Changes to Public Arena coming June 10th

[Frightful]

Sadly we also have a big number of players who find it very attractive to exploit every possible flaw in the system to gain a short-term advantage or just like to annoy others. Unless that kind of thinking changes and shifts more to a fair play in the spirit of the game idea, we cannot really do more than just fix one symptom after the other with a risk of making it another abusable exploit. The alternative would be to drive a hard line of punishments on players, which might catch a lot of wrong ones.

I agree. LTs are ruining pub. Greening to bypass the idea of killing the enemy to obtain 20 bounty is huge exploitation of the spirit of the game. I would love to see players who green levs in safe be banned for abusing the spirit of the game.

[Steep]

frightful nails it, greening levis should be illegal... and please, insert the maximum number of attached players back to 3. (why was that removed in the first place?)

[big eater]

When I first returned a few months ago I found it really odd that there was a bounty limit on levis attaching but it wasn't illegal to feed a lev kills. I spoke at length with one staff member about it, but it seems like a change is unlikely because it has been a common tactic for too long.

I absolutely agree with bkgmjo that we must do whatever we can to make the game fun and balanced on launch. Many of you will already know that I do what I can to make pub teams balanced by offering my pubbux on top of what the bot offers for players to swap freqs.
Automatic shuffling of teams would help. Does !shufflevote work? I've tried it and nothing happened. (Maybe I didn't do it soon enough after round was over?)
Why isn't the losing team favoured when a new player joins, rather than always freq0 when teams have equal players?
We could also do something to stop people who are afk from bloating frequencies, e.g. have a player automatically specced after dying twice without moving & lower safe zone time limits.

I'd like to relate an experience of a recent newbie. Pub was quiet, it was 4 vs 4 with me extra on a private freq. Round ends, losing team all specs or goes afk. A newbie joins the losing freq. He's not completely new to subspace, but is new to TW, and asks how to play. I ask for everyone to not kill him until the round starts so he can at least see where the flag is, but the other team is so engrossed in spawnkilling this guy while he's talking to me that he doesn't even get a chance. Finally, once the round starts and this guy is blasted from the FR in a couple of seconds I manage to convince one of the better players from the other team to switch freqs and we eventually get a good 3vs3 game going. The newbie is already I would say an above average terr, but we nearly lost him as a player in his first couple of minutes of gameplay.

Spawnkilling is my pet hate. Sadly with the changes to the weasel, it's harder to do something about as a player. Nothing would make me smile more than sitting as a cloaked weasel on someone who was afk and wait for the sad guys trawling spawn to come to kill them and then watch them shit themselves as I jump out and surprise them, usually managing to save my baitship with a rep too.

I really like to changes to buy, but I am saddened by the changes to the weasel. It's gone from a unique ship which can be quite fun to play to just an aggravation with little use in the basing game. I strongly agree with others who say that with the combination of cloak & stealth, it will really be a big turnoff to newbies.

[c00l_b0y]

So after many years playing I've now become the newest guy on this forums because apparently ranting in pub isn't going to cut it. Basically I'm here to petition to change the weasel back to the ship it's been throughout my TW play time for three main reasons

• The weasel was challenging to kill as warbird, now that learned skill is useless as you can't even see them as warbird anymore, and when you can they're not such a hard target. Being a hard target is a good thing because it adds challenge to the game. You've removed something dynamic and irreplacable, a skill honed by lots of warbird players thats now to be forgotten about?
• If I was a weasel player, which I'm not but bear with me; If I WAS a weasel player I'd be fucking annoyed that the ship Id learned is now changed beyond belief. True theres not that many but junin and spock were skillful with that ship and its sad to know that what they've mastered is now going to waste.
• And thirdly, the new weasel is not fun to play as at all, and even if it WAS, who the fuck is going to try and learn a ship that is subject to change?

Just change it the fuck back to how it was and stop messing with the game, changes are going to alienate old users and new users aren't going to care; Anyone who says they want change in this game is merely shit at using the current roster of ships and should be ignored.

