Time for some pub changes

[Dierienow]

I think it's a good summary and I like your point about removing rep leaving sharks (and levs) as the only ship able to clear mines.

A simple solution for terrs running into base and spamming bursts is to change the incentives. I think if people want to spam burst and die and it's fun for them they should do it.. but it should be for the fun of it not because it's a good strategy or rewarding. You can make it so that getting a kill in terr is simply less rewarding then it is in other ships. Bursts are powerful but also lazy.. if you get a kill with them you should earn less $ than a typical kill. The reward for skillfully using bursts is basically less pressure and less enemies to deal with and easier time holding the FR. Killing a terr should be much more rewarding than a terr killing you since it's fast, has a warp, and is dangerous apparently.

Basically my idea to reduce the amount of burst spam:
- Kills in terr worth much less than in other ships.. say if a terr kills you it's worth 1/4 - 2/3 of what it would be worth to kill them.

Might be like that already who knows. But nobody gains/loses features, everything is basically the same, only there's a slight nudge to change behaviour of the players. If you are good with bursts (say you could somehow hit all 3 bursts every time) there is essentially no penalty to you and you make those dolla bills. But if your goal is to run into every base on every spawn and spam bursts.. now you need to make a decision is the fun of that worth not making as much money as I could by trying to stay alive. Just throwing my idea out for terrs.

[Rab]

The game actually gives terrs extra money to try and get people to terr.

[BIET]

You wouldn't want to discourage players to play terrier, but it shouldn't become an annoyance for everyone else. The burst spam in midbase is already bad enough, if multiple terriers get into the FR and clear it just solely because they spawn with bursts it defeats the point of trying to stay alive. I think it's bad to award players, terriers in particular, that die a lot and therefor get more items/min. Especially if the item in question gives you 3 bouncing bullets that one-hit-kill you and doesn't require much skill.

Maybe I'm just so focused on bursts because every time I use a burst I hardly kill a single person D:

[Dierienow]

Which is a good thing especially when your team doesn't have one. However you can't really argue that the ship's identity is based on transportation not killing, the fact that it has any killing potential, let alone 3 potential OHKs on spawn, is pretty crazy. My idea is simply to shift the scales a bit where it is less rewarding to be a suicidal terr, not to remove the fun of that entirely, but to turn it into a decision that must be considered rationally, rather than the high value of dying, killing 2-3 people, then doing it again. Which only seems to be a problem at certain populations anyway where the terrs are spawning in mid base. And that's assuming the community doesn't already police itself and make lamers feel bad. Personally if 4 terrs want to try to burst me I already see it as a win but other people see it as a balance problem, and maybe they're right. Not really sure but if it is a balance problem that is just my idea to fix it a bit without changing the entire game.

The X's and sharks and other stuff are probably the bigger issues but also the most difficult to solve. I don't really have anything for those. I agree it should somehow be more difficult for x's to reach the flag, and that currently it is TOO easy to break flag control.

[Rab]

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

<3

There's another one it would be good to have a command to get rid of:
TW-PubSystem> For tutorial, type !tutorial Command help: ::!help Zone feedback: !comment <msg>

Maybe it could be an arena message instead?

or maybe a ::!shutup command to opt out of PMs from the bot (unless they're responses to a command).

[Rab]

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.

This is much better, a guy just tried to flag rush flag with it, and I killed him just before he got the flag.

[Leland]

Qan, thanks for your valuable time in posting your detailed explanation on your thought process concerning public!

[Rab]

30s on the brick is too short too. it's proper hax when you get a few weasels buying max bricks.

[Rab]

Levis just totally ruined some really good rounds. lolnope must be removed, there's no two ways about it.

[LaSenza]

Being as most of you guys are talking about the flag room and other things I'll not bother getting into (Fr area warp is unhealthy, and the reason I do not play in the base anymore) because I almost never go to the base in pub itself. I thought I'd take the time to bring up another issue I've had with pub. The duel arenas. Ever consider linking those arenas to TWEL? Also, why are the duels only to 5, there should be an option to increase it to 10, considering 10 is a standard option in the official dueling arena. Personally, I think they're poorly designed in the first place. I'm sure I'm not the only one turned off by 20-30 asteroids blocking my radar at any given point in a duel.

[mtine]

How do you know this game is dead?

When LaSenza makes a post on the forum.

[qan]

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.

