An end of an Era

[Fit of Rage]

I might be late out of gate here, but from what I've seen pure pub is more of "basing" than the free-for-all it used to be. It's definitely more competitive and at least in my experience, it's the lesser of two evils. Speaking as someone who's played for 6+ years, and based most of that, I can say I feel like I get more practice out of purepub than say ?go base.

[J.Birdman]

Mootland Farmer, your logic is flawed.

You say that moving the purepub to the second pub is a means by which you can determine the popularity of it. How so? The reverse arguement can also be applied..Who is to say that the non-purepub is more popular by moving it to the first pub?

Whichever pub is first in the arena list is the one that is usually going to be the one filled up, period. That's common sense. But in essence what you've now done is kill purepubbing. There are now usually never enough people in the purepub to even hold a game, let alone a decent one. What you are really saying by making this swap is that "pub-laming"*(IE LT'ing, LT-hunting, spawn-hunting, private-freq'ing, spawn-turreting, etc) is what you want new players to learn, rather than semi-organized, goal-driven, team-based play. In my opinion, that's crazy.

But the bottom line is this..

How many players are needed for "pub-laming"?

Answer: Far less than needed to hold a decent purepub game.

(*Note - I use the term "pub-laming" simply because, in general, it appears to be the preferred vernacular for whatever you call that style of pubbing. I would also like to add that I myself enjoy doing some of those things. I simply like to have the choice to do both, but with things as they are, that is seldomly possible to do.)

[Bioture]

I knew something was up when I got blown up by that blue bomb while going up the tube!

Yes, I believe that there should have been a poll... so people who are accustomed to purepub can still have one. You're doing this for the benefit of everyone, right Moot? Then let the people decide.

I remember a few years back someone decided to give ?go boki a go as the main pub map without consent from anyone... what a nightmare that was.

I think it's a nice idea, but pub has evolved (for better or for worse) and users will be accustomed to that.

[bkgmjo]

things thrown in from me:

pubbing people might know im almost 99% of the time on roof on freq 12 in my little weasel.

why?

i dont like dealing with teamkills, laming, spawning. but that is almost all pubs are about those days. pure and non-pure.

i "play" this game because i know people i can talk to. and i think i am really not the only one logging in for just the kind of community, not the game.

when i see basing going on, and one freq doesnt have x-radars, i kill the cloaks trying to lame them. when i have lts attacking me or totally destroying basing, i shoot them, which usually doesnt take more than 1 or 2 mins. there is about 3 or 4 terrs who can manage to evade it for longer, but none can live forever. they dont even get to line up a shot when i hunt them constantly and if i dont shoot them they have an unlucky warp into a bunch of spawners.

now if i can do that alone on a priv freq, why shouldnt any random basers (even if they didnt play since the 90s) be able to do that?

things i suggest are:

- keep the public a public, not ?go base or whatever limits

- the timer can be fun, but please give an option to shut it off. i hate all this bot spam (includes ads for automated zones, i wanna be able to turn it OFF, i dont care what idiot gets fed in duel)

- allow levs/lts everywhere. they are easy pray for a working team.

- get that anti-tk bot back that was there like ages ago and changed ships for tkers. i tried playing pure sometimes and left cos those dumbfuck javs wont stop tking all day. (the idea of more tks allowed for lev but harder punishment someone stated was good)

- leave items to buy/costs like they are. i play here because i dont want to have to buy everything and upgrade constantly. its what makes the zone different (anti costs 2000, worth only 10 or less! kills when you hold flag, now if thats too hard go cry).

- autohost events like base/elim/whatever depending on the population. rotate them if its not enough players online. nobody enjoys them with only 3 or 4 guys in.

- get back the old basing weekends. was by far enough limitation.

- if you already have your spybots running around the zone make them collect votes for changes BEFORE applying them instead of leaving it to a small group in this forum(or some comittee i only see the leader of) and shocking the rest with unexpected changes. set a limit of usage for votes. a 100 hour usage guy got no idea about the game yet.

- have a pub squad ranking somewhere and inform people about it. the only squad working together in pubs is happytrain. and only to lame levis and spawn.

- introduce the minigames in pubs. often mentioned never tried out for real. its an awesome idea.

