Pub Timed Matches

[suxxor]

So I guess the question is: anyone care about the Ave stat enough to justify not giving out points for flag time wins?

yes, I do. primarily for the reasons troll king stated above, but also for personal reasons; when I play, I use my rating as a kind of indicator as how well I'm doing for that reset. kill points make up a big part of rating. besides, take a look at a random player's statistics.. like.. oh, I don't know, how about this Popular_Demand guy. total kills: 1101. average kill: 0.74. that tells me right off the bat that I should stay the hell away from him if he's on my team. out of all the statistics, average kill tells you the most about what kind of player you're dealing with, and personally, I think it's worth keeping it meaningful.

edit: regarding leviathans, LT's don't only harass the flag room. they harass anyone that's anywhere near a wall. I, for one, see them as the single worst thing in the pubs right now.

[Kyace]

How would people feel about redesigning the roof area to discourage LTs and to better reflect the strategic position that it has? Would that be more drastic than nerfing levi’s settings or banning them from a large portion of publics?

[Troll King]

So would you say that levis are a problem for publics or just for basings or neither? Or rather, are levis the biggest problem that you see for publics?

The biggest problem is that not enough people base. Levis may be part of why that is, but it is not necessarily the biggest reason. They are admittedly overpowered, disturb basing activity and draw people away from basing. But is getting rid of them the answer? It might be a good start, but there's a lot more. Ask the random pubber why he doesn't base and he won't say it's because levis ruin basing, they won't say it's because the cloakers are too strong, they'll instead say "why should I?"

The bigger issue is the perception that pub isn't worth it, or pub isn't good enough, or that pub doesn't matter. That attitude starts from the top down. I believe that one of the biggest problems affecting pubs is that the zone's "elite", the veterans, the leaguers, the "pros", do not play in publics enough. They have to set an example and the example they have been setting is that you should try to get out of pubs as soon as you can. That just turns pubs into TW's ghetto.

As much as we would like to tinker with setting changes or scoring bonuses, what we have to first realize is that the biggest problems facing TW's pubs and the lack of basing in them is in the attitude. Any changes have to consider how they would improve upon that attitude first and foremost. If people continue to think that pub doesn't matter then any changes are already doomed for failure. We have to change that attitude first and make pubs, all pubs, matter for everyone.

[Kyace]

The biggest problem is that not enough people base. Levis may be part of why that is, but it is not necessarily the biggest reason. They are admittedly overpowered, disturb basing activity and draw people away from basing. But is getting rid of them the answer? It might be a good start, but there's a lot more. Ask the random pubber why he doesn't base and he won't say it's because levis ruin basing, they won't say it's because the cloakers are too strong, they'll instead say "why should I?"

The bigger issue is the perception that pub isn't worth it, or pub isn't good enough, or that pub doesn't matter. That attitude starts from the top down. I believe that one of the biggest problems affecting pubs is that the zone's "elite", the veterans, the leaguers, the "pros", do not play in publics enough. They have to set an example and the example they have been setting is that you should try to get out of pubs as soon as you can. That just turns pubs into TW's ghetto.

As much as we would like to tinker with setting changes or scoring bonuses, what we have to first realize is that the biggest problems facing TW's pubs and the lack of basing in them is in the attitude. Any changes have to consider how they would improve upon that attitude first and foremost. If people continue to think that pub doesn't matter then any changes are already doomed for failure. We have to change that attitude first and make pubs, all pubs, matter for everyone.

It would seem that both Qan and Mootland are making great steps to try to encourage people to base in public, however you don't seem to like their band-aids. What do you think we should do, Troll King?
Shut down ?go base for a couple hours a day to promote public basing? Hell, how about we try advertising for publics, instead of trying to pull people out of them?

[Troll King]

I've already made a couple of possible solutions in this thread. If you don't want to go searching for them, here they are with a couple more:

1/ Decrease the arena population caps. With fewer people in an arena problems such as uneven teams creating unbalanced basing are severely lessened. Also, if you reduce the number of people in all arenas by 5 then on average you will actually lower the number of levis per arena by one. That's just from spreading them out more. Add to that other factors like how having fewer targets means it will take take a little longer to green.

