The Decline of SS and TW is real

[Exalt]

Can TW grow some balls and just get rid of public? It's garbage. Nobody has fun in public for longer than 10 minutes max. Get rid of it already. Be creative and do something entirely new or stfu and let the game die. Fixing a shitty pub map isn't goin to do anything at all. Use some common sense.

[Fork]

[Jerome Scuggs]

If krynetix is inactive... could syst-ops discuss who to nominate next to be in charge of pub temporarily until kry returns? Let turban/ ephemeral be in charge (maybe after twl) because they seem most willing to try and improve pub + they are very active.

[Fork]

If krynetix is inactive... could syst-ops discuss who to nominate next to be in charge of pub temporarily until kry returns? Let turban/ ephemeral be in charge (maybe after twl) because they seem most willing to try and improve pub + they are very active.

[Turban]

i think any bombing ship should be warped to safety zone (javelins included) before the match starts to prevent this from happening, however i don't see fighting ships being an issue here. there should be LT protection in flag room and that can be accomplished with the use of weapon removing tiles, covering the outside area of the base.

i'm not sure if warping should be mandatory, but it should be enabled by default and would require the players themselves to disable it. some players want to play in the middle/outside base area, dueling each other, and would probably be annoyed to get warped into base when the round starts.

i have no idea how these veteran and basing king/queen calculations are done, but if it's about amount of players killed in flag room / base, then only kills done by players who are inside the basing area should count.


EDIT: oh, bombing ships can bypass the warp by attaching to a terrier -- never mind, i take that statement back.

[Ephemeral]

Auto warping in FR at start is nice but has problems. First, they penalize sharks for no reason by warping only them to safe first. I understand the reason but it is easy to avoid (just attach to terrier and you don’t get warped) and why only do this for sharks? Other ships can also use their weapons just seconds before the start to own entire team. It is also easy for an LT to run to top of FR just before start and wipe out everyone in it.

Auto warp only terrier and everyone else goes to safe at start. (More like leagues start and helps new players learn about attaching.) Place a bot at top of FR on private freq 10 seconds before start to ensure no one is just sitting up there at start; have it expire 15 seconds after start.

Fix the ‘basing king/queen’ and ‘most vet’ calculations. An LT should not be able to win ‘Basing King/Queen’ when they don’t even base. A lone, private freq shark should not be able to win ‘most vet’ by simply mining the entrance of the base the entire game.
Eph

[Turban]

if i am not mistaken, krynetix is the current head of public and all changes have to be approved by him. this will impose a problem as he is one of the most inactive staff members and i do not see that changing in the near future. here are some of the things that i would want to see happening within this year in the public area, but not all of them.

high priority:

- remove every item from the shopping list, with the exception of fireworks, as most of them are fundamentally flawed and give a huge edge to experienced players. several of the items can be blatantly used to grief other players and outright ruin games (see: epidemic, super as an example) which is something we do not want to see happening in the future.

- simplified tutorial that would put emphasis on ship movement, explanation of the main objective (basing / flagging), and telling how to bullet and use afterburners. this training area should be at most two minutes long, and upon completion it should warp the player into action by reaching a checkpoint. there could be multiple mini tutorials areas in the public arena, ranging from simple to advanced, however all would remain optional.

- retraining of certain staff members who are incorrectly doing their volunteer job. we need to rethink the approach that we will take when a new player launched this game. i have heard about some staff members, who are supposed to help the new players, basically spam the new player and if there is no response (without even telling them how to privately message one player) they will leave the player alone after a while. this has probably driven away a couple of new player candidates.

- outsource any work that we can not get completed. it is not that expensive, and we do not want to burn out our remaining developers. they are doing an excellent job, but we can not demand anything from them.

- first wave of marketing, but do not go all in. set focus to medium priority work.


medium priority:

- remove the repel from weasel and make shrapnel fly in a set pattern to simulate a competitive basing match where you do not get a lucky shrapnel kill to win the base.

