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

[IxaDor]

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

[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]

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!

[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

[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

[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.

[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!!

[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.

[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.

[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

[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.

[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]

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)

[Ricko]

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

Love you bae

[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...