Distension Beta Suggestions/Bugfix thread

[Mjollnir]

...
you have to remember the ballgame is to dispel boredom, not to be a distraction, modifying the arena just for it is a terrible idea.
i suggest that the reward for a goal be 80% of what it is.
...

I know what it is for. I see only benefits in having a seperate area for the ball game. Currently some of the newbies keep playing near the goals, even when the game starts, because the games are mixed together and the ball game switches to a real one really quickly. Having the ball game in the same area as the real game just confuses people and makes it harder to improve the ball game field. This is not a high priority thing to do but it would make it more fun and less confusing for people.

[2kill]

I'm very content with the spider right now and do not think that it needs further adjustment. Tweaks for the specializations might be nice - I've got high energy low recharge and the energy advantage I have seems to only amount to 100-150. I do think allowing spiders to have L3s is going to cause a lot of problems. No one has reached that point yet, but someone will and it's likely that it will get nasty -- we'll see.

Dug has said already that spiders will never get blues.

you have to remember the ballgame is to dispel boredom, not to be a distraction, modifying the arena just for it is a terrible idea.
i suggest that the reward for a goal be 80% of what it is.

isn't the reward for the goals only like 600 per person? I read it that way it goes 7000 rp total (ave 623) or something

so dug should up the multiplier to 20 soon, so we can get lvl80 ships, and then possibly FINALLY PUT THIS TO PUBLIC!

quoted for truth

people seem to forget that this is beta and in most betas where there is levels the designers change you as they need to test things this means you need to learn to detach yourself from your ship and learn to play what ever rank you are. and if you really can't do that, before posting make sure that it isn't the other reasons you list and not cause you are annoyed that your ships were changed.

[jngy slate]

I have no motivation to play.

[Dibs]

A few comments and some suggestions for abilities.

• Terr:Terr attaching is either balanced or it is unbalanced (it is unbalanced, imho). As much as it is something that Terrs have to look forward to as they level, this is unfortunately not a good idea. Upping the required level does not fix the problem, it only delays it. Imagine the outcry when only one terr is level 100 and guarantees that team victories for weeks. The fact is, it takes a lot to take out a terr and even moreso when they're higher level - allowing the higher ones to come back quickly would be killer.

• If you can keep the ball from being present when the flagging is on, then having it decrease the speed of the ball carrier is essential. As it is now, faster ships have a huge advantage and there is no passing. The whole game is pretty much chaos though, but with nothing else to do during the downtime I'm not complaining.

• Sharks in trench wars have always been a necessary evil. I feel it's too far alon the development process to try to change that, but there must be some way to keep reps from shutting down an entire game. One idea I have is an ability for a ship likely to kill sharks (WB, spider?) to be able to activate an ability that prevents the other freq from being prized repels for 5, 10, 15 seconds (levels 1-3).
  • This idea can be extended. Since I'm not sure if you can de-prize specific greens, one way to allow ships to have a 'debuff' would be to disable prizing of that green for 'x' amount of time.
  • WBs could disable speed upgrades, Terrs thrusters, etc. etc.

Right now the ship distribution seems to strongly favour weasels and lancs. I'm very content with the spider right now and do not think that it needs further adjustment. Tweaks for the specializations might be nice - I've got high energy low recharge and the energy advantage I have seems to only amount to 100-150. I do think allowing spiders to have L3s is going to cause a lot of problems. No one has reached that point yet, but someone will and it's likely that it will get nasty -- we'll see.

[H.M.S. Stargazer]

NEW DISTENSION TIMES FOR 2.5 weeks!

Alinea, Dug, and myself have discussed this at length and we have decided to change the hosting times starting tomorrow. It will be hosted from 2pm-3pm EST (this is the same) and 8pm-10pm EST. (this is extended and moved an hour later).

Many west coast players have voiced concerns that if they work 9-5 days they cant make either test time. So this is for them.

If this works, we will keep the times.

