atWar 2019 and beyond
Inlägg: 156
Besökt av: 915 users
Hi everyone!
As you've heard I'm the new admin. I'd like to introduce myself, share some of my ideas/plans for atWar, and most importantly get your input.
About me: my name's David (most people call me Dave), from Los Angeles, CA, USA. I'm a programmer by trade and I run a small business creating various apps/software.
I'm new to atWar -- to be honest, I've only been playing for one month. My first knowledge of the game was when I heard the owners were considering selling it. I decided to do some due diligence, so I signed up for the game to see if it was something worth buying. Even though my initial interest was purely from a business perspective, I immediately fell in love with the game. I guess it's kind of a special niche, but I absolutely love strategy/war games like this.
I think the game has a lot going for it, but I also have some concerns. These can be summarized in 3 general categories:
- Bugs. Nothing so terrible that prevented me from playing the game, but definitely there are some bugs that need fixing.
- Stagnating user base. I saw the traffic and revenue numbers. Long story short, they've been more or less slowly declining since 2014. They could be worse, but they could be a lot better.
- Toxicity in the community. There's no point trying to sugar coat this. As a new player, I couldn't believe the negative stuff I saw in the forums and in chat. Some people are nice and welcoming, but there are also some jerks who must get their kicks bullying new players. I'm not naming names, but it's really astonishing -- we've got folks who on the one hand complain about atWar "dying", and then at the same time piss on new players.
I doubt this is "news" to any of you. Reading the forums, it's clear you are all aware of these issues. So what you probably want to know is... what am I planning to do about it?
- Bugs: it's simple, we'll fix them. It will take some time, but it can be done.
- Stagnating user base: I think there are 2 parts to fixing this. 1) bringing in new players, and 2) keeping players around. We can address #1 by investing in some marketing, which is something I am looking into. However to keep players, we need to reduce the toxicity problem, which leads me to:
- Toxicity in the community. I'm not sure how or why things got so bad, but it needs to stop. I'm going to start by making sure our moderators have the tools and resources they need. This might mean adding more moderators, or it might mean giving our existing moderators more powers. I will be talking with our mods about this issue.
Now, I'm not one of these guys who comes in and changes everything. I may take a hard line on certain issues that I think are really important. But for the most part I'm here to listen... there are many people who have been playing this game for a long time and I want to hear your thoughts. I want to enjoy playing atWar just like you do.
One more thing I want to say. I know it was a difficult decision for Amok and Ivan to part with atWar. They created it, they put a lot of blood sweat and tears into it. I think it pained them a lot that they just didn't have the time it needed. I know they still want to see atWar succeed and I'm honored they agreed to let me take the reins. I just want to say that Amok and Ivan will always be welcome here, whenever their schedules permit.
I've shared what my top priorities are at the moment, so now it's your turn. I'm open to any issues or ideas you have. Please reply to this thread with your thoughts... I look forward to your input!
Best wishes,
Dave
As you've heard I'm the new admin. I'd like to introduce myself, share some of my ideas/plans for atWar, and most importantly get your input.
About me: my name's David (most people call me Dave), from Los Angeles, CA, USA. I'm a programmer by trade and I run a small business creating various apps/software.
I'm new to atWar -- to be honest, I've only been playing for one month. My first knowledge of the game was when I heard the owners were considering selling it. I decided to do some due diligence, so I signed up for the game to see if it was something worth buying. Even though my initial interest was purely from a business perspective, I immediately fell in love with the game. I guess it's kind of a special niche, but I absolutely love strategy/war games like this.
I think the game has a lot going for it, but I also have some concerns. These can be summarized in 3 general categories:
- Bugs. Nothing so terrible that prevented me from playing the game, but definitely there are some bugs that need fixing.
- Stagnating user base. I saw the traffic and revenue numbers. Long story short, they've been more or less slowly declining since 2014. They could be worse, but they could be a lot better.
- Toxicity in the community. There's no point trying to sugar coat this. As a new player, I couldn't believe the negative stuff I saw in the forums and in chat. Some people are nice and welcoming, but there are also some jerks who must get their kicks bullying new players. I'm not naming names, but it's really astonishing -- we've got folks who on the one hand complain about atWar "dying", and then at the same time piss on new players.
I doubt this is "news" to any of you. Reading the forums, it's clear you are all aware of these issues. So what you probably want to know is... what am I planning to do about it?
- Bugs: it's simple, we'll fix them. It will take some time, but it can be done.
- Stagnating user base: I think there are 2 parts to fixing this. 1) bringing in new players, and 2) keeping players around. We can address #1 by investing in some marketing, which is something I am looking into. However to keep players, we need to reduce the toxicity problem, which leads me to:
- Toxicity in the community. I'm not sure how or why things got so bad, but it needs to stop. I'm going to start by making sure our moderators have the tools and resources they need. This might mean adding more moderators, or it might mean giving our existing moderators more powers. I will be talking with our mods about this issue.
