To Zero: Business Teaser for wcs?:P

[CYBER]

WARNING: My first wall of text in a while. Only for the strong hearted lol...

http://penny-arcade.com/patv/episode...cing-for-skill

---------- Post added at 10:32 PM ---------- Previous post was at 10:30 PM ----------

http://penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/counter-play

---------- Post added at 10:32 PM ---------- Previous post was at 10:32 PM ----------

I think it is funny to think about those 2 and the way abilities for the races are set up.

i love penny arcade. The last video about counter play can easily be shown with a Vaga example.
For many, playing vagas is their goal in the game, they enjoy it. But for new players, they seem OP and annoying to play against.
With the introduction of new races like warden, athena, shadow hunter etc, or items like the LACE, then they could simply "lure" the vaga into a lace range by hiding conveniently in spots along the line of the objective, baiting the vaga to get stuck. Killing the vaga becomes a reward, an achievement for new players. They get that sense of "fuck yeah!".


Now zero, I need to discuss a scheme for wcs that is more "business" related when it comes to the gameplay.
Many new players bitch about not having free levels when joining ibis (frankly, i;m AGAINST having free levels).
But many new people get discouraged playing against high-level races wielded by a player who knows how to use that race efficiently. And I've seen many occasions of when a player goes "fuck this, it's impossible to get past the initial curve".

Honestly? I disagree with them because Human, Flame pred, and shadow hunter are VERY VERY strong races,and introduced early. But the problem that occurs is that people don't take the game seriously initially, just racking up tomes to get to play the vagas and athenas etc... What ends up happening is described in the first link u posted: people don't learn the advantages of the early races, thinking that they will be underpowered in the long run.

What I would like to suggest is this:
Is it possible to have, once a week, a "free-for-all" event? By that, I mean that, let's say Saturdays, all races get a temporary max level cap that would allow new players to experience the races provided later on in the game. Obviously, you would put a restriction that you get no experience on any races other than the ones you already had unlocked. When saturday event ends, you go back to your previous skill level, and only xp that was earned on ur actual races is kept.

Advantages:
1- New players will get a taste of the newer races. Just enough for them to work even harder to get to the higher levels, instead of giving up on the leveling process.
2- Once a week, they can get a chance to play as if they have maxxed everything, and see how they would have faired if they used the strategies they currently know and applied them on higher races. Heck they might learn new tricks and level faster by knowing how the OTHER races play.
ex: If they managed to play Vagalion for example, they'd know how the race is played, and how they tele, know it's strength and weakness from the player's view and learn how to counter better. ETC.
3- Keeps our server fresh for new players
4- Gives everyone a chance, even older players, to test their preferred race to its highest potential
5- Think of it like a WvW or sPvP event in Guild Wars 2 where you get power capped to lv 80 while you're in that event, but when you leave it, you go back to your actual level, but with a fun experience. Players who are ACTUALLY maxxed level would have their experience in the game at their side, differentiating them from other players.)

Disadvantages:
1- Players will still be bitching about getting restricted races, but that happens already anyway.
2- Saturdays (event day) will probably be very popular dates for the server, making reserve slot a must (this might turn out to be an advantage, since people who didnt buy reserve slots before will end up buying one now for their weekend escapades!)
3- Veteran players will definitely go against this because they think it's not fair that they had to work to "taste" the new races, when new players wont have to do that on saturdays. (I counter that with the fact that you will probably get more exp out of the noobs trying to learn to play unfamiliar races before perfecting the older ones)
4- More work for Zero (Sorry, many, we love you tho)


Think of this system as a "teaser" system for new players to keep them interested and hyped early in the game, but without actually giving them any free stuff (like other servers who give them free levels, or buy-your-own-race, etc...)
Is this possible to program? Thoughts?

[Meltdown]

That means i will only play on saterdays on wcs, why go do all the hard work for ranking up. I have fun on zombie mod for a reason that is because wcs is just not as fun. getting grinded into dust day after day to get to certain rank meh no thanks. also the server is empty around my time is it is even harder to level. I do welcome this idea great way to have fun on wcs and not to have to grind for it.

[CYBER]

That means i will only play on saterdays on wcs, why go do all the hard work for ranking up. I have fun on zombie mod for a reason that is because wcs is just not as fun. getting grinded into dust day after day to get to certain rank meh no thanks. also the server is empty around my time is it is even harder to level. I do welcome this idea great way to have fun on wcs and not to have to grind for it.

Well, I suggested the weekly thing for the hell of it. It could be once a month.

Originally i had the following, which is better tbh, but harder to program:
how about you get 24 hours to play any race you want only on the first day you join ibis wcs. And only the 4 starter races would actually accumulate xp?

Surely you can post a welcome message stating "Welcome to IBIS, this is your lucky day: You have 24h of 100% unlocked content. Enjoy it while it lasts, and work hard to earn them back again!".
We do have the "First day joined" option in wcs stats, why not give a 24 hour from that date only for new comers?

Dont take me wrong, wcs is gr8 as is, no actual need to mess with it, but it might appease the newcomers who join for an hour or 2, get their asses raped, and say "Fuck this server, no free levels" and leave...
Instead they might actually go : "Holy fuck! All races! I wanna try that one! and that one! fuck i only have 24 hours... I better play through them all today"...

This way u get people wanting to play PAST the learning curve in wcs instead of rage quitting.
After 24 hours, people who played the higher races now have that URGE to work even harder to re-achieve that maxxed cap...
It's a thought in progress.

