Time for some pub changes

[Rab]

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?

Back in the day there weren't rounds at all. The game just continued. So the timing of when people left was not aligned with the end of a round. So as small numbers of people joined and left, a fairly stable population was maintained. Causing the leavers to stack up causes a failcascade, as everyone thinks "oh everyone's leaving" and then they leave too. So my point is, fundamentally it's having rounds of pub which causes this, so the solution should be to remove rounds?

I think a low-impact way of doing that is:
- don't warp at the start of rounds, ever.
- reduce the time between rounds to a very low number, e.g. 1 second.

[IxaDor]

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.
- 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

I agree with you on removing rep and rockets from the weasal. I think it should only have cloak and stealth just like it used to have. Jav and Terr are responsible for weasal detection with use of xradar and as it stands now, it's worthless to expend energy on those abilities. Also, the weasal is a stealth killer, having reps and rockets makes no sense for that ship. Pretty sure back in the day it never had those abilities, not sure why it does now. Cheers.


-IxaDor

[Dierienow]

Yeah I think the time between rounds sometimes seems useless and causes disinterest as there is no longer an objective and it feels pointless. During this time, and the 3 seconds that I spend dead (adds up), are when I'm most at risk of questioning why I am even playing this game. Would be nice to have something to do during the break, or if it was a little shorter. Maybe 30s between rounds or something.. not 1 second... if it's one second there is no time to feel anger if you lost or pride if you won, just on to the next map.

[Tone]

New:

Retroaction & The Protector & TuNe!

[qan]

Shield
Should be fixed; now works as intended, lasting 60 seconds. But at 30 seconds remaining, will reduce all damage by half, at 15 seconds remaining, will reduce all damage by 25%, etc.

2cool
Made a special edit just for you on that one, Rab, heh.

KoT Leader
Now recommends using !npkill to opt out of the KoT in order to buy.

[qan]

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 ?

There's a way, but the effort required to do it vs the payoff is basically beyond the scope of possibility. It took us about 9 months to get the new tutorial graphics in. I'm the only truly active coder, and Wirah as the only really active graphics guy is mostly tied up with the social media/newsletter updates + webdev. By the way, he puts out a useful update almost every week... subscribe to the newsletter if you haven't already: www.trenchwars.com/newsletter

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?

Might be interesting. I can't imagine many winning teams would vote to enable levs, though. If you're winning, it's not good to have them around, as you're stationary and defending the FR. But, as you say, let's keep thinking outside the box. What we have is far from perfect and could use a lot more brainstorming.

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?

This is what I thought it was (roughly speaking) but apparently somewhere when CFGs were switched around for various special events, it was reset. To be clear, this is just for the medium size, which opens up mid/reduces spawning potential in mid. That should basically always be active now, except in very small games. Hopefully will cut down on some of the spawn issues. Sorry for that one.

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.

They were interesting when they had L3. But maybe a bit too luck-based, or situation-based. (Wait for someone around a corner and cheese them with spread.) They also were slower then, I believe. Lanc is certainly more close-range than before with L2 vs L3. But if you look at the spider game of many players, those slow, low-damage shots are still being carefully aimed. You can (and should) do the same with Lanc, I think. The shots aren't 1-shot kills, but at 1040 damage, it'll kill many players (most of whom are firing when they reach max energy), and spiders/Terr spam/Jav bombs hitting close by should finish them off after that if they're still alive. It's arguably an OP ship that is extremely underutilized and needlessly maligned, though it's hard-countered by the Spider, meaning that vs most serious basing lineups it's crap. I used to play it decently well in pubbase when I played daily. It's definitely my second favorite ship in terms of enjoyment of play, after Shark. Also, few people know this, but it has the lowest afterburner cost of any ship by a decent margin, meaning that while its thrust leaves plenty to be desired, you can make up for it via afterburners and position yourself. Focusing on positioning with afterburner and precision aiming will really make it stand out as how it's meant to be played, as in the hands of people such as TheSerpentMage. I think it's in a good position, and is currently considered one of the "untouchable" ships, along with WB, Jav, Spider, Terr, and Shark. Might be fun to do a throwback one weekend to L3 Lanc, though.

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?

These wouldn't be technically possible due to some limitations to how our bots work. Basically bots are simulated players. So they aren't able to selectively limit, say, who can fire on a team. Would need ASSS to be able to do this kind of stuff.

[qan]

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

Wasn't trying to suggest it's difficult to get into the flagroom itself. Just saying there was a fair bit of testing done testing how far a Weasel can rush in with afterburner after entering any FR hole without getting quite close to death. (Current settings were based around that.) However, with a rep and rocket, they can enter with full energy and rocket to the flag, then rep away any mines; or, if there are no mines, rocket, then rep on the flag and wait out the turnover timer.

