Points, money, pubbux, to die, to sleep, no more

[WingZero]

It has been suggested that in an effort to alleviate some of the stress on our overworked databases, to begin using the ideas of 'points' and 'pubbux' as one in the same. What does this mean? Well, the points seen in the F2 list would now have a bit more meaning and purpose. Like in the olden days, points will again be used to purchase ship items. However, unlike olden days, they will also be used to purchase anything else our minds dream up (and then become realized by TWDev). Using points as 'pubbux' has broad implications but will essentially work the same way except the intense database use pubbux demand won't be needed. The only downside to this is the fact that points will no longer be unidirectional, and having the most doesn't necessarily carry the same bragging rights.

I haven't explored all of the inner workings behind this fully, yet, but I imagine I will be able to utilize the game's built in point allotment algorithms and perhaps augment them with some of the location specific and game oriented mechanics pubsystem has endowed or standardized. This will be a lot of work but I think, if supported, it would make pub much less bot dependent.

THOUGHTS?

[WillBy]

I like this idea. Assuming this is possible as you believe, we should also use this opportunity fix some of the problems with pubbux. Most notably in my mind, the mix of inflation/deflation we've got going on. Are there any other such plans, or just to switch puubbux -> points? Regardless, this plan seems to be a great idea!

[Shaddowknight]

So, the periodic scoreresets will also reset pubbux? If so that would piss a few players off (the ones who hoard it all), but would help reduce inflation and people having millions hoarded up.

[bkgmjo]

Keep bux.

Allow to trade in score for bux or auto-trade on score reset. Like payday.

Set the buy system back to what it was (SAFES ONLY, by score) => no more bot pming, way less server/db trouble, no buy-spam in basing action.

What to do with the bux you kept? Duels, special buys (dunno if epidemic and such could be used by ?buy like Hyperspace does it), a poker arena, buying events or ground for houses on a new city map, even if I hate pure pub u could make this a buy for a few hours for a really high sum, bragging, whatever and at the end of the year restart everyone with zero and award funny little icons in pubstats for the ones who got most. Might as well promise real cash or a funny TW basecap to the winner at the end of year.

With a system like this you could even bring bux to the whole game and award it for whatever like those boring TWD games (sorry I'm just pubber for life) or dueling streaks or event wins as it wouldn't really be related to pub only but be one thing all players - no matter where they play - share. Hell you could even have stuff like buy an advantage for a few minutes in TWD/Base/Duel for lots of those bux.
Betting could be extended to ?go duel, ?go base, TWD, races and whatnot. Cash games like card/dice/guessing/or even pokemon duels could keep ppl entertained and wouldn't really be hard to implement (k the last might be a little harder).

Just u know... bring some RPG element to the game that doesn't influence gameplay really and doesn't trouble servers/bots as much as spamming commands between servers and database for every kill and buy but at the same time unites playerbase a little.

[true_vision]

A sysops can grant '' POINTS '' to a player.. So it wouldnt be hard to get the bot record everyones '' SCORES '' to give them back their '' POINTS ''.. But again.. Wingzero would like to get rid of a few bot command so it is less bot dependent in public.

[Left_Eye]

Well, the way I see it, this change would be a fantastic thing. It would help reduce inflation with the scores being reset every month, and it would honestly give the chance for new players to have the most "points" per month, still giving the bragging rights going again. It's like having a complete pubbux reset, and if people want to have the bragging rights of having the most points, they'd need to play pub more often. The website already records the scores players have in points, as pinkSTAR already tested out earlier last month.

I totally agree with this change! It would really make the bots much more stable.

[Ephemeral]

Pub bucks was the stupidest idea to ever be implemented in TW. It destroyed much of the team competition and replaced it with ‘what’s in it for me’ with its equivalency to ?buy win. Like virtually every other ‘good idea’ that TW has ever had this one is also always considered without the context of the entire game and its mission statement.

