The Leviathan

[Shaddowknight]

Another thing to take into consideration when dealing with levi win/loss ratios, is intentional greening. While not incredibly relevant, it's not something to be ignored completely. It's also pretty much impossible to track properly without constant spec watching everyone for the entire 2 weeks.

[qan]

You will be known as the person who killed TW.

https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/slippery-slope


I appreciate the massive amount of thought you put into many suggestions (and will very likely post responding to those, too) -- but I had to stop to facepalm extremely hard -- do a double take and make sure you actually posted this.

What you appear to be saying is that any approach you dislike will kill TW. Especially something as simple as giving Levis back L3, but removing rep/port/burst ... really? That will kill TW? Are you really sure that will happen? Not being a touch dramatic, are we?

It just makes it hard to take seriously anything else you say on the subject. I know from talking to you in private that you're very angry about Levi changes. But please keep in mind that this style of arguing takes a big bite out of your credibility. And that reduces how effective you are at actually changing anyone's mind to your way of thinking. (This is general advice to all people who like to present arguments in the popular "internet forum style.")



--- EDIT ---
OK, read the full post. Really good stuff in many places. I like most of the things you had to say -- the pub suggestions in general, as well... simply ways to get people to continue playing that (hopefully) aren't disruptive.

In particular I like the one where you're growing a tree, cultivating something through daily effort. I think that specific idea might not work ... but one in which active daily play-time in a ship creates some sort of special option. For a long time I've wanted to do something silly along the lines of (automated) bot Pokemon/etc., where you can upgrade some kind of bot-based fighter or creature (maybe it would even go in-ship?) ... perhaps find parts for it when you're in game, or spend pubbux on command modules, etc. I dunno. If you found dropped weapons/equipment/charms/parts on occasion the PM spam might get annoying -- maybe you'd have to enable notification. If the bots were in-game bots, you could also allow players to write basic commands that the bots would follow. Or, the same thing if the battles were only simulated. Of course the idea would be players fight their creatures/bots/whatever, bet on them and so forth.

Or you might simply be able to get some kind of prize (thor, etc.) if you log on and play some amount of time (15, 30, 45, 60 minutes a day?) some consecutive number of days. To keep them pulled back in. Ship-specific prizes possible, too (or ship-specific part drops) ... would be a lot of fun to develop.

The little things that keep a game on a person's mind and don't really affect the outcome of the game as a whole.

I'm considering raising the payout for !fruit very slightly if a player is actively playing in-game, too; while many people enjoy !fruit (and lose a lot of money at it), I notice that some people who ordinarily would play pub will play it a bit less because they prefer to spec and !fruit.

[KrynetiX]

I'm very pleased with the practical turn this thread has taken, and especially Drosophila's practical, factual perspective and data sets. Now that we recognize we've got some raw data to look over and analyze, we'll see what we can figure out. Again, it's ideal to restore L3 (classic Leviathan) and once again give LT's their fun-time. We also have to take many other things into consideration, such as new player retention. Along with a new marketing/advertising campaign, mass emailing, new websites, new "Getting Started" guides -- we can really come out ahead if we continue our practical approach.

As Drosophila pointed out: We need to stabilize pub over the next year, and we need not panic. That's exactly right. Let's take this one step at a time and work our way to something that works.

As for the website stuff, I've been working on pages at: http://free-space-mmo.subspace-continuum.com/

If you look on the right, under "Pages on this Site", you'll see the pages I've created thus far. Especially note "getting started" and "The Basics Part 1", as those I put together specifically for new players. If anyone would like to start adding pages of information / tutorials / files / etc. let me know and I'll give you administrator access to the website to easily publish pages with a WYSIWYG editor (simple text editor to create pages, very easy)..

I'm very excited to see this much involvement, and especially the practical/realistic/factual perspectives.

Thanks all!

[qan]

A major theme of this thread is considering changes to the levi that would make it more balanced as compared to other ships in pub. In a series of earlier posts, I had analyzed the win loss ratio of the levi and the seven other ships. The purpose of this was to develop a quantitative means to evaluate the relative strengths of the ships. One criticism is that this was based on the top 100 players sorted by total number of wins. Here, I have repeated my analysis of the win / loss ratio for the eight ships, but now for the nine different categories that can be used to sort players on the public stats web page. The main finding is that regardless of how the data are collected, the levi has a significantly higher win loss ratio than any of the other ships.

