I suggest that DSB negotiates to move to TW

[jim the chin]

If you think an objective is not the right thing to do, what are you doing, as sysop of DSB, to change pub for the better?

By the wikipedia link, I think you knew what I meant, but I'll spell it out for you anyway: If the game is "wildly successful" then you shouldn't need to give me a link, you should expect me to have heard of it. I've looked at these farmville type games, they are like the Sims, you start with the bare minimum and build it up into something better. I've already explained this is an objective (upgrading a ship, city or farm, to make something more powerful to overcome hardships). We don't have this objective in DSB, it's not the same... forget about apples and oranges, you're comparing apples and roast beef.

Killing would be a goal if there was a reason to do it. Take the CS example. If people didn't respawn then killing people would be a means to win the round. Games like Team Combat league have killing as a goal because you can eliminate people. There is no goal to killing in pub. People are crying out for a goal, so much so that some take to spreeing because it gets them on the website leaderboard. That's a killing goal: to get on the leaderboard by killing. It's a goal that would be more fun if there were lots of people in pub.

[Seriel Killer]

Entr0py, i've been saying this for years now.

If you want a person to start playing this game out of 100,000 games available for him to pick
it needs to be:

1. Appealing.

2. Advertised heavily.

Appealing? questionable, DSB has always been fun the way it is, but there's obviously
lots of work to be done.

Advertised heavily? not done. gg? yes.

Now put your coding skills to work and create a worm to infect 10,000 computers and then
spread an advertisement e-mail about DSB. Shouldn't be THAT hard.

[Tembest]

Anything you do repeatedly is for the goal of getting better at it. That's not an objective. You get better at rowing by going to the gym and using the machine all the time. You get better at fighting by getting into bar room brawls all the time. You get better at lighting your farts the more you try it.

That's not actually true. You go to the gym not to get better at
it but to either improve your health or grow muscles to look better.
A reason person would want to get better at fighting is that one
wants to win battles; battles that end when they beat the other guy.
No one would care about fighting if the other guy just "respawned"
every time you knocked him out.
Lastly, the last example is ridiculous but it also has a clear goal. The
person wants to be able to do that and the "game ends" when he can
finally light his farts, (also the goal of show off, which is likely the
reason he started practising it).

Pub's only clear goal right now is to create a super ship by greening
and not die. But the goal clearly isn't interesting to people because
no one is doing it. It gives them no mental kick; they don't feel better
when they achieve it. In other words, there is no prize (game-related
or psychological for the players). Sure, tokens but that seems to be
another thing people do not care about. The benefit would have to be
something that motivates people to try to reach the goal.

[Tembest]

Oh yeah, about greening, I personally don't think it's good at all.
It makes the game too random. You kill someone and the other
guy happens to run into a green and gets full charge or shields,
and he won't die. It's annoying when you have no idea how to
kill people. Full charge isn't as bad as shields, shields is horrible
for pub game play.

But personally, I don't really like any random elements.

I think it's a reason people used to like DSB. Skill used to beat
everything else. That's why people complain about lag. Any good
player knows exactly how many bullets are required to kill a certain
ship at a certain moment, and when they don't die it's annoying as hell.

[Matioso]

DSB is already dead, this could a valiant last desperate attempt of revival :/

Agreed!

I think reviving this zone can only happen in this order:

1.revive league
2.revive prac areas
3.revive pub

I think it should be the way around. Pub should be revived first so that we can also get new players and old players could have even some place to hang around if no pracs. After that prac arenas and league. Also, I would like to see more events but that is ofc if we get more ers, and those who have er nicks would actually use them. Events, even tho you wouldn't like them show that the zone is alive.

P.S Get the league going on already

[jim the chin]

DSB is already dead, this could a valiant last desperate attempt of revival :/

Agreed!

I think reviving this zone can only happen in this order:

1.revive league
2.revive prac areas
3.revive pub

I think it should be the way around. Pub should be revived first so that we can also get new players and old players could have even some place to hang around if no pracs. After that prac arenas and league. Also, I would like to see more events but that is ofc if we get more ers, and those who have er nicks would actually use them. Events, even tho you wouldn't like them show that the zone is alive.

