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

[qan]

The main thing either way is to not allow that cluster fk that hapened with 75 people in one pub. It was wayyyyyyyyy too hectic and full of spawns and teamkills and a giant mess. If pubs are used we need a player cap on how many can play and open a new arena when it is over the limit. It used to be 30 max allowed in each arena .. spec or playing.. it didn't matter.

I don't think we're going to be seeing a really significant increase in players. If we have a 20% population boost I'll be pleasantly surprised. Visibility Rounds are rather subdued affairs compared to a Steam launch. (This isn't a relaunch -- that concept no longer exists in Steam, a change they probably had to make after they sold out and decided to accept any hot garbage a 12 year old could put together in Unity over one weekend) Mostly this will advertise to those who installed SS before, have the game on their wishlist, or play similar games. A small but targeted group. But if we luck out somehow and do see huge pubs, yes, we'll be running a second pub, for sure. As for disabling buys, there are no plans as of yet to punish the current pub playerbase for continuing to support the game by gutting pub like we did during the launch. Most of the extra players we'll be seeing should not be brand new, anyhow.

The spamming green help text needs to be disabled. Or slowed WAYYYYYYYYYYY down in its messages to like 1 per every 5 minutes.

This is a fair point. You mean the help ticker, right? Arguably this is not very useful and just spammy overall. I reworked it to be slightly more useful, but even still ... hmm. The one issue I'd see with this is it affects all zones. If it was just TW I'd say default off is the way to go, but for some places this may be the only tutorial. Tough call. Something to think about.

Are we having noobs auto join TWD squads?? I thought making 2 or 3 auto generated noob squads would be cool and let staffers be caps for them so games can be started by them and also do adds.

Nobody's expressed any interest in running a newbie squad, but if someone's interested, they're more than welcome to take the lead on setting that up and recruiting. As TWD requires the bot to alias-check, though, there's no way to have them auto-join a squad, at least in the current setup.

[qan]

If you want 0 new players to stick around put them in pub again. If Elim is really that busy you set up multiple elim maps, it's really not complicated. They would rather watch something they understand as opposed to play pub, pub has 0 redeeming qualities and has no bearing on what actual tw game play is. But what do I know lol

You bring up a good point: what do you know about being a new player? It's a strange mindset to try to inhabit. I've been able to observe a few brand-new players recently, explaining next to nothing about the game and just watching to see how they do with it. When you're at that awkward stage, you're figuring out which button is fire, and spend a lot of your spawn time just sitting and spinning, hoping to shoot someone coming by.

In my opinion, the reason TW's the most successful zone is how fast someone can pick up every newbie's favorite ship, the WB, and make an instant kill. It's really satisfying. It might be your first time playing, but there's an equalizing power in that single shot.

Pub doesn't have a point. You could argue that it's flagging, but that's just one of the goals people choose to pursue. At its core, it's about making kills and avoiding being killed. Everyone understands that. It's even more simple than elimination. And it introduces a lot of the fundamentals used in the rest of the zone.

I entirely understand why people would suggest we send new players to elim -- it's something they probably already understand -- but keep in mind, we're talking about people who may still be trying to use WASD to control the ship, and are trying to figure out which key is fire. Telling them to "Enter if playing" in the corner isn't going to get them into the game. Even if they do make it into an elim, they're going to see that the game is 90% waiting for better players to finish playing, and 10% trying to figure out how to control their ship while they get 0-10'd. And then have to wait another 15 minutes to play the next round. Elim is addictive and fun if you can get even 3-10. But if you can't even control your ship it's not going to hook you. In education we call this beyond the +1. You aim for the +1, something that is challenging enough to be exciting, but not so much to be discouraging. Below it and people get bored from lack of stimulation. Above it and people lose all motivation and just give up.

So I get what you guys are saying about getting them into more competitive and addictive play, but you're being a little bit too optimistic in terms of what we can expect of a brand-new player. Better to think of pub as a necessary tutorial arena where players can learn the ropes and then move on. Currently when a new elim/wbduel/javduel/base/TSL game starts, a graphic pops up in pub, much easier to notice than the usual greentext. I think most players who have mastered the core SS concepts and are becoming interested in more structured gameplay would see this, start asking questions about how to join, and then do it.

[Jessup]

Also.. CLOSE THE STORE WHILE THE STEAM RELAUNCH HAPPENS AND ALLOW NO BUYING..I think its not fair to new players and disrupts pure play not to mention its confusing as crap and way too much for new players to deal with.. AND IT CREATES EVEN MORE GREEN TEXT THAT SPAMS NEW PLAYERS FROM TW-PUBSYSTEM.
Tone it down!! LESS IS MORE WHEN PLAYERS BEGIN!!

[Jessup]

Are we having noobs auto join TWD squads?? I thought making 2 or 3 auto generated noob squads would be cool and let staffers be caps for them so games can be started by them and also do adds.

I sort of agree with the elim/deathmatch idea honestly Zidane and Ixador are talking about. I always thought a split pub/elim map would be cool but I know time is short now. The main thing either way is to not allow that cluster fk that hapened with 75 people in one pub. It was wayyyyyyyyy too hectic and full of spawns and teamkills and a giant mess. If pubs are used we need a player cap on how many can play and open a new arena when it is over the limit. It used to be 30 max allowed in each arena .. spec or playing.. it didn't matter.

