Competitive Pub Frequencies idea

[Dwopple]

The public arena for TW is great, and well-built for casual play. I was brainstorming some ideas to keep it casual, but add some low-stress competition for frequent and new players with fun incentives. Threw this together quickly, but give it a read and post your thoughts below.

Competitive Freqs Pub Structure

Competitive Frequencies:

1. Private competitive frequencies are claimed by players each week for $100k - $250k pubbux.
   1. Weekly wipe
   2. Can create a friendly freq name
   3. Can create a freq password
   4. Competitive Freq names cannot be changed once created (optional idea, or could be enabled as pubbux sink)
   5. Freq ownership cannot be transferred once created (optional idea, or could be enabled as pubbux sink)
2. Competitive Frequencies will compete with other frequencies for overall points increased by:
   1. Pub flag wins
   2. Player kills
   3. In game events, i.e. Kill-o-thon?
3. Overall points are calculated by players who are members of that frequency, regardless of whether they are playing on that freq privately, or on a public freq (0 or 1)
4. Capped at 6-8 players at any given point during a wipe
5. Public frequencies are excluded from competition and cannot be claimed (freq 0 and 1)

Players:

1. Can join any competitive frequency
2. Limited to 1 or no competitive frequency at any given time
3. Can only change competitive frequencies in the first 2-3 days of a wipe
4. Can’t join competitive pub frequencies after 10? Hours of pub play (actually in a ship 1-8, not spec)
   1. Can still play on a non-competitive private frequency, but will be excluded from pub competition
5. Can increase their freqs points playing on their frequency, or public frequency
   1. Cannot play on other private frequencies

Incentives:

1. Recognition (website, in-game)
   1. Display top 3 competitive freqs for current wipe by combined overall freq member points somewhere on map or player UI (top-right, or above map)
   2. Winning players are given an in-game emblem (Gold, Silver, Bronze) for the next wipe, or # of pub wins next to their name?
   3. Overall wins are displayed in A1 and updated after each wipe? – this might be tedious AF
2. 30% pub store discount for the next wipe, excluding claiming freqs / freq name changes, etc

[Helps]

The public arena for TW is great, and well-built for casual play. I was brainstorming some ideas to keep it casual, but add some low-stress competition for frequent and new players with fun incentives. Threw this together quickly, but give it a read and post your thoughts below.

Competitive Freqs Pub Structure

Competitive Frequencies:

1. Private competitive frequencies are claimed by players each week for $100k - $250k pubbux.
   1. Weekly wipe
   2. Can create a friendly freq name
   3. Can create a freq password
   4. Competitive Freq names cannot be changed once created (optional idea, or could be enabled as pubbux sink)
   5. Freq ownership cannot be transferred once created (optional idea, or could be enabled as pubbux sink)
2. Competitive Frequencies will compete with other frequencies for overall points increased by:
   1. Pub flag wins
   2. Player kills
   3. In game events, i.e. Kill-o-thon?
3. Overall points are calculated by players who are members of that frequency, regardless of whether they are playing on that freq privately, or on a public freq (0 or 1)
4. Capped at 6-8 players at any given point during a wipe

...
Incentives:

1. Recognition (website, in-game)
   1. Display top 3 competitive freqs for current wipe by combined overall freq member points somewhere on map or player UI (top-right, or above map)
   2. Winning players are given an in-game emblem (Gold, Silver, Bronze) for the next wipe, or # of pub wins next to their name?
   3. Overall wins are displayed in A1 and updated after each wipe? – this might be tedious AF
2. 30% pub store discount for the next wipe, excluding claiming freqs / freq name changes, etc

As a person who plays pub frequently I think this would add an extra wrinkle that could be fun and it's worth a try for two months to see how it shakes out.

The winning freqs with player names for last three to five rounds should be displayed at the top of the roof basing map right above the rock boarder.

Most kills and deaths should also be displayed, as well as best k/d ratio and worst k/d ratio other than sharks. Maybe by ship type if that's not too hard.

Thanks!

[the_paul]

I think this is a great idea Dwopple. I also think you are great Dwopple.

In all seriousness, if something like this can be added in without taxing the dev team too much, I don't see why we couldn't just try it out.

[hellkite]

good ideas dwopple

[Nipple Nibbler]

Suggest we get rid of the 100's of green spam bots already do in pub first, but yea +1 for pub stuff n things.