Wanted to say, thank you, Drosophila, for one of the single most rigorously researched and calculated posts in the history of TW forums.

As if your name wasn't already a giveaway, you've finally outed yourself as a scientist. Are you taking your PhD? Doing your post-doc?

I feel sorry for every guy who has to do the cleanup for a fly lab. My yeast lab always smelled a little funny, and when the plates were contaminated they could collect a decent aroma ... but nothing like the rank stench of a bag of flies. When I had to empty out the autoclave because the guy in the fly lab "forgot" to set his timer again it always put me in a great mood.

[bkgmjo]

really? That will kill TW? Are you really sure that will happen? Not being a touch dramatic, are we?

, there are some things that might happen

Those theories are not more dramatic than claiming a feature that worked for 20 years is killing the game you know...

I would also like to note I am not angry at lev changes and you might know I put quite some work into figuring out what changes are even possible on the current technical limitations together with fiS and KrynetiX. Also set up clones of TW on own servers and experimented with lots of options. I am angry about people trying to break a game for no reason at all. Well, maybe not even the game, but the community that evolved from it. Just because a few people complained about something they complained about since TW exists. Might as well try to forbid spawning, chatting, dueling, leagueing or any other element of the game that some like and others don't. And in the end, the more of this you take away the higher the risk of pushing game population below the point where it can sustain itself, thus risking the game to die.

Oh ya...: How would you like to have distension taken away? Numbers clearly show it is frequently killing the pub game by drawing people from it. Also it keeps crashing the server and prevents a lot of other stuff from being hosted.

@KrynetiX: you might want to read the stuff Drosophilia copied from where lots of people pointed out those numbers say nothing at all.

[Lemmin]

Meow! It's no secret that I've been opposed to LTs for the last decade - I've always said they've been killing the zone. In fact, LTs are one of the two reasons I've basically quit the game and mothballed Ossify (one of the longest running squads in TWD) - the other reason is of course the continuing resolution limit.

One of the things that attracted me to the zone back in the 90s was a simple description on the website. I can't remember it exactly, but it listed each ship's role in Trenchwars, and went something like this:

1 - Warbird - Rifleman: highly accurate single shot kill sniper
2 - Javelin - Grenadier: can bounce bombs around corners and has defensive rear guns
3 - Spider - Machine gun: rapid fire to clear or defend trenches
4 - Leviathan - Heavy artillery: slow moving but heavy hitting to bombard defensive positions
5 - Terrier - Troop carrier: fast but lightly armed can carry other ships into the trenches
6 - Weasel - Assassin: stealthy but slow, can take out key enemy troops
7 - Lancaster - Shotgunner: wide burst of fire for close combat inside the trenches
8 - Shark - Sapper: can lay and clear mines to defend or force entry

The settings for many of the ships has been altered over the years, but I think we should go back to the spirit of Trenchwars to decide what to do with the Lev: It shouldn't be a hugely powerful turret you can attach to a Terr on a private freq for ruining everyone else's basing fun; It ought to be a valuable asset that should be protected as it travels up the entrance, and used to bomb the flag room to break the dominant freq's hold.

In general I respect any Lev that will work it's way under it's own power into the base or up the outsides in order to bomb the flag room. However, in the last few years, when I've played in pub (about four times a year) I've usually ended up hunting levs in the spawn area because I know they will turn into LTs, and LTs are parasites who feed on basing and give nothing back.

Therefore my support would go in favour of returning Levs to full power bombs, with reps and teleport, but removing their ability to attach to a Terrier (could do this by setting the attach bounty really really high). This would return them to their intended role as occasional and valued assets to be used in extreme circumstances when other means of storming the flag room have failed.

An alternative (but I believe technically impossible) solution that I would support would be to allow them to attach to a Terr, but immediately detach them. This would allow them to enter the mid base, or appear above the base, but would remove the terriers mobility from them. I can't think of a way of doing this though.

As one of the original proponents of pure basing, I'm very glad to see that something is finally being done to limit the destruction that LTs have caused to the zone - I'm highly tempted to come back to play more often now that something is being done about this!

LEM

[Lemmin]

For those people who would argue in favour of LTs, I'd like to ask you a question: would LTing be any fun without anyone in the base to bomb? Can you imagine a map full of nothing but LTs? Would you get any kills? I think the answer is that LTs NEED basers in order to have fun.

