Some Pub News

[roxxkatt]

what happens when they accidentally press insert or f11


and thats why its in its own arena, where any bot can easily bounce people to without them knowing
just like it can bounce them back to pub when theyre done

[Fork]

At a very basic level: We just need a tiny area in pub that is only accessed by new players upon entering. It prompts them to type !tutorial and when u have completed it- you will be warped into the main game. This should be a priority for dev staff to work on. Once this simple thing is added- u can spent how many months making a separate arena for a fun/quick tutorial.

[Shaddowknight]

As has happened in the past, work on it has come to a halt. I don't recall WHO was working on it, but I beleive it would now fall in the marketing/newplayer area of Staff, which is now headed by Dezmond.

No idea what the current plan, if any, is to work on it right now, but if you wish to work on it or help, talk to Dez and try to get the process started back up again.

[Turban]

i once tried to make one about 5 years ago, but uh.. kinda run out of ideas, motivation and time. nevertheless, it really shouldn't be too hard to create an area in our public current map with a basic tutorial for new players; just warp new players there and have them complete the course (or they can be given the option to start playing the game without doing the tutorial) until they are ready to jump into action.

tutorial area should be really simple. it should give the new players some easy advices and objectives to complete, such as flying from X to Y, telling them to enable afterburners by holding shift to move faster, let them know how to shoot (CTRL/TAB depending on shift) or lay mines and some information about the game itself. it has to be short and simple, though, no one is going to stick around long enough to complete a detailed training area.

[Wazzaaa.nl]

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.

Sup?
People still working on this newplayer training area
or what happend..?

[Spock!]

I concur eph. Private freq LT's just ruin the game and serve no purpose. But as it is, many people seem to enjoy ruining the game for all, for some odd reason.

Do you think newbies will want to stay after getting killed by a bomb that they saw a millisecond before they died? Its not exactly a fun experience, and the problem is that these private freq lt's won't stop bombing the flag room until getting killed. And then they just go off, green the lev again and repeat the process and kill basing for another 15 minutes. Adding to the problem is that sometimes LT''s get into large groups of "Vet" players and they have a private freq as big as the other teams all attached on one terr, making it next to impossible for a lone player to kill. Players from the other teams then have to group up to attempt to kill it, killing basing even further. Private frequency LT's really just have to go, or at least inhibited somehow.

A few proposed solutions:

Limit the amount of players allowed on a Private freq with a Lev (Prevents those 'Uber' lts with a dozen players onboard)

Limit the amount of Levs allowed in pub at a time. (some problems may arise, since some player might just sit in the lev to prevent others from playing it)

Remove safe zones for levs. This way Levs won't have a place for safe greening or a place to hide in while the terr switches ships to regain his/her burst/portal.

Make Lev only available on non-private freqs (would totally kill private Lt's, so probably not the best idea.

And I agree about the Tower spam, its rather annoying and might help in driving new players away and driving older players mad. Random chat babble is annoying, and even I cut back on using macros.

Just putting my penny in the pot.

[Ephemeral]

Qan,
I do feel it is important to have a diverse Pub, that being an arena with a blending of new and more experienced players. Playing against better quality players is one approach to how a person can improve. I also agree that pub direction often appears to be just wandering and without purpose or intent. And I concur that some new features should occasionally be tried; but only those which have been thought through, have a stated purpose and way to measure it success/failure, and keep the playing field level. But IMO the last few years of pub smells like desperation and has made things worse, not better.

Consider the recent decision to throw sharks into the safes at restart. The need was obvious but the implementation was short-sighted. Sharks are not the only ship taking advantage of restarts. Just yesterday a private frequency LT ruined three games in a row by running to the roof at restart and raining bombs down on the hapless players at restart. So instead of the restart helping the weaker frequency get a toe hold in the FR; the underdog frequency lost even more players and the games collapsed quickly. How many new players are usually a part of private frequency LTs? How many new players have just started to play and enjoy the competition of a good flag room battle only to have a few selfish experienced people cause them to think the zone sucks? (Even the fact that we are debating this question, instead of simply answering it with empirical data, reflects a big part of the problem. We should be able to ‘go to the numbers’ and see the biggest issues facing new players AND be able to see how each change has helped or hurt the arena.)

