Distension discussion

[dako]

Time to shut it down.

I'd love to see distension come back alive, but its not happening. Here's how it goes daily at 9PM:

Team 1 - 3 wbs, a terr, a lev
Team 2 - 2 wbs, a terr, a lev, a shark

Its the same setup every day, i haven't seen anyone spider for more than a round in weeks, same for jav / weasel / lanc. Lev is ridiculously lame with only 7 people in the game, and sharking kills the game entirely.

Kill it already.

Its the same 3 wbs - wicket, tagmor, house of orange, the same 2 terrs, me and comrad, the same 2 levs, desktop and carbonphoenix and once in a while mcvicar / haberdash will make a guest appearance.

This is not fun anymore. It isn't stabwounds fault either, I dont know why people blame him. Qan has been completely negligent of this game for about 4 months now, ever since the major recycles and bugs have occurred. He used to give the whole "but im busy" speech in a desperate attempt to justify it, but doesn't even bother to let us know if he's still alive. The last time he was seen was 4 weeks ago, and hasn't even let us know "hey guys im giving up on this sry". And it didn't help that qan gave distension ops so little power to actually do anything. So if nothing else, at least perhaps this post will urge dugwyler to explain the rash of lazy patheticness that he seems to be increasingly experiencing.

You suck qan.

Love, dako

[roxxkatt]

our excellent staff actually unbanned you the next day, because theyre well on top of things!

really!

[SokoMoko]

Why are the color's so blurry, and the text is silly, hard to read, well for me anyway =]

And when is my name on to be lifted of the ban for scoring a goal while I wasn't mean to

[D1st0rt]

Wouldn't bundling together speed, thrust, rotation into a single engine only give less choice and variety?

It actually encourages more variety because players have to make decisions on what they want. Here are some of the "sublight drives" as we call them. Hyperspace used to be straight prizing like Distension, but everyone ended up having pretty much the same ships. Now there are tradeoffs and different people's styles of play favor different choices.

[project dragon]

Wouldn't bundling together speed, thrust, rotation into a single engine only give less choice and variety?

You could make a lot of combinations. I guess my point was it's something to consider when people are finding the grind of leveling so difficult. A possibility to obtain more than one upgrade when you rank up (instead of possibly pooling all of it into a single upgrade

As for the multipliers, they were just a quick thought, and I am sure there can be others that could be thought of that could reward defensive and offensive achievements.

[Viruk]

At higher levels I think there will be quite a different playing style for specialized warships compared with artillery or science vessels even if there will never be a vast variation of basic weaponry and abilities. There is the potential for more specializations as well as new specials but anything important would need balancing.

Wouldn't bundling together speed, thrust, rotation into a single engine only give less choice and variety?

I like some of those temporary multiplier ideas although I think you should always have to do something positive to get them. Rewarding survival alone would only encourage camping and running whereas survival in a hostile FR is often a useful distraction and perhaps should be rewarded.

As for Stabwound I am not sure whether he is always doing the best he could do for Distension. Although I sometimes disagree with his decisions I do not believe he is singlehandedly killing the game. (AFAIK Distension is qan's responsibility anyway.) I am certain that he has been doing a lot just by being there to start all those sessions. He has done more than I could do and probably much more than any one unpaid game player should be asked to do. He deserves some respect.

Thank you for all the effort you have put in, Stabwound! Keep up the good work (but get some help!)

[project dragon]

I guess the thing for me was the grind, and the lack of variety per upgrade. I know making comparisons to Hyperspace is not the greatest but what I find that works for them is that each ship is vastly more customizable then what we have here. All the ships in distension more or less end up very similar to each other, whereas there is a greater difference in each ship in Hyperspace (if you play or watch Hyperspace for a while, you'll know what I mean). Also, when you upgrade an item, it does more than one thing (upgrading your engine gives you speed, acceleration and rotation, not just one of them), which I find also gives you more variety.
I don't know if it's just a limitation to our zone or not, but that are some of the reasons why I find I can depend more on Hyperspace to entertain me than distension. I understand that Distension is not supposed to be a knock-off of Hyperspace so my points may be moot, but I remember qan playing around in Hyperspace during beta for Distension so I know he did make observations then.

For more distension-based ideas, some I have thought of is:

-Temporary multipliers
sort of like how you get a bonus for a streak. How about multipliers for little achievements? (ie: 2x multiplier for streaks instead of a bonus, increases a bit after every 5 kills or so. TD multiplier: the more nme terrs you kill, the more you earn for each kill in the round. Endurance multiplier: every minute or something that you stay alive, the amount of rp you receive per kill increases) I think this way, it can be a small help with the grind, as well as give something else that players can accomplish.

-Map
I said it before, but I still wonder why the map has to be restricted to the general TW map idea. Why not make it open to different designs? I suppose you would want to keep it at 2 teams, but how about 3-4 different map ideas in the zone (create 3-4 rings in the map with a different base idea in each ring). Then possibly have a vote (or random, who knows) between the different "arenas" the round could be in.

Just some from the top of my head.

From what I gathered as I was thinking about what I was writing, comparing the arena to other zones, is that what I feel the arena is lacking now is variety. Sure, you can pick what you want on your ship and what kind of ship you want it to be, but more-or-less everyone's ships slowly just turns into everybody else's ship. Ships are basically striving to obtain the maximum of an item, but if there was a way where there are stronger benefits to other items (other than "I don't have lvl 3 bullets on my wb yet because I haven't been able to upgrade my wb's nrg yet!") I would bet that you will see plenty of different ship combinations than we are seeing now. Again, I am not aware of how constricted we are with using the bots and what they can or cannot do (changing rate of fire per ship depending on what lvl bullet you have and what-not), but if there are more ways to bring in different variety into the arena, then I am all for it.



