The Great Vanilla Revival Initiative: Discussion (Page 1 of 5)

That's a good idea, nice call
Though, true long message
What about having official teeworlds vanilla server? For example 3 vanilla servers beginner, medium, pro.
I think it would be great to have some official Tournament, this would make the community more participative.

I understand your suggestion, but I don't think it would help to have "official" servers. There have been admins hosting Teeworlds servers for 6+ years and players organized nicely. The same goes for having an "official" tournament. We have had many tournaments, organized differently (through ESL, some TW initiatives, etc) and they worked well. The problem is finding people to organize and maybe to comment the games as they are streamed like TeeTV did in the past.

A new version, if released so soon, would not bring new gameplay features (aside from Last Man Standing gametype which is already available as a mod). A new version for the sake of a new version is not going to solve anything, since the problem has nothing to do with versions but with new blood, and it has been a problem that started stacking up back then when the Vanilla community was alive and kicking.

Now, I am obviously hoping we will release new versions sooner than later; that we will have new official gametypes; that we will have new maps, new features, and everything. We are also working towards that end. Yet I believe it's not only the developers that have to motivate the players, but the other way around. Now I'd really like if we could avoid skeptical replies and think positively.

Mostly, my call is not to individual players, even if I want to reach to them. I'm trying to reach other Teeworlds communities (ctf5, instagib, ddr, ...) and clans of the said communities to tell them: "I guess you like challenge, like all gamers? Well here's one for you, and we will help you getting started."

So, in response to you both, I don't think this is about having more involvement of the Teeworlds.com / TW dev teams, but rather having more involvement from the community, and the community helping each other revive the original game (that still has the characteristics we love it for, and that won't change anytime soon, new versions or not)... There are now 1000+ players on TW, less than 200 on random standard servers, 10 on what we used to call the "vanilla community".

Well the goal of official servers could be something for newcomers, for example first time they connect in game, they already have the prompt for nickname, but they could have also displayed the beginner server. They would be advised to log there at first to discover the universe.

What about to implement also a "trusted server" list? This would make players more confident. These servers would just be a place to gather easily, displayed in the server list with a special flag/color.

About tournaments, yes I suppose it's hard to find people to organize and comment, but to me it's a bit what you ask in your initiative? You say that it worked in the past, so let's try to find people to organize this, there are some, but it needs more ads on the website.

Well just a few ideas

@floyd
I understand your point, I really do and I appreciate your message. We have thought about the features you talked about, including server levels, trusted server list, etc. But please do not hijack this thread and have it become a discussion about game features... There are other threads about how to help Vanilla by improving the client.

Before having tournaments, we need people to play them. Once again, this not a thread to start a discussion. This is a thread to ask people who are playing mods other than vanilla  (and their clans) or ctf5 players (who are only playing ctf5 as if it was a mod) to consider joining, and allowing those who want to help and those who need help to meet. It is meant to educate people about the current state of affairs. It is what it is: a call to reach through the scattered community, the Teeworlds diaspora... and meet in the promised Land of Vanilla. Oh wait, that doesn't end well

@Steph
Good memories, sure, but we can live new ones. The Golden Age is long gone, how about starting a Platinum Age? Let's think positively!

@floyd, np, that's why I gave a list of servers in my original thread. I understand your point. We could keep that list in a topic until we can make a "recommended servers" feature in a future version. We have a bunch of ideas about that. I don't want to prevent you from expressing yourself, especially when considering that you're yourself an oldschool ctf5 player and one of the few who actually made a semi-competitive clan over there . I am just wary that more people start diverging and that the thread transforms into a wishlist for TW 0.7 . In any case, I hope you can relay the original message to whichever community you play in now (since I haven't seen you on ctf5 for ages, and you seem to be still around!). Cheers!

Things that turned me off to organized vanilla games:

     Pros are extremely unfriendly and don't care about lesser skilled players. There is no mid-level scene and pros will act like anyone less skilled is worthless. So the game becomes completely ego driven. It's okay to have "star" players but not where they discourage people interested in taking up the game. And if pros play with lesser players they either insult or rage, instead of offering helpful tips or encouragement.

Some solutions that would work for me:

    A mod with daily automatic tournaments. This has helped in many other games I've played. One nice thing is, with a knockout structure, you always have a chance to be on fire for one day, or that a top player might not be playing. Also a mod with a form of skill rating, such as ELO. This lets you know what to expect and gives even the weakest players motivation to improve their rating and not be frustrated losing to a very high rated player. Lastly, for pros not to be complete fags.

    So basically I think the death of vanilla is entirely predictable, and players like me that have kept going on in spite of every reason to quit, are going to be rare. One mistake the devs have made in my opinion, is not realizing that TW, despite looking kid-fun-friendly, is actually a 100% skill based game, like chess or tennis. What we're hearing here is just, I think, the few straggling super pros left, that remember the cool "pro" days, and are sad most pros got bored of it. That's not enough for a "revival" of vanilla.