2/ Create a new map that places more emphasis on the base. Right now the base represents less than a quarter of the entire pub map. Why not make the base bigger? Imagine a set of walls extending from the base down through the middle of the map. That would in essence turn the middle of the map into a large (and when I say large, I mean as big as or bigger than what the current base is) room inside the base. This room would be to the current base what the mid-base room is to the flag room. Think of the flag room as a throne room, the mid base as a giant hallway. This larger room would be like a castle courtyard. Now here's the kicker: people can spawn in this large room. You're already inside the base when you enter the zone. I'm not saying they will necessarily move upwards, but that's already a subtle change that will affect how people think of the base. Another benefit: the safe zones will be outside beyond these new outer walls. If levis want a safe place to green, they'll have to move farther to get there. Another benefit: these walls will also have levi and sniper friendly openings. Levis like shooting through holes, but right now, all of those holes are facing the areas where people want to base. These new levi spots can help encourage levis to fire into the courtyard instead of into the base. Levis get their kicks but the base doesn't have to receive the brunt of it.

3/ Eliminate private freqs. Private frequencies tend to hurt basing more than encourage it. Sure you and your buddies might get to base as a private team and have a good time of it, but that comes at the expense of the other two teams. The only people getting the benefits are those on the private freq. When they eventually leave, it creates a vaccuum where even fewer people than before, from either pub freq, will base. The actual net change is negative.

4/ Increase the size of the flag room. People like flag room battles? Give them more space to accommodate more people in there. With the added room you'd also stand a better chance of surviving a levi blast from outside. Imagine how big an improvement that alone would be.

5/ Encourage basing as a general concept. Advertise it. Have arena messages periodically challenge people to try for the flag. Have an automated message bragging how long one team has held onto the flag. Add tiny subtle hints like walls shaped like arrows pointing towards the base. Increase the flag bonus.

6/ Start a grass roots movement by established veteran players to pub more. This one can be done by ordinary players and not staff. All it takes to make a pub arena better is just two or three experienced people to get in there and give it a push.

These are all small, simple changes with broad positive results. All pubs will benefit, not just one or two that will be filled with mostly veterans. The ones featuring major map changes may receive resistance from staff, but it wouldn't be as drastic a change as making yet another ship setting adjustment. These ideas aren't new either. I've been proposing this stuff for several years now, and instead all we keep seeing are band-aid solutions that have little reach and lack any continuity that shows a constant and consistent drive to make things better.

[Theif of Time]

Myself, I don't really care too much about flag. I find that usually people I know will take flag, assist in taking flag. Usually those with more points base aswell, seeings as its difficult to get lots of points without basing. So, when qan used a bot to generate a poll last night in PurePub, I voted yes, prize the points, I don't care about Ave. Hotmail also voted yes.

It turned out that me and Hotmail were the only ones that voted there... just goes to show people don't pay attention.
Hmm, I don't have any particular objection to Troll Kings Ideas, they all look good. No Surrender generally pubs a lot, yeah, all four of us :P. If I had time I might recruit more people to have a genuine pub squad but, I don't have time.

[Mootland Farmer]

"1/ Decrease the arena population caps. With fewer people in an arena problems such as uneven teams creating unbalanced basing are severely lessened. Also, if you reduce the number of people in all arenas by 5 then on average you will actually lower the number of levis per arena by one. That's just from spreading them out more. Add to that other factors like how having fewer targets means it will take take a little longer to green.

"2/ Create a new map that places more emphasis on the base. Right now the base represents less than a quarter of the entire pub map. Why not make the base bigger? Imagine a set of walls extending from the base down through the middle of the map. That would in essence turn the middle of the map into a large (and when I say large, I mean as big as or bigger than what the current base is) room inside the base. This room would be to the current base what the mid-base room is to the flag room. Think of the flag room as a throne room, the mid base as a giant hallway. This larger room would be like a castle courtyard. Now here's the kicker: people can spawn in this large room. You're already inside the base when you enter the zone. I'm not saying they will necessarily move upwards, but that's already a subtle change that will affect how people think of the base. Another benefit: the safe zones will be outside beyond these new outer walls. If levis want a safe place to green, they'll have to move farther to get there. Another benefit: these walls will also have levi and sniper friendly openings. Levis like shooting through holes, but right now, all of those holes are facing the areas where people want to base. These new levi spots can help encourage levis to fire into the courtyard instead of into the base. Levis get their kicks but the base doesn't have to receive the brunt of it

3/ Eliminate private freqs. Private frequencies tend to hurt basing more than encourage it. Sure you and your buddies might get to base as a private team and have a good time of it, but that comes at the expense of the other two teams. The only people getting the benefits are those on the private freq. When they eventually leave, it creates a vaccuum where even fewer people than before, from either pub freq, will base. The actual net change is negative.

4/ Increase the size of the flag room. People like flag room battles? Give them more space to accommodate more people in there. With the added room you'd also stand a better chance of surviving a levi blast from outside. Imagine how big an improvement that alone would be.

