Distension Beta Suggestions/Bugfix thread

[Fluffz]

may i suggest something about the cloaker: make it the fun assasin ship it used to be in pub before staff *cought* messed it up into a wanabe basing ship. imho a cloaker doesnt have to keep up with a spider kill or ratio wise, just make sure its fun to play and has its chance to get RP.

so what was so much fun about the x? it was getting bounty, laming people, and hunting people. so why dont u improve on that and

• give x an unholy high streak rp bonus
• give x a prey which gives unholy bonus rp when killed, but inform the prey it is hunted
• increase the lameness of vengefull bastard with shroud, a chance to *kill or something similar
• give x an addidtinal bonus for teks

and please give x a repel at some point, half of the cloakers power was to repel mines into the enemys face.

a great jav skill would be to unprice every repel in a defined range once in a while like by messaging !!, duno how traffic and lag effective this would be but in theory with all the sharks around that would rock. Or a skill that warps a shark by messaging the name to the bot. something like that

[gdugwyler]

Changes:

• Killed low rank caps. After seriously thinking about them I couldn't see a real point. Lower ranked players give a much lower amount of RP. It just doesn't add much on to the high ranker's stack. High rank caps are still in place, however, as earning full ranks off of large ships at the lower ranks kills the fun. Actually ...
• Now you can't earn more than 25% of your rank from any kill. It might be tougher for newer players this way during, but I think we'll have enough random players filtering in during public release that it won't be an issue. This should give new players a bit more of a sense of accomplishment when they rank up.
• Participation: Aqua, at first I was going to give the reason I'd had for participation being killed by changing ships: that you could play most of a round in one ship, then change to a lower ship just before a win and gain all sorts of RP. Then I got to thinking, well, it's not very abusable if the shipchange is free while you only have one flag. Furthermore, the amount you gain for a round win is in direct proportion to your rank (also in response to Mjoll's post -- this's the way it's always been; the averages you see at the round end screen are just that, averages). This may not be permanent, but I would like to give it a shot to see if it works. I don't think there are many cases in which it can be abused all that badly. We'll see.
• Levi was made a support ship before the huge recharge buff. Now I think it's more than capable of handling itself.
• I'm (possibly temporarily) making the Weasel a support ship, as a crutch, and as a motivation for people to play the ship. The reason is that generally they're a somewhat weaker ship than the fighting ships, and they're able to perform special operations such as taking out terrs, stealing a flag, and so on. Personally I've been playing a low-level weasel and with the rocket haven't had much difficulty getting quite a few kills with it on players above my level; of course it still doesn't compare to how well a WB or Spider can do. We'll have to see how it goes and work from there. An energy increase might be needed, but I'd like to see it become more maneuverable or able to fire more rather than go that route.
• As another initiative to encourage Weasel playing (and possibly reduce the length of matches), I've changed the amount of time required to break or establish a hold on a sector from 10 seconds to 6. This is still a decent amount of time -- enough so that either the enemy has to be caught somewhat unawares, or one team has to have a minor hold... just not so much that it makes it a true pain in the ass. The recent flagroom changes I realize will still make flag capping more difficult, but I also hope that it increases the skill required to enter and take a base, and will put more emphasis on mid-room defense. At present, the strategy is to wait in FR for the enemy, something that may eventually lead to rather monotonous play... any ideas to mix this up a bit are welcome.
• Spiders can now get L3 guns ... at level 75. This represents a change toward making all ships able to achieve great things in later ranks. The Lanc will definitely be seeing additions of the 5 basic upgrades as a result of this decision.
• Spider Infinite Energy Stream percentage chance reduced from 10% per level to 9%.
• Lancaster Special (bomb) energy cost and firing delay both significantly reduced.
• Shark gun firing delay halved; mine and bomb fire delay also reduced. I've noticed that sharking has reduced lately, particularly with the repel changes. Maybe this will make it a bit more desirable. Firing delays are nice in that reducing them usually just gives ships like the shark more options -- more ways to use energy... not so much changing power extensively so much as giving them the freedom to use the energy for offense, if so desired. By the way, how is the Shark multi doing lately? Anyone still use it? Note that this change will make acquiring L2 guns on a shark particularly useful, perhaps worth the time placed. At that point the ship may have a formidable offense considering the very low firing cost (lowest in the game).
• Players will now warp further down at the start of a round, closer to the base entrances. One exception is that a single Terr from each team will be warped into the home FR, if available.
• Special warp points will be active to warp players from one location to another, active every 15 seconds.
• Soon to come: Jav JumpSpace ability. Use your imagination. It's cool.

