Use of !buy purepub

[qan]

You could add passive defenses, more incentive to hunt LTs, pubfreq-like bonuses to private freqs who play in flagroom, modifications of the map, more safety and equal buy rules for levs in flagroom and so on. But what is chosen instead? Some pseudo-solutions which ruin lots of play styles you did not even mean to target, cause hatred between players, make it almost impossible for a newbie to learn how to lev for a basing team and modify the balancing of the other ships. All this does is throw off players and harms the game as a whole, especially when it goes back and forth.

I understand your anger -- the solutions that make it through are always those that are fast to implement and require little political clout. The reason? The only people with political clout in TW are the highest-ranking members of staff, and even they don't have much at all. Not even sysops have much ability to really change things without people crying out, "Power-hungry monster!" There is a paralysis among members of staff in the last few years; nobody wants to take the blame for the next big screw-up. The game is far less forgiving now than it was when we had 650+ online.

You throw out plenty of strong ideas (and a few flawed ones), but without committing to any of them. Let me ask you this: do you want it to change for the better, or is it simply more enjoyable to rage against the machine? I know you try to distance yourself from the "X ruined everything" crowd, but you might want to be a bit more of a realist in imagining how human beings implement things, especially in a game that is quite literally nobody's job to maintain. (Aim low and you will not be disappointed.) Throwing out ideas does very close to nothing but make you feel better ... a little more righteously vindicated, perhaps, but close to nothing to actually change anything. They don't give anyone anymore clout. It still shoulders responsibility on others and not on yourself or the community. It's a cop-out, in other words.

Rather than another inevitable forum post about how everything done is ruining everything, here's my suggestion. Put together a complete proposal for what the community should do. Leave no options open: decide. Post it (ideally in the Council forum) and ask for input. Revise it. Keep it as simple as possible. Think it through. Get a member of Council to add it to the agenda, have it voted on, and get it implemented.

It remains to be seen whether or not Council will remedy the cycle of indecision, but this is exactly what it's at least supposed to do. It's designed to empower staff to implement ideas the community genuinely believes are worthwhile. So make use of it!

[bkgmjo]

Sure, will take a bit of time and some thought about how to get close to an optimum on input though. Just please understand that the reason I post here is not rage. It comes more from sadness about seeing the spirit and population of TW vanish and trying to make people question their action instead of adding the first idea without even high members of staff having a clue about it and then ducking away without notice on what exactly they changed. This does not really mean you, but ya I guess you know what I am talking about and have enough experience with this already.

[Frightful]

blah blah blah

So basically, levs can do no wrong and we need to protect them. Everything you said above is just laughable.

In regards to the whole nonsense about purepub killing the population. I have seen far too many basing games killed due to a single LT. If people didn't base, LTs would have no targets. Private frequency LTs are leeches who take without providing anything in return.

[Wormhole Surfer]

It wouldn't hurt to let everyone start with anti-warp (and antiwarp energy set to 0) and have the antiwarp radius set to the max which is something like 1280 (80 tiles) pixels.

[Viruk]

I actually have a problem with calling things abuse when they are used the way they are ment to be used. This includes LT, !buys, lag effects like lagrocket or the reward system

I don't think it was ever intended that private freqs should outnumber pub freqs.
I don't think it was ever intended that players on another freq would kill-feed a player bounty to evade balancing limitations.
That is what I meant by suggesting abuse. Others may have differing opinions on what abuse is.

Also, if you wish to whine about buying out of safe, perhaps we should just force everyone to buy in safe, just like the ?buy ages of yesteryear, that way it's fair and annyoing equally for everyone.

Umm no. Safe buying is better for ships that can move to safe faster, have a wider choice of useful specials to buy, have the best chance to avoid dying before deploying them and that have the spare time to do this. No prizes for guessing which common ship combo fits this description best.

Limiting Terrs to 3 attachers seems like a no-brainer to me. It's fun to have massive turrets on occasion, but really, it's not interesting enough to justify what it allows LT freqs to do.