5/ Encourage basing as a general concept. Advertise it. Have arena messages periodically challenge people to try for the flag. Have an automated message bragging how long one team has held onto the flag. Add tiny subtle hints like walls shaped like arrows pointing towards the base. Increase the flag bonus.

6/ Start a grass roots movement by established veteran players to pub more. This one can be done by ordinary players and not staff. All it takes to make a pub arena better is just two or three experienced people to get in there and give it a push." By Troll King

All these ideas are good, but forgive me for being narrow sighted but we wouldn't have to put these ideas in place if we made the Levithan more base friendly. Recently upper staff have been screwing arond with the settings alot, so trying new things with the Levithan would not be so difficult. Only doubt I have is actually being allowed to implement a plan over all the Publics. Pure Pub was hard enough to put in place and sure I would have loved to have it implemented to ever Public. Its going to take a bit to convince DoCK> to change the zone like this. I'll take you're ideas into consideration Troll King, have a chat with Qan, and try and reach a good solution for the Publics.

[JeBu]

so could we test this on weekends:

spawn freq 1 to left safe spawn freq 2 to right safe. when round start spawn freq 1 to left ear spawn freq 2 to right ear.

set scoreboard.

change it to be timerace to 5 or 10.

limit 3 javs per team.

if tking too much example 5tks in min being changed from jav to spider.

auto balance on freqs and some freq hopping block that players can't hop too often.
____________________________
There are ppl who will be against this but try it on weekends it will be fun and even those ppl who are agaisnt it now will change their mind :grin:

[Theif of Time]

Mootland, qan, arilou, whoever it may concern:
you think you could procure another weekend for, eh, testing? It would be fun, and various ideas could be implemented over the weekend(s), to gauge public reaction to them.

[MagiWyvern]

Screw it... I'll post here.

Lets get a few things straight.

1. Levis and weasels are not and never have been the reason people dont base.
Its player attitudes, attitude reflects leadership, the older players believe it or not are leadership. New players to the zone never get told that basing is the objective. They just spawn in a ship and then get spawn killed by some idiot screaming "newb". The first thing that they see in this zone is the blob of 'seagulls' hanging out in the spawn rushing to get whatever kills they can. And, you blame them for emulating this behavior and acting in kind. Maybe if you taught them about basing instead of rushing to spawn them, who knows?

2. A lev in the fr is basing.
No matter what you think, however lame you consider it. It represents an asset of that freq to be used in the defense of that fr. And like any other thing there are counters for it. You as older players have to show new players not to plow into the L3 bombs coming at them and tatically counter that lev. Priv freqs taking fr? thats basing too. Its your actions as a team that counter the actions of other players.

3. Also... as far as killing LTs go... if your basing and a LT shows up on the roof and procedes to turn the fr into a slaughter house...
You dont have to stop basing and divert time and energy to killing it, because lets face it, its gonna be back in 5 minutes anyway. Solution? Simple... put a couple of players on the roof... a good warbird on the roof watching his radar can keep an LT off the roof for a good amount of time. This goes for mid-base too... using effective sharking and a few good players you can shut down an LT to the point that 'roofing' and 'going in' are no longer viable options for them. And whats left? spawn shots... LOL spawn shots never got me any good bounty and seemed to attract that flock of 'seagulls', cause they werent happy.

4. Change the Roof, or the Map for that matter. See what happens... its been done in the past. I personally know 8 different shots for 1 single hole on the roof... almost 37 total for that hole if you count all the variations... If you change the roof or the map, its not gonna stop me. Its actually gonna encourage me to think new shit up.

5. Timed Basing? Ship Restrictions? All good stuff. Also a feature like in base elim where the bot enforces basing, to a degree... youd have to make allowances for private freqs and somesuch, so that people could actually green in the spawn, and im not talking about levis, i mean javs and sharks too.

6. Give Javs back X-radar?
omfg. what stupid newbie said that? Javs never lost x-radar... Just upon spawning there is a good chance that you'll have to go and Green it, like sharks... Kinda like greening more shrap. Go and actually play. Pick a few greens up. I dare you. And if you dont find it, quit. Right now chances are you'll pick up 3 x-radar greens before you even get one shrap.

7. TKing javs...
Shrap is the answer... lessen L1 bomb damage and up shrap damage... Shrap from a Jav bomb doesnt damage friendlies, its the actual bomb itself.

8. The cram.
There is more to basing than just cramming. Get over it. If you want to cram all day join a bd squad and bd all day long. Like spastic, i hear they're recruiting.
:english:

[WiseCherub]

Troll King mentioned (Idea #1) to decrease pub arena population. Like to what? 30? Right now its 36 and I have no problem with the current limits.

