yea and tbh a lot of ppl have been boycotting it for awhile now, maybe this is a mute point

Hm. So maybe the idea is the opposite? Get everyone who would play if CW were good to play for 1 season, then go back to regular. And show how good it could be?

Then again, l4v said this before, don't know that Fizz really cares how many people play, just whether you agree with him (counts your vote) or not (dismisses your vote). Seems like he'd rather have 50 people playing something he wants them to play vs 500 people playing something he doesn't care for.

Since this has currently turned into an CW improvement thread:

Current state: The CW matchmaking does not only match make the clans, but there is also a clan internal matchmaking in that the player with the oldest account gets the highest ranked opponent clan and the younger accounts subsequently get the lower ranked clans.

Problem:
- The clan internal list of who contributed most heavily favors the younger accounts.
- I know of no correlation regarding account age and playing strength.
- We have some bombers who keep getting away with their relatively trashy play since they constantly get pushed all the way down to clans like cats. It is quite difficult to tell someone that his play is garbage when he keeps winning.
- On the other hand, we have relatively solid bombers who keep running into the strongest opponents and thus get a bit discouraged.
- Some players keep getting matched against each other. For example, 2 players could prefer the same time slot and like the same templates.

Suggestion: Randomize the clan internal matchmaking.


----------------

The clan internal matchmaking is pretty annoying for me, apart from that I love CW. M'Hunters will continue to hit CW hard.

Edited 9/22/2022 21:51:55

One issue we keep running into is that if you ask 20 players who have issues w/ CW what they want, you'll get a list of 45 different, somewhat conflicting demands. At the least, we need to coordinate to show consensus and only ask for a few things. 30 players asking for 30 things are never going to get anything; 300 players asking for 3 have a good chance.

Agreed Lav, but how do we come up with a consensus? have someone put together some kind of survey and tally everyone's votes? There's got to be some kind of forum where folks can summarize their requested changes and have people vote yay/nay on them then widdle the dozens of ideas down to 5-6 solid changes that we can place on a crushed purple velvet pillow (with tassels) and present to his majesty, King Fizzer.
I've seen some pretty interesting ideas already on this thread that I didn't even think of before that I would vote for. and MB is getting lots of free publicity from this stray thread which is rather amusing.

I made a Discord server for us to organize: https://discord.gg/Y7RbpJMP

We should try and first get everyone (or as many people as interested) who has CW improvement ideas and/or grievances in one place, then do basically what you suggested.

Right now we waste a lot of time fighting over different solutions without having a clear idea of what the problems we want to solve are. So we should then have a discussion to figure out what our shared grievances even are. We can minimize the overhead here by having clan representatives for clans that want to coordinate a bit internally and simplify the process, replacing 30-50 voices with 1.

Then, once we can agree on the problems, we should come up with no more than 5 demands through another consensus process, like your proposal. I think if the Discord doesn't take off we could use a doc for this and just have people leave anonymous comments/suggestions until we get it to a good shape.

Then, we will have a clear, short (1 page max) list of problems & proposed solutions & players/clans who support it (all or nothing).

I think just having clarity & consensus will go a long way in terms of getting feedback to Fizzer. We might be able to just do a coordinated Uservoice (i know i know that's cursed), just posting a statement backed by a bunch of players, getting someone who's close with Fizzer to act as an ombudsman and forward our requests & reasons. If that doesn't work, then we can think about coordinating in more extreme ways, like the boycott/strike.

1) If Fizzer wont change anything - Nothing we do will matter.

But I do 100 % agree we need to agree what we want first.
So I like the idea to work out a concept we all would like to be the "new clan wars".

If he would listen thats what he could listen too.

I have joined the channel.

*Following*

If we want to make Fizzer listen, we need to hurt him where it counts the most: His financial gains. I got the following suggestions at the moment:

• If ~100+ players coordinate together, they can send Fizzer mails on regular basis, which would clog up his inbox and make things more annoying for him by wasting his precious time.
  
• We could spread around idea of Don't buy anything, we find anyone who is supporting Fizzer financially and convince him to stop doing that.
  
• With help of some alt accounts, we can flood open games with games which would have our messages in title and description, plus a link to where to find us, which would grow our supporter list.
  
• Whenever Fizzer makes streams or posts threads, hijack them and have dozens of players write their grievances on them. Also make daily threads in general forums. Fizzer has proven to check and read them, so he's going to have "fun" seeing a neverending player feedback.
  
• Turn global chat into active communication platform, so that whenever anyone goes there, they are bombarded with our messages.
  
