In Testing: When only one freq has a shark, reduce mine alive time

[Lupin]

Yeah a lot of this boils down to ppl who enjoy sharking vs those who don't. I agree there, I don't really enjoy sharking in pub.

qan BIET since this is in testing, how are u guys gonna determine if it's a success or not?

[Mootland Farmer]

In a nutshell, no. I may write a more lengthy reply later...

[qan]

Yeah a lot of this boils down to ppl who enjoy sharking vs those who don't. I agree there, I don't really enjoy sharking in pub.

qan BIET since this is in testing, how are u guys gonna determine if it's a success or not?

I actually quite enjoy sharking in pub, including when there are no other sharks. But I think mineblocking is pretty poor sportsmanship and gives the ship a bad name.

As far as testing goes, it's not a simple thing to determine success or failure. Ideally you'd have statistics of pub populations before and after and could compare. We don't, though. I do a lot of manual monitoring, flawed though that may be.

[qan]

Currently we're running modified settings from the OP: 35s mines and threshold is 6v6. This was updated 5/23, so there's been a fair bit of time to play with it and see how it feels.

I've played a fair bit on these settings and 35s does not feel too brutal. It has roughly the same feel as standard alive time in that you can trust your mines for a bit, but you do still need to replace them frequently. It's possible that 40s may be closer to the sweet spot. Also, I've found that usually around 6v6, people do get serious and will generally change to shark to combat a laming shark, so 5v6 or 5v5 might be an acceptable threshold.

[beam]

just saw a 12v12 pub game ruined by player "skyforger" in shark 1v0 the enemy team didn't want to shark so they all quit and it became a 5v0

[Lupin]

Ideally you'd have statistics of pub populations before and after and could compare. We don't, though. I do a lot of manual monitoring, flawed though that may be.

Maybe the bot can help you monitor? Perhaps note the playing pub population per hour and write it into a file. You guys can check the weekly pop avg before/after a big change like this one - just one indication of success/failure.

Disclaimer: I dunno the amt. of technical legwork required for this stuff.

[qan]

just saw a 12v12 pub game ruined by player "skyforger" in shark 1v0 the enemy team didn't want to shark so they all quit and it became a 5v0

Unfortunately that's just the nature of pub. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn't. I think few people would be in favor of lowering the mine time regardless of arena size. At a certain point there's just an expectation that someone on a large team will make the sacrifice. If not, they didn't really want the win that badly to begin with.

[2pac]

Easy way to fix this qan, possible for mine to disappear and reappear in phases?

[qan]

Nope, not with the server we use, though it's a good idea.

[skyforger]

just saw a 12v12 pub game ruined by player "skyforger" in shark 1v0 the enemy team didn't want to shark so they all quit and it became a 5v0

i wonder what goes though this guys mind to play base with a ship efficient for the purpose...

also don't nerf sharks rather have bot switch beam to shark, problem solved

[Diakka]

I have talked to BIET and other pubbers and players when this was released. In my opinion this is really only a problem in pub when it is like less than 10 people playing, so a 5v5, 4v5 or 4v4 match...something small but happens often in pub. One of the team gets a shark and then the other team complains because they are all WBs and can't get through entrance without ramming. If anything you could lower the minealive time in these scenarios...but any other scenario should stick with default. If someone hops in a shark to help their team/they like playing shark then that is their prerogative. If the other team is serious about getting flag/winning then they will eventually get a shark. The problem is if this becomes the norm then no one will shark.

[skyforger]

diakka said it all

[qan]

That seems to be the consensus, that generally it isn't a big deal once the game gets going a bit. Let's try out 5v5 as the threshold. How is 35s feeling as the time? (You'd need to be a solo shark to test it out.) I found I was still able to do a little bit of blocking and the mines didn't disappear so quickly that it was nearly as noticeable. Almost feels normal.

[Diakka]

That seems to be the consensus, that generally it isn't a big deal once the game gets going a bit. Let's try out 5v5 as the threshold. How is 35s feeling as the time? (You'd need to be a solo shark to test it out.) I found I was still able to do a little bit of blocking and the mines didn't disappear so quickly that it was nearly as noticeable. Almost feels normal.

Sounds good, you can always adjust the minealive time for those small games too.

I also don't think sharks should be fined $1,500 for one of their mines TKing someone.

That is all