[Aquatiq]

I just think the participation penalty for switching ships should be abandoned for the beta altogether, it inhibits testing more than it 'rewards perserverance' or whatever it's supposed to do. I'm all for seeing it in the real release.. and I think it's good how it is, that if you switch to a support ship you keep participation.. but I don't really think it's a good thing to have right now, I just don't see the advantage of keeping this setting for the BETA. If this isn't doable, maybe can we have 3-4 free ship switches per battle/war? It's just prolonging the testing, I think, if people are discouraged to switch to new ships in the first place.

[Mjollnir]

I agree that the rocket's time could be upped a bit.

As for rank caps, they make a lot of sense. It's easy to kill low ranked ships, so go for a challenge, plus it sorta stops feeding of others.

High rank kills are annoying, if i can kill a lvl 40+ ship, give me all the glory! but i can see how this might level the playing field too much.

If you keep getting these caps, and they actually annoy you, just switch ships!!? If you like the one ship so much, does it really matter how many points you get per kill? I wonder how many of these people complaining about not getting any points for low rank kills have balanced their hangar? not that i'm saying it's bad to play just one ship a lot and be good at it, but i dont think that's the point of distension. And if you're so bad ass that you have 8 level 20+ ships: maybe take a break, let the others catch up to you, and it will be fun again.

I do have 8 level 20+ ships. Since the tests are so short and they are only done on weekdays I don't really wanna miss any of them. It's also true that the rank caps are there for a reason. I am just just trying to explain how I feel about different things while playing and the rank cap happened to be one of the things that were kind of annoying when playing as a ship that gets a lot of TKs since the TKs cost A LOT. It is necessary to have some kind of rank caps anyway so I am not advocating a big change but maybe some balancing.

[DankNuggets]

I agree that the rocket's time could be upped a bit.

As for rank caps, they make a lot of sense. It's easy to kill low ranked ships, so go for a challenge, plus it sorta stops feeding of others.

High rank kills are annoying, if i can kill a lvl 40+ ship, give me all the glory! but i can see how this might level the playing field too much.

If you keep getting these caps, and they actually annoy you, just switch ships!!? If you like the one ship so much, does it really matter how many points you get per kill? I wonder how many of these people complaining about not getting any points for low rank kills have balanced their hangar? not that i'm saying it's bad to play just one ship a lot and be good at it, but i dont think that's the point of distension. And if you're so bad ass that you have 8 level 20+ ships: maybe take a break, let the others catch up to you, and it will be fun again.

[Mjollnir]

Someone told me today "lagout doesn't work," but I was able to use it myself. I did notice that the bot seems to sometimes spec you between shipchanges for some reason, but this is a new development, from what I understand. I'll take a look at that and lagout, and try to fix the shipchange limit.

Caps: Caps of this nature are pretty standard. I'm not sure who you're killing with your rank 40 Levi, but at least half the people playing at any given time are above rank 20. Maybe you have a bad build, or just aren't very good with the ship yet? I'd like to know what other people think about the caps, if they've had problems, etc.

I think you are already aware of this but every time someone tries to shipchange when still rearming they get specced (unless that has been fixed recently). The rank caps can be a bit frustrating for a high level ship with bombs because the TK penalty is so much higher than the RP you get from low level kills. Especially sharks give a lot of negative RP since they give extra negative RP from being a support ship and they are always suiciding on the front line so they keep dying to my Jav.

The new kind of flagroom, where the flag wall is closer to the other walls, has an advantage and a disadvantage. The advantage is that it is harder to attack the base now which was probably to intention of the change. The disadvantage is that ships like the Jav has an even harder time to find a decent spot to bomb without TKing people. Also, the battles tend to take a very long time nowadays and this naturally makes them even longer. I am kind of neutral towards this change though so I don't know if it should be changed back or not.

