Pub Proposal

[Poseidon]

i realize u dont play the zone but hopefully the anecdote still resonates...

in HZ, the settings are ALWAYS changing from season to season depending on who is in charge, and the leadership is always changing. u have ur ups and downs, like the doodoo they have cookin over there atm, but one thing's for sure is that if the settings were done by polling of the community or any such shenanigans instead of the reigns always being kept in the hands of a single person... it would be an absolute shitshow. its not even realistic. the analogy holds for the situation we have here, where u seem intent on deadlocking any decision by demanding it be submitted to a vote, and on forums not even frequented by 90% of the pub population


if you simply went with this proposal for a couple of weeks... imagine the type of data you would get on how the votes are going. does this not jump out at you as infinitely more valuable data than a one off poll on this forums?

[Lizzo]

Finally some good ideas, except the purepub one. That is bad idea.


Personally think spawners are as bad a problem as roofers. Three sec spawn immunity outside of Base would help new players and discourage spawning which jacks up teams as much as roofing

[Poseidon]

There are several staffers right now very interested in this concept whose names you may have figured out by following the thread, and who would be very useful people to contact, if you'd like to try advancing this further. A way for TW to exist via its community's control would be an interesting development. I just think the biggest problem is that people aren't interested enough.

im not surprised your experiment failed. and shouldnt the fact that there are several staff memebers very interested in this concept indicate plenty enough interest for you to proceed? it appears to me the biggest problem, and perhaps only problem, is leadership.

its becoming clearer where the philosophical divide may lie. for me, the leader of the zone should lead. if you let me personally make the decisions and i had someone helping me reprogram simple tweaks & changes to pub... it would become a much more consistent and populated game. the base would have to be expanded to accommodate how many people would want to play. i would take care of this as well. i am one of the best players to ever play this game, and my vision for seeing what pub can become follows as its reflection. its as simple as all this. i have explained some of the ways in which these things could be done, but the truth is i could probably write a dissertation on the subject.

im not expecting you to hand me the keys, im just stating the facts.. you are being unresponsive to the points i am trying to address regarding levi. i am raising these issues to you because leadership is needed. as ive stated to you twice already now, the voice of normalcy and the clung-too past will rarely yield the best option.

[Scurvy]

What if a purepub purchase automatically included a private freq roofbot for the duration of purepub?

[Rab]

I like the idea of putting pubbux into the round prize. Anything that encourages basing gets my support. I feel like this should be a replacement for bounties, as bounties encourage people to forget about basing and go chasing someone outside.
Edit: realised this is basically festival

I agree about jav rocket, it's lame, and really laggy. Buying rocket defo shouldn't exist (not sure if it does). A similar issue happens with buying full charges. Levis buy full charges and thrust all the way from spawn into lower base, which is basically the same as having rockets.

Private freqs must not be disabled because some people want to have a playstyle that makes them not contribute to their team's basing effort.
e.g. roofers, levis, freespirit, spawn duelling wbs, levi hunters (should use freq 99 but often don't), anti-roofers, afkers.

These are the major issues that kill pub basing, and therefore where we should spend our effort.

If these people are on freqs 0 and 1 they put their team at a disadvantage. I'm trying to encourage people to be considerate of those trying to base by moving their non-basing endeavours to private freqs. Disabling private freqs would force all non-basing endeavours onto freqs 0 and 1.

I agree that roofing is annoying, especially when people put their team at a disadvantage by doing it on freqs 0 and 1.

Solutions are:
- Change roofturret so it can be bought constantly.
- Reward freq 99 for killing roofers.
- Block off the whole top part of the map outside base (everything above the side spawn locations). Also makes it harder for tiny weasel to troll the flag game. Also stops levis shooting right into the flag room.
- Close the holes on the top of the flag room (a smaller-change version of the above).

[Vehicle]

My thoughts on pub:

Allow players to donate toward game jackpots. It will make games more interesting and at times could generate huge games. I personally get bored and start spending my pubbux on random shit anyway. Why not make it more interesting?

Add buy item to prevent private freqs for 10 min. Kinda like purepub.

Take away rocket from Jav. It's long overdue. It's basically an item that's only purpose is abuse and "rocket lame".

Lessen the time between roofturret purchases. To many people going roof, on private freq and line bombing.

Just a couple ideas.

I like all of your ideas.

Edit: Allow the private freq to spend more than pub to override their ban.

[Pineapple Express]

My thoughts on pub:

Allow players to donate toward game jackpots. It will make games more interesting and at times could generate huge games. I personally get bored and start spending my pubbux on random shit anyway. Why not make it more interesting?

Add buy item to prevent private freqs for 10 min. Kinda like purepub.

Take away rocket from Jav. It's long overdue. It's basically an item that's only purpose is abuse and "rocket lame".

Lessen the time between roofturret purchases. To many people going roof, on private freq and line bombing.

Just a couple ideas.

[qan]

im not completely clear here; are you implying that this should be voted on by the community... and to even be voted on, i need to "find some other folks who support it"?

Yes, absolutely. Imagine you're part of a village. Anyone in the village should have the power to change the rules -- no gatekeepers needed. But, before voting on something, there are some basic checks in place. One person proposes something, which you've done. Another person needs to agree for that idea to be more than crickets in the dark. Or, if the village is big enough, a third person, and so on. Proposals liked by some very small part of the population should be voted on by the whole group, in other words.

We've tried this a few times before, usually failing. Here's the first one, a decade and a half ago: www.trenchwars.org/twps We're at least able to experiment.

