Weekend of Oct. 25th, 2008

[Krazie_Killer]

You maybe asking yourself... whats the weekend event?

Well, i am happy to inform you that DISTENSION will be taking both time slots (saturday and sunday) of the weekend event, therefore, distension WILL BE our weekend event, + whatever else the <ER> Team decides to throw your way.

Expect Big Turnouts, Expect Big Explosions!

Have Fun
-Krazie <ER>

[roxxkatt]

HURRAY!

fr srs

[Heroin Bob]

wow, the one event i hat ethe most and its the only weekend event........ lame

[duel pasta]

and its still going strong after almost 5 hours with still 61 players in the arena, and 44 people actually playing

[Malladrin]

Congrats on the most successful weekend event in Trench Wars history!

However, there are now rumours Distension will be a weekend event only. If this is true, it's an outrage! Ranking is already slow on these low levels, and if we could only play weekends it would take literally years to rank one ship to a high level.

So either more Distension to the people or tweak the rp system to adjust for less hours of play. I would prefer Distension to be played every day though.

Dont lose momentum Staffers! You got the opportunity to hook the community now. Dont screw up please!

[dako]

Leave distension running on every day BUT the weekends (Mon - Thurs/Fri) for tourny, so that they alternate and both aren't running at the same time.

[Capital Knockers]

Leave distension running on every day BUT the weekends (Mon - Thurs/Fri) for tourny, so that they alternate and both aren't running at the same time.

good idea - whats distension?

[2kill]

good idea - whats distension?

In another person words...

in short:

TW + RPG = DISTENSION

thats all you need to know though if you want detail this is taken from my post in distension beta thread.

okay...

distension is in its essence a basing match with two bases. where you have to hold both for a set time (not sure whats it is at now it kept changing maybe one minute?). this is where its starts changing. you start playing with access to only TWO BASIC (I mean really basic they move like snails) ships (the terr and warbird I belive) you then go about trying to gain RP (rank points). to gain rank points you kill other people the amount depends on their level compared to yours, or you win the basing match which gives an RP bonus (quite big of a bonus too) now since the terr can't kill very well it gets double RP bonus for a round win and gets something called profit sharing which is where he gets a set % of RP that the whole team made in that time (profit sharing is an ability that that the terr can upgrade which I'm getting to).

okay once you have gained enough RP you rank up. this unlocks some UPs (upgrade points) that you can use to upgrade your ship. there is I belive a total of 16 upgrade slots per ship. 1-3 are the same for every ship. 1-3 being thrusters, top speed, and rotation. 6-16 are ship special abilities (like terrs profit sharing which is basic, or warbirds thor which is a high level ability, or sharks which can get more repels) no I didn't forget 4-5 thats later.

this is the basics I think though there is maybe one more thing you should know. there is also a mode of play between basing matchs where it is a soccer (football) game with the nets and where scoring gives RPs

In the advance area there was recently designed "ship types" which is where you chose what you are trying to get your ship to play like. Eg. "warship" which has high energy slow recharge and low UPs (so you have good energy and can tank shots better but can't buy as many special abilities) "science vessel" (which is the only ship that gets to set its own energy and recharge settings which is in upgrade slot 4-5 so its gets a high # of UPs but has to spend some on energy and recharge) there is a different combos along these lines. changing energy, recharge and UPs gains.

this is I belive it if I have missed something its cause I haven't been able to get in a test recently

if you wish to see the map and read the F1 which explains it from the developers view its up at ?go distension

hope this helps

2kill

hope this helps

2kill

[H.M.S. Stargazer]

Okay, Heres the dealio!

I Love distension! Have for ages. I will be working on the fine tuning the bot and gameplay with dugwyler. This will NOT be a weekend only event. I want this to be soemthing new for the zone, im not sure exactly how duggy feels, but I see this a the way the zone needs to to go to survive.

