Distension discussion

[Raible]

This is how to me repels and everything connected to them appears to work:

At the instant you press repel, your SS client repels everything that's within range and it 'knows' about. However it doesn't do this every frame it renders, only let's say every 4th. Let there be a WB at fairly close range that fired. So prior to the next frame your client gets the info that a bullet was shot at a specific point and direction 1/5 of a second ago (laggy), calculates where the bullet is now and displays the bullet. Even though the bullet is in the repel effect area, your client doesn't check for it. Had you pressed repel at this frame, your client would've known the bullet was there and repelled it. You didn't, the shot travels for another 2 frames and hits, you die by rep ignore.

The one and only true solution:

Make bullets (and bombs) slower so there are more frames in which they are in-flight per distance travelled. Anyone want to argue for that?

Increasing the repel strength (i.e. RepelSpeed) won't do anything for helping rep ignore, only drive everyone else crazy. Decreasing it will make repped mines travel too slowly among other things.

Increasing the repel radius (i.e. RepelDistance) won't do anything for helping rep ignore at close range, but decrease the skill required to stop a bullet at longer range, rise the duration and likelyhood of battles being stalemates exponentially, aside from driving everyone else crazy. Decreasing it would make even the skillful sharks complain.

If you travel at high speed, don't expect repels to do much for you since you'll be out of the repel radious sooner the faster you travel. The repel doesn't stick with you. And a shark like any ship should require skill to play, dodge, wait for the moment to rep, not plow through a contested flagroom with rep-rep-rep-rep expecting to be invincible doing so.

I like the present speed and distance settings but would put RepelTime to something lower (170 or 150) for various reasons. Creates strange effects for an otherwise manouverable ship rushing around even when the shark that repped may be far away already.

[Kolar]

You're not seeing a decrease in <ER> events because of distension, you are seeing a decrease in event population because the <ER>'s are retarded and fuck everything up. .?go bug would have 40+ people if Flibb or Chao was hosting it, but I haven't seen Charis get more than 8 people to an event yet, even during peak hours, when distension isn't even running, because he/she (shim) ruins everything "shim" touches. I don't see the logic is holding 50 people hostage in distension for 30 minutes, so Flion or Charis can host a shitty event for 6 people.

From my perspective I think Hosted Events and games like Distention, even TWD, TWL, Elim ect... they target different people in the zone. You don't see your average TWL player playing ?go bug or a game of zombies. A lot of staffers seem to not understand that, and why should they? All they see is their position in this zone becoming less important so naturally they will fight back against something like Distension. In doing so they've lost sight of what staff's and development's role is here. It's not about their position or whatever they do here.

People aren't locked into those two categories either but if they are not exposed to something either then a random game of zombies or bug they will eventually return to Pub and never go beyond that, eventually tire of the environment and not return. Distension and by extension most advanced systems in this zone like it (TWD as another example) has the potential to retain player interest and maybe turn around our downward population stats.

All of that said I don't think it's our place to put a value on Dist over that of ER events, I think the general public has already spoken and it's our job to find a balance between the two while acknowledging the want of the player base. There are going to be legitimate times for Dist to not be online and also for no ERs to host events, most notable during TWL games. The best solution would be to figure out first how long per day (for now) should the play window be open and second how it should rotate day to day so everyone gets an opportunity to play.

Randomly turning it off and on throughout the day is causing too many problems within Staff right now and those coordinating it I think know this and want to cause that unneeded controversy.

[Peace_Maker]

Solution is to allow more people to start it. It is an event. ERs, event referees, should be able to start and stop this bot. What other staff started events can they not control? None that I know of.

[Soilderz]

distension should be an event that can be hosted like.. half hour everytime, by any ER+ (like any other event) Distension pretty much kills everything else in the zone, especially when it's hosted for hours at times.

[gdugwyler]

Distension doesn't run like every other event, though -- and as you know, not every event runs for only 30 minutes. Many do run longer. However, the difference between those long-running events and D are that people feel (like TWD) more invested in the play. That is to say, who they are is more important in Dist than in most other places; the bot remembers them and their decisions, and those decisions have a lasting impact on their gameplay for hours to come. It's not merely an event. At present it's hosted like an event, sure, but it really has no more need for a host than does tourny.

