Time for some pub changes

[Rab]

We had a really good round of pub last night, but there were some really obnoxious things that people seemed to agree were annoying and should be changed.

Small weasel
- Can too easily sneak into fr and claim flag, this prevents a team which really earnt a win from getting the win.
- Proposed change: make the weasel normal size

lolnope
- When there are loads of levis it ruins the flag game, either because you're constantly getting bombed/tkd from outside base, or because some of your team is leaving you short of players because they're levs.
- In that situation, it's right to ?buy purepub
- But if the levis ?buy lolnope then the game continues to be ruined.
- Proposed change: Remove buy option for lolnope.

Shield
- Provides immunity rather than a shield. The player can fly into fr and claim the flag and there's nothing you can do about it. It's fully hax and it prevents a team which really earnt a win from getting the win (similar to weasel problem).
- Proposed change: Remove buy option for shield.

I also observed that after the good round, which was something like 20v20, all the players left afterwards. So a couple of rounds later it was only 2v2. I don't know why this happened or what to do about it, but it's something about rounds ending/starting I think. Ideas about this or anything else welcome, please contribute.

Edit:
Oh and this thing is stupid and should be removed. It's super annoying to get a flashy chat window for no good reason.
TW-PubSystem> 2cool4school Bonus: $100

[Wirah]

I also observed that after the good round, which was something like 20v20, all the players left afterwards. So a couple of rounds later it was only 2v2. I don't know why this happened or what to do about it, but it's something about rounds ending/starting I think. Ideas about this or anything else welcome, please contribute.

Maybe we could reward consecutive wins, streak.

Agree with everything you mentioned

[IxaDor]

Also, please for the love of god make pub large all the time. So tired of the ridiculous spawning that goes on when it's set to FR only spawns. I don't care if there is 2 people in the game, make it so they spawn outside of FR. Larger maps create better games, period. It's a spawnfest until we get like 40 players in, it is so stupid. Please, I've asked this like 1000 times but will do it again, give us normal spawns back. Least give it a trial for a couple months, I think you will be blown away how much more people will want to play pub. I'd bet my life on it. DO IT.

-IxaDor

PS: if you change the weasal size, please give it back stealth along with cloak. Terr's/javs have x-radar for that reason! Also, please consider bringing back lancaster spreadshot 1 hit kills (taking all 4 bullets results in death). It makes sense since 2 shots of 2x bullets does it, plus lanc is easily countered and fun to play against. Spread shot has it's own disadvantages too, so it's not likely going to make a huge difference. Let's make pub great like it was when I was a teenager in 2001 $

[Dierienow]

that's not FR lmao.. it's greater FR area. 1000% disagree though

[IxaDor]

that's not FR lmao.. it's greater FR area. 1000% disagree though

Since they changed it to outside FR rather than the old way, pub has died. I think a trial to restore it to it's formal glory days is worth merit since it was successful for like 16 years. Spawning is retarded, sorry you feel different but it's not fun for a lot of us.

Edit: I mean how long does it take to fly from outside base back into fr? All 5 seconds? With a very high chance of not being spawned? If you count the fact that 3 out of 4 deaths is a spawn, you save way more time just spawning outside base like we always did. It's retarded.

[Dierienow]

yeah it would only really effect a player like me anyway who refuses to attach, since i'm refuse. that is why i disagree

i prefer the skill of shooting a non-moving target to the skill of shooting a moving target. Some people like to practice at a target range, others at a high school. To each their own.

[Dierienow]

some kewl ideas to try out in a pub flavour week end or some thing

[Leland]

im so fucking sick of getting tk'd

[mtine]

Also, please for the love of god make pub large all the time. So tired of the ridiculous spawning that goes on when it's set to FR only spawns. I don't care if there is 2 people in the game, make it so they spawn outside of FR. Larger maps create better games, period. It's a spawnfest until we get like 40 players in, it is so stupid. Please, I've asked this like 1000 times but will do it again, give us normal spawns back. Least give it a trial for a couple months, I think you will be blown away how much more people will want to play pub. I'd bet my life on it. DO IT.

-IxaDor

PS: if you change the weasal size, please give it back stealth along with cloak. Terr's/javs have x-radar for that reason! Also, please consider bringing back lancaster spreadshot 1 hit kills (taking all 4 bullets results in death). It makes sense since 2 shots of 2x bullets does it, plus lanc is easily countered and fun to play against. Spread shot has it's own disadvantages too, so it's not likely going to make a huge difference. Let's make pub great like it was when I was a teenager in 2001 $

This guy been owning pub since 2010 and still doesn't know if you disable the !warp command that you spawn normally outside like back in the good days. GG

[Rab]

Also, every time I try to buy stuff I get this message...

