system that allows way more newer players to be involved in TWD and TWL. Rewrite TWL and TWD league rules.
8. Basically a repeat point - Get more and more people who care involved with improving the structure of staff, the zone and leagues.
9. Listen and give respect and thanks to existing staff members like MM God and team who are still giving their best to improve the zone (instead of pointing out every flaw, mistake etc). Basically re-motivate the people who spend hours and days of their time to keep this free game running.

[Turban]

looks like we're straying away from the main topic of this thread. after skimming through most of the posts, here's my input:

i completely agree with rules third point. we have a bunch of players working behind the scenes to improve the zone features, they are the true heroes of this zone. they absolutely deserve some recognition and perhaps even rewards for their hard work. unfortunately we do seem to lack real leadership in the zone; while M_M God is doing a fantastic job, he's not capable of doing everything by himself. we need the right kind of people delegating the work for those who are capable of fixing things and making sure that the projects don't go astray. mostly everyone that has previously been on staff knows how hopeless it sometimes may seem to get anything done. in my eyes the current is like an ant colony without a queen overseeing the workers, the last thing we should do is add layers (features) to the ant-hive without approval. that's only going to make things more complicated and unpleasant for the rest of us, even if your intentions are good. with some clear directions things might actually turn out to be good. have patience, good sirs.

hopefully the recent changes in the staff structure has started to break that age-old mentality we've had for several years. after hearing from someone that the new structure is actually starting to work, much to my surprise, i was prepared to give them the benefit of the doubt. to be honest, posting ideas may actually help to motivate some staffers/players, but of course nothing will actually change if there isn't a single person delegating the work and making sure we focus on fixing things one by one. we will never be able to fix anything if we try to fix everything at once. really simple.

as eph stated earlier, several of us ex-staff members burned out rather quickly because of the old staff structure. if you wanted to help with something specific, but weren't a coder, you basically had to work your ass off to get promoted to the position where you would have the power to actually make some changes. it could take you months, or even years, to finally get to promoted to that position. it's a small wonder we even have some old players remaining in staff, climbing that ladder was definitely not worth the effort. however, if things actually have changed and upperstaff is more motivated to fix the things that are broken then i'm willing to give staffing a second chance - assuming that you guys still want me back. i also promised to help with this new marketing thing that staff is working on, thanks to a request by M_M God, but to be honest that kind of thing isn't really my forte. hopefully things will turn out to be okay.

there's a problem with the aforementioned 10 player limit that was suggested earlier in this thread. we probably don't have enough active players to support that and it would result in several poor "showings" by teams. even with bigger rosters, admittedly because of improper captainship, we had some squads not showing enough players almost every single season. i think this would start to happen more often with a smaller roster size + with more squads even if saw an increase in competitiveness. it's not like we can go and select the right types of captains for a squad; everyone should have the right to manage a squad even if they aren't capable of doing it properly.

i would like staff to focus, without a shadow of doubt, on making TWD more newbie friendly. this is something i wanted to work on when i was a twd operator, but that position didn't really allow me to make much rule changes and my opinions didn't matter much to the upperstaff. i completely agree that we have some higher priorities that would require fixing before even considering this one, but it should still be rather high on the priority list. if we can get new players involved in the "competitive side" of the game and making them enjoy their time on a squad, then they will surely play the game for a longer time. hopefully old squads will have enough common sense to give the new players an easier time rather than stomping them every single match, unfortunately that's too much to ask when considering some peoples ego. i'm hoping that more squads will be created once the zone is back up, especially squads that will work as a training grounds for the new players. now is the best time to work together for a greater cause, trying to return the zone back into an active and fun one it once was in the past. assuming we have enough people helping out with this project then we really don't even need the help of the staff. having multiple newbie friendly squads would be ideal for our zone; if those squads can compete against each other then there'll naturally turn out to be some kind of friendly rivarly between squads. winning is more fun than losing and playing against players with the same skill level is probably the fastest way to improve your skills, especially coupled with the opinion/tips of a seasoned player.

