Some Pub News

[Shaddowknight]

Not too long ago, we reset pubbux to remove the infinite money some players had to abuse big-ticket buy items and level things out abit.
Things have settled down enough that we are working to re-price them and re-instate some such items, in addition to more.
One of the smaller buy options we had made is a buyable shield for the spider and lancaster. We have some other ideas in the works as well, both with the buy list and elsewhere.

If you have any ideas for sweet (and not insanely unbalanced or broken) ideas for the !buy menu, let us know by posting here, in a !comment to pubsystem, or ?message'ing KrynetiX or myself.

[Pressure]

Remove the 'big' version of the map that occurs when more players start playing. last night we were at the borderline amount of players before it changed to the big map and we were having some real good pub basing action going on for about a half hour. once the base opened up to the 'big' base, the action died down and became diluted and boring. close the map back up and stick to the old Arilou map but keep the same pub bux and pub system in place. you'll see a lot more people playing because as it stands the big base is pretty damn boring after months of trying to like it

[Ephemeral]

Shaddow,
How does this level the playing fields for new players who have no pub bucks? Learning the ships, the weapons, how to attach, already puts new players at a distinct disadvantage. How does allowing players with more experience buy additional features to own the newest players help the zone at all? Does staff get a lot of help calls from brand new players asking how to buy shit?

Pub bucks appease bored experienced players who already know the game. Too bad the bored experienced players aren’t the ones who are going to keep the zone alive. Pub is the front door of the zone; it is the first thing that a new player sees and experiences. Adding features that makes it even more difficult for new players to enjoy, and stick with, this zone is suicide.

This is more of the same ‘let’s see if we can be all things to all people’ thinking that got the zone into the sad shape it is today. Remove pub bucks completely. Pub shouldn’t be that attractive to vet players except those who care about helping new players. Experienced players have plenty of other arenas, events, leagues, etc to enjoy. (Perhaps if we didn't have all these 'features' in Pub the other venues would be better populated. Perhaps if new player retention was made a priority some of the vet players would start to understand why it's importance to keeping the zone up and running.)

Stop allowing developers to implement dumbass features in Pub just because they know their ‘ideas’ will have a better chance at being considered a ‘success’ (since putting it in Pub basically forces it down everyone throat).

Implement the idea where new players have to go through the training arena so that they become ‘invested’ in the game. Once they feel like they have put in 10 minutes in learning the basics (like aiming, flying, attaching, etc.) they won’t be as likely to quit immediately when some vet owns their ass for ‘fun’.

I know a fair amount of staff agrees with the above, I don’t understand why pub bucks still exists. Is it that the right people don’t have the balls to make the decisions or is it that someone with big influence is married to the pub bucks feature?

And what happened to wanting to be able to measure success/failure of this stuff? Did the last round of changes help or hurt new player retention? Does anyone even know, or care, about new player retention? If so, where are the real numbers? The zone population usually goes up this time of year, what is the status of the zone population?

No offense Shaddow but your post above doesn’t really tell us anything other than ‘more, undefined changes are coming’. Just more of the same.
eph

[Spock!]

I concur with the pub bucks removal. It still caters to the damn LT problem and results in base terr buying infinite bursts and ports, thus making wealthy terrs extremely hard to kill over a terr that cannot !buy as much.

Items like epidemic are just lame and the save the flag item is terrible.

The zone is about developing skill, not !buy Win.

That being said, if your gonna keep pub bucks, at least allow the weasel to !buy rockets out safe. It wouldn't affect basing much and would make it a bit more fun to fly....

[Fork]

Personally I dont really mind about space bux, new players are prob gonna want that. Im not keen on this epidemic thou or if people can buy to win.

Listen: We really should b making more bigger improvements to make a bigger difference coz altering mini things wont do anything to retain players. Think of this as an idea: add a mini twdd/twjd base to pub where a squad can chall the world or another squad for a match (5 lives each) for a certain amount of cash and the first 3-4 random players to type a command gets to play- the winning team gets a split of that cash. To me this idea would b awesome in alot of ways: players get a taste of twd/ squads that cant find a jd/dd can now chall the world instead of logging of/ squads are playing for cash adding to the excitement. These are the type of improvements I wanna see

[qan]

Pubbux are, at least at this point in time, here to stay. The idea behind pubbux is to give incentive to continue to play pub, much like adding in the pub timer helped bring back basing in pub around 9-10 years ago.

Most things anyone can buy who plays regularly enough. Yes, you get burned by the guy who has full charge macro'd on occasion (and sometimes decide it'd be fun to macro it yourself and throw off the timing of those used to vanilla TW). And there are a few items that are not so much !buy win as "give us another chance" -- often if someone buys the Flagsaver, for example, their freq still doesn't win. It's basically for when the game is tight and you want to keep playing. I haven't ever been annoyed when it's used against me, but might just be me.

