03-19-2011, 11:30 PM
(This post was last modified: 03-19-2011, 11:32 PM by hallucination.)
First, thanks for posting, everyone. It's good to have a civil discussion of the issues in depth.
The situation of few/no players is a bad one and I'm very concerned. fresh speculates that it's the greening that is discouraging people from playing. I'm skeptical that it is a significant factor... Immediate play and greening are topics of interest though. First some facts:
-- The number of greens, green dispersion, has been dynamically adjusted since 2000-1 along with the freqsize. There are wildly more greens than SVS settings. Polix suggested dynamically changing Initial Bty along with freqsize -- it could be added.
-- Nude is right that you almost always get a full ship except for max nrg (the biggest reason to green), x, and aw. Toy amounts are random. Yupa said "If they haven't been fully greened, then they were at least incredibly well greened compared to classic Chaos." which is correct.
-- When Jeff et al were actively working on ss, settings changed _very_ frequently and for the most part the general population was not consulted nor informed. Settings have continued to change since Chaos became player run, albeit more slowly, and there have been very few changes in recent years (the shark being the notable exception). The population has always been informed of any permanent changes. The cumlative changes are mostly "none to tiny" but some of the changes are hugely different -- like the two points above.
-- Yupa said, "They already have population-based on-the-fly adjustment, and it doesn't work. For that matter it hasn't worked in any zone that has implemented it," When I first did Chaos-Bot with dynamic freq and green adjustments, Chaos had a very significant population increase and dynamic adjustments worked here quite well for 10 yrs. Polix points out that when Yupa was playing Chaos, Chaos-Bot had already been dynamically altering these settings for years.
-- Under passplay the initial bty did get raised from 30 to 50 (narrowing the difference even more between Chaos and Alpha).
-- Originally, greening was part of the penalty for dying. When you die, you are weaker and need to green for a few minutes to get back to a full strength ship, so -- don't die! As Yupa implies, with the initial settings and huge number of greens available today, it's not much of a penalty, and imo has significantly altered the game design consequences of Chaos. Dying used to mean something -- now it means little -- you have a very good chance of immediately getting a ship that's good enough to fight with.
-- DZ had full ship spawns as fresh suggests, and yet they were losing population and merged into Chaos many years ago. League pub had full ship spawns, yet one of the driving factors of League merging into Chaos was that League Pub was losing players. Btw, I loved DZ and played it often.
-- There are strong arguments for both leaving settings as they are/were and going forward. This controversy is an old one, and not everyone will be pleased by whatever is done. I have some radical ideas for changes, but I'm very much worried about it 'not being Chaos anymore.' Yupa and others already feel this way -- with good reason really -- the vast majority of settings are very close to/unchanged from SVS settings, but a few are very different (like greens) and substantially alter the game dynamics.
-- All zones are losing players, including Trench. Chaos still actually has about the same percentage of players that it has had over the last years (about 10%) -- that doesn't make the number of players we have ok.
There are many factors that have influenced the population flucuations over the years, but I think greens and greening has been a minor factor. No possible change in green settings is going to get very many people out of spec (or out of pracs, or out of TW) and playing in Chaos. I think Camel hit the nail on the head -- the fundamental problem is retaining new players.
Why do new players not stay? Basically, because getting killed over and over by multi-year vet players is no fun.
The problem lies in the maturation cycle of the game (and recurs in many settings) -- Chaos always was an intermediate zone and hostile to new players -- early on, however there was Alpha. After Alpha, there was EG and TW where newbs could get some kills and figure out the basics. Now, there is no "Alpha" at all. TW is suffering from the same problem now -- too high a percentage of experienced players -- they too are not keeping new players now (I've heard 99% loss rate there recently).
In a sports program, you separate players by ability level. Put an advanced player with a beginner and neither player has fun or learns much -- only a teacher-student relationship is viable for that situation (and most advanced players really aren't teachers and don't want to be).