Now, I'm not one of these guys who comes in and changes everything. I may take a hard line on certain issues that I think are really important. But for the most part I'm here to listen... there are many people who have been playing this game for a long time and I want to hear your thoughts. I want to enjoy playing atWar just like you do.
One more thing I want to say. I know it was a difficult decision for Amok and Ivan to part with atWar. They created it, they put a lot of blood sweat and tears into it. I think it pained them a lot that they just didn't have the time it needed. I know they still want to see atWar succeed and I'm honored they agreed to let me take the reins. I just want to say that Amok and Ivan will always be welcome here, whenever their schedules permit.
I've shared what my top priorities are at the moment, so now it's your turn. I'm open to any issues or ideas you have. Please reply to this thread with your thoughts... I look forward to your input!
Best wishes,
Dave
|
I have an idea. We can make when someone for example writes F$#K it will turn into *
----   
Laddar...
Laddar...
|
|||
Yeah thats what I said nigga
---- 
Laddar...
Laddar...
|
|||
|
Hello David and welcome to you. Glad to hear that the buyer likes AtWar first and foremost. We will surely go in the right direction together. The bugs have already been advanced by other players, I will not talk about this fact. Then, I do not play RP games, not because I do not like, but because I do not have a good enough level of English to play (I thank Google Translate for this, because thanks to him I am became polyglot ^^). But I really do not understand why players are attacking RP players, we are in a form of harassment. Continue to make your 1v1 or 3v3 games on europe + map. Leave his players alone, they have not done anything terrible, they are the right to play, they pay for most of them the game, thanks to them AtWar makes profit and stays alive. So why ask to withdraw this community of players, when there is so much card and opportunity to play each one of them. Finally, for over a year I joined the community of occasional games players, because I have unfortunately no time to make quick games. I found that there was a big lack in competitiveness (duel, CW, tournaments), compare to the community of players in quick games, which is really a shame. It would be nice to see if it would be possible to set up a reward system for duels and CW, over a period of 1 year or 6 months., not every 3 months as for fast players which is quite normal. Because for the occasional players it is almost impossible to compete with the fast players for this type of events as well as for the seasons of Coalitions War. This could energize this community. He should also remove in the casual games, the reinforcements of the T1 for the host, in order to remove the advantage he has, compare to the players who join the game on the T1. Thank you for the time you took to read me, hoping now that Google translated well what I wanted to say ^^
---- Le mot perdre ne fait pas partie de mon dictionnaire, d'ailleurs je n'ai pas de dictionnaire !
ゆめ の ちから
Laddar...
Laddar...
|
|||
I've been saying this for years, our rules are extremely vague (in my opinion) and theres a lot of gray areas in the realm of enforcement
----   
Laddar...
Laddar...
|
|||
But thats because Amok and Ivan just said fuck it and let you mods figure it out. Vril truely was a glorious motherfucker for taking this to the absolute peak of power abuse.
----  
Laddar...
Laddar...
|
|||
|
Laddar...
Laddar...
|
|||
|
First of all, Welcome to the game David! I think most of us are happy to see that this game is evolving again. Atleast I am. And eventhough people will roll their eyes after they've read this, since its coming from me, but I just have the urge to warn you atleast for this: When it comes down to choosing your moderators/enforcers, and adding more power to them, I'd like to point out that you should do this with alot of care and thoughts. In the past we've had several of moderators who'd liked to overstep their boundries and changed the whole character of this game into their own biddings. I am not blaming them fully, of course there are alot of people who'd also overstep their boundries and deserved the mutes/bans (you name it). But it seemed like few of the moderators/enforcers were not capable of putting their own emotions and personal feelings aside from their ''job''. I am not gonna tell you how to run those things, but I am merely trying to help you understand that we have/had alot of ''social climbers'' in the past years who tried to climb their way in to the top and tried to become a part of the moderators. Thankgod Amok and Ivan weren't that easily manipulated, otherwise things could've gotten way worse. Anyways, I think you'll figure this out yourself, sooner or later, and you'll make the right decision. The moderator squad has alot of experienced, nice and friendly players so im sure they will help you out with this. I still have one question though: What will happen to Clovis? (Our newest admin). I don't see his name mentioned anywhere in the recent threads and I am sure others are wondering the same thing.
Laddar...
