What idiot put a cap on the amount of people that can be in the same ship in pub?

[Beast]

First it was the shitty map update, with no decrease in the over all entire map size, and NOW we are forced to play other ships? Nice one buddy, have seen quite a few complaints about it already, you must really want pub to have zero pop eh?

[Lizzo]

Good to know staff trying out new things. What is the cap?

[Jessup]

If there is a shark cap I am all for it. Nothing worse than freqs changing to 5 sharks last minute of flag battle. Makes sense for bomber ships too even though selfishly as a jav or lev it wud suck if thats the ship you wanna play but .. it makes sense to me. I'd love to see list of ship caps though so we know what we are dealing with.

[Rab]

Had a situation the other day when we had max sharks on the team and they were all afk or useless or just deliberately wrecking the game. Enemy sharks were competent, so we couldn't overcome it.

[Omega Red]

i see the crybabies like dgen got their wish. constant complaining works i guess

[Vehicle]

This is a horrible idea. There is only one limit for ships that should be in place, and it should be 0 levis allowed.

Change the map if sharks are such an issue (they're not, the other team can just as easily adjust and add a shark with a ship change). Limiting ship numbers is just going to decrease player count. Someone who switches to a jav and is told "no you can't" is more likely to spec than they are to just say "oh ok, I guess I'll spider then."

I appreciate all the efforts to reinvigorate pub, and am mostly behind them, but this is not a good path to go down.

[Unlimited]

Yup there was legit one person complaining and that was dgen. He's aliasing now as pokebong and other names complaining about the same things.. staff you can't enable these cry babies and actually alter settings LOL this is ridiculous 10.2.3

[Lizzo]

Typical point and shoot retireded wb vets going to the polls worried that diversity gonna come into their neighborhood.

Oh, a Lev on the team, there goes the neighborhood.

Why are ship % a bad thing? If u could choose any position in soccerball game make everyone me-sized goalies. We will sandwich and block whole goal. Good game. Watch them play being hurt with their tight buns and short shorts idgaf. Try to put the ball in the goal bet you can't. How some one gonna have game against all shark?

put no more than 30% ship type on team, but aggressively deal w afkers
You NEED to wb? Then you NEED to get yo ass on priv freq.

[Vehicle]

The reasons it's a bad thing are obvious Lizzo, I didn't think they needed to be enumerated.

But since you asked:

1. They keep people from playing the ships they want to play, thus making them less likely to play.
2. They inhibit competitive adjustment. If Freq 1 has flag and a shark and Freq 0's shark is in mid-tube doing nothing, Freq 1 can't get in and can't add a shark to help.
3. It assumes all players have the same mission. A roof terr/jav/shark does not equal a base terr/jav/shark. This further penalizes freqs when non-bullet ships aren't flagging.
4. Limits assume all players are equal. One good shark/terr/jav is often equal to two bad ones. Limiting the number doesn't help make teams more even.
5. It's against the spirit of "Pub," which has historically been a place players can go and play whatever ship they wanted (levs aside).
6. It adds yet another layer of bot-driven complexity to the already esoteric pub system.

This is a poor attempt at trying to force some parity between teams. If everyone playing were of equal skill it might work but would still be detrimental to the game's fun factor.

[Rab]

It's against the spirit of "Pub," which has historically been a place players can go and play whatever ship they wanted (levs aside).

This is an excellent point.

Why should people filling chat with aids all day have more freedom than those actually playing the game?

Why should levs/javs/weasels/useless afk fuckbois have more freedom than those actually playing the game?

[BIET]

First it was the shitty map update, with no decrease in the over all entire map size, and NOW we are forced to play other ships? Nice one buddy, have seen quite a few complaints about it already, you must really want pub to have zero pop eh?

That would be me. I needed to know what the effect would be if we had a percentage limit to sharks. After a week we have the data to make a plan and see if we can improve on the current situation. I'll list the findings at the end of this post.

No drop in population was observed, and no drop in popularity of shark.

Good to know staff trying out new things. What is the cap?

TW-PubSystem> Sharks: limited to 1/4 of the size of a frequency (but 1 always allowed).

This was set to 1/5 at the start, but it was quite clear to be too low.

Change the map if sharks are such an issue (they're not, the other team can just as easily adjust and add a shark with a ship change). Limiting ship numbers is just going to decrease player count. Someone who switches to a jav and is told "no you can't" is more likely to spec than they are to just say "oh ok, I guess I'll spider then."

Not sure how changing a map would make sharks less of an issue (Would love to see examples though!). It's also not as straightforward to expect someone to switch to shark. Plenty of games have died because no one was willing to switch, even in 10v10+ games. Forcing someone to play shark is arguably as bad or worse than saying they can't. The loop of needing to shark to defeat sharks, especially in bigger games, just dissolves games into chaos. A chaos that brings loads of TKs, desynced weapons, and random mines.

