A Proposed Plan

[falconeer]

I dont mind what solution you use, I just don't like the idea of a sectioned off deathstar.. Might as well have separate practices than and keep the deathstar pub intact right?

Having activated flags (if its possible) is better than closing off sectors.

[jim the chin]

Falconeer's short term solution is/will be to add prac to the lower map, and to make this work by removing the flags from the death star. The death star pub game will be killing only no flags etc. This is ok on some levels, it puts everyone in pub etc..

-Fly

Well that's no good. We need some kind of pub game based around flags.

[falconeer]

And to do that you need walls to block off each sector? No. Not according to Fly's Latest post. He said you can activate flags.

Good in practice basically means good at killing. 1 vs 1 you win, 3 vs 1 you win. The goal of any pro player is not to bell flag and run circles around a sector like a moron. It's to go for a quick lock, flag before ding, and maintain the lock so you don't have to fly around and reflag like a moron.

A kill game still benifits new players. But Fly is using my/wo's Idea in Subgame. If I was Sysop and was going to use my own idea. I would move the zone to ASSS by January, and then I could have both flags in the sectors and flags in pub.

Why won't they move to ASSS. Is argyle not willing to do it? Then time to find a new host. We can't sit in subgame forever.

[jim the chin]

For the sake of time and effort etc. Maybe a change of plans. Keep the map the same as it is now, same nkz everything same as pub is now, no doors etc. Add the league style game, bell flags, scoring all the same as in prac or about the same.

Bot says "Get In!"... bot waits.. checks player count until a game forms etc..
Bot says game will start in 20 to 25 seconds..
Bot, based on player count sets up a game..
Bot selects groups of flags, not whole sectors but flag groups relatively close to one-n-nother..
note: flags would be activated by flag poles, in other words if a flag pole is activated all four of the flags would be as well.. other flags would be dead flags..
Bot displays a flagradar (i still need to create this) that shows which flag poles will played. Players will have a !radar command to pull it up if needed.
note: active flag poles will have green flag pole (image lvz) as in #publeague, and red for inactive (its really easy to understand once you see it, might even send the player a private msg if the touch a red inactive flag or a buzzer sound).

Everyone might have a different opinion on how many flags should be played relative to player count. It could be for a 1 vs 1 game just one flag pole (4 flags), or two flag poles (8 flags) maybe even more. 5 vs 5 could be 5 flag poles (20 flag) or as many as 10 poles (40 flags). Its easy to just randomize it a bit, 7 vs 7 there would be atleast a minimum 7 active poles (28 flags) and a maximum of 14 (56) active flag poles. The number of active flag poles would just be different each game, but always within 1:1 2:1 ratio per player. It might just be easier/better to just hard code groups of flags, that way we can setup some interesting groups. Letting the bot decide randomly might suck.

80 sec bell dings just like in prac, and no half time switch or anything just fast 15-20 min games (maybe just 10 80sec dings).
Bot warps all players back to nkz after game, process repeats..

The warpbox !ds function would stay, just modified so you spawn to a random point in core only.

I could explain it better i guess but hopefully you get the idea. This is about 20-30 build (with the new !radar taking up a chunk of the time) and can be done by mid december. Then we can gauge what works and what doesn't.

-Fly

This sounds ideal. A few suggestions:

1. If possible, make the games last longer when there's more players. You said 15-20 minutes. This is too long for a 1v1 or 2v2 battle. I think people would grow impatient fighting the same person in the same place for too long. So, if it's easy to code:

1v1 (i.e. the max team size is one) = 8 dings (10:40)
2v2 = 9 dings (12:00)
3v3 = 10 dings (13:20)
4v4 = 11 dings (14:40)
5v5 = 12 dings (16:00)
6v6 = 13 dings (17:20)
7v7 = 14 dings (18:40)
8v8 or more = 15 dings (20:00) = maximum game time.

If not, then I'd suggest a default game time of 12 minutes to keep people interested. If the zone recovers, then it could always be increased to 15.

2. I'm not sure why you want the bot to warp everyone to the NKZ after the game. That's madness IMO. You're basically inviting people to leave when the game is up. Also, it would be good if the bot sent a message after each game is finished, saying something like: "The next game will begin in 1 minute in a random area of the death star", just to let people know that there is more fun on the way!

3. When you say that 7v7 would require 7 flag-poles, I think this is too much. You'd be dividing the fight over more than one sector. In league, veterans are disciplined enough to divide the flags up in the best way, but pub players won't play like that, and I don't think we should try to force them to either. The fun in pub will be (and always was) to have mass brawls in a single region of the map. You could easily have a fun 7v7 game in any one sector... even east with just 5 flag-poles. It's difficult though, because 3v3 is fine for a whole sector too (apart from north). I guess what I'm saying is: it should take a large increase in the number of players for the bot to start allocating flags in more than 1 sector.

4. I think it's worth emphasizing groups of flags within individual sectors, simply because that's how league is played, and we want people to learn how to play in sectors. However, like you say, some interesting flag groups could be used to keep things interesting. For example, the 2 flag poles in the rear of east (tube flags) together with the 3 upper south flagpoles (in my opinion these 5 flagpoles would satisfy a game as big as 9v9). For this suggestion, you would ideally have changed the map to link the east and south tubes. This was successfully trialled in league, and most people seemed happy with it.

That's all I can think of for now. Hopefully it was useful.

[Fly Swatter]

1. If possible, make the games last longer when there's more players. You said 15-20 minutes. This is too long for a 1v1 or 2v2 battle. I think people would grow impatient fighting the same person in the same place for too long. So, if it's easy to code:

1v1 (i.e. the max team size is one) = 8 dings (10:40)
2v2 = 9 dings (12:00)
3v3 = 10 dings (13:20)
4v4 = 11 dings (14:40)
5v5 = 12 dings (16:00)
6v6 = 13 dings (17:20)
7v7 = 14 dings (18:40)
8v8 or more = 15 dings (20:00) = maximum game time.