-H.M.S. Stargazer
On behalf of ECT/ DistOps

[roxxkatt]

ive seen the code, and the complaints as well...


you have to remember the ballgame is to dispel boredom, not to be a distraction, modifying the arena just for it is a terrible idea.
i suggest that the reward for a goal be 80% of what it is.

the balancer has always been incorrect, and needs to be fixed.
terrs should be worth 3 of any other ship, sharks worth 2.
a lvl60 wb shouldnt be worth a whole lot more then a lvl20 jav, and those should be much more linear...

the avarace currently checks for speccing losers, but apparently not far back enough...

and the high ranks make the game less fun while everyone has them, but the high lvls NEED to be tested...
a reset to 0 would take far too long.

so dug should up the multiplier to 20 soon, so we can get lvl80 ships, and then possibly FINALLY PUT THIS TO PUBLIC!

[Mjollnir]

So I'm giving up on this.

I haven't seen more than 15 people in the arena at one time in forever. This new "lets put everyone at rank 40" thing completely screws over those who actually put time in to level up their ship. Sharks still run the game with 5 reps. Terrs get obscene speed and portals.

No shuffles in weeks. Every other ship is a weasel. Game can still go to 5v10 without anything from the bot. Ship specializations only make things more confusing and are completely unnecessary.

I know its your game and you do what you want dugwyler, but damn. It was going good until the 5 minute timers were put in.

Many many suggestions have been put in, but I don't see any useful responses, so I'm not even going to try the "constructive criticism" approach. Perhaps something will be done when it actually does die.

I think there was at least 21 people playing today. This is a beta test so it's natural that people get screwed sometimes. I probably lost the most RP of anyone in that reset and I don't even care. You have to understand that anything can happen and the whole purpose of the test is to balance the ships and the game so that it's stable in the public release.

I agree that Sharks are too powerful but I don't know about Terrier portals and speed since you are playing against very high level ships. They may get too many portals but I would have to test a lower level Terr to know for sure. Terriers are very strong but I guess that's how it's intended so they don't die so much. The bursts now disappear more quickly than before and I think that's a change to the right direction.

The bot doesn't allow teams like 5v10 easily and you are just plain wrong about that. The assists reward needs to be upped though. The Weasels do seem extremely powerful at the moment so I am not suprised people play them.

Ship specializations are fine when they get balanced. I think they really need to be looked into though since they are going to be a big part of the game. I was playing around with my level 60 Terr and noticed a few things. For example low nrg, low chg ship got 33% recharge and 1775 energy and a med nrg, med chg ship got 36% and 1825 or so. The difference is so small that I am wondering if it's supposed to be like that? Also, warship seems to get a lot more energy than a Z-class ship could afford even with all the UPs. I wonder if the energy prices are in balance? I am not sure about all the numbers since it was some days ago when I tested the shiptypes but you get the general idea.

The powerball game is currently very chaotic. A suggestion:
- Make it a confined space (and make it smaller than the current ballgame area) that is seperate from the rest of the map.
- Warp the people in there when the break starts and allow people to !enable or !disable the ball game warping if they want.
- You could possibly add some obstacles to make other than the fast ships useful as well.

[Mjollnir]

Today i spent most of the test assisting. Last game, finally one thats somewhat close, i am on freq 1 the whole time. First time theyre gonna win a round. freq 0 decides to go speccing before round end to create an avarice (btw i thought that was fixed?). Bot detects that, and puts me back on freq 0. result: i get nothing as round end bonus. Cant the round end bonus be calculated for the amount of time you were on the winning freq?

Also, i have to agree that the 5 min timer as it is now isnt working out. Imagine freq 1 getting fr with 0:10 on the timer for the other team. that means they have to keep fr for almost 10 minutes in order to win. So either you close up the fr so that getting in becomes mich harder (DONT- fr battles are fun) or you can put the clock to three minutes. When another team has it for 10 consecutive secs, they get the hold. Otherwise the team that loses first fr battle loses the round- havet seen any eceptions on this yet.

Hows the newbie tutorial coming? with ads we have some newer players in - and its pretty much hopeless to get them started now, with high levels.

The timer is way too long like I have mentioned before. And it does seem to be possible to cause an avarice by speccing. It also seems that it is always warning about avarice when it's a small game and the teams are 5v6 or so. The teams are never balanced in a situation like that (especially since everyone is level 40+) so avarice shouldn't happen. It doesn't help that the assist rewards are tiny and the guy who wins by avarice gets more than someone who assists just before winning.