We have a thread about distension here in the forums:

http://forums.trenchwars.org/showthread.php?t=31676

Ill get back to you all and im sure duggy will be more than HAPPY to help us get this integrated into TW

Thanks.

-H.M.S. Stargazer
Event Coordination Team

[roxxkatt]

the faster this becomes every day, the better...
im going through withdrawal.

yes, it was the most successful weekend event in tw history, with a consistant 50+ ppl for 8 hours straight, on all 3 days.


monday, no dist, for 5 hours sitting in the arena:

wicket666> chesse what time?
4:2kill> I liked it
4:asesino-en-serie> when is distension?
leningrad> I was thinking of starting a Distension squad
Sketch_hs> it should just be always on
Flion <ER>> how am i ment to host it?
Hadouken!> is this being oppeeneed
District S> is distension gonna be host today?
Acido> wtf
Sodomizer> wtf
Burnt> starting soon?
CLAMY> wen does this place open
leningrad> 12 people in the arena! get them to start it Turban
Dude78> where's distensionbot?
4:TildeStar> D
4ankNuggets> how was it?
4:Trunks_rage> u just joking or are they really gonna have it next weekend?
4ankNuggets> cha-CHING
4:ST/\R_|)E$70Y3R> the distension file
chuK Nores> DIS TEnsION!
E#> What, another week 'til it's hosted?
Sonic11> DISTENSION
Sonic11> OR STRIKE
DankNugget> strike!!!!!!!!!
iHigh> is there a Dist schedule up anywhere?
SexualRobo> cheese, when i this getting hosted again??
SexualRobo> I looove it
KuleniKs> wnat to freaking play
iHigh> do you know if theres any scheduled time for it?
KuleniKs> dont think they are going to do anything tonight
piNNoy> g0g0g0g0
4:alinea <ER>> is Distension being reset before this weekends game?
4:Viruk> i havent heard anyhting about any resets
KuNI> whens distension on next?

all that in 5 hours.
didnt count how many ppl that was.
it seems all of tw is waiting...

[Andy H.K.]

Be quick with it then.

Something else (read: another game) is already getting too much attention from me :fear:

[Vehicle]

Not the most successful weekend event of all time, get over yourselves. (Malla, I would expect better from you.) There was a time where WW6 would get 150+ every weekend and journy would do the same.

Either way: Distension's cool and all but it's not a panacea, it's a sub arena. The only way it really works is if a lot of people are playing at once, to ensure easy (or less difficult) rank ups, so please for the love of God don't leave it running all the time.

What would happen should be obvious to anyone who logged enough usage to play elim. Things would start out great with a shit ton of people playing, within two weeks there would never be more than 15 people in the arena, within a month it would go the way of baseelim as a select few players would have obscenely high ranks while those with lives or other obligations in game would still be low ranked.

I would say do one of three things: run distension only when 350+ people are in the zone (have the bot zone automatically when such a thing happens,) run tourny Monday-Friday and distension Friday-Sunday, or even make the pub map distension on alternating weekends (which would also keep Dads Revenge from fucking up the pub every other weekend.)

The last choice would involve some tweaking of how players are placed in each pub and max players but no reason to get into that now.

[DankNuggets]

Not the most successful weekend event of all time, get over yourselves. (Malla, I would expect better from you.) There was a time where WW6 would get 150+ every weekend and journy would do the same.

Either way: Distension's cool and all but it's not a panacea, it's a sub arena. The only way it really works is if a lot of people are playing at once, to ensure easy (or less difficult) rank ups, so please for the love of God don't leave it running all the time.

What would happen should be obvious to anyone who logged enough usage to play elim. Things would start out great with a shit ton of people playing, within two weeks there would never be more than 15 people in the arena, within a month it would go the way of baseelim as a select few players would have obscenely high ranks while those with lives or other obligations in game would still be low ranked.

I would say do one of three things: run distension only when 350+ people are in the zone (have the bot zone automatically when such a thing happens,) run tourny Monday-Friday and distension Friday-Sunday, or even make the pub map distension on alternating weekends (which would also keep Dads Revenge from fucking up the pub every other weekend.)