Good suggestion, easily done.

2. I'm not sure why you want the bot to warp everyone to the NKZ after the game. That's madness IMO. You're basically inviting people to leave when the game is up. Also, it would be good if the bot sent a message after each game is finished, saying something like: "The next game will begin in 1 minute in a random area of the death star", just to let people know that there is more fun on the way!

3. When you say that 7v7 would require 7 flag-poles, I think this is too much. You'd be dividing the fight over more than one sector. In league, veterans are disciplined enough to divide the flags up in the best way, but pub players won't play like that, and I don't think we should try to force them to either. The fun in pub will be (and always was) to have mass brawls in a single region of the map. You could easily have a fun 7v7 game in any one sector... even east with just 5 flag-poles. It's difficult though, because 3v3 is fine for a whole sector too (apart from north). I guess what I'm saying is: it should take a large increase in the number of players for the bot to start allocating flags in more than 1 sector.

Most of this can be changed/configured during testing.

4. I think it's worth emphasizing groups of flags within individual sectors, simply because that's how league is played, and we want people to learn how to play in sectors. However, like you say, some interesting flag groups could be used to keep things interesting. For example, the 2 flag poles in the rear of east (tube flags) together with the 3 upper south flagpoles (in my opinion these 5 flagpoles would satisfy a game as big as 9v9). For this suggestion, you would ideally have changed the map to link the east and south tubes. This was successfully trialled in league, and most people seemed happy with it.

I guess it would be ideal to confine small games to individual sectors. Maybe link east and south tubes again as you suggested. The coding will be flexible enough to make changes later on.

Its a easy build, so if it fails no big deal.

-Fly

[jim the chin]

Thanks for taking my suggestions seriously. Another good thing would be to post the current scores in pub-chat after each ding so people are aware that a game is going on, and so they can see who is winning.

[Fly Swatter]

Thanks for taking my suggestions seriously. Another good thing would be to post the current scores in pub-chat after each ding so people are aware that a game is going on, and so they can see who is winning.

Still work to do as far as scoring goes. But, it posts scores each ding, its the same as prac in that way.

Code: Select all

   Fly Swatter> !start
GO GO GO!!!
   Fly Swatter> !ding
   DSB-PUB-BOT> Bell 1: Freq 0 Total:  16
   DSB-PUB-BOT> Bell 1: Freq 1 Total:  0
   DSB-PUB-BOT> Bell 1: Freq 0: 160 - Freq 1: 0.  Freq 0 by 160
   Fly Swatter> !ding
   DSB-PUB-BOT> Bell 2: Freq 0 Total:  16
   DSB-PUB-BOT> Bell 2: Freq 1 Total:  0
   DSB-PUB-BOT> Bell 2: Freq 0: 320 - Freq 1: 0.  Freq 0 by 320
   Fly Swatter> !ding
   DSB-PUB-BOT> Bell 3: Freq 0 Total:  16
   DSB-PUB-BOT> Bell 3: Freq 1 Total:  0
   DSB-PUB-BOT> Bell 3: Freq 0: 480 - Freq 1: 0.  Freq 0 by 480
   Fly Swatter> !end
Game Over!
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Frequency             |Kills|Deaths|Ratio|As|TKs|FTs|BFs| Avg |Kill  |Death |Flag  | Total |
Player                |     |      |     |  |   |   |   | BFs |Points|Points|Points| Points|
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1: Empire             |0    |0     | 1.00|0 |0  |16 |48 | 16.0|     0|     0|   480|    480|
2: Rebel Alliance     |0    |0     | 1.00|0 |0  |0  |0  |  0.0|     0|     0|     0|      0|
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1: Fly Swatter(0)     |0    |0     | 1.00|0 |0  |16 |48 | 16.0|     0|     0|   480|    480|
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I still remember that scoring normalizing formula you suggested years ago bty.

Code: Select all

((kills / total kills) * 100 + (flags / total_flags) * 100) 

or something like that.

-Fly

[jim the chin]

I think the prac bot only gives the score to spectators. The people playing have to do !L to see who's leading. For the pub game, letting everyone see the score would be better for showing newbies what's happening. To avoid spam, it could be reduced to one line.

I remember the normalized scores. I can't remember how it fared though. We don't use it now, so maybe it's no better than the prac-system.

[Fly Swatter]

What is the lowest scoring event in a game like league/prac. Other then tracking damage and scoring for every bullet, the lowest scoring event is a flagtouch. You set flagtouch to 1pt, then you use human judgement to determine what a flagbell is worth say 10pts, then you determine what a kill is worth, you base that on how many flags are in play. Playing east you have 20 flags so kills are worth 20pts.

FlagTouches : 1 pt
FlagBells : 10 pts
Kills : 1 pt per flag in play.

Simple is best imo, so this is where i would start. As other have said you want to avoid suiciding for last second flagbells. More thought needs to be put into this ofc.

Current prac scoring is 150 per kill, but you lose 150 for a death, so every kill is worth 300, then you subtract the death bounus which is 5.. So kills are worth 295.. or something like this.

It seems strange that people abandon there team mates to flag in prac. Even with lock on east with all flags, the total flagbell is only worth 10 pts x 20 flags = 200. Not even worth a single kill.

Ofc kills are suppose to be set differently for each sector but its not functioning correctly so im told..

Then there is no place for new players to read up on how scoring works.. Staff isnt even clear on some of the categories in the end game printout...

-Fly

[the_real_the_snake]

Does this "match" style system really appeal to noobs and players who prac in the long run?
I don't know, coz otherwise we would have found them playing more pracs :/