We really need a good tutorial for newbies. It is extremely confusing for them to be put in a level 40 ship without any help. It would be much easier if they started at level 0 but then they'd whine about getting owned. Since the newbies tend to have no attention span whatsoever they just leave after dying a few times. Most of them have no idea that they are supposed to upgrade their ship, and that alone makes them think the game is stupid, since they keep dying.

[Vergilius]

Today i spent most of the test assisting. Last game, finally one thats somewhat close, i am on freq 1 the whole time. First time theyre gonna win a round. freq 0 decides to go speccing before round end to create an avarice (btw i thought that was fixed?). Bot detects that, and puts me back on freq 0. result: i get nothing as round end bonus. Cant the round end bonus be calculated for the amount of time you were on the winning freq?

Also, i have to agree that the 5 min timer as it is now isnt working out. Imagine freq 1 getting fr with 0:10 on the timer for the other team. that means they have to keep fr for almost 10 minutes in order to win. So either you close up the fr so that getting in becomes mich harder (DONT- fr battles are fun) or you can put the clock to three minutes. When another team has it for 10 consecutive secs, they get the hold. Otherwise the team that loses first fr battle loses the round- havet seen any eceptions on this yet.

Hows the newbie tutorial coming? with ads we have some newer players in - and its pretty much hopeless to get them started now, with high levels.

[dako]

So I'm giving up on this.

I haven't seen more than 15 people in the arena at one time in forever. This new "lets put everyone at rank 40" thing completely screws over those who actually put time in to level up their ship. Sharks still run the game with 5 reps. Terrs get obscene speed and portals.

No shuffles in weeks. Every other ship is a weasel. Game can still go to 5v10 without anything from the bot. Ship specializations only make things more confusing and are completely unnecessary.

I know its your game and you do what you want dugwyler, but damn. It was going good until the 5 minute timers were put in.

Many many suggestions have been put in, but I don't see any useful responses, so I'm not even going to try the "constructive criticism" approach. Perhaps something will be done when it actually does die.

[Lag.Com]

The only way to do it would have the 'attach-bounty' set ridiculously high, then buying the 'being able to attach to terrs' upgrade give you a zillion greens to put you over the required amount. Which would be bad.

Of course, the bot could just spec you or ban you or something if you attach to another terr. Easy

[Vergilius]

2)terrs attaching: I think you have already fixed this but 50 level terrs shouldn't be able to attach there just isn't enough flying death around to suppress them so maybe when they get to level 75 they could attach... so make attaching bounty 75 almost no one well ever get there anyway.

cya all in distension

2kill

In higher lvls the ship's bty doesnt represent its lvl anymore. eg i have a weasel of lvl 51(? 52? i dunno for sure) and my bty is 65-ish so that doesnt exactly work out. Maybe make attaching an ability you have to purchase?
Available at rank 75, cost 1 UP or something? Although im afraid that isnt possible to implement in the game..

[2kill]

Okay... been awhile since I posted, heres my take on whats been happening.

1) people not playing: this has a few reasons, one the two weeks without any games as dug worked on it, two instead of a nice build up to the new system which it will be when its released people were forced to re-upgrade their ships confusing them plus learning a new specializen system I think its the combo that really threw people and new people are turned off cause they have to jump right in to upgrading their ships and they don't really know what they are doing. I do not think that it really is the specializen by its self that is turning people off and as dank said you can now just play without even worry about specializen

2)terrs attaching: I think you have already fixed this but 50 level terrs shouldn't be able to attach there just isn't enough flying death around to suppress them so maybe when they get to level 75 they could attach... so make attaching bounty 75 almost no one well ever get there anyway.

3) Levs shrapnel: annoying as heck... but I think it should increase the levs kills I know cheese l3 shrapnel was annoying me... though I hear he annoys his teammates

4) New abilities: I am just listing abilities and will not comment on what ships they should go on thats for you to decide

One: "vortex" the ship opens a vortex underneath his ship and all ships near him (and including him) are thrown in different directions kind of like a random jump space. As he upgrades the ability the area it grabs and throws increases (or just one if you want) this ability could get extremely annoying... I suggest only one ship get it and it have a cool down of 30 minutes that would make the max times you can use it in a round would be 2

