Screw you Sharks (Unless your on my team)

[rothe]

Why must you go shark in a 5v5 game and lay your dirty mines. Of course posting this will only make it worse but I have only one thing to say.

[qan]

Might be worth having some sort of buy in which you could ban single sharks from playing when numbers are quite low. Would need some way to indicate that a second shark wanted to play and the first shark is allowed.

Have tried for years to think of a good solution to this issue, to no avail. You don't have to mine entrance to shark, so it doesn't seem fair to block it from play in small games outright.

[Scar Trek]

Cool film. Gotta abide by your principles...

I'm guilty of sharking in pub with few people on. Should maybe do that less. Thing is, I genuinely enjoy sharking a lot. Often the problem is solved if someone else would just countershark, but a good amount of times people will just complain and not do anything. You could say I stimulate people to cooperate and take action (^_^).

Cause that is something that's lacking in pub, seriously. We'd often be able to achieve so much more as a freq if there was more cooperation. I'm usually the guy who takes care of roofer as well (or sometimes is the roofer >:-) ). Setting up a hunting party for an LT that's destroying the basing game, is practically impossible.

So I guess my question would be: how can we encourage more cooperation in pub (for everyone's benefit)?

Edit: one or more skilled wbs preying on you, can also be quite dissuasive. At least if you don't have flagroom and are in mid a lot. In short, 'the shark problem' can be entirely dealt with in-game, gameplay wise, if people would just make an effort. But a good shark can certainly be a force to be reckoned with in a good basing game, and has is its enjoyment/ right of existence. #nocountryforoldsharks

[Rab]

well step 1 would be banning freespirit from terr, then at least when people attach they'd be in the action

[Zeebu]

So I guess my question would be: how can we encourage more cooperation in pub (for everyone's benefit)?

purepub

aint ever gonna happen again but it was great when it existed

[Scar Trek]

purepub

aint ever gonna happen again but it was great when it existed

I guess cooperation just spontaneously emerged more when there were lots of ppl on. Like you'd have lots of people outside and a lanc decides to stick to a terr for a while to take em out and the terr starts flying him around. And then a few other players join in and suddenly you have a turret terr.

Now often there's just not many ppl on or ppl too thin spread. Also more ppl = more chance someone will take up the initiative.

[kthx]

Every generation of player and society got more retarded as well. I remember when I could host predator or journey and the population was smart enough to figure it out.

[Nipple Nibbler]

Scar Trek It sounds like to me you should join a basing squad. TWBD is where the action is these days not pub. Most us old farts don't play pub often.

RiP pub without levs.

[BIET]

Here's a short version of the text below.
MineAliveTime to 1m15s and BombAliveTime to 1m0s. Half of the original values.

To combat some of the issues players are having with sharks in pub I want to propose an initial solution. Here is a list of the current issues mentioned by players:

1. Sharks blocking flagroom entrance and flag with mines (and bombs if given enough time) during smaller games (5v5 or smaller) heavily disrupting gameplay.
2. Bigger flag matches (10v10 or bigger) are mostly won by the team with the most sharks. Especially a problem while attach mode is active since they can attach to each other creating an impenetrable rep wall.
3. Random mines in flagroom and team mines in cram create very chaotic and teamkill heavy gameplay when freqs get bigger. With the addition of the recent increase in lag, due to higher internet traffic, mines and shrap are far more out of sync between players.

There are a couple of possible solutions I think could resolve these issues:

1. Changing mine (and bomb) alive time settings to lower values, currently set at 2m30s for mines and 2m0s for bombs.
2. Set a limit to the amount of sharks per freq, which could be proportional to the freq's total size.
3. Disable sharks for x minutes, similar to purepub which targets levs. Obviously the best solution for non shark players, but detrimental to shark players.
4. Disable attach to sharks during attach mode.
5. A shark training course that teaches proper shark etiquette. Obviously the best solution according to the TW forum for 20 years in a row.

Issue #1 can most likely be solved with solution #1. For it work the mine alive time should definitely be lower than the max flag timer so a mine can never block the flagroom for the entire round when laid at the start of it. Might be possible to have a ?buy to reduce/increase the alive time further and add additional game play. This fix shouldn't change/affect the way shark is played normally.

Issue #2 is a bit more difficult to fix without making most definitely noticable changes to the way shark is played currently. Solution #2 seems like the best solution, but to make it fair for all sharks would be near impossible to do. It's also an easy way for people to troll their team by taking up a spot. Solution #4 might be the best solution for this one.

Issue #3 is mostly a product of the current internet situation and increased activity. Solution #1 should relieve some of the annoyance, but it's mostly waiting for bandwidth to enter the arena again. Could also be solved like issue #2, but has the same downsides.

In the end I think it is important to keep the fun and helpful aspects of sharks intact. With this in mind I would propose to lower the MineAliveTime and BombAliveTime in pub from 2m30s to 1m15s and 2m0s to 1m0s respectively. These changes don't require anything new to download or something to be added to pubsystem. After a few days it should be clear if these changes had any effect and where to go from there.

Feedback is appreaciated as always, ty! <3

[Edify]

I've gotten in shark just a couple times in low-number pub because everyone wbs/lancs and no one has the capability to actually push thru. While I'm not trolling too hard by blocking off the lower entrance, I sometimes mine just above the bar under fr. Most of the time me sharking just gets the other team to also get a shark if they're smart at all.

Definitely agree on BombAliveTime decreases, not sure there's any use in the bomb lasting that long besides trolling so it's a good move.

As for the game-level modifications: The attach mode disable for sharks sounds good; I haven't seen it happen but I can see the value in it. #2 proportional sharks to team ratio would also be helpful.

[BIET]

As an answer to the all present lame sharks, who refuse to follow shark etiquette, the following changes have been made to shark.

Default MineAliveTime is set to 60s and BombAliveTime is set to 45s. The general consensus is that a longer duration only really favors trolling plus mines/bombs aren't handled as cleanly by the game over time.

These changes have been live for a while now and didn't solve all of the issues. That's why we added the following.

For small games the settings are reduced a bit further if conditions are met. Mine duration will changes from 60s to 15s while:

• either of the public freqs (freq 0 & freq 1) have no shark AND
• another freq has a shark AND
• the total amount of players on public freqs is lower than 17

If one of the above conditions isn't met, the mine duration changes back to 60s.

The small game settings have been active since May 16.

Let us know what your experiences with these new settings are.

[Lupin]

RIP trancetunes