Darn right do your thing

The game was better then because 95% of the players didn't log into their bot at the start of the game and then go about their business elsewhere. Scripts were definitely part of the game, but there was a player component that just isn't there anymore. Believe it or not, the PLAYERS were better then too. Bots are much like six shooters in the old West. It evened the playing field even though the participant AREN'T equal.

... and that is what games should be all about - allowing us to enjoy life as the kids do.

               / Promethius / Enigma / Wolfen /

"A man who has no skills can be taught, a man who has no honor has nothing."

The target audience of the version that you are looking at with the "old school" version would include my wife. She played back in 88/89 - 92 when we ran a WWIV BBS. I never beat her in a game back then and I don't think any else in our area ever did either. Those games resulted in her having notebooks of planet status, warp mapping, and port information (that she didn't share). She will not play in today's games with scripting because that is not the game she loved back then.

Our first game back in about 2003 was on our local server and it was a no-script/helper game with about 4 friends involved -- no, I didn't lose to my wife - I learned and corped WITH her. The "old school" version would appeal to my wife and probably countless others to bring back the old memories and fun times. The more I think about it, the more it is beginning to appeal to me also. One of the things about the 2003 game was one of our friends that played had a great time and was just learning about TW.

So, yeah, the old school version has an interest and maybe after playing there we will see those players become the next group of elite class players in all versions of the game.

               / Promethius / Enigma / Wolfen /

"A man who has no skills can be taught, a man who has no honor has nothing."

I think that's true, Promethius. By having this slower pace, less intense version where players like your wife can still enjoy the experience, it would serve as a recruiting tool into the "shark-infested" hard-core, anything goes games. I can see some players (certainly not all) getting to a point where they would want the challenge of seeing if they could swim with the sharks in the heavy scripting games Then again, I expect the old-school games to be highly competitive as well, just with a different set of tactics.

What would you say was the biggest breaking point for your wife? Was it automation in general, or just event-driven scripts? Was it tools for tracking things like ports and planets, so that players could compete with her without having to put in the same effort that she did? I wonder, because I think it's reasonable to provide players with some tools so the game isn't tedious or too data-intensive, but it's more about the decision-making. I think the real wrong-turn was event-driven scripts and how that changed the game. If this "old school" mode provides internal automation so you can find your trade routes, but you don't have to manually trade them, would that still be interesting? And what if it provided some other popular helper functions so that any new player would have the same basic tools at their fingertips?

I'd like to add to Promethius' discussion here with wives if I may. Daala and I have been discussing this thread this morning over breakfast and after we read Promethius' post, we had a good long chat about the game.

My wife (Daala) plays TradeWars with me as well. We have two games that are marked for us only and have been running for a long time. When Daala first started taking an interest, I pulled out my notebook to show her how I kept track of games I played in. Yes, I must admit that I was one of the old die hards that still did most things manually and on paper. We have our own system developed where I write my notes and Daala can look at them and continue onward in my absence. As a matter of fact, Daala improved some methods of recording information in my notebook that to the average person would think it was some top secret encryption code, but to us we could look at it and say "that's planet number 12, an M class planet in sector 4455 with a level 2 citadel and 1500 shields". One notebook for every game we played (since they only cost 99 cents for us) and we have a box full of games we've played.

Daala started to play via the java telnet app we have on our site. She manually moved around, got use to the commands- both common ones and remembering to use the ? key for help. She then decided over time that too many little things were being done continuously over and over again and asked if there was an easier way to "speed up the process of certain things". I sat her down and showed her TWXProxy and scripts, as well as the SWATH helper. She decided to go with SWATH at first, and got more and more familiar with functions of game play. Then she wanted to move into scripting.

