Changes in Pub

[Jones]

i see Izor <ZH> in the making. it's the only change we need

[Izor]

I dont think anyone really complained about levi settings. I just see what's happened over the years and imo besides TW-Dev doing some pretty good work on the bots, those changes are the only ones I've seen work. Unsure where I was inaccurate about docks stuff, cause his post pretty much details everything I said. Regardless, if we can agree not to just start randomly changing shit it's a step in the right direction.

Pub hasnt been neglected over the years - just mismanaged. I've seen plenty of updates to it but they just suck. Shitty dramatic changes are still not going to work out. As we prepare for round 2 of ship settings, think of how many more times we're going to go down this road. In fact I'll tell you what will happen: the first weekend everyone will embrace the new features so they'll become permanent. After the novelty wears off and people have time to figure out exploits, it will just be annoying to everyone and we'll be right back here to the drawing board. I've seen this happen countless times with new bots and new maps. GuanoBot provided pure basing weekend -> pub basers loved not having to deal with levs so they raved about how great it was -> now we were stuck with a system that didnt work all week, too.

You got some pretty veteran guys telling you your process is broken. I finally did my research earlier in the thread and saw Eph already made some of the same points I did - especially that your production environment isnt there for testing. While I do agree that the lev needs adjusting, we already had a proven pub 0 in the past. It was balanced for every ship but lev. Now you're talking about 1 player adjusting settings on 2 ships however they like, seemingly without a plan to do so or any ideas on what those ships may look like so they can be critiqued before launch. It should be no surprise where the perceived arrogance comes from.

[Demonic]

Meh, Levi changes was mine not Fis so you can look at me for that one. Now they have been altered however it means base can be changed to make the small wzl come back without affecting the base dramatically as there are less need for holes into the base.
Izor you make some good points on process from dock, although not entirely accurate it was close enough to get a good idea of what setting changes should look like, unfortunately pub has been neglected and been on the end of some strange choices of settings and maps so changes at the moment are a bit more dramatic then I would normally have liked.

That said Fis doesn't like the current lev settings so I believe is changing them again so all above might be crap lol, so guess we have to wait and see.

[Oranje]

tbh I noticed I rather die immediatly over getting emped and not being able to recharge and try to run hoping to recharge soon and in time and then die before i can shoot.
But w/e i could be the odd one out.

[dofus]

Looking forward to the new weasel,
hope it actually serves a purpose to basing rather than just being a levi hunter.

[Izor]

Maybe you should tell them to post it here cause I sure as hell don't see it. That said, I don't want this to be about who's right or wrong or whatever. Everyone wants to see new people come to the zone. Without them it would be hard to feed my ego by mercilessly ruining their attempts at having fun.

Like you said when we discussed this the other day, I've been gone for a while and things have changed. The only thing I noticed having really changed all that much is the pub base. The small x was designed for a base that it wasnt broken in. There was a single 2 block ship point of entry and then a few side holes which were easily patrolled by javs or bursted by terrs. Perhaps before we get into the topic of rebalancing ships we should attack whether or not the current pub map is what we want for the game. You dont see this type of pub map in ?go base or twbd, and I would argue that this design has really led to the need for change in 2 ships (although lev was a long time coming). Are the 5 entrances really worth it? Now you're asking teams to defend the 5 base entrances and fend off 1 pixel ships suiciding at flag. It's no wonder the game has been broken, but attributing it to the 1 pixel weasel is a bit short-sighted. We can probably revert to an old style base with skilltube intact and have a much better basing game in pub, especially now that the lev has been toned down. That is largely what broke the old pub and its good to see it finally getting addressed.

The second problem I have here has more or less been building up over 6-7 years, or since whenever dock stopped caring. It's the troubleshooting process by staffers who want to 'fix' the basing game in pub. As I've said I've watched change after change to pub over this time, whereas I saw 1 in the previous 5 years. I'll list some and why they didnt work.

