Underinformed community

[Ray]

I'd like to share some of my observations related to today's community with you, because I believe we have to do something in order to get everyone - especially the newcomers - to understand how things work around here. I'm pretty much a conservative guy, I always like the old things better, but I'm open to changes also - unless the change is negative, as it is with today's worms community, I think.

I'm not talking about the forum readers here, the kind of people who read these forums, understand English quite well and as a result, are clear with the etiquette and the way things work. The problem is - if there is a problem, there might not be, it could be only me - that the young people who start playing this game now are completely unaware of these customs.

I have seen this a lot for example: there are games hosted in #AnythingGoes with names like "tus hysteria", that is the most common I see. When you join, the host plays 1 TUS Hysteria game with you. You don't know if it's for Classic or TRL, you don't know how many games the guy wants to play. If you ask, they don't understand - because they probably don't know what Classic League or TRL is or they don't speak English. The maps they play on, personally, I'd declare unusable.

Even if you get to play two games, they don't understand what picking a scheme means, they are very likely to quit in the middle of your pick, not because they are "bad people", only because they don't understand the custom of playing a Classic League match for instance, when you pick a scheme and the opponent picks a scheme, that's how it works and they don't know that, and they are not to blame.

I'm not trying to be mean here, don't get me wrong, but I'm under the impression that there is a big cloud here on which newcomers don't see through and they have no knowledge at all about anything and as TUS today is the main source of basically everything related to Worms: Armageddon, I believe we should do something. I have no idea what yet, but I think something must be done.

I know it's easy to be smart with hindsight, but I was bringing up topics that could lead to this condition a while ago, but noone cared back then. I really hope that now, that things got exponentially worse, we can make a change and also, that I'm not the only one who sees a problem here.

[Aerox]

There's no reason for change as TUS is clear in its principles: quantity beats quality

efforts are aimed at reaching for a bigger userbase rather than stablishing a quality one.

[Ray]

You are right, but this is exactly what I'm trying to change here. Damage is done, even though we have a time machine on the site, we can't use that to jump back in time. You are a man with a huge experience, you could also help.

[Aerox]

You are right, but this is exactly what I'm trying to change here. Damage is done, even though we have a time machine on the site, we can't use that to jump back in time. You are a man with a huge experience, you could also help.

they don't want my help

[NAiL]

The community is fine and TUS is the highest quality league WA has ever had. Dno wtf ropa is talking about but we all know he likes to play the provocateur for the sake of trying to look clever.

Worms is more active than its ever been, ofc your gonna get some guys who dont understand how it all works but they will learn. If they dont learn then they stop playing. In the years ive been playing tus I havent found this to be a problem ray. People not understanding how the league works doesnt seem to be a major issue. If they continue to play league games then they will learn eventually!

[Ray]

But how about instead of leaving them to learn these things eventually, making steps to help them? For instance, increasing the quality of this website? There is a huge amount of information, but as I see it, it is stored in a wrong and overcomplicated way.

This might really not be a problem, as you say, but I remember when I started playing this game, a lot of people game me a clue and helped me to understand and learn. It's another thing that I was the kind of person who wanted to learn, that's also important.

And back then, there was only English material found on the internet, we have a strong tool in our hands with TUS, let's use it! We can translate into any language.

[NAiL]

Yes I agree the rules and the league workings should be made as clear as possible, but I really dont think the issue you raise is that prevalent! There is no mass complaing about people not understanding how the system works, there may be a few problems but they are easily resolved and dont cause much of an issue.

[DarkOne]

ropa wants us to handle TUS the way Kiros handled fb. Shall we go ahead and write a script to auto-ban you then?

The main problem is that WA has evolved so much over time that any newcomer will have to wade through an enormous text to know what everything is about here. Mostly, people online can't be arsed to read a lot of text, they just want to play.
If you can find a way to make the necessary starting info minimal, I'd say go for it.
The rules are readily available in plenty of languages (16 and counting), so that's not the problem (though, admittedly, scheme rules are hard to find; I've PMed MI about that again just now - cheers for the heads up there a while back, I hope it'll be addressed now).