TW-PubSystem> You cannot buy an item while being a leader of the Kill-o-Thon.

... which is really starting to piss me off.

[qan]

The issue with pub is, as always, satisfying everyone (or, rather, compromising in a way that satisfies the largest number of people). Most of what we have now is a series of long and complicated compromises that very narrowly navigate a middle ground.


Small vs Large Weasel
We've gone back and forth on this one for years. The small weasel can be quite obnoxious; but, it's also quite unique, and some people really enjoy playing it. For the most part it has significant disadvantages vs the old small weasel. It may not seem so, but a lot of thought's been put into where its settings currently lie. It's been carefully timed to make it quite difficult to simply punch through a hole and rush the flag, for example, at least for a defending team that's paying attention. The rocket is much shorter than it once was, and the afterburner cost is quite high, meaning a weasel has trouble covering enough ground to make it to the flag without using up a lot of energy. Meanwhile, it doesn't start with stealth, and must buy stealth if it wishes to be totally hidden, meaning that most players can simply watch radar to spot a weasel. Even if purchased, stealth and cloak together are fairly high-drain and make for a difficult journey into the flagroom if not backed up by others. For the most part, it's able to take the flag only when it's done skillfully and/or against a team that's just not paying attention. If I'm mistaken in this, please let me know. For example, if they're able to rush a bit too cheaply, rather than simply reverting again to another solution with its own problems, we have the capability to tweak settings that may be a more subtle change, and compromise. The heavy-handed approach often taken in the past, especially by those inexperienced with settings work, I think has often thrown out the baby with the bathwater.


lolnope
This one's still controversial, and not sure how well it fits into the pub puzzle. It's been a feature request for quite a while, ever since PurePub's existed, and mirrors the concept that underlies the ability to buy PurePub, which is that those who have played pub successfully and for a length of time earn money, which can then be exchanged for the ability to control certain elements of gameplay.

The idea is that for a relatively small price, people can buy PurePub/SortaPurePub for a short time (10 min), which is often enough to get Levis to change ship. If, however, someone is feeling really annoyed by the PurePub buy and wish to continue playing as before, they can override it by spending some ridiculous sum of money. The problem with this logic is that the sum is not so ridiculous. It was raised from $100K to $150K, but nonetheless, many experienced players are able to spend this without batting an eye, so that rather than being something exceptional, lolnope is bought fairly often.

It's worth noting that PurePub can be bought again fairly soon after an !lolnope cancel, and the PP buyer receives a partial refund (or full refund in the case of SortaPurePub). There are also a number of tools available for proactively countering Levis (though not those on your own team), including cheap anti and free roof !deploy. Also, everyone can now see Levi bombs on radar, the radar's zoomed out further to see the bombs coming, they have a drastically reduced energy pool that makes hunting with spiders/lancs far more effective, they no longer have green sharing on their freq, and they have reduced recharge and reduced bomb speed.

I'll see what increasing the cost of lolnope does to how frequently it's used. Would like to see if we can still find a way to include it in pub, though, as it's been requested by many people.


Shield
The shield may not have any meaningful role in pub at present. I think it may also be re-prized regularly, meaning it's always at 90-100%, which is near invincibility. Will need to think of a tweak, or just remove it.


Leaving after a big round
This one's really difficult. I've definitely felt this myself. After a long round, 20+ min, you're often just not ready to dive into another one. Especially long, intense basing matches can be intense and require a lot of concentration in order to win (or lose, even after all that effort). Then after this, you have only 1:30 to take a rest, get something to eat/drink, use the bathroom, and so on before it begins again. But a longer break between can also lose players. (Time between rounds might still be something to look at. Longer break between longer rounds?) A key Terr leaving is another big reason behind a mass exodus. And people talk so much crap to Terrs that rarely will anyone who doesn't have several years of Terr experience hop in to replace them.

Streaks are an interesting possibility. Will add that one to a todo list. Not too tough to do. Should you earn it regardless of if you win or lose?


Low-pop Basewarp
As mentioned, you can toggle this off with !warp. (There are plans to separate round-start warp and low-pop warp but it's not a serious priority.)