SpookedOne I think is monitoring this thread, because he put in an unexpected commit yesterday with an idea to counter this. It's currently live. Regardless of the arena size, Weasels now have a 5 second flag turnover timer, so that they'll need to hold it for a full 5 seconds before they can break the enemy hold.

Will look at the rep and rocket. Both together are quite cheap. With only one or the other, taking the flag wouldn't be so easy. Or, as ixa suggested, starting with stealth. That might be a more interesting arrangement and would solve the problem fairly well, especially as stealth is high-drain. It would also be giving something to the weasel in exchange for taking away rocket and rep.

Back in the day there weren't rounds at all. The game just continued. So the timing of when people left was not aligned with the end of a round. So as small numbers of people joined and left, a fairly stable population was maintained. Causing the leavers to stack up causes a failcascade, as everyone thinks "oh everyone's leaving" and then they leave too. So my point is, fundamentally it's having rounds of pub which causes this, so the solution should be to remove rounds?

Here's a blast from the past. Did a little digging to find this commit. Think we were still using CVS at the time:

@415  	13 years	qan	Untested first hack at flag time mode addition.

So around 2005 is when we first saw the flag timer go in. You might be slightly incredulous to hear this one, but do you know what this was put in as a response to? A notable decline of basing in pub. Not joking! The promise of 200 points extra per kill was somehow not enough to get players to fight over the flag, especially as they were slammed with lev bombs from all sides. I'm not going to pretend I'm not proud of the fact that after we began using the timer, we saw a big increase in basing, which continued, and continued, and continued, even to the present day, when you can see huge basing games on the weekends. Of anything I've done in TW it's the single thing I'm most proud of, and the first thing I'd name if anyone asked out of what I've done do I feel has had the most positive impact on the zone.

The only reason I go through this long-winded explanation is to point out for other forum-goers that you surely must be employing that trademark dry British humor when you're suggesting that having rounds is the root cause of the issue of having people quit all at once. Yes, it's the root cause, but it's also probably the root cause of why anyone's basing at all. Without a goal, people were becoming disinterested in 2005. In 2005! When the bar was really quite low, and we were still one of the best shows in town for massively multiplayer action gaming. Since then, game development has surpassed itself time and time again. People aren't going to fight for extra points in 2018. If ever there were a baby to throw out... (End of needless rant.)

Back to your suggestions, I'm not sure I understand them. Is the logic behind not warping players in order to fool them into not knowing when a new round's begun? Or is it necessitated by the 2nd suggestion, because it would be quite strange to warp players immediately after a win?

The flow seems quite awkward, one game starting immediately after another. I think this would be confusing to players. Some kind of break seems necessary, just in terms of "readability." Die broke down the psychology pretty well. Enough time to revel in victory/agonize in defeat, but not so much that you're able to question whether or not to play. The easier choice is to continue, so you continue. Let's experiment with 30 second intermissions and see if it changes anything. Can increase/decrease as needed.

[Rab]

Back to your suggestions, I'm not sure I understand them. Is the logic behind not warping players in order to fool them into not knowing when a new round's begun? Or is it necessitated by the 2nd suggestion, because it would be quite strange to warp players immediately after a win?

The flow seems quite awkward, one game starting immediately after another. I think this would be confusing to players. Some kind of break seems necessary, just in terms of "readability." Die broke down the psychology pretty well. Enough time to revel in victory/agonize in defeat, but not so much that you're able to question whether or not to play. The easier choice is to continue, so you continue. Let's experiment with 30 second intermissions and see if it changes anything. Can increase/decrease as needed.

When you've fought for control of a base, it's yours, you earnt it, you should get to keep it untill someone takes it from you.

The rounds mess that up in 2 main ways:

- In between rounds, there's no action. People float around wasting time. There's no incentive for them to continue the battle during that time, and they know they'll get a warp back in anyway. So you've saved up your pennies and got this fancy new base and nobody gives a shit anymore. "lol that guy's still fighting over a flag like it's 1997", they jest. I see how some people might view that as a useful break, but I view it as an annoying interruption, unless everyone needs a piss and a drink every 10 minutes it's bound to be annoying other people too.

- When a round starts, your entire enemy team is warped into your base. It's full on trolling. Get out of my base. It's not "all your base", it's my fucking base, get out. ?cheater entire enemy team!

[Dierienow]

Forgot to post this earlier but I had an idea where there are 4 small lights in corners of the FR, where if you have them capped (maybe need flag capped also?) they act like truesight allowing you to see stealthed boyos in the FR. I think it's a good idea because by 'nerfing' an ability it adds a dynamic to the game.. now you might have to work with your team to have them grab one of the switches/lights so you can go in to grab the flag. Would stop the X from constantly rushing for the flag and the enemy terr and his team need to move around the base can't just camp the safe spots. Unique solution that would probably look/feel weird but throwing it out there.

