-PUB INCENTIVE: JACKPOT-

[Eren]

I'd say start hosting scheduled distension again and make rp boosts (x% more rp for y hours) available for purchase with pub money.
Obviously a better way to go would be adding very light distension-like RPG features to the pub, and gradually decreasing the lightness of it as players get used to it. I'm thinking starting off with very basic features like +100 energy for a ship, slightly faster recharge, make your ship always spawn with a decoy for x minutes and so on.

A lot of people on the game know that I'm from EG. Back there we had arenas for Monopoly and Chess, and you could play Connect 4 on public via a lvz interface -while playing normally- so maybe you could request the usage of bots for them and implement a pub cash system there? I'm thinking buyable playing pieces for Monopoly, or just simply having a money pot and playing for pub cash. We also had a casino where you could spend money for a chance to win more money.

Betting on more stuff, mainly TWL (not being real money gives much less incentive for someone to throw the match away).

Premium features might also be another way to go;
Off the top of my head:
Make Levi and Weasel premium ships in pub (pay x pub bucks to unlock usage for y hours/days).
Make adding a picture and/or banner to your twd page a premium (one time pub buck purchase, would also encourage a "squad bank" of some sort).

Or maybe new ?buy features:

[Rab]

I'd delete Distension - it's one of those things (like TWLM) that detracts from the core competencies of the Zone.

[Exalt]

The one thing that I hate is that you get ****ty pubbux for killing outside of base. I HATE playing inside that horrible base. I'd rather rape newbies outside of it with 60 kill streaks, macro it so they all hunt me, and then keep raping them. This is much more enjoyable to me than playing some terrible disjointed basing game full of weasels and ****.

I don't know who decided that playing inside the base was more "valuable" than the rest of the pub map, but it's ridiculous and needs to change. I never played inside the base when I started in 2000 either. Very rarely I would, when there was an actual "basing" game going on, but that was very rare even back then. Stop forcing players to do what YOU think is valuable, and allow everything to be equal and fair. If a bunch of wbs want to duel at the bottom safe like it's 2001 again, why can't they? Why is it only $2 per kill? Please explain to me how killing some ****ing ****ty newbie shark inside the base is worth more than killing some wb who can actually shoot back outside of it?

[Jerome Scuggs]

The answer is probably something like "if you want to play wb's outside the base and make money then duel people"

it's tricky because penalizing warbirds who hunt outside base is, i think, an unintended consequence of an effort to cut down on rooflaming javs/levs and stuff. they can adjust kill rewards for specific ships, yea??? penalize javs, not wb's

[mtine]

U missing the whole point here. Noone likes pub because...well, it's boring. Make pub interesting again, THEN start implementing new ideas. Poker, trivia and such should be added to pub so people could do all kinds of different stuff in here, not just base and duel. It would make pub feel alive again!

[Turban]

The one thing that I hate is that you get ****ty pubbux for killing outside of base. I HATE playing inside that horrible base. I'd rather rape newbies outside of it with 60 kill streaks, macro it so they all hunt me, and then keep raping them. This is much more enjoyable to me than playing some terrible disjointed basing game full of weasels and ****.

I don't know who decided that playing inside the base was more "valuable" than the rest of the pub map, but it's ridiculous and needs to change. I never played inside the base when I started in 2000 either. Very rarely I would, when there was an actual "basing" game going on, but that was very rare even back then. Stop forcing players to do what YOU think is valuable, and allow everything to be equal and fair. If a bunch of wbs want to duel at the bottom safe like it's 2001 again, why can't they? Why is it only $2 per kill? Please explain to me how killing some ****ing ****ty newbie shark inside the base is worth more than killing some wb who can actually shoot back outside of it?

this is because several of the staffers and developers are mainly basersand want to promote basing in public as it's one of the main aspects of the game, but I think it's a bit unfair to the dueling population that like to fight outside the base.

trench wars has never been a 100% flagging/basing zone and shouldn't be one in my opinion.

[Ephemeral]

Turb,
While it may not have ever been 100% basing zone, this is/was its primary purpose. At least that’s what the web site says. And no one is arguing that it should only be a basing zone, the diversity that the other arenas and events bring to the table are important. But we are talking about Pub 0 here.