- train your mods. often when i ask them stuff they have to ask others/dont even answer me/insult cos they feel personally attacked.

- finally get a tutorial back like it was in the old ss client.

- limit spec times/set it equal to safety time. arrogants kick option is a nice idea, but doesnt help anything, both bots r more than easy to trick and spec population quite often kills pubs.

- get rid of the get killed 5 times get kicked rule. or at least increase it. it ruins some really great hosted games(starcon for example) and punishes the people suiciding for the good of their team.

- reestablish the old lvl2 bullet settings. levis in spawn are defenseless with them and lancs are just encouraged to keep straying. this zone was one shot kill not lucky spray hit stray in spawn.

- make the weasel fat again. i love playing without laming with the small one, but it is used to lame all the time and to destroy basing. really give it the old settings back. make it dam slow, increase its energy, let it cloak constantly, take away its radar. give it its rep and rocket. it was an awesome mine clearer at entrance and lt hunter with the cloaked rocket attack. id likt to see the small one kept alive in some kind of event tho. its great fun to duel with it.

- remove levi repels. easier to hunt lts, more teamwork required for them. not like reps really save them in spawn anyways. once they are target they r killed.

- let tests for changes run for longer than....4 hours

- HAVE MORE SEX!!!

- ?message me with hate spam for this longass stuff

[spinsanity]

Noah, Venice and Soilderz

Noah, why complain? Nothing has changed (yet), for about 1 day, pure pubs were taken off, now they are back. I don't know what you didn't like, but as I pointed out in a earlier post (health vs unhealthy), we have all the dueling lone freqs and LT priv freqs in one pub, and all the basers in the other.. if we had more people in pubs and pubs with the same rules, then there wouldn't be this problem. (If that was your complaint).

Venice, Ajant has the right idea, but there are some more acceptable solutions that accomplish the same goals, for example timed game, I sure thought about timed games being a good solution, but at the same time, open-ended play has been part of the TW pub tradition that even pure pubbers enjoy... but timed games would certainly encourage good gameplay.

Instead of banning priv freqs, which would also block people that wanted to dual, why not have priv freq limits (like only 30% of the population could be on priv freqs with a max of 3 priv freqs). Too many people on priv freqs is the only problem that doesn't tend to be self correcting when we have enough people in pubs for 3 or more full pubs with the same rules. Which gets back to another Ajant idea, which is to limit numbers of levs.. I understand why, if you look at the normal rule pub vs the pure pub, there are normally too many levs in the normal TW pub, BUT if there was more pubs with the same rules, you would scatter the devoted lev population among the pubs and it wouldn't be a problem, especially if changes were made that would emphasize basing.

I was thinking last night about timed games, there are reasons I don't like timed games and some pure pubbers don't like the idea either... BUT one good advantage of timed games is that its a good way to put emphasis on good game play and discourage lone wolfs. IF we had timed games like every other weekend (for example), that may have the effect we are after, but still have the traditional open-ended game play people like about pubs.

Soilderz.. yeah, you see what I see for the most part. Understand that if changes were made to get more people in pubs and with more pubs all permitting levs/lts ALONG with a series of minor changes people like ajant or I or others have brought up (map changes to some degree, easier to buy antiwarp, possible timed games ever so often, priv freq limitations of some sort), then what your noticing would disappear.

Also soiderz, your right to be looking at how many auto-hosted zones there are and if our current population can support them. As far as 2 full pubs, that is not enough, there needs to be minimum of 3 (with the 4th being a come and go trash zone), and this also relates to what hosted zones are going on and how many.

*** side note: I suggested that there is ALWAYS pure basing hosted zones up, and that they should be used more, instead of brining it into pubs. Someone pointed out to me that basing zones are timed, which not all pure pubbers like. So one of the solutions should be to modify hosted basing zones to be like the more popular pure pub rules.

[Noah]

I've tried to play some with the new pub settings, but it just isn't fun anymore. I didn't know how much I appreciated the pure pubs before this change.

Ah well, I guess if this is what is best for the zone, I'm not going to complain.