It would still hurt pub diversity a bit to lose the option of massive turrets.

It would still allow terr + 2 levs + unlimited defenders/blockers attaching and detaching (or maybe 3 levs if one can detach and reattach at strategic intervals to allow support.) Even 1 turret of these is more than enough to badly disrupt basing at low population so the horrible !buy purebub is still the only practical respite for small basing teams (providing it is used *before* they start quitting.)

One interesting option would be to allow Levis to !buy L3 bombs if in FR for a reasonable amount, which would then be removed once outside FR

Allowing a super-powered ship in FR would make it easier for the flag game to be unbalanced when populations are low.

It could probably be abused by buying in FR, then porting/warping out and bombing before the bot registers the change of location and downgrades. Not sure how much of a problem this would turn out to be if it had to be bought each time the lev entered the FR. I bet there are spots outside the FR that the bot thinks are inside too.

Some levis might convert to basing but it would probably only attract the hardcore streaking LTers when the freqs are so stacked that they had a good chance of survival. A smaller, hated priv freq would likely be too vulnerable to antiwarp and reppy weasels and would mostly carry on disrupting basing with hit and run as usual.

Rather than simply changing Levis out of ship from a !buy purepub, it's been suggested that there is some kind of Levi sudden death mode activated immediately after the !buy. ....

This would be more fun and more fair than a sudden forced shipchange but it would still take time to hunt down the lev. This would leave less purepub time spent purely basing which ought to be the main point of buying it in the first place.

Whether the LTs would find it amusing I could not say. Perhaps they would just hide in safe until the hunters started basing again and then sneak out to disrupt basing as much as the debuffs would allow.

Speaking of, I'm thinking of putting in a !buy sortapurepub, where you can buy, well, sort of pure pub. This means Levis are allowed, but only on public frequencies

Make it too cheap and spammable and you could lose pub diversity even when it has the population to support basing with an LT or two. Perhaps a significant chunk of the TW playerbase as well.

Unfortunately, pub freq players could use this to destroy a private frequency if those on the privates would actually be removed from the private freq when a pub freq (or pub pop in general) drops below a certain amount. Just tell everyone to spec and suddenly you ungreen all the freq's Levis, reset their bounty and potentially keep them from rejoining if you don't rejoin your freq -- an easy way to be spiteful.

Yes I didn't think of this happening by spiteful players (or mass leaving to play an event). Oops!

The idea of warping them to a containing safe box (unless they choose to switch) seems a good one.
If you have to force-switch you should at least force the lowest bounty player off first.
You could also wait until death/safe-hiding to force-switch them (levs don't die quickly but their blockers may do and it might make it worth hunting them if death was more permanent.) Warn of Sudden Death and those without streak may choose to switch or leave for a bit.

Simple question: Why constantly put limitations, punishments, unbalanced super weapons and ruining of a ship which never broke anything first?

In an attempt to balance its game-breaking overpoweredness in certain circumstances. Seems very difficult to balance using config settings alone when it has to work as a standalone ship and a rider and retain its traditional virtues. I don't agree that anything proposed 'ruins' it as a ship.

Purepub (until you realized it kills pops and does nothing good)
Why not just give levs the option to

Live until killed with tasty bounty on their head and instant ship change should they go for a safe and purepub starting as soon as the last lev is removed.

Because this can take hours, and a person who has just spent a huge pile of spacebux deserves not to have to wait that long and because basing could have died entirely before then, making it pointless. Many LTs will already have lots of bounty, but it won't cover the cost of !purepub without an unbalanced (abusable) bonus bounty.

Wait it out in some box with safe zones outside the map. Doubt they hurt anyones feelings there and it would be way more fair for a 800 bty LT to just make them pause than to remove them.

Good idea. Purepub should be about enabling basing more than punishing levs.
Can we have something else designed for punishing levs (and shrappy roofers) please? ?buy dudbombs FTW!

Start it after a game has finished (all rounds) as removing actively basing players after round 1 and taking theirs and their freqs potential wins for the whole game is unfair.

