Steam Vis Round, March 16th! GONE SEXUAL (NOT CLICKBAIT!!)

[qan]

We're live!

[Rab]

Looks good, ty!

[qan]

Rab, res limits should be removed in all arenas. Though at some point it did ?go chaos and tried to go to Chaos zone, I think. (Cross-zone stuff doesn't work on bots, iirc. Can't remember offhand though.) I checked the arenas that came after it on the list and they all seemed to have been fixed. Also did a random check of some you listed and they seem set. Anyhow, let me know if you see any it missed. Thanks again for taking the trouble to check those.

[Dierienow]

I don't dislike them but I usually wish they were a different flavour. If the flavours could be voted on I'd probably want more of them.. since we all played the standard settings enough by now, and there could be something better or more fun out there waiting for discovery. Even though it's bad for the game I loved the weekend where 'boosting' didn't cost energy. Just from a technical standpoint I thought it was a good flavour because the number of shots you can take increased (like if you play pub you're going to have standardized shots that vary only by minute degrees. The number of shots available to you multiplies if you can step in or step out of a shot at no cost, since it gives you a much tighter control of your ship and aim).

Sometimes when I'm playing I think on how to commentate my play style and I think of skateboarding. Because any noob can kill you in Pub that's just how it is, so if you want to be a good player you need to qualitatively (and quantitatively, but that comes with quality) improve your aiming. Like if someone killed me but I tried a difficult shot I'm not going to be upset. To describe how what I'm doing is better than what you're doing, there needs to be a language to put it into words and I think skateboarding commentary is probably similar. You can have an ollie, nollie, switch, fakie (moving backwards while doing the trick), normal. Like how you can be turning clockwise or counter-clockwise, you can be rotating for an inward shot or outward shot where your target is boosting away from you. Even through the smallest windows you can have many angles of shots, even from the same general direction, so you need words to describe the minute changes in aim or ship position that allowed for a less-than-stereotypical angle to your shot. That's actually partially my reasoning for prefering pub over something like deathmatch or elim style warbird. If the number of words you need to describe what is happening is higher than a different gametype, and the gametypes are equally fair or balanced, then the game type with more complexity is going to be the more interesting game to commentate. The counterargument is that elim is more fair than pub and therefore the comparison is strained, which is true. But it doesn't change the fact that the settings in pub produce a more diverse landscape of commentatable events. In wb elim/DD there's very little to commentate on. A group of people chase you and try to stray you using only straight shots. This doesn't really work, so the good players are going to try to get closer to where they can take a shot. If you're skilled enough and have really good aim there isn't anything to commentate on, because the niceness of the shot is how it went straight into the other guy. It's incredibly hard to do but to watch it there's really nothing to describe. And any competitve game is nothing these days without an audience.

I'd like to see a flavour weekend that's something like, maybe a a number of small changes that are quality of life. Maybe reduce the death timer by .5 or 1s, make burst cost something and not be entirely free, make boosting or pressing shift if you use default controls cost nothing or just cost less. Or just keep it the same (one big-ish change) but allow voting anyways. That would be my suggestion to improve it, as there have been some times where the change in settings has made me not want to play (and the only flavour I liked really helped me out!)

[Rab]

Does anyone else find these "pub flavour" things annoying and would rather not have them?

[skyforger]

Ixa, it is awesome you'd run a newbie squad on the side. I think nobody would mind if you did it with a 2nd alias. Wouldn't even have to change back/forth much after you setup asscaps. Though for it to be fruitful, like you say, there would need to be atleast 2-4 of these squads to play between themselves.

Unless more vets are willing to cap these, the best bet is to integrate some amount of newer players in existing squads. Though that sadly has a tendency to piss off some stuck up veteran players.

[IxaDor]

Honestly, at this point in time with very little time left until visibility begins. I would say hold off on making any serious changes Qan as far as pub and the newcomers are concerned. A simple (least I think) change that should take priority right now is figuring out something about green wall text as it makes it very hard for us mods to work with newbies. In my honest opinion, 100% focus needs to be on TWD and squads. Put TSL on hold or anything that makes players not feel the need to log in. When you set dates for leagues, it just kills the zone as no one shows up until said dates. Squad play is crucial because it while being fun is also a great way for friends to unite and play. I would be willing to run 2 squads if this would be allowed as well, one for newcomers in which I help them from everything to learning how to play to getting into a competitive match. If we could get 2 or 4 of these squads together, we could organize games just between them so it's fair. Strict alias checks would have to be enforced as to ensure newcomers have a equal playing ground vs other newcomers in a competitive yet fun environment. Wouldn't mind shooting ideas around with you if this sounds feasible. Thanks.

-IxaDor

[Ricko]

good old hindsight

[qan]

Whatever happened to the idea of when a brand new player enters TW they are automatically sent to a tutorial map? That would probably be the best approach to getting someone to learn the controls and the purpose of the game as opposed to being dumped in pub and spawned and killed time after time with no idea what is going on, and then quitting in 5 minutes.

Create a new name and you'll see that's basically what pub is currently. Brief but reasonably useful new tutorial, plus map underlay graphics (think Santa msgs) explaining many concepts in more detail if anyone cares to wander around to discover them.

The most basic keys are shown first thing after they're done downloading, they're immediately placed in a WB, and a prayer will sort them out after that. Either they enjoy moving and shooting a ship, killing and being killed, or they don't.

As for a <10 hours elim, don't really think we've got the pop to support a regular elim, much less a newbie-only one, but would have been an interesting idea to try out 10 or so years back. (So would have been a lot of things -- but that's not much good now, heh.)