[Scurvy]

+1

should have two empty slots in private freqs for randoms to get slotted into if they have none to join. Would be fun to have one or two new players get thrown onto a freq with vets for a two week span, and they'd obviously have the option to not play on the freq

[LF]

The only change I would suggest is to make the "wipe" every 2 weeks instead of 1 since everything resets on that timetable anyways (Every other Wednesday if I remember correctly)

Even though I know very little about coding (Read: Nothing at all) Most of what you suggested doesn't sound unreasonable to me. I don't think the bot/client could add a logo next to a players name in game though, they may have to settle with their name being enshrined somewhere on the map.

I also don't think we should reward things like k:d ratio as that would encourage horrendous campers (Levs and blind bombing javs)

I like the idea as a whole, though.

[Nipple Nibbler]

Levis shouldn't be allowed to do anything remotely competitive.

[Mootland Farmer]

If you want to make Pub more competitive, private frequencies should be banned, not encouraged.

[Dwopple]

I've been playing pub more lately during twd downtimes... ideally this would be something to gauge other pub players' competitiveness, to see if they're interested in TWD competition. There's currently no team-competition middle ground between pub games and twd... and the concept of team composition isn't the current meta of TW pub.

Looking at the list of :TWBot:!showlfs there are 1) a lot of people last seen more than 10 days ago, and 2) a lot of pubbers I wouldn't mind playing with to gauge their competitive interest, but without the hassle of having to explain / guide them through the twd signup / playstyle process. I think something like this would do a better job of opening up the pipeline from pub to twd than what we have now.

[qan]

I think this idea definitely has potential. But, I think the issue that Mootland Farmer brings up is also important. I'm not certain that incentivizing private frequencies will boost participation. We've seen some successful 3-freq games when pub squads are active. But generally speaking, private freqs tend to make games more chaotic, less structured, and overall less about team performance, especially with a smaller number of players. It may also possibly incentivize LTing rather than basing.

Is there a reason we couldn't use the same basic concept but with squads? This would also seem to tie more directly into TWD by giving them a direct path to playing with their squad more competitively. We could provide a way for players to more easily join the freq their squad is on, such as the bot automatically placing them on the freq with the most squaddies when they enter a game where freqs 0 and 1 are even. Currently there are small round bonuses for playing with squaddies, but if the top squads were also recognized at the end of each scorereset period and given some sort of award, it would give further incentive to join a squad. Playing with a squad could transform into something every serious pub player must do in order to be able to maximize their potential income, for instance.

Tying to squads also has the advantage of being much more straightforward from a development standpoint, as most of the work is already done there.

[Dwopple]

I think this idea definitely has potential. But, I think the issue that Mootland Farmer brings up is also important. I'm not certain that incentivizing private frequencies will boost participation. We've seen some successful 3-freq games when pub squads are active. But generally speaking, private freqs tend to make games more chaotic, less structured, and overall less about team performance, especially with a smaller number of players. It may also possibly incentivize LTing rather than basing.

Is there a reason we couldn't use the same basic concept but with squads? This would also seem to tie more directly into TWD by giving them a direct path to playing with their squad more competitively. We could provide a way for players to more easily join the freq their squad is on, such as the bot automatically placing them on the freq with the most squaddies when they enter a game where freqs 0 and 1 are even. Currently there are small round bonuses for playing with squaddies, but if the top squads were also recognized at the end of each scorereset period and given some sort of award, it would give further incentive to join a squad. Playing with a squad could transform into something every serious pub player must do in order to be able to maximize their potential income, for instance.

Tying to squads also has the advantage of being much more straightforward from a development standpoint, as most of the work is already done there.

You and Moot raise great points. Chatting with BIET, using the current in-game squads would be viable so long as we can "balance" the competitive ladder between larger and small squads, by determining a squad's 'points' using the top X players within that squad, or something along those lines, with restrictions in place to avoid unfairly gaming the system.

I do feel adding some sort of pub competition with in-game recognition would go a long way for new player retention and raise awareness of the competitive scene. Right now there's a huge visibility gap between new / pub-only players and TWD / Formal Leagues due to a number of factors and gaps.

Establishing some sort of passive competition in pub would cater to both regular pubbers, vets who play pub, and new players... BIET has already come up with some cool ideas for recognition of the bi-weekly winners like displaying winner names atop the flag room roof each wipe. Short of promising anything, or speaking on behalf of staff, I'll leave the implementation to you guys, but I do feel closing this gap would be a nice step in the right direction.

[Dwopple]

Bump. Any more chatter / thoughts on this?
8.5.2

[Vehicle]

I think this is an awesome idea however it's implemented. I like the idea of having a buy in though.

Edit: If you're worried about 'making chaotic games more chaotic' force a minimum of 5 players to start getting points and allow teams to ... team up and divide the points somehow.

Edit 2: Also you could force the freqs to be between 1-99 and either allow anyone to join or have people request to join, like EG pub base games