She read Promethius' tutorial on TWX scripting and sat down one day to create a simple script. She browsed other tutorials and began to expand her scripting knowledge. She not only has learned how to script in TWX, but even took it one step further and creates scripts in ZOC. I asked her why she wanted to do this and the response from her was:

"It is part of the game. One needs to learn all aspects of a game to be able to play it effectively. Scripts are like a tool. Take a calculator for example. You learn how to do math on paper, then you learn how to use a calculator. If the calculator dies, you can hopefully still do the math manually. Scripts are the same to me as a calculator. They automate functions for me, but if they stop working, I can at least still remember to do things manually. Scripts are a tool for me to do some things automatically while I make my coffee or want to quickly make lunch. I can live and adapt with them, and I can live and adapt without them."

Daala's response made me stop to think on how much we use our scripts and rely on them. Scripts are part of the game, but it's the type of scripts used and the player involved that sets the pace. We play the game just as it had been played years ago because we don't have people in our game trying to lock it down, or attempting to kill us off and get all our assets before extern, etc. We have no one blocking us from building up our base, then expanding one sector at a time. As a matter of fact, Daala wants to do just that in our games- pick one sector to build, then expand sector by sector. To her, you win if you hold all the sectors (except FedSpace of course).

The tactics that are used in most game playing are played that way because that appears to be the "norm". We're not knocking that style of game play; we just don't play it. There are some that have to get in and lock down a game; others want a medium pace, some like it slow. Some thrive on the most kills, others just want to play and have fun. Everyone has their own taste. We like our pace, and even have now created a "computer player" which right now is doing well on it's own as our adversary. Everyone has their view on how the game should be, but for us the game is the way it is because of how we choose to play it- at least in our games anyways.

Final note to Promethius and his wife; Daala wanted me to add this. If you and your wife ever want to play a game- where it is you two and us two, whether you and I team up on one team and the wives on another; or you and your wife on a corp, and us on another; or all four of us on one team- you have an official invite from us. The games are closed and no one can interfere with them and can run as long as we want them to.

The event driven scripts are what caused my wife to lose interest. Her take is computer vs computer more than player vs player. Part of that, I think, is that with scripts you are really going against whoever wrote the script and not necessarily the player using it. An example in unlims would be the cashing scripts - you are competing, the vast majorty of the time, against someone who could not even come close to writing a script, but relies on the public scripts for their tools. Granted, you have to know what a script does, and when to use it (example CK's ship cap), but you don't need to have knowledge of the nuts and bolts aspect.

So even though I have most scripts that a player can use, and can even write a few, my wife felt it wasn't true player vs player.

Thrawn and Daala - thank you for the offer, and if I can get her interested I will take you up on that.

               / Promethius / Enigma / Wolfen /

"A man who has no skills can be taught, a man who has no honor has nothing."

Daala writes scripts that are more of use to her, such as her colo script, or one that does a search of specific ports to sell product on. Basically they are scripts not so much used to gain an advantage, but in her mind they help to automate the mundane repetitive tasks. Yes, she knows she can manually move to sector 1, land, get colos, leave and return home, drop them, do it again. As I said previously, she looks at ways to automate the simple tasks. She has never written any offensive scripts; only writes scripts for building. That role she took to right away and thrives on it. I do more of the offensive/defensive scripts for our base protection; gridders, patrol scripts, scout scripts, etc. Although a player vs player I do more manual than rely on scripts.

No problem, Promethius. The offer is open anytime. Hopefully your wife will be encourage that another wife plays and enjoys the game in the same manner. Although two of our games have played a while (one is 306 days, one is 170 something) we have not done too much where you could not join in and get established. We also run the OCSBot in our games, and it runs the Patrol/Sweep from Terra to Stardock. But you two are welcome anytime nonetheless.

I really don't think the decline you are observing has anything to do with gameplay or mechanics, or tactics, or scripts. I doubt that the types of changes you are currently contemplating will have any real impact on the size of the player base.

TW is a text based game in a high def era. Even in its heyday, TW was a niche game, primarily of interest to computer geeks (the kind of guys who were excited about upgrading from 2400 to 9600 baud). But now TW is a decades old game, several generations behind the times, and it just doesn't have what it takes to appeal to more than a few hundred people.

