Suggestions for making TWD alive again

[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]

.. 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.

[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]

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.

[beam]

stfu tryhard f G t turban

[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.

[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.

[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

[Fork]

@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.

Well (personally) i don't think twd is irrelevant because it's the only thing (along with twl) that kept this game going for so long... yes you have the other things like events/ pub but the drug is TWD/ TWL. I mean i only log on to play squad matches and its always been that way. I'm 100% sure many people log on only to play squad matches but unfortunately they can't find another squad to vs and javduel doesn't cut it. Unfortunately people after along time of playing the same thing get bored (though i know some grow up/ get married/ kids and can't spend commit any more time)...

We do have ideas that's not been tried before and no-one truly knows how effective they will be until its actually tried. When this game was made- did they know it was going to last 20 years+? Throw in some spice to twd and you never know, old players (who log in once in a blue moon) could play 1 match and find they want to play more and more... just like old times- that's the goal we should try and work on.

As a very regular twd player and after discussing ideas with other people on different squads... they want more squad matches. They want to log into tws at any time and be able to find a match. Still the competition is high and getting more challenging because squads are struggling to find games other than the top 5 squads. ATM if you want a squad match- its quite hard to find an easy squad to vs. Hell because there aren't many shit squads to vs anymore, i bet people get fed up of losing all the time and perhaps stop playing haha.

We need more people playing in twd. We need to capture the old players that log in now and again but also try and tempt new players in too. We need a system in place so squads can find games when other squads don't have 3-4 on (challenging the world matches)... because pub is rarely good and getting worse- you can't srsly play pub in the inactive times- coz 0 people are playing for hours (which alarm bells should start ringing for the syst-ops but i bet they don't think its an issue).

W/E idea is possible- try the simplest ideas and work it from there. I have suggested extreme ideas, (though possible)- it would be too much work to ever achieve- someone isn't going to spend that much time making squads vs computer bots in twd, because this game might not have long life left + if they did achieve an idea as big as that- i can't imagen them to get a thanks with the current staff on.

TBH, there needs to be a major long discussion between staff/ regular twd players about what TWD players want? What will make retired twd players start playing again??? How can we increase the population in twd??? Gather all the comments- get an average picture and address the average negative about twd. If syst-ops really wish for this game to last- they need to at least show that they are trying/ try new things.

Done boring you with my rant. Anyway... i wanna jd.

[Turban]

despite the sheer amount of times that we have said it is impossible to implement bots against squads to this zone, you still go on about it on a daily basis. we are using a subgame server which has its limitations, end of story. time to head to bed and see what tomorrow brings to the table.

[Fork]

Turban i already know this. I wasn't even asking for that idea to be implemented! (although that idea would be brilliant) i was just suggesting to work on the simplest ideas first and that pretty much all my ideas aren't impossible- just that no ones willing to spend that much time working on it. You're just typing what i said in my post for some bizarre reason.

Turban it seems you read only the lines where you feel you can try and make me look bad. In this case you even exaggerate the truth to make me look like a *** more "you still go on about it on a daily basis". It's a shame you do this because its very immature. Where's your thoughts regarding the other 99% of the post i made? If you really wanted to improve this game, for those ideas you didn't like (which is 100% of all my ideas)- you would think out-side the box/ think how they could work- and provide an alternative... that's a healthy way to do things.

[mtine]

Thanks for the list, turban. I really liked how you categorized them by the simplest things first like small changes which can make it a more fun experience for old/new players and then working it from there. Some of these changes are really easy, hell, even Fork coud do them (but prolly won't).

So why don't we just start doing something? Like we should make a starting point of where to start and then go from there. I.e. let's all agree to remove the unnacessary LVZ from pub to reduce downloading of the pub map. Yes/no?

The other thing I'm worried about is a lack of Dev zone. Is there still one where we can work our magic? Because if there is, I'm gladly to help out with map/setting changes because I know how to implement them. Also for making the tutorial area.

Let's start making changes. Stop ranting about what is going to happen/what is good for the zone, we got that one covered. Let's just categorize the things we need to do (make a similar list o turban's), prioritize them (easiest ----> long-term changes), find the people willing to do it and BAM...start working together as a team.

Oh and ffs stop listening to Fork.

[Vatican Assassin]

So why don't we just start doing something?

Because none of the people chatting up a storm in this thread can even code? LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL

[Fork]

Up in ya is suggesting (note suggesting) to add unlockable ships to twd, see thread: http://forums.trenchwars.org/showthr...CK-ITEMS-SHIPS. I'm going to see if i can help him in anyway. Any suggestions on what you guys feel about this? Problems + possible solutions to these problems/ if you can help design ships- it would be great + speak to up in ya about this.

I mean the only way that could stop an idea like this would prob be the coding involved i guess and who could do this.

Another thing i would like to see if wormhole surfer could make a new twjd/ twdd map for twjd3/ twdd3 arenas- this guy is srsly good at making maps.

[Rab]

TWD just needs players.

- stop taking players away from TWD to do TWL and TWDT
- encourage players to form/join squads
- put TWD on the TW homepage so every new player knows the whole point of TW is TWD