The spamming green help text needs to be disabled. Or slowed WAYYYYYYYYYYY down in its messages to like 1 per every 5 minutes. Staff can not help players when they can't see the text we type them due to spam in green text. I strongly suggest keeping green text in both helps and arena messages very limited during this launch. PLEASE KILL THE HELP MESSAGES THOUGH. We have tutorials and auto !helpon overlays on map now and the f1 key is there for new players with 1/2 a brain too.

Also can staff huddle up and discuss how we want to deal with new player greetings. Are the welcomebot objons really needed now?? I want to know exactly what a new player logging in is going to have auto generated on their screens. If all these new help features are auto generated I think the main job for staff for new players should be the communication factor regarding how the chat functions work. IMO the objons are disruptive to their experience with this giant message overlaying their field of vision. I think we should rather focus on the ORANGE/RED chat Help Chat. I have macros made and think every staffer should have one too that says "Hi!! This is Trench Wars help chat. You can ask any questions you have here. To activate this orange chat type ; and then type a message" have this set to spam the Orange/Red help chat channel so use ;4; or w/e slot you have open for it so they see it in orange/red.

[zidane]

If you want 0 new players to stick around put them in pub again. If Elim is really that busy you set up multiple elim maps, it's really not complicated. They would rather watch something they understand as opposed to play pub, pub has 0 redeeming qualities and has no bearing on what actual tw game play is. But what do I know lol

[Rab]

My take on this is new players should go into pub, but the bottom half of the pub map should be cut off - so the whole issue of never discovering the base doesn't arise - the map would only contain the base. All the players are in pub anyway, so unless you want them to play alone this isn't really a choice.

I'm not a fan of newbie tutorials. The best way to learn is to type in chat, which is easy enough to work out. It also happens to be social, and it's social stuff which drives retention.

The major difference between the good old days and now, is how squads work. Back in the days of Diso, Pallies, A-S, etc. even pub squads like Floydians.. the fun part was getting in a squad and making some friends to play with. This got ruined by TWL, as squads would dissolve and reform every season for competition. I've posted at length on this forum about how TW should focus on TWD and put squad recruitment features front and centre. See: http://forums.trenchwars.org/showthr...nd-of-the-year

[IxaDor]

I'm not going to read this thread for the details but just wanted to say don't make these new players enter into pub again, it was a disaster. No one knows wtf pub is and everyone knows what deathmatch is, put them into elim or some event arenas

We've been asking for this forever now since 99% of the gaming populace understands how death match works. Instead focus was made on goofy looking tutorial graphics added to pub to combat the confusion though if you'd ask me, it's sensory overload with all the walls of green text, beeps and explosions from being spawned. The argument against placing players into elim first is they would have to "wait" to play until the round ends. Yikes!

[zidane]

I'm not going to read this thread for the details but just wanted to say don't make these new players enter into pub again, it was a disaster. No one knows wtf pub is and everyone knows what deathmatch is, put them into elim or some event arenas

[IxaDor]

Well, apart from Ixador, who started SubSpace last year.

[Trasher]

Yes in the hypothetical event that there will still be some form of competitive warbird gameplay, we should allow Ixador, Dicko, Attacks and co. to stray at eachother with their 20 year old resolutions like they have always done.

Well, apart from Ixador, who started SubSpace last year.

Maybe Jones and Cres will show up as well, we do so sorely miss them both.

[Rab]

That sounds like the right plan to me.

I'd still argue that no arenas should be limited if we want new players to play them, but players have voted before to keep res limits in competitive warbird, so I think we have to respect that.

[qan]

Good catch. Thanks for checking those. This looks like it's widespread enough of a problem that it'd be worth doing programmatically. Pretty easy to feed in a list of arenas, have a bot ?go to each and then do the 2 ?set commands. My guess as to how this became so widespread is that spawn.cfg once included res limits, and they were passed on. They're probably quite high, so normally they wouldn't be noticed. But this is definitely something that needs fixing before the vis round starts.

Here's a current arena list:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets...it?usp=sharing

There are only a very small number of arenas on there that need a res limit. TWLD, TWDTD (maybe?) ... then a few such as the full graphical overhaul arenas, can't remember which. Battleship might be one, for example. And a few use full-screen LVZ (enigma?). Any others I'm forgetting?

[Rab]

some more using tw arena github as inspiration

?go f1spirit
?go rabbit
?go tanks
?go twisted
?go twisted3
?go trivia
?go balance
?go balanceout
?go baseduel
?go hillpeace
?go cstrike
?go deathmatch
?go golf
?go frontsix
?go middlesix
?go backsix
?go gravbomber
?go gravbomber2
?go halloween
?go fishies
?go fishies2
?go blind
?go levirace
?go shrap
?go powerball

[Rab]

some more using my maps folder as inspiration

?go dodgemaze
?go fireworks
?go javufc
?go minijavs
?go sealjavs
?go scramble
?go superbeast

[Rab]

some more, using tw.org events news posts as inspiration

?go twtown
?go twcity
?go zombies2
?go twcountry