Number of Team Mines

[Nude For Satan]

As Gad's post is clearly specifically aimed at me, personally, I thought I'd better respond.



1. Yes its a good idea to reduce some of the advantages turrets have now in low pops. Also do same for advantages runners and remote lobbers have, too.



2. No leave safe zones there. Make sure they aren't ridiculously easy to enter, because some folk like to exploit them for hit and run sessions, but don't remove them altogether. Definitely was a good move to reintroduce them.



3. Toys are too easily gained through greens, bonusing etc, agree. Would rather the bonus system be scaled back than removing greens tho. Means there is still some actual legwork involved in gaining the toys. I think you SHOULD have to work at greening. Hence scale back bonuses and let people green their toys more than gaining them through automatic means.

*actually good point inside the sarcasm here from Gad* - how about, when !fullship becomes available, its time to make !sc tougher. !sc only from safe, too?



4. Sorry I don't follow this one.



5. Who got rid of !revenge? Whoever it was, GOOD IDEA!



6. Agree except for the bit about the puppy ship, if a 50bty bot appeared I'd never get to it in time before you found it. Mind you, you'd have to check quickly to make sure it wasn't another instance of you <img src='http://www.subspace.co/public/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/wink.png' class='bbc_emoticon' alt='' />



7. Don't follow this one either. People who don't talk to me are ultra-cool like Skiz.



8. Yes waiting sucks, I never wait. I hop in as soon as I can. Then, if a turret slot opens up, I'll jump on it. The only player I've ever seen actively waiting to hunt is sue e side. He asks for people to bonus rabbit hehe. I don't have that patience.



9. Turrets should be subject to mine rules like every other frequency. No special consideration!



10. Should be able to have as many gunners as the frequency settings allow at the time.



11. Or even if they gunned on a turret that stayed in play!



12. Nah don't ban him unless he does anything illegal. Probably need to scale back the advantages turrets have in these times' lower populations, though.











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Here's my take on the never-ending argument. Remember I'm not a long-time Chaos player and don't really know how it all was back in the day etc etc.



Essentially Chaos has seemed to me to be intended to cater for many and varied playing styles. Turretting, hunting, J12 melee agents, bounty- and/or stat-whores. Lamers, surly vets, gangly newbs. There's kind of something for everyone. These days there's flag games etc to cater for even more conceivable goals.



Overall, each of the approaches to play should have pros and cons, and not be either impossible to succeed at, nor impossible to defeat. In a perfect world each should have a similar level of difficulty, weighted against the strength of the goal.



With turrets, the trade-off for a super-powerful multi-firing, multi-special, robust megaship, is that, as you start to assert authority using these advantages, everybody else starts to take notice, and you find yourself under siege.



That is right, isn't it? Turrets are way more powerful BUT they suffer wave after wave of assailants paying a LOT of attention to them! THAT'S why its not a total mismatch.



( General view only, ignoring that me driving a turret with Blackers and Great Jedi gunning, facing say, Snafu, or Surrey in a straight-out duel, might not fit the above assumption of power balance! <img src='http://www.subspace.co/public/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/biggrin.png' class='bbc_emoticon' alt='B)' /> Actually me driving with a turret with Blackers gunning is enough to kill us in an otherwise empty arena!)



So, this is representative of a basic concept, which is indeed a basic concept of gaming. As you proceed, survive, win, excel, etc, you "level up", and face more difficult "levels". In the case of Subspace, "levelling up" is really just entering a new level of "noticeability":

Quote:When you first arrive, on 50 bty, you have people to avoid, fend off, and kill, yeah, sure. But the majority leave you alone. You die, respawn, you die, respawn. Then you win.



LEVEL UP! The increased difficulty is, the guy who you killed, just said "wtf?", respawned, and is now looking for you. You're not dealing with what you run into anymore, you've got someone out there for whom your ship name makes him go "grrrr!".



You kill him again. Then you kill someone else. Then you die. Then you kill three guys, then a fourth.



Then a fifth. LEVEL UP. Your bounty is 200. Some bastard arena spam just told everyone you have a 3-strong streak. Your ship just went bright blue on everybody else's radar. Now, as you pass by other ships, they all turn your direction.



You kill them too. Then you kill some more. Your bounty is now 450. That mongrel bot just told everyone you have six straight decent-bounty kills. On different occasions various players have said "u so dead". Some have added umlauts.



Then you kill another ship. It was also 450 bounty. The bot screams to everyone, basically "somebody kill this &*&%^^&er!!!". LEVEL UP. The first sign of the new level is a single chat sentence by another ship : "where's [your ship name]".



More killing, more surviving, you are on 700 bty and the bot is frothing at the mouth. "He's great He's fab! He MUST be killed!" Then four hunters converge in javs. The put you on the wall with repping tape. You burst. Port. They die. Bot rages : "MEGAEXPOSED TO THE ENTIRE CHAT-READING AUDIENCE"



LEVEL UP! Suddenly, extra weasels start peeling off the mothership (the mothership known as the "USS Spec"). There are as many ships hitting you now as there are bullets, and the ships are actually hitting you faster than the bullets are! Rabies is rife arenawide. "You run!" "You lame!" "Backarrow more!" "Forwardarrow more!" "Sidearrow more!" "Use-combo-of-various-arrows more!" "Haha you repped so I won even though you're 10:0 on me."



Then you die. You were apparently very easy, too. You think, well, that was fun, if intense. Could do with a smoke (or a soda for the kids) now. "A-ha and straight to spec!"

