[T:V] Fixing Pubs?

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Blotter

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i mostly pub and im hoping there will be major improvements to pub gameplay in t:v. im pretty sure KP has a good idea about the pitfalls of CTF pubs. things like HO and no base D, stacked defenses, team stacking, etc. i know there will never be a real balance because of different talent levels with players, but i think some things can be done to the gameplay to prevent pub gayness :x

i dont really have any suggestions on how to fix these things, which is kinda why im posting this (help me). it would be nice if people got the team oriented thing, but after t1 and t2, it just doesnt happen to the extent which is called for, well, most of the time it doesnt happen. there are simply positions people dont want to play. lately, things have been scripted into the server - like no inv destruction til 8v8, team randomizing after every map, not allowing to repair turrets after 8v8, etc. i think they help a ton and i hope these kind of features will be in the game by default, not by a 3rd party.

discuss?
 
When it comes to pubs, people are weakest in their egos. I purpose a highly advanced stat stracking system with a few key elements. Not only would it record detialed information like your kill percentage, weapon stats, number of caps, favorite armor, repair stats, etc, but it would also keep track of your location for the majority of the map based on the distances you are from base waypoints. This way it could tell if you're primarly Offense or Defense (if you make most of your kills at the enemy base you're O, if you make most at home you would be D).

Now you take all of this and you create a team rabbit 2 like system for assigning player titles for the map. "5 Star Capping Chain Whore" for example could be someone's title. You would have titles displyed in red for O and green for D (or something of such) so it would be easy to see where the team needed reenforcement just by taking a glance at the roster.

Anyone not playing long enough would just have a newblood title of course since you don't want to skew the results.

You can then have it so just by clicking someone's name in the roster it goes into detailed stats for that map. Perhapes allow servers to save player histories and you can see their overall status and get a good idea of exactally what kind of player they are.


I think it could help pubs as the majority of the time people don't know what it is they should be doing to help the team, and while a manager like this would be good guidence, it wouldn't take over a be intrusive.

Plus people would work for the best titles. I mean sure you'd have to have some limitations like X number of people need to be on the serverto record server stats or something (just leave that up to admins) and you might get 10000000 O and no D b/c everyone is trying to get a super capper status, but that might not be a bad thing. Just record map wins and losses too so people don't get their precious reputations tarnished.
 
I think one problem with pubs, and Luci basically said this, is that people don't know what they need to do. You join a pub, sometimes you have 10 guys on offense, and sometimes you have 2. And since people don't stick to doing one thing, (they may do a cap run, then play some base d, rape a base, etc), it's tough to tell exactly what's needed.
 
aolh4x0r said:
I think one problem with pubs, and Luci basically said this, is that people don't know what they need to do. You join a pub, sometimes you have 10 guys on offense, and sometimes you have 2. And since people don't stick to doing one thing, (they may do a cap run, then play some base d, rape a base, etc), it's tough to tell exactly what's needed.
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I do that all the time. I see what my team's lacking, and I try to fill in. Trying to put a title on me wouldn't work too well.
 
Sir Lucius said:
When it comes to pubs, people are weakest in their egos. I purpose a highly advanced stat stracking system with a few key elements. Not only would it record detialed information like your kill percentage, weapon stats, number of caps, favorite armor, repair stats, etc, but it would also keep track of your location for the majority of the map based on the distances you are from base waypoints. This way it could tell if you're primarly Offense or Defense (if you make most of your kills at the enemy base you're O, if you make most at home you would be D).

Now you take all of this and you create a team rabbit 2 like system for assigning player titles for the map. "5 Star Capping Chain Whore" for example could be someone's title. You would have titles displyed in red for O and green for D (or something of such) so it would be easy to see where the team needed reenforcement just by taking a glance at the roster.

Anyone not playing long enough would just have a newblood title of course since you don't want to skew the results.

You can then have it so just by clicking someone's name in the roster it goes into detailed stats for that map. Perhapes allow servers to save player histories and you can see their overall status and get a good idea of exactally what kind of player they are.


I think it could help pubs as the majority of the time people don't know what it is they should be doing to help the team, and while a manager like this would be good guidence, it wouldn't take over a be intrusive.

Plus people would work for the best titles. I mean sure you'd have to have some limitations like X number of people need to be on the serverto record server stats or something (just leave that up to admins) and you might get 10000000 O and no D b/c everyone is trying to get a super capper status, but that might not be a bad thing. Just record map wins and losses too so people don't get their precious reputations tarnished.
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Heh, don't know that that'd help (seems to me people just do whatever they feel like on pubs, helping or not), but I like the idea anyway.
 