The reason that there are specific hosts for the game at present is due to a number of factors, the largest being that it's exceedingly complex, and those who host it need to be aware of its intricacies. The host is someone of whom one can ask questions and get solid answers. The host also operates somewhat like the beta-testing operators -- conduits for reporting bugs and ideas. It's not a difficult job, but it doesn't lack in requirements. Note that for security & safety reasons, all SMod+ have operator commands, though without strictly being recognized as operators. Those who play Dist are of course welcomed to host it as a normal Op if they feel comfortable doing so, however.

There are a few notable exceptions as far as events that can't be hosted by ERs -- Trivia I think is still one. Eventually, once Distension becomes (comfortably) part of the TW lifestyle, and almost all staff are familiar with it, it's likely that all senior ERs+ will be given the ability to control it to some degree -- enough to be able to host or shut it down as needed. It won't be that big a deal at that point; the controversy will be solved.

One benefit to an increasing number of Distension players is an increasing involvement in the zone. While any number of players may wait for Dist to load, only 40 can play; the rest can either wait or do something else. What happens when a player who's played too much that day is booted, and has to wait quite a while to get back in? Does he or she log off? Or does the player wait around a while, possibly attending hosted events, going to a JD, playing some pub? It's hard to say exactly without tracking people. I'd like to think that so long as we present high-quality offerings to substitute Distension when it's unavailable, players will stay. As the regular Distension population grows, the player limit will not. Maybe a solution is to allow them to wait in other arenas? For example, rather than sitting in spec in Distension, if you put yourself on the waiting list, the bot could PM you that a slot has opened up, and they'd have X minutes to wrap up what they're doing before the slot is given away again. While this might encourage some dropouts, at the very least waiting players could get involved in other aspects of the zone.

The other thing I'd been thinking about (as a distant potential) would be league games using Distension ships. In a contained match, players would be given rank X in all ships, and would have 10 minutes to assemble their ships as they please. After that point, you'd have a DD, JD or BD proceed as normal. This might open up more options, really... perhaps it would legitimize Levis and Weasels in basing, as well as allow new leagues to open? This could bridge Distension-only players with league play, and perhaps encourage larger kinds of competition... players might be competitive in the Distension version of BD, and also the regular DD. Wark also has an idea for Distension squads internal to the game that might help players become involved in other parts of the zone.

Bottom line: let's think of ways Distension can be used to bring the zone population and participation back up. If we assume it will divide us, or take over entirely, we're admitting to defeat that none would like.

[roxxkatt]

i would rather have it take over the zone, but im also concerned that the zone can not handle the load of distension based activities.

also, i would like to note that the distension folk are becoming unionized,
and sometimes, the drop of population in events is deliberate, in protest.
there was a time where we chose to have -60- ppl play in one of CHARIS's events.
Which is something to be said....

and perhaps the staffers concerned about losing their jobs and fighting dist:
maybe their struggle is merited?
however, theyre fighting a superior power.
Staff may be a monarchy, but a king of no country is no king at all.


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Welcome to Page 6!

[Viruk]

I would much rather see Distension as a properly integrated bit of the zone and not have it 'take over' anything.

Reason being that I still like to play (pure)pub even after all these years.
I believe Distension could be too high a learning curve to take the place of pub for many players new to the zone and the ship locking system makes it initially quite restrictive. The leveling system also makes it inherently unfair to new players.
It does seem vital that new players know about it though as it should be a major attraction.

I am glad that people are thinking of interesting new things to expand Distension and perhaps involve players in other areas of the zone. It would need to be done without slowing rearm further or making the bot much more likely to die though.

As far as competing with events is concerned:
I have seen a Distension arena full of players idling away with only vague hopes of Distension being started despite being clearly aware that an event was being hosted elsewhere. Clearly many players are like me and not very interested in most of the hosted events most of the time. This is not always that the event is poor quality or poorly staffed it is just not what we want to do right now.
If Distension ceased to exist it is likely that events would only benefit from the most hopelessly bored players. This might be good for the ego of the hoster but is not what is required to keep people interested in the zone or make for an exciting well-fought event.
Shutting down Distension when hosting events would have the same problem but with added anger from dedicated Distension players who have had their session interrupted. Obviously if Distension was less rationed there would be less of a problem but it would still be a factor.