This would be possible, but maybe would seem a bit wonky. It might serve the same purpose to just have the bot do ?set Javelin:InitialRocket=0 whenever the very low-pop spawn is enabled, disabling rocket spawning. Anyone have an opinion on this? (We could look at doing this with other settings, having a special "very low pop" mode that disabled certain features that can turn into viable but uninteresting/destructive strategies, like rocketjav.)

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.

The loss of rep does certainly make it trickier. However, with its small size, it's able to get around mines and other problem areas. Receiving stealth as an initial also allows them to get quite sneaky. It's been a while since weasel's started with stealth; worth seeing how it plays out for a bit.

Currently having both stealth and cloak on at the same time is quite high-drain. I believe it's not possible to enable stealth and cloak and then kill someone except in the first few seconds (meaning the weasel would have been seen cloaking anyhow, so that it wouldn't be all that useful, except for perhaps slight repositioning and striking from an unexpected place). Would need to verify this, though. Basically going full cloak+stealth is meant for transportation only, with the idea that you'll need to drop stealth or stealth and cloak in order to recharge. So you can use it to escape or use it to get into position, but being fully cloaked/stealthed and then striking is not all that practical. But, again, it's been a while since the most recent adjustments were made, and I might not be recalling perfectly.

- 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.

Could look at reducing burst frequency in greens, though getting people to fly Terr is difficult enough, as they are probably the most trashed ship in the game. Can't remember the last time I played for more than a few rounds and haven't heard someone on the team complaining about the Terr. Even competent terrs who've played for years. One mistake and everyone's all over them.

Any more info on what you mean re: the buy locations not being strict enough? The intent was, buying in or near FR would be a challenge, but buying outside in order to mount an offense would be possible. The reasoning behind this is that helping the losing team through subtle means keeps the action going. But it's not really accounting for lower-population times. Bursts are a rather annoying way to die, of course... yet are part of the game at this point. Would a longer buy delay be reasonable? There are other restrictions that can be applied, such as how many of a certain item can be bought during each life, and which might prevent certain behavior while not sacrificing other intentions.

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

This one's a no-brainer; probably just an oversight. Will fix.

- Kills in terr worth much less than in other ships.. say if a terr kills you it's worth 1/4 - 2/3 of what it would be worth to kill them. Might be like that already who knows. But nobody gains/loses features, everything is basically the same, only there's a slight nudge to change behaviour of the players.

I haven't really factored in the money aspect. Do you think this is all that common, players simply grinding kills with bursts for pubbux? I always assumed they do it more for the joy of the kill.

I worry about anything that makes it less worthwhile to play terr, though. Any time someone's terring, even if they're playing poorly, they become a mobile attach point, which generally increases team play. Of course, suicidal terrs brust-grinding aren't great attach points, but at some point they may make it into FR and increase the competitiveness of the game. After enough people begin attaching, it may also cause them to change how they play.

In Distension, support ships (terr & shark) received a larger round win bonus. Could look at doing that with pub, and reduce how much they earn for kills.

I agree it should somehow be more difficult for x's to reach the flag, and that currently it is TOO easy to break flag control.

This was changed somewhat recently in response to many people complaining about "flag lag." Basically, they were frustrated that it took too long to break a hold. Mostly this complaint comes from those playing during slower times. So I adjusted it to scale with population; when there are few players at the start of a round, the break time is shorter.

Unfortunately this still needs a refactoring, because at the moment the flag timer is checked only once a second, so this can make for uneven responses.

30s on the brick is too short too. it's proper hax when you get a few weasels buying max bricks.

This might need adjusting again. Brick was added a bit back, and pretty much nobody was using it/knew it was buyable. Now that it's being used more frequently, they might be testing the limits of the implementation.

Levis just totally ruined some really good rounds. lolnope must be removed, there's no two ways about it.

This seems to be operating from the perspective that Levis basically shouldn't be part of the game. There are quite a lot of tools available to handle them. If your only response is to buy purepub, your use of that toolkit is rather limited. If your belief is that you shouldn't have to handle them, well ... we no longer have two pubs, and can't simply make one pure and one not. Can look at increasing the cost of !lolnope further, though it's already become quite expensive, and only saves them for 10 minutes, anyhow. (I'll take a look at how often it's being used.) It seems nothing but fair that if you have the ability to deny one group of players the ability of a certain kind of established play by using the in-game currency, that they also are able to use that same currency to overturn it. At which point you need to resort to normal gameplay in order to combat them.