Sir Lucius said:
When it comes to pubs, people are weakest in their egos. I purpose a highly advanced stat stracking system with a few key elements. Not only would it record detialed information like your kill percentage, weapon stats, number of caps, favorite armor, repair stats, etc, but it would also keep track of your location for the majority of the map based on the distances you are from base waypoints. This way it could tell if you're primarly Offense or Defense (if you make most of your kills at the enemy base you're O, if you make most at home you would be D).

Now you take all of this and you create a team rabbit 2 like system for assigning player titles for the map. "5 Star Capping Chain Whore" for example could be someone's title. You would have titles displyed in red for O and green for D (or something of such) so it would be easy to see where the team needed reenforcement just by taking a glance at the roster.

Anyone not playing long enough would just have a newblood title of course since you don't want to skew the results.

You can then have it so just by clicking someone's name in the roster it goes into detailed stats for that map. Perhapes allow servers to save player histories and you can see their overall status and get a good idea of exactally what kind of player they are.


I think it could help pubs as the majority of the time people don't know what it is they should be doing to help the team, and while a manager like this would be good guidence, it wouldn't take over a be intrusive.

Plus people would work for the best titles. I mean sure you'd have to have some limitations like X number of people need to be on the serverto record server stats or something (just leave that up to admins) and you might get 10000000 O and no D b/c everyone is trying to get a super capper status, but that might not be a bad thing. Just record map wins and losses too so people don't get their precious reputations tarnished.
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there's something like this for t2 already, it's called PizzaMod, but you cant see the stats til the end of the map and it doesnt say much about who is O or D. but that sounds like a good idea, if you could pull stats up mid-game and check what the positions are.

http://hosted.tribalwar.com/pizzamod/features.htm no screenshots tho, basically the score screen is tweaked at the end and gives out all kinds of awards - sniper whore, chain whore, capper whore, etc.

im not sure how much this really helps, but it is interesting to see the stats at the end. tho, it probably would be more helpful to be able to view this mid-game and get an idea of whats needed, so yeah. good idea.
 
Pizzamod strat tracking lags the server like nothing else. I dread playing on servers with that because there is alot of trigger lag at times even though I get "reasonable" ping i.e. 80-90 ms. There is just too much strain on the cpu for pizzamod stat tracking to be a built-in feature for the game.
 
Pizzamod might lag b/c it's not optimized (I don't know, I've never played it) but when one is building the game they could put in such a feature pretty seemlessly. The server is already computing all that data anyways, so it's really not all that more work to compile it into a stat spreadsheet of some kind.

In addition, I've heard KP mention stat tracking is already going to be built directly into the game.
 
what if there was a system whereby each player could quickly indicate that he/she is currently playing such-and-such a position. it could be a system similar to the voice binds.

any player on the team could bring up a list view, and see a kind of tree structure breakdown of the team and what jobs they've all assumed.

this way you could join a server, take a look at the list, and see what your team is lacking. or if you're getting stomped, you can take a look at the list and hurl insults at the people who have not listed their position, are obviously not playing their position, or have signed up for a position ten other people have already overloaded.

one level above all this, the server might be able to keep track of how well you are performing your position and award points accordingly... or possibly even indicate right on the tree view whether or not you are accomplishing your goals.

the waypoints idea for detecting O vs D play mentioned in the post above gives me one last idea - the tree view might be able to indicate "in position" for each player by comparing their location to the location associated with their job.

as far as the list of available positions, the locations, etc, that could be configurable on the server side.
 
ricefrog said:
as far as the list of available positions, the locations, etc, that could be configurable on the server side.
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That's a good point. This is probably something that people should be able to configure server side as a new game introduce the possibilities of new positions even after release.
 
Honestly, when you can't even get people who know the game in and out to coordinate on even simple things via chat, It'd be a waste of time to implement "I'm doing blah blah" voice binds. Since no one will listen to them except a select few people. Most people that go into pubs already know what they want to do and they follow through on it regardless of what everyone else is doing.
 
someone else brought this up on twl and i agree.

all these "position lister" ideas sound good, but what about the positions people dread playing. like a deployer, or a turret killer, or base repairer, imo, those type of things dont really belong in a fast-paced tribes gameplay. just take that shit out, it doesnt fit and causes "gameplay clashing". i know thats pretty drastic, but they are a major annoyances. now, how to take them out without changing too much, hmmm..

goin kinda far out there, but whatever :shrug:
 
ZProtoss said:
Honestly, when you can't even get people who know the game in and out to coordinate on even simple things via chat, It'd be a waste of time to implement "I'm doing blah blah" voice binds. Since no one will listen to them except a select few people. Most people that go into pubs already know what they want to do and they follow through on it regardless of what everyone else is doing.
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that reminds me. a working/stable in-game Voice over IP feature would be helpful too. if people actually used it, it'd be easier to set up positions/strats on the fly.
 
