What Killed TDZK?

[Drunkenduo]

Removing Main Engines == Initiative

[Nagel]

What Dracula said.

[Inflateable Beaver]

noob retention

lack of solo play

neeo's humor?

probably just the elitist nature of the game, but speaking from a eurpean point of view, the ping and lag issues that cropped up at weird freakin times were extremely annoying, i was always a quick early round leveler/trader to get rdy for the first raids or fund something, and in that mess of mass activity, i could trade fine, but then every now and then with less than 100 people online, lag spikes appeared right as certain hunters were chasing you, got to the point where i would sit in ports and spam refresh to see the lag to know if a hunter was outside or not.

cheating and crappy morals definitly drove off the core community players... no doubt about it.

[Legho]

Most of above answers are true and ... invalid at the same time.

The reason for that being the perspective. You are digging into things from a veteran's point of view. You name the things which made the game less apealling to YOU - a small group of veteran elite players.

Newer players had too little game knowledge to be affected by cheating scandals etc. Those are almost never targeted against them. And when they are - they are not really aware of abuse taking place. They were in a way playing a completely different game than the Veterans. And because of that they had different problems.

I personally believe that the single most important factor to any game's thriving is a nameless mass of casual players. As long as the numbers were high (early 2.x rounds) the game was fine in my opinion. People were having loads of fun and I only expected it to get better with more people joining.

But those never came. For some reason the influx of new peopled died out. I consider this to be the biggest reason for TDZK death.

Even though you might have been angry about several problems that you mentioned in this thread you still stuck with the game. You did so, because you still enjoyed it and had hopes for it. But without new players it could never work. And so it didnt.

Damn shame.

Legho

P.S Long live xF.

[zer0das]

The thing is, cheating does affect the acquisition new players. When I first started playing 2.1, I indirectly brought in half a dozen people or more because I just started talking about the game and how much fun it was, and other people became interested. I never even had to directly invite them, they just came on their own. And then these new people would talk about it to their friends, and they would bring in more people still.

After 2.3, my inclination to want to talk to anyone else about the game who wasn't already a part of it already was about zero. When things went back to 1.0 rules in 2.7, same story. If the installed playerbase has rather large reservations about the game, they aren't going to enjoy idly talking about it to friends, and probably not want to invite them either. And these were the people who would be more likely to stay, because they already had an ingame connection to someone with knowledge.

Now yeah, the game was sufficiently complex the average newbie is probably going to try it and then give up. But the playerbase itself growing weary certainly doesn't help matters.

[Thor]

Zer0das, i don't belive cheating via trigger scripts etc was as common as you believe. Im not saying there wasn't any, but they certainly weren't as widespread as believed. I spent most of my time as a hunter in TDZK under one name or another, when i joined outcasts in 2.7 i spent months denying any former relationship with renegades or other groups within TDZK history due to people not believing me to be who i am. I even had ingame messages asking if i was Carlos or Wolvie...if you did a decent job and were an unknown it seemed easy to accuse you of cheating.

I spent alot of time with a group that were often highlighted and tarred with the brush of being cheaters, i can safely say i never used a trigger script or witnessed one within that alliance. What killed part of the enjoyment of the game for me was the consistent accusations however. I and i know alot in that allaince were accused of having trigger scripts, if you had op'd with us and witnessed sometimes how inept we were :p you'd understand how laughable it was to be told we had scripts.

The reasons TDZK died are varied in my opinion. The main reason being poor retention of new players, ultimately older players were always going to move on, the game needed fresh blood to replace them. I played this game actively from the original 1.0 and was around before that, i see many names of these forums talking about the demise of the game who werent there then. These are the lucky ones who for whatever reasons managed to stay and develop within the game, probably finding a decent alliance i.e FURY who would teach them. How many other allaicnes can honestly say they were friendly to new players and helped develop them?

The admins didnt help at times, mago, neeo etc i can think of a number of times where yes it wasnt easy decisions, but some of those made just made me and probably others lose faith in the game. How many times did the argument of whos a tester come up? alot of the time there were some questionable names on those list....


The final blow for me was probably Nomad being released....it was crap at first and i think that probably did more damage to the aspirations of TDZK than anything else. I would have stayed even as a casual player and played an average 2x round rather than that nonsense. As it stood when Nomad finally cme round it was to little to late and considering how built up it had been it wasnt the same.

The thing im most sad about is that TDZK was thena llowed to die a death....ive had a look at fleets, im sure theres more to it than my limited experience but it isnt TDZK. TDZK was good because of the alliance play, thhe solo huunting, the jumps, raids etc....something you couldnt really get in other games. Thats gone and so for me thats the real depressing thing. it was those things that made it fun for me.