The mission statement on the TW web site states, “The ultimate goal of Trench Wars is the development and maintenance of an online community that fosters teamwork and camaraderie among its members. By providing an environment that promotes integrity, good sportsmanship and fun, Trench Wars strives to remain as one of the Internet’s best online gaming communities.” Yes, adding a self-serving capitalistic element to the game really is in alignment with the mission statement. What about ‘pub bucks’ fosters teamwork? What about a ‘kill-a-ton’ spawn-fest fosters teamwork? What about having two really experienced played (like staffers) jump in a LT every time a good competitive pub base game is going on and rip it apart.

TW has basically added “features” that only benefits some existing experienced players at the expense of being able to hold on to any new players. You attract new players to the game with talk about it being a team game, they show up, start playing and walk away when they see these “features” in action.

When pub bucks was developed did no one suggest that it would over-burden the database? if not, why not? If so, why was it implemented anyway? So will dumbass staff still be giving away ridiculous amounts of points for winning events which in turn allows only experienced players to come back into pub and ?buy win and run more new player off?

Without any leadership TW that is willing to have a backbone TW has suffered from endless ‘we do it because we can code it’ features. The attitude of ‘any change is good for the sake of change’ has also been at work here. There is no vision, there is adherence to the teamwork that has made this zone what it is. Instead we have a leadership that supports adding ‘features’ that only serves as change for the shrinking population of existing players. So solicit donations but do nothing with it. Let developers determine the direction of the game in a visionless vacuum (I mean you HAVE to hold on coders so let’s not piss them off). And by all means give the remaining handful of players little ‘features’ that make them feel better about themselves by crushing new players. Yeah sounds about right to me, keep up the good work.
eph

[bkgmjo]

Not a tone that helps but you are basically right. The whole system of pubbux made buying much more complicated but if you learned how it works you can buy your win from cash you made by freqhoppingat the end of rounds or non-pub games.

By the way: killothon being spawnfest has been fixed as only lower/mid base, flagroom and roof kills count. It is now a tk-fest and assembles lamers in lower base entrance area instead. This also removes a bunch of players from actively basing for the duration of killothon and thus kills basing games.

I am curious about what you would think about my idea though.

[WingZero]

As much as I'd hate to fall victim to a counter-productive troll, I am offended by your complete misrepresentation of the retrospective evolution of the TW public arena and am forced to respond, Ephemeral.

First of all, TW had LevTerrs before basing even remotely existed the way it does today. Pub used to be little more than a spawn fest. It wasn't until the emergence of pure pub that there were actual flag games taking place. Pure pub raised so much controversy that it became uncompromisable. TW has always been a nostalgic community that places great value on roots and LevTerrs are the most fought for root.

Now, after pure pub, pubsystem started being developed by one developer and eventually was finished by another. I won't name names, but they both approached the project from a dictatorial perspective. That's not to say that anyone really cared enough to contribute though. I wasn't involved in dev during that time, but I have openly opposed pubbux and pubsystem since the day I joined botdev. But see, I don't treat TW, TW Dev, nor Bot Dev like a dictator. It's for that very reason why I haven't simply decimated pubsystem all together because there are always more opposing that than supporting that.

Over the past couple years, many many things have been added that require substantial database usage. At the time, pubsystem wasn't as demanding as it is relative to today's database usage.

Most leviathans make use of a terrier which they themselves cannot drive so must therefore seek out another to drive it for them. Sounds like a team to me, albeit a small one. Not enough teamwork? If only we had some kind of organized but automated means for squads of players to battle one another like a league or something where ships are limited by game type...

Pubsystem made much more possible in terms of ship upgrades which is why it was created in the first place. Distension has always been a crowd favorite and its RPG style is 100 times that of pubsystem. Most of the 'anti-newb' items I have removed over the years due to constant whining, bitching and bugs.

I absolutely love your comment about the ‘we do it because we can code it’ mentality that I and Dev leadership supposedly have. Yet, I distinctly remember having to remove a highly motivated, intelligent, dev leader and friend because he was trying to code something that, despite its proposed intricate coding complexity, would have devolved pub in a direction that opposed foundations the community has promoted and continues to defend.

Frankly, I could go on and on about all of the unfounded, emotional and narrow-sighted things in your post Ephemeral, but I have already stopped caring.