Two: "store access" I know we talked about specials being bought before but here is a different take. the person would upgrade this ability and get access to buy stuff through the bot with !buy <name> now the different levels of this ability would unlock more powerful specials the order is up to whatever you want but something like this rank one, x radar stealth, rank two cloak multi, rank three, temp energy or temp recharge (only one allowed per life) rank four, thor repel (to buy these it would have to be a huge amount of points). Now when making this I think you will have to decrease the amount the flags give you or just take them in to account and make everything good and expensive

three: Darn it! I forgot I was thinking about this last night if I remember I will post again

cya all in distension

2kill

[DankNuggets]

i think it should be made pretty clear (since it took awhile to sink in with me) that you can forgo the specializations and continue playing advanced scout with little or no recourse. This should keep people who think it's gotten "too complicated" from complaining, since it's the most complicated change.

I don't know if it would just add a bunch of spam or complicate things further, but if you could upgrade a ship w/o actuallying piloting it, it would make upgrading much faster and help prevent afk people in battle. Something like !dock then !u #:# where the second # is the ship. Be even cooler with !mu #:#:#, but that's inherently complicated and confusing with 3 input #'s. Allowing !lagout for those people so they can take themselves out of the equation to prevent imbalance, but retain participation since they're supposedly upgrading to help the team. I think this problem mainly stems from the ship reset, so it's probably not necessary in the long run now that I think about it.

personally, i suggested nerfing lanc entirely because of foobarz camping in the corner of the fr, shooting multi lvl 3. He's quite adept at it, probably the highest lanc and one of the highest ranks in general because of it. It's plain annoying in a 5v5 game when he's the only ship that can afford to camp. The nerf of lvl 3 multi specificially ought to help stop him from being able to camp so effective. I don't think it's a good idea to continue the nerf too much, because the lanc should still dominate in midbase conditions. (fast moving, wide spread, high energy shots)

[Viruk]

raise terr attach bounty to 100, only THE BEST TERRS should be allowed to attach

I would rather avoid having ANY killed terriers arriving straight back in the FR with their starting burst. THE BEST TERRS will not be dying much anyway and if you do manage to kill them it is right that your team should get an advantage.

increase lanc bullet fire cost, more

Only if the Lanc is still overpowered and it won't underpower it at later/earlier levels.

slow lanc bullets down
increase multifire delay, to the stupidly long levi multi delay.

No fighter ship should have stupidly long fire delay or slow bullets.

ball game is good, but possibly distracting. move wormholes farther away from the goals.

I like the wormholes near the goals. I hate that goals can apparently be scored (very noisily and spammily) too quickly. Can you temporarily set the speed of the ship that has the ball to a standard slowish rate to equalise the ships and encourage passing?

decrease spider bullet cost a little.
increase wzl multi delay a little.

Perhaps. It might be better to avoid tinkering without a good reason though. We have few low level ships to test it with (and they don't seem to know enough to realise that they should be higher level.) As it is the new system is likely to have upset ships that were already balanced at lower ranks.

ADVERTISE DISTENSION

Agreed.

and to all those people that think levi shrap/bomb is overpowered,
#1: i can hit a -weasel- with a big, shiny, blue bomb, and then the wzl promptly fired -2- multifire lv3s at me immediately after, killing me.
#2: every bomb nerf makes the levi bomb more useless.
#3: emp bomb only does about 20% damage, and dug keeps reducing it for some reason...
#4: a blue bomb costs about all the energy to fire.
#5: bomb = many tks, big bomb = many more tks

Levi bombs are not overpowered without the shrap but I don't think I could design a level 40-ish weasel that could instantly fire back even one multifire after being hit with an L2 bomb unless you hit it when within the blast radius. Although most ships can survive them it often seems as though it would be quicker to die and respawn than wait to recover from the EMP enough to fire. This seems right to me.

and i believe the shrapnel is an excellent idea, because it actually allows me to get a kill with my bomb, even though its 15rp for -1- shrap, and i only get 5 or whatever per lvl...

Kills not deserved by your aim. You would struggle to find many other upgrades for 15UP that are always available and can deliver that kind of damage. Cheap at twice the price.

and to dug:
the energy bar is almost completely useless,
set the max energy as low as you can, as close to the highest a ship can get...
then add a long energy bar, LONG, into the lvz, that should stretch across a 1280x1024 screen, to fix it.

Only if it doesn't mess up the screen for those playing at lower resolutions.