Now if the base/map was widened, then it might be good to have 40... the more the merrier.

From my pub basing experience, if 1 frequency has way more than another, usually some players will hop to the other to make it fair and to have a better basing experience for all. The basing game gets severly boring if one freq has way more; we all like freqs to be even inorder for more challenging basing.

I agree, LTs or even just levis really disrupt basing. Sometimes I see in Pub0 the purepub settings are disable... when that happens; very little basing goes on.

I agree that the levi should be modified to incorporate it into purepub basing; obviously the L3 bomb has to go.

[Theif of Time]

From my pub basing experience, if 1 frequency has way more than another, usually some players will hop to the other to make it fair and to have a better basing experience for all. The basing game gets severly boring if one freq has way more; we all like freqs to be even inorder for more challenging basing.

These players are usually the good players who drive the team along anyway. It seems that on occasion you only need a few good players on a team to make them basing viable: whether they be shark or spider or lancaster, any of these with a reasonable terrier can get into the base and give the freq a foothold. Usually they carry the team, while the rest of the team goes in jav and rockets blindly into enemy spider fire, and it is the spider that follows that takes the prize. Or the shark that follows and pushes the terrier into a corner for the jav to bomb.
So I believe it is Idea #6 that pubs need. I propose the ?chat=twpub for those who pub seriously, and we begin this movement.

Magiwyvern, those are all good ideas, but #8 I find it nearly impossible to cram in pub: far too many javs to rep everything, plus theres always a high chance of being tked.
and yes, I think that lessening level 1 bomb damage may indeed be a good idea. I'm not too familiar with shrap, but shark shrap kills in 1 hit, whereas jav shrap doesn't, If i remember correctly. Or, decrease bomb damage and up bomb radius. either way, things like this need to be tried. I think people need to be discouraged from javving too much.

[Krusnik]

These players are usually the good players who drive the team along anyway. It seems that on occasion you only need a few good players on a team to make them basing viable: whether they be shark or spider or lancaster, any of these with a reasonable terrier can get into the base and give the freq a foothold. Usually they carry the team, while the rest of the team goes in jav and rockets blindly into enemy spider fire, and it is the spider that follows that takes the prize. Or the shark that follows and pushes the terrier into a corner for the jav to bomb.
So I believe it is Idea #6 that pubs need. I propose the ?chat=twpub for those who pub seriously, and we begin this movement.

Very true while I enjoy playing in these pub timed matches when i'm losing i notice that all the hardcore basers (ya know the people that make a difference in the team) are on the other side, the team is outnumbering us by 5+, or half of my team is ROOFING or just spawning. I enjoy being on the losing team most of the time, but i enjoy more when the teams are evened out and the battle for the flag room is ferocious. Thats the kind of person i am, and i think that others prefer this too. There never is a perfect solution to anything, but patching problems up as best as you can with suggestion from "the people" (the guys who take the game to the next level).

[Soldier13]

Oh JEEEZ, the sky is falling........everything was fine till some goddam........time race came along, picked up basing fun, put most of it in its mouth. I have trouble standing time rushing type matches, now the whole point gathering thing where you can take your time to take out your enemy and plan your actions instead of having to blindly joust at each other and suicide is all going away with time it seems. The more rushed things are done, the stupider the actions and not well thought out. Making this game more of a lamefest. Not that blind rushing idiots cant be taken out easily but....you dont want to be on the team that has to do the blind rushing just cause it lost the base for you and you need to get it back before the buzzard as the objective of the game. This is where you are pretty much at the mercy of the enemy cause if they play their cards theres no way ur gonna get in.

[Theif of Time]

If they play their cards right, sure you're going to have difficulty getting in. But if you play your cards right, you can get in.
There are several ways this can be acheived:
#1: have a good weasel on your side, who can take out enemy terrier, giving your team a chance to get in.
#2: have a good jav, who can either kill enemy terrier or kill lining spiders.
#3: have a couple of sharks who know how to time reps. Its not that difficult, really..
#4: have a terrier who can place a portal in the right place in flagroom entrance, and use port to get in, and subsequently stay alive. - with this trick, if you go all the way to bottom safe before warping back to the port, you have a second or two before your computer registers the enemies in flagroom. Alas, it registers mines instantly.
#5: just push them out with the sheer brutality of any of the above, combined with non-tking fighter ships such as spiders, warbirds and lancs.
It is often good to have more than one terrier in public, unless your enemy isn't very skilled.

Soldier13, you just need to adjust to faster thinking. It is faster paced some of the time (by no means is it slow) and does all depend on a terrier not dying, but its not nearly so fast you can't think or plan.