Public discussion reopened.

[Kolar]

i guess you don't know who's in charge either. i don't want to "attack" dads or anyone else, i just want to know who to talk to.

who's name do we see on the weekly news? dads'

who has been responsible for almost all non-bot changes in the pub? dads'

these changes i'm talking about - "high bounty weekends" "powerball weekend" "changing the weasel settings" are all somewhat drastic changes. If they needed coding, then it somehow got done for his ideas, why not ours?


I'm not saying he personally needs to fix the voting or the bots. I realize that's not his bag. However, he could kindly point us to that person, instead of getting defensive over something he's not even responsible for.


who do you want me to complain to? this thread wasn't created for me to keep my thoughts to myself. I'm trying to find the right person, hasn't happend yet, and this isn't the first time.

Moot is the person to talk to about public development.

[Izor]

lol lets talk again about who's on the forums whining about these changes. LB players mostly, and Kont and some random guy that seems to know a bit about coding. The players not on these forums talking are the ones enjoying the current settings that i see in the arena frequently

[dads revenge]

Hey if you get a GOOD idea for weekend pub just ?message me in game and I will see if it can be done. Now by see if it can be done I mean A} if its possible and B} if I am allowed to. Ginormous bounty weekend actually raised to Pub population for 2 days OMG how did that happen. I still get the occasional message asking for Wild Guns weekend. Great Balls of Fire weekend even went pretty well. These were all simple changes for 2 days more showing everyone what is possible, the zone utilizes about 1/3 of potential settings in pubs. To answer your question I guess there is no one person in charge of pubs I have never seen a change to pubs the has been 1 person just doing it. Look at it this way the reason Levs are still there is because more people want them then people who don't the same goes for the size of the cloaks. If you see a change in pubs its because people know they are stagnating and need to be changed. Hell I hope a new map is chosen (I doubt it will be) everyone knows all the shots all the bursts and all the sneaky little tricks. We need a challenge for a change rather then every time someone new plays the game they get lamed over and over and decide the game is too annoying and don't stay.

[CaptainPoopface]

Look at it this way the reason Levs are still there is because more people want them then people who don't the same goes for the size of the cloaks.

What method was used for determining this, in both cases?

I would very much like to see both of these things numerically verified among the current player population. Put up a voting bot in a dedicated arena, where people can only vote once (IP + alias check). Milosh did it for his elim experiment. Leave it up for a month and let's see how it shakes out.

I prefer to allow leviathans:
1) in all pubs
2) in at least one pub, but not in purepub


I think weasels should be:
1) like they are now (slow speed, slow bullets, 1300 energy, slow recharge with cloak + stealth, have rocket and repel, no x-radar, do not fit through holes)
2) like they were immediately before (faster speed, faster bullets, 1020 energy, energy drain with cloak + stealth, x-radar, no rocket or repel, fit through holes)
2a) [optional]...but let every ship green or buy xradar
2b) ...but take away multifire
2c) ...but downgrade to L2 bullets

I want to know what the NUMBERS are, as of right now. Not a particular person's impression, not a staffer's bias, not an apparent consensus from 4 years ago, not some poll or magic wand estimate of what people on the forum say. I think it's important to figure out who is in the majority, and then figure out how to please them while minimizing the discontent for the minority.

There are other votes we should also conduct in-game, but I think these two are top priority.

[kthx]

Besides Izor being right about the fact that you will never get a good consensus from pubbers because they either don't care or are too new to know how to vote or what a bot is or how to PM a bot in that case.

On top of that, the server crashes once a week if not more, good luck keeping a bot up for a month.

Basically the poll will tell you what twd players who play pubs only occasionally want from pubs, not what newbies who enter the zone and shoot around want from pubs.

[DankNuggets]

Besides Izor being right about the fact that you will never get a good consensus from pubbers because they either don't care or are too new to know how to vote or what a bot is or how to PM a bot in that case.

On top of that, the server crashes once a week if not more, good luck keeping a bot up for a month.

Basically the poll will tell you what twd players who play pubs only occasionally want from pubs, not what newbies who enter the zone and shoot around want from pubs.

for the most part you are right, but if it's left up long enough, and zoned occaisonally then a lot will figure it out. And if everyone only gets one vote, then we don't have to worry about people rigging it.

[MirrorriM]

There's always the option of talking to the pubbers personally. Not just in pub chat because the loudest opinions will overwhelm the quieter ones, but PMing (ok we must assume they know how to PM or can be taught). But then this process would take a lot more work.

[Kontrolz]

What the fuck are you people talking about. There are a lot of people who rarely/don't twd and play pub often/frequently for YEARS. Wouldn't they be the best people to ask/listen to?

Someone who TWDs and rarely plays publics will try to push his TWD preferences into pub (no matter what division). Someone who is new to the game/zone wont know what the fuck is best for sustaining a high player population.

Common sense people. Listen to the pubbers who have played pub religiously for years. I think if you pull your collective heads out of your asses (which seem to be located in matchbots for TWD/L) you will find that most of us agree on some very basic but important issues.

Anyway, that's my last desperate whine about publics on these forums. Hopefully moot or someone will start up another public committee with people who are and have been pubbers for years.

[CaptainPoopface]

There's always the option of talking to the pubbers personally. Not just in pub chat because the loudest opinions will overwhelm the quieter ones, but PMing (ok we must assume they know how to PM or can be taught). But then this process would take a lot more work.

I think it would be good to canvas pubbers individually, but there are many hangups:

• Players might not want to invest the time to type for a minute, vs. just sending a few numbers to a bot
• Staff could outright falsify if they chose - how could there be transparency/accountability?
• Only a few staff (BanG?) have access to player IPs and aliases, so there would potentially be duplicate opinions

- If we use a bot, and assume the bot will not be stable for a month:

• Can the bot write its vote tally to some external database every hour or so? So if it crashes, the data is not lost.
• Can a player verify his/her vote at a later date, to make sure the data is persistent and accurate?

