Unix

Basic game mechanics are easily learned and picked up intuitively, most players shouldnt even need someone to point it out, they're basic game play mechanics. Like protecting your anchor from dying / danger and prioritize that over your own life. This one mechanic isnt unique to Hyperspace, it's in other zones and probably other games. The key is getting them to want to learn and improve instead of just depending on others who are better and more competent to do everything for them.

Time and time again settings and the zone have been altered to help make the zone newb friendlier. Sometimes they make sense, sometimes they just werent needed. If you compare the zone from four years ago to now, the zone is insanely easier to comprehend and start making money. In fact getting money (when zone was populated) was insanely easy to do. This was a mix of both balling being extremely lucrative and jackpot rewards growing at insane amounts. Think about it this way. When this current Arnk item set was introduced, Alien Tech items were (iirc) 1M or 2M and to go along with that, just getting ONE Alien Tech item would at times take near an entire reset and winning consistently, and there were only two users who were able to buy it before a reset occurred, myself and f3ar-evil, with f3ear-evil getting its AT by having Timestrain combine their cash, and at the time they had somewhere around 15 or so active members. Now, we've had one user who by them self was able to purchase... Extra Signature (15m) and several AT (5m). ------------------------------------------------------------------- Now then, the reason why I'm focusing on this issue about money is that this has caused the zone's players motivation to improve their ability go down the drain. Time and time again we see players more interested in getting fast and easy money instead of playing for the fun and trying to improve your ability because of competition and trying to win. Players are becoming lazy. Wanting to simply sit back and hold down their spammable op base guns (such as Trap Laser with some modifications) and depend on the more competent and skilled players to do the work in terms of advancing the team forward into the base. A large reason to why players are becoming more and more like this is because there's no motivation to improve. Before, when privs were active and able to participate in flag games, more often than not, the only way to be invited to a priv, and have a higher chance to win would be to get better and then recognized enough to either form your own team or be invited to a priv. So in the end, it's not the settings that's the issue, the players' mentality are the issue. There are plenty of players who have been playing long enough who dont improve at all and dont understand basic game mechanics. Of course I dont expect newer players to understand basics, but if you've played multiple resets I would hope by then you would. Nor do I expect everyone to understand advanced mechanics, that is where the difference in players' ability come into play. It's not about making the game easier, if anything it might be about making the game reasonably harder. The zone has tried to dumb down playing more and more, make things easier, make getting item easier, and all we've seen is a decrease in game play. Shields have potential, but were implemented horribly. Depending on how you execute it, it could work the way you're suggesting, but that would take quite a large amount of balancing and time involvement since you would need to balance both armors and shields while making sure you could not pair up certain armors, we wouldnt want radiating coils and the burst protection shield combined. The times that shields were used in Hyperspace, it fell flat on its face, because the developer didnt know how to balance. Player behavior is influenced by the settings. You can use the map, the settings, the items etc etc to influence player behavior, and you need to consider player behavior when developing. You should develop based on competent players, not newbs nor skilled vets. Basic game mechanics that players should comprehend. Again the point isnt to dumb down the zone, its to try and have players learn and improve, and we need development to foster that. Making the zone easier isnt the key, it's making them have a challenge and encouraging them to want to improve to advance further.

We've seen what a "small" buff in repel radius can do to HS. Ceiu has tested it and without a doubt it was bad for game play and the zone. Having bomblines be beatable for newer players isnt about reps or whatever, it's simply competency on their part. How many times has it happened where a vet will take charge, lay a perfect brick, but no one moves up to take advantage of it? How many times has it happened where a newb will repel a bomb into a nearby wall and still receive the damage? etc. etc. etc. It's more along the lines of needing a decent base/map where the bomblines itself isnt op and if it is, the rest of the base isnt too easily defended. The reason why privs are able to overcome bomblines more consistently is largely in part due to their competency in game mechanics. Bursts need to be powerful. It's not about the lanc getting killed then rqing, it's more often than not the lanc getting killed and then rqing because of a bad team. As a rusher, you try to conserve your energy and specials to use for the lanc (usually). If you're somehow even able to get to the lanc (assuming a decent team), how often does it happen where you can do enough damage to the lanc simply with guns and without bursts? Even if you do have bursts to use, there's no guarantee that you can use them against the lanc. Another key part is that a condition to use the burst it needs to touch a wall first before it becomes dangerous to the enemy. This is where a smart lanc with good positioning can overcome strong bursts, even if the lanc isnt using Radiating Coils. I've used multiple sigs on lancs through the resets, a large component is making sure that you dont stay in a corner, a spot that can be coffined easily/well and keeping your energy relatively high. Guns are fine as is, if anything they're too powerful in base as it is, especially the larger the game gets. In a smaller game they're relatively balanced, but after certain point, gun lines are insanely powerful. The Thorstorm item has had several iterations, either way there are easy ways to balance it instead of raising repel radius. The point isnt that you repel all seven thors, the point is that you repel the concentrated thors. One thor, you let hit you or have someone shield you against the heavier damage, but when 2+ come bunched up together causing the instantaneous damage, that's when you need to rep. There are two parts for thorring, one is keeping the pressure and making it so 1) enemy cannot recharge and makes it easier for gunners/bombers/rushers to attack them and they're forced to move back and 2) causing a large amount of instant damage so even if they do have a large pool of energy they're dead or near dead. As a rusher, a stronger defense like shield is superior to armor. You dont need a constant small to medium level of protection when it's the short period of heavy protection that you need to protect against the enemy weapons while going right into them. After that, who cares? If you leak, you're running away from the danger and I would hope you're recharging enough while running away. Shields overall were bad for the zone, especially in center. As many are aware, there's a rather constant issue of players running in center, when shields were available, players would constantly run away when their shields were depleted and come back after their shields were back. Not sure about you, but I dont want more running in center.

Bullet live time would be ok to increase, no serious drawbacks or imbalance, depending on how much it were to be increased. Repel radius being buffed, we've seen this, and it's an utterly horrible idea. This is one of the things that really hurt the zone and even now it hasnt recovered. If anything the repel radius should be decreased. Both bursts and thors are fine as is, if anything bomb settings themselves need to be touched, which in turn would alter thors. Someone lowered burst damage, which was a horrible move, yet again. The live time should be similar to bullets. Supplements should be merged back with addons, a really bad move done by spidernl to separate them. The intention and purpose was good of why they separated, but it did the exact opposite and made the problem worse that he was trying to solve. Emitters are already a weak category as it is, you'd have even less reason to choose emitters and just go with 3 other addons, such as Power Strip, cloak and hull polarizer, then one more addon with extra addon like solar array or system optimizer. Shields / Armor together would need a serious nerf to even be considered. Shields overall dont work in HS though. Relics are along the lines of one time use, such as cobalt. Doesnt make sense to merge them with Alien Techs where they last and stay with the ship permanently until you sell. Prototypes were meant to be a separate category and work well as is. The point is to have items that are game changers at a higher level, but not equivalent to sigs. Such as Reaper having a maxmines of +1. These items are a little more peculiar and have more unique item properties.

Ceiu borked it

When it comes to lag, a player with spikes every so often who lags out is far more disruptive than a player who is lagging nonstop, but just under the limits.

I put in 5 - Someone did bad edit job

Need to hire a better re-re-retiler. Edit: Wow, this guy. unix.lvl

Sectors 3 and 5. Retiling done by monkey. Edit: Re-retiling done by monkey. Re-edit: Re-re-retiling done by monkey. (This guy) unix.lvl

RIP Hyperspace

SSCE seems to be down

scrambled

Only time bricks have ever been a serious issue is when a player is using them to stall for time while the're defending team. Bricks have already been nerfed a bit earlier by Corey when he had access, he lowered the live time of the bricks by 2 secs, give or take. Lots of ways to balance it if it were an issue still. Maybe even lower it some more, since it's still possible to brick, tw, brick constantly.

Bare minimum, need to have a developer before an actual reset.

The development and balancing needs to happen before the actual reset otherwise the problems will just come back and you'd either have to re-balance then since you'd probably need to test a bit. Re-balancing now will guarantee that when we get to that point there will be fewer to no problems. Main problems to fix.... Sharks, shields, radiating, turrets, speed and cloak/xradar disparity, stealth and their actual costs for the items that use stealth and balling.