if we can get enough new squads created then i will look into hosting a newbie TWD cup with 4/6/8 teams participating. it wouldn't be anything too serious, just some simple fun for the new players to experience some competitive play. it would need have some strict rules just in case, such as forcing the squad captains to add at least 4 new players (out of 5) to the game, to make sure the competition would remain fair. it would be a rookie tournament with scheduled games. games would be best of three and played in TWD arenas with a round-robin tournament setup, ensuring that every team gets to play against each other.

our main problem is the new players. alluring them is a team effort that could easily be ruined by a couple of trolls. what we need is ways to keep them entertained and having some of the new players on squads would be a good place to start. that alone wouldn't be enough though, way more would need to be done if we want to have a healthy environment for the new players. can it be done? probably, but its going to require a lot of hard work from both the players and staff.

staff also should try recruiting back the motivated players who left staff due to either burning out as a result of the old staff structure or because of some disagreements with certain upperstaff members. lately there has been several questionable recruits by staff, which really gives me tells me a lot about the current staff situation and the problems they face. it seems to me that staff is running out of capable volunteers that have the potential to do stellar work and are technically forced into doing bad recruits to support all parts of the zone. please start sorting out any problems some players may have with certain members of staff (mostly seems to be some conflicts with demonic) and try getting those players back into staff if they still want to help the zone. i know that there's at least five great old staffers who would want to rejoin if things truly are better within staff. there's absolutely no reason to rejoin if staff is still in the same mentality - nothing will ever change.

several members of the trench wars council are lacking in both experience and knowledge to be called the true representatives of our zone. while it's a good thing to have a wide variety of players, there will surely be times when some members will not have the expertise to know whats actually good for the zone. make sure to discuss things thoroughly and list the pros and cons of the changes. either way, we do have to remember that this is meant to be a test run for a new system - it's not going to be smooth sailing from get-go. staff will probably not give them absolute power to ensure that they won't break the zone, but that's fine to be honest. we do need the council to get that ball rolling as fast as possible, once the zone is back up, or else they'll most of their credibility. nevertheless, if this turns out to be a success then more people will apply for the position in the future. good luck.

just my two cents in the morning, hopefully you got my point. looks like it ended up being a lengthy one with some off-topic shit. fuck. sorry.

tl;dr: things are broken, but with the right attitude we should be able to recover the zone. focus on one thing at a time if you want to succeed. がんばって!

[Turban]

Can anyone explain to me why the hell if I hit "Edit" or "Reply" all i get is a dam black box that I can't type in? This is annoying.

you have to go to settings located in the top-right corner. in there go to forum settings located under my account and scroll down a bit. in the miscellaneous options change the message editor interface to enhanced interface and save settings. that should fix it, i think.

[Turban]

tl;dr most of ephs posts:

trench wars should be ran like a successful company. currently staff is like a hen house without a rooster. perhaps that'll change in the near future with this restructuring of staff.

[Ephemeral]

looks like we're straying away from the main topic of this thread.... . がんばって!

No, you are not straying from the main topic. You are taking the 'top down' perspective to the TWL issues. And by definition any TWL 'top down' discussion has to be in the context of the entire zone. One of the main reasons the zone has always stalled is because so many people use a 'bottom up' approach; thinking that floating a new idea for some TWL detail will magically fix everything.

The recent TWL playoff situation stands as the perfect example of why we HAVE to use more of a top down approach. We can add all kinds of new ideas to TWL, improve it in 100 ways. But what would it matter if the change management process isn't fixed and someone with empowerment asks for and gets an untested change implemented the day of the finals?

