The Leviathan

[Ephemeral]

You are wrong Eph. Hunting LT's so you can talk shit to them afterwards is probably one of the few things left to do in pub besides having a bounty race bottom, leviterring itself, shark terring and mining the tube etc. Me and izor would LT and there was literally people who would login just to hunt him down so they could talk shit. Coddling a bunch of newbies into not getting bombed is fucking stupid, let people figure out on their own how to deal with the shit.

I see a bunch of people sitting here whining about LT's ruining pub basing and defend Distension which does the exact same fucking thing to pub when its hosted pretty much every fucking day when I get home from work it seems.

kthx,
Well if shit talking is the way to grow the zone than change the mission statement and make it so. This could well be a situation where I am out of touch with what most players look for in a online game. Shit talking does appear to be popular but as you know that is not something that I have even done much of. I play because I get intrinsic satisfaction in participating in a well executed play or series of play that wins a game. TW always seemed to thrive by supporting this but perhaps times have changed.
eph

[kthx]

Shit talking is your reward for executing a play that wins a game. You have it backwards.

[roxxkatt]

yo cthx bro i thought u killed distension
remember?
how can it be killing pub if its dead

[kthx]

Zone doesn't know history thus is doomed to repeat it.

[bkgmjo]

Have you ever helped any new player? Were they asking you how to “where people instantly listen to the flight leader (terr), report scouting info, sacrifice for their leader by greening and meatshielding and luring, attack each threat instantly (anti/porttraps/hunters), come up with creative strategies”? LOL Come on, no new player is going to learning this kind of stuff.

I have, 3 hours ago. And no the wording was not this, but asking how to do the heavy bomber teams along with which other arenas there are.

As for the mission statement you set up with mootland: if I remember correctly everyone involved in these changes caused chaos, pissed off hundreds of regular players and disappeared suddenly.

[Lemmin]

I would support allowing LTs onto just freq 0 and 1, so long as there was a robust and instant system in place for teamkilling. LTs DO have a place in basing, it's just that at the moment they are mainly used as a tool to feed off the basing for their pilots private enjoyment.

I believe the "just basing freq" idea was tried before six or seven years ago, and resulted in a lot of people LTing just for the 'fun' of teamkilling an entire flag room. Is it feasible to set up a system whereby teamkills by levs result in an automatic setship to a spider for a few hours?

LEM

[bkgmjo]

Automated punishment has been suggested and tried a few times. The problem here is abuse and getting correct data: people run into bombs just to get the other player punished for nothing or are just newbies who do not know, the other freq repels mines in a way that they tk to get the lev/shark punished for nothing, in a very crowded place where a few teamkills can save your flag and team it is sometimes better to tk than to watch the team lose. Also LT guards usually do not mind getting teamkilled at all just to save the turret or lure enemies, this would have to give an option of !idontmind or something.

However, a simple staff policy change of having many people as ZH whose sole purpose it is to deal with intentional teamkillers and assist people in pub would be a great improvement here. Sadly I barely see any staffs who actually play in pub most of the time while I know of a lot of players who would play the neighborhood watch role if it did not include having to deal with other staff stuff.

I also doubt the problem with LTs on private freqs are the LTs themselves. Look at the difference of how many kills they get how fast and how long their life is when just one or two of the basing freq start hunting them in defense of the flagroom. One for each freq already makes two. Even just patrolling roof usually prevents the LT from attacking easily. The problem is that staff in the past years decided to put automated kill systems, quick antiwarp buys, epidemics, nerfed lev and other weird things in place and not to simply promote skilled hunters, which are still the best defense. After all, it does not matter how strong your bomb is if you cannot direct it into enemies.

[Lemmin]

I do fondly remember the call for a roof patrol, and the pride I felt when I answered the call to patrol the top of the base agaisnt Levs and LTs. Unfortunately, these days I don't think the pub population is large enough to support a private LT freq plus roof patrol - we generally have at most 20 people actually playing in pub, of which maybe six or so are on private freqs. To take another person from each pub freq in order to patrol the roof really does reduce the number of actual basing players below a threshold necessary for a decent basing game.

Therefore I still support the idea of a restricting LTs to the main freqs, and shipsetting them to a spider for the next hour of play if they serial teamkill.

If people are deliberately "getting in the way of the bombs" to get the LTs banned, then maybe this is an indication of how little LTs are appreciated by the rest of the population?

To change the subject slightly, has a variation of the pub map been considered? A decade ago I thought fatbase might be the answer to the LT plague - a double-sklnned base that couldn't easily be bombed from outside. Could a similar modification to the base map be made to render LTs less dangerous to people actually basing (and maybe allow them to be used to clear out vermin like weasels?)
LEM

[bkgmjo]

Hm, I suggested a !buy of extra walls already as I guess a passive protection would be fair to everyone, at least in comparison to automated kills. Not sure how a permanent solution would work out, guess it would limit the options of different base sizes, but at least on roof and the sides it could be tested. A simply bigger base should do the same trick though, nobody forces you to sit on the walls. Maybe even a slight change to the roof holes could be enough to prevent shooting deep inside base but still allow firing out or to make them have to come close, a little like this:

  #######                            #######       #######  ###                  ###  #######
 #       #                          #       #     #       #                          #       #
#         ## #################### ##         #   #         ## #################### ##         #
#                                            #   #                                            #
 #         ###                  ###         #     #                                          #

The blocks that were added on the sides and on top of base in early 2ks worked wonders against too heavy LT fire, could do that again on this newer map to balance by making it harder to LT on priv without affecting the whole rest of the game.

As for the weasels from roof... there should still be those tiles you can shoot through but not fly through. Could at least put those on the roof holes and only allow weasels to slip in from midbase as a flagsaver, not a solo priv freq flagstealer at last second.

[roxxkatt]

that is a very moderate and easily implementable solution, and i think it should be the first step to try

[Bioture]

I guess you could just stop fucking around with it. You could also stop fucking around with the map.

Just two things I think doesn't need to be fucked around with. I don't know though new players might want things to be fucked around with.

[Kahlan]

Bring back old lev from 2000.

[KrynetiX]

UPDATE

Levi's back to (roughly) the way it was before. Restored classic levi (from 1999ish), removed 2 reps (from max 4 to max 2) and added one rocket. Reply to this thread with what you see/think.

Pub will soon be going into a 'classic pub' period, in which we'll be temporarily using the original/classic settings (1999ish).

Now we continue to collect statistics, and hope for healthy pub games around the clock.

[Zeebu]

Pub will soon be going into a 'classic pub' period, in which we'll be temporarily using the original/classic settings (1999ish).

does this mean no pub bux and stuff?

[KrynetiX]

Good question.

My first thought would be to remove pubbux for 'retro pub', but I realize that many people view pubbux as an incentive to play. Perhaps we'll allow the accumulation of pubbux, but no spending.

Ideally, it being 'retro', we would restore all the classic settings, including ?buy (with points).