Fortress changes: more noob-friendly

[Z-Man]

I was afraid of that: The <failed vote gets submitter kicked> didn't work out that well, if a semi-well known player issued a poll against a new player, it always got accepted. So that has been reverted.

I did two changes that give new players less opportunity to mess up the team's game. The hope is that the experienced players less angry at them and be just a little bit friendlier.

The spawnpoints are moved to the front of the zone, so a goalie does not have to navigate around non-grinding and/or dead players' walls. The side effect is that there is less time to grind and accelerate until the teams meet in the middle.

Team sorting is now more or less predictable. New players are added to the outside where they have time to observe what the others are doing and what they should be doing. When players leave, the other players move in to fill the gap, keeping their relative positions. And switching the side they're on. It would be possible to make at most the outmost player switch sides, but the code would be a bit hackish, so I'm leaving it as it is now for a while and see how it works out.
Side effect: you can get yourself re-shuffled to the outside by entering spectator mode for some seconds at the end of a round. You don't even have to miss a round if you do it right.

Third change: Vote bias will be three. I'm going to keep increasing it until the number of unjustified successful kick votes is down to a bearable level.

The code changes, if they turn out to work, will get into 0.2.8.1.

[wrtlprnft]

The new players starting on the outside was something I wanted for a long time
Not excactly sure about the new team stating position, I'll have to play a few rounds to see how that works out.

I'm going to make a patch that sets the spam leven of a vote by the ratio of players that voted for it and the number that voted against it. So if your poll gets accepted 9:1 you get almost no spam, if it gets accepted 5:4 you get a bit (2 votes of that kind get you kicked) and if it gets rejected 1:9 you're out immediately

[meriton]

I like the new settings

[2020]

may i ask why you set up the starting launch to be inside the zone in the first place?

i suspect the reasoning was good
and i don't think changing it to accomodate for noobs is good design:
the problems caused by having deadman trails
and tunnels for enemies to follow to the heard of your zone
were interesting problems to solve
and IMHO the game may have lost a little edge because of that

may i repeat:
i think the settings for your fortress were excellent
and allowed for a huge amount of skill
and the development of interesting team strategy
of which we are only starting to see the evolution

please do not compromise because of noobs

all that is required to change
is the team-formation algorithm
team choices
etc
in order to further improve the rate of evolution of strategy and teamplay

[Lucifer]

Yeah, you know, it seemed like having the spawn point in the middle of the zone was more interesting.

I'd be interested in seeing what it looks like if you stretch the grid a bit, so the spawn points are still the same distance from each other as before, but stretching the grid so there's room to move the fortresses back.

[wrtlprnft]

I think older clients can't cope with rectangular maps, so you'd end up increasing the distance between the point where the teams hit each other and the right/left rim wall... That means you'd have trouble keeping the enemies in their half, so they would hit the zone too early to allow a reasonable defense.

[Z-Man]

Wrtl is right, the only possibility to make the spawn points be further apart without sacrificing compatibility would be to scale the map up one notch, and that would also make covering the flanks more difficult. Of course, a setup with a huge arena where the action happens only in the middle and the rim is marginalized could be interesting as well.

Yes, interesting challenges are lost with the new spawnpoint positions and I was aware of that when I made the change. But consider that new players now spawn on the outside; a first time visitor will then usually go straight and not grind. Back when he'd spawn close to the center, the outsiders would join and usually still manage to leave the zone packed relatively close together, and the defender could go around the back ends without leaving a too big crevice for the enemies to occupy. Now, the inexperienced player going straight will leave the defender with two choices: leave two small crevices by going around the noobs back trail and the bulk separately, possibly leaving a hole because his trail is not long enough, or go around all back trails and leave a huge crevice. Result: Anger at the noob, cussing, and kick votes. The goal of the change was to avoid that.

