State of Pub

[Poseidon]

im going to make a big post about a complete overhaul of pub. first id like to get a sense of where staff feels like they are with pub right now. i genuinely don't know how the people who make the decisions feel in this regard, and im curious. for me, its a total disaster. just now i was playing a 12v12 pub game and attachmode ends in the middle of a game that's been going for 20 minutes. it absolutely fuks the game which then immediately ends, and 5 minutes later pub is 3v3. these are the actual numbers. in the 100s of hours ive played pub the past year, this type of scenario happens THE MAJORITY OF THE FUCKING TIME attachmode ends, and i absolutely refuse to believe this is the best way to run pub.

are there not huge glaring obvious problems to other people, ones that seem easily fixed? i understand the staff is stretched then, but lets deal with that as a separate issue; it seems there is a further philosophical divide here, and i am trying to understand it.

[Rab]

if u ban freespirit u don't need attach mode because other terrs actually stay in base.
if I'm terring and someone buys attach mode, it makes my role redundant, usually just log off.
the gameplay of having to pgup/dn all the time to try and attach to whoever is alive, and ending up attaching to someone in spawn when wrong, is not fun gameplay.
tl/dr. attach mode is shit and should be removed. and freespirit should be banned.

[Poseidon]

unfortunately the numbers dont support your position, at least during the peak hours of pub - which is prob past ur bedtime(as well as freespirits). for anyone who is paying the slightest bit of attention during these times there is an obvious trend that attachmode usually causes a large spike in playercount, and when it ends, unless rebought, there is generally a decrease in population - not always, sometimes the game can sustain itself, but i dare say this is the exception, not the rule.

its not hard to understand why. its qute rare that there is a balance of the number/skill of sharks/terrs, which means one teams terr is usually going to be dying a lot more. thus not only is the game less balanced but its often movng at 1/3 the pace and stuck in cram phase. most people find this much less enjoyable, as one would expect. attachmode alleviates these problems, allowing for more fast-paced, fluid gameplay. compound this with the nuisance of levis and TKs also feeling softened thru the action of attachmode...

it becomes quite clear why any cursory glance at general population trends vs. the two game types reveals a huge favor in the preference of attachmode. dont get me wrong, i actually prefer a good game of pub with no attachmode, good terrs, balanced sharks, etc. .. unfortunately, without some major reworking of pub, this will remain largely a fantasty, and to try continue to try and chase is it to continue to gimp pub from what it could be.

the simple solution to this is to allow players to vote on gametype after every couple games end or every 30 min or some block of time. ATTACHMODE: yes/no; PUREPUB: yes/no. $$$ can be spent on xtra vote or exemptions or etc., i have a growing list of things ... but not entire gametype. ill go in more detail in my big post. im using this thread to try to get an understanding of peoples various perspectives on the issue, so i appreciate the feedback.

[Rab]

and purepub should be permanent
and weasels should be normal sized

[Poseidon]

i agree in spirit with ur first proposition, but im not opposed to levis remaining for use in a less gratuitous and overbearing fashion, which is why im proposing the vote system with a readjusted store/economy.

small weasel is fine and while trying to make the game as competitive as possible i think its important maintain a certain “pub” feel and to include as much of the gimmicky stuff as u can without it feeling too intrusive to the overall flow of the game (currently a disaster).

the problem with weasel is it can ninja the flag in a way that is more of a nuisance than should be allowed for. my suggestion - and something i feel could be good for the overall game - is to increase the amount of time it takes for a flag capture ... try between 10-15s.

[Rab]

and the ball powerup shouldnt exist
and super should not be buyable
and shield should not be buyable

[Poseidon]

well then ill just say: im glad rab isnt running things!