Being as most of you guys are talking about the flag room and other things I'll not bother getting into (Fr area warp is unhealthy, and the reason I do not play in the base anymore) because I almost never go to the base in pub itself. I thought I'd take the time to bring up another issue I've had with pub. The duel arenas. Ever consider linking those arenas to TWEL? Also, why are the duels only to 5, there should be an option to increase it to 10, considering 10 is a standard option in the official dueling arena. Personally, I think they're poorly designed in the first place. I'm sure I'm not the only one turned off by 20-30 asteroids blocking my radar at any given point in a duel.

Can you explain why you believe the FR warp to be unhealthy? Rab agrees with you, I believe. Might be worth discussing more, and trying a weekend with warp disabled, if enough people really see it as destructive.

Would definitely be interesting to see the duel arenas linked to TWEL, and to see duels to 10 (or other #s), different arenas, etc. At the moment the dueling system in Pub was built piece by piece, on top of the rest of the features, making it quite unwieldy to add yet more features, though. I'd thought of some system where you'd set up duel parameters (choose ship, number of lives, arena, etc). But bottom line is that it needs a complete overhaul. I don't really have the time or interest, though. Have thought about maybe putting together a tiny kickstarter for it, as money is basically the only thing that could possess me to give up large numbers of weekend hours that are much better spent actually enjoying life, heh. (I do like to code. But I do enough of it already, and there's an unending list of features that could be added. I once quit my job and lived off of savings to code for TW.)

How do you know this game is dead?

How do you know it's still alive? When people who don't play it anymore are still posting consistently negative comments in order to try to bring it down, and yet it still keeps going in spite of this. Time to get a hobby, wii.

[mtine]

I got many hobbies now qan. But when I wake up/before I go to bed I just check on you lazy fuks to see how far the guys in charge are gonna bring this game. And I'm amazed every day at how bad this is paning out to be. No disrespect to you, man, but the others are doing nothing to save this beautiful game. Oh well, have fun as long as you have.

[Bosshawk]

Ive only been back a short time..and i got hooked in this game with basing.. and the intense flagroom fights.... they disappeared for a long time

The one thing ive noticed since being back.. especially on the weekend was how intense the large flagroom fights have become again... espeically with 40-60 in pub (minus the specs... but still 15-20 per freq in the flagroom) it was awesome.. and i think guys getting into action would be no less hooked then any console game....

So much effort goes into this game its appreciated by those that are still here...

my observation on one issue though:

Thors... absolutely wreck an awesome flag fight... sure everyone has opinions on how levis or cloakers ruin basing but they are a fact of life and ships in the zone... so you learn how to deal with them....

But when it comes to thors there is no recourse.. no dodging, no repping just boom and your whole freq in the flagroom is dead... then you have to try to get back into a loaded flagroom with 15-20 enemy makes it extrememly tough if they are organized.. and often no one gets back in till the round end...

It is the one thing that other then pointing in a general direction that theres no skill to using and anyone can destroy a whole freq just becauuse they played enough to have enough pub bux to buy....

if there was one change to be done.. removing it would be one option id love to see...

(on a sidenote: nerfing bursts is im not a fan as since i am usually terring lol) its hard enough to stay alive in the flagroom when the battles are full in there... and when u have a couple spiders and jav rocketting at you and cloakers repping all your bullets you are defenseless too much of the time... u have to fire to kill cloakers or point them out... so u are always weak... and bullets dont damage to kill so u hit someone 2-3 times they dont die and 1 spider shot kills u lol the only saving grace is the portal or burst and with lag sometimes they dont cut it either

[qan]

Thors... absolutely wreck an awesome flag fight... sure everyone has opinions on how levis or cloakers ruin basing but they are a fact of life and ships in the zone... so you learn how to deal with them....

But when it comes to thors there is no recourse.. no dodging, no repping just boom and your whole freq in the flagroom is dead... then you have to try to get back into a loaded flagroom with 15-20 enemy makes it extrememly tough if they are organized.. and often no one gets back in till the round end...

You're right that thors can be a bit extreme. Brought them back for a bit of variety, but they tend to get used a bit much. Think it's still interesting to have them used occasionally, but the price is probably much too small, especially now that things such as Festival exist, which allows people to rack up quite a lot of money from a win (and encourages them to use cheaper methods such as Thor in order to win). The idea behind Thor is to have some of those "oh sh--" moments when everyone's suddenly blown up in a surprise move. If it's occasional, it can be fun and light-hearted. But in order to have that impact, it has to occur with a low enough frequency that it isn't annoying.

(Also, thors can actually be repped, though it's difficult if they're moving fast and aren't expected.)