[Venice]

My ideas

OK, I tried to read all the posts, and there are some good opinions there, so I will add mine. Can't believe I actually applied to hated forums, but situation requires it.
In my opinion, pure pubs were mistake and are in certain degree responsible for decline in numbers of players. Maybe not the biggest reason, but they are certainly to blame for part of the damage.
How to better things?
1. bring back timer, there seems to be consensus that it was good thing as it introduced a goal in the game. Giving anti to spiders in winning team is also good, as maybe more people will use spider and not jav and they will help killing any LT that might be around.
2. NO warping in base for levs! No need to create massacre at start of every round.
3. NO changing of frequency in safe. In order to change freq you must spec and return on another freq. This will stop easy greening of levs in safe by their teammates and assure that people with some experience play lev. I can't imagine new players greening in lev on their own.
4. Limit the allowed number of levs and javs per frequency. This can be tested, but 2, max 3 levs should be ok.
5. YES to shipban for lev that team kills 5 times (or some other amount). 30 min ban for that shipwould do and it would also allow others to try levs. This will also make lev more aware of need to look where his teammates are before firing and it will limit "blind" fire from sides of base. Maybe it will even force LT to actually get inside the base.
6. NO private freq (i love those, but in all this years of LTing I saw pubs die every time when private freq becomes 2 strong), LT or no LT strong priv freq kills the pub or at least basing in the pub. It would be ok to allow single player priv freq for people who like to duel in pub or fight alone, because I dont think it will hurt basing and team play in pub a lot. There is a catch here. There are players who have some brain damage and feel they must tk LT on their freq. Those were main reason why I eventually had to go on priv freq every time I LTed. How to fight those, I don't really know.
In my opinion priv freq are main reason for pub to stop fighting for flag, not LTs. Besides, jav teamkills more then any LT.
7. Make reduction in points acquired when killing as lev. This will make it difficult for lev to ?buy his greening. Or just make things more expensive to buy if in lev. I am sure that can be done.
8. Make all the pubs same, because that is their purpose. Pure pub is not really pub since lev is not there.
That's about it. B)

After giving it more thought, the thing I like about pure pubs is the timer. Ajant, I agree with most of your ideas, but opt for as little changes/restrictions as possible. I'd say take pure pub, add levis, and don't warp them. I'd let the first three arenas be untimed, with private freqs, to filter out most of the goofballs. The rest can be timed without private freqs, with a couple kept levi free.

Venice

[Doc Flabby]

I’ve got an idea, lets make a thread 5 pages long and spend a lot of time discussing and debating how to improve/market an online game when it is not clear at all if;

a.) The servers are going to be around for long
b.) That the game is going to be around for long

That was kinda my point here: http://forums.trenchwars.org/showpos...3&postcount=18

The game itself i think will be around for a long time. However in its current form i think its life it limited to 2-3 years max. I've noticed a large reduction in non-SSC zones, this should be a warning to anyone, we are losing creative people who are trying to create zones. We're at the limits at the moment of how much further we can develop the game with its current client and server imo.

[Ephemeral]

I’ve got an idea, lets make a thread 5 pages long and spend a lot of time discussing and debating how to improve/market an online game when it is not clear at all if;

a.) The servers are going to be around for long
b.) That the game is going to be around for long

[Soilderz]

I haven't had the energy to read whole thread,I only read the first page:

First of all, I find that we have some problems, When staff took away the usage limits to b.elim it has been full. With 20 + people on days! It has been great, Now that is not a problem, But now when its friday, Tourny is on, We have 20+ people there, 4 people playing (?) And in the elim arenas there is 6 in baseelim, (there were around 15-17 at same time yesterday) and 15 in elim ,(2 playing) There has been many questions about if tourny should be gone because it kills the elims. I dont know. Does it kill the elims? Or what is it.. ?

Now to another thing, Im a baser, So i've noticed this, yes,we won game of the month, maybe we got some new players, Before this Pure pubs change (Not saying it is its fault) base was actually on at evenings/nights. Now when i logged on yesterday at the time whenbase is ALWAYS on. There were around 5 people + bots in spec. What? Why? Don't know if there any hosted event going on or what it was.. Why is base dead? Tonjo(i think) tried to ad there came like 5 more people there.
When pubs were changed or so if we think logicially there should come more people/basers to ?go base if they dont like that its levis allowed, But it has just gotten even more inactive. Hmm, Why? Now,Im on TW, I see 2 pubs, 35 and 30 people in it, Thats good i think? But then we get to a question

What is most important to try to keep active and so? For the moment i cant see TW hold, tourny,elim,baseelim base and pub active at same time, Not with this amount of people we have here in this zone. Im not suggesting ANYTHING that we should remove anything or something.. Just saying my thoguhts and ask what you guys think?