Laddar...
|
|||
|
To help provide more funds to go towards advertising I feel we should add more to the game that people can buy with protocoins. A lot of stuff in the game doesn't really mean much. The best things you can use PC's on are premium(which is irrelevant if you're lifetime),promoting threads(which is irrelevant if you don't use forums regularly), and sp boost(which can be irrelevant if you've gotten most of the upgrades). I feel one of these things should be changing how "gifting protocoins" works, I've used this to try to help my friend get premium and the "gifting" feature didn't really gift the PC's to him, it only gave him a discount if I remember correctly. I'd be willing to buy PC's to help nonpremiums get premium but there's no direct way to give protocoins since the gift feature isn't really "gifting" protocoins. Another useful example of making protocoins more appealing to buy was suggested here I know this doesn't directly tackle the issues stated above but I think having more funds in general will allow for more advertising which would help get more players and as it stands there's not much reason for some people to keep investing money.
Laddar...
Laddar...
|
|||
|
Laddar...
Laddar...
|
|||
|
First thing is new players, so you need marketing as you said, but even new players need a lot time to get all needed upgrades to be good as rank8-9 players, we have something which can help to get more SP called "Medals" but its premium feature, so you need to make this game less pay to win. Second thing is fresh strategies and upgrades. Third thing is trolls and rude people, 3/6 months ban can help... Good luck David.
Laddar...
Laddar...
|
|||
|
Back in 2012, the general was free for all, so i hope that you will unlock him again.
---- "War is nothing but a continuation of politics with the admixture of other means." ― Carl von Clausewitz
Laddar...
Laddar...
|
|||
|
My advise to you is to not listen the community (toxicity, you said it yourself), and only rely on your own plans, thoughts and instict. Maybe i am wrong, but i think owner/admin must distance himself from community, in order to focus better and yield results, as listening to the community or certain groups will always lead to confusion and disorder, because they are trying to improve their game careers by 'changing/improving' the game (its just their tool to be important). Also it is better to find mods among people you know IRL, not among players (like old, new or skilled at playing). Same reason as above. Not going to mention anything about why and how to solve toxicity in this game. When i tried that few years ago i was mocked for wanting to be babysitted (asked mods to clean chat, spam, insults and mute perpetrators according to rules)
---- If a game is around long enough, people will find the most efficient way to play it and start playing it like robots
Laddar...
Laddar...
|
|||
|
----
Laddar...
Laddar...
|
|||
I already PM'd Clovis and planning to talk 1-on-1 soon. I can't speak for him, but nothing is happening to him as far as I know. 
----
Laddar...
Laddar...
|
|||
1n1 him ds rush him ez win
---- 
Laddar...
Laddar...
|
|||
|
Hi David, welcome to atwar! I am confident you can exterminate the pesky bugs and reduce the toxicity with a clear set of rules of conduct and enforcement policies! However, IMO the game stagnation will be your greatest challenge! Cheers and Good Luck! 
---- You have to understand, most of these people are not ready to be unplugged. And many of them are so inert, so hopelessly dependent on the system that they will fight to protect it.
Laddar...
Laddar...
|
|||
Kaska Kontot borttaget |
Kaska Kontot borttaget
Ok time to post. First of all i must say, probably following most of the players that care about the game, that i'm glad to see new blood coming. Probably most of the problems (specially toxicity) on this game come from the fact that Ivan and Amok had no time anymore, simply because creating this game probably took them a LOT of time, and they never setted up their life to manage it full time (neither u prob, but u see it as a business occasion, altho it's important to remind that this community isn't looking for a all cash game, despite the problems between prem / non prems). They did a great job, so longue vie à eux. I should warn u that u appear when atwar is having a hard time, most of the very good players from the 1st generations are gone cause they got bored, so maybe there is something to be done with them, before even starting bringing new players : a lot of experiences and ideas have been accumulated by passionated folkds ; probably that would be a good idea to really organize an efficient mentor programm (the Pavie one failed in the end). We need transmissions and cooperation (that could bring an interrogation on the size of clans, the way clan wars are organized - leagues could be an idea etc...). Second, and that will be my only advice : there is a LOT of good ideas in the part of the forum dedicated to propositions. So if i were u i would try to get in touch with some skilled / old players and give them the task to propose u a certain amount of idea that allready have been debated in the forums, according to some specifications (difficulty to implement, interest according to your goals, + and - of those propositions so u can judge / make us vote etc...). Cause u bought a game that has a real past already, a very active community (which was getting depressed due to the inerty). Use them - i think about niggas like Laochra, Acquiesce, The Empire etc... A very good luck to u and a lot of courage cause, as i said previously, the game isn't in a good shape, and it has been invaded by kiddos, nerds who prob will harass u with several requests, your goals are good so follow them 
Laddar...
Laddar...
|
||
|
Laddar...
Laddar...
|
|||
|
If you want the community to be less toxic, I'll suggest to demote the entire mod team and replace them with people you know irl. Then classify RP as SP farming
Laddar...