But here's the thing: without new blood, this game dies. Look at the people playing now and the people playing 6 years ago and you'll see a big difference. Sure, there are a couple of oldschoolers still around, but if it weren't for the new players who developed their skills to play competitively, this game would've been long gone. You simply need new blood to keep things interesting.
Not all of the new people will know english at first. Would nino still be here if he were banned from fb because his english sucked back then?

This might really not be a problem, as you say, but I remember when I started playing this game, a lot of people game me a clue and helped me to understand and learn. It's another thing that I was the kind of person who wanted to learn, that's also important.

I think this is the most important part in this game. I didn't learn anything about WA from reading it in rules and what not. I just played.
That's what they're doing now too. Why is it wrong for them to learn about WA the same way you and I did (not ropa, of course, he already knew )
True, there are people that don't want to learn, but those people don't stick around very long. Can't really do much about them.

[Ray]

The way they helped me was by actually bringing me to hundreds of webpages, all which I read through, I should have mentioned that. Well, yes, you could be right. It's just, what I see on WormNet every day is so much different from what it was, say, 2 years ago, back then - which wasn't even long ago - 60-70% of the people was trying to play league games or knew generally all the classic schemes and played those. But now this amount went down drastically and that's the thing I'm worried about.

[Dub-c]

How about a multiple choice test when you sign up to tus. You have to get 100% on it before your account is activated? Included is rules, customs, etiquette, and etc.

lol just a suggestion. I don't know how else your problem would be solved.

[Korydex]

How about a multiple choice test when you sign up to tus. You have to get 100% on it before your account is activated? Included is rules, customs, etiquette, and etc.

lol just a suggestion. I don't know how else your problem would be solved.

Not so good idea imo... I think most of newcomers will just give up on 1st try and wont even try to read the rules.

[Aerox]

The community is fine and TUS is the highest quality league WA has ever had. Dno wtf ropa is talking about but we all know he likes to play the provocateur for the sake of trying to look clever.

perhaps it's the most feature rich league, but that's not all there is to it.

D1, stop making excuses, you're better than that, notice the vocal new school? They're not living in the shoutbox and posting internet images from 2002 because society has evolved into this, it's because quality is not demanded, it's not even recommended.

Nail will tell you that this ain't a problem, as you see, he's one of the many examples of someone actually believing the TUS propaganda. The phenom known as being actively new school. What is it, you might ask? Well, TUS shields itself against any kind of progress that isn't populistic and this scheme of working things out is flawed from its conception.

Why? Because if you're going to be a populistic authority, ideally you'd want the people to be insightful to the topics you're presenting them. But when you do nothing to educate them then I can't help but think things are being done wrong.

The best league WA has ever had? How are you measuring it, Nail? Games played? Well, it's also the league with the most complaints, probably the second league with the most bans. And not to mention other things that you probably can't grasp them being TUS fault, things like, lack of clan competitiveness, lack of motivation for Playoff completion, lack of debate in the forums and basically lack of everything other than playing games.

Nice league indeed, as for its actual value to the community: other leagues have done infintely more

[Ray]

I love TUS, the staff, the features, the creator (), but unfortunately, I think ropa is right.

I didn't start this thread to have an angry quarrel like "TUS IS GUD!!!44" "TUS IS B4D!!11" though, I started this thread to see if other people see what I see and if TUS staff wants to make some changes, discuss what those changes should be and how to execute them.

As likely as it is to have this thread ending up in a flamewar again, I'm still asking you, please don't...

[TheKomodo]

Hmm ropa you are wrong about clanners, cFc constantly clan, we play 100-200 a month, I basically clanner everytime I am on at weekend, it's great, but right now it's not so great cuz of the WO thing.

[Ray]

Hmm ropa you are wrong about clanners, cFc constantly clan, we play 100-200 a month, I basically clanner everytime I am on at weekend, it's great, but right now it's not so great cuz of the WO thing.

But the number of the clans who actively compete for both seasonal and overall points, playoffs and are - not to insult anyone, but - on a "professional" level (meaning that they can compete in every scheme, you understand...) is only a fraction compared to how it used to be, that's what ropa meant. Sure you play a lot of clanners each season, but against who? The same 5-6 clans.

I never understood this idea of making clans and then not playing clanners, "cus clanner is stupid."... pointless.