The low-pop spawns were put in around 5 years ago. A bit before this time, I was playing pub almost every night for several hours during off-hours, around 1-5AM EST. Even that long ago, we were experiencing massive problems with pub fading out and dying: 0 players for several hours at a time. One player would hop in a ship and float around spawn, and another player might hop in as well. But rarely would they go to base. If they happened to be two fighter ships, they might duel in spawn. If one was a jav, it could go into base and hope the fighter followed, or rocketjav around spawn. Usually people got bored and would quit.

Without low-pop spawn, any time one team had a terr and the other didn't, the base game would basically fall apart, and soon after that, pub would die out. I watched it happen over and over for months at a time. Then K A N E added low-pop spawn.

The change was immediate and drastic. Yes, spawning became much more prevalent (it still exists in normal spawn, by the way). But at the cost of some spawn deaths, suddenly pub stood a much better chance of remaining active with few players, no Terrs, etc. And by keeping those few players actively engaged, when more players did eventually come around, a base game could form.

These days low-pop spawn works a little differently. It has two stages, very low-pop and normal, which also spawns to many locations in lower base, and reduces the chance of being spawn killed pretty significatly. It also takes into consideration whether a team has a terr or not, and doesn't count Levis as active teammates.

If a decent group of people think it's worth experimenting without low-pop spawn as an option, we could give it a shot. But I don't anticipate a good result.

[qan]

Thought of another possibility to handle Levis. Rather than PurePub/lolnope wars, we could have Levi bombing ability toggled on or off for a certain price. Buyable only every X minutes. You essentially would have permanent purepub until the cost is paid to revert it, and then someone would need to pay again. This would be a simple settings change, where the cost of firing a bomb would be increased beyond the energy pool of a Levi. Would also solve the problem of having a lot of pub-freq Levis. But, it would certainly favor experienced, rich players; new players would not have the option of flipping the switch on in order to play Levi, and this might not feel all that fair, especially as the cost would probably need to be fairly high, and could just be reverted again by someone with more money soon after.

[IxaDor]

The issue with pub is, as always, satisfying everyone (or, rather, compromising in a way that satisfies the largest number of people). Most of what we have now is a series of long and complicated compromises that very narrowly navigate a middle ground.


Small vs Large Weasel
We've gone back and forth on this one for years. The small weasel can be quite obnoxious; but, it's also quite unique, and some people really enjoy playing it. For the most part it has significant disadvantages vs the old small weasel. It may not seem so, but a lot of thought's been put into where its settings currently lie. It's been carefully timed to make it quite difficult to simply punch through a hole and rush the flag, for example, at least for a defending team that's paying attention. The rocket is much shorter than it once was, and the afterburner cost is quite high, meaning a weasel has trouble covering enough ground to make it to the flag without using up a lot of energy. Meanwhile, it doesn't start with stealth, and must buy stealth if it wishes to be totally hidden, meaning that most players can simply watch radar to spot a weasel. Even if purchased, stealth and cloak together are fairly high-drain and make for a difficult journey into the flagroom if not backed up by others. For the most part, it's able to take the flag only when it's done skillfully and/or against a team that's just not paying attention. If I'm mistaken in this, please let me know. For example, if they're able to rush a bit too cheaply, rather than simply reverting again to another solution with its own problems, we have the capability to tweak settings that may be a more subtle change, and compromise. The heavy-handed approach often taken in the past, especially by those inexperienced with settings work, I think has often thrown out the baby with the bathwater.


lolnope
This one's still controversial, and not sure how well it fits into the pub puzzle. It's been a feature request for quite a while, ever since PurePub's existed, and mirrors the concept that underlies the ability to buy PurePub, which is that those who have played pub successfully and for a length of time earn money, which can then be exchanged for the ability to control certain elements of gameplay.

The idea is that for a relatively small price, people can buy PurePub/SortaPurePub for a short time (10 min), which is often enough to get Levis to change ship. If, however, someone is feeling really annoyed by the PurePub buy and wish to continue playing as before, they can override it by spending some ridiculous sum of money. The problem with this logic is that the sum is not so ridiculous. It was raised from $100K to $150K, but nonetheless, many experienced players are able to spend this without batting an eye, so that rather than being something exceptional, lolnope is bought fairly often.

It's worth noting that PurePub can be bought again fairly soon after an !lolnope cancel, and the PP buyer receives a partial refund (or full refund in the case of SortaPurePub). There are also a number of tools available for proactively countering Levis (though not those on your own team), including cheap anti and free roof !deploy. Also, everyone can now see Levi bombs on radar, the radar's zoomed out further to see the bombs coming, they have a drastically reduced energy pool that makes hunting with spiders/lancs far more effective, they no longer have green sharing on their freq, and they have reduced recharge and reduced bomb speed.