Distension still has that potential. What we don't need is the useless bickering between players (those who play and those who don't) that do nothing to construct forward motion for this project, but people who are willing to offer criticism in a proper manner and in a proper tone. Realize that your ideas are simply that: ideas. There's no need to get in a huff because they don't listen to all your ideas or they just shrug off something you provide. This is very far from being complete, and I am sure that the Distension staff are grateful for all the input and dedication that it has received throughout all this.

Keep up the good work on everything Stab and Qan.
As for the bashing on Stabwound:
I am certain he is doing what he can to help aid in the arena. The lack of players now shouldn't be placed on his shoulders, as this is just one of the long-term variables that you can't possibly predict during the short-time beta testing. Some things have the possibility of not being able to stand the test of time and that is something that we have to work against.

[Dabram]

what a surprise a dumb side-event is dying out again..

i guess all the time spend on making a bot that can make the zone recycle a few times a day should've PERHAPS be spend on getting this zone (starting with pubs/tutorial) working properly again.

nah, i'm probably wrong........... i say distension just needs MORE moderating/botcoding, clearly with an update a day this event would keep it's 20 hardcore followers happy. and fuck the rest of TW i say.

after wasting time on this drivel, can staff please get their priorities straight on what's important now?!

[DankNuggets]

I don't play it anymore because of the time slot. I feel bad playing this game in a room by myself in the evening when gf gets off of work. Same when my friends are over at night.

Pretty much the only convenient time for me was when I got off of work for a few hours and on the weekends at odd times.

I guess I played it so much before because it was online when i was on. I was in school, so I had a lot of free time. Now I don't have time to log on more than 2-3 times a week.

Sorry I got no advice on how to improve turnout.

[dako]

To stabwound:

1. The bot has been shutdown and restarted, sometimes with days / weeks in between periods, with no real warning. People lose faith if they log on 8 days in a row and dont see distension going.

2. Nothing new is happening. It's the same 10 or so people every time, in their same exact ships, doing the same exact thing. No new or significant updates have been made recently, and its disillusioning to play the exact same thing.

Think about what was going right when we had a playerbase:

1. A predictable schedule when people knew (for the most part) exactly when distension was going to happen.

2. At least 2 updates a week on things that actually mattered.

3. An incentive to get a higher level ship than others.

Now, its just play for a week to get the next bar of your level. I'd go as far to say I have the most balanced hangar in distension (24/33/23/27/24/26/35/35/28), but even still, my lowest level takes more than an entire session just to level up at best with 10 people in game. Look at other successful RPG style combat games (ill go with call of duty). Level 1 takes like, 5 kills to get to. However, level 50 still takes only a couple hours at most. Its not like Rank 1 = 10 RP, rank 50 = 300000 RP, rank 80 = 370 million RP. This is the main problem I see with this game. There needs to be either a less harsh ramp up on RP ranks, or alternate ways of getting RP (achievments anyone?), or just make end game bonuses actually worth something.

[roxxkatt]

Leaving it up for half an hour at a time is never going to accomplish that.

again in case common sense isnt working still.

With how often this game has been shut down it's extremely unreasonable to expect all its fans to still constantly be keeping tabs on it... Many of them don't play Continuum for anything else. They'll play when they notice it's back online. Leaving it up for half an hour at a time is never going to accomplish that.

[Viruk]

It was 40 minutes and after 2 adverts. There were 6 people playing and that was slowly diminishing. This is supposed to be to stress test the new bot settings, and testing with 6 people is accomplishing nothing. I couldn't even advert again (even though adverting does nothing) because an ER started hosting. Besides all of that, the game doesn't even work with 3 people per team.

If anyone has any intelligent input on why you used to play and don't anymore, please let us know here. Is it just boring now?

I arrived 40 minutes after start to find bot had just been shut down. I would have been happy to play 3 vs 3 if players were active. I agree it would have been minimal use as a stress test but it could have been left running for us to enjoy and to maintain a reliable schedule.

I still enjoy playing Distension however I do play slightly less than I used to. My reasons:

After months of playing it is not new enough and exciting enough to struggle to make every single session. I don't think it was ever intended that we should.

I have achieved my primary goal of getting the 3 main gunships unlocked. Lanc is the hardest unlock and getting a relatively high level ship made it easier. I can play at leisure towards my secondary goals.

When Distension becomes unavailable for days at a time I am forced to find other things to do and lose the habit of logging in to TW to play Distension.

I am reluctant to abandon any other game I am enjoying to gamble on there being a full Distension session if the bot or the hosting becomes unreliable.

Having only one (slightly too late to be convenient) session time limits my chances of being available to play.

Having few players makes it less attractive. I still find it fun but not as much fun as with lots of players.

[iLDuce]

Make it later- 11pm EST.

If you care, I like to stay at my girlfriends after work for a few hours, and I'd be able to show

Or not. But from what I recall you were pulling in a decent crowd at the later hosting time. S'worth a shot.

[TagMor]

There were 8 people playing and others entered after you had shut it down.
How do you expect to gain players when you shut it down? I would think the only way to rebuild player numbers would be to have the game running??.. Not only are you preventing new people from participating, you are infuriating those 8 players who were playing and reducing the chance that they will come back next time.