Was having no bots a bad thing?

[schope]

yes, there are too many arenas.

no, ppl that play other arenas like base/elim wont have fun playing pub.

[raizin]

The bots being down sucked ass. I just beat diablo2 twice this week.

dont mess with twd arenas. it already sucks ass that on the weekends when us newb squads are most active, we only get 1 arena to fight with over TWL team warming up.

[Lag.Com]

I'd rather ?go afk were removed and people were disconnected for being AFK, because artificially inflating player count (more than the bots already do) is laaaame.

Also I've never heard such whining while the bots were off. People logged on then immediately logged off again because they couldn't JD, a bunch of us went to Extreme Games regularly to play stuff instead of TW. It just wasn't anywhere near as much fun as TWD and/or tourny/belimbeta.

?go javs was horrible because there were too many people

[kthx]

Yeah but I am not suggesting taking all of them down or anything, mainly I just want to limit the amount of crap to do in TW, so instead of 10 arenas with 10 people each, have 5 arenas with 20, or 3 arenas with 33. It is much much much more fun that way. Also if we combine the elims we will have the expanded maps for each open when there is over 30+ people playing in either. So your right.. ?go javs was never meant to be an automated thing it just sorta.. happened, but in ?go elim the jav arena is made to handle loads of people.

[Trunks_rage]

TWD used to be only on weekends and things were just fine. The fact that people only TWD now is part of the problem. Limiting the number of TWD arenas would only create a logjam of people sitting there waiting but if you shutdown TWD at regular intervals it would free up a lot of population for big scale events. The idea that we don't have to make any sacrifices to improve participation is idiotic. You need to have long term goals in mind. If you just want the population to dry up completely as people begin to retire and TWD becomes less and less competitive then don't change anything. But I think drastic times call for drastic measure.

[Noah]

I've always said they should recombine the elims. That was probably the single biggest fuckup by staff in last 5 years. The reason ?go javs has become so popular is because baseelim is always dead, and though the wbs might get a little annoyed having to wait for the javs and vice versa it would make for bigger games for both.

I'm a warbird and I don't care that much for javs. I would gladly sacrifice half of the games to javs to get bigger warbird games going. If this works as I hope then jav elims will be big enough to even get me interested. Please merge the elims back together, and remove all this elimbeta shit. Keep a fucking leash on what the coders can throw into the game, do that stuff in the dev zone.

Rather than limiting the number of TWD arenas you should limit the hours it is available, if TWD locked up for hour and a half or two hour intervals it would benefit both TWD and hosted events because each would become better regulated. In other words for two hours TWD is available then next two hours it isn't and on and on till infinity. We don't need to get rid of anything we should just restrict them a little bit to increase demand.

This is a bad idea. The only reason why I haven't retired already is because I've always known I can log back on to Diso and play TWDs with them. In the long run I just can't resist this. Things do become more special if it doesn't happen to often, but it doesn't work with everything. I wouldn't eat food once per week to make eating more special.

TWD used to be only on weekends and things were just fine. The fact that people only TWD now is part of the problem. Limiting the number of TWD arenas would only create a logjam of people sitting there waiting but if you shutdown TWD at regular intervals it would free up a lot of population for big scale events. The idea that we don't have to make any sacrifices to improve participation is idiotic. You need to have long term goals in mind. If you just want the population to dry up completely as people begin to retire and TWD becomes less and less competitive then don't change anything. But I think drastic times call for drastic measure.

I almost don't ever play hosted events except Wark's tournaments, and that happened for a reason. I got tired of the "new clever" twists that could be done to the game to give you a slightly different experience, but with a lowered competitive level. That's how I feel, others feels different, but it would fucking suck to be forced to play hosted events.

As I said, I wouldn't mind a being forced to play some jav elims, but this is a far worse tradeoff. I get less TWD, and I get NOTHING in return. TWD is up when it is up already, and this is based on zone wide activity. Sometimes we don't have enough on, and something only we have enough.

[CaptainPoopface]

I think Wark has mixed a couple of different points. Bots are not intrinsically bad; if a bot seems to have a deleterious effect on hosting, I say that's on the host, as has been pointed out. However, I agree that too many choices have fractured the player base. It was because bots were down that some of the choices were eliminated, and so arena populations consolidated and the action picked up. So the problem is too many concurrent playing choices, not too many bots.

I have the impression that there are two basic player populations in this game: Those who do the league/squad thing, and those who are happy to just putz around in pubs. The pubs are the lifeblood of the game. It is where nearly all the growth potential lies. From a sea of noobs, a hero will emerge [/voiceover]. My point is, it was good for the game for some of the more "serious" players to get their elitist asses in pub and flex a little bit. Elevate the level of the game, give people some pointers (without being an ass), show that there's a bit more depth to the game. So that was a good thing about the bot outage, and again, related to the available playing choices, not bots directly. In other words, assuming all bots are functional, vets should be playing in pubs more often, for the good of the game.

I agree that afk/spec players should be booted from pubs after a very short time - say, 5 minutes. If they want to continue speccing, they can switch ships every 5 minutes. If they want to hang out longer, they can fly a ship into safe. If this were implemented, then I would support lowering the pub player cap to 35 or even 30. That way the 2nd pub is in less danger of dying as the 1st pub's population hovers just below 40.

