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

[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]

good old hindsight

[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

[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.

[Rab]

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

[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!)

[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.

[Rab]

Looks good, ty!

[qan]

We're live!

[IxaDor]

Got the update on my Steam "Activity" page. Looks great! Only wish there was emphasis on what zone to go to (Trench Wars), which zones to avoid (everything other) and what zone did all the work (trench wars) LOL EG and the like to my knowledge haven't done squat yet are basically credited for it. Oh well. I hope things go well though, unfortunately I will be leaving out of town and won't return until the following Sunday. I will maybe have net using my phone but not sure how reliable it will be. Anyways, great work to everyone involved. You guys are awesome! Cheers.

-IxaDor

[Rab]

another one with res limit:

?go fighterduel

[qan]

OK, thanks. Must not be on the arena list. Fixed

[Rab]

another one:
?go snipe

[Rab]

another one
?go mannerheim

[Rab]

bump