Speaking of, the prices for those two items were doubled. FlagSaver is now 5K, and Epidemic is now 20K. It doesn't keep the high rollers from buying them all the time, of course... but then again, when was the last time you saw Amerie or pps buy anything? Doesn't seem to be too big a problem. But others may disagree.

We also are able to toggle on/off the money system at intervals. For example, it could be shut off for a weekend stretch, and everything would continue to work fine.

But the one truly great thing about pubbux is that they've made dueling in pub somewhat relevant. It means a bit more. The fact that people can also bet on those duels adds another level to it. The idea is not to throw off the balance, but to still keep it fun. I think largely that's successful.

[Ephemeral]

Qan,
What is the point of making Pub more than the front door to the zone? For years it did just fine as an introduction to the zone. I can’t think of any other games where it is important to get experienced players back to ‘level 1’.

I really don’t understand why there was a need to screw around with something that was working for years. Pub introduced new players to the game; it wasn’t meant to be a developer’s magnet nor was it meant to hold vet interest for years. The best designs are when there is nothing left to remove; not when there is nothing left to add. Pub achieved this years ago and proved itself as being able to attract and retain new players. Now it doesn’t.

If every single aspect of the game has to be ‘fun’, lets revisit how staffer are axed. I recommend the following.
eph

[Shaddowknight]

A newplayer training area for pub is in the works... although there have been a number of attempts at it, this one is more likely (at the least) to actually follow through, for reasons I'll be announcing later on this week. Pub and newplayer stuff is also being tracked.

[Fork]

A newplayer training area for pub is in the works... although there have been a number of attempts at it, this one is more likely (at the least) to actually follow through, for reasons I'll be announcing later on this week. Pub and newplayer stuff is also being tracked.

Man I hope it works out Ty for updating us.

[roxxkatt]

eph, which problem would you say is worse, the very few new players being slightly more likely to leave or a very large number of 10+ year vets leaving because they are bored by the lack of new or interesting things in the game?

[Ephemeral]

eph, which problem would you say is worse, the very few new players being slightly more likely to leave or a very large number of 10+ year vets leaving because they are bored by the lack of new or interesting things in the game?

IMO player population is a fluid thing, much like water flowing into a bucket. Of course existing players are important but it is inevitable that attrition will take place over time. For years the zone did not have to be too concerned about this attrition, we had enough new players to replace those who were leaving. But at some point ‘critical mass’ will be (or has been) reached. ‘Critical mass’ is when the number of new players joining the zone drops below the number of player leaving. It doesn’t take an Einstein to understand that the zone won’t last very long when this point is reached, it will implode on itself.

Of course we can debate if the zone has reached this or not; IMO it has but truth is that few people know the real metrics. Everyone is running off of ‘casual observation’ and basing their opinions of what they see happening; those that log in often generally have a better handle on the population trends. There are also a few population trends/graphs/tools out there but they are incomplete and also require a lot of speculation and assumptions.

But while we debate Rome is burning. New players don’t really have a voice, they aren’t a part of this forum and they don’t have influence that vets and those with friends have.

But the above is why I keep harping on new player retention and the importance of Pub. As long as the zone is at, or near, critical mass my opinion remain that new player retention and pub are the highest priority. If we can get this turned around and the bucket start to fill back up with water then we can go back to placing a higher priority on existing players. (Note; placing priority doesn’t mean that you walk all over either of these important groups of players, it simply means an added variable in the decision making process.)
eph

[qan]

Qan,
What is the point of making Pub more than the front door to the zone? For years it did just fine as an introduction to the zone. I can’t think of any other games where it is important to get experienced players back to ‘level 1’.

Well, but don't you think that attitude is a tad bit elitist?

I assume you are calling league the end goal of TW? I've done a little bit of league. At one point I was a very good WB, for example, but that was about 12-13 years ago.

I came to TW for pub, and stayed for pub and events. How much pub do you play, if you feel quite qualified to comment on it? Is the fact that people may prefer pub to leagues puzzling to you? Disheartening? I don't understand why people should be funneled into enjoying TW a certain way... this zone has always been diverse, as it should be.

Yet players who want to play only pub ... or even who play pub any more than the occasional 1 hour to "pwn n00bs" or whatever you might say ... are constantly looked down upon. Why? I don't look down my nose at leaguers, and do my best to keep league bots running well, because I know it's hugely important to the zone, and I care about the zone.

Back around 2004-2005ish, can't remember the exact time, I created the pub timed game in response to a lack of interest in basing. Standard pub was NOT doing well. It got things going again. Meanwhile, population IS declining, and will probably continue to decline. Offering the same old, same old simply has not worked. We are constantly coming up with new ideas not just to try something out for the giggles, but because you can't simply maintain interest doing what you've done since the dawn of time. Not with what we're now up against, in terms of competition for the audience base. We've had to adapt in the past. We continue to have to adapt.

And there's nothing wrong with 20v20 basing ... with all ships! :> No other arena but pub offers the kind of happy-go-lucky play I expect from my multiplayer gaming. I'm long done being "hardcore" -- never was, never will be, never want to be.

