Levis/weasels changes

[but...why...per...]

Dros, in a previous version of the levi (from version 0.37 ) it had 4reps, a rocket, a portal, stealth, 1 hit kill yellow bullets and level 3 bombs that were twice as powerful as the current version. Anyone who played lev back then would tell you the same that in comparison the new lev is significantly weaker.

The reason why levs have a higher kill death ratio is simply because those who play lev are not 'pawns' they don't sacrifice themselves like how warbirds, spiders and sharks do they make a much more conscious effort to stay alive so that they can attach. Also people LT to try gain high bounty, some players find trying to get over 1000 bounty exhilarating. Whilst LTing may not be the intended aspect of pub it is a challenge and can be fun.

Eph has already stated above the further flaws with your statistics there are just simply too many variables to be considered that can affect the population, weather, events, twl, popular new game releases, to try say pub changes alone is the cause would be fool hardy.

The only meaningful data that those graphs show is that the gameplay is seasonal and in decline (something that happens to all products).

[roxxkatt]

I'd be curious to see population statistics over a longer period if they were available.

unfortunately they arent

[Drosophila]

I think the numbers are OK to use for some reference and it's a nice idea to look at a ship's average. But yes, the shark isn't supposed to go positive. (Well, of course you could be streaking as a shark, but usually one doesn't do that in a basing game but a shark is always needed or greatly appreciated because of its repels). So it's fine.

Now the levi: it actually surprised me that the average from a lev is 3:1 but the logic behind is that once a levi is greened and allowed to either LT or sit in FR protecting the flag its able to get pretty high streaks, that would explain it. You must consider though that a levi (sometimes) has a hard time to travel up to fr or to green at all, so levi's aren't constantly streaking. I hope I make sense. I would also say that an average shark gains more kills per hour (or any time frame), than a levi, and a warbird or spider would gain much more than that.

Actually I'm not sure on that, but I would imagine it to be like that. Would be interesting to verify that. But if you get, say, 10 kills in 2 minutes as WB, and 10 kills in 5 minutes in levi on average, but the levi has the 3:1 K/D, then I'd still call it balanced (just based on the numbers, taking no other matters into that)

I hope I make sense, and I think if we take a WHOLE average of pub that maybe can bring some more light rather than just the top 100, although it's just number-talk lol - interpreting these numbers is maybe fun though

Hi fiS,

Here are the total kills (for the top 100 players with the most kills) for each ship.

wb	74137
jav	30197
levi	28799
ter	23950
lanc	23178
spi	20725
shark	18488
wea	9544

In more detail, the stats for the top 100 players with the most kills in each ship were downloaded (as described earlier). The total sum of the kills for each ship was then calculated.

These data show that the top 100 most active levis have 50% more kills than the sharks. What I think is more telling is that the total number of kills for the javs and levis is similar (i.e. 28,000 vs 30,000), yet it seems that there are many more javs than levi in pub. This again is consistent with levi being overpowered.

I would personally prefer to work with the statistics for the entire pub population. Though given the small size of our current population my guess is that the activity of the top 100 players for each ship captures 80 to 90% of the activity for all of the ships, except for wb. For the wb, the top 100 players is likely to represent between 50 to 75% of the total activity. My guess is that it would be fairly straightforward to modify the listing of the pub stats to show the top 1000 (or all of) players for each ship. Instead of complaining about the lack of the data, lets get the full data set (n.b. this is a general comment not directed at fiS).

The question of kills per minute is interesting. The way to address it would be to list the number of minutes played in each ship in the summary stats.

[but...why...per...]

Hi fiS,

Here are the total kills (for the top 100 players with the most kills) for each ship.

wb	74137
jav	30197
levi	28799
ter	23950
lanc	23178
spi	20725
shark	18488
wea	9544

In more detail, the stats for the top 100 players with the most kills in each ship were downloaded (as described earlier). The total sum of the kills for each ship was then calculated.

These data show that the top 100 most active levis have 50% more kills than the sharks. What I think is more telling is that the total number of kills for the javs and levis is similar (i.e. 28,000 vs 30,000), yet it seems that there are many more javs than levi in pub. This again is consistent with levi being overpowered.

I would personally prefer to work with the statistics for the entire pub population. Though given the small size of our current population my guess is that the activity of the top 100 players for each ship captures 80 to 90% of the activity for all of the ships, except for wb. For the wb, the top 100 players is likely to represent between 50 to 75% of the total activity. My guess is that it would be fairly straightforward to modify the listing of the pub stats to show the top 1000 (or all of) players for each ship. Instead of complaining about the lack of the data, lets get the full data set (n.b. this is a general comment not directed at fiS).

The question of kills per minute is interesting. The way to address it would be to list the number of minutes played in each ship in the summary stats.

I'm sorry but just no, how you can say he levi is overpowered with this is just ridiculous. The number of kills is related to the playing time (more time played, more kills -generally) to say that this suggests the levi is overpowered is nonsense. Please just take a class in statistics to understand why this data is insignificant, preferably a class that focusses on the understanding of statistics rather than the process of crunching numbers.

[bkgmjo]

To make it simple, the data you need to at least get started if you want to improve the game by stats:

1. Each active and potential players likes (not their opinions) and for that their aliases, too. Then compare this to their average potential playing time.
2. Every play style with every ship and its effects on stats like kills, deaths, score gain, pubbux gain, spawning, LTing, basing, buys, sitting in safe zone, motivation of players, server traffic and so on. Then link this to point 1 and to every potential arena/ship/buy/bot setting and every arena/event.
3. Teaming effects on the game, just like point 2. Link to 1 and 2.
4. Staff behavior effects on the game which inclusively includes hosting, banning, times online, reliability, helpfulness, friendliness. Link to previous points.
5. Outside-TW-effects like weather, holidays, technological conditions, aging of players, internet effects. Link.

I could go on but I guess you get the point. Stats like the ones you posted say nothing at all and I seriously wonder why anyone decided to log them and clog up server with it. The only thing this kind of data is useful for is fooling idiots into buying insurances.

[Drosophila]

If you have been in pub over the last two days, you might have noticed that we are "TESTING a small change to the Leviathan: + speed increase, - decrease in max repels (1), - increase in attach bounty."

I was interested if this might be having any effect on the TW population. So I copied the number of players over the last 24 hours and pasted it in blue, over the number of players over the same time period (i.e. Feb 18 - 19) a week ago.

The graph is below.

From this, it would appear that the average number of players has decreased by 10 to 20.