hallucination

Revisiting the safe zone time after the 9 hour experiment. Please vote, and state your thoughts below. I've not put in poll choices for "no safe zones" because Chaos has always had safe zones and lame safe zone play (like J12), and that's not going away. Also when safe zone time was 5 minutes, rather than forcing people back on the field to play as those advocating that short a time had hoped, the targets simply went to spec or left, yielding a lower population. So I've not included that choice either because we've tried it and it didn't work well for anyone. --15 mins The Retail Release SVS (RR-SVS) setting. My opinion: Something of a balance between "taking a break" and "still playing the game" in that hunters could wait out the 15 minutes. --45 mins Allows enough time to grab a quick meal. Requested by many people, and when it was put in the feedback was very positive. Did it increase zone population? Not much, but it did not decrease it. --9 hours Requested with the speculation that it would lead to higher btys which would lead to higher population. Extraordinarily high btys can bring people into the zone to hunt, but they can also skew the Ave and Rating competition through a small number of kills; so it's not all positive. Enough time to go to work or sleep and come back. To me, there is little difference between 45 mins and 9 hours in terms of game play. Both are ridiculously long periods of time for a real time game; the action comes to a halt longer than any player is willing to actively wait in either case. Did it increase population? Not significantly. Decrease? No. Feedback has been quite positive, with several people changing their minds over the course of the reset from "don't like" to "like." Downsides of 9 hr safe time (or any long safe time): First, any exploit possible with a 9 hr safe time is also possible with a 45 min one (or 15 mins for that matter), it's just the effort involved in executing it. --Streak exploits. Sit in safe with the streak and wait for the zone to get very quiet, then bring in a friend and kill them over and over with no one else around. This is not new, really, and would be dealt with the same ways that are used to keep the integrity of Streaks and of the Reset Winners competition (disqualification, etc.). --Antiwarp in safe for hours. People speculated at the beginning that this would happen. I thought only occasionally would someone accidentally leave aw on. No one could possibly be a big enough troll to intentionally do this for more than a short period of time (meaning that 3 months from now, no one would be sitting in safe every day to annoy people). Right? Well Mr. Explosion decided to try and be that very troll himself, in order prove that being a troll was possible and would be bad. BAD! Or something. Only a couple of players were upset by his action. The vast majority of people had no problem with him making it clear that he's a troll. There are ways to deal with this (and all trolls), so I don't consider this an issue if we keep long safe times. --Holding the streak. We saw Gadianton hold the streak an entire day sitting in safe. This is the only real downside I see to long safe times -- not so much that the a personal Streak can be held that long (Gad did nothing wrong here), but that it prevents the Streak from being part of the normal, active conversation during play. If someone is sitting in safe, not playing, there are no announcements of who has the Streak, which is a goal for some of the players. The Streak was conceived as a continuous playing effort, during 15 min safe times, so short breaks were possible. There are solutions for this including going to safe for any length of time ending a streak; or a streak ending after sitting in safe for X amt of time. I'm not fond of these solutions. This still needs consideration. As always in Chaos, with the various goals that different players have, there will be a variety of opinions Thoughts? --hallu

Slightly enhanced version of what's in news.txt: --Map with new castle design is in! This castle is more like the original battle drome castle plus it is even better for base fighting play. Thanks to all those that brainstormed ideas, especially wobit, Axe Demento, and Capt. ARGH! Please give feedback here: http://www.subspace....he-hallucitron/ --JACKPOT Reward formula has changed! Previously, every freq member would get the full reward, now it is effectively split between them: rewardPoints * freqsize / numberOfTeamMembers --Master of Chaos was won by Static Burn when, 17 minutes into the final round, he greened shields, and JOCKER charged. Congrats! --Master of Chaos rule change going forward: During the first minute of the final round, all greens will disappear. This keeps the event true to Chaos Dueling which often occurs at the edge of the map, where there are no greens. It will also discourage endless running and greening during the final round. --Tuesday Feb 7th saw the highest Chaos population at any time since early 2009. We hit 39 players, and had >30 playing for about an hour around 10pm ET. Many heavy turrets, hunt freqs, but still no squads swarming/owning specific map areas. In any event -- good stuff! --hallu

As a follow up, this weekend saw the highest Chaos populations for January going several years back -- max of 34 last night w/multiple turrets, hunt freqs etc. Over the weekend, the pop hit the mid 20s a bunch of times (more frequently than usual I think). I speculate that this is partially due to the successful DZ event and the energy it created. --hallu

And let me add this -- even though the population wasn't much different than typical, I think that many of the players were more excited than usual due to having DZ settings and map live again, but also just because of change/something different. I felt like things were a little more lively over the weekend, as has been the case with each of the 'guest appearances' by other SVS settings/map. Good stuff imo. What do you think? --hallu

Since Chaos-Bot had to be down (so dynamic freqsizes, greens, etc weren't goofing up the DZ settings), I don't have the precise population stats I usually have. Plutorus and I were taking notes, and what I saw was a peak of about 26-28 people on Saturday night which was pretty good. Last night (Tuesday) we had 26, which is good for a Tues, so that could be the carryover effect we hope to get from events to regular Chaos play. Overall, I'd say that population was consistently a little higher than average during the time it was in, but that is the expectation when settings are in for a short time and they are old favorite settings -- DZ has certainly been one of the most requested old SVS settings to make an appearance. And true to that, there were a lot of happy vets and a number of names we hadn't seen for a while Historically though, it was close to the average, decent weekend for the zone during the school year (summer is lower population, plus the population fluctuates quite a bit anyway) -- e.g. overall the week of Nov 30th was quite similar with a peak pop of 26. I'm glad people enjoyed it, and that hopefully we'll get more of those less frequent vistors stopping in during regular Chaos play. DZ has always available in ?go dz so anytime people would like, get a dueling thing going there Chaos of course has Speed at any players request 24/7. And Jackpot also runs continuously -- but _not_ with the extremely difficult JP settings (e.g. 0 bty start). We did that a long time ago to try and keep these classic SVS games alive and active in some form. --hallu

+1 --hallu

Yes, possible... however, echoing what Nude said, negative, punitive, special powers just drive the targets from the zone... and the targets end up being a very few number of people, if you know what I mean In an event -- possible. In Chaos, not so hot... I like all these impossible ideas! Except nrg deplete for everyone is possible, but would have to be an event (just not based on a green). Yes... some are in the works (like when someone rabbits)... done. More like this plz. --hallu

Good work guys! I like it when ppl take initiative and make stuff happen! --hallu

Yes, I think this is a good idea My post from the Events Staff forum: Unfortunately, the logistics are a bit complex to implement (code must be migrated from chaos-bot to scores-bot for one thing), but it remains towards the top of my "list" -- things not included in the above list are: --bonuses on/off (including earning of bonuses) --dynamic freqsizes on/off --dynamic greens on/off --dynamic flags on/off --ranks on/off etc. Map changes are more disruptive than settings changes in general (due to the recycle of the zone if nothing else). These types of changes, even when temporary, elicit a wild variety of "opinions" shall we say Events can be a great tool to bring more people into the zone, but it's not a slapdash affair. I'll talk to you in the zone mr silly about that. I've long had an ad in the .staff command: Help Wanted: Graphics Designer, Events Design, Events Hosting, Zone Promotion, Marketing -- all of which go into making great new events that will draw ppl in. It's a great opportunity for creative folk to experiment, and help Chaos and SVS. I put out the call again for applicants to these positions. More ideas/specifics? --hallu

Yes, main zone (announcements like this are always for Chaos -- an event should be labeled as such). Thx for pointing out the inconsistency in the moc settings -- I've changed it to zero delay on alt-tab like Chaos. Almost all settings in MoC arena should match Chaos. Let me think about !king... maybe a reward of some kind for some other achievement. --hallu

Time for a major change of pace with the new year! We're going to have a DZ Weekend in Chaos! Dueling Zone settings -- no reps, 1 mine, etc. etc. Some will rejoice Some will cry Some will kill And many will die Enjoy! --hallu

Anyone interested should also check out previous discussion on green settings and freq sizes and interrelated issues on other threads on the board. E.g. http://www.subspace.co/topic/25734-svs-2003-settings-this-reset-more http://www.subspace.co/topic/25707-svs-settings-thread/ http://www.subspace.co/topic/25703-vie-old-school-weekend/ http://www.subspace.co/topic/25620-the-need-to-change-greening-now-how-to-keep-new-players/ --hallu

I split this off into it's own topic, as it's something quite separate from Calling Out Coords, and has much more merit. I'll add a little more info: 1) People have never been forced off freqs. I considered and rejected it in the first implementation of dynamic freqsizes back in 1999. 2) I've always thought that forcing people off would be incredibly messy (as demonstrated by the scenarios above), and just end up making people mad. I have yet to think of/hear an idea where that wouldn't be the case. In general, people do not like to be forced/selected to do something that is not their own choice. This is a game, and for fun. 3) About current freq size switch points and the relationship with green settings: During SVS weekend last spring, I noticed an increase in teamwork. Freq size was fixed at 6. Of course, the same problems that spurred me to create dynamic freqsizes in the first place were present during low populations (very unequal teams; huge disincentive to start a new freq of others were full). But between larger freqsizes and lower starting bty (30), there was more team play. We'd often see 6v6. (Side note: FYI, overall, population did not go up during SVS weekend -- it was extremely similar to the surrounding weeks(just some diff ppl were there -- it was a nice change of pace)) Teamwork and squad play was a critical part of the glory days of Chaos imo. I've been hoping to reignite more squad v squad play and competition since my return -- foremost with work it took to bring back squad stats -- but we have yet to see any Chaos squad consistently utilize swarming, the most powerful and most challenging way to play, as a strategy to dominate the zone as we constantly saw in the old days. 4v4 was born out of these Chaos zone squad rivalries -- one swarm against another; just move it to a solo arena. Pro players still do swarm in Chaos, and yes, they completely dominate when they do it. I was hoping that league squads would take each other on in Chaos -- but they mostly avoid engaging each other, and go after the weaker fish. People have forgotten these play patterns though, and most current Chaos players have a solo mindset... So, with my persistent hope to respark more squad play (which would lead to recruitment, and bring in new players to the zone), I ran a number of experiments to see if something could be done to encourage more team play. One of the first was to make the minimum freqsize be 3. I also experimented extensively with changing the dynamic green settings, as the low bty start necessitates team greening to a much larger extent. I enhanced the dynamic settings to tweak more variables, and do so at a fine grain of detail. When I tried lowering green settings to force more team greening, there were many, many complaints about too few greens, even though the number of greens available and the starting bty were much less severe than SVS. I am data driven though, and I kept the changes in long enough to see if the contingency would take hold, and people would realize that team play was the way to go, people would start to get more serious about forming squads and working together, and thereby population would increase. Basically, it didn't happen -- population remained flat, but also, I saw none of the precursor steps of increased team play, and squad oriented play and thinking. I slowly increased green settings to what they were previously (still had complaints) and then to even more than before (long story about how I made that possible without breaking several aspects of the game design). The complaints stopped, but more interesting was that population went up somewhat. At the same time, I slightly tweaked the freqsize switch points to try and achieve fewer scenarios where we'd get uneven freqs (like 4v2v2v1v1v1) 4) I have long thought about trying to implement a version where the freqsize does not drop until there are no freqs of the larger size (as Axe mentioned in his first post). This seems fair to me. 5) The upside of a min freqsize of 3 is that people get to choose how they play. Yes, there are the jerks that keep a 3v1, or even worse, keep a 3 pilot freq when no one else is in, ready to drive any single player from the zone if they try to play. Thankfully these are few. With the current setting, 6 ppl can choose to be 1v1v1v1v1v1 or 2v2v2 or 3v3, or 2v2v1v1. That option to choose is kind of nice (people like the freedom to choose), especially if you are trying to help a newb get started here. 6) The option of having #4 above + lower freq sizes (as in prev implementations) could work. I'm not sure that a forced size of 1 is the best thing though. Everyone on a solo freq never feels like Chaos to me -- Chaos is teams, swarms, turrets, _and_ solo pilots. 7) Axe -- why 4 min instead of 3? 4v1 is distinctly