- complex achievement system with daily quests to complete for certain rewards. this achievement system would include things such as receiving a set amount of kills (with different ranks, scaling up) in a ship in the public arena, basing rounds and matches won, overall time played, times assisting a team and so forth. it could be further expanded to give achievements in competitive arenas, such as elimination, TWD, TWL, and certain events and automated events such as weekend events, hockey and base. there is no limit of how many achievements one can have, and the more we have the harder it will to achieve all of them. these achievements could be tracked in trenchwars.org/TWPD which was an awesome project at that time, and had a lot of potential. add a way to track your current achievement progress and option to display the percentage of the players who have achieved a certain achievement, and giving the option to showcase your favorite achievements in your profile page. you should be able to track and see your progression in-game as well, which could be done with the help of the bot and splash images.

- leaderboards (squad and player specific) displayed in public above the flag room area in various categories, uploaded after every reset, and adding more details to the new database site by further enhancing TWPD to display public statistics and leaderboards.

- encourage squads to participate in public by giving them perks that they can unlock which could only be obtained by activity.

- continue marketing. target a wider audience this time, particularly retro, flash and indie gaming communities.



low priority / not necessary / split opinions:

- bring back the old leviathan and implement a protective shield of weapon removing tiles around the flag room to prevent a perfectly running base game from being ruined by a roaming LT. this would still allow them to make high risk/reward plays, but it would severely diminish their power when fighting outside the base. i know this will split opinions among players, but i believe no ship should be banned from use.

- with the return of normal leviathans, we would need to bring back pure public weekends. these weekends would follow a rigid schedule, starting every Friday evening and ending on Monday mornings at a set time.

- adding further options to encourage players to participate in a basing game such giving ship suggestions to frequencies based on the team size and their current ship lineup.

[An UnKnOwN KiLLa]

nahh i was just in jail so this fake

[Fork]

Ideally there would be a way to make noobs more powerful than existing players. (Ability to absorb more damage, more reps, more weapon strength, etc.) By giving the new players an edge and reducing the chances of being totally owned in the first 30 minutes they would be able to learn the game (and become hooked). This would go a long way in helping increase the chances they would stay with the game. And of course this would make Pub a bit more challenging for existing players as well.

Downside? Well, thats obvious. You would have lame ass players who would make new player names just to get the extra power. (Could something could be done at the IP level to check if a player was truly new or not?) And there are some existing players who would not like this idea because they LIKE owning noobs in Pub. Guess it makes them feel good about their ‘skills’.
Eph

I like this idea... but i think it would be somehow nice for those new players that have extra powers to be recognized visually so everyone can see that they are a new player. This would prevent people moaning when those players tank shots or kill you easily... if you can see they are a new player- then you won't moan or think a normal player is cheating. I don't know how new players could be recognized visually though because i don't know what features can be added to this game. Something like: A star next to their banner/ even a dull ring around their ship? Either way- this idea would make new players feel good and should help to retain those players.

Again who can actually add these ideas? there needs to be a dev to public conversation. I would love it if dev team (if it exists) or whoever is currently in charge of pub to come to forums and ask what changes are needed... and they actually alter them- then we feedback about that change- whether it was good or not. Keep altering things until people are happy. If everything is fixed- work on a new idea- squad pub leader-boards/ squad pub total accumulation of spacebux... man add that sexy jackpot so everyone can see what they can win- boy that would honestly since up things i swear :P

[Ephemeral]

Ideally there would be a way to make noobs more powerful than existing players. (Ability to absorb more damage, more reps, more weapon strength, etc.) By giving the new players an edge and reducing the chances of being totally owned in the first 30 minutes they would be able to learn the game (and become hooked). This would go a long way in helping increase the chances they would stay with the game. And of course this would make Pub a bit more challenging for existing players as well.

Downside? Well, thats obvious. You would have lame ass players who would make new player names just to get the extra power. (Could something could be done at the IP level to check if a player was truly new or not?) And there are some existing players who would not like this idea because they LIKE owning noobs in Pub. Guess it makes them feel good about their ‘skills’.
Eph

[mtine]

First and foremost, change the pub map because it doesn't excite anyone anymore. Make it more like a hub for new and old players alike. Expand it, make a new map for basing, add a racing map around it, give it more color, maybe a zombie style subarena where players can play a mini zombie event if the majority votes on it via bot, of course the tutorial map for new players, a small map for pub squad duels (if it ever really comes to that in the future), lots of achievements (that would be awesome, and I mean that) and last but not least, leaderboards + more fun statistics.