There are several staffers right now very interested in this concept whose names you may have figured out by following the thread, and who would be very useful people to contact, if you'd like to try advancing this further. A way for TW to exist via its community's control would be an interesting development. I just think the biggest problem is that people aren't interested enough. It's usually too much of a test case that stands in for our real hope, to somehow improve what we see in our lives. But it's a very good and noble impulse, and we should keep trying to harness it. I think honestly that's most of what's kept us alive these decades. Nice work, spaceship people.

[Lizzo]

For the sake of clarity, I was directly involved in the last pure pub weekend and it was a resounding success. In spite of 3-4 very obnoxious, very loud children making a stink about it and refusing to play, base activity was at its highest point since my return last summer (Mid-Covid). Active players hovered between 26 and 44 consistently between "peak" hours of 7PM - 11PM eastern.

With that said, I imagine that the most likely outcome of this lev vs no lev debate is simply going to be the occasional purepub weekend and nothing more.

Bolding and underlining doesn't make it not fake news

[Poseidon]

Seems as though it's pretty clearly stated, Poseidon. You'll just need to find some other folks who support it to the point where a vote on it would seem worthwhile. (We don't yet have a great metric for this threshold, but BIET and Hookecho and others were working on it.)

im not completely clear here; are you implying that this should be voted on by the community... and to even be voted on, i need to "find some other folks who support it"?

at any rate, ill quote myself in full from the email i sent you and other upper staff a few months ago where i first laid out this proposal:

Point being here - the average pubber today is leagues beyond the same of yesteryear, yet there has been relatively little of this notion reflected in the zone's policies or pub's evolution at large. The zone is still modeled in a way to cater to the noopiest of pub players, to the subspace of the year 2000, and to Priits & whomevers hypergratuitious game design. Purepub helps, attachmode helps as well as it keeps certain players like myself from getting bored (you would prob never see me flagging in pub if attachmode didnt exist), but its clear there is a philosophical divide and it appears to me pub has remained largely on the side of the noopis, noopis who generally have little in the way of the vision required to conceive of what would be good for the zone at large, let alone take any altruistic interest, mind you. This is why I dont take to the forums but prefer to email upper staff: leadership is needed. the voice of the normalcy, of the average TW pubber, of the clung-to past.. this voice is rarely going to yield the best option.


~~~


let me be clear. what i am fighting for here is the very lifeblood of trench wars. its obvious to me, someone who has spent 100s and 100s of hours the past year playing pub (likely more than the rest of staff combined), which pub dynamics = the most activity. Increasing activity should be one of the primary objectives of our upper staff. is there anyone who disagrees with this?

this is why i posed the question, which you ignored but i would really hope you to answer; again i quote myself:

say this were implemented and you had a general trend where 80% of players voted for attachmode and 90% for purepub. what then? what percentage would be enough for you to consider significant changes to the levi, im curious?

obviously here im implying at a shade greater significance than represented by any of these tweaks you mention from the past 20 years.



------------
to Rabbit Rapist:

the soltuino is easy. when idiots like people named Useless Baseterr keep abusing a mechanic to prove some bizarre, spurious point about the game - you ban them.

[LF]

For the sake of clarity, I was directly involved in the last pure pub weekend and it was a resounding success. In spite of 3-4 very obnoxious, very loud children making a stink about it and refusing to play, base activity was at its highest point since my return last summer (Mid-Covid). Active players hovered between 26 and 44 consistently between "peak" hours of 7PM - 11PM eastern.

With that said, I imagine that the most likely outcome of this lev vs no lev debate is simply going to be the occasional purepub weekend and nothing more.

[Lizzo]

Charging for lev is going to do anything? Pure pub already there and when it's activated numbers go down. Some one cancel and numbers magically stay up. Pure pub weekend equal big failure. 50% numbers during peak times.

People are going to quote numbers about levs killing games, when in reality there are good games going on (30 flag changes)which include levs, then finally a team wins. Then a few players go to sleep, imbalancing teams, then you get a downward spiral. By the way, after that team loses, a few racists going to post on the forums and blame the levs. None of the people complaining on this forum say "we can win" or "good game" when they lose. Just got mad cuz they don't like losing, and they don't like losing to a bbbw.

Before wasting time programming anti-community anti-ship laws. The real community focused strategy is to figure out how to bring the population up during non-peak times to build a base for sustainment.

As for lev power, things are already working themselves out. 3 months ago, only one player could consistently kill me. That number is like 5 now. Spoiler alert, they aren't the people complaining on this forum. I am differently abled so I know what I'm talking about. If anything, it is pointing to the lev being lesser abled ship.

Everyone knows lev are an easy target for low class low skill complainer wb spiders on forum. Biggest impacts to anti-competitive play are sharks, roofers, AFK, anti-warp, attach mode, spawners, cloakers. But this is the diversity the community needs. Haters going to hate complainers going to complain. Stop the downward spiral. We don't want PP, we want np.

[qan]

Seems as though it's pretty clearly stated, Poseidon. You'll just need to find some other folks who support it to the point where a vote on it would seem worthwhile. (We don't yet have a great metric for this threshold, but BIET and Hookecho and others were working on it.)

As for if people were constantly voting for purepub and attach mode, again, it's a community problem. We've reworked the Levi probably 20 times over the years. This is just the most recent compromise. It has reduced energy and slower bombs than the original while retaining L3. One probably much more viable option that retains freedom would be to charge people either per minute or per life for the use of the Levi. Most buys reflect this: to drastically change the game, perhaps sometimes negatively for certain players, you have to pay. Levis might be categorized as a kind of luxury that can disrupt pub (but is still a cornerstone of pub) that might warrant a charge to play.


Rab, for #3, there's no way from a code perspective to make a person unattachable (at least, without AS3), but if someone attaches to you, you can just detach them with the attach key.

[rothe]

Rab

[Rab]

Just completely killed pub in 5 mins using #1. From about 7v7 to 1v1. Attachmode totally flawed.