As a pub player, I thought the absence of bots was horrible. No timed game, levs everywhere, and a couple of players went on teamkilling sprees because they knew there would be no enforcement. Also, a big boner-shrinker about events for me is how damned long it takes to fill the teams and actually start playing the game. Bots to the rescue. Randomize the roster, warp players to their places, and let's play immediately if not sooner.

Conclusions:
- Bots aren't the real problem.
- Consolidation of arena populations is good. Let's find a good way to structure and schedule things so this happens more often.
- Vets/League/Squad players should try to play pubs more.

[kthx]

I don't think bots are bad really, its just that bots cause bad things. Just like guns aren't intrinsically bad but the people who use them can use them for the wrong purposes. Bots were designed to do exactly what you are talking about, make it easier for us to catch cheaters, remove laggots, and make hosting events faster and easier for the ER's. However this logic has become twisted over the years to do things that they were not meant to do. Automated help calls instead of mods just talking to the player, ER's being able to host events and go afk, and even in Pubs where the TK watcher is definitely a great addition it also stops the vets from wanting to play in a pub. I have said it before but I used to get with my squad and go to a pub and take over the base in a private frequency. Also for instance some people (I disagree but this isn't the place for this) would say that the levi restriction part of the pub bot is fine because it makes the basing better. But I would argue and I saw this today that the bot warping everyone into the FR to start a round also doesn't make basing any better. People need to learn to fly into the FR and try to take the flag, learning how to do things on your own is how you get good at something. And we are taking away that ability from these players. So basically I would agree with you that bots inherently are not bad, but they way they are used, and the way we as a zone use them is bad.

[CaptainPoopface]

Just touching on one aspect of the zone, I just want to say that when base was not run 24/7 and was played in private arenas (#mythrandir etc) the basing community was a lot better and far more accessible to new players. For one thing, players of the arena would go into pubs (!) to personally invite players into the arena to play. Because it didn't have automated announcements (or announcements at all) and because it was a private arena, they needed to personally invite people to have enough players for a game.

I disagree with this somewhat. #1, I ignore.txt people who just come in the arena to spam about their favorite event (Money, Goddess, etc.). #2, private/spammed invites create the impression that there are secret apocryphal things taking place that only certain players are privy to, whereas we want(?) everyone to feel welcome and invited.

That's why I think public announcements are better.

I also don't think the past and present TW are directly comparable, due to many confounding variables.

[HateTheFake]

/2

+ all the dd squads (way more then bd jd squads) that have dissolved in the last reset. wbmasters stray ect

TAKING AWAY OR RESTRICTING TWD IS A HORRIBLE IDEA SPECIALLY WHEN THE ZONE REVOLVES AROUND TWL..........

[TagMor]

Kthx preparing for when half the population migrates to Dist zone.

[kthx]

Yeah, maybe you can steal the nine Hyperspace players also. And the 5 Mystic Kingdom Players.

[TagMor]

dude, you have a serious case of denial.
let me try to make it clear.
When Distension was hosted it averaged an arena size of 60+, even though only 34(?) could play.
Even when the sessions had finished, the arena would have 30+.

IF YOU TAKE DISTENSION OUT OF THE TW IT WILL REMOVE ATLEAST AN AVERAGE OF 60+ ACTIVE MEMBERS FROM THE ZONE.... after bots and afk'rs that would be close to half.

[kthx]

Captain Poopface, I kinda disagree with you on how TW back then and TW now are different. They are largely different in worse ways, we have fewer people playing, and few people moving up from pubs. That is because of how the way the zone is ran these days I believe, hopefully if we go with my idea it will be the start of something better at least. I say we try it for awhile and see how it goes. And everyone just ignore Tagmor, I don't think anyone is posting on the SSCU Distension forums yet so it is kinda cranky.

[DankNuggets]

Captain Poopface, I kinda disagree with you on how TW back then and TW now are different. They are largely different in worse ways, we have fewer people playing, and few people moving up from pubs. That is because of how the way the zone is ran these days I believe, hopefully if we go with my idea it will be the start of something better at least. I say we try it for awhile and see how it goes. And everyone just ignore Tagmor, I don't think anyone is posting on the SSCU Distension forums yet so it is kinda cranky.

This isn't your daddy's TW. I don't think any of these bot free ideas are anything more than your typical gimmick. It's fun now, and there are people playing still because they know that eventually the bots will be back. Tell them that they're never coming back, and see how many people want to stick around.

Either way, it's not going to increase population. Nothing short of a virile ad campaign will change that, or maybe a celebrity endorsement. What it *might* do is make the game more enjoyable for players who were used to that gameplay and enjoyed it. Fair enough. Doesn't mean it makes it more enjoyable overall.

Go ahead and ignore Tagmor, just like you're ignoring the 60+ people he's speaking for. Go ahead and say "good riddance" now, because we all know you won't be saying that when the 5 arenas you've consolidated TW into have the average population of the 10 you had before.