[Irishdrunk]

My own personal experience being a noob for many many rounds says the reasons it died were,

1. Lack of a newbie zone.
Don't give a crap what anyone says if u start a game and die within 5 mins 16 times to some retard who has nothing better to do than sit over a station looking for new players trying to get a handle on the game then u won't want to play, build, die, restart....... A pure newbie 9k or a couple of zones should of been created that were non pvp that you couldn't enter if u left it.

2. Lack of a ingame chat.
This was a big big problem now i know alot of people used mirc at the time, but jesus that was only about .001% of the world population. It is really really nessacary for a person to click a link and just be able to type, Am listen what do i do to get started? How many newbies did we see on irc over the years maybe 20 a round if even ?

3. Bad advertising.
No Facebook, no Bebo, no Twitter no (or at least they were less advanced) Mobile platforms. One advertising game's poll site.... love mpogd (whatever) but for crying out loud, i never once saw it anywhere esle ! All u had to do have a list of about 50 voting game sites of them. 1million credits per one if u click and vote. Good Press, more people see it and helps the gamer!

4. Too many people with zero interest in actually making the effort to help newbies out messages etc refer to no 2 to fix at least some of those issues alot easier to answer a chat question than getting around to a message and u mighten even get a message! Guides couldn't be there all the time. Broader support would of been offered with no guides answering questions in a chat

5. Noobhead's like carlos who cheated, lied etc and did everything to make themselves the so called best, when the fact they had to do these things make them plain laughable and even worse the people who let idiots like that get to them. They are,were and will always be in every game, Catch them, ban them, FORGET ABOUT THEM.

That's my two sense i'm sure andrew will crip about puncatation and whatever else but i smoke too much weed to be worried about that! Hope everyone is doing ok and LETS GET TDZK BACK there is a thread on the fleets forums where this should be. Letting them know

[Wolfy]

SD distributed trigger scripts to every single hunter in their alliance. And even if they didn't, they may as well have- the same stupid rainbowssss would have happened.

Not that I'm bitter or anything. we rebuilt 8002. So who has the last laugh.

I Started probably around 2.2, got properly into the game a few rounds later and was with SD until the game died.

I never had a trigger script, nor had any knowledge of the use of them within SD. I dont know if this just makes me ignorant or not, but i wasnt aware of any use of them within SD.

The game was difficult to find, I was reffered by a friend when he found it, although he didnt play very long. Think I got a bit lucky being recruited by minibev, who taught me the game before he went inactive, that said (not trying to insult the alliances here) when i was recruited into SPQR and SHS, i stayed only briefly due to the lack of help that appeared to be available. It was only i think it was when i joined Cartel that i was actively encouraged to get onto IRC.

anyway, i was mainly responding about the SD thing, I don't wish to argue about it as i couldnt say Im right, but I was a hunter for some time in SD, that said, not a very good one. I was also too young to really remember what happenned and a lot of the rounds blurr into one for me. What i do think is that nomad wasnt remotely ready to be released, once 3.0 came out was when i pretty much quit.

[Irishdrunk]

SD distributed trigger scripts to every single hunter in their alliance. And even if they didn't, they may as well have- the same stupid rainbowssss would have happened.

Not that I'm bitter or anything. we rebuilt 8002. So who has the last laugh.

I was hoping to avoid having to speak on this matter, but this crap is going too far i know from the 2 odd rounds including as escort leader on a few operations, this included when we had the cafe crew, and at no at no stage were trigger scripts were being used in any part of the operations i was apart of. Yes, one main guilty party was magma who admitted his guilt and took the penalty, his message on the boards was about making sure his alliance didn't suffer afterwards from accusations like this. This has all been discussed.

As for 8002 hell it brought out a brilliant fight i barely moved from my computer for 4 days! I'm pretty sure it was one of the active periods of tdzk left my ship in sector to go for a nap more than once. Was quite sickened we lost it after all the hard work

[zmaniacz]

Delusional.

[CABaaL]

Link killed TDZK, fact.

[ECAFRUNOTABMUN]

Could agree with that. He was a raging fgt.

[TigerTank44]

Hello all,

Nice to be back.
Too bad that only forum is what remains of a truly nice game.