I'll finish by pointing out the fact that pubsystem has 1 item that can't be bought with ?buy, and the only difference now is that you don't need a safe to buy items. This adds a level of tactical use to ship item replenishment since it can be done in the moment. Also, the idea I'm putting forth reduces bot involvement and removes pubbux by promoting points, so why are you being a self-defeating fucking moron, Ephemeral?

[Ephemeral]

Wing, I appreciate all that you and every other person has contributed to TW but the time of any of this discussion was years ago. TW is in ‘Band-aid’ mode and has been for several years, it simply has Zero leadership and your response reflects this perfectly. For example you state, “Over the past couple years, many many things have been added that require substantial database usage. At the time, pubsystem wasn't as demanding as it is relative to today's database usage.” Exactly my point, no planning and planning is an important part of leadership.

More astoundingly you go on to say that you don’t support the pub bucks and never have but that you don’t want to be a dictator. Leadership is not supposed to simply be a role that merely implements whatever the ‘masses’ want or because that’s the way thing were being done. Leadership is assumed to have more vision, more insight than the ‘masses’. Leadership is supposed to have access to more information than the masses ever would so they can make better decision. (A General does not listen to a foot soldier on strategic matters.) And sometimes leadership has to make decisions that go against what the majority of people want or what the existing culture dictates. If you know in your heart that something is bad for the long-term future of the zone, even in the face of a majority supporting something, then it is your responsibility to fight to do the right thing.

What leadership is supposed to do is long term planning using the mission statement as their guide. They are supposed to develop new ideas. They are then supposed to do discovery that includes generating metrics to justify the cost/risk of the new idea. They are then supposed to take measurement before anything is rolled out so they have a baseline. They are then supposed to implement the new idea and re-measure to see if the new idea has had the expected result or not.

If your argument is that TW does just this then you are wrong. New ideas are implemented on a Wing and a pray; faith or hope being that the new idea might be ‘good’ but ensuring that no one can ever really determine success or failure. Instead the opinion fest begins and the absence of any real data to talk about it simply becomes more forum fodder like this thread.

So before you get all indignant about how pub has evolved in the vacuum of any vision and leadership, provide something real for us to discuss. I am more than prepared to admit I am wrong if you can provide examples of any TW project that had proper metric/measures taken (i.e. average number of players per day) before the idea was implemented and then after the idea was implemented. Until this is offered everything else is just the same subjective bullshit, we can hurl trolling insults at one another all day long. Move this discussion into the objective realm, show us the numbers. Go back 10 years if you have to but come up with SOMETHING tangible that shows; how an idea came up, discovery was done complete with some kind of forecasted measurable benefit, idea was implemented, and then follow-up measurements were taken to understand the impact.

Your post carries on about being ‘counter-productive’ and ‘productivity’. What I find counter-productive is doing things that can never be measured for success and then coming in here and defending this practice.
eph

[Viruk]

I never liked the pubbux system but then I ignored points too.

For me, pub should be mainly about (roughly balanced) teams competing against each other in the base with victory being decided by skill, teamwork, a bit of luck and the ability to adapt to a changing situation.
Being able to buy your way to victory (or just single ship overpoweredness) just because you have played a lot or fleeced some suckers in a duel takes away from this.
If people want a way to build on their previous success they should play Distension.

I think pub should happily tolerate those who just want to spawn but not offer great rewards or include them when calculating team balance.
Allowing Levs to LT has probably got to continue for traditional/popularity reasons, as well as them being the overpowered combo we love to hate (and really love to make explode!) but I suspect the current system gives their lame, wallbombing kills far too much reward (and their hit-and-run streaks far too much kudos). The bot ought to disallow them when the number of active basers is too low to both sustain a decent basing game and defend the base against them all.

I believe the reward system, be it pubbux or points, should be used to encourage good basing and discourage teamkilling, griefing and laming wherever technically possible and I would tend to support whichever system best allows this. I would also rather see pub rewards based on kudos (or gamechanging bonuses outside pub) rather than gamechanging bonuses in pub.