Because this can take hours, and a person who has just spent a huge pile of spacebux deserves not to have to wait that long and because basing could have died entirely before then, making it pointless. It could also be spitefully delayed by vengeful levs jumping into weasels.

Have it last for a whole game, not fixed 30 mins.

It could also be spitefully hurried by vengeful levs somehow. Otherwise it could take hours and be unfair to levs.
If all you care about is LTing you know you can go do something else for 30 min and play what ship you choose when you return.

Increase costs with the number of active players, just like the costs for epidemic, buyblock, turret, baseterr and all other things that potentially affect all other players actively.

This makes sense for many items. It might make sense to start from a lower cost with very small populations too. It could make the !buy system harder to understand and to document clearly though.

Auto-Warping
On round start it would be nice to warp levs or LTs currently in base area AND ROOF to safes rather than sending another 80 bty baselev into spawn randomly.

As long as round start does not happen randomly or without warning this should not be needed. Incautious levs deserve to lose their bounty and should be discouraged from lingering in range of basers in such a potentially disadvantaged position.

[bkgmjo]

@fright, worm

See the interest in playing any lev-free area? I mean, you could always go to one of those places and be happy there is no LT posing too much of a threat to a play style of shooting people on the other side of the wall from safety with bouncing bombs and almost free-to-buy shraps, which of course is very altruistic and is regularly praised by their own teammates when they blow up and lose flag.

Just somehow I doubt you will find many to follow you there. Look at the masses of people who left for ?go base when the evil leechers were killing the game, just a few hours ago in a pretty active pub:

  [FLAG] ROUND 3 START!  Hold flag for 3 consecutive minutes to win.
  Banner Boy entered arena
  ADistraction entered arena
  ipaD left arena
  [STREAK] Red_X with 84 kills! Best Streak of the Session!
  itchynutz!!! entered arena
  Bumpa promised something sexy if your freq wins. ?go Base -BaseBot
  Geez. entered arena
  Jaren entered arena
  Geez. left arena
  Geez. entered arena
  [FLAG] Freq 1 will win in 10 seconds . . .
  Up in ya !! entered arena
  [FLAG] END OF ROUND 3: Freq 1 wins after 3:18 Final Score: 0-3 (Bonus: +$180)
  - Basing King/Queen       : Kelly Martinez (+$500)      - Most Veteran Like       : colombiano (+$250)
  - Flag Savior             : LiL Dreamer (+$250)         - Best Terrier            : Pity. (+$250)
  - Most Terrier Kills      : LiL Dreamer (+$250)         
  [FLAG] GAME OVER!  Freq 1 educates with a masterful victory after 3:18. Final score: 0-3
  Weapon left arena
  field left arena
  Nikorio entered arena
  [FLAG] Hold for 3 consecutive minutes to win.  Next game in 1:30. :tw-p:!warp to warp in
  Up in ya !! left arena
  TW-Bot1 entered arena
  [BUY] Chanelle_Leftcoast has bought a turret that will occupy the roof for 4 minutes.
  itchynutz!!! left arena
  t(-_-t) entered arena
  Nikorio left arena
  Banner Boy left arena
  Jaren left arena
  [FLAG] Next round begins in 10 seconds . . .
  [FLAG] ROUND 1 START!  Hold flag for 3 consecutive minutes to win.

Ya, ?go base did not start as you can probably guess. But for a fun fact: another one of the LT haters spammed about how destructive the LTs are, after he tried to hunt it and failed horribly by catching every single bomb roughly directed at him in open space. Why did he fail? Because running after a faster car with a slower one where the faster one even has someone with a bazooka aiming at you is generally a bad idea and seriously lacks creativity. Of course now he whines and demands cheaper turrets, more anti, removal of levs, claims levs ruined the game (pub was stable the whole time) and all this stuff. Sorry, but if someone cannot handle competition and challenges in a multiplayer game, there is lots of solo stuff with cheats out there (Probably also something with free antiwarp).