From the other point of view, do basers need LTs? Basically no - basers don't like LTs, and can happily live without them. I realise there are people who switch between both, but in simplistic terms LTing is a very one-sided proposition - you don't give anything to basers, you just take from them. Is it any wonder so many basers have left the zone? Eventually LTs could suck the life out of pub, at which point they would be having no fun either and would also quit.

Although I was all for pure put at the time (anything to give me some respite from LTs I thought), in hindsight I can see it was a mistake and might have contributed to the decline of the zone. Veteran basers like myself simply tried and tried until they got into a pure pub, which left the LT pubs for the newbies, and being relentlessly bombed by experienced LTs is not a very good introduction to the game. By allowing ANY LT activity in pubs a decade ago, we were driving away the new blood that could have kept the zone fresh.

Just my tuppence worth!

LEM

[bkgmjo]

For those people who would argue in favour of LTs, I'd like to ask you a question: would LTing be any fun without anyone in the base to bomb? Can you imagine a map full of nothing but LTs?

Actually some of the most awesome fun can happen to a LT. Although rare. Would love to see TWDLT, might even make me suffer from game schedules and all the trouble of squad management via a website and bot and twdstaffs and whatnot voluntarily.

From the other point of view, do basers need LTs? Basically no - basers don't like LTs, and can happily live without them.

You might speak for one group basers, not for all though. As you noted yourself, Lev was part of the game from very early on and ment to be heavy artillery. You can even use enemy and neutral LT fire to your advantage by luring and an own LT will definitely make it easier to break a defensive line. Not to talk about the value of a baselev/baseLT.

LTing is a very one-sided proposition - you don't give anything to basers, you just take from them.

This is a rather conflicting situation. Many LTs start on pub freqs to work for their team and then move to privates after getting teamkilled by always the same people who do not get punished because the last few year's BanG crew got pretty weird. They rather ban people for words out of context than actual cheating and beg the cheater to do it again so they can ban them.

By allowing ANY LT activity in pubs a decade ago, we were driving away the new blood that could have kept the zone fresh.

Are you seriously claiming we did not get a new player the last ten years? As for keeping the zone fresh... please give me a list of useful staff/devs who did not start getting involved into LTing.

Although I was all for pure put at the time (anything to give me some respite from LTs I thought), in hindsight I can see it was a mistake and might have contributed to the decline of the zone.

Please say this louder, much louder. Having different pubs and making some of them "pure"(aka heavily restricted) was the single worst decision in TW history. Was even worse that it kept changing which pub does what. Ironically, that great plan to promote basing removed the bi-weekly basing weekends for those who do not like levs, too.

[Zeebu]

my opinion, if LTs get annoying go kill them. if you get bored of doing that-or just dont want to bother-leave pub and go find something else to do.

its a big zone. there are often other things going on.

[Lemmin]

I often hunt LTs. Sometimes this is totally futile - many Terriers have perfected the use of natural or induced lag to make themselves almost unkillable. If I find LTs to be artificially impossible to kill, I'm more likely to go and play Sins of a Solar Empire, or Supreme commander, or Far Cry, than I am to stay within the zone.

Technically, is there any way of penalising a terrier for having a lev attached? Making it slower to move, reducing or removing warps or similar? I suspect the answer is no, but it's worth exploring as a possibility to limit LTing.

LEM

[Lemmin]

@bkgmjo: please don't misunderstand me. When I said I made a mistake by supporting the pure pub initiative a decade ago, I was basically saying I shouldn't have settled for a half and half solution. Allowing ANY sort of LTing in pub is what has slowly killed the zone. I had hoped that having a half-and-half solution would allow anyone who wanted to play 'pure" to do so, but what it actually did was allow the veterans to play pure, and force the newcomers into playing in a hostile LT-rich environment.

I'm not claiming we've had no new recruits to the zone since pure pub started but I do believe more people would have stayed with the game and played basing if they had been dropped into a pure pub arena rather than an LT friendly one.