[Ricko]

Whatever happened to the idea of when a brand new player enters TW they are automatically sent to a tutorial map? That would probably be the best approach to getting someone to learn the controls and the purpose of the game as opposed to being dumped in pub and spawned and killed time after time with no idea what is going on, and then quitting in 5 minutes.

The same argument seems to just go around and around when we discuss this issue - pub vs elim/twd/twl for new players, there needs to be another solution - an arena for newbs with a tutorial, an elim with a usage limit (you can only enter if you have under 10 hours, and monitored by staff to ensure no aliasers are in there destroying newbs) or something else...

[Ricko]

we should allow Ixador, Dicko, Attacks and co. to stray at eachother .

Love you bae

[qan]

Elim or something needs to be placed in Pub arena as Rab said because it will at least generate more interest that way.. you can still talk with people and not feel like a bunch of stinky nerds in a dark corner. Then if interest is formed it could always move to a separate arena. Nobody is going to go 1-10 in elim and stick around for the next round picking their nose.. and the longer you're in one place the more you're cemented and so people tend to stay in pub and nobody really plays elim. Putting elim in pub would be a great step towards fixing that I think. But I don't think there is anything wrong with pub.. it's not supposed to be organized or pretty or anything good really, just a fun social zone that you can pretty much make of it what you want. Yeah newbs can kill you but maybe it's better than perfecting the same stale style for decades. Also elim rewards a kind of stale play style anyway because the goal isn't to do anything cool or different but to keep from dying. How interesting. Meanwhile in pub I can be a suicide terr one death and a huge asset for my team in the flag room the next. It makes no sense to argue sides.. we can't get rid of pub can we? And we can't force people into belim or empty zones. So there has to be some compromise which is why I piggybacked onto Rab's idea as I think it's good. I'd love to play a round of elim, go 1-10 making an ass of myself, and go into pub and continue playing as long as it's in the same arena.

Would be a great way to go, agreed. But it'd be a pretty big undertaking. I guess a simplified elim module could be written. There are many, many special clauses that already have to be written to check for dueling status, as the duels and the various pub functions share the same arena. Could do the same with elim, but it just becomes more complex each time another dimension is added that has to account for the others.

Theoretically you can do what you're talking about still -- play pub, and then when you see the graphic announcing elim starting, ?go elim, play your 1-10 round, then ?go when you're done. Also involves a lot less work on my part, heh. Of course, it needs more people willing to get involved in elim and stick to it. (The same reason that most people enjoy pub dueling over ?go duel)

[Dierienow]

Elim or something needs to be placed in Pub arena as Rab said because it will at least generate more interest that way.. you can still talk with people and not feel like a bunch of stinky nerds in a dark corner. Then if interest is formed it could always move to a separate arena. Nobody is going to go 1-10 in elim and stick around for the next round picking their nose.. and the longer you're in one place the more you're cemented and so people tend to stay in pub and nobody really plays elim. Putting elim in pub would be a great step towards fixing that I think. But I don't think there is anything wrong with pub.. it's not supposed to be organized or pretty or anything good really, just a fun social zone that you can pretty much make of it what you want. Yeah newbs can kill you but maybe it's better than perfecting the same stale style for decades. Also elim rewards a kind of stale play style anyway because the goal isn't to do anything cool or different but to keep from dying. How interesting. Meanwhile in pub I can be a suicide terr one death and a huge asset for my team in the flag room the next. It makes no sense to argue sides.. we can't get rid of pub can we? And we can't force people into belim or empty zones. So there has to be some compromise which is why I piggybacked onto Rab's idea as I think it's good. I'd love to play a round of elim, go 1-10 making an ass of myself, and go into pub and continue playing as long as it's in the same arena.

[qan]

I've posted at length on this forum about how TW should focus on TWD and put squad recruitment features front and centre.

Agreed, and regrowing TWD is a big priority. We've been putting a lot of work into it. Can see the TWD threads. Aside from attempting to recruit players directly to TWD from TSL, TWD squad challenges using TSL matchmaking, and staff actively advertising for squads who want to recruit/borrow/etc. in a way that hasn't been done before, most simple squad commands can now be done in-game. After a player does ?squadjoin and re-enters, they ?go TWD and PM TWDBot with !applytomysquad. This sends a squad PM, and any cap or asscap can !accept. They can then immediately begin playing in TWD.

Also, finished that res fix bot yesterday. Just need to figure out if any other arenas should be exempted.

[zidane]

I was once a new player and pub was horrible, the only reason I stuck around was cause my irl friend (Children) was asking me to play and we both left pub and played elim non stop. No player who played this game competitively thinks pub is any good and the reason this zone lasted as long as it did was competition (twd/twl/twdt/tsl).

Pub is just a cluster fuck, too many ships, no real purpose, annoying players, just flat out not much fun to begin with. The only version of base that is fun is super organized, otherwise it's trash.. why do you think people cry so bad about unfair base teams & this has been proven throughout tw's history as being the least popular league by a mile.

Your best bet is someone plays elim and goes 1-10 and says to himself/herself, I hope I go 2-10 next round and plays another round..... the odds of that are low but are still much better than hoping people will seriously stick to this game because of pub. I'm done commenting on this because it's unlikely i'll even be here for the relaunch so it's not really my business. I'm not saying this to be mean or anything, i'd love to be proven wrong and I hope we pick up some new players. Felt I should speak up before another opportunity is squandered