Another brick in the wall

[Dax Dupont]

Hello fellow Candidates.

Are you pro- or contra- wallening?
Will you try to reach consensus and do your best to get it reverted or forked?

I hate the wallening, part of my platform is getting rid of it. It will be one of my main objectives as headmin.

[TheRex9001]

Im iffy on it, if it keeps bleeding population I don't think its trade off is worth it. It puts us in a very hard position because we do not want to lose our maintainers, but at the same time losing our players is even worse since maintainers can at least be recruited from contributors who only exist if we have players. If the wallening gets improved and more players return I would not like to see it reverted. A revert is preferable to forking in my mind because whilst a revert might lose us some maintainers a fork would lose us all if not most of them.

[Timberpoes]

The Wallening is amazing. What has been thrown under the bus to achieve it undermines every single positive the Wallening hoped to achieve. And that makes me sad.

Headmins always have to put the good of the server above anything else. A forkening is almost never for the good of the server. But MSO has always told me, across both my headmin terms, that if the headmins voted to fork the codebase over an issue he'd do it.

To avoid the meme of "Whelp, I've tried nothing and I'm all out of ideas!" - if the pop count wasn't recovering, the pop count dropping was directly linked to codebase management and the powers that be in the codebase we not offering solutions that I felt would work then I would stand down as a maintainer and vote in favour of forking as a nuclear hail Mary option that couldn't do any more harm than what was already being done.

I only say that because I have faith it won't come to that. And if it did, well... Speaking as a maintainer, that's a codebase skill issue.

[ekaterina]

I have seen nothing but backlash from the players, and, on account of that, I am against the wallening.

While I don't find all of the new visuals unpalatable, this whole ordeal feels to me like a case of "trying to fix what isn't broken". Its current iteration is several leagues better than what was originally testmerged, but, as others have pointed out, our US servers are dead and even our European server's lost a moderate chunk of its population. Without players, there is no game. It makes no sense to force onto the players something that they don't want. Both the administration and the codebase's purpose is to improve players' experience, not degrade it.

As headmin, upon confirming via in-game poll that it is the players' will, I would be favourable to pressuring the maintainers, and, if necessary, forking the codebase.

[Itseasytosee2me]

I've long since been a bit jaded about our maintainer team. Obviously they all have good intentions, but the culture of being stubborn and standoffish is something we've seen time and time again. If you have a problem with a change that some powerful maintainers are upholding, best thing to do is to understand it well and argue the points you know you can make when you can.

As for the Wallening specifically, overall it has not met my expectation. I do appreciate nicer looking sprites, and I am open to exploring a more isometric style, but what we got is too intrusive. Ideally, a style where wall-mounts could have been left as is would have been more appropriate, and that's certainly something that could have been pulled off. As the Wallening stands right now, it brings more problems than anything else.

Traditionally, headmins have next to no influence on the maintainer team. However, if pressure mounts to the point where the wallening is truly causing us to loose otherwise contented players, and the maintainer team does not move to rectify this, I would be in favor of a fork, although I will say that its unlikely to ever come to that.

[DrAmazing343]

While Headmins do not have any real say over the codebase itself, I'd like to say that I've been very bitterly (and vocally) disappointed with the handling of the Wallening. I respect the effort of the code and spritework that went into it, and a lot of the sprites are absolutely stunning, but ultimately I've found that I do not really feel it has a place in our codebase. If it came to the point of a Forkening, I'd regrettably have to vote for it, but I do sincerely hope that in the meantime we find a compromise, or perhaps even better a revert and another significant time period in the oven. It is truly a shame that things turned out the way they did, as I was initially a huge proponent for the Wallening, but I've continually found my expectations shattered in a bad way and seen very little action taken in response to player outcry until today. While it feels good to finally see some response, I do very much feel that it's too little too late, and I've already seen many of my friends fly the coop, quite possibly never to return. There's very little that's going to sway me towards liking the idea again until time has passed or I've seen overwhelming results.

[TheBibleMelts]

looks fantastic, plays worse. the whole thing has been handled as well as a lubed up trashbag full of ferrets.

i'd rather fork before i let the community feel abandoned and voiceless.

[Bmon]

I have made my stance on the Wallening very clear in my thread.

I don't want to see this community fizzle out over the Wallening and will try my hardest to get the Maintainers to revert it or convince MSO to fork.

However, I am open to some form of compromise so long as it is widely accepted by the majority of players.

[Lacran]

I think it's required at this point to do a revert to send a clear message that this is a show of good faith to the community.

The wallening represented to players that maintainers did not care about their gameplay experience if it posed any obstacle to their goals. This is what needs to be fixed.

Once player trust has been restored then maybe the wallening could be looked at again. But it would require a radically different relationship between coders and players than what is present.

The wallening could become an excellent addition, but it's not

[RaveRadbury]

The coders seem to have a handle on it now, with the recent discord ping.

I'm interested in seeing where that goes.

Ultimately I want whatever happens to be done calmly and deliberately, and I'm open to the opinions of the other headmins.

[Lacran]

It was great to see oranges take accountability.

Reverting was a good step.

Issue here is the project is still being treated like an inevitable thing. The issues around offset and sprite loudness was a legitimate playability concern which was previously considered a perfectly fine trade-off. (It's not)

It's a promising first step, but I still think stepping away from this project and giving everyone a chance to cool off, would've been much better.

[xzero314]

I really like what the Wallening did to Lavaland and Icebox. I enjoy many of the sprites.

I have been very frustrated dealing with all the gameplay issues kinks that have not been ironed out yet. The other day I tried to disarm a flux anomaly and I just couldn't click on it due to all the stuff on the wall having massive click boxes.

I am also really sad to see how the change has ripped the community apart.
My reply to this comes pretty late given the announcement regarding wallening, but I still think my stance is important to share. I want TG to be the best it can be. I dont think I am able to decide what that looks like on my own at all. So I rely on the community and my peers to help shape that vision.

Right now its clear to me wallening is not what the community wants. So with that in mind I would be opposed to keeping it merged if that was still the plan. Am I against the wallening entirely? No. I really like the look of it. But the gameplay concerns and the community cannot be ignored.