Chaos historically has been an intermediate level zone. Newbs did not belong there. Chaos' players are even stronger now (overall), and newbs still do not belong there. Alpha had a point limit of 5000 which discouraged players from staying -- only lamers would stay by getting a new nick. The removal of the point limit was a bad thing imo -- that is when alpha ceased function as a place for newbs to learn by playing other newbs. The only new players we get are people who are very experienced from other zones (like EG or TW [though they have a huge learning curve to overcome]), or brave souls who are brought here by a friend who helps them start to get up the learning curve to compete (a very high percentage of new players without friends will not talk, and leave after going somewhere between 0-3 and 1-10).
League players are not going to play in Chaos because of the stigma of being killed by lowly Chaos Players. Many of the League players that do play Chaos avoid engaging other league players -- a death in Chaos is a bad thing no matter who they die to since it's perceived as "Intermediate" and not as "Open/All levels" (which is would be better -- not sure if that's possible though).
I think the key for Subspace going forward would be to 'force' new players, all new players, to play each other -- create a new Alpha. This means routing new players to a single arena/zone, preferably with teachers (NOT grief players, mine reppers, cloakers etc. that enjoy easy kills on newbs/weak players). In this arena, or better yet, series of arenas, you learn the skills needed to compete in SVS (the most complex and deep form of the game) in an appropriate sequence. Flying first; then shooting; then dodging/prox; then energy management; then repelling; then x radar. That's the minimum set to start to compete in Chaos.
This is both a very old idea (I kicked around the multiple learning arenas back in the early 2000s) and a new idea (get all the zones to sign on to forcing newbs away until they learn the ropes -- not sure about how willingly others would do this thing).
I know this is not a very satisfactory post, but it's one current line of thinking I've been having.
I am not averse to doing experiments, and having a DZ day/time and a Classic SVS day/time is something I'd definitely like to do as "In Chaos" events (i.e. won't count toward Reset Winners, but takes place in Chaos). So trying out fresh's idea is doable.
--hallu
P.S. What is this "chaos pub" of which you speak? <img src='http://www.subspace.co/public/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile.png' class='bbc_emoticon' alt=':p' /> I don't know about you, but I play Chaos; or sometimes I call it Chaos Zone.
The situation of few/no players is a bad one and I'm very concerned. fresh speculates that it's the greening that is discouraging people from playing. I'm skeptical that it is a significant factor... Immediate play and greening are topics of interest though. First some facts:
-- The number of greens, green dispersion, has been dynamically adjusted since 2000-1 along with the freqsize. There are wildly more greens than SVS settings. Polix suggested dynamically changing Initial Bty along with freqsize -- it could be added.
-- Nude is right that you almost always get a full ship except for max nrg (the biggest reason to green), x, and aw. Toy amounts are random. Yupa said "If they haven't been fully greened, then they were at least incredibly well greened compared to classic Chaos." which is correct.
-- When Jeff et al were actively working on ss, settings changed _very_ frequently and for the most part the general population was not consulted nor informed. Settings have continued to change since Chaos became player run, albeit more slowly, and there have been very few changes in recent years (the shark being the notable exception). The population has always been informed of any permanent changes. The cumlative changes are mostly "none to tiny" but some of the changes are hugely different -- like the two points above.
-- Yupa said, "They already have population-based on-the-fly adjustment, and it doesn't work. For that matter it hasn't worked in any zone that has implemented it," When I first did Chaos-Bot with dynamic freq and green adjustments, Chaos had a very significant population increase and dynamic adjustments worked here quite well for 10 yrs. Polix points out that when Yupa was playing Chaos, Chaos-Bot had already been dynamically altering these settings for years.
-- Under passplay the initial bty did get raised from 30 to 50 (narrowing the difference even more between Chaos and Alpha).
-- Originally, greening was part of the penalty for dying. When you die, you are weaker and need to green for a few minutes to get back to a full strength ship, so -- don't die! As Yupa implies, with the initial settings and huge number of greens available today, it's not much of a penalty, and imo has significantly altered the game design consequences of Chaos. Dying used to mean something -- now it means little -- you have a very good chance of immediately getting a ship that's good enough to fight with.