Bah, Never really written this long post,

EDIT: Now i've read through the thread a little. People saying that pub is NOT about basing, Its about learning stuff, Pub is where you come when you first enter TrenchWars. Yes, I agree somewhat, People come there first, They play,getting killed, dueling, hanving fun(hopefully) when i were new, I didn't have a clue there was actually a base or flag that you should keep even if i flew around the base on roof hunting people. Newer people dont really go into the base and know about the flag, So, Why are people whining that 'we' basers are taking over the pub and trying to get the levs out, to engage more better skilled basing with cram and so on, so newbs cant have fun? There should be diffrent pubs that allows levs and some that doesn't. Then some of you guys start saying that dont limit ships, New ones wont find it fun to not be alloed to lev and boom everyone becuase there is no one in the base where levs are allowed, Guess why? Because people dont like that levs bomb into base when they are fighting for the flag. When i enter pub i just see people whining on the lev (see mirrorrs log aswell on page 2) and no one really shouting, LEVS ARE SO FUN !! Now again, I wont say what is wrong or what is right before something otherwise is proved. Just my simple opinions.

Regards.. And sorry for the long post.

Okey just saw that you're not allowed to lev in pub 4

[Doc Flabby]

Your making people leave! Why MOOT WHY

???? pure pub was put back after about 4 hours of trialing this, things are as they were....

[Jockman]

I Need My Pub Back

Your making people leave! Why MOOT WHY

[spinsanity]

Moot Conspiracy?

Oh come now, there is no conspiracy, and the most of the roots go back before Mr. Moot's time... It goes back to well intended promotion of league games and that faithful decision to ban levs from league games. And while we had many full pubs, having one pub be like league games didn't seem so bad....

Well that system got out of ballance, so now its time to reballance things, that is why Mr. Moot started this thread.

Hehe, but was a funny post and your right about splitting pubs into two

[kage]

The Moot Conspiracy

1. Evidence

moonshake.txt
converitable motive
guilty testimony
lives in new zealand

2. Opening Arguements

KAGE: You may begin, for it is MOOT.

MOOTLAND FARMER'S ATTORNEY: To what do you account these allegations of consipiring, dishonesty, insincerity and public deception? I will begin by saying that the defendent is poor-

KAGE: no u r!!

MFA: [OFFENDED] DO NOT INTERRUPT ME. What is this, what you write? Is it intelligent? No, it makes no sense. Nothing ever makes sense. I use my knowledgable, vast, inconcievably large vocabulary and make the connections and it all comes out all nice and sweet and I know what you are thinking but no, that does not make SINCE Wittgenstein said no way to art in his logic box and I bet you haven't read that, Mr. kage, because then you would know exactly the meaning I am making, as opposed to your nonsense. I am a lawyer now son. Therefore we should just stop these proceedings right away for I have just proven him to be retarded like duh and but so what do you have to say about that?

KAGE: quoi?

MFA: Young man. Alright, I rest my case. You may give your arguement now, although I doubt it will be anything convincing considering your lack of trained professional to let you know how much I just graped your juice right there. You don't even have enough money to buy a lawyer, son, you can't be that bright. You live in America, goddamnit!