Remove: ?buy option for gaining extra power for ruining others' experience of playing pub, annoying LTs that almost always kill a nice basing game (even a 5v5) and fix the goddamn bot so it isn't always 3v12 (been experiencing this for a couple of days now where one freq has 12 players and cry how good they are while the other one has only 3-5).

Make it happen or die trying!

[Turban]

it will come down to prioritizing everything correctly if we are to succeed, assuming that we get anything going on at all. we can only hope that the members responsible of the public arena are listening, even though most of them seem to be inactive or busy with other projects.

i would personally go through every item and feature that is even remotely harmful to the public gaming experience, and scrap them immediately with the help of our developers. it may seem rude to remove all of the hard

it would be nice to see the return of TWPD with a couple of enhancements, such as various achievements ranging from easy to near impossible, leaderboards of about anything that we can track, and an updated player history. this would give our older players another reason to play; they would have clear goals to accomplish and brag about. it would be a grand project, but well worth it. this profile database had so much potential, and the project should be picked up again.

we should also have leaderboards in the arena, on a monthly basis. it is important to give recognition to the players who deserve it, and i coupled with the achievements it could even further boost the activity levels.

there is also a need for a simple crash course, or tutorial, for the new players, to teach them the basics of the game within minutes and to prepare them for the action to come.

give a reason for squads to play in the public arena. there is no incentive to do it at the moment. unlockable perks, as an example, would be an option, especially if combined with the achievements in some way.

the sense of progression is an addiction to most of the gamers. we should look to outsource this work to someone, as most of our developers are burned out or want to work on their own projects.

all new additions and suggestions should be well-thought and thoroughly tested, and never made permanent unless there are clear benefits and reasons to.

[Fork]

there is a number of reasons it should not be in pub


one of them being tutorial arena can be locked, and only new players can be in ships
another being bot can put information in chat without it being drowned out by idiots like tower

Was thinking messages could be sent as little splash images as this would be the most effect way anyway... and why cant they have it so when a new player enters pub- they are warped to a co-ordinate outside pub area (in the new player area) where no other player can get to. Have the bounce bot do this function in pub: new ip address- warp to new player area.... splash images start- prompt them to type !next and the next splash happens.

Perhaps if 2 new players arrive at similar times... they are on the same freq so they can't kill each other- but still complete the tutorial even if they are at different steps of the tutorial.

I'm still very sure its doable and it is more effective in pub... in many ways.

[roxxkatt]

there is a number of reasons it should not be in pub


one of them being tutorial arena can be locked, and only new players can be in ships
another being bot can put information in chat without it being drowned out by idiots like tower

[Fork]

1) finish tutorial arena
2) make sure tutorial arena has large lvz
3) have tutorial bot sit in tutorial arena 24/7
4) have bouncer bot in pub
5) bounce new players to tutorial arena
6) have first lvz image as 'dont want to learn? type ?go'

I'm not too sure about giving the option to skip a tutorial unless its not very simple +... here's why: i can imagine new players thinking- fuck it- lets see what the games about !skip and they are brought into pub and they quit after a few minutes (like normal) before they know how to attach/ about squads battles/ squad chat etc...

Even with donation money- staff could easily persuade a coder to implement a tutorial into pub... otherwise who is actually going to code this to work?

TBH i would like this tutorial arena to be in pub arena itself... This is why:

1) So other people could see how its working/ see for themselves how many new players are entering in that island of an arena (like the duel areas around pub). It shouldn't just be about staff helping new players- the public should be involved too and will be more involved if they can see these players for themselves.

2) Put yourself in a new players position... You've just completed a tutorial in a separate arena like ?go tutorial... you then have to wait 5 minutes to download pub- its gonna be extra boring now because you've just seen the shit graphics/ started to make judgments already without meeting any players yet- you're more likely to quit. Instead... let the player download pub- they don't know what to expect: so they will wait... they go through tutorial in pub... then instantly warped into action- smartest move if you ask me.

3) They can see this game has other players playing just from the lines of talking... even tho it might be shit if towers typing but hell... in a seperate arena- they may feel no one plays this shit when in reality... us nerds still play it now and again.


Anyway i'm wasting my time as always... up to the big boss's to actually convince people that they can actually get someone to code this in- and maybe people will do the mapping/ lvls. Have a separate thread regarding this- and everyone help out... perhaps someone implement a tutorial area and people comment to say what they like/ don't like etc.