My contribution to the topic:
1. poor advertisement
2. a bit outdated look for 2006/2007 game
3. Money, Money, Money

[Gotenks]

Zer0das, i don't belive cheating via trigger scripts etc was as common as you believe. Im not saying there wasn't any, but they certainly weren't as widespread as believed. I spent most of my time as a hunter in TDZK under one name or another, when i joined outcasts in 2.7 i spent months denying any former relationship with renegades or other groups within TDZK history due to people not believing me to be who i am. I even had ingame messages asking if i was Carlos or Wolvie...if you did a decent job and were an unknown it seemed easy to accuse you of cheating.

I spent alot of time with a group that were often highlighted and tarred with the brush of being cheaters, i can safely say i never used a trigger script or witnessed one within that alliance. What killed part of the enjoyment of the game for me was the consistent accusations however. I and i know alot in that allaince were accused of having trigger scripts, if you had op'd with us and witnessed sometimes how inept we were :p you'd understand how laughable it was to be told we had scripts.

The reasons TDZK died are varied in my opinion. The main reason being poor retention of new players, ultimately older players were always going to move on, the game needed fresh blood to replace them. I played this game actively from the original 1.0 and was around before that, i see many names of these forums talking about the demise of the game who werent there then. These are the lucky ones who for whatever reasons managed to stay and develop within the game, probably finding a decent alliance i.e FURY who would teach them. How many other allaicnes can honestly say they were friendly to new players and helped develop them?

The admins didnt help at times, mago, neeo etc i can think of a number of times where yes it wasnt easy decisions, but some of those made just made me and probably others lose faith in the game. How many times did the argument of whos a tester come up? alot of the time there were some questionable names on those list....


The final blow for me was probably Nomad being released....it was crap at first and i think that probably did more damage to the aspirations of TDZK than anything else. I would have stayed even as a casual player and played an average 2x round rather than that nonsense. As it stood when Nomad finally cme round it was to little to late and considering how built up it had been it wasnt the same.

The thing im most sad about is that TDZK was thena llowed to die a death....ive had a look at fleets, im sure theres more to it than my limited experience but it isnt TDZK. TDZK was good because of the alliance play, thhe solo huunting, the jumps, raids etc....something you couldnt really get in other games. Thats gone and so for me thats the real depressing thing. it was those things that made it fun for me.

I agree with Thor 100% out of all the replies.

I played TDZK since 1.0 I wasn't a huge factor of a player but i was a solid player. I had no idea of trigger scripts even being out their, I just thought it was people being mad they died (Just like if you die in an FSP you claim they have an aimbot) I was in a range of alliances never KAOS, Fury or a Reny tho but the "misfits I.E LoF" then from their people i met got me in with SH and later on warriors and ronin.

The deep quality of friendships made during TDZK is what truly made it great. I do this day still ask people i meet randomly if they have heard of TDZK, because i feel like anyone who wasnt apart of it really missed out on an aspect of gaming that has never been matched. I recently met with one of my best friends I made on TDZK for the first time after knowing each other for ruffly 6-7 Years.

All that aside....

TDZK died because of the constant nagging for change. A small group of players wanted to expand the game I.E. items among other things which were not needed to improve the game. These players were on the forums constantly wanting change to the game which was not broke in the sense of what they wanted to change. Link was a big factor in leading that group and his alliance scandals and the drug deals he made through out the rounds to bring him on top. If the admins would of never given in to the nagging of these players the game would not have died. They feared the game would not survive if they didn't change things. The BIGGEST want from the players was the older version of TDZK but it kept steam rolling on to newer and bolder ideas which killed off more of the player population each time.

Alliances were more then just a group of players it was repping an entire country at times. As an american growing up I had a huge influence of European culture from playing TDZK it really opened my eyes as a person to be more tolerant of other cultures and not live in a bubble. Two of my friends i played with joined fury and the other renegades meanwhile i was on the outs with other alliances. At sometimes it ruined our friendship because of the secret missions being played out in game.


Sorry I'm not as structured with my thoughts but Thor pretty much said it all I just wanted to put my outlook also. I will always miss TDZK and hope for a time machine so i can play it again.


P.S. World of Warcraft should be mentioned in helping kill TDZK as it killed many other games. TDZK was a mom and pop game and WoW was walmart. Friends saying how awesome TDZK was didnt compare to friends saying how awesome WoW was.

Someday TDZK will be back in its glory but It wont be under the creators they dont understand what they had and they never will no matter how much the read from the playerbase's point of view. For those who were among the lucky ones to play TDZK we will always have that brotherhood of knowing what happened during the early 2000s. We truely were a unique group of people who are doing great things as adults and raising families.

<3 TDZK

[isotaan]

What killed TDZK?