KAGE: well, basically, as the moonshake.txt will show you, once presented, mootland farmer had planned the decisions thought to be in reaction to player's wishes long in advance, no trace of spontaneity whatsoever. you may be saying to yourself, 'quoi?' - what does that mean?, and i will tell you what it means. it means that he has wanted to destroy the public zones of trench wars ever since he began playing subspace out in his farmland of lore (lotr, lolz). why would he want to eliminate public (no, that's public not pubic) play? well... he wants to kill trench wars. as you will find out, he has been the reason behind our population decline, causing other zones to lose players also because they could finally play in our zone with all the good players gone but eventually the game got boring for them too so they eventually quit and you may be thinking, once again, 'quoi' - wasn't he appointed not long ago?, and i would slap you because i would also know you are thinking that and well if he was smart enough to decieve you now don't you think it's conceivably possible that he's been pulling strings long bee-foh-two-kay-foh? yes, it is conceivably more than possible, it is true. you might be telling yourself, hmm.. well now i know WHY... BUT HOW?, and i would see play with my baaaaaalllls. don't you not know that dividing public into two separate entities will destroy the idea of pub as a complete entity? it's actually logical too- i had 100% of something and then i split it into two categories (those being pure pub and levi pub) and the number for each individual category rises but pub itself, the place where people go when they enter the game, the place that remains the same no matter which specific arena you are in as long as you are in pub itself, that place as a whole will have been divided and it will split in two. so listen newbies, this actually was a lot more work than i planned so i am not feeling up to forging a moonshake.txt because i am too lazy so if you just skipped down to the bottom you would have gotten my point faster i hope you read all of this suckas because i really did make most of that up because it sounded fun at the time but now it got kinda old.

well, the point that i just made is that when i allow for both butt-clenched seriousness to the point of absurdity above AND the laziness at the end, is deconstruction. our zone is deconstructing and there is nothing you can do about it. that is why this is called the moot conspiracy. embrace the chaos.

[spinsanity]

Healthy vs Unhealthy

Lets look at healthy vs unhealthy TW pubs.

UNHEALTHY TW pub system.
There are enough players for 2 full pubs.

pub 1 breaks down to:
freq 0 - 13 players all ships except levs - levs not permitted
freq 1 - 12 players all ships except levs - levs not permitted
spec has 5 players
** rules ban priv freqs- no players on priv freqs


pub 2 breaks down to
freq 0 - 8 players 2 are levs
freq 1 - 5 players none are levs
freq 34 - 1 lone wb
freq 911 - 5 players for a lt freq
freq 1342 - 2 players for a lt freq
spec has 9 players
------------------
This is a unhealthy TW pub system.
Pub 1 may have a good game going, but at what cost?
Well for starters all the players that know how to base are in one pub, while you have too many people dueling or going out on their own to form their own bad-ass freq in the other pub. Both pubs are unhealthy, one isn't TW, its some other game that restricts levs and priv freqs, and the other has all the players that want to play TW with levs and priv freqs---but they are all piled into one pub, leading to uneven and weak pub freqs and poor game play.


HEALTHY TW pub system.
There are enough players for 5 full pubs.

pub 1 breaks down to:
freq 0 - 10 players 2 are levs
freq 1 - 11 players no levs
freq 78 - 1 lone cloaker
freq 2375 - 5 players for a lt freq
spec has 5 players


pub 2 breaks down to
freq 0 - 14 players 2 are levs
freq 1 - 13 players 3 are levs
freq 34 - 1 lone wb
freq 911 - 4 players for a lt freq
freq 666 - 3 nuts trying a spider-terr
spec has 0 players

Pubs 3 - 5 are a close match to pubs 1 and 2
--------------------------------------
This is a HEALTHY TW pub system.
The players that want/know how to base are evenly distributed, so are the levs, so are the spawner/duelers, so are the priv freq players. This is due to more people playing pubs, and less are in manual or auto hosted zones AND because all pub arenas have the same rules.

---------------------------------------------------------------
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Changes need to be made that would get us closer to the healthy pub system. Having more than 2 full pubs, having the same rules that permit levs and priv freqs throughout tends to make the pubs self correcting directed at good game play. But a priv freq restriction a spec time/population limit MAY also help as well as a auto-even pub freq bot. A priv freq restriction may work something like: 30% of the players in a zone can be priv freq, first come first serve.... OR you could create greater incentives to stay on pub freqs.

Putting a limit on who can be in what ship seems to be dumb, since if people make the wrong choices (they are all levs for example) that team will not get very far << this is part of the game.

It wouldn't kill us to make other changes, for example experiment with a new map, as long as it can deliver the same fun, but maybe make things a little harder for the traditional Lev/LT. Maybe give a ship or ships a slightly better edge over LTs, for example easier anti-warp, as long as anti-warp wouldn't get in the way of people attaching to the base terr.

If we could get by without timed games, or maybe have time-gamed weekends that would probably be best.