08-18-2012, 09:59 PM
Welcome to the 2nd edition of Chaotic Chat, a bi-weekly column focused on turning real community questions into real answers. With the debut of Hamburglar's Trivia event (every Wednesday @ 10pm ET) and the massive Streaks/Sprees update, it's a busy month for Chaos, so let's get started:
Question #1 - Why is the safe zone limit for streaks set at 10 minutes, and not longer/shorter? (anonymous)
A. In looking for a word to describe what streaks were supposed to be, 'streak' was chosen based on multiple definitions: Move quickly in a specified direction, MOVE, an unbroken series of events, UNBROKEN, a continuous period of specified success or luck, CONTINUOUS.
When Hallu originally conceived streaks, they were supposed to be a continuous series of kills. At the time, sitting in safe for 15 minutes was longer than Hallu would have liked, but he didn't want to lower safe time, so he left it at 15 minutes before you lost your streak. With the advent of the 45 minute safe time, a streak could be held for far too long without action. In addition, long periods of idle time make it easier to 'game' streaks. This problem of non-continuous play was exacerbated by the ultra-long safe times that we are experimenting with now. The solution was to have the bot kill the streak after a certain amount of time - 5 minutes was first tested, but that seemed a bit too short, so now we have 10 minutes.
Upon entering a safe while streaking, you're bound to notice the new warning about the time, as well as the activation of the 'stoplight' display (a small green icon in the upper right portion of your screen). With about 30 seconds before the time is up, the stoplight turns yellow/orange, and then you lose it. However, you can refresh it by exiting safe before the time is up, but don't cut it too close! The safe detection is not immediate! So just nudge out and into safe every 10 minutes, and you can keep the streak.
Question #2 - Ever notice items from your ship disappearing when you win the flag game? I just lost all 3 of the bricks I had before I jumped back in to green/flag? (Sue E. Side)
A. Not a bug, this is hard wired into the server. Win the flag game == shipreset. In a normal flag game, a shipreset is a disadvantage...not necessarily here. That's why people are re-prized, but the prizing doesn't give bricks.
Question #3 - Whatever happened to Chaos with walled off areas? Depending on number of players? (Gold Teeth)
A. It was an experiment, and here are the results: smaller areas always led to smaller populations. A significant number of players do not like to play in a confined space. So they would just leave; they wouldn't just play in the mosh pit. So that meant that everytime the map shrunk to a new smaller size, the population would shrink even more. The map would be hard pressed to size back up afterwards. And all those usual players that like open maps would stop showing up.
Chaos encompasses many playing styles and goals. Many of those styles don't work well on a small map. Additionally, a large map is newb friendly. Newbs need space to start to figure things out. If they are forced into a heavily populated melee, they die over and over very quickly, and that makes them quit. With a large map, they can fly around the edges and start to figure things out without dying every 20 seconds.
And thatââ¬â¢s a wrap! You can help make this Q&A a regular feature to the forum, so please feel free to message me in-game or drop me a ?message (Plutorus) with your questions/observations.
Thanks for reading!
-Plut
Question #1 - Why is the safe zone limit for streaks set at 10 minutes, and not longer/shorter? (anonymous)
A. In looking for a word to describe what streaks were supposed to be, 'streak' was chosen based on multiple definitions: Move quickly in a specified direction, MOVE, an unbroken series of events, UNBROKEN, a continuous period of specified success or luck, CONTINUOUS.
When Hallu originally conceived streaks, they were supposed to be a continuous series of kills. At the time, sitting in safe for 15 minutes was longer than Hallu would have liked, but he didn't want to lower safe time, so he left it at 15 minutes before you lost your streak. With the advent of the 45 minute safe time, a streak could be held for far too long without action. In addition, long periods of idle time make it easier to 'game' streaks. This problem of non-continuous play was exacerbated by the ultra-long safe times that we are experimenting with now. The solution was to have the bot kill the streak after a certain amount of time - 5 minutes was first tested, but that seemed a bit too short, so now we have 10 minutes.
Upon entering a safe while streaking, you're bound to notice the new warning about the time, as well as the activation of the 'stoplight' display (a small green icon in the upper right portion of your screen). With about 30 seconds before the time is up, the stoplight turns yellow/orange, and then you lose it. However, you can refresh it by exiting safe before the time is up, but don't cut it too close! The safe detection is not immediate! So just nudge out and into safe every 10 minutes, and you can keep the streak.
Question #2 - Ever notice items from your ship disappearing when you win the flag game? I just lost all 3 of the bricks I had before I jumped back in to green/flag? (Sue E. Side)
A. Not a bug, this is hard wired into the server. Win the flag game == shipreset. In a normal flag game, a shipreset is a disadvantage...not necessarily here. That's why people are re-prized, but the prizing doesn't give bricks.
Question #3 - Whatever happened to Chaos with walled off areas? Depending on number of players? (Gold Teeth)
A. It was an experiment, and here are the results: smaller areas always led to smaller populations. A significant number of players do not like to play in a confined space. So they would just leave; they wouldn't just play in the mosh pit. So that meant that everytime the map shrunk to a new smaller size, the population would shrink even more. The map would be hard pressed to size back up afterwards. And all those usual players that like open maps would stop showing up.
Chaos encompasses many playing styles and goals. Many of those styles don't work well on a small map. Additionally, a large map is newb friendly. Newbs need space to start to figure things out. If they are forced into a heavily populated melee, they die over and over very quickly, and that makes them quit. With a large map, they can fly around the edges and start to figure things out without dying every 20 seconds.
And thatââ¬â¢s a wrap! You can help make this Q&A a regular feature to the forum, so please feel free to message me in-game or drop me a ?message (Plutorus) with your questions/observations.
Thanks for reading!
-Plut