[roxxkatt]

as expected, you didnt answer the question
those were some nice buzzwords though

additionally, the zone died off when people ignored that pub was the front door to the zone, so they stopped hosting events and the zone rotted away from the inside
this has always been and always will be a casual game, and ignoring that group caused it to leave

thats why you are arguing between only 2 groups of people: "vets" that play twl or some shit and people brand new to the game
theres noone else, because you ignored them and they left

[qan]

as expected, you didnt answer the question
those were some nice buzzwords though

If the question was "What is the point of making Pub more than the front door to the zone?" my answer was that pub's valuable in and of itself, and while it's the first thing a person sees when they enter TW, it's demeaning to those who enjoy it to treat it as simply the front door. (Do you play TW pub? Do you even play SS anymore? I figured I'd ask this as long as we've all agreed to be condescending to one another, in the spirit of cooperation and finger-pointing. Geh.)

I get where you're coming from, though: events did at one point hold the zone together. Then again, people used to be interested in events a good deal more. Now it's considered beneath most leaguers' social standing to attend an event, and rarely do they deign to do so. (Same with some staff.) There's interest, but just not a lot. Perhaps some of the problem was forcing people to host events that never wanted to, and were only on staff to make it to some higher position. They did a lot of highly-automated, lackluster hosting. You could also say automating too many events took the charm out of hosting. I'd be in part responsible for that.

In some ways, pub has tried to move in to fill the hole left by lack of events, and low event attendance. We have a low pop, and can't easily draw 20-30 away from other arenas for special events that most people have already played. It's just not practical. Whether this is right or good, and whether someone should be whipped and beaten for it, we can all contemplate. Maybe we drove all the casual players away. Maybe they lost interest and went on with their lives. (I've done that a few times.) It's unknowable. But we all know that the glory days will not return. We get new players, sure, but they are a rarity that can't be relied on ... and while we should cater to them to some extent, they're such a small part of our population as to be almost unnoticeable. (Very sadly.) So here's what we have -- what you see is what you get. 2014 is upon us, and we are a very old spaceship game. Most who are around have been around awhile. They want something old, and yet something a little new as well. It doesn't have to be very new, but... enough to hold interest a little while longer. For that reason, adaptation is what keeps us afloat at this point. In my opinion.

[Ephemeral]

Qan,
How much pub do I play? I play a LOT of pub. Ask anyone who plays it, they will acknowledge that I am there often in spite of it being total cluster fuck. I play pub not because I like it, but because it helps the zone. If everyone would play Pub a few hours per week the zone wouldn’t be in this shape. The question is, who the hell wants to play it when it sucks this bad? Who likes listening to Tower (or one of his aliases) cut and paste for hours on end? Who wants to invest in a competitive game only to have someone ?buy win? Who wants to organize an underdog frequency only to have a couple of ‘vets’ climb into a private frequency LT and remove all frequencies from the FR for 45 minutes while they have ‘fun’? Who hasn’t been frustrated by players who know exactly how to the abuse team killing process? Who doesn’t waste a lot of time trying in ?ignore to overcome frustrating kill macros? Who hasn’t spent many hours helping new players only to have them to leave the game after being overly–owned by vets assisted by ?buying endless weapons?

IMO Pub is not working well. IMO new player retention is a big problem that needs immediate addressing. Does anyone have a solution to the new player retention issue? Does anyone have evidence that driving all players into a single arena by adding additional features is working?

I do not consider keeping pub features simple as being elitist at all. Many times the best designs are when there is nothing left to take away, NOT when there is nothing left to add. I managed a large staff of engineers are decades and recognize the perspective of ‘hey, we can add more features to make it better’. “Feature creep” isn’t only a part of my vocabulary. Your implication that I am being condescending is insulting and uncalled for.

I do concur that population will drop and that other factors are also certainly at work. And I do agree that downsizing by consolidating is the correct approach; ideally there would be an arena where players of all skill levels would be able to compete. But I do not think that Pub fits this description at all. I am not saying that you did this but surely you have agree that Pub has been used as a test bed and was subjected to other new features by some who wanted their new code to be used. (I recall Pink rolling out the Christmas map 2 days after Thanksgiving one year and when I asked her why she said it was because SHE was blue and wanted to get HERSELF into the Christmas spirit.)

If anyone has the secret to making Pub competitive for players of all skill levels, if anyone has a way to add features without making the game more difficult for new players to break into it, then the zone should have many more years of life.

Qan, what role do you play on staff? You seem to have a lot of control over what happens in Pub yet it appears that Kyn (and now Shaddow?) is the one who is supposed to be in control. Kyn started off proactive and with a vision be appears to have been thwarted in his attempts to make Pub what he thought it should be. Do you know why this happened? Is ‘diffusion of responsibility’ an big issue with Pub? Are you now the one person who is willing to take control and be held responsible for Pub success/failure? If so, how are you planning on measuring the success/failure as changes are made?
eph