• Send mail to thousands of different players and recruit some of them for the cause.

Any message would include requests to boycott Fizzer financially. If we rally up enough players, we could do some real damage to him. Fizzer might not care about the community, but he clearly cares about his profits, therefore this approach should work wonders.

---

Regarding player caps, lowering it will allow less players to play and have fun, which is not good. I propose to change it to 40 or even more daily games allowed per day where any player can play during multiple slots. This would also mean that during different days different players can play and there's no longer problem of someone joining clan wars and then never playing in them, thus preventing others from playing.

Two concerns with that approach:
1) We're requesting his time, attention, and labor. It's risky to try and achieve that by antagonizing him and going after his livelihood.
2) We have little leverage. If we spam him or the site, he can ban us. If we boycott, we'll barely make a dent in revenue.

I propose we instead focus on demonstrating consensus as our Plan A. In other words, we should make it extremely clear to Fizzer that a specific number of players has specific problems for which they all agree on a specific solution or solutions, which ideally all take little effort for him to implement. In short, a petition strategy - similar to what worked in the INSSpocalypse (https://www.warzone.com/Forum/536492).

However, if we have compelling reasons to believe that:
1) We have substantive leverage- i.e., that those who would join this boycott otherwise would generate substantive added revenue for Fizzer, creating a cost to non-compliance.
2) We can mitigate the risk of antagonizing Fizzer.
Then your proposal may make sense. I would still workshop it to tailor its player uprising into more effective, harder-to-suppress channels.

I hope we keep effectiveness top-of-mind, since we aim not to punish Fizzer but to achieve specific categories of improvements in the Clan Wars player experience and these improvements almost certainly require Fizzer's enthusiastic cooperation to carry out.

Edited 9/23/2022 00:49:22

I support we stay nice and ask as a community for a change which benefits all :)

LOL Gunk, lots of publicity for MB indeed!

Agree w/Flex & l4v, best to be nice. Realistically, the best course of action is making a convincing case & have Fizz change things for the better. He's shown that once he's convinced he makes changes, like the overlapping superbonus display tags, took l4v a freaking essay documenting all the supporting points in explicit detail, when really all it really took is Fizzer understanding 2 simple things: the change made maps worse for the community [map cosmetics/ease of use], the change he made didn't actually solve or add anything. He even stated that he didn't really understand INSS maps, thus didn't fully understand the problem. He heard the story, understand that the community hated his change and wanted it reversed, but b/c he didn't understand how it negatively impacted us, he refused to change it back and stood by his change, even though it solved no problems, achieved no gain but caused community unrest. But once he understand how and why it was bad, he reversed it. The problem is that he doesn't listen intently enough to understand community unrest, and even when he listens, he typically is only hearing on a surface level, not really putting in effort to hear the real message.

Anyhow, let's be nice. Let's be clear, concise, unified. And if we're not unified, don't ask for it. B/c if it's not something the majority wants, it's just not going to work out in the end, there will be unrest & lack of consensus.

If nice doesn't work, plan B, strike.

If strike doesn't work ... back to the drawing board. Maybe then we get creative with a plan C.

Just to ground this discussion: Whether we are implementing Plan A or B or C, we should aim to be effective first. No point being nice for the sake of being nice- you will overdo it, drop compliment sandwiches that get misinterpreted, and achieve half-results leaving a lot of progress on the table. No point being mean for the sake of being mean- you will overdo it, burn bridges and achieve at best begrudging half-results at the expense of future cooperation. Whatever we do, we should do it for the sake of achieving results.

The ideal scenario has us executing Plan A really well and finally making progress. While the thought of finally testing out some of my toys excites me a little, I hope we never have to speak of Plan C or seriously pursue Plan B.

Agree w/you boxfaec, and tbh I think that's where l4v comes in, he's good at ensuring things aren't too nice. (;

Seriously though, by "being nice" we just mean not being unnecessarily aggressive. We don't actually want to attack/insult/harm Fizz, we just want him to understand & respond appropriately (make good changes). Being nice doesn't mean compliments, it means being concise, clear, unified, simple.

excellent post Norman!

spamming fizzer is just going to push him further away from a community he does not listen to

Norman you should join the discord krinid made

a petition could work, but also fizzer ignores the user voice which is basically just petitions

Uservoice is in theory like petitions but in practice we don't really do it in an organized, consensus-demonstrating fashion or make it clear which problems we're trying to solve. I'm optimistic that if we do this in an organized & well-enough-communicated fashion, it will work better than Uservoice.