Let's just cut to the point here. Upper staff is too timid to make the kind of sweeping changes that need to be done. Truth is that if upper staff tries to make the changes to the culture that needs to be made they will alienate a lot of the existing staffers. They will be taking a giant step into the 'unknown' and end up axing or having some of the existing people quit. It scares the shit out of upper staff to consider making the sweeping changes that need to be done to affect change. Frankly they are right; it IS scary. There are no guarantees that anyone will step up if existing staff is completely reorganized and 50% of it is lost. It is a large gamble and will take a lot of balls to attempt.

It is far easier to 'sneak up' on this kind of change. This is what they are doing with the Council. Trouble is that IMO this isn't going to work and this is why I withdrew from running (not that I would have had enough votes anyway). The only way to make the kind of process changes that need to be done is to 'go all in'.

For example, the existing culture has always been to have multiple people have the ability to make changes. So when Kyn is appointed as being the 'Pub guy' what does it really mean? Does he have full control over Pub? No. Is he the only one who makes decisions about Pub? No. And the result of this? He can't be held responsible for Pub.

It is obvious why TW is run this way; it is easier on many levels. Having a single person responsible means that person has to be very active. So if Kyn isn't online when April Fools Day rolls around everyone thinks nothing of just changing the map without him being involved in the decision. WTF? This was the stupidest thing ever done in TW but again perfectly illustrates the real problem. The problem has nothing to do with Pub or the April fools map. The problem is that Kyn's responsibility has been circumvented. Who the hell wants to have the responsibly for something yet not have the autonomy? And we wonder why good people have left? And we wonder why good people won't step up now?

Yet when I asked about what happened two things became clear to me. First, whomever actually made the April fools map decision was being kept secret. Second, the decision was blown off as being totally minor with 'hey, some of us thought it would be a good idea PLUS we have always done it before.' So instead of being seen as fucking Kyn over and undermining a staffers responsibility, it is just an accepted way that staff works.

But it far, far easier to just suggest some that we change LTs or weasels in Pub then to face the fact that the culture is badly broken. How the fuck do you 'sneak up' on changing the culture? You can't. You simply have to make sweeping changes and disallow having multiple people making changes to things they aren't really responsible for. You have to stop this bullshit of making running, real-time changes without even understanding the risks involved.

So no Turb, you didn't go off-topic. You did exactly what needs to be done; consider the TWL issue from the top down.
eph

[Ephemeral]

tl;dr most of ephs posts: ...

I know that I have become known for EWOT (Eph's Wall Of Text). In my defense I am a good enough writer to use topic paragraphs and topic sentences in most posts. This allows the reader to simply read the first/last paragraphs and still come away with the primary points. And frankly taking a 'top down' approach often means that you have to illustrate the connections between things. There are no simple fixes here. No one can describe the zones problems and cultural fixes on a bumper sticker or in a tweet.

So I am sorry that my posts are long.
eph

[Turban]

heh, that problem has existed within staff for as long as i can remember and still remains to be the number one reason why i gave up on staff. not only did things move at a snail's pace, everyone that was upperstaff was allowed to do whatever they pleased. there seemed to be no respect for the heads of some staff departments. now that they've basically forced a new staff structure, one which they apparently are constantly improving, things might actually turn out to be good for once. we do still need that one brave soul to venture into the unknown and make those big changes happen if we want to move forward. without taking that first step forward we'll remain in the same vicious cycle with constant poor calls and no fixes to the zone. the time to act is now, not next year.

it's true that nothing good will happen if we have no true leadership in the zone. there's no reason to have 6 different CEOs in the zone doing whatever they please. if we have a head of public and other people are allowed to make changes in the public arena without his consent then things are obviously not working the way they should be. what's the point of even having staff departments if their positions aren't being respected? hopefully they've finally started to learn from their mistakes after all these "hateful" messages on the forums.

[Turban]

I know that I have become known for EWOT (Eph's Wall Of Text). In my defense I am a good enough writer to use topic paragraphs and topic sentences in most posts. This allows the reader to simply read the first/last paragraphs and still come away with the primary points. And frankly taking a 'top down' approach often means that you have to illustrate the connections between things. There are no simple fixes here. No one can describe the zones problems and cultural fixes on a bumper sticker or in a tweet.