At the very least, change the game in a sub arena first before just going all out and changing pub, pub should be the one constant in this game. It's the only thing keeping it alive, and if you are going to change it at least personally consult players that spend their days in pub, like myself... Don't just fucking change it and then expect each one of us to take time out of our day to write essays on forums, because I'm the exception to the rule here I'm sure. Most people will just play another game if you ruin this one.

tl;dr - FUCKING WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU GUYS PLAYING AT LEAVE THE GAME ALONE ARGHHH

[the block]

Thanks for all the comments on the weasel. I understand everyone's got valid points and opinions on both sides of the argument, and we're still evaluating how the changes are working out, so all this discussion is good for that purpose.

I think what bkgmjo! said about how the big weasel is much more of a surprise ship now with the ability to go cloaked and stealthed, speaks to part of the reason for those specific changes. It keeps everyone more on their toes (including LTs who must now choose between warping away quickly, or using X-radar) and makes it so small weasels can't just fly into the small holes of the flagroom and steal the flag without having to work for it. The teams also have to be more dependent on their base terr notifying them if there is an X in the area, and where. Terrs have to be paying more attention. I think if anything, again as bk mentions, it is still too weak and should be able to take on more damage before dying, however I personally disagree with bk on whether the weasel should be able to stay hidden indefinitely. I like that it only has a set amount of time to stay hidden before it can no longer shoot (somewhere between 60-90 seconds), as it must use stealth/cloak selectively as part of a mission, not endlessly stalking random players around spawn which has been a complaint in years' past.

As for people saying people will never play the new weasel, well the new weasel (for the most part) is the pre-small weasel, that was around for years. And not that I have any statistics on how many people are playing as the weasel now vs a couple weeks ago, but from my own observations I think there are just as many if not more players playing as the weasel since the most recent changes. I just think it adds a different (not necessarily better, or worse) element to the game play. I also tend to LT a lot, and my LTs have died many more times to a sneaky weasel where the terr didn't have x-radar on, then we ever used to with the small weasel. It definitely makes LTing more challenging and gives the terr something else to have to worry about, especially in-base.

Pub has also never been a constant, and has always had changes like these. What we're trying to do differently this time around is actually let the players know about them ahead of time, and evaluate their affects afterwards and tweak them if/as necessary.

Lastly as I've found myself constantly having to remind people, these are not my changes. I have just as much say in them as all of you that are complaining about or praising them. So I can't just snap my fingers and change something. I can however relay public opinion, which is the point of this thread.

Thanks to everyone for all the feedback so far!

[c00l_b0y]

If the pre-small weasel was such a great thing why was it ever changed in the first place?

Why does public opinion need to be relayed by one person? It's called public opinion for a reason; Anyone can come on here and read our thoughts on it. Is the reasoning for this that higher TW staff, or whoever made these changes, don't care enough to read this forum? I know they don't play the fucking game so they could at least read the forum?

Why could these changes not be voted on? Instead of every player needing to vent their feelings on a forum that only the public relations manager is going to read, on which he has to report back "Well some people feel this way, other people feel this other way" and then the decision made by a select group of people that don't even fucking play this game... Why not just have a vote as the pub welcome message with two options, "KEEP OLD PUB, or KEEP CHANGES please ?vote"

Then at least people like me that feel miffed at how the game has suddenly changed can take some solace in the fact that if we're out voted, that's the will of the userbase isn't it..

NOT the will of a select view who never bother to come on pub to talk to people anyway. I would be less annoyed if the person who made these changes came on and opened dialogue rather than sitting behind a fucking public relations manager!!

[bkgmjo]

The reason for the change to the small weasel was simple: the client got an upgrade which allowed different size ships and someone on TW wanted to be the first to use that. The original version of that was way more powerful than the weasel we had a few weeks ago. It had full cloak (including stealth), x-radar, could stay cloaked permanently, had about twice the energy it has today and for some time even carried a brick. Since then it got various tweaks and changes, but stayed a ship mostly used for solo missions on stealing the flag or rushing to kill key base ships like terrs and baselevs due to the ease of getting into flagroom where everyone else had to take the long route. This has led to many people being too frustrated with basing and also pushed many LevTerr players on private frequencies which did not play inside flagroom anymore, which again was a reason to complain for many.