Problem:                                        Solution                           Why it sucked

Levs ruining pub                                Pure pub                           The other pubs had LTs and no basers, so people would get really bored and just stop playing.
Private freqs ruining purepub (ST's)            Pure pub no priv freq              Do I need to explain?  People enjoy private freqs for various reasons
Levs still ruining pub and purepub was dumb     New map!                           Seemed ok...new map to make LTing harder.  Unfortunately, it wasn't.
Too many mines at entrance                      Add side entrances                 wb's/lt's were almost impossible to get out of the skilltube.  Midbase was ruining the basing game

This new base appears to be a response to make levis a lot harder to use, and it seems to be doing well. Unfortunately, no one has ever sat back and thought why none of the previous changes have worked. If you do your own analysis you'll see that almost every change to the pub game since 2006 has been because of the lev being overpowered. The approach you should be taking is finding the root cause of the problem and working there. Otherwise you'll create more problems for yourself trying to bandaid up whatever problem you think you have. Problems such as the small weasel being way too powerful.

I didn't link dock's changes just to say that it's what a well-received change looks like. His process was what made it that way. He tested it for hours and hours in other arenas, changed it god knows how many times, and when it was ready brought it down on pub. He also left pub the way it had been in the meantime. It's one thing that's far different than the band-aid changes listed above. There's just no testing of anything before it's released. Staff has been half-assed throwing down changes for years and this is the end result. And now what do we get out of it? A whole new weasel whipped up in a couple weeks' time, made to someone's liking, and soon to be released then subsequently exploited for its overpowered/underpowered nature.

[AceHac]{er]

P.S. post a list of the people who messaged you with "great changes, keep it this way" so the rest of us know who to stealth+cloak kill repeatedly with these huge POS weasels.

[AceHac]{er]

After my conversation with FiS last night I have to agree with sc00p. Basically any conversation with regard to having small weasels is met with "just get out". Seems small weasels could have no offensive weapons at all and FiS would think they are overpowered. All she is willing to even consider is the settings for the current crap we have now.

Why she asked for opinions is beyond me, she just dismisses them anyway.

[fiS]

I don't know what "rotten attitude" you're talking about, sc00p. It was certainly not intended.

Izor: As I told you in the parts that you have cut out of the log, here to clarify by your request. (This might be also interesting for you, AceHacker)
The small weasel is considered overpowered due multiple factors that it had, namely: able to shift-bullet, invisible on screen, fast recharge allowing rapid L1 bullet fire, privilegue to fit through tiny holes, while holding both, a rocket (hello lagrocket) and a repel, along with the ability to multifire and upping the bullets to 3 instead of 1. It got into flagroom too easily and is pretty hard to hit due to the smaller radius and could just sit on flag, repel once, claim flag. Success chances of it even when the flagroom is crowded has been pretty great. Yes, it maybe have been because our Terrs or other Xradar ships aren't used to warning anymore (sadly), but even in spawn or wherever, it was just overpowered entirely with any aspect.
These are the main reasons that the big aka old X was brought back.

And yes, I get your and the other people's point of the X being fully invisible for an infinite time frame being lame just too well, which is why I have already prepared a "new" weasel that will get in place soon. Either today or tomorrow along with a new post + updates so that you all know what has happened. The levi has been overworked too, and I showed these to multiple people, staffers and pubbers and a great majority (some of these who helped developing them further) appreciated the changes over what we have currently and which is why they'll be in place. Details are to come - it's worked on.

Killothon: It was changed before I was in charge of that but it was a good change. I have also explained you, Izor, why. But here again: These 10 minutes where Killothon has been going on, and it was once per hour, so roughly 1/6th of all the pub time we had an incredible spawnfest going on which entirely raped basing since people hopped into WB or Spid, got onto a priv freq, and didn't bother about flag at all. I understand the competition that you spawn people have/had, but that isn't all about it, but it gave terrs a really hard time even getting into entrance, because every single blue dot was a target that everyone wanted to have for the reason of killothon, especially terrs which had 3+ people attached.

I'm sorry if this isn't what you're expecting, but the philosophy isn't that we are changing the game into a way that we want to play it, because I certainly love LevTerring and getting high streaks and 10fers too sometimes, but it's more doing of what we think is right, what the majority would want and how we improve gameplay for everyone. There isn't a solution for everything. Whatever happens or changes, there will always and forever be people who complain about it and dislike the changes, who keep bringing it up and people who just appreciate what has happened. It's really hard trying a compromise, but that is what I'm looking for and it's not easy.

Why do you think I am posting a topic here to keep the playerbase up to date? Because I care and I actually read what you guys suggest or dislike. But I also got multiple PMs or people who left me ?messages with "Wow nice changes, keep it that way!".