In my opinion, competition, and timing. I saw TDZK when it won the MMORPG.com contest. Since then, there was an ever expanding cloud of other games, all clamoring for players, drowning each other out. TDZK was niche, and yes, unforgiving to newbies. Perhaps 3.0 could have been released in a finished state, and been newbie-friendly in addition to mass advertising on social websites and such. Frankly, I didn't see where social media was heading, nor the potential in it for MMO-text-based games.

In regards to vets leaving:

Since playing TDZK, and in my years since, I've come to know the bitter veteran rather well. He's going to be bitter no matter what the admins did, or what direction the game went. It saves everyone a headache if they just accept it and plan for it.

[AKULA]

Lack of fresh blood. TDZK by design had an absurd washout rate with new players. When the newbs stop showing up in droves the game died a slow death over several rounds. By the end of 2.6 you had a collection of bitter divas, and professional rabble–rousers, who couldn't even agree the sun rose in the east, or water was wet.

....Of course the bad ideas of 2.7, 2.8 and Nomad only served to quicken the pace. I couldn't bear to put myself through that pain, so I skipped that.

[foamy]

Lack of fresh blood. TDZK by design had an absurd washout rate with new players. When the newbs stop showing up in droves the game died a slow death over several rounds. By the end of 2.6 you had a collection of bitter divas, and professional rabble–rousers, who couldn't even agree the sun rose in the east, or water was wet.

....Of course the bad ideas of 2.7, 2.8 and Nomad only served to quicken the pace. I couldn't bear to put myself through that pain, so I skipped that.

You rang?

Honestly TDZK's basic problem is that it was trying to compete with larger, better-funded MMOs (most obviously, EVE), and it simply wasn't attractive enough, even free, to keep newbies coming in and not going to one of a jillion other places. Stuff like the poorly designed and un-updated help files, the variable and slipping round start and reset dates (a result of linking round resets to code changes, a poor practice), and, not to put too fine a point on it, admin personality issues, didn't help either.

I think TDZK might well have worked better with shorter rounds and with less changes between rounds, but I don't think it could ever come back and compete again.

[Mipe]

For once, Lemmy isn't being blamed.

On a more serious note, I believe that we simply grew up. There are many games I simply adored back then but don't even look back at now that I'm an old geezer.

Oh, that and the internet started shifting toward broadband and the gap between dialup and broadband was growing wider and wider. Anyone with broadband could get quite a few triggers on a dialup player. I could feel the difference. It was all about reflexes and scripts.

That killed the charm of TDZK. For me, at least.

[Andrew_tM]

There was a very small period when you had a small proportion on broadband and a large number on dialup - around 2.0/2.1 was probably the peak there, and then you had the majority on various forms of broadband. To me that's a nonstarter in the decline, except for the obvious point that broadband allowed for higher-end gaming and the creation of games like WoW and EVE which would dominate the online gaming scene.

As a different observation, one thing I've recently realised while doing some SEO work is that TDZK sucked for getting found by casual lookers. The name was made up, the tagline (Explore, Trade, Conquer!) was mediocre and nowhere did it shout out FREE ONLINE SPACE GAME PLAY AND BLOW PEOPLE UP AND HAVE FUN ETC to even appear anywhere to be found for any flyby casual traffic to even start to actually, you know, pick up on or anything.

[Cosmo]

You're right. Looking back i'm extraordinarily suprised we even found TDZK back then. Come to think of it, most of the community was founded by word of mouth.

[todd10000]

I killed it.

[Harbinger]

No, you just made #tdzk more interesting.

[JSG]

You dont even know how many bricks were shat when I saw people were posting on this forum still. also: redial killed tdzk

[lemmy]

omg, jsg posting on the same i decide to look up an old quote on redial.net

...while you're here... "humps"

[EkomS]

Never saw this thread and forgot i even had an account..imo tdzk died because the admins sucked and didnt know how to market the game or advertise...The whole debate about buying in-game items and keeping games fair is stupid..if you can sell things you do it..the game was allready unfair..(new players mainly)..all they had to do was make some sort of monthly premium service like everyone other damn game and they would have been fine. I played tdzk and learned how to type on a computer at the same time..if you know what i mean i stuck it out over the years..my first deaths were to people like pete and jaimaster in the kaos days.

names i went by: Dark Knight,Lrt3hr0x0r,EkomS if anyone remembers me whats up. And yeah i was the original Dark Knight on tdzk. ;D

But yeah tdzk failed because they gave up..tried to give us rainbowssss excuses and made a horrible boring game that is just like 1000 other tick rainbowssss games..and now i think they probly shot themselves or something.