While he was busy complaining someone else started to hunt, shot the LT and gained some nice reward. The LT freq went away, as did the original complainer as I guess now that there was no more LT the game got boring? This is the stuff that is laughable.

[Frightful]

@fright, worm

See the interest in playing any lev-free area? I mean, you could always go to one of those places and be happy there is no LT posing too much of a threat to a play style of shooting people on the other side of the wall from safety with bouncing bombs and almost free-to-buy shraps, which of course is very altruistic and is regularly praised by their own teammates when they blow up and lose flag.

Just somehow I doubt you will find many to follow you there. Look at the masses of people who left for ?go base when the evil leechers were killing the game, just a few hours ago in a pretty active pub:

  [FLAG] ROUND 3 START!  Hold flag for 3 consecutive minutes to win.
  Banner Boy entered arena
  ADistraction entered arena
  ipaD left arena
  [STREAK] Red_X with 84 kills! Best Streak of the Session!
  itchynutz!!! entered arena
  Bumpa promised something sexy if your freq wins. ?go Base -BaseBot
  Geez. entered arena
  Jaren entered arena
  Geez. left arena
  Geez. entered arena
  [FLAG] Freq 1 will win in 10 seconds . . .
  Up in ya !! entered arena
  [FLAG] END OF ROUND 3: Freq 1 wins after 3:18 Final Score: 0-3 (Bonus: +$180)
  - Basing King/Queen       : Kelly Martinez (+$500)      - Most Veteran Like       : colombiano (+$250)
  - Flag Savior             : LiL Dreamer (+$250)         - Best Terrier            : Pity. (+$250)
  - Most Terrier Kills      : LiL Dreamer (+$250)         
  [FLAG] GAME OVER!  Freq 1 educates with a masterful victory after 3:18. Final score: 0-3
  Weapon left arena
  field left arena
  Nikorio entered arena
  [FLAG] Hold for 3 consecutive minutes to win.  Next game in 1:30. :tw-p:!warp to warp in
  Up in ya !! left arena
  TW-Bot1 entered arena
  [BUY] Chanelle_Leftcoast has bought a turret that will occupy the roof for 4 minutes.
  itchynutz!!! left arena
  t(-_-t) entered arena
  Nikorio left arena
  Banner Boy left arena
  Jaren left arena
  [FLAG] Next round begins in 10 seconds . . .
  [FLAG] ROUND 1 START!  Hold flag for 3 consecutive minutes to win.

Ya, ?go base did not start as you can probably guess. But for a fun fact: another one of the LT haters spammed about how destructive the LTs are, after he tried to hunt it and failed horribly by catching every single bomb roughly directed at him in open space. Why did he fail? Because running after a faster car with a slower one where the faster one even has someone with a bazooka aiming at you is generally a bad idea and seriously lacks creativity. Of course now he whines and demands cheaper turrets, more anti, removal of levs, claims levs ruined the game (pub was stable the whole time) and all this stuff. Sorry, but if someone cannot handle competition and challenges in a multiplayer game, there is lots of solo stuff with cheats out there (Probably also something with free antiwarp).

While he was busy complaining someone else started to hunt, shot the LT and gained some nice reward. The LT freq went away, as did the original complainer as I guess now that there was no more LT the game got boring? This is the stuff that is laughable.

To be honest, I don't even know what you're talking about. You posted some random snippet of people leaving an arena. Is that supposed to mean something to me?

I will pick out the part about creativity. You know what lacks creativity? Attaching to a fast ship and line bombing. That's about the most unimaginative thing you could possibly do in this game.

[Viruk]

That log shows a lack of interest in basing in general not just ?go base.

Same freq winning a 3-0 victory?
Round lasting barely more than 3min?

Players have stopped trying?

Possibly the presence of a an LT that has been there long enough to make an 80+ kill streak had something to do with it? Just guessing tho.

[Steep]

Kind of funny how the people who keep ruining the game for some people ruined their own fun and were the first to leave the pub.

