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Public memo - October 2016

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  • #46
    Figured some of these points should get a decent response.

    I get the critique several of you guys have, which is, "Staff are generally useless," but the point is, in the parlance of our times, every one of us does it for the hotpockets. That is, we do it for free.

    Many people make the mistake of evaluating an all-volunteer staff by comparing them to a paid staff of employees, or other group at least hoping to make their livelihood via the work provided.


    He does it for free.

    I'd like to propose that this isn't a very good comparison. The reason we've always had a large number of staff members is because people volunteer what they can, when they can. Some days they can't put in any time at all. Some weeks they have to go on vacation or go inactive because their jobs (the work they do to actually pay bills) require more time or they have to take care of family members.

    In contrast, we could essentially have one paid staff member handling all calls: answering questions, enforcing rules, taking TWD calls, etc. Legally we'd be forced to pay this person a certain wage in rich countries, so we would probably outsource the work to India for the lowest possible cost. We'd need 3 employees working 8 hours to cover each day. On average a full-time customer support rep in India makes about 15000 rupees, or roughly $300. The agency that manages them charges about the same. So each support rep will cost us about $600 a month, or $1800/mo total. That's about as good as we can do in terms of offering affordable staffing, and remember, that means paying people the equivalent of about $1.25/hr. This is assuming they work every day of the week as well (and they won't for that wage!). So we'd probably need 1-2 more to cover weekends. I'd estimate about $2500 would be the cheapest we could get away with.


    He does it for $300/mo.

    Then we'd have presumably the one dev guy left. Me? No offense, but if it's just me and the paid tech support guy from India, I'm not really interested in volunteering my time for TW. I'd either look at getting compensation, or (much more likely, as I'm doing fine) pass it on to an Indian programmer. They make around $1100 a month. But, you need someone who is close to "full stack," meaning they can do programming, server maintenance, web development, database administration, etc. So you're probably looking at something closer to $2000 a month. You could maybe get someone to work half-time, which is probably all that's needed. So let's estimate the dev cost at $1000/mo.

    Then you just need to find some fair way to decide what the programmer does based on ideas from the community. I assume you'd need a volunteer to arbitrate the process, or else it would devolve into forum bickering. Maybe they could be elected. That'd be cool to see.

    That's still $3500/mo, though. So we need to either find a way to monetize the game to an already small playerbase. I'm thinking a $10/mo subscription to play, 350 players signed up? I don't know if we could get 350 ... Maybe getting 70 players to sign up at $50/mo is a more reasonable goal. They could gain access to event bots and other special commands. Or rely on large donations from our wealthiest players. And if the funding somehow fell through the game would need to either shut down, or the players would need to form a volunteer staff, which is what they've done now.

    I'm not saying staff isn't without literally hundreds of problems, but the reason that it works the way it does isn't because of total incompetence. It's largely because it's a staff made up entirely of players, working for free when they have time after work, after school, or on the weekends. If anyone's livelihood depended on staffing this game, you can bet it would be about 50 times more efficient and active. But if anyone's livelihood depended on staffing this game, it literally means you'd also need to pay them. Therein lies the paradox. I'm really not sure what to tell you when you get salty over other players not facilitating the kinds of activity you'd like to see in the zone, except, "become independently wealthy and then outsource to India." After that, all that's left to say is: Enjoy SSCU Trench Wars! :^)
    "You're a gentleman," they used to say to him. "You shouldn't have gone murdering people with a hatchet; that's no occupation for a gentleman."
    -Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment

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    • #47
      Shadowmere as the QA guy for staff? I had to check 3x if this was posted for April fool's.
      5:LF> no the worst texts ever are having to explain to your gf why "megaman89" is demanding that I be somewhere at 3PM on a sunday

      5:fiS> you're lying, my mom doesnt even know how to poke

      pinkSTAR has been released from the kitchen long enough to serve you ?go elame3 -Reckful
      1:Cig <er>> ROFL
      1:fiS> LOL
      1:MAGI KOZ> hey population just spiked in here</er>

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      • #48
        Originally posted by Reckful View Post
        Shadowmere as the QA guy for staff? I had to check 3x if this was posted for April fool's.
        I would seriously love to know the thought process behind that decision.
        Seriously.