I'll see what increasing the cost of lolnope does to how frequently it's used. Would like to see if we can still find a way to include it in pub, though, as it's been requested by many people.


Shield
The shield may not have any meaningful role in pub at present. I think it may also be re-prized regularly, meaning it's always at 90-100%, which is near invincibility. Will need to think of a tweak, or just remove it.


Leaving after a big round
This one's really difficult. I've definitely felt this myself. After a long round, 20+ min, you're often just not ready to dive into another one. Especially long, intense basing matches can be intense and require a lot of concentration in order to win (or lose, even after all that effort). Then after this, you have only 1:30 to take a rest, get something to eat/drink, use the bathroom, and so on before it begins again. But a longer break between can also lose players. (Time between rounds might still be something to look at. Longer break between longer rounds?) A key Terr leaving is another big reason behind a mass exodus. And people talk so much crap to Terrs that rarely will anyone who doesn't have several years of Terr experience hop in to replace them.

Streaks are an interesting possibility. Will add that one to a todo list. Not too tough to do. Should you earn it regardless of if you win or lose?


Low-pop Basewarp
As mentioned, you can toggle this off with !warp. (There are plans to separate round-start warp and low-pop warp but it's not a serious priority.)

The low-pop spawns were put in around 5 years ago. A bit before this time, I was playing pub almost every night for several hours during off-hours, around 1-5AM EST. Even that long ago, we were experiencing massive problems with pub fading out and dying: 0 players for several hours at a time. One player would hop in a ship and float around spawn, and another player might hop in as well. But rarely would they go to base. If they happened to be two fighter ships, they might duel in spawn. If one was a jav, it could go into base and hope the fighter followed, or rocketjav around spawn. Usually people got bored and would quit.

Without low-pop spawn, any time one team had a terr and the other didn't, the base game would basically fall apart, and soon after that, pub would die out. I watched it happen over and over for months at a time. Then K A N E added low-pop spawn.

The change was immediate and drastic. Yes, spawning became much more prevalent (it still exists in normal spawn, by the way). But at the cost of some spawn deaths, suddenly pub stood a much better chance of remaining active with few players, no Terrs, etc. And by keeping those few players actively engaged, when more players did eventually come around, a base game could form.

These days low-pop spawn works a little differently. It has two stages, very low-pop and normal, which also spawns to many locations in lower base, and reduces the chance of being spawn killed pretty significatly. It also takes into consideration whether a team has a terr or not, and doesn't count Levis as active teammates.

If a decent group of people think it's worth experimenting without low-pop spawn as an option, we could give it a shot. But I don't anticipate a good result.

Qan, thanks for your valuable time in posting your detailed explanation on your thought process concerning public. I will reply to a few things you had mentioned, firstly, regarding the weasal, I am a big fan of the small weasal myself. I didn't know you could purchase stealth, interesting. Is there a way to code it so things like that appear on the side of the screen near say "Multi"/"Cloak" is located. Like a "Buy Stealth - "command how" ie. type :twpubot:!buy stealth ? That goes for other ships too, like Spider's "Anti-Warp" if that is even still purchasable and any other ship upgrades relevant to their corresponding ship. I wish there was an easy button press that allowed us to purchase upgrades without having to make macro's to spam bot too, I get lost in 2018 with all the stuff we can buy as this was never available in my days as a pubber from 2001-2006, I think it's awesome but it's also off putting and confusing to pick up.

Not much to say on the "lolnope" "purepub" fiasco but maybe instead of tying those to currency, you could tie them in as a team reward? Maybe freq 1 wants to bring in levs to the mix, they win a round and can vote? I don't know. Since high amounts of pubbux is abundant for most pubbers, I am trying to think outside the box of how they can use those rewards without over doing it. There is that goal and ball, might be able to work something in with that?

Map size. I flat out believe it should be large 24/7. I am wondering though if we can meet in the middle. Are you able to adjust the player size for map spawn? So instead of it being 15-20 (whatever it is now), make it so if its 6 or more it goes to large? I think having it big all the time is better honestly but if it could be tweaked to changing earlier that could work too. Anything over 6 seems to be problematic since that's about how many spawn points there are outside flagroom. Once it goes over that, spawning becomes an issue. Yes, spawns can happen outside base too, I am aware of that, but it's far far less and usually if you are paying attention, you have plenty of room to move, where outside flagroom, you might hit the wall or be corned down an ear. I think testing is worth it regardless.