Funny^
I ruined lt's game? Take a guess how many times lts have ruined other people's game?

Purepub has worked fine for its purpose, each time there has been a nice 30 minutes of basing without distractions. The images you show, have quite some time inbetween. The basing in this particular case was already dieing, so it was a little too late. Also, these times pub pop drops and increases randomly from 5 to 20 without much reasoning.

I just cant understand how you think lt is not the problem of this game? It takes away from players, and gives nothing back (except the few of your like). Most rediculous lie i have heard is you telling us hunters like to hunt you. Name me the first guy who likes to play with dudes who just run and lob bombs...

[LF]

Playing as an LT is not a "play style", its fucking lame. We can continue to have these conversations and go back and forth about which aspect is more important or you retards can just ditch the fucking LTs already (Note that i said LT's and not Levs) If the 6-10 people left in the entire game that play nothing but exclusively LT don't like it they can fuck off and go play world of warcraft together so the rest of the 99% can actually play the game the way it was meant to be played. Pubbers don't leave pub for ?go base because they don't get picked or can't compete even when they are picked, not because they'd rather stay in pub and LT (With the exception of people like this bhjwerdhjf newbie) Faggots who need the best aspect of every ship (speed/power/ports/reps/etc) just to survive are useless, let them leave so everyone else can go on playing the game for what it was designed to be ---- BASING/DUELING

Back to the shadows

P.S. Hey zeebu ┌∩┐(◣_◢)┌∩┐

[Crescent Seal]

do a poll and link it to pubbers and let them decide

[qan]

I've thought of a way to make the PurePub buys work that I think might make both sides (reasonably) happy:

Bot will no longer will switch players out of Levi at the start of PurePub. Instead, it will only switch them out of Lev if they make a kill.

This way, LTs get to keep their bounties & streak intact, if they want to wait in safe until PurePub is over. So it's their choice ... not forced on them. Meanwhile, the basers aren't getting fired on, and can base freely. And, as a kind of compensation for the PurePub ruining their fun, there's always the option for a Levi to get one last good shot in while PurePub is actually going. A choice, again. I don't think the basers will be too upset by one Levi bomb. It might also make a fun game for LTs: try to kill as many people with that one kill allowed before switch as you possibly can. (Apologies in advance for the private message spam you'll get if you kill more than 1 person with a levi bomb with purepub enabled.)

Because this now results in a slightly less pure pub, and is not so damning to Levis, I reduced the cost for the buy to 50K, and the buy for SortaPurePub to 35K (SortaPurePub allows Levis on public freqs to continue making kills without being shipchanged).

[bkgmjo]

Nice excuse to make spamming it cheaper :-)

Seriously, no change you or anyone makes in it will compensate for the fail it is. It still did not reach its supposed goal of helping in improving any basing action, just like all the other super weapon buys or Anti-Lev measures staff came up with so far. It is nothing but a revenge tool for people fed up with someone beating them and the costs are hilariously cheap thinking about how quickly you can make bux. Compare to epidemic which does not destroy anyones game completely and only lasts a few seconds. Purepub does not even cost twice as much for locking a whole bunch people out of the game for a whole 30 minutes. Might as well add "!buy NoTerrs", "!buy NoSpid" or "!buy NoSharks" as revenge tools for whiners who have to deal with porttraps, anti or mines at low pop and see how happy people will be, won't even get started with instant-full-shrap-javs.

Remove and bring back basing weekends.

Side note: this last change can easily be abused.

[qan]

Good morning bkgmjo!

[Bukkake Surprise]

"as a kind of compensation for the PurePub ruining their fun"

Where's the basers' compensation for LTs ruining THEIR fun?

PurePub does not lock a whole bunch of people out of the game. It locks one ship out of the game. The people can change ships freely.

Why haven't levis been brought back to their original power (but only 1 or 2 repels) and the limit of people who can stay on a terrier brought back to 3? Why are people still able to buy out of safe? Instead of making stupid changes that don't work, put everything the way it was.