OK, on to what we knew and what we've learned.
We knew that:

1. Sharks shut out games during low pop. Changes have been made to the duration of mines during smaller games to not 100% rely on someone else switching to shark, but the issue remains.
2. The average shark sucks. They have no concept of how to efficiently rep, position, lay mines, let alone work together with other sharks on the team.
3. Sharks begets sharks. In most situations the only way to beat a team with more/better sharks, is to get more/better sharks. Combine it with attach mode, and you got an endless cycle of reps. They are also the perfect ship to have attached to you, and to attach to. Rocket jav + shark is just dumb.

And we now know that:

1. Having a limit on sharks still allows for chaos in the flagroom, but not so much that you are helpless without having to resort to changing to shark. More strategies are available.
2. Teams are way more dependent on good sharks. Especially when the number of sharks is limited to 1 or 2, your team will have a rough time getting through any decent shark if your team's shark aren't.
3. Players that AFK in shark, and players who aren't interested in basing but are using shark, are filling up spots. This was to be expected, but it sucks never the less.
4. Not being able to hop into the ship you like, or the ship that's needed sucks.

But, how can we use this to make improvements, and do we actually have to make those improvements? I think we do have to make some changes, but there are quite a few approaches that might work. To name a few of these approaches:

1. We use the same limiter and have a better AFK check system (I swear I'll finish it one of these days)
2. Teams are limited to the same amount of sharks as the other team plus 1. This would mean that there's less of a chance to end up in situations where you are severely outnumbered on the shark department. Ramping up the number of sharks during the final push/defending of the flag would also be harder.
3. Have a hard cap on the amount of sharks per team that doesn't scale with the amount of players.
4. Limit the attaching capabilities of sharks during attach mode. This could be done by making sharks not attachable while attach mode is active.

This is what I've got so far. I probably forgot to mention a lot, so feel free to correct me or add on to what I've said. Also, sorry that it was changed without warning, but now we do have some authentic reactions.

[Rab]

But sharks are actually useful basing ships. Javs/Levis/Weasels are useless, so if you're going to limit anything it should be them. i.e. no more than 1/5 of the team in either jav, levi, or weasel combined.

[WillBy]

4. Limit the attaching capabilities of sharks during attach mode. This could be done by making sharks not attachable while attach mode is active.

This 100%. Lag attaches + 3 reps + big enough flag room makes sharks extra viable and attach mode extra annoying.

[Lizzo]

The reasons it's a bad thing are obvious Lizzo, I didn't think they needed to be enumerated.

But since you asked:

1. They keep people from playing the ships they want to play, thus making them less likely to play.
2. They inhibit competitive adjustment. If Freq 1 has flag and a shark and Freq 0's shark is in mid-tube doing nothing, Freq 1 can't get in and can't add a shark to help.
3. It assumes all players have the same mission. A roof terr/jav/shark does not equal a base terr/jav/shark. This further penalizes freqs when non-bullet ships aren't flagging.
4. Limits assume all players are equal. One good shark/terr/jav is often equal to two bad ones. Limiting the number doesn't help make teams more even.
5. It's against the spirit of "Pub," which has historically been a place players can go and play whatever ship they wanted (levs aside).
6. It adds yet another layer of bot-driven complexity to the already esoteric pub system.

This is a poor attempt at trying to force some parity between teams. If everyone playing were of equal skill it might work but would still be detrimental to the game's fun factor.

This guy - "pub is about freedom"

Also this guy - "except if it involves levs or ships that I don't play or don't like to play against"

[Vehicle]

Lizzo I've been calling for levs to be banned or have their settings drastically changed for a decade now (including when it had EMP bombs). Thinking that levs are a cancer to gameplay and that "pub is about freedom" are not incongruous.

BIET Thanks for the thoughtful reply. I personally don't think sharks are really a problem. But if you feel like you need to do something to "fix" the issue, perhaps add a "!buy nosharks" that locks everyone out of the ship for like 1-3 minutes. Enough time to push into a flagroom but not long enough to last a whole round.

Limiting shark numbers is not a good plan and can easily lead to even more lopsided games when good players are locked out of ships that are being occupied by bad players.

P.S. When I said "change the map," I mean drastic changes. Shark's primary purpose (in pub) is usually to mine the FR entrance. To make that strategy less effective, the solution would be to add more entrances. Basically I would make the side tubes accessible from the top of mid base and make the side FR entrances more easily flown through. This would presumably result in less trouble getting into and more fights inside of the flagroom.