The last choice would involve some tweaking of how players are placed in each pub and max players but no reason to get into that now.

Two things:

One, he's refering to the fact that the event lasted for like 5 hrs straight, both days with 1.5x the maximum amount of allowed players in it, so there were constantly people who wanted to play, but couldn't because it was full. It obviously didn't beat the sheer # of ppl at one time that events several years ago got, but the event itself lasted at greater than full capacity for the entire weekend. I don't remember more than three +100 person events, but they were definitely over within an hour or so. (i wasn't there, this is what i was told, they could have exaggerated a bit)


Two, it's not the same as elim, or tourny, or beelim in that there's direct reward for spending time in the game (not based sheerly on skill and w:l). You could suck ass at it, and gain a lot of emotional reward (ranking up) by playing it a lot, whereas in elim it's pretty much based on how well you do, and it's pretty much the same day in, day out. It has more versitility than the public arenas, so in reality it draws people in more than pubs. I'd be willing to bet that if it was the direct arena you entered, it would definitely stay populated vs. the pubs (quite a tangent, ill leave it there). Yes, it would suck if it was constantly 15 ppl, but it has a 1 base mode which would be effective with 15 ppl. 10, maybe not so much, but that's a very low # to assume. It can work almost as well with 16 ppl (think go base) as with 40 ppl (think pubs). That's almost what's so great about it. Also, given the slow ranking and coding to prevent feeding, there really won't be too many people outrageously ahead of your average person. It's not like you couldn't still have fun as a lower rank too: ranking up is half the fun, and it happens a lot more often when you begin than when you've been playing it forever.

i agree it's risky to go 24/7 and have it become a ghost arena, but if it's hardly hosted there'll be no point to play.

[Malladrin]

Actually the event lasted for around 8 hours. Started around 8 pm CET and ended at around 4 am CET, with maximum number of people in it all the time.
I'm not aware there has ever been an event going on for so long in TW before.

I concur with Darknuggets in the previous post.

[Viruk]

Either way: Distension's cool and all but it's not a panacea, it's a sub arena. The only way it really works is if a lot of people are playing at once, to ensure easy (or less difficult) rank ups, so please for the love of God don't leave it running all the time.

Rank ups will become difficult at high levels anyway regardless of the number of people playing so I don't think this is a good reason for limiting Distension time. Even without decent leveling rates I think Distension works as an alternative basing arena with a fairly small number of people (say around 5 a side as minimum.)

What would happen should be obvious to anyone who logged enough usage to play elim. Things would start out great with a shit ton of people playing, within two weeks there would never be more than 15 people in the arena, within a month it would go the way of baseelim as a select few players would have obscenely high ranks while those with lives or other obligations in game would still be low ranked.

I fear there is a lot of truth in this although I think it would remain popular for much longer than you suggest. I think it would still be worth playing because although high ranked players badly outclass low rankers in Distension they will never be invincible in a melee. The bot takes account of level as well as numbers and will try to balance teams. Even with caps for kill bonuses the low rankers will gain a whole lot more when they do manage to kill the high rankers.

Whatever the schedule, your Distension level or rank will never be a measure of skill. If it runs permanently then rank will mostly be a measure of usage. If scheduled regularly it will mostly be a measure of availability at the scheduled times. Anything between and it will be a mixture of the two. As with most leveling RPGs your Distension level is a measure of achievement rather than skill and those people with a real life shouldn't begrudge the virtual achievements of others.
Perhaps it would be possible to calculate a player rating based on RP earned for usage at each RP rate and then add it to the Distension page if we need a measure of skill.

I still think it would be best to have it running permanently with low RP rewards. Then advertise special Distension events with a high RP multipliers when requested or whenever player numbers and hosting slots warrant it.

I would hope that having it running permanently with regular adverts for special events might attract players to the zone (or even Continuum) since many people seem to be quite passionate about playing it.