That said I would hate to think of events dying for lack of players. Fewer events would be bad for the zone and perhaps one of the dead events might turn out to be the one I care about. Again, I think that if Distension was less rationed it would begin to make less of an impact on other arenas and events and a less crowded Distension arena would mean less lag and less waiting for slots.
I think the idea of being able to play events in other arenas while waiting for the bot to message you for is a free slot is a good one. Perhaps it could somehow be expanded so that completing a hosted event would be like a Distension 'mission' that would somehow give you an advantage in the waiting queue like a higher priority or cancelling out some of your Distension playing time?
Maybe even completing a round in purepub could be included in this at critical population levels if the bots could communicate with each other?

As well as thinking that short Distension RP-multiplier events could be hosted (standard Distension is clearly too long-term and popular a game to work well limited to 30 min slots as someone suggested) I also wondered whether you could have Distension with a fractional RP-multiplier for periods when other events were being hosted. This would still be annoying to hard-core Distension players but at least their playing would not be interrupted and they could still earn a tiny bit of RP. Those less dedicated to Distension might find this a good time to have a break or join the event. Perhaps this could be integrated with the 'mission' idea and be launchable by event hosters with a single command.
Of course even if this all worked brilliantly you might still want to shut Distension down for 'critical' events like squad league matches if squads contain dedicated Distension players or the bot was stressing out a server or something. I think even the more militant Distension players would (reluctantly) accept this.

[Peace_Maker]

Ball game: Please make it illegal for enemy terrs to enter the goal area. Hosts could help enforce this. It makes it impossible for either team to score. If all enemy are attaching inside one goal that team can not score and the team trying to get in that goal can not score either. Repeat offenders could be asked to sit a game or some other minor penalty. Any thoughts on this game improvement? Please comment

[Aquatiq]

Ball game: Please make it illegal for enemy terrs to enter the goal area. Hosts could help enforce this. It makes it impossible for either team to score. If all enemy are attaching inside one goal that team can not score and the team trying to get in that goal can not score either. Repeat offenders could be asked to sit a game or some other minor penalty. Any thoughts on this game improvement? Please comment

dont see the problem i just kill them easily booom boom!
but when i'm not there yea it could be an issue, maybe auto-warp them if they get into "goaltending range" which could be drawn out with fly-over tiles.

[Peace_Maker]

The other thing I'd been thinking about (as a distant potential) would be league games using Distension ships. In a contained match, players would be given rank X in all ships, and would have 10 minutes to assemble their ships as they please. After that point, you'd have a DD, JD or BD proceed as normal. This might open up more options, really... perhaps it would legitimize Levis and Weasels in basing, as well as allow new leagues to open? This could bridge Distension-only players with league play, and perhaps encourage larger kinds of competition... players might be competitive in the Distension version of BD, and also the regular DD. Wark also has an idea for Distension squads internal to the game that might help players become involved in other parts of the zone.

Dug!!! I have mentioned this several times and people have put it down. I think it is a great idea. I have lots of ideas for this. For one, I would not give each ship a certain rank but I would give captains a set amount of UP to use for the entire team. Just a thought but the rank would work too. Let me be part of the idea team when it happens please.

Edited to prevent double post:

I would like to request the power for tec ops to put blocks around the flag be removed. Is it not enough they can slow down entrance into mid base and completely prevent entrance into the flag room? When a team has fought to get that far and they are close enough to touch flag, I think they have earned it.

[Kolar]

I would much rather see Distension as a properly integrated bit of the zone and not have it 'take over' anything.

We had a discussion on staff chat about the future of the project, I don't think anyone is keen on having Distension take over the zone or any major part of it. Rather I have suggested people should learn from it, we have a lot of people who are into the style of play it provides so maybe some ideas from it could be implemented elsewhere.

I don't think having it running for 3-4 hours a day puts too much on Event Refs, they can host later or try during those hours. And added to that I don't think Distension players are the type of people who actively participate in regular zone events. As Dug said it has some depth to it, it's not a simple 10, 20, 30 minute event that comes and goes and may appeal to newer players use to less structure and more random 'shoot here, enemy ship blows up, next target'.

But as I said earlier in the wall of text it's not staff's place to put a value on one of the other, that is for the public to decide. I believe if people are simply not going to play an ER event and they are a sizable population, who would rather spec and wait, then there's no reason to delay it or kill it for the intangible benefit of the zone's other events. It's like turning off TWD to boost the population of a public arena, it's just not going to happen no matter how much we might want it to.

[2kill]

Dug!!! I have mentioned this several times and people have put it down. I think it is a great idea. I have lots of ideas for this. For one, I would not give each ship a certain rank but I would give captains a set amount of UP to use for the entire team. Just a thought but the rank would work too. Let me be part of the idea team when it happens please.

