Publics

[Izor]

Making every arena levi restricted would probably work ok as I said; then youd just have duelers and basers like in pub 2. I like that, and I think that the other people who play that arena like it also. As long as its not another 'compromise' like for the past couple years, it will even out the playing field in all pubs. If thats the direction most people feel comfortable with so be it. My personal stance for removing purepubs comes from me thinking that taking out the levi takes something away from this game, but the current setup in pubs is taking away far, far more.

You didn't prove any correlation between pure pub and the decline of the playerbase, and are you sure the playerbase declined by 'nearly half'?
You don't even seem to know exactly when pure pub started, and you don't seem to know when the prime of TW was.

Prime of tw was around 2003-2004, purepubs came around in early 2004?

Anyway you want proof I'll forum search it.
http://forums.trenchwars.org/showthr...ht=700+players

^ this is the first sign I could see that the playerbase was on the decline. Note it takes a while for the long-term effects to start showing (duh). This could be, and is the result of many factors as rand posted there, but purepub is undoubtedly one of the major ones.

http://forums.trenchwars.org/showthr...light=guanobot

Earliest I got and notice that it was around early 2004, so maybe it even came in late 2003, but im close enough.

The zone is a base/flag zone

200 people came to our regular season LD vs squad!! week 2. Thats the most Ive seen in one arena in a very long time (even ww3 taken into account). Playoff games have gotten around 150 that I've seen. Tell me now what is more popular. The 2 squads in LB finals arent even true basing squads. Theyre duelers with some basers thrown in the mix. I would figure that if you people whine so damn bad about basing being more popular, you would at least have people dedicated to it who could actually win instead of dueling squads winning as an afterthought.

Public was mainly inhabited by basers and people trying to feed on the fact that basing was going on, more and more people left the publics to play in sub-arenas, if you enter a new game and there is only 10 people playing you probably will give up on it pretty quick.

This is a problem totally unrelated to the pub issue that I addressed earlier. There are so many arenas that all of them are making people lose interest cause no one plays them. autosb is going to be my example here. It's fun for people I suppose but it seems like they dont get enough players since they're always whining on forum for more.

Chao <ZH> and myself have been working on a new map.

This isnt the solution. First off, it sounds like you're trying to restrict spawn zone play, which many people like myself enjoy by cutting off how much room there is. Second, the only way a levterr is going to be able to get in mid to shoot up into the fr is if there is no attacking team, meaning basing is dead. Or portal shots which are the worst form of LTing. Meh, you're not going to stop lamers from laming people. Sharkterrs can devastate basing just as bad I prove routinely in purepub, but no one else has picked up on it fortunately. Changing the map wont stop shark shrap and mines

[Sufficient]

The whole declining population argument doesn't really hold much water. Almost every single zone in SS has declined in population over the past few years (minus the fairly new zones like Metal Gear). It's not like players are moving to other zones and leaving TW a barren place to play.

[Izor]

Well lets put it this way suff, can you agree that those bottom pubs are no fun at all? Players come and go naturally, but the players coming is stopping since they will never stick to this game in those pubs

The game would probably most certainly be on the decline, but this would slow the process greatly in my opinion and i think most people here agree with that by now, as opposed to before when they still didnt see why purepub was killing the zone

[Chao.]

Have you even bothered to look at the map we're working on, Izor? I'm just wondering.

[Izor]

I could, but I dont need to with that description to see what youre trying to do.

what is your response to levterrs now being forced to pick on the losing team, instead of being able to shoot both

[Hakaku]

I don't think child-proofing the map will help,
I don't think changing map layout will work,
Boki map caused an uproar, this will too.
Can't wait to see you lose pop after this taboo.

The problem lies within everything
Have you even considered altering?
The levi is grotesquely overpowered,
No more lance and X to kill the cowards.

Get rid of the people which spec all day,
One hundred arenas seems like hay.
Bots, base, elim and more,
Can't you see too much is a bore?

Why the fuck have I started rhyming...
Oh yeah, 'cause y'all think this is trying.
Try to think outside the box,
Arguing wins nothing, just like my stocks.

So let's stop F&#^$&% quoting and let's stop F&^$^% debating, so we can get something done, that works for everyone.

[Izor]

some positive comes out of arguing i think, at least i would think that some people realize im right since they're slowly starting to see purepub kill the zone after Ive said it since its inception

problem is, people go to some radical fucking changes to fix simple problems. A map that has worked for soooo many years in tw doesnt need to be changed, for example. 'Enhancing' it isnt an excuse either, since its a pretty major change thats about to happen. Again, I cant stop anyone from doing anything I imagine, but I've been right pretty much every time when it comes to pub. Perhaps cause I actually play every aspect of pub so I know what I'm talking about?

[Hakaku]

Sorry, that was just random. But I do agree Izor, how it all led to killing pub. But we can't go back, cause no one wants to. So how do we fix this without murdering pub? Places like ?go base, etc. won't even match up anymore due to pubshield(2), and they think purepub was bad. Restricting levis everywhere just won't pass by very easily either. But then again, we don't know unless we try. And we need a solution that isn't appealing to us, but appealing to the newcomers.