Laddar...
|
|||
|
>No toxicity Seems like I'll be gone for the game for good, then :/
---- Someone Better Than You
Laddar...
Laddar...
|
|||
|
Imo don't attempt to advertise until we've a functional mapmaker and some basic bugfixes. I've a query though. Will you be taking on the workload yourself or do you intend to or have the resources to hire help? Clovis was hired a year ago and we still haven't a fully functional mapmaker in spite of amok's claim that it was 90% done before clovis came on the scene. Game development in the past few years has moved at a glacial pace. It would be nice to see things move a little be quicker if possible.
---- 
Laddar...
Laddar...
|
|||
|
1. Learn from huge games and game developing companies, but don't rip the skin off new players. Also, what are your thoughts on the lifetime sub that hundreds of players have? 2. Regarding community toxicity, some players when they get muted by mods create guest accounts and harass the mods and continue their toxic dialogue. My suggestion is that the first guest can be created instantly, but put a 10min. cooldown on the 2nd guest, a 30min. on the third, a 1h. on the fourth etc. 3. Mentally categorize the players and listen to the suggestions of the oldest and most experienced ones. Players can be split in map makers, competitive, scenarios, casual and rp. Also in admins, ex. admins, mods, ex. mods, banned, forgiven of ban, on the brink of ban.
---- For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. 
Laddar...
Laddar...
|
|||
|
I don't mean to contradict you, but you can't simply add a toxic filter or anything like other games. atWar isn't like most games, most players will find ways around the filters, besides, everyone including me loves the free speech and saying whatever we want here and i can guarantee lots of people will get pissed if you change that. You'll have to find a way to lower the toxicity another way. Also, if possible, we need more people like clovis, he's done this much by himself, but we need more. The new mapmaker is still very broken, and i myself lost 3 hours work on my map because of an error yesterday. We won't get far without new maps. You should also take advice from old and experienced players. They know this game and know what to do. Anyway, I just wanna say thanks. We all hope you will bring atWar to a golden age. ~Pera
---- 
Laddar...
Laddar...
|
|||
|
Laddar...
Laddar...
|
|||
You are so right, Pera. I am one of those players. Certainly, atWar has a problem with toxicity, trolls and insults, but the fact we can say what we want and the very, very wide freedom of speech we have is just one of the things why I love this game. Sometimes, we can see debates going on in the lobby and they are done in a good way and we get into interesting topics. We love that, we love to share our ideas in the lobby. I cannot support to block words like "fuck you" or other insults, because I feel that keeps the game warm and the debate going, and it is also funny lol. However, I would say that the community, just like we can see in Youtube and other social media is very, very racist. For example, I am not turk, but I can see a lot of racism towards this nationality.
---- .
Laddar...
Laddar...
|
|||
|
---- Laochra¹: i pray to the great zizou, that my tb stops the airtrans of the yellow infidel 
Laddar...
Laddar...
|
|||
I am Lirbur i am a good player with moral code rare on this comunnity if you can i can be a ne wmoderator or support the game i only want to speak you in this message about the toxicity please do not ban a lot of people cause if you start banning all the tolls we will lose more than 50 active people only put temporal bans on the ones harassin others and please do not act very hard or this community will bedome for you a nightmare ii know more than 100 people here the majority of them are tolls, members of secret societies, nazis, communis, radical nationalist and many worse radical people i just ask you to tolerate them their heavy discussions and their insults beetween them aswell as their propaganda i know it will be hard but i prefer to play with toxic people rather alone
---- http://prntscr.com/omka79 http://prntscr.com/n1ymiv Tacent quibbus Italia noverca est Lirbur: therapy for england claims of superiority Lirbur: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWyvoWzq3EM Lirbur: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_S8tP9wu2W0
Laddar...
Laddar...
|
|||
|
Do not enforce political correctness or this community will destroy the chat Be careful atWar people is not normal is very special, we got one person who says that is a horse typiiiiing with mout we got nazis, fascist nationalist extreme left toxic turkish people toxic anti turk peoples angried serbs and bosnians discussing about religion secret societies members inside the game masonery sionist people and lot of toxic stuff BE CAREFUL THE PEOPLE WILL RUIN THE GAME IF POLITICAL CORRECTION JOIN
---- http://prntscr.com/omka79 http://prntscr.com/n1ymiv Tacent quibbus Italia noverca est Lirbur: therapy for england claims of superiority Lirbur: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWyvoWzq3EM Lirbur: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_S8tP9wu2W0
Laddar...
Laddar...
|
|||
95%...
---- intelligence + imagination = extraordinary result
Laddar...
Laddar...
|
|||
|
Very excited to see what is going to be happening next. I really hope you take some of the suggestions from a lot of our experienced players into consideration. Good luck we are all here to support!
---- 
Laddar...
Laddar...
|