I have thought of this idea as well during beta I even talked about it and think that a league would be an amazing idea

I even considered to keep the map from getting tired that since its a war between two empires that people could summit maps as a different sector and once every month or so it would be put up for a weekend or something. now I kind of ditched this idea cause the balancing problems with a new map, and only being up for one weekend, and all the loading thats required :-/ just shoting this one out there. see if anyone even remotely likes the idea. since we are talking about leagues which would be on a different map we could have different maps for different sectors... whatever

2kill

[roxxkatt]

• distension
• distension2 (30+)
• distension league
• distension dueling
• distension squad dueling

these have been ideas for AGES, but they will never exist until we find a way to use them without crashing tw

[Vehicle]

Jesus, I stop reading forums for the long weekend and have to spend an hour catching up on this thread.

Things I've noticed:

All the bitching about other events and Distension killing the zone could easily be solved, as I stated before, with a set schedule. I've been informed that there is a loose schedule to when distension is supposed to start but it hasn't been followed. Like I said before, I propose 11-4 and 6-11 EST to give Europeans and North Americans ample playing time while still allotting time for other events.

I think we should let players leave the arena when they’re in the queue. I’ve waited 25+ minutes to get into a game that I was only added to after it had ended. Let players go do other things and get a PM when a slot has opened.

I’m not keen on the idea of a Distension league in the traditional sense (IE: TWD-D/J/B style). If anything, I’d say make the map smaller and let squads challenge each other to distension games where your rank carries over from the pub to the competitive. (Meaning if I’m L25 Terr in regular distension, I’d be L25 in TWD-Distension). Either way, though, I don’t really like the idea.

I think we need some sort of team shuffler, as many have agreed. And I think Stabwounds proposed method, 3 rounds in a row under a certain amount of time or 5 consecutive rounds, would be fair. Or, since we currently require a host to start the thing, add an Ops command to shuffle.

I think that’s it. PS: make me a distension Op? I play this shit on the regular.

Edit: I forgot two things:

The small weasel, when a team gets 3 or 4 of them, is really annoying. Make it harder to unlock or give it a longer rate before it can shoot again.

The goals need to be reworked. I think we went from too little base to too much base as far as the goals are concerned. Minimally keep their shape but make them larger.

[gdugwyler]

For team balance, I'm still unsure as to how to make that work properly. I may just have to eliminate the idea of armies as truly fixed -- that's essentially the way it is at present anyhow. We have to shuffle so often that they're nearly meaningless. Instead we could do something like assigning players a team for a particular day; if there's an imbalance, such as a massive winning streak, a shuffle would not be uncouth, and no-one could complain.

I'll think of a way to implement the out-of-arena queue fairly soon. No reason to need to sit in spec... it just makes it easier on the bot, at present. Much easier. Still, there's a way it can be done.

I'm thinking about a way to keep Distension "new" to players who've been going at it for months... what if, on attaining X number of round wins and rank X in all or some portion of ships (probably 50), you had the option of "reincarnating" with a number of special options... for example: a unique ability for each ship only available to those who've gone through this process; removal of various penalties (no scrap or specialization charges, for example); maybe a small queue advantage ... essentially, various goodies for the die-hard Distension player. They'd then be able to complete this process again if they wish, giving further bonuses (perhaps allowing one ship to start at rank 70? 80? -- and with each "reincarnation" allowing one more ship to start at this rank, though the number of wins required, rank required, or possibly just the sheer RP required per rank would be increased at each stage). In this way, the game could continue to challenge for a very long time those who simply have to have it all, or at the very least would like motivation to continue playing a game they enjoy. This would also solve the problem of players getting to extreme ranks and dominating others.


Also, regarding those who are playing more than others (no, not going the route of instituting a penalty for such persons), I may implement some kind of small bonus to those who have not played a particular ship in a while. Play time will begin to be stored per-ship in order to keep track of this information; it will be considered separately than daily play time. If you've played ship X more than Y amount of time yesterday, you won't receive any bonus today for playing that ship; however, you'll receive a small bonus (10% or so) in the ships you didn't play yesterday. This will encourage parallel development of ships for those that wish to pursue that option, while not penalizing those who are simply there to fly their favorite ride. Haven't hammered out the details, but this is definitely going in.