[IxaDor]

Forgot to post this earlier but I had an idea where there are 4 small lights in corners of the FR, where if you have them capped (maybe need flag capped also?) they act like truesight allowing you to see stealthed boyos in the FR. I think it's a good idea because by 'nerfing' an ability it adds a dynamic to the game.. now you might have to work with your team to have them grab one of the switches/lights so you can go in to grab the flag. Would stop the X from constantly rushing for the flag and the enemy terr and his team need to move around the base can't just camp the safe spots. Unique solution that would probably look/feel weird but throwing it out there.

Am out of time, I will reply to your post later today/night Qan, thanks for getting back to me though bud!

@Dierenow Honestly it would be better to just give weasal cloak/radar while removing rep/rocket, that alone will make taking a weasal to grab flag more challenging/risky. Stealth while yes, completely hides the weasal, is very taxing so using it creates its own risk. This will also change the role of the weasal, since with it's current setup, it is all over the place in that regards. Plus, I'd like to see people actually using xradar on ships that have it. It's become a "forgotten" ability in terrier/javelins, which by ignoring it completely, changes the way those ships perform. As you know, Terr has to devote pricesless energy to watch for x's which adds another layer of complexity in playing it. More so for the jav as to power it's xradar, it drains it's energy until it's turned off, which can prevent firing a bomb, crucial thrusting or decreased bullet spray. Just changing the weasal back to the way it was, would in turn, change how several ships are to be used which in turn, creates more play styles, risk and of course, rewards.

I think also for regarding the 4 lights, it would be too much for Qan to code in, since simple things like tuitorial graphics took several months, just for graphics because Qan is only coder. I think we should be trying to think of easy solutions that don't require much from our sole developer and will enhance pub gaming. I think we are getting there, especially with the consideration of changing weasal. Cheers!

-IxaDor

[Dierienow]

If you are so concerned about the fun of this game then please where are your suggestions for sharks. Obviously campers like Rab fucking hate X's.. they're fun and interrupt his Nazi-like hold on the flagroom gained through having at least 1337 camp hours and 1 shark on his freq. His entire strategy consists of a) getting to flag room first b) teaming with other try hards who clearly give too much of a fuck about pub that they're trying to remove any counter to their strategy, and then c) tell everyone gg like you have even a crumb of skill on this game beyond camping in spider.

I have never had a bad experience with x frankly. They've annoyed be but never made be quit, and often make me laugh because the play styles they open up. Meanwhile nobody complains about sharks because it is the sole ship that lets these try hards camp the flag.

- QQ more newbies.

[mtine]

If you are so concerned about the fun of this game then please where are your suggestions for sharks. Obviously campers like Rab fucking hate X's.. they're fun and interrupt his Nazi-like hold on the flagroom gained through having at least 1337 camp hours and 1 shark on his freq. His entire strategy consists of a) getting to flag room first b) teaming with other try hards who clearly give too much of a fuck about pub that they're trying to remove any counter to their strategy, and then c) tell everyone gg like you have even a crumb of skill on this game beyond camping in spider.

I have never had a bad experience with x frankly. They've annoyed be but never made be quit, and often make me laugh because the play styles they open up. Meanwhile nobody complains about sharks because it is the sole ship that lets these try hards camp the flag.

- QQ more newbies.

Rab isn't even good lol.

[qan]

When you've fought for control of a base, it's yours, you earnt it, you should get to keep it untill someone takes it from you.

This seems practical from the perspective of rewarding winners, definitely. But the overall health of pub has to be considered. To keep it somewhat competitive, allowing warping at the start of the round is fairly essential (or, so long as there are rounds, which as mentioned, I think are necessary if we're to have anyone interested in fighting over the base). Teams tend to get stacked quite quickly, and losing a match can be pretty discouraging. If they don't even get a shot at taking the FR at the next round start, many of the losing team will just give up. Also, despite the fact that they warp in, you still do have many advantages: usually, you have the numbers advantage, you often have the terr/shark advantage already, an overall skill advantage, and the "engaged player" advantage in terms of which of the players are actively participating in the basing game vs spawning, leving, etc.

It's a pretty bad analogy, but imagine a TWBD game where the team that won the last matchup between the two squads starts with control of the base. It's not going to make for a very interesting game, especially not for the former losers. Same goes for pub rounds.

Forgot to post this earlier but I had an idea where there are 4 small lights in corners of the FR, where if you have them capped (maybe need flag capped also?) they act like truesight allowing you to see stealthed boyos in the FR.

Sounds cool, but yeah, unfortunately not doable.

If you are so concerned about the fun of this game then please where are your suggestions for sharks.