Please put aside your own personal ideals for a minute, and try and imagine how it feels to play the zone as a total newbie. You will probably start as a Warbird. It is fast, charges well, and dodges well, so in the spawn zone you have fun. You can fight against most other ships quite easily - lancs and spiders will pose a problem until you learn to keep your distance. Then, feeling brave, you venture into the base. You fight off a few attacks and are holding your own, until two high speed blue bombs appear from outside and wipe out half the mid base. You have no defense against that, and no idea how it happened. You venture up the outside of the base and see no-one - then a high speed terrier with six names listed against it flies past. Your shots hit but don't score kills due to lag, and you have no idea how to catch it or kill it, or even how to become it. At this point you realise the game is biased towards existing players, and you subconsciously decide to go and play elsewhere.

This scenario is played out daily in TW - you may not realise it, and you may not care, but the truth is that as an LT you require a fresh supply of blood to the zone in order to kill them from afar. The blood you are killing finds this to be a one-sided proposition, and invariably quits. You are not supporting a sustainable gaming ecosystem.

LTs as they stand need to evolve, or they need to ride the game into extinction. It's your choice.

LEM

[bkgmjo]

Hm, I feel quite different about what happened with the different pubs. I always liked the ones with LT more since people had more strategic options and used them. Also in my opinion people were more experienced and able to think tactical there. But a discussion about this would not bring us anywhere I guess, no way to prove one side anymore.

As for your newbie point, I can see where you are coming from but what I experienced from actual newbies I keep helping into the game for years now I can say there is no such effect. On the contrary: people seem to become very excited at the LT for this is something different. Way more by LT than any of the subarenas or flagging as it does not involve the big picture of basing yet and allows you to play with someone else who can show you things in "us against the world" style. Also they are frequently getting happy about being able to get kills against the experienced players with the help of an experienced terr. Many of those newbies I introduced to the game that way got involved into the community and still play, or did for years. Most of them don't play LT anymore, if this is what might be feared now.

I think for a newbie it is not really an option to hate specific ships or play styles as they have to see what is in the game first and deal with it. So people who teamkill, call them names because they are a less valuable players on a pub freq in base or keep spawning them are hurting their first impression way more than getting killed by an L3 bomb or just any other more experienced player in any ship (cloaking might be very annoying to a newbie though I guess). You wouldn't want to remove the Super Star Destroyer from X-Wing games because they require more than a simple bullet in their direction to be destroyed either. It gives an additional challenge to beat, which never hurts any game as long as it actually is beatable.

For your question before:

Technically, is there any way of penalising a terrier for having a lev attached? Making it slower to move, reducing or removing warps or similar? I suspect the answer is no, but it's worth exploring as a possibility to limit LTing.

Look at ?go battleship or ?go turretwars for example, there it is done. Although by arena settings it is only possible to change rotation/speed for when turrets are attached, not by which ships. This could be handled by the bots prizing things though, you can already see they detect LTs when forming. This is just for info though, nothing I would like to see done for various reasons.

[Shaddowknight]

Yes, we can penalise a terr when it has players attached, it's built into the arena config. We currently do not, but I pointed it out as an option available when discussing it around staff chats recently.

[Dral]

Although by arena settings it is only possible to change rotation/speed for when turrets are attached, not by which ships. This could be handled by the bots prizing things though, you can already see they detect LTs when forming.

This seems like the best option to me, changing the rotation/thrust/rockets on a lev doesn't effect a lev at all once it's greened and attached, and I don't think too many people are complaining about a lev being OP by itself. A de-prized thrust would make it easier to hunt the LT when they become too much of a nuisance, without crippling LT's.

It wouldn't do to change TurretThrust/SpeedPenalty in the CFG though, as this would effect base terrs. Would have to be via bot.

[Ephemeral]

Why not simply limit private frequency LTs? (We have been suggesting this for what? 6-7 years?)

An LT is a legitimate weapon for taking a flag room. It is equivalent to airborne bombing used to soften’ the enemy before sending in ground troops. So an LT on a public frequency, used in the right way, certainly has a place in Pub.

Trouble is that a private frequency LT is mostly used as a weapon of terror. It’s only purpose is to run around and rain bombs down on hapless teams which are trying to play the game correctly.

Surely this wouldn’t be hard to code. Simply disallow a Lev to attach in a private frequency that has less than 8 people on it. This would leave the door slightly open for a large private frequency to still be assholes but surely this would not happen often.

We can’t mandate that people try to take the flag room and capture flag but we certainly can configure the settings to encourage people play the arena in a way that made the zone so popular.
eph