- If we don't use a bot:

• Can staff advertise and "host" a voting session just as if it's an event? I.e., pose the questions one at a time, tally the vote PMs manually, and send them to a database?
• Can a player verify his/her vote at a later date, to make sure the data is persistent and accurate?

Either way:

• We could put up a background image or set of flyover tiles on the golden bar in pub telling people about the vote(s). That's hard to miss. Also the arena entry message could advertise it, or a periodic auto-PM if a bot detects that a player has not yet voted.
• A staffer or bot could "host" an event where players type up to 3 lines of their own opinions/suggestions, then store that in a database for subsequent analysis.

Things I'd like to know:

• What type of playing do you tend to prefer in pub? (e.g. basing, spawn dueling, lev/LTing, roofing, camping, other/write-in, many of the above)
• How often you played small weasel, how often you now play big weasel, and thoughts on the difference between them? (List pros and cons of previous and current weasel settings)
• How often do you play each ship, on a scale of 1-10?
• Which pub(s) should allow levs?
• What change is most needed in pubs? (open; 3 lines)
• What should not be changed about pubs? (open; 3 lines)

It could be a lot of legwork, but it's worth knowing what people really want and what they really think about TW, whereas we tend to argue (and decide) based on conjecture.

[Mootland Farmer]

Public Development nowadays is a collective effort. While I have stated leading the division again, Dads Revenge has been helping with map related stuff. He has also done other stuff to make Publics more interesting. Qan has been working on the RoboBots adding new modules. Pure sometimes does his own thing. I hope that makes things a bit more clear as to who is involved with Public Development. I am undecided as to whether I am going to form another Public Committee.

I am planning to get involved with players who play Public, just like I did last time, and get their views on what we can do to make Publics more fun. To be honest, forums are not the best medium to gauge opinions on Publics because most of those players do not read the forums.

At the moment I am working on a specialised F1 Help guide for Trench Wars. Extreme Games has one and I think Trench Wars could use one to help players understand the game better. After that I will look at forum posts like the ones in this thread and player's opinions.

[kthx]

I say we just let Mootland do what he basically rejoined staff to do, which is fix pubs. I trust Mootland over just about anyone else in the entire game to make sure that whatever changes are made in pubs are fair, and as pleasing as possible to the largest majority of players.

[Troll King]

The one thing that's important is that people understand that a level of compromise will be required. Most people will come into this with a very singular vision of what to change, and often at the expense of other styles of play.

I'm in the camp that basing should be a beneficiary of changes because it's been overlooked for so long, but it shouldn't be the only concern. Swaying too heavily in one direction may cause just as much harm as we're trying to fix. It'd also be harder to get an idea accepted if it's too far in one direction.

There must be a common ground, and like Wark says, it must be made fairly. If people are too unwilling to compromise, we'll never see any progress.

[DankNuggets]

Things I'd like to know:

• What type of playing do you tend to prefer in pub? (e.g. basing, spawn dueling, lev/LTing, roofing, camping, other/write-in, many of the above)
• How often you played small weasel, how often you now play big weasel, and thoughts on the difference between them? (List pros and cons of previous and current weasel settings)
• How often do you play each ship, on a scale of 1-10?
• Which pub(s) should allow levs?
• What change is most needed in pubs? (open; 3 lines)
• What should not be changed about pubs? (open; 3 lines)

It could be a lot of legwork, but it's worth knowing what people really want and what they really think about TW, whereas we tend to argue (and decide) based on conjecture.

I think this can be done in steps. I'm going to use this as a template, set 'em as macros, and ask around in pubs. Gonna keep a list of people willing/unwilling to participate, and tally the votes anonymously. When i get a sizable # of surveys done, i'll share the outcome. Shouldn't take more than a min or two to conduct an interview once you find someone willing to provide feedback.

[dads revenge]

I hereby nominate dank and poop to be in charge of conducting all public surveys.

[CaptainPoopface]

I hereby nominate dank and poop to be in charge of conducting all public surveys.

Sure, I'll do it, but we need to specify what will be asked, with neutral wording, so we're all asking the same things and getting answers that can be pooled for analysis.

I don't want to preempt whoever really has the power to make changes to pub (Mootland? Who is it?), so I'd rather wait until called upon. I would also want some kind of assurance that these surveys would actually be considered and acted on by those with the power to do so.

I basically live in pub, and I'd be willing to spend a little time each day to canvas people, but I wonder if it should be handled by staff. There are a few players I don't particularly like (although I would treat everyone with fairness), and definitely some players who hate me, so that might color their responses or willingness to participate.

What if players type a command like ?vote, and then the next available staffer enters the arena to give the survey? Or maybe ?help vote, if we only have ?help and ?cheater to work with. That way we're not hassling anyone at an inopportune time, we can employ a larger group of people to get answers, and we have a better shot at objectivity. We could periodically zone for the ?vote command, add a background image in spawn to describe it, or put up an image on arena entry (check the Extreme Games pub for a good example of this - they show leaderboards).

So here's what we need:

• The actual questionnaire (I'm willing to write it, but I'd imagine there are other questions we should ask besides just what I come up with)
• A way of collating all the answers (I can make an Excel spreadsheet that everyone uses for entering the data. I can also analyze/pivot table the aggregated results, since I have a lot of experience doing that at work...)
• A way of verifying that only one alias votes per IP address, and all aliases linked to that IP/alias cannot vote from any other IP (Surveyors would record usernames, then submit the entire list of usernames to someone with the ability to check aliases, who would then remove the duplicates and send the list of names back to us)

I'd like to get the green light from staff before going forward with this.