[Rab]

and fix afkcheck, atm most afk ppl cant be removed with afkcheck

[SpaceShark]

and the ball powerup shouldnt exist
and super should not be buyable
and shield should not be buyable

arnt you a real buzz kill
the powerball should be free the last 5 minutes of every hour
super should be rewarded at the start of each match to the last games MVP
shields should be rewarded at the start of each match to the person who captured the flag the most the last game

[qan]

I've added a simple system that notifies freqs without Terrs 3 minutes before Attach Mode ends that it's about to end. It does this every minute until the end, with a more pointed warning as it finishes. If a freq has Terrs when Attach Mode ends, the bot will show their names.

!terr will now show all players in base during Attach Mode.


I took this on as a reasonable compromise to alleviate the problem somewhat. A lot of the issue has to do with people just being unaware that Attach Mode is about to finish, and so they get discouraged when nobody changes to Terr and many people quit. With plenty of warning, there's time to reorganize strategy, or to decide to re-buy. It's much simpler than organizing an elaborate voting system.

[Poseidon]

its not hard to understand why. its qute rare that there is a balance of the number/skill of sharks/terrs, which means one teams terr is usually going to be dying a lot more. thus not only is the game less balanced but its often movng at 1/3 the pace and stuck in cram phase. most people find this much less enjoyable, as one would expect. attachmode alleviates these problems, allowing for more fast-paced, fluid gameplay. compound this with the nuisance of levis and TKs also feeling softened thru the action of attachmode...

it becomes quite clear why any cursory glance at general population trends vs. the two game types reveals a huge favor in the preference of attachmode. dont get me wrong, i actually prefer a good game of pub with no attachmode, good terrs, balanced sharks, etc. .. unfortunately, without some major reworking of pub, this will remain largely a fantasty, and to try continue to try and chase is it to continue to gimp pub from what it could be.

the problem as i see it lies in what i stated above. i really wish you would address it.

is there a reason you dont see the voting system i proposed as superior to the system we have now? i see only benefits, no drawbacks. its egalitarian; no more switching modes mid game; it allows the game to cater to whatever vibe the current playerbase is feeling, etc. etc. etc. the only apparent drawback is that people have to vote and spam pub chat.. so it will be like elim... but can be way less frequent. and anything to clear the tinfoil trump bullshit of the screen is okay with me

you mentioned in your message to me it seemed like my proposal would take a lot of effort. as far as i see it, all it takes is re-coding the store, and programming in a vote system like elim PUREPUB: yes/no; ATTACHMODE: yes/no ... as an ex-staffer, im happy to learn how to do what it takes to program the bots and make it happen. so if volunteers was your problem it is no longer.

here's the thing: Hooknecho told me yesterday that pub is not a place for competitive play, he said it was for casual play. this was in response to my proposal above about voting. i really hope this is not the attitude of the entire staff. pub, as much as we can possibly walk the line, should be the place for both COMPETITIVE and CASUAL play simultaneously. when you look at pub at any given time, 70% or so of the players are usually competitively engaged, meaning they are trying to win for their team and playing the flagging game. the large majority of the playerbase feeds off of the competitive aspect and we should be doing as much as we can to cater to it while keeping the spirit of TW in tact

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another thing.


a way to help balance the game: offer $$$ incentive for ship change.

say its 10v10. 3 sharks on one team, 1 shark on the other, making the game totally suck for everyone, stuck in cram, etc. Offer a $15k reward for any player on the team to change shark to help balance.

you could even allow players to offer custom rewards with their own pubbux if they think they need a certain type of ship on their team, etc etc.

[qan]

The problem with voting is, as you said, there's a huge preference for attach mode. A straight 50% vote would mean it's run pretty much constantly, and traditional TW basing in pub likely makes its final bow.

I agree that pub's a mix of casual and competitive play. It should still be a bridge to competitive play, as well, including standard basing. Running attach mode almost constantly would burn that bridhe.

