Official DDNet staff statement

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Onion
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Official DDNet staff statement

Post by Onion »

Dear DDNet community
It's almost impossible to sum up the happenings of the last days in an objective way. It has been a roller coaster ride of emotions for you as well as for the complete DDNet staff. But as we are now in the position to hand off our first thoughts and plans, we think it's the right point of time to share our ideas now. Take your time to read this, it's an important topic for every active player. For those of you who don't want to read all this / don't care about details: you can skip directly to the end of this message.

Full version
Let's just start in a chronological order, so everybody of you is able to follow the happening properly. Like this you can be sure to have the right information from us.

On 25th September 2015 deen decided at 4:53 pm to shut down all DDraceNetwork servers. Even if shutting down the servers has already been a topic in our internal section, not even we have been prepared for such a sudden decision by him.
Of course this was followed by a huge chaos. Players paniced, joined different servers and had no idea what's going on. We were not sure how to handle this unexpected situation as well. We directly started big discussions about it, founded groups of players with huge DDNet experiences to find a fast solution for "The End of DDraceNetwork".
You are able to comprehend the reasons for deen's (partially emotional) decision in the related forum topic.
A huge problem was also, that we were not able to find a trustful and experienced person who is able to manage the technical support as deen did it before. Without technical support it's nonsense to continue with our servers.
  • After ~ 1 hour we were at least able to set up temporary DDNet servers again, to give our community a base to talk about what's going on. Not even we had concrete plans then, but we tried to answer all your questions about how it will continue now.
  • At the same time we have been in big discussions with deen as well. We tried to follow his reasons for making such a big decision on his own, without preparing the community or even the staff. Of course we were able to understand his decision, but we thought it's just the wrong way to end it like this.
  • After 3 hours of discussing the official servers were online again. Deen was able to empathize with us. We got a "deadline" till 1st October. If we wouldn't be able to find secondary administrators for the technical server support DDNet would be offline forever. From this point of time it was our main target to find persons who are able to do this.
A LOT of suggestions reached us and many players offered their help - for technical support, for sponsoring servers, for little tasks that could be done by others. We already thank you for this! This is what we understand under a well working community! Not just the DDNet staff improved DDNet in the last two years - we are able to use the big potential of our community as well!

So when the seriousness of a "DDNet death" was published, many players thought about their own ways of keeping DDrace alive. A lot of little groups brainstormed of how it could go on after DDNet. Many players thought about hosting their own servers, based on DDNet. Others wanted to establish a new project, that already found a lot of reputable and experienced supporters. All in all this would keep DDrace alive for sure! We don't deny that this is an alternative for DDrace. The big disadvantage of this is quite simple - the often praised DDrace community would be divided into hundred of parts. Like a broken mirror that's not able to get fixed again we would not be ONE community anymore. In some locations there wouldn't even be servers anymore and we would lose a lot of our international supporters. That's what we wanted to prevent totally! DDraceNETWORK connects players all over the world! Keeping up this should be the aim from all of us! This made DDNet what it became today!

Following to these thoughts we tried to bring the new founded "project groups" together. It sounds easy in theory but brings up new challenges in practice. Different opinions in important aspects are able to destroy the cooperation completely. It was important to find compromises to work together with the best possible supporters. This meant that they have to stop working for backup solutions, but support the main aim of keeping DDNet alive. Everybody will understand, that they didn't directly agree to that without any doubts. At this point of time deen gave us the safety that DDNet will not just get sutdown again suddenly, if we are able to find secondary administrators for technical server support.

After many discussions with players, who have a huge technical knowledge, we are finally able to present you the new maintainer of DDNet! east, DoNe and HMH are going to take part in the technical server support. Deen will just stay in the background! Additionally to this we have to say: deen is not the person to talk to! The plan for him and us will be, that our new administrators take over DDNet step by step, to become a substitute for deen.
You will find the new responsibilities and different staff organization in a different topic. We need to reoganize it in the next days.

As we already mentioned it - we still needed more compromises to bring the little groups of players together again. That's why this huge challenge is not just done by presenting new administrators. There need to be big changes in DDNet, which are partially against our guidelines as well. The following information are the actual standards we already discussed but didn't establish yet!
  1. We need to reorganize the responsibilities of our staff members. Firstly we will present you staff member who you can talk to, if you have questions, suggestions or when just need somebody to listen to you. Only one aspect is already sure: this will NOT be deen! Please don't contact him for such things, we will have different players who are responsible for this.
    For the case that there will be no staff member available / online we will add a seperate forum section. In DDNet - Support you can mention your points. You can discuss public matters there. For more private problems please contact a DDNet staff member personally! We will check it as fast as possible to give you a fast answer!
    1. There will not only be staff member who care about players suggestions. We will also establish a team (including a little hierarchy) for testing maps, we will present you a staff member who cares about adding new moderators/administrators, we will bring up a team for the forum organization and the already mentioned team for our technical support! This gives YOU and US the safety to have special players for each task! They will be able to make reasonable decisions on their own - and they will be responsible for them - nobody else!
  2. We are going to seperate the race maps! Yes, we know about the advantages and disadvantages of those maps. It has always been a critical topic in our internal section. Race points implemented in DDrace points don't fit as it's organized now! We are not going to remove the race maps and we will keep the server as they are now. You will still have the possibility to vote for race maps on DDRace servers, as it already works, as well. We can't tell you concrete changes yet, but this will be a topic that gets changed somehow. Of course you will get new information about this after we made decisions!
    We already discussed a customized ranking system especially designed for our race maps. Establishing and creating it costs a lot of time. As we are working on many points at the same time right now, we don't know when and whether we can add it, yet. As long as nothing is decided, we are going to keep the existing system.
  3. We will seperate the DDrace maps! When DDNet started, we created rules for mappers - they were hurt more and more with each map we released. The quality of our DDrace maps was suffering much under the influence of the DDmaX maps we released. The MAIN part of it is - BE CREATIVE! This was one of the aspects that made DDNet famous and popular! We released interesting maps that are fun to play, not always totally clear, but challenging! The aim of every mapper should be to challenge the player and to create maps that are fun to play! If you are going to create a map for seeing your name ingame - this is the wrong attitude!
    So we are now in the position to "clean" the servers. Good maps get the fame they deserve, worse maps (maps that don't fit into our mapper rules) get divided from them.