So I am sorry that my posts are long.
eph

no worries, i was just being sarcastic even if you do have the tendency to repeat your point in different ways.

[Dethdefire]

looks like we're straying away from the main topic of this thread. after skimming through most of the posts, here's my input:

i completely agree with rules third point. we have a bunch of players working behind the scenes to improve the zone features, they are the true heroes of this zone. they absolutely deserve some recognition and perhaps even rewards for their hard work. unfortunately we do seem to lack real leadership in the zone; while M_M God is doing a fantastic job, he's not capable of doing everything by himself. we need the right kind of people delegating the work for those who are capable of fixing things and making sure that the projects don't go astray. mostly everyone that has previously been on staff knows how hopeless it sometimes may seem to get anything done. in my eyes the current is like an ant colony without a queen overseeing the workers, the last thing we should do is add layers (features) to the ant-hive without approval. that's only going to make things more complicated and unpleasant for the rest of us, even if your intentions are good. with some clear directions things might actually turn out to be good. have patience, good sirs.

hopefully the recent changes in the staff structure has started to break that age-old mentality we've had for several years. after hearing from someone that the new structure is actually starting to work, much to my surprise, i was prepared to give them the benefit of the doubt. to be honest, posting ideas may actually help to motivate some staffers/players, but of course nothing will actually change if there isn't a single person delegating the work and making sure we focus on fixing things one by one. we will never be able to fix anything if we try to fix everything at once. really simple.

as eph stated earlier, several of us ex-staff members burned out rather quickly because of the old staff structure. if you wanted to help with something specific, but weren't a coder, you basically had to work your ass off to get promoted to the position where you would have the power to actually make some changes. it could take you months, or even years, to finally get to promoted to that position. it's a small wonder we even have some old players remaining in staff, climbing that ladder was definitely not worth the effort. however, if things actually have changed and upperstaff is more motivated to fix the things that are broken then i'm willing to give staffing a second chance - assuming that you guys still want me back. i also promised to help with this new marketing thing that staff is working on, thanks to a request by M_M God, but to be honest that kind of thing isn't really my forte. hopefully things will turn out to be okay.

there's a problem with the aforementioned 10 player limit that was suggested earlier in this thread. we probably don't have enough active players to support that and it would result in several poor "showings" by teams. even with bigger rosters, admittedly because of improper captainship, we had some squads not showing enough players almost every single season. i think this would start to happen more often with a smaller roster size + with more squads even if saw an increase in competitiveness. it's not like we can go and select the right types of captains for a squad; everyone should have the right to manage a squad even if they aren't capable of doing it properly.

i would like staff to focus, without a shadow of doubt, on making TWD more newbie friendly. this is something i wanted to work on when i was a twd operator, but that position didn't really allow me to make much rule changes and my opinions didn't matter much to the upperstaff. i completely agree that we have some higher priorities that would require fixing before even considering this one, but it should still be rather high on the priority list. if we can get new players involved in the "competitive side" of the game and making them enjoy their time on a squad, then they will surely play the game for a longer time. hopefully old squads will have enough common sense to give the new players an easier time rather than stomping them every single match, unfortunately that's too much to ask when considering some peoples ego. i'm hoping that more squads will be created once the zone is back up, especially squads that will work as a training grounds for the new players. now is the best time to work together for a greater cause, trying to return the zone back into an active and fun one it once was in the past. assuming we have enough people helping out with this project then we really don't even need the help of the staff. having multiple newbie friendly squads would be ideal for our zone; if those squads can compete against each other then there'll naturally turn out to be some kind of friendly rivarly between squads. winning is more fun than losing and playing against players with the same skill level is probably the fastest way to improve your skills, especially coupled with the opinion/tips of a seasoned player.