The weasel as it is now might not be the best possible choice, but from the feedback I collect there are a lot more players who like it more now. Still also those who oppose the changes. Thinking about how extreme players complained on other pub changes in the past though, the comparably very low numbers of complaints coming in now leads me to believe that the decision was right and should be kept. However, as every change to the game it has to be evaluated after some time when it has settled in and we can see how it truly affects the game. The first days are never very reliable on that.

[Rion.]

from the feedback I collect there are a lot more players who like it more now.

Wow, where do you get your feedback? In chat I've literally not seen any positive comments about the weasel change.

It's one of the less popular ships, but some people really love the small weasel and it feels really shitty to have your favourite ship snatched away for basically no reason. Sneaking into base being a problem is the most hilariously flimsy defence. Most pub teams consist of 80% javelins. X-Radar is not a problem.

Fuck, I don't think I'd even be that upset if it lost cloak AND stealth. The amazing thing about the ship for me is the small size that lets you take really interesting routes around the base, creating really fun tactics that you have to employ to make up for the useless bullet speed, low energy pool, slow energy regeneration and bad turning speed of the ship.

I was super hyped about this game launching on Steam, promoting it to friends, but this change is just such a bad way to treat your playerbase.

I feel like I'm completely wasting my time here but god damn it I really liked that ship.

So sad.

[bkgmjo]

I get from calls, !comments and talking to a lot of players in pub.

[Frightful]

Wow, where do you get your feedback? In chat I've literally not seen any positive comments about the weasel change.

What he means is that everyone he LTs with didn't like small x's.

[Jones]

pub is terrible for new players because there are no pub squads around. all these artificial changes do nothing to make it more pleasant to play.

-staff has pretty much eliminated the duels at south safe.
-it's a basing zone get over it
-pubbux works
-lt is dead with non-effective bombs see french dash #2

-tw squads eliminated new basing squads with people stacking on 1 to 2 squads
-no one plays warbirds anymore it's just javelins and jds, see french dash #1
-to conquer french dash #1 and #2 basers stick to themselves and dont need to play anything else than the random bd with "ppl they like to play with"

suggestions

-we NEED pub squads
-pub squads
-focus on core concepts like elim, twd, and (especially) twl
-beg hallucination for the code of how he made the chaos bots (this shit will teach any newbie how to play)
-twl
-twd multiple ladders in case of onslaught of newbies

right now this zone is about how much paladen can lose to patouf in a jd

[Jessup]

right now this zone is about how much paladen can lose to patouf in a jd

We have not had a jd with them in months!

How would pub squads work anyways? I mean I like the idea, I just wonder how it would apply? I think we need to host tons of games when steam starts. Let them be added to wbduel, javduel and base. I hope that staff does tons of helpful zoners for them . Write them like "HI NEW PLAYERS. THIS ARENA IS FUN BUT CHECK OUT THE OTHERS WHERE YOU PLAY IN CERTAIN SHIPS VERSES ANOTHER TEAM. TYPE ?go Wbduel" Those type adverts specifically for news players with a staffer hosting them game and adding new people so they can play will really help show them the diversity. Teaching them ?go arena is as important as teaching them to hit esc to expand chat and esc s to spectate.

[Frightful]

How would pub squads work anyways? I mean I like the idea, I just wonder how it would apply?

Back in the day, it was basically just "everyone on this pub squad join this private freq and base".

[Jones]

honestly, the ESC A command zoner should be implemented asap.

pub squads were the only thing that kept me here. i played pub 2 years before i ever entered elim and i had no idea of it. i just kept trying for those 3:1, 4:1 and above scores in pub as a wb.

pub squads made things interesting. the best squad was at the top of the sonera site (public site for pubscores when zone was in finland and beyond) but you could check if it was based on flagscores, k/d ratio etc. me and many other were trying to get to join better and better squads based on that k:d or flagpoints thing and squads took notice, remember, this was before twd started. i played in those pracd arenas if anyone remembers them but that's skipping ahead.

[Ravos]

?go #spoon