never played fizzer until today...2 times! in the second I told him to review this haha

https://www.warzone.com/MultiPlayer?GameID=32059926

I do not believe that being nice to Fizzer is going to work. He is the same person who filed a frivolous lawsuit against Activision and then lied to community that Activision were the ones suing him, just so Fizzer could milk some extra cash from the players. It clearly shows that he's greedy, callous and manipulative. Fizzer is not the type who cares about Warzone community, he will only do something meaningful if he can get profit from it. He has been ignoring uservoice and Warzone clans for a long time already, at this point he clearly knows what's going on, because he's been sent mails about it, yet he chooses to ignore the situation and refuses to communicate to us on this topic. Stop being delusional, acting nice will not make Fizzer change, it will only show him that he can get away with his ignorance.

Clan Wars boycott does not directly impact Fizzer, he could just adapt to it. If seasons are taking too long, he'll just decrease the size of map, if not all reward tiers are hit, he will decrease their amount (if he's not feeling lazy, which is likely). Fizzer can easily make your boycott pointless with these easy 5 minute effort updates. If you want Fizzer to do any change, you need to convince it that it's in his best monetary interest, because right now he doesn't care about you, because I presume you barely bring him any profits (Considering how a couple dozen players compared to all remaining players is basically nothing).

TL;DR: Being nice has worked in the past; to wit, it's the only thing that's ever worked. Fizzer is not a fundamentally bad or greedy person. We do not understand him well and are probably wrong about many judgements. I think we have something good going right now with the petition effort and I'd really like to try that first.

---

As someone with little respect for the guy, I feel those are unfair & unproductive judgements. If he were simply lucre-motivated, he would not have made this game.

He may have done some things you & I find reprehensible, but people are complex and the vast majority of bad things are done by mostly-decent people for what they believe are good reasons. There are clearly things he cares about and ways in which he's demonstrated kindness, patience, & conscientiousness. We're all mixed bags, right? Just think about how others would judge you if they only fixated on your worst or your best parts, with limited knowledge of what really makes you tick.

Plus if your theory of Fizzer is true, then we have already largely lost. Let's play the winnable game first.

Stop being delusional, acting nice will not make Fizzer change

I can attest this isn't always true. The Create Game API accepts a "settings" parameter because I simply asked nicely over email- he implemented that feature the same day I asked! He also sent me a lenghty, heartfelt apology once in 2017 or so after (apparently) saying bad things about me on his Twitch stream (which I didn't view and can't speak to). My opinion of the man was for the longest time one that held him in the highest esteem. He's done lots of very nice things!

Anyhow, I'm hoping you can cut him some slack. What you said earlier about "health problems" rubbed me the wrong way; if he is struggling with health, I hope he absolutely prioritizes that over any perceived obligations to us. I hope we presumptively extend sympathy in case he is. (I suspect some will perceive this as hypocritical, given my persistent & harsh criticism of him, but like I said earlier, we're mixed bags and outside observers often jump to wildly incorrect assumptions about motivations, then confirmation-bias ourselves into perpetuating those and becoming increasingly wrong.)

you need to convince it that it's in his best monetary interest

I do not think $ is his core motivation. I suspect he is instead motivated by some vision of what he wants to do with his time & life. I doubt we have figured this out.

Anyhow, we don't really need to. There are members of the community who have become his personal friends and can have extended conversations with him. If we can draft a clear, concise, copacetic petition and recruit someone he trusts/respects/listens to, to present it and advocate for it on our behalf, then I think we have strong odds of success. It's about cutting through the noise and getting someone who has a better working relationship with him to help us out. I have some candidates in mind, but unfortunately I've burned my own bridges with them so it might take a little bit of time to get that piece in place.

---

He is the same person who filed a frivolous lawsuit against Activision and then lied to community that Activision were the ones suing him

In case you arrived to this half-wrong conclusion based on my updates, let me correct the record. Activision did sue Fizzer- but for a declaration of non-infringement. Warlight, on the other hand, persistently claimed Activision was infringing on their "warzone" mark and demanded $ over it- both by sending a cease & desist and in their now-dismissed countersuit. Please also do not just take my word for things; my own relationship with Fizzer has completely deteriorated after some adverse interactions in 2020 and 2021, so my description of his actions are likely colored by strong prior beliefs I have formed about his personality & character. Also he worked at Microsoft and as someone who has interviewed with them, I also have a strong prior against anyone who has ever worked there; one of my core beliefs is that Microsoft's hiring bar is lower than a pub at the center of the Earth. I'm biased!