For those of us who lost their races after the big updates, some of us bitched about losing everything, sure. I mean it was a loss of a lot of hardwork invest. But it was quite fun as well to have had a taste for every race one day, and then u start over. But this time, instead of getting a billion questions a day "hey, is vagabond any good? What race should i level first? What skills do i put points in first?" etc... instead now, they can PLAY it maxxed, notice the important traits that make the race strong, and when the 24 is over, they can level and build their race based on their gaming style that they tested with first.... u dig?

[HK5150]

I am just curious how any server administrator would adjust the back-end DB for this. Are we using MySQL? I suppose you could adjust the racefile for a day and redo that once a week but that screams problems with potential data loss/server downtime. And of course it would just be a pain in the arse to go back and hope the player DB doesn't get corrupted. I do think that the concept of advertising War3 is a good one for sure. We can run events w/ special races for the various holidays that have reserved slots in the racefile. That is easy to administrate. We can also run special map rotations designed around important dates to the clan (i.e. XMas, St Pat's, etc.). From my experience the main attention and desire to frag out on War3, as w/ any other server would be community involvment. New content is always appreciated for sure but player's personalities and a good gaming environment will always support a growing community. That's my 2-cents for what it is worth. As always, if you want any of my old racefiles just throw me a pm and I will post them up appropriately. Take care!!!

~HK5150

[maynard]

don't approve. saying "we have a FFA once a week!" isn't going 2 change anything.

new people come and new people go, it's the same as when the server first started... who cares if some noobs come along and finds it 2 hard and leaves. good riddance. Because the fact of the matter is... if you know how 2 aim, you can still easily level the classes without issue... more so cause as you all know, purchasing XP is an available option.

this seems like more work and shit 2 worry about for damn near no reason.

people will ALWAYS bitch... no matter what. We could have the least flawed WCS that has ever existed and people would still find things 2 complain about.

so once again, no. This accomplishes nothing..... the races we have and have released are all part of a grand balancing scheme which is based on team vs team play.

if you want a FFA WCS server... go find one and if people want free levels they can piss off and go find another server also. we have all worked for our levels... new players can as well... as we all have at one point... and in some cases like myself and others... have twice over.

[Erdenay]

As a wcs player (I don't consider myself a veteran even though I'm maxed) I think that this is a bad idea. However, apart from that, I could say that this could work with the right implementation, but Cyber, you have overlooked some important things:

1. How exactly would you advertise and spread this? How would all new people know that it's that time of WCS when they can actually enjoy all the free races?
   
   Possible solution: Have an addition in the name "All Races Available @ Saturdays." However, our server name is already more than long enough and it's unclear how many people would pay attention to that.
2. This would likely to get under more skins than you might think. I can easily imagine quite a few people who would be extremely against this idea.
3. One of the main things (at least for me personally) what kept my playing WCS was the challenge and the want to experience all races and etc. If I'd have had everything given free to me, I may have left after trying it out. The learning curve and the challenge makes it fun for quite a few people and you'd be possibly getting ridding of these.
4. Finally - and most importantly - this wouldn't work as if everyone would be aware that it's Saturday, they'd all would login (lets assume that most people would end up buying reserved slots or admins when playing at that time) and play it (since there's a fair amount of people who still don't have a lot of maxed, a lot of regulars would possibly play at this time to test out every race). Now, if server is full with RS and admins, how exactly these new players would join? Very few would be willing to pay upfront for something they haven't even tried and the server being full would make it all but impossible for any new people to come in and join the server - which I believe was the whole point of this idea.

All in all, this idea does have some promise, but it's a lot of work and the concerns need to be answered before this could be efficient.

[What]

Thats not a good idea. It also would make saturday a shitty day to play since everyone and their brother is gonna be trying to hope on vaga or some other restricted race. The point of the mod is to progress and learn along the way a Free for All solves nothing, and would make people less apt to play during the week if they know on saturday they can just hope on and do what they want. whats the incentive to keep playing and earning levels if they can just walk in and do as they please.

Terrible.

[Wolfenstinger]

I highly disagree with the whole "Give everyone every a total level of 976 for a day each week"

RATHER:

They want to try it out? Go to the WCS Test Server with a friend. You won't be playing for rank or anything, rather you can just goof off there with a max level race and nobody really bother you until you come back to the live server. In the end - the new people can go suck it up and get killed by me playing Vagalion until they figure out how to counter properly.

[CYBER]

Did not think about the test server-.- ... Yeahh nvmd. I was up all night trying to procrastinate my report... Ended up writing THIS piece of shit of a report instead lol... Oh well, it was a random suggestion. Like i said above, i moved my first post to a 'first 24 hours free' instead of every week. But still, i forgot Bout the test server, even if it usually has non-live races, they can test shit there...Heck we should start redirecting newbies over there until theyr get the hang of it, or raped in the face by esp hacking bots (man i hate those fuckers)

Edit; this post was on an iphone. Leave it the fuck alone and all it's typos..

[Erdenay]

Did not think about the test server-.- ... Yeahh nvmd. I was up all night trying to procrastinate my report... Ended up writing THIS piece of shit of a report instead lol... Oh well, it was a random suggestion. Like i said above, i moved my first post to a 'first 24 hours free' instead of every week. But still, i forgot Bout the test server, even if it usually has non-live races, they can test shit there...Heck we should start redirecting newbies over there until theyr get the hang of it, or raped in the face by esp hacking bits (man i hate those fuckers)

The only problem with that is that test server hasn't been up for a while recently...