I noticed you say something about changing the RP that people are going to get from winning a battle. You said that it could be dependant on the combined ranks of the teams and that is a fine idea. I don't know how it currently works but it could give you RP having your ship's rank as one criteria. That way everyone would get their own amount. I also think the victory awards are not big enough for fighter ships and on the other hand the award is huge for the levi (being a support ship) even though it can get as much kills as any other ship.

One more thing: I think the weasel is really weak. I haven't played it for a long time now but I tried it again yesterday and it was just plain boring. It is even a pain to kill a lvl 20 terrier with a level 46 weasel and naturally I get low rank cap from a kill like that so it isn't very rewarding either. I have also heard several other weasels complain about the ship. Too bad, we can't test the new cheaper energy costs yet because that might help out a bit (currently 6/14 energy level costs 30 UPs..). For some reason, I don't think that will be enough though, especially since all the other ships will have cheaper costs too. The rocket timer is too short as well.

[roxxkatt]

and dug, you must realize:

YOU HAVE CREATED THE BEST EVENT IN TW.
EVERYONE IS YOUR FRIEND NOW.


ty again for distension =)

[roxxkatt]

caps lock is highlighter ;D

reentering dist, i really, really like the colors.
especially the blue.
maybe some cyan on top like snow on a rock, or sexy icing on a sexy, sexy cake? =)

keeping players closer to the mean is logical, but making it a grind to play by cheating players from rp sucks too =(

and im going to scrap some stuff so my 0/5 thr and 0/5 spd levi can go faster =S

[2kill]

Someone told me today "lagout doesn't work," but I was able to use it myself. I did notice that the bot seems to sometimes spec you between shipchanges for some reason, but this is a new development, from what I understand. I'll take a look at that and lagout, and try to fix the shipchange limit.

Caps: Caps of this nature are pretty standard. I'm not sure who you're killing with your rank 40 Levi, but at least half the people playing at any given time are above rank 20. Maybe you have a bad build, or just aren't very good with the ship yet? I'd like to know what other people think about the caps, if they've had problems, etc.

ok my experince with this was I swiched to sharked and I laged out nothing really new there... I went !lagout and it put me in right away but speced me again I did this untill I got dc'd then I came back and had lost all particpation. I'm just wondering did you take off the 30 sec wait or is this part of the bug?

I haven't had any major problems with it since I still level fine, mind you my high rank ships don't tk exept maybe the lanc if I'm not careful so I'm not losing much of anything, so maybe I'm not the best one to talk about it though you should be a good enough bomber to avoid teammates.
[Edit: just read MeDDi edit and I agree

also I was hearing that people didn't like the plum chat... maybe going back to the purple? I was divided over which I liked better]

2kill

[meddi]

I am sometimes frustrated with the low rank cap when playing my shark, but the fact that I get a lot of profit sharing means I dont rely solely on killing to rank. I could see how fighting ships might be hurt by low rank caps and high RP requirements for each rank.

I don't think the upper cap should be removed. It isn't hard to rank with low ranked ships, there is no need to make it easier.

Edit: Now that I think about it more, the low rank cap helps to keep the ranks of the player population closer to the mean. This is important to help keep things balanced and makes it harder for the most powerful players to become even more powerful.

[gdugwyler]

Okay, Cheese, first off, chill out. Yelling at me about bugs I'm as yet unaware of makes no sense. It's basically just a personal attack. Take a deep breath, remove the caps lock key if necessary, and realize that we are in beta, and bugs you're reporting are the exact reason we are still in beta.

I don't just magically come to know about things. I rely on people to tell them to me. Insulting me by yelling at me, essentially saying, "this should have been fixed yesterday, even though I'm telling you about it today" is not even remotely helpful. Keep in mind that I only play Distension about 15-30 minutes a session personally, and during that time I'm usually looking mostly at the chat answering questions (or lately being yelled at about colors) and am rarely actually able to test the game out. I rely on you guys to find these things for the most part.



Someone told me today "lagout doesn't work," but I was able to use it myself. I did notice that the bot seems to sometimes spec you between shipchanges for some reason, but this is a new development, from what I understand. I'll take a look at that and lagout, and try to fix the shipchange limit.