I can translate this post to German, but I don't have any accounts on other teeworlds community websites and I don't intend to create those. I can send you the translated post as a pm or per mail if you want, so you can post it onther websites.

Teeworlds, as each esport titel (yes, in my opinion teeworlds is one), raises and dies with its challenges. Tournaments are a good way for organized, funny and (semi-)official skill comparison.

In these days, teeworlds lacks of high level/ professional players and, like You pointed out, mid level players. People start playing vanilla teeworlds, don't see any sense of fighting and playing it (like: "Wow, i can beat 50% of this server full of beginners...but who cares?") and stop playing teeworlds, or join more rewarding modifications like Instagib or DDRace.

At this stage we should give them any reason to keep on playing vanilla teeworlds. When there was an active vanilla scene, there were many fun-/clanwars/capgames. Players were motivated to train there skills to take part.

Tournaments will fill this gap:
1) Old players are mostly very busy (out of school). Tournaments with fixed date and time give them a chance to reorganize their everyday life to take part. It is very demotivating to run teeworlds, looking for a non-existing high level game and shutdown teeworlds again.

2) New players would have a real reason to keep teeworlds playing. An active community and tournament szene are the most important thing in the life of a skill based game.

3) Tournaments (and VODs by casters) are the best way to advertise a game. Streamers will attract future-player over their platforms (they should have one).
Money is just a simple trick to attract them.

@Donations: GIVE US THE DONATE BUTTON BACK!
Open a new account for the donations and organize monthly tournaments (I am pretty sure we will find some casters, hosts and moderators for these games) with prices (1st: 50€, 2nd: 15€, 3rd: teeworlds server for the next month...whatever).
For higher motivation, integrate a chart on teeworlds.com and maybe also in the game (server browser), where you announce the recent top 5.

PS: I would love to help organizing tournaments and stuff, but after my exams (end of 2013).

(I didn't read any post on here before because tl;dr, so sorry if this has already been discussed)

To be honest.. The reason why vanilla is dying are the players, which display an incredible arrogance.
I've experienced this by myself. I have been playing Instagib for like 1 year and wanted to change to Vanilla. Pinkie Pie from OtH convinced me to try it out. "It will be fun!" he said. Yeah.. As soon as I started playing Vanilla, I was told being an "Instagib noob, I should get skill". At capgames I didn't even have the chance to play with those old-school guys. (I wonder why. It's all the same, if they play vs. the same enemies). Btw, I am not including OtH, when I was playing with them, they have been nice all the time, regardless if I played bad or good. Sadly that clan died.)

I am VERY sure others have experienced that too. If you want your project be successful, tell your oldschool mates to stop being so arrogant and let the new players play, no matter if they were Instagib players or Block players.

For 0.7, you guys should review modifications and after a complete review decide, if those mods should be playable on 0.7 or not. This would get rid of MANY blocker servers, which are like 70% of the current servers. 90% of them containing maps like blmap_v3. (worst blockermap ever, sorry to say that). Also I do not have anything against block, I just wanted to clarify that blmap is a really bad map, if you want to improve your hook/hammer skills.

Please notice that this is an OPINION. I experienced that all by myself.

They have a working community, vanilla doesn't.

Broadcasters can take part in tournaments, they have just to skip the games they are playing in. E.g: 1vs1 with 32 players = 16 (15 streamed) first rounds, 8 (7 streamed) second rounds, 4 (3 or 4, if he is out) third...

If you want to take Teeworlds to the next (tournament-ready) level, those functions are needed urgently:
- spectator only slots
- better streaming features (mostly statistics, zoom)
- and for sure many other features you will be missing when you stream your first match

My contact list is very limited. We could at least open some threads to get some help.

There are many things that have become outdated, out of the game and ingame. We should consult other developer, team members and the community (via new threads) to discuss several things like donation, new streaming functions and support for tournament organization.

From my point of view: Only few player follow teeworlds.com. Implement a news window into the server browser, to reach the whole community.

Edit: and xFrozen, please don't reply to a thread you didn't read. This is no discussion about the bad behaviour of some vanilla high level players (there is no need, it is a fact). Also we won't forbid any mods but if we do, we will forbid all.

I posted it already on teeworlds-friends.de imo the biggest community after tw.com if you want Mag i could collect what they are saying and write it here down for ya

Hosting an official teeworlds vanilla tournament and using modificated clients for streaming is very odd, isn't it?

DDRace and Instagib are both easy to learn (maybe hard to master). Vanilla is hard to learn, I would even say harder to learn than actually to "master" (comparison to the current ctf5 level).

How many players can I address when starting a thread here? 5? Maybe 10?
A server-browser news with "New official vanilla tournament looking for staff" has way more potential. You could also link a thread on tw.com.

Furthermore when trying to change something, waiting for the time to change things will lead to nothing.

@Jambi* How many active accounts does teeworlds-friends.de have?