I don't claim to know what is the right balance of "dictatorship" vs "mob rule" in developing the game but the fact that someone has stated some of their thoughts and is asking for some of mine seems a good sign to me. We are not foot soldiers in anyone's army; rather, we can all vote with our feet.

[bkgmjo]

two nice things I see here:

If only we had some kind of organized but automated means for squads of players to battle one another like a league or something where ships are limited by game type...

For squads of players in pub...
Would it actually be possible to allow a squad to challenge the whole pub for one round? Like they pay 10k+ to the bot and if pub freq (there would only be one then) wins money would be split between those who bet against this squad and otherwise those bets would go to the members of the squad that challenged? Too much bot trouble?

I believe the reward system, be it pubbux or points, should be used to encourage good basing and discourage teamkilling, griefing and laming wherever technically possible and I would tend to support whichever system best allows this.

Possible to determine best streak by ship type and *arena those? Like "Best Shark Streak of the Session: clue" ? Then award a little bonus once the streak is over for beating "highscore"? Would also include non-levs then.

Also is it possible to base cash rewards on percentage of time someone has been actively basing for the winning freq? Figure this would increase bot load quite some again though but still not trouble database when bot just collects location and freq on each tick until round/game is over.

[Ephemeral]

In my opinion pub basing is supposed to be a team game won by capturing the flagroom and holding the flag. It is just that simple, nny points/bucks system should reward this and nothing else.

• No points for killing other players. There is no teamwork in just randomly killing people, killing other players is what you do to win the flagroom and capture the flag. Period.
• No points for winning duels. Set up dueling in another arena or leave it as it is but without any points/bucks.
• No points for flying around in a LT and hurting the game in progress. Allow LTs but remove the ‘reward’ for nuking the FR and killing the game. If an LT is on a freq that wins they get the points/bucks (note next rule).
• Lose points for each teamkill

Simply award points/bucks only for capturing the flagroom and holding the flag until your team wins. They should be awarded on a scale that rewards players to stick on team and play the entire game, those who freq jump or join a in-progress game should not get the same amount of points as those who contributed the whole game. Drop the whole ?buy win crap in pub 0.

I have no heartburn if any of the current stuff is used in other arenas. My opinion is that all the ‘features’ and current point/bucks only serves to make breaking into the game as a new player harder than it should be.

And even if I am clueless about new players then how about at least trying to get some real empirical data on new players? Change the installer so that people can supply input when they uninstall the game, find out why they left. Start polling people via email when they get inactive, see if you can generate some meaningful data on why people aren’t logging on. Instead of the ‘new player’ help system how about polling new players who do hang in and find out why they keep playing the game.
eph

[Shaddowknight]

In my opinion pub basing is supposed to be a team game won by capturing the flagroom and holding the flag. It is just that simple, nny points/bucks system should reward this and nothing else.

Could not agree more

[bkgmjo]

So basically remove the main feature of pub? Namely allowing players to do what they want to do in a ship they want to pilot on the freq they like most because you want them to play by your ideals? Spawners, duelers, LTers, LT hunters, super turrets, roofers and ppl who do a mix of those can just be removed from the game after so many years just because you do not like what they like?

Encouraging people to base is one thing, punishing them for not doing it is a whole different one. If you remove them from scoring or completely disable some play styles (even if just for a few hours a day) because you want to have a ?go base pub you are actively telling a big part of the population to "go fuck off". Ever thought of this?

For past experiences with those ideas check what happened in mootland times or whenever bigger pub changes happened. Things happened because some people believed if everyone followed their ideas of a good game experience in pub TW would become a better place and totally refused to think about its consequences despite many many voices that warned. Do you really want to repeat that or even do worse and halve player count a second time? I doubt TW can afford another such careless messing with the game and its players.

Get the old basing weekend and other specials (no levs/javs/sharks/weasels/whatever), different map, or whatever funny idea ppl might have back in pub every two weeks to spice it up or add a few rewards for basing but don't go crazy and remove half of the people permanently because you are frustrated they don't play the way you want them to.