Weapon bars: I know the weapon side bars are not fantastic at the moment. But if you'd actually read what I'd posted you'd know these will be fixed.

Bombs: Why be a Levi when you can Jav? Well, because a Levi is a gunning glider with EMP bombs, and the Jav is a bomber. A lot of people play Levi and like it. I see no problem with the Levi's role.

Caps: Caps of this nature are pretty standard. I'm not sure who you're killing with your rank 40 Levi, but at least half the people playing at any given time are above rank 20. Maybe you have a bad build, or just aren't very good with the ship yet? I'd like to know what other people think about the caps, if they've had problems, etc.

[meddi]

Colours are good, and I could see my port timer today.

[roxxkatt]

colors:
they look good now, only changes id make is a little cyan on top of the blue to lighten it a bit, and make the chats fireman red, the plum sucks imo, and maybe make the yellow look gold.

-important-
also, the gray weapon lvz is craptacular, looks as well as use.
today i was trying to figure out if i had xradar on, couldnt tell by looking.


its time for another team shuffle.
there should be a regular team rearranging, imo.
perhaps weekly, or bi-weekly.


bombs:
reduce the radius or power, and up emp bombs from 35% to 40%.
why be a lev when you can jav?
maybe, bombs look good as is anyway.


-important-
high and low rank caps need to go.
playing a lvl40, every kill i get is low rank cap.
if i got a 4fer, id get 50rp a person, and -150 for the tk i got with it, making my great shot worthless.
playing a lvl10 ship, every kill i get is high rank cap, 100rp or so is still good, but its horribly difficult to kill anyone.

rank caps cheat everyone out of the rp they deserve, both high and low lvls.
the high rank cap cheats the newbie out of more rp to lvl faster,
and the low rank cap cheats the high lvls out of the rp they have earned, making the game MUCH more of a grind.


also, today i tried to change to a shark.
WHAT A FUCKING ORDEAL.
the shark max wasnt reached, btw.
i tried 5 times, and was spec'd by the bot each time, and given that stupid nonworking lagout business.
i kept trying until the point where subgame disconnected me.
i came back to dist, and tried lagout. OF COURSE IT DIDNT WORK.
3 more tries of being spec'd, and i finally got into a shark.

#1: REMOVE THE SHIPCHANGE LIMIT COMPLETELY, OR SET IT TO 100.
#2: GET LAGOUT WORKING PROPERLY
#3: LET PEOPLE SWITCH SHIPS WITHOUT SPECCING THEM


also:
when u left, u said u set dist to continue for 90 minutes.
but the automated shutdown came like 30-40 minutes later...
did we get shorted an hour of dist? =(

[gdugwyler]

After messing with the font a good bit more, I'm now pretty happy with it. The distinctions are good as well, and it's highly readable. However a lot of the colors work pretty exactly with the normal radar colors (for friend/foe) so I'll probably go back to those, with minor modification. Will tweak the port color as well -- thanks for specifically mentioning the radar part.

For those wondering, we will be testing soon, but I need the arena clear. As the biller's down, just wait for the bot to PM you before entering.

[Mjollnir]

...
Radar: I understand it's harder for those who have been playing many years to make good use of the radar; this was considered when the change was made. It's keeping with the philosophy of the game I had when first imagining it several years ago, however: holding to traditional principles (of both SS and TW) where they have unequivocally succeeded, and freely changing that which is mired in tradition without necessarily being the best way to do it. I'm not saying that this arrangement is better; however, in my personal opinion -- and I realize this is not the opinion of the majority of people as far as most things in the world go -- if something is different, even if it's slightly worse it's still better than the monotony of that which is the same. With that formula in mind, the chances of "success" in my eyes when changing something fairly trivial such as the color of enemies on radar is quite high. Furthermore, another goal has been to reward the adaptive and quick-thinking, and perhaps also level the playing field between new players and old players: both of which are pursued by this approach. Regarding the flag, though, I'll change that: you're right that it's too hard to see when you have it.
...

The enemy and teammate colours on the radar are also less pleasant on the eyes (especially the white) than the old colours and it is harder to distinguish stuff because of it. About the portal showing on radar: it is too dim (just like the flag is too dim). The portal comment was just in case you were going to change the portal icon instead of the radar.