Oh yea and what about bringing back lancasters spread shot 1 kill? If memory serves me right, it took out much more energy from the ship as current spread does now. So spamming it wasn't possible and often left you vulnerable for a good chunk of time after it but if it connected with a player, it had a great payoff. Is it possible to do some adjustments to the lanc? I liked how the lanc was either close range or long range (spread). Today's lanc is gaged primarily towards close range, doesn't feel like a multi role fighter that it used to. I'd love to see some love put towards that ship though I won't lie, in all my early years of pubbing, it was my ship and will always hold a special place in my heart. I just don't enjoy playing in it much if at all as it is currently so hoping to get some attention on it to maybe revitalize it some.

Anyways, really appreciate all you do Qan. You are a rockstar! Keep up the hard work and have a safe, fun memorial day weekend with you and yours. Cheers!

-IxaDor

[IxaDor]

Thought of another possibility to handle Levis. Rather than PurePub/lolnope wars, we could have Levi bombing ability toggled on or off for a certain price. Buyable only every X minutes. You essentially would have permanent purepub until the cost is paid to revert it, and then someone would need to pay again. This would be a simple settings change, where the cost of firing a bomb would be increased beyond the energy pool of a Levi. Would also solve the problem of having a lot of pub-freq Levis. But, it would certainly favor experienced, rich players; new players would not have the option of flipping the switch on in order to play Levi, and this might not feel all that fair, especially as the cost would probably need to be fairly high, and could just be reverted again by someone with more money soon after.

This sounds crazy but what if you made it so players have to purchase leviathan ammo dispensers? So say for 200K you could buy your team 40 levi bombs? LOL.. Could do that for say weasal too, have it so players can purchase a some sort of cloaking transmitter for 200K that gives all weasals on your freq the ability to stealth/cloak for 10 minutes? I know, probably not an option and kind of teetering on the edge of Distension but you never know! Just thought that would be cool to see a graphic of some cool looking station spawn outside base that powers up your team or gives them things like levi bombs lol. See ya!

Ha to add to that, you could allow players to purchase basically big ass nukes to bomb the towers/dispensers for something like 1000K, then have it so the bombed facility becomes a black hole for (x)time that if players go near it respawns them and during the time nothing can be purchased as it would just go into the black hole.. Edit: Hell make that 10,000K, so only the big big spenders can essentially turn it into purepub but for much longer. $

[Rab]

Small vs Large Weasel
We've gone back and forth on this one for years. The small weasel can be quite obnoxious; but, it's also quite unique, and some people really enjoy playing it. For the most part it has significant disadvantages vs the old small weasel. It may not seem so, but a lot of thought's been put into where its settings currently lie. It's been carefully timed to make it quite difficult to simply punch through a hole and rush the flag, for example, at least for a defending team that's paying attention. The rocket is much shorter than it once was, and the afterburner cost is quite high, meaning a weasel has trouble covering enough ground to make it to the flag without using up a lot of energy. Meanwhile, it doesn't start with stealth, and must buy stealth if it wishes to be totally hidden, meaning that most players can simply watch radar to spot a weasel. Even if purchased, stealth and cloak together are fairly high-drain and make for a difficult journey into the flagroom if not backed up by others. For the most part, it's able to take the flag only when it's done skillfully and/or against a team that's just not paying attention. If I'm mistaken in this, please let me know. For example, if they're able to rush a bit too cheaply, rather than simply reverting again to another solution with its own problems, we have the capability to tweak settings that may be a more subtle change, and compromise. The heavy-handed approach often taken in the past, especially by those inexperienced with settings work, I think has often thrown out the baby with the bathwater.

Yeah you're mistaken. It isn't a difficult journey into the flagroom, it's pretty easy.
The travel distance is only from the tiny holes in the flagroom to the flag.
Diagram: https://imgur.com/a/cLmzoio

- Any mines on the flag can be taken care of with the rep, so the shark can't counter the weasel, and weasel can probably cause the shark to TK by repping their mines.
- Players can't easily keep track of the weasel using radar becaue the weasel can rocket to quickly drastically change their position, a player who takes their eyes off the radar for half a second to fight anyone else will lose track of the weasel. There are often more than one weasel.
- The distance the weasel has to travel is very safe and extremely short.

I still think bringing back the bigger weasel is to the way to go, but if I had to suggest something else, it would be:
- Remove the repel + the rocket