P.S Get the league going on already

I agree. Without an active pub vets leave when the league/pracs are over. It's not like the vets go to play the pub (although they do sometimes), it's just somewhere active to spectate/chat until the next prac comes along. Also, vets inevitably leave, so unless there is somewhere to get replacements from, leagues and pracs will always die.

[jim the chin]

Anything you do repeatedly is for the goal of getting better at it. That's not an objective. You get better at rowing by going to the gym and using the machine all the time. You get better at fighting by getting into bar room brawls all the time. You get better at lighting your farts the more you try it.

That's not actually true. You go to the gym not to get better at
it but to either improve your health or grow muscles to look better.
A reason person would want to get better at fighting is that one
wants to win battles; battles that end when they beat the other guy.
No one would care about fighting if the other guy just "respawned"
every time you knocked him out.
Lastly, the last example is ridiculous but it also has a clear goal. The
person wants to be able to do that and the "game ends" when he can
finally light his farts, (also the goal of show off, which is likely the
reason he started practising it).

Pub's only clear goal right now is to create a super ship by greening
and not die. But the goal clearly isn't interesting to people because
no one is doing it. It gives them no mental kick; they don't feel better
when they achieve it. In other words, there is no prize (game-related
or psychological for the players). Sure, tokens but that seems to be
another thing people do not care about. The benefit would have to be
something that motivates people to try to reach the goal.

I guess this debate suffers from the ambiguous definition of objective/goal. I hope we can all agree on this statement:

Whatever objective DSB may or may not have, it is not sufficient to keep people entertained, and not sufficient to draw in new players. Many games have objectives that directly contribute to making the game successful, and this includes subspace zones. Given this evidence, the requests of numerous people (pub objective thread: wo, fly swatter, deathcorp, myself and delic.), and DSB's deteriation without an objective, I suggest that developing an objective is the best use of time for anyone with the coding abilities, time and willpower to make that happen.

[Tembest]

I agree with Mati and Sever. Unless we have a succesful pub, we cannot draw in new players.
If we spammed every old league players and got many of them active again, it would only
keep league alive for a few more years. New players need a place to practise their skills or
they will leave. Prac arena cannot be the only place to do this because newbs are treated
horribly there.

[Entr0py]

Anything you do repeatedly is for the goal of getting better at it. That's not an objective. You get better at rowing by going to the gym and using the machine all the time. You get better at fighting by getting into bar room brawls all the time. You get better at lighting your farts the more you try it.

That's not actually true. You go to the gym not to get better at
it but to either improve your health or grow muscles to look better.
A reason person would want to get better at fighting is that one
wants to win battles; battles that end when they beat the other guy.
No one would care about fighting if the other guy just "respawned"
every time you knocked him out.
Lastly, the last example is ridiculous but it also has a clear goal. The
person wants to be able to do that and the "game ends" when he can
finally light his farts, (also the goal of show off, which is likely the
reason he started practising it).

Pub's only clear goal right now is to create a super ship by greening
and not die. But the goal clearly isn't interesting to people because
no one is doing it. It gives them no mental kick; they don't feel better
when they achieve it. In other words, there is no prize (game-related
or psychological for the players). Sure, tokens but that seems to be
another thing people do not care about. The benefit would have to be
something that motivates people to try to reach the goal.

You're quoting the wrong guy. Sever said that, not I. Regardless, my point is that killing in and of itself is a goal, one which improving your skills helps you attain. This open-ended goal appeals to people who want to blow off steam and kill other people mindlessly. I'm not saying it appeals to everyone, but it IS appealing to some people, just as hockey is appealing to some, but not all, people. I think it's been clear for more than a decade that that's been the goal of pub.

Oh yeah, about greening, I personally don't think it's good at all.
It makes the game too random. You kill someone and the other
guy happens to run into a green and gets full charge or shields,
and he won't die. It's annoying when you have no idea how to
kill people. Full charge isn't as bad as shields, shields is horrible
for pub game play.

But personally, I don't really like any random elements.

I think it's a reason people used to like DSB. Skill used to beat
everything else. That's why people complain about lag. Any good
player knows exactly how many bullets are required to kill a certain
ship at a certain moment, and when they don't die it's annoying as hell.

A year ago, I would have agreed with you. But the fact is that our pub participation has been way up (pretty sad, right, that THIS is way up) since we made it permanent. Trust me on this, we've tested removing them and putting them back. There's a clear difference.