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        • #49
          Originally posted by Missa View Post
          I would seriously love to know the thought process behind that decision.
          Seriously.

          HI MISSA! I sometimes wonder where you've gone.
          Happy New Year BTW!
          3:kyler> who r u btw i keep wanting to ask people "who is 45th pres" but someone gonna say "trump"
          3:45th President> do it
          kyler> who is 45th President
          nah> donald j trump

          Downfall> Shoutout to forwards for randomly giving gunsmith results that made no sense and just made things harder

          Jacklyn> holster is the thing that holds/carry the gun

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          • #50
            Originally posted by Exalt View Post
            You guys in staff circle jerk each other way too much. The few players left do the same as well. It's a big jerk party, but nothing ever gets done. Nothing changes. It's an ego trip for most players on staff, and they've been in control of a game that's been drastically dying for years. Think about how incompetent most staff are to not have joined steam years ago. Think of how useless these staff members have been to legitimately do nothing different than the status quo from 15 years ago. It's pathetic really. The status quo didn't work. The game is dead for a reason.

            Also, you're greatest 'hope' is a few hundred new players from steam. You hope to get literally dozens of regular players that stick around. It's a joke.

            The real issue I have here is that staff even has so many members. NEW multiplayer games, developed by Indy devs, don't have so many staff members. Think about that. Raizin says there's literally just one dev on the staff team. So essentially, there's only one useful staff member out of all of you. The rest need to go. Your nepotism help ruin the game long ago, and it never had a chance to do anything different when useless staff members (every single one of you besides the 1 dev) liked to status quo too much. If not, you all lacked imagination, and it's absolutely pathetic that this transparency post was done in Oct 2016. Seriously, 2016? You couldn't try this 10 years ago? 15 years ago?

            This game is fucked guys, and it was helped along its doomed path by these staff members like Beasty and the rest. They're the bottom of the barrel in a dead game. Any changes that are attempted now not only should've been done 15+ years ago, but also are a half-assed joke. This post by Beasty is called transparency. That has to be a joke.

            My feeling is that these staff members work in fast food IRL. The only useful one, the 1 dev (is it you qan?), isn't running things. The real 'power' is in the SYSOP's hands, and his qualifications are being good at kissing ass. He's a yes man that has zero original ideas. Even the new idea he brings up here in the OP is useless. There hasn't been any transparency with that post, so why even write it? All it accomplished was show the rest of us how absolutely inept you all really are.


            oh and Raizin: why would I apply for staff when I'm advocating for all staff to be let go aside from the devs? If there's only one actual dev in that huge mass of staff members, then even you should recognize that's a problem. All I see is a lot of useless and inept people. Let actual devs run the zone. All one of him.

            edit: none of you created this game. You don't even run more than a single zone in a game you didn't make. The devs are the only ones who even touched it. Stop pretending as if 99% of you are qualified to head over any of the players. Let the players make group decisions and drain the swamp. Nobody supports staff for a reason. It never should've been ran like this from the start. At this point, I'm just pointing out the obvious failures of this game. So few players ever had any real input in how it was run, so there is practically nobody left. The good staff members left long ago for a reason: politics. A ton of inept people playing political games on a player-ran game drove a lot of good people away. Enjoy your small bit of e-cred while it lasts. It isn't like you have more than a 100 or so active players in game anyways. Go pretend transparency is a thing between yourselves. Nobody else has ever bought what you're selling.
            people are noticing this extremely late
            better late than never i suppose
            The above text is a personal opinion of an individual and is not representative of the statements or opinions of Trench Wars or Trench Wars staff.

            SSCJ Distension Owner
            SSCU Trench Wars Developer


            Last edited by Shaddowknight; Today at 05:49 AM. Reason: Much racism. So hate. Such ban. Wow.

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            • #51
              Originally posted by forwards View Post
              kinda answered your own question there, don'tcha think? :P
              No
              What do you contribute so far as coding or adding new material?
              How many events have you set up with your own Pubux?
              How many events have you shown up to?

              “Holding onto anger is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die.”

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