    We are not sure yet, how to handle the existing points players got for their finishes on those maps. That's what we're discussing internal right now. But you can keep your trust in us! If we would have just made bad decisions, DDNet wouldn't be where it is today.

    We are not going to delete any of the released maps. We will just need time here as well to sort out the maps, please wait for changes here. Every map needs to get checked properly, every map gets the same chance!
    Of course the mapper rules for new maps will be followed more strict than before now, to make sure that we just release the maps that we want to publish on DDNet! You'll be able to talk about this with the team we will present you in near future.
  4. If we make decisions, you will always see WHO is responsible for it and WHY this decision was made. So you will not just read that the DDNet staff did it. This gives everybody the possibility to talk to the responsible person. Of course we will try to make the decisions as reasonable as possible! We will choose staff member who we trust totally! And even if a decision doesn't find that much acceptance, please respect it! Feel free to discuss it with the responsible persons!

    Of course there were many internal changes as well, that we already discussed. I'll not add them here, because these are just the main information for the players. Once we made decisions that influence you, we will publish them, so that you always know about the actual status.

Short version
To sum it up DDNet will keep running with a new administration structure (east, DoNe and HMH), upcoming changes about race and DDrace maps, map testing and more to come!

All mentioned aspects above are already discussed and clear. They will not get changed anymore, so we are not going to discuss them in public again. It meant a lot of work for all of us, so please respect that for the beginning and let us continue with our big "work packages". Be sure that we always want to find the BEST solution for the community - not for us! We set high standards, now we are going to keep that level of great quality!

This is how we were able to stop "The End of DDraceNetwork". You can keep playing on our servers, even in different locations and in different game mods! We hope you enjoy playing with us!

Yes, there are some huge changes, but most of them were needed to keep DDNet alive. But DDNet is known for such improvements and updates. Everybody should realize, that the DDNet staff is trying to lift up DDNet to a higher level - by little and huge changes that happen regulary!

So following the quote "Stagnation is regression" we keep working on DDNet for giving you the best possible base for your time in teeworlds!

Thanks for listening, I know it has been much, but this has been the most critical situation in the last two years, so I guess it was worth the work and the time for reading all this.

Be sure that we will publish new information when we made actual decisions! Till then I wish you just the best!
If you have any suggestions, feel free to contact me.

I look forward to play and discuss with you!

Best regards
onionly .me'

P.S. You will be able to take part in the KoG event on friday, 2nd October at 8:00 pm! Take part in this tournament and enjoy the challenge!
back to the roots - plant onions
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Ryozuki
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Re: Official DDNet staff statement

Post by Ryozuki »

Onion, i just love you
Fels

Re: Official DDNet staff statement

Post by Fels »

hmm ok. thanks.. -.-
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Re: Official DDNet staff statement

Post by Forris »

I didnt quite understand the parts with maps.
Will some be deleted and we may lose points?
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Re: Official DDNet staff statement

Post by hi_leute_gll »

Forris wrote:I didnt quite understand the parts with maps.
Will some be deleted and we may lose points?
We are not going to delete any of the released maps.
[...]
We are not sure yet, how to handle the existing points players got for their finishes on those maps.
.hi._.leute._.gll. | iMTGmember
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Re: Official DDNet staff statement

Post by Tezcan »

I hope it will be like in the text..
good luck!
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Re: Official DDNet staff statement

Post by Aoe »

Wooho!
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Re: Official DDNet staff statement

Post by gdin »

Sounds good. With your "new ranking system", it would be great if this new DDNet could be more focused on rewarding players for ranks, instead of just collecting points. It seems that everyone has fallen under the cushiony spell of points though, so I doubt that ddrace will ever be the way it used to be.

Also, I have a question about staff/administration. Will all the current staff members stay in their positions, or will the entire structure be reworked? You mentioned a hierarchy so some more information on how that works would be nice, when it is finished being thought out.
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Re: Official DDNet staff statement

Post by Forris »

I think the 3 ranking system should stay as they are now.
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Re: Official DDNet staff statement

Post by Im 'corneum »

To the points/ranks story i have to say how i play maps.
When a new map gets released and i know i can do it, i mostly play it once to get the points. But sometimes i really like the map so i am speedrunning it. i guess i found a good middleway between wanting a good rank, and wanting many points. I made much points in the past with racemaps and i dont want to lose them :c
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