Now, the complication is this:
1. For some reason, the server is popular in spite of plenty of other Fortress servers.
2. Because of 1., Many people play there often.
3. Noobs are attracted to crowded servers.
4. Because of 3. and 2., the server needs to be noob-friendly, or else we'll just lose fresh player supply.

The dilemma: if the changes because of 4. manage to eliminate 1., nothing is gained I'll revert to the old spawnpoint locations and see what happens.

But also keep in mind that this is primarily a test server and that sometimes, silly changes will be made. Hmm, how about stretching the start formation over the whole arena baseline?

[belenus]

Hey,

taking your idea with the moved spawn points I did something of a middle approach, just put the spawn points in the middle between new CVS and old CVS settings... thats what I did at FE server and it helps the defender a LITTLE but also doesn't take away too much of the grind speed.

I even experimented with some alternative spawn points, but nothing was really good.

[2020]

1. For some reason, the server is popular in spite of plenty of other Fortress servers.

the game design is excellent:
it provides a huge strategic potential
which makes the game so bloody addictive

2. Because of 1., Many people play there often.

what did i say about addiction...

3. Noobs are attracted to crowded servers.

where the action is

4. Because of 3. and 2., the server needs to be noob-friendly, or else we'll just lose fresh player supply.

this is not a problem with the game design
it is a problem with team formation and team support!

please do not try to program this out of the game!
the very anger and cussing that is excited in players
is the same energy that makes the game so exciting

it is the classic error of game designers:
it's like you are designing football
and it seems to work
and then you think
maybe it is too hard for new players
let's make the goal posts wider
and the pitch smaller so they don't have to run as much etc etc
all this does is reduce the skill required
both individually
and more importantly
team-wise

i can not emphasise enough the brilliance of fortress as it stood

ok
so if it is not a problem to be sorted out in terms of settings
how then can noobs be catered for?
so that new players remain....?
to that end
please visit the wiki:
http://wiki.armagetronad.net/index.php/Tronic

i believe the problem is socially-based
and once there are enough players who are wanting to play in teams
then perhaps we as players can ask the developers to change the code
so that teams can enter the fortress as a unit
and play against one another

once players get the power to choose teammates
the whole notion of team-support will be strengthened
and then noobs shall gang together as noobs
or they shall be carefully invited into an existing team

sorry for going on about it...

[Lucifer]

Actually I think setting up as goalie is a bit harder. On the one hand, it's easier to get the initial box. On the other hand, it's harder because the initial box leaves some little bit of the zone hanging out and you have to reclaim it--can't do that with the bad guys in it.

Also, the speed difference seems to vary more dramatically when the two teams crash into each other. Overall speeds are lower, but the difference is all in the grinding. Seems like the pressure on new players to grind isn't likely to change, or it will only drop a little. Not sure, I saw people getting kicked, but couldn't gauge if it was less often than before.

With the speed difference varying so much, it's no longer feasible to break early and go defensive. It's easier to play an offensive game now than it used to be, harder to play a defensive game. Overall, I mean.

We had some really good matches last night, so I'm not sure if it's better or worse, or still equivalent but different.

[gnorty]

Side effect: you can get yourself re-shuffled to the outside by entering spectator mode for some seconds at the end of a round. You don't even have to miss a round if you do it right.

any chance of this being a menu option or even a console command? playing_time 0 or some such? I guess not now I trhink, or else playing_time 100000000 might me abused somewhat!


lucifer:

With the speed difference varying so much, it's no longer feasible to break early and go defensive. It's easier to play an offensive game now than it used to be, harder to play a defensive game. Overall, I mean.

Dont you mean "the old defence strategies dont work so well, and new ones will be needed? I wont get a chance to play until early next week, so am offering pure speculation, but I am thinking along the lines of break right immediately, go 'x' distance past the zone, turn right again to the rear wall, then right-right-right-left to leave you zipping back into the center at high speed.[/quote]

[Lucifer]

What I found works is the old 3-man grind. You grind a ways, then double-back towards the zone, turn before you reach it, and you've setup a good wing defense.