-- DZ had full ship spawns as fresh suggests, and yet they were losing population and merged into Chaos many years ago. League pub had full ship spawns, yet one of the driving factors of League merging into Chaos was that League Pub was losing players. Btw, I loved DZ and played it often.
-- There are strong arguments for both leaving settings as they are/were and going forward. This controversy is an old one, and not everyone will be pleased by whatever is done. I have some radical ideas for changes, but I'm very much worried about it 'not being Chaos anymore.' Yupa and others already feel this way -- with good reason really -- the vast majority of settings are very close to/unchanged from SVS settings, but a few are very different (like greens) and substantially alter the game dynamics.
-- All zones are losing players, including Trench. Chaos still actually has about the same percentage of players that it has had over the last years (about 10%) -- that doesn't make the number of players we have ok.
There are many factors that have influenced the population flucuations over the years, but I think greens and greening has been a minor factor. No possible change in green settings is going to get very many people out of spec (or out of pracs, or out of TW) and playing in Chaos. I think Camel hit the nail on the head -- the fundamental problem is retaining new players.
Why do new players not stay? Basically, because getting killed over and over by multi-year vet players is no fun.
The problem lies in the maturation cycle of the game (and recurs in many settings) -- Chaos always was an intermediate zone and hostile to new players -- early on, however there was Alpha. After Alpha, there was EG and TW where newbs could get some kills and figure out the basics. Now, there is no "Alpha" at all. TW is suffering from the same problem now -- too high a percentage of experienced players -- they too are not keeping new players now (I've heard 99% loss rate there recently).
In a sports program, you separate players by ability level. Put an advanced player with a beginner and neither player has fun or learns much -- only a teacher-student relationship is viable for that situation (and most advanced players really aren't teachers and don't want to be).
Chaos historically has been an intermediate level zone. Newbs did not belong there. Chaos' players are even stronger now (overall), and newbs still do not belong there. Alpha had a point limit of 5000 which discouraged players from staying -- only lamers would stay by getting a new nick. The removal of the point limit was a bad thing imo -- that is when alpha ceased function as a place for newbs to learn by playing other newbs. The only new players we get are people who are very experienced from other zones (like EG or TW [though they have a huge learning curve to overcome]), or brave souls who are brought here by a friend who helps them start to get up the learning curve to compete (a very high percentage of new players without friends will not talk, and leave after going somewhere between 0-3 and 1-10).
League players are not going to play in Chaos because of the stigma of being killed by lowly Chaos Players. Many of the League players that do play Chaos avoid engaging other league players -- a death in Chaos is a bad thing no matter who they die to since it's perceived as "Intermediate" and not as "Open/All levels" (which is would be better -- not sure if that's possible though).
I think the key for Subspace going forward would be to 'force' new players, all new players, to play each other -- create a new Alpha. This means routing new players to a single arena/zone, preferably with teachers (NOT grief players, mine reppers, cloakers etc. that enjoy easy kills on newbs/weak players). In this arena, or better yet, series of arenas, you learn the skills needed to compete in SVS (the most complex and deep form of the game) in an appropriate sequence. Flying first; then shooting; then dodging/prox; then energy management; then repelling; then x radar. That's the minimum set to start to compete in Chaos.
This is both a very old idea (I kicked around the multiple learning arenas back in the early 2000s) and a new idea (get all the zones to sign on to forcing newbs away until they learn the ropes -- not sure about how willingly others would do this thing).
I know this is not a very satisfactory post, but it's one current line of thinking I've been having.
I am not averse to doing experiments, and having a DZ day/time and a Classic SVS day/time is something I'd definitely like to do as "In Chaos" events (i.e. won't count toward Reset Winners, but takes place in Chaos). So trying out fresh's idea is doable.
--hallu
P.S. What is this "chaos pub" of which you speak? <img src='http://www.subspace.co/public/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile.png' class='bbc_emoticon' alt=':p' /> I don't know about you, but I play Chaos; or sometimes I call it Chaos Zone.