The entire issue of LTs has been debated for years in these forums. My own opinion is that LTs are important and should be a part of the game. Anyone who has played Pub knows that a LT can be used to ‘soften’ up a stronger team that is holding the FR. This means LTs meet the primary mission statement on the zone’s web site (‘competitive basing’). But this is for LTs which are a part of a frequency which is trying to take the FR, not a private frequency LT which has NO intention of ever taking the FR.

So in an attempt to ‘be all things to all players’ we have impacted the new player experience. This is what I mean by ‘making things less complex’ or ‘removing features’. I am not against pub bucks; I am against them being used to changing the level playing field. I see no harm in players betting on duels with pub bucks. But I do see an issue with adding more complexity to Pub when it widens the gap between new players and those with experience. Any feature that does this ought to paired with other things that also assist the new player. It would have to be based upon IP address, but perhaps allowing new players to have better damage resistance or some other way to give them a better chance at getting good would help offset some of these new features?

But when adding new features someone has to be looking out for the new players in the zone. IMO new players are reason TW is still active; without them TW becomes just like the EG or HZ zone. In those zones the population critical mass was reached the result wasn’t good. Every new feature that is added to Pub certainly adds some new aspect for those experienced players who are bored with the zone. But at the same time it tilts the playing field a bit more in their favor and piles on more things for a new player to have to learn.

I support any new ideas that can be implemented in the context of adhering to the purpose and intent of Pub (competitive basing), keeps the arena fair for even the newest players, and has a way to measure its success/failure.
eph

P.S. I don’t think it matters if I like or don’t like Tower’s spam; nor does it matter if you enjoy it or not. My concern is that it runs people off; we have all seen this happen. I support his right to say what he wants in chat, but I don’t support him evading the ?ignore feature. If anyone wanted to damaged the zone ask yourself how could you go about doing it? You could do things like fill Pub chat up with inflammatory or inane chat, you could completely take advantage of the ?report team-killing process, etc etc.

[qan]

I guess a lot of the things about pub that you don't like I actually like -- but that may be why I'll always be pubtrash, hahah. I like that it's in flux, that Tower and others are there to fill up the chat (because they enjoy it), watching the interactions ... and of course, because I like to switch ships and go AFK as needed. I also mostly just play lanc and shark. While you can shark in a more formalized base game (if you don't mind a lot of rep and die) there's certainly not a lot of opportunities for the lanc to do its job. There's much to like about pub, in my opinion, and I always enjoy and have enjoyed playing it.

I do agree with you that once you have something good, it's pared down -- there's nothing left to take away. Then again, we really have never had any goal with pub. So it's difficult to know exactly when it's in its perfect state. We can argue about what its intended role is, should be, or what we imagine it to be, but in the end it simply is.

Doesn't mean we haven't mucked things up with hasty feature additions in the past, to be sure, or just to see a bit of code run. And some of these do benefit more experienced players ... the buys in particular, which many macro. (More than anything, people buy shrap -- fullcharge isn't as common as is thought.) The prices have been raised for some of the more disruptive !buys, such as the FlagSaver.

My role on staff is as a bot developer and general SMod (aside from the Council stuff as well). Kry is head of dev, and has taken some initiative to make pub changes. However, pub is (at least ostensibly) under the jurisdiction of TWDev as a whole. This suits me just fine -- I'd love to see pub changes become more democratic and deliberate. I like what Krynetix did with pub, though initially I was opposed to some of the changes. The levi's effectively integrated into basing.

As far as anyone making sweeping changes, though, that doesn't happen much -- including with sysops. I'm not sure any one person's vision is clear enough as to what pub should be.

Sorry if I offended you in any way; I'm just a bit defensive when it comes to pub, heh! We go way back, pub and I. No ill will meant, anything like that.


Also, sorry, Cheese for misinterpreting your post, heh!

[Shaddowknight]

That highlighted bit was the announcing of the staff restructure. If you wish to know more, 24/weedle and rest of the marketing department were working on it, so you should inquire with them. I dont actually know of their current progress on it.

[Wazzaaa.nl]

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.

can you update us about this newplayer training area plz

[roxxkatt]

Qan, what role do you play on staff? You seem to have a lot of control over what happens in Pub

hes the guy that makes things happen, which is far more effective than any windbag

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?

because every time you try to change something you get a wall of people saying:

I do not consider keeping pub features simple as being elitist at all.

[roxxkatt]

If the question was "What is the point of making Pub more than the front door to the zone?"

it wasnt, u posted in front of me

[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

[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.

[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