DSB is already dead, this could a valiant last desperate attempt of revival :/

Agreed!

I think reviving this zone can only happen in this order:

1.revive league
2.revive prac areas
3.revive pub

I think it should be the way around. Pub should be revived first so that we can also get new players and old players could have even some place to hang around if no pracs. After that prac arenas and league. Also, I would like to see more events but that is ofc if we get more ers, and those who have er nicks would actually use them. Events, even tho you wouldn't like them show that the zone is alive.

P.S Get the league going on already

I'm in the revive pub camp. But I'm in the revive everything camp! League is starting soon, btw. Join old bones!

Anything you do repeatedly is for the goal of getting better at it. That's not an objective. You get better at rowing by going to the gym and using the machine all the time. You get better at fighting by getting into bar room brawls all the time. You get better at lighting your farts the more you try it.

That's not actually true. You go to the gym not to get better at
it but to either improve your health or grow muscles to look better.
A reason person would want to get better at fighting is that one
wants to win battles; battles that end when they beat the other guy.
No one would care about fighting if the other guy just "respawned"
every time you knocked him out.
Lastly, the last example is ridiculous but it also has a clear goal. The
person wants to be able to do that and the "game ends" when he can
finally light his farts, (also the goal of show off, which is likely the
reason he started practising it).

Pub's only clear goal right now is to create a super ship by greening
and not die. But the goal clearly isn't interesting to people because
no one is doing it. It gives them no mental kick; they don't feel better
when they achieve it. In other words, there is no prize (game-related
or psychological for the players). Sure, tokens but that seems to be
another thing people do not care about. The benefit would have to be
something that motivates people to try to reach the goal.

I guess this debate suffers from the ambiguous definition of objective/goal. I hope we can all agree on this statement:

Whatever objective DSB may or may not have, it is not sufficient to keep people entertained, and not sufficient to draw in new players. Many games have objectives that directly contribute to making the game successful, and this includes subspace zones. Given this evidence, the requests of numerous people (pub objective thread: wo, fly swatter, deathcorp, myself and delic.), and DSB's deteriation without an objective, I suggest that developing an objective is the best use of time for anyone with the coding abilities, time and willpower to make that happen.

I disagree with your entire statement because it's entire premise is that DSB's problems stem from the lack of a pub objective. It entirely overlooks the fact that DSB is 15 years old, and has a diminishing and aging population base. Perhaps people are bored, but the fact is that every time we've tried to add objectives in the past, interest has waned after the first couple of days of excitement over something new.

All of the past evidence shows that pub gameplay changes don't significantly increase our usership, unless it's a change BACK to the ORIGINAL gameplay from some other new gameplay.

That doesn't make it impossible that there is some team gameplay out there that we could try that could appeal to a pub of 3v3 and somehow make the non-existent newbies flock to DSB. If you want to develop it and try it, I'M OPEN TO IT.

But I'm not going to waste my time doing all the work on something that I don't believe will do anything at all, when I have bigger fish to fry, like getting the league bot and website ready.

Another issue is that, even though some clamor for an objective, nobody offers any help or ideas towards its production in a volunteer-based game. Now please stop trying to tell everyone else what's wrong with DSB, and try to fix it by making something.

[Beer Hunter]

Public objective - yes a good thing if it is individual based, which it is at the moment. There ARE objectives which every individual can achieve as a force of one. Getting bounties, hunting people, doing sprees - stuff like that.

Team objectives are part of the game of course but do they belong to public? I'm not quite sure. Why? It's simple: people like to hop in and play mainly for themselves, learning new ships, just killing few people for fun, trolling, whatever. This hardly suits for team objective focused public - half of them will NEVER play towards achieving that objective and if it requires a team to win something - the players who like playing as a team and the ones who do not will obviously get into a fight about it. The "having fun in pub" attitude would ruin the game for the objective gamers looking at the "bigger picture" and obviously this works vice versa too.

I think that is one of the problems why objective does not work if it is a team objective. In league, practices or events a team objective is fine - they came there to do exactly what the description said. (Protect the king, dont become a zombie, win east practice..etc) However on pub it's hard to adjust the game for those two different types mentioned above.

I'm not saying it's impossible but I think this could be one of the reasons why public objectives are a bad idea. Just throwing my few cents into the center ice and waiting for the referee to call me back to penalty box.