We do actually have a (controversial) command which clears the mines of "bad sharks" ... sharks who purposely try to kill the basing action by mine-blocking the entrance when there are no other sharks on the other team, and nobody is changing ships. (The command is !badshark, for any staff reading this.) It takes a certain kind of masochist to play shark, or a certain sense of fun. To me there are few things more enjoyable in TW than rushing someone's trajectory with a shark and mining ahead of them. But few people will change to shark simply because the other team's shark is mineblocking. Most would rather spec, or settle for killing outside of FR. It's a tough problem. Some have suggested banning sharks under a certain population level, but that seems to upset the fine balance of freedom vs structure TW tries to strike.

I don't have any better ideas for how to prevent mine-blocking sharks from ruining basing games, but if anyone else does, I'm all ears.

[BIET]

This thread grabbed my attention and since I play a lot of pub I just had to reply.


For me personally items are the biggest offender of making the game unfun and almost brainless. Combine the midbase spawning with this and it just gets even more ridiculous. The items in question are the burst, rocket and stealth (I just really hate the fact that when combined with cloak it just totally renders 6 out of the 8 ships defenseless).


Bursts are fine when you can expect about one every minute, but the fact a team can have multiple terriers that spawn with a burst each, and can even get more through the green sharing, is just downright stupid. What happens is: they spawn, fly up to base and use burst. This is acceptable when there is only one terrier on a team, but I've seen teams with 4 or more terriers. Dodging 12 "random" bouncing bullets in a confined space is almost impossible AND they can do it every 10-15 seconds because they spawn right outside the FR again. Sometimes they even get back into base and their previous burst is still there.


Rockets are also annoying when you can just rocket at someone, suicide into them, respawn and do it again. This gives javs a way to fly into the FR and rockets into the flag. This causes a couple of problems, but the most annoying one is that it is just very laggy for everyone other that the jav itself. Bombs, mines and bullets just get blocked by a phantom ship most of the time. At the end it comes down to it happening every 10-15 seconds from one single jav.


Stealth is mostly a problem in situations where there are only a few players and most likely no teammates with X-radar to help you out. There are a lot of weasels around right now that only target specific players. I'm not against hunting specific players, but when the targeted player has no other way to defend himself other than changing to a ship with X-radar or speccing, I would say it's gone too far. Spawning in midbase makes it more noticable aswell.


Buyables are a tough subject. Personally I don't use any of the buyable items, but I like the fact that it gives people a chance to kill a player with the items they would otherwise not have been able to kill. Thors might be a bit too powerful, but they are expensive enough to counter their power and limit their appearance. The celebratory items (fireworks) shouldn't obscure your vision as much and not at all while dueling. The cooldown on some of the items, if there is any, is too short aswell. Javs can buy infinite rockets one after the other. There should atleast be some cooldown for that.


How to solve those problems


To limit the way rockets and bursts affect the basing game while spawing in midbase I would suggest prizing those items after a certain amount of time. Maybe the time it normally takes for those ships to reach the midbase from the normal spawn. Players using those items can average about 1 kill each death mostly due to those items. I don't know if this would be to much for the bot to handle, but it should only take effect during small games and only for a few ships. An other solution would be to decrease the duration of the items.


As Rab pointed out it's too easy to claim the flag with weasel and I agree, but I'm not sure if all the suggestions to balance it are quite helping to address the issue. Getting rid of both the rockets and the repel would make it too hard to pilot. Making it the same size as all the other ships takes away the novelty the X has. I would suggest to get rid of either the repel or the rocket. If I had to choose I would pick the rocket because otherwise only levs and sharks would be able to repel mines.


Stealth I would just get rid of it personally but that would be unfair for the players that actually like that kind of play. They should atleast not start with both and buying it should also cost a bit more. Otherwise it should be made (near) impossible to kill someone with both stealth and cloak on and give the ships without X-radar a brief chance to react. Killing a ship conceiled by cloak by only looking at your radar is hard enough as it is.


Please let me know if you think my suggested solutions are any good and if not, how you would change them.


-BIET

[Rab]

Good points, my thoughts:

Burst
- Is overpowered when multiple terrs get a prize green
- Can the probability of a burst green be reduced?
- Buying bursts is location limited, and restricted to 1 minute. The locations are:
TW-PubSystem> To buy an item, you must be in one of these areas: in Mid Base around Flagroom around Flagroom Not yet spotted in Flagroom Cram in Lower Base in Buyzone
- I tested a few areas where you can buy bursts and send them into the flag room. IMO this means the areas aren't strict enough.
- I think buying bursts may as well be removed, by the time it's balanced properly it's just easier to ship change to get a new burst, that also has the advantage of making you sacrifice your port.

Rocket
- Definitely needs a time limit so you can't buy infinite rockets, even if it's only 1 minute.

Weasel
- Yes if I had to choose between removing the Rep or the Rocket I would also choose the Rocket.
- However this would be my third choice, after: 1. bigger weasel. 2. remove both rep and rocket