if we can get enough new squads created then i will look into hosting a newbie TWD cup with 4/6/8 teams participating. it wouldn't be anything too serious, just some simple fun for the new players to experience some competitive play. it would need have some strict rules just in case, such as forcing the squad captains to add at least 4 new players (out of 5) to the game, to make sure the competition would remain fair. it would be a rookie tournament with scheduled games. games would be best of three and played in TWD arenas with a round-robin tournament setup, ensuring that every team gets to play against each other.

our main problem is the new players. alluring them is a team effort that could easily be ruined by a couple of trolls. what we need is ways to keep them entertained and having some of the new players on squads would be a good place to start. that alone wouldn't be enough though, way more would need to be done if we want to have a healthy environment for the new players. can it be done? probably, but its going to require a lot of hard work from both the players and staff.

staff also should try recruiting back the motivated players who left staff due to either burning out as a result of the old staff structure or because of some disagreements with certain upperstaff members. lately there has been several questionable recruits by staff, which really gives me tells me a lot about the current staff situation and the problems they face. it seems to me that staff is running out of capable volunteers that have the potential to do stellar work and are technically forced into doing bad recruits to support all parts of the zone. please start sorting out any problems some players may have with certain members of staff (mostly seems to be some conflicts with demonic) and try getting those players back into staff if they still want to help the zone. i know that there's at least five great old staffers who would want to rejoin if things truly are better within staff. there's absolutely no reason to rejoin if staff is still in the same mentality - nothing will ever change.

several members of the trench wars council are lacking in both experience and knowledge to be called the true representatives of our zone. while it's a good thing to have a wide variety of players, there will surely be times when some members will not have the expertise to know whats actually good for the zone. make sure to discuss things thoroughly and list the pros and cons of the changes. either way, we do have to remember that this is meant to be a test run for a new system - it's not going to be smooth sailing from get-go. staff will probably not give them absolute power to ensure that they won't break the zone, but that's fine to be honest. we do need the council to get that ball rolling as fast as possible, once the zone is back up, or else they'll most of their credibility. nevertheless, if this turns out to be a success then more people will apply for the position in the future. good luck.

just my two cents in the morning, hopefully you got my point. looks like it ended up being a lengthy one with some off-topic shit. fuck. sorry.

tl;dr: things are broken, but with the right attitude we should be able to recover the zone. focus on one thing at a time if you want to succeed. がんばって!

Only had a chance to skim through some of this. The "10 player" comment was really just being used as an example. I am sure there would have to be many factors to look at before deciding a reasonable number, if something like that were to take place.

[Dethdefire]

To add, I think that Jessups idea to force squads to play everyone they add to their LD and LJ roster a certain amount of games could spice things up a great deal. I think it's probably one of the best ideas I have seen so far. That, along with reasonable player cap limits for LD and LJ, would certainly not only force captains to be more selective of who they add to their roster but also promote squad creation. I will also add that teams could have the choice to add UP TO the required amount. So squads that know they have 7 solid wbs or javs that will be there every week would not have to add "10 players" to their LD or LC roster. This would allow squads the ability to play their very best lines instead of everyone on their "10 player" roster. Maybe that would all be to complicated but It is just an idea.

This would also co-inside with another topic about players benching all season and being rewarded with a ring. Everyone would be forced to earn their position on their squads roster. So in theory you are going to see more squads created because active players don't want to bench X amount of games every season. Thus creating more competitive teams and hopefully reducing the chance of squads dropping out of TWL, or at least the impact from those that do. I understand the fear behind capping LD and LJ but if you look at most squads that don't drop out of TWL they play the same 5-10 players every week with a ridiculous amount of benchers that could easily be playing. I understand that it's a delicate balance but when you put the two together and really hash it out it makes sense. After this last TWL season I really am hard pressed for someone to explain to me what we have to lose by trying something like this. Yes, I understand it starts with the staff system being fixed but the council has publicly been announced and they should be reading this entire thread, taking notes and working on a plan to implement some much needed change in this zone.