I hope you understand and I could clarify some.

[AceHac]{er]

One of the Terr's jobs when there are little weasels is to watch X-radar & warn the team of Xs and even fend them off. FiS likes to Terr so maybe she's just tired of having to do that work. Yes weasels have a rocket and one kill bullets that travel about an inch, plus a single repel for defense but I strongly disagree that it is overpowered. Little X is a secret spy limited to very close lunge kills and with minimal defense and a relatively slow recharge, hardly the overpowered monster FiS tries to claim it to be.

I still go back to the point that we shouldn't have a castle with a single drawbridge. If there weren't meant to be ships shooting and bombing from the roof then the maze wouldn't allow you to go up the outside. And the little weasel gives it a function of the secret spy sneaking around the castle trying to kill the king's guards or get the secrets before he is killed. Large Weasels biggest function is as a spawn killer and wb annoyance. If you want to defend base, if you want teamwork, then work together and defend it ... ALL of it: get lancs to shoot the small Xs and post wbs, javs, maybe even a second attach terr on the roof to defend. You should have to defend the whole base, not a single doorway.

And if it is harder to defend when there are fewer players then in small map, block the two side holes.

[Izor]

Seems our young staffer needed a history lesson, so I had to oblige.


:fiS:im just saying that you havent been around a long time to understand the whole pub and how stuff works. DoCk> did when he made the original weasel and lanc changes, which were both very popular
(fiS)>we dont have the pop to support it hough
:fiS:to support what? the small weasel?
(fiS)>you probably werent here... and probably didnt realize
(fiS)>it's more pro-basing than pro-spawn. you're a guy in spawn, rarely flagging, hence you didn't realize how much the small wzl damaged the pubbing
:fiS:ive always gone in base to get kills so i see it all
(fiS)>but not for flag, on a team.
:fiS:there was a lot of people flying around the outside to harass and steal the flag
:fiS:maybe on a priv freq, maybe pub
:fiS:have you ever thought that it would work if there werent 10 entrances to the base
(fiS)>yes
(fiS)>the small weasel is/was OVERPOWERD in any regards, dont know why youre bringing it up
:fiS:you think the playerbase doesnt support it, but when dock made those changes pub was limited to 35 people
:fiS:so the playerbase hasnt changed at all
:fiS:in regards to pub
:fiS:it worked because there was only one entrance to base
:fiS:and having the small weasel made at least some people on the team guard the roof entrances
:fiS:which helped their team get through

The things our junior staff member is attempting to fix was already part of an earlier fix to change the old overpowered spawn-feeding weasel into a viable basing option. The changes that dock made were major and almost universally accepted by a much larger playerbase at the time. Don't believe me?

http://forums.trenchwars.org/showthread.php?13842-Public-Settings-Change

I cannot find the weasel change thread, but the change was met with as much positive feedback as the lanc. Notice how the change was first tested in other arenas and THEN brought to the game's main arena for new players to test. Pub 0 is not a test bed. It's the arena in which new players first experience the game, and to have the chat filled with griping about dumb changes turns them off to it.

Look at dock's thread, then look at this one. Tell me who made the right change to the game.

[DKFett]

...after the conversation I had today with fiS and LF about these changes I'm absolutely livid with them both, especially fiS.

Heh, I know how that feels.

...AND they change their rotten attitude toward players both old AND new...

That's true, I was a fairly new player and I can honestly agree some of us weren't treated well either.

[Izor]

Any sysops or staffers that matter chime in on this thread? I'm too lazy to read the whole 5 pages. I just want to know why players with only a few years experience are able to make such changes with little to no evidence that their changes will prove effective. The whole philosophy of the changes are 'because I was new and wanted to play the game a certain way, everyone else thats new will want to.'

[Rab]

I miss hunting LTs too...

there were 2 problems that needed fixing:
- small weasel didn't die when a terr he's attached to dies --> make weasel bigger
- lev couldn't kill you if you sat right infront of it --> upgrade lev bullets

everything else can go back to how it was

[sc00p]

That's funny, because she said exactly that - the changes we re done to bring in new players, and if we don't like it then we can get lost. Considering the fact that the goal of these changes is to revive the game by increasing the player base, trading old players for new ones is a TERRIBLE strategy.