Maybe an interesting (and expensive) buy would impose fairly strict ship restrictions to scale a standard competitive basing game up with the population. Some games do this to impose a certain style for a mode. The problem with scaling would be the constantly changing player counts, but it's an engineering problem. Once X number of players are on a freq, for instance, a Jav or WB slot opens up past the standard basing roles. Probably allowing Lancs instead of Spiders as that's a pretty standard substitution. I don't know how much more than half the normal pub crowd would like it, but it might be a way to get competitive basers to pay to put together a pickup base game more controlled than normal pub, perhaps also disabling many buys while active as well. Would do well to monitor the other freq to determine if a 3rd shark would be allowed, for instance, if there were only 1 on the other team. Needs hashing out but is a decent kernel of an idea.



For the last point, there are !st and !ss commands to sponsor a Terr/Shark as they play, and it's advertised if you issue the command and the position is lacking. I don't think they're used by hardly anyone. The bot advertises it but maybe not ideally.

Switch rewards tend to be abused heavily by certain people. They even gloat about it when using it to the detriment of the game. Bizarre, self-centered human beings...

[ronaldinho]

I am strongly against limiting the choice of ship in public arena. I hate the Leviathan but I don't want to deprive those who love it to play it because if we start to ban this one we will end up forbidding me to jump in the javelin under the pretext that there is already enough and that a spider will help more the frequency. I will not go as far as to boycott if that were the case, nevertheless I would play less for sure.

[Poseidon]

The problem with voting is, as you said, there's a huge preference for attach mode. A straight 50% vote would mean it's run pretty much constantly, and traditional TW basing in pub likely makes its final bow.

i wish ud read the email i took the time to type, but its okay ill just repeat myself where necessary - as long as we're communicating im happy.

i proposed a list of !buy items to mitigate the problem you just mentioned. for instance, if its purepub, a player could !buy exemption for some amount of $$$ and be able to levi for 10 min or whatev. there are more details in the message i composed.

its important to consider why there is such a huge preference for attach mode. why is this important to consider? because its directly related to the population numbers, the consistency of these numbers, and the overall enjoyment of the players. again, you didn't touch on the problem i mentioned before and why i feel a major change is so needed. ill quote part again in hopes it may be addressed:

its not hard to understand why [players prefer attachmode]. its qute rare that there is a balance of the number/skill of sharks/terrs, which means one teams terr is usually going to be dying a lot more. thus not only is the game less balanced but its often movng at 1/3 the pace and stuck in cram phase. most people find this much less enjoyable, as one would expect. attachmode alleviates these problems, allowing for more fast-paced, fluid gameplay. compound this with the nuisance of levis and TKs also feeling softened thru the action of attachmode...

it becomes quite clear why any cursory glance at general population trends vs. the two game types reveals a huge favor in the preference of attachmode...

in fact... i want to take this qualm of yours for a wild turn and propose that, at least during peak hours, a vote system might allow for less attachmode and more traditional pub. during peak hours, the game is often in attach mode the entire time because a single player has all the power. i think a voting system could actually behoove traditional pub, especially if allow one to !buy an override of the entire vote (600k?) (currently its difficult to override attachmode... you have to time buyblock, and its not very effective period).

I agree that pub's a mix of casual and competitive play. It should still be a bridge to competitive play, as well, including standard basing. Running attach mode almost constantly would burn that bridhe.

attach mode generally provides (significantly) better practice than traditional pub because it moves much faster and there is a lot more playing in the flag room and constant action. in many ways its often better practice than twbd.

Truly, what burns this bridge most is levis, as evidenced by a prior thread here where u have turban and 3 other people all saying they dont play pub solely because of levis; and as i mentioned, for every 1 of them you probably have another 15 who will never bother to speak up about pub.


~~

so again, i only see benefits in this proposal. i like what uve suggested about limiting ships but im trying to keep things simple here and least work intensive as possible so im just going to stick to the topic. i didnt realize there were sponsor for shark, i knew terr. its good, i think the bot doing to sponsoring and putting up the $$ would be more effective howevs

[Vehicle]

Step one of fixing pub: Get rid of leviathins. At a certain point we have to accept that the ship is not a net positive to pub gameplay. Never were, never will be.