Your target audience is either a brand new player, or a returning player rediscovering the game after a long absence. I really don't see any compelling attraction for a new player. You are competing with the likes of Call of Duty, World of Warcraft, Wii, Xbox Live, Farmville, and a million others. It's not even a competition. The prospective new player has very little chance of discovering the game in the first place, and even less chance of being interested in it. You have a much better shot with returning players, people (like me) who have had a lifelong love of this game and who think about it from time to time, or even those who played it during the BBS days and don't even realize it's still possible to play.

Frankly, the only reason I stayed around as long as I did after rediscovering the game (right about when TWGS came out) was the scripting aspect. For me, the game provided a fairly unique combination of BBS space trading nostalgia with competitive programming. Unfortunately, most returning/nostalgic players face too steep a learning curve to compete in the current environment, and most won't make the leap.

The combination of the text based interface and a highly capable (PC) client make little sense today. In my opinion, the only ways to generate renewed interest in the game are:
1. rewrite as an action/adventure PC game.
2. rewrite as a text game for mobile devices.
3. rewrite as a facebook application.

CK has a point in the lack of graphic eye candy that seems to be needed by many people. A few years ago I tried to get my wife's nephew interested, and he just couldn't grasp a game w/o graphics and bloodshed.

I've always thought a decent helper that provided grapics would be somewhat interesting. I doubt if it would be used by most players because I think it would be too slow possibly - don't know as I'm not a programmer - if I was a programmer I would have already given it a shot. Part of what makes me think it would be good is the desire for graphical mapping (SWATH).

               / Promethius / Enigma / Wolfen /

"A man who has no skills can be taught, a man who has no honor has nothing."

I'd buy all that logic if it was true across the board. But text-based MUDs and other BBS games continue to have about the same small, niche appeal. TradeWars has shown a significant dropoff from its small, niche appeal. And that's what I'm talking about. Not expecting Eve Online numbers. Just wanting the game to continue to be fun for those who once found it fun, and for those looking for a bit of old-school gaming. Yeah, it's a niche market. But when you alienate about 99% of that niche with hyper aggressive scripting, that's when you start looking at a few hundred player community like we have today. That's not niche, that's dead.

JP,

The problem with Tradewars is that there's a damned steep learning curve. New players don't stand a chance. Part of the issue is financial, the MBBS Mega Rob bug totally blew the money system to hell, and it got worse from there, as players learned how to adjust in the standard game (planet-port sales for instance). To make the game popular again, you have to do something about the learning curve. And I'll admit that I'm probably well behind on that curve myself, when I started traveling a lot for work I didn't have time to keep up, and now, well, I burned my Windows install media and run Mac OSX and Linux only, and I haven't gone looking for software to use.

But if you can do something about the learning curve, that would help a lot. I still have the game stats for the mod I put together a while back to try and even things out, and I think it worked fairly well except for the Transwarp drive - I couldn't make the difference between Type 1 and Type 2 big enough.

Wayne aka The Mad Hatter

Ah, another WWIV BBS Sysop - I was node 4651 - Through the Looking Glass.

Wayne

I personal would love to see an old school trade wars. I started playing TW in 1996 and stopped playing in 2002. I have since tried to get back in to the game, but to me the use of scripts to completely run the game is not fun. The last 7 games I tried to get in to, I was ptorped the second i left a safe (aka Fed sector).. I personal have no fun in starting a script and coming back to check in a few hours to see how its doing..

I miss my little note book full of price brackets on how i should spend the credits I got and the good trade routes. The finding of a good trade route, and the wars that built up.. Now Its become a Start script, check back, start new script, ect.. Im not playing Im just letting my computer play and seeing what the results are.. With all the scripts that are being used if I dont start right after a bang I might as well not even try.

So if there was a browser based interface with some simple scripts built in. I would love it.

JP,

I did some work ups on ship pricing, since the current pricing is too cheap, at least it is with the current game economics. Attached is the spread sheet I put together showing some of my ideas, take a look at it and let me know what you think.

Wayne