So don't just take my word for anything. Many of the documents are public and you can read them yourself: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1fvqiprIa_0wIQCDUBdEeyiXXxBUKeV1e/view?usp=sharing

In short, I believe he willingly and deliberately misled the community about the facts and stakes in order to push a sympathetic narrative and raise funds by wildly mischaracterizing the lawsuit as a fight over whether this game can continue calling itself "warzone." But it's tricky to communicate this concisely without confusing people about the case.

The rough timeline is:
(1) Activision files for trademark registrations in the US & EU to "CALL OF DUTY WARZONE" and "WARZONE"
(2) Warzone counter-files in the US for "WARZONE" and files opposition to Activision's US trademark registrations, claiming Activision is instead infringing on Warzone's common law trademark to the word "warzone"
(3) Warzone sends Activision a cease-and-desist letter on November 20, 2020, alleging trademark infringement and demanding Activision cease using the word "warzone," pay Warzone for using it (initial ask: 0.25% of CoDWZ profits), or get forced to pay "massive damages" by the courts
(4) After failing to come to an agreement, Activision sues Warzone in April 2021 for a declaration of non-infringement and to decide the trademark dispute in their favor.
(5) Warzone countersues Activision for trademark infringement, demanding the court either stop Activision from using the word "warzone" and/or make Activision pay Warzone money for using it.
(6) The court rules, without a trial, that Activision is not infringing on Warzone's alleged mark to the word "warzone," that Warzone's infringement claims have no legal merit. The court does not rule on the competing trademark registrations.
(7) Warzone appeals the decision.

My objections (in terms of dishonesty and manipulation) were to the following misrepresentations:
(1) When fundraising, Fizzer repeatedly claimed that Activision was simply lying about the cease and desist letter. He later claimed (to the courts and to Farah) that a letter was sent but it was not a cease and desist. Though not public, this letter was submitted to the courts, which simply described the letter as a cease and desist.
(2) When fundraising, Fizzer claimed Activision is suing Fizzer for using the word "warzone" in his game's name. This is exactly backwards: the only party in this case to claim infringement or demand $ for using the word "warzone" was Fizzer. Activision's legal theory, upheld by the courts, precludes an infringement claim against Warzone, as do decades of legal precedent.
(3) When fundraising, Fizzer manufactured a scenario where this game gets its apps taken down or gets forced to change its name. As a good faith prior user, Warzone is protected even if Activision succeeds in its trademark registrations. Activision's own First Amendment-based legal theory, upheld by the district judge, also precludes going after Warzone over infringement. Fizzer cites the time Hasbro got his apps taken down temporarily over "Play Risk Online Free," but this was a case of legitimate trademark infringement through consumer confusion- trademark infringement on which this game built its playerbase. At this moment, Activision already holds the trademark to "warzone" in the EU- yet they have not taken the apps down, because doing so would be legally baseless & they probably do not care in general.

I strongly suspect that most donors donated based on the above misrepresentations. Insofar as that is true, I hope he can understand the degree to which he took advantage of the community's goodwill and make amends. However, I suspect this will never happen because his strategy for fundraising has been rather successful and morally he probably feels he is in the right to do what he's doing after getting surprised by a big company using the word he'd hoped to build his own gaming brand on (in both foresight and hindsight, quite foolishly and after repeated prophetic warnings by the community).

Edited 9/23/2022 23:49:34

I also hope we don't lose perspective of the bigger picture: the stakes are quite small (the enjoyability of a feature on a free online game). CW isn't something that's, like, harming anyone- we can always just Log Off and do something else on Warlight or even play another game. Escalating grievances, about unaddressed requests on a casual group competitive event on a niche Risk-like indie game we otherwise all (probably) quite enjoy, into a full-blown campaign to frustrate a man, who on balance has added quite a bit of value to the quality of our leisure time, seems to me quite unwarranted as a first option.

To reiterate, we should focus on balancing effort, risk, and likelihood of effectiveness. In that calculus, I'd say the Be Nice approach clearly should be Plan A.

If we pick a more aggressive course of action, we should spend like 2 days Logged Off before committing to it so we make sure we have made the decision with some perspective instead of Extremely Online tunnel vision. To be honest, the only justification I can think of for pursuing a "strike" or "boycott" or the extremely aggressive spam-driven strategy is its sheer entertainment value. It's a foregone conclusion that it's not going to really work any better than trying to get your boss to give you a raise by making his life miserable. Even if it's less effort to just give you a raise, he's going to fire you.

Edited 9/23/2022 23:48:46