So you're back to Level .... 2. People are going to notice you right from the start now. But they aren't going to batter you to pieces until you get a bit of bounty again ... or if they feel you really, really, did all that very lamely.



Now, this is the concept of how the game is supposed to become more difficult as you become better. Its our version of levelling. So long as the environment supports this, it really can work quite perfectly.



With Turrets, and also with Runners, and Remote Lobbers, part of the environments that keeps the balance, is population. All three need to rely upon not spending too much time constricted to melee-work. On the fringes, or anywhere out of the centre, there's more flee-space.



Nowadays, population is considerably down. Why this is, and what we can do about it, is for another thread. Fact is, it is.



What this has done, is it has altered the balance. The remote areas of the map used to be comparatively safer than the middle. There was less action out there, and, more importantly, it was action that hadn't seen what had just been happening in the middle. Now its basically empty, and almost entirely safe. The only action is the action that chased the turret/runner FROM the centre. The fringes are a haven now, with probably only about 20% the dangers that such areas used to pose. No-one's going to be hanging around safe, sitting in a sole gap to another sector, or spraying bullets all over the place in some outlying duel.



There are other elements too, a random warp is a LOT safer now. The ability to get into a safe zone is easier, due to there being less enemies hanging around there at the time you arrive.



So, overall, the balance of power has been skewed by population change.



Now I'm no hunter. I've had a fun discussion with Gad about how proud I was when I killed him once, yes ... ONLY ONCE , in the 9 or so months I've been back in Subspace and playing Chaos. (Actually its twice, now, and I only added this sentence so I could brag about it) But I LOVE to chase a big bty or a turret. Why? CHALLENGE! I can hardly beat a first-time newb, but if a turret flits by, I'm off after it. Its FUN! Sometimes I'll try to be self-preservative in the act, sometimes I'll throw caution to the wind. Who friggin' cares. I guess if I was any good, it might matter a bit more that I'm fairly suicidal.



Hence I think that some things DO need to be adjusted to bring the balance of power back to a more even level. Exactly what? Well, we've seen some slight tweaks and its generated a lot of discussion and anger. Larger tweaks are billed for upcoming resets and these are going to be supported by some and decried by others.



I can SEE why a hunter feels that its lame for Gad to run round the map like he's in a centrifuge, or head for safe whenever he loses a gunner, to allow a secure reattachment rather than attempt to do so out in the open arena. When I'm on a turret, the driver has always attempted to enable my attachment from within play, rather than within safe. EG fongz, umm that other player, can't remember name, a word like dix but not dix, probably another 3-letter name, can't remember, loves lancs. They don't last as long as a Gad turret, but then again, they don't spend much time in safe, or rocketting along the boundary of the map, either. They tend to stay in play much more often. Caveat: not ALWAYS, as EVERY turret, like EVERY player, is plain stupid to not duck away from the action when they cop some hits and have low energy, or run out of reps. I'm an exception. Or stupid. Probably the latter.



I can ALSO see why Gad and those who ride him feel as though the changes are some sort of personal attack on them. They are trying to use one of the various playing styles in Chaos. Their ships are more powerful, they have more focus on them, its supposed to even out. Why change anything else? Why the hate? Is he being punished for being good?



To an extent, such tweaks ARE based on reducing the advantage turrets (also runners and lobbers) have these days - due to the lower population. Because there are less players around, more safe open spaces, fringes, unmarked safeties, unguarded slip-points, the "levelling up" simply doesn't result in a higher level of difficulty, or not enough so. The balance has become skewed. A turret should have to run a gauntlet of one strength or another almost everywhere they are in the arena, perhaps a little less so in the remote areas. Now there is just no gauntlet at all out wide, not near the safes, either. That just makes the situation a bit of a joke.



Also, exploits of the game through simply, realising "hey if I do this, then ..." are always going to be discovered. They also must always be taken into account by staff, does this new concept ruin things, skew balance? If so, do we a) outlaw it, or b ) adjust other things, to bring it back to a balance. In my opinion rules/settings should ALWAYS be examined for the need to change. When the environment itself changes, ie population and its ramifications, then this is just all the more imperative.



So I support tweaks to bring back some balance. I dunno if I agree with everything suggested. We suggested changes to the bonus system and the overwhelming response was to get rid of the bonuses altogether! Wasn't expecting THAT! So there is going to be a reset with no Bonus use at all ... a combination of a) a fun change and b ) seeing what feedback such a scenario gets. After that, new bonus settings are set to be introduced. Again, the reception this receives is all important.



I don't care that Gad (and Gad-turret) mine-reps. I don't really care that he runs when under attack. I enjoy chasing a Gad turret regardless of my chances. What I don't like is that the arena is arranged, settings-wise, such that a Gad-turret can exploit safety zones for regular get-out-of-jail-free. What I don't like is that he wrongly (edited from falsely, I don't think it's "falsely") claims that Chaos keeps changing to accommodate hunters, when in reality NATURAL change (population attrition) has caused Chaos to change to accommodate runners, and staff are merely working out ways to restore some balance. Clearly, if Gad's playing style was so impossible to utilise in Chaos, he wouldn't be the current record-holder for longest ever streak.



Finally, I don't like that Gad has publicly expressed that he hates the (or some selected) staff of Chaos enough that he was encouraged to try to kill the zone. I don't believe he is trying to kill the zone, though he may feel somewhat that way, on and off. Regardless, that's a pretty pisspoor thing to say, and doesn't endear him to the rest of the population too much. I don't mind Gad, but I'm not gonna say I liked seeing him say that.