the bind itself is unimportant. what matters is the list, which lets you see at a glance what needs doing. i'm not going to remember every guy on the team and what he said he's going to do, which is why even when people try to teamchat their task at the start of the map, it's a wasted effort. i'm not gonna bust out a pencil, write it all down and then say hmm what's missing.

but if the game did that for me, i honestly would decide what to do based on the list.

if you're assuming that everybody is just going to do what they decided to do before entering the game, no matter what, then i can't imagine anything in the world making pubs better. sometimes i have that mindset too, and i just do whatever i feel like regardless of the effect on the overall game. but most times i could be flexible if it meant a more fun game.

besides, the list would introduce some small amount of accountability, and on a server with people who cared, it would be noticable if you were bucking the system to just do your own thing.

maybe you're right that people don't care, but i think a position list would at least give people the chance to do it right.


edit, ps i don't mind farming once in a while, and turret clearing is fun for me, i'd sign up for that pretty often. you might be surprised what newbs might not mind some of the more menial jobs... my first month, i spent plenty of time in the gen room defending, and it helped my team.
 
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ricefrog said:
edit, ps i don't mind farming once in a while, and turret clearing is fun for me, i'd sign up for that pretty often. you might be surprised what newbs might not mind some of the more menial jobs... my first month, i spent plenty of time in the gen room defending, and it helped my team.
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true, but it just seems like its 2 kinds of gameplay in 1 game. repairing/deploying/destroying assets (slow, repetitive) and then the flag game (real fast, anything can happen). i guess thats one of tribes strong points, is it's so diverse and all the options available. yeah, im just tryin to brainstorm, but good point.
 
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I'm expecting flames for this but, REMOVE THE INDIVIDUAL POINT SYSTEM.

It's fucking WORTHLESS and does NOTHING but contribute to point whorage on pubs. Leave it for match maybe? I don't know, just kill it from pubs. There's really no reason we need to know how much better player 1 is doing in comparison to player 2, when all that matters is who caps the flag more times.

I honestly think that if we couldn't look at each others' points, there would be a lot less bullshit to deal with.
 
RenGen said:
I'm expecting flames for this but, REMOVE THE INDIVIDUAL POINT SYSTEM.

It's fucking WORTHLESS and does NOTHING but contribute to point whorage on pubs. Leave it for match maybe? I don't know, just kill it from pubs. There's really no reason we need to know how much better player 1 is doing in comparison to player 2, when all that matters is who caps the flag more times.

I honestly think that if we couldn't look at each others' points, there would be a lot less bullshit to deal with.
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ill use points as a gauge for my effectiveness, sometimes anyway. i think players will need something to help push them, and some (alot) players need points (like lucious said, it's all ego). maybe if it was changed to something like a effectiveness percentage so people wouldnt whore a certain position for points, but removing an individual scoring system all together would not be fun imo.
 
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RenGen said:
I'm expecting flames for this but, REMOVE THE INDIVIDUAL POINT SYSTEM.

It's fucking WORTHLESS and does NOTHING but contribute to point whorage on pubs. Leave it for match maybe? I don't know, just kill it from pubs. There's really no reason we need to know how much better player 1 is doing in comparison to player 2, when all that matters is who caps the flag more times.

I honestly think that if we couldn't look at each others' points, there would be a lot less bullshit to deal with.
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I agree. Point whores are what make maps like sb absolutely no fun in t1 pubs.

Although I don't know if that's the best solution.
 
i understand why you guys don't like the turrets, and i don't disagree out of logic, just out of taste... i like being the annoying bastard who messes hardcore with the farmer and LD.

the best part of tribes for me is all the objectives (and means to accomplish them) you choose between, and how most of them don't involve simply killing people. taking away turrets would limit them a lot more imo, for both O and D.

it does seem hard to reconcile these viewpoints, but just to take a shot, here's a crazy idea that just occurred to me:

deployable turrets can only be acquired at a special sort of an inventory station. this would let maps determine not only the presence or lack of deployable turrets, but also the areas in which it would be easy to deploy them.

if the turret inventory is in the basment by the gens, then it's easy to farm up the cellar, but time-consuming to farm out the flag area. a dedicated farmer could still farm the flag, but clearing it would mean that the farm wouldn't be replaced in .5 seconds from the deployed inv nearby.

of course, that would make farming even less fun than it is already. :p
 
Ok fair enough, but it does need changing. There's players all over the top 5 that join a server and just whore it for no reason. I've seen your former teammates do it all too often. Base rape the whole map until the team they're on has lost the map by 5 caps. It's fucking stupid. Maybe instead of points it could just be raw tallies, listing how many times you've done xyz.
 
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