[Izor]

yeah but i havent seen anyone really oppose restricting levs in all arenas. Normally I would be the one that is expected to. I personally dont like that change, but I think it would restore balance to all pubs, which is the primary objective I'm pushing for. Only reason I shoot down most ideas on here is because they are more band-aid solutions, or dont make sense. People that post here do not have the ability to see how a change will affect the entire pub. For example, a 'pubshield' will stop people from shooting into fr, but it will cause problems elsewhere, namely the midbase where the attacking team will be peppered with L3 bombs cause they're the only targets. hf with a basing game in that

[Hakaku]

But instead of restricting the levi, we could completely remodel its settings. It is really quite useless, there's huff in elim over levis, there's not even a levi dueling map anywhere. Restricting it will render it 90% useless in all of TW. We could still keep it as it is for certain game maps, but for the most it should be changed. So should the weasel, it's been crippled like fuck, and its been weakened so much since '03. We've appealed a change and most people agreed, why can't we fix that, is it so hard? But instead it's easier to fix pub maps?

Edit: Ps, I'll be your first to oppose its restriction. Loved using it back in 98.

[Sufficient]

I dunno what the real objective for this thread is:

Are we ...
1) Trying to eliminate LTing?
2) Lessen LTing?
3) Make basing in pub more enjoyable?
4) Create different pubs to cater to diff players?
5) Make changes to the lev/LTing to make it more skill-based?
6) Eliminate wall-bombing?
7) Integrate lev as a basing/team oriented ship?

I personally think ship settings are unavoidable if you want the lev to be some sort of useful basing ship. If you have the objective of turning the lev into basing ship, it could in turn help pub (and imho all pubs should be the same).

The lev and weasel are really useless ships. They aren't basing ships (1 3 5 7 8) and they aren't dueling ships (1 2).

If we're thinking about ship settings changes, then we would need to figure out if we're tweaking them to become basing ships or dueling ships. And frankly, I would like to see them become more of a team-oriented basing ship.

[Vehicle]

Okay guys, here's the deal; the settings aren't going to drasticly change. Have they ever? No. The biggest changes are those to the lanc and cloaker, which I think we should agree, were not great leaps. The changes being proposed to the levi are serious changes in the style of the ship, it's not gonna happen.


Moot, have have one question, what's happening as far as purepubs are concerned. I'm fucking imploring you to allow levi's in every arena, and to reopen private frequencies.

Hell, if you really wan't to avoid leviterring on a private freq in pubs, set the bot to only allow frequencies of 2 players for 5 minutes, at which point they are changed on a public freq. However, you would have to adress the issue of being able to switch frequencies and remain alone. But with minimal coding, you could eliminate that issue.

My only issue with purepubs is it more or less seperates the small population of expert (I use the term loosely) pubbers who could play in subarenas but often are in the publics. You put all the good players in purepub, and leave the lower pubs for newbs who can't switch arenas, the dying levis who rarly play anymore, and people who spend their time in spawn.

In my opinion this issue is the main reason there is no more serious play in publics. If you make them all purepubs with levi's included, there will be less arenas (because people will have no reason to switch and create more pubs,) with a higher capacity of players. People will argue that because people don't switch arenas, there will be different things going on in every public, causing less people to base. However, with pubbots encouraging basing in every arena, more players in each arena would base.

On top of all of this, by putting purebots in every arena, players will be exposed to basing more easily, and will be more likely to start basing. And there are a lot of people whining about less up and coming talent and a diminishing basing community. If more people begin to base in public arenas, more people will become good at basing, and in turn, more players will enter the go base community.


Sorry my post is so long, I hope someone reads it.

[Izor]

umm the thing that separates purepubs from normal pubs is levis..how can you have purepubs with levs? Someone mentioned this earlier but I thought it was just a mistake on your part in the wording

[Vehicle]

umm the thing that separates purepubs from normal pubs is levis..how can you have purepubs with levs? Someone mentioned this earlier but I thought it was just a mistake on your part in the wording

Purepubs aren't just without levis. Purepubs differe from regular pubs (in my eyes) in the following ways:
Timed Games
Allowance of private freqs (in pub 0)
Allowance of levithans

So in guess in one sense they aren't purepubs with levi's, but the way I look at it, levithans are just a piece of the pie. In my post when I talked about purepubs I was including the timed games and private freqs.

So what i'm saying is put timed games in every arena, but allow levis. Because if the changes to the map don't suck (I haven't seen them,) levi's won't be as major of a threat to basing, especially if you enable the blocking of the 2 player frequency that I discussed above.

[Mootland Farmer]

One of the main points I'm driving here are that all Public arenas have to be the same or similar. And I've mentioned that to other Staff members who are possibly making changes too, otherwise there's no point making any changes.

In terms of the bots, I see it like this. There's a bot in every arena, kinda like what we have now. This bot will have multiple games. For example;

Publicbot>
::Timed-Match
:: Points-Race
::Total-Points
::No-Game

There may be other games, I can't remember. This is an example of what players may be able to vote for. I think the option to disable/enable private frequencies would remain in every bot. Leviathans would be allowed in every arena. Information regarding what the games mean and what they're about would have to be up somewhere. I can already think of a few places where (bots/f1/TW site etc).

---------

Likewise, I thought PurePublics would have worked, if they had been spread across all arenas. But DoCK> wouldn't have any of that. So I think making a solution across all Public arenas would make everyone happy.

Everyone has their opinions of what may work and what won't. I think it's best if we just try different stuff, and see what works. If the map change doesn't work, then we could try reducing the Leviathan's blast radius for example.