U missing the whole point here. Noone likes pub because...well, it's boring. Make pub interesting again, THEN start implementing new ideas. Poker, trivia and such should be added to pub so people could do all kinds of different stuff in here, not just base and duel. It would make pub feel alive again!

Boring for who? Oh, boring to people who have played the game for years? Is it boring to a new player? IMO it is far too complex for new players; most of whom struggle to figure out how to attach while bored ‘vets’ own them so they can win a jackpot or kill streak.

Simply put, Pub 0 cannot be all things to all people. The decision was made years ago to allow it to evolve away from a simply place to learn the game to one where they is a captive audience in which to saddle every flipping idea that came along. ANY idea you force into Pub 0 automatically becomes used because no one has any choice.

It’s just like the scheduling of leagues. Of course ANY league which is held in prime times will be used. On any of this stuff, ask yourself, would this be popular enough to draw a lot of people to play it if it is held off hours? Would people have flocked to Pub 1 and abandon Pub 0 if pub bucks had only been available in Pub 1? Of course not.

Developers and those with ‘good ideas’ simply dumped every feature they could think of into Pub 0 and then stood back and said, ‘see, aren’t I full of good ideas’. They never listened to new players and in fact new players never get heard from at all. They just leave and don’t come back.

So we live with the zone shrinking down to barely sustainable levels and keep piling on the new ideas. None of the new ideas have helped increase the zone population over the last 10-12 years; what in the world makes anyone think that they will pulling one from their butt now will make a difference?

We should have left our hands off of Pub 0 and let it run as the arena in which new players learn the game. New ideas and other features should have been implemented in other arenas and events. And leagues should not be competing with each other for prime times. If a league like TWDT is so good then hold it during week nights and let’s see how popular it really is. Since it is supposed to be about allowing newer players a chance to experience leagues play (which was always a joke), let them play during the weekdays; ‘vets’ shouldn’t care when it is held.
Eph

[Turban]

i have always been a strong advocate of simplifying public as new players do not care about any of these new features and all it does is making the public arena seem excessively complicated. in my eyes, public is meant to be simple fun. that is how the arena was designed in the first place. it was not meant to be a super public, similar to what Extreme Games has, and there is no reason to make it one. rather, it is meant to be something simple that both basers and duelers can enjoy, and it has to be something that is easy to figure out as currently the new players get bombarded with new information at a faster pace than they can process. i would have switched back to the vanilla state of public years ago, but it's not my department and my word has no power on the matter.

nevertheless, i have told staff this issue numerous times and how we should approach the situation at hand to fix it, or at least as an attempt to reinvigorate the public. we should revert most of the recent changes and only add things that make no difference to game play, such as adding bi-weekly or monthly statistics to somewhere in the arena to give recognition to the best players in different categories. these statistics could be used in an achivement system which would basically reward players medals for being top 5 in warbird for more than 3 times, 5 times, 10 times and so forth every reset cycle. this could also be expanded to reward medals for winning a certain amount of weekend events, TWDT and TWD activity, such as playing X amount of games.

as an added note with my edit, i used to like public back when it was simple. these changes have drawn me away from the arena and from participating in the public play, especially because of how easy it is to abuse your public money to gain an advantage and ruin the fun of others.

[Fork]

As i'm typing this, there are 0 players playing in pub and has been like this for over an hour . Surely incentive is needed to make players want to log on during these times because players are entering- see that its completely dead and leave. When really, they could enter- see 1-5 players are playing and stay logged on.

There was a time when the purpose was for basing... but as the population reduces, it should be aimed at making pub as fun as possible + addictive.

Spacebux needs a purpose. 75% players or more (in my opinion) play this game for TWD. A smart move would be to link pub with TWD. Lets say you have squad twd bank accounts that players could donate their spacebux into. Everyone in the squad can see the total balance. Squad players who don't have enough for a twd game could actually be tempted to play pub to gain as much money as possible to donate into their squad in order to get that squad richer. Have a squad rich list. Make squads duel other squads for spacebux if they dare. Allow squad captains to by rich medals/ squad home page designs/ colours/ extra assistant or captain slots.

Trade spacebux for real cash. Should happen straight after spacebux is reset + there is a limited fund until the next player donates.

Introduce A.I bots into pub during times when it is dead. These bots can get some spacebux when killed. A player will be alot more tempted to play pub vs some bots then without and 0 players.

During the hours where TW's is pretty much dead- rewards should be alot higher.

Everytime you play 20 minutes in pub without speccing or leaving- ur invited to a mini money race where u have a certain amount of time to complete as much of the race as you can. The more you complete- the more spacebux rewards you get. The race could be designed so you don't necessary need to be skillful to get far in the race- more luck involved.

[Turban]

There was a time when the purpose was for basing... but as the population reduces, it should be aimed at making pub as fun as possible + addictive.

this could be done by making the public more simple and fun, rewarding player activity by means that do not give someone an advantage over others. trench wars is not an RPG and should not be treated as such. there is no reason for players to be able to gain an advantage because they have more money to spend; it's a flawed system and creates an unfair playground for all.

Spacebux needs a purpose. 75% players or more (in my opinion) play this game for TWD. A smart move would be to link pub with TWD. Lets say you have squad twd bank accounts that players could donate their spacebux into. Everyone in the squad can see the total balance. Squad players who don't have enough for a twd game could actually be tempted to play pub to gain as much money as possible to donate into their squad in order to get that squad richer. Have a squad rich list. Make squads duel other squads for spacebux if they dare. Allow squad captains to by rich medals/ squad home page designs/ colours/ extra assistant or captain slots.

we can't remove the public money at this point. last time it was done we saw a drastic drop in public player population. however, we can't continue allowing players to spend this public cash to gain an advantage and need to figure out something else to do with it.

we could have two separate money systems if we had the manpower to actually develop these things. one of the currencies could be called squad money and you would gain this by actively participating in public, killing players and winning rounds. you would not be able to gamble this money and it would be used for TWD squad profile upgrades, such as additional captain/assistant slots, additional statistics/graphs for your squad and other things that do not give a squad an advantage.

Trade spacebux for real cash. Should happen straight after spacebux is reset + there is a limited fund until the next player donates.

not a fan of this one.

however, we could find another purpose for regular money which you could still gain from public on top of the squad currency. this currency should be used to buy simple non-squad stuff, like buying a property/house in a zombie maps if you are wealthy, or something else as long as it doesn't give a player an advantage. this is the currency that you can gamble and duel with.

remove everything that has the potential to grief the entire public (super, epidemic, you name it) and add things that do not alter the gameplay.

Introduce A.I bots into pub during times when it is dead. These bots can get some spacebux when killed. A player will be alot more tempted to play pub vs some bots then without and 0 players.

can't be done with the subgame client, but would be fine if we were using AS3 and if it was done properly. there is almost no harm with this one, but we should only allow a small amount of bots to be playing in the public, such as one or two. we don't want to have an artifically filled public arena with bots fighting against each other.

that is assuming that it is possible to make a good bot with high enough of an AI to play at a decent level in trench wars settings.

[mtine]

I like your thinking Eph, however, we didn't understand each other perfectly. I didn't mean to alter things with pub itself, maybe just a little change to the map here and there, but that's it. All I wanted was to make it more appealing to the people that aren't currently playing pub, but are just sitting there in spec. Well, in that case, let them do soemthing else like play poker or trivia or some other simple word games likes acro, story or hell, even scramble could be possible (you could purchase this from the pubbot by using spacebux for bot hosting these small events every 30 minutes or so if u wished).
A small racing map was discussed a long time ago. Would be a nice change of pace now and again if something else happened in pub, like for example in Guild Wars 2 where every now and then a World v World event pops up and you have to unite powers with all the other players in order to defeat a huge boss, even if you were lvling up/doing something else. It's all about fun and a bit more diversity.
Don't get me wrong, when there are 2 balanced teams in pub, the basing is super fun. But when there aren't, something is missing. Adding stuff to pub wouldn't necessarily mean something bad as long as u keep it simple. Just add 1 or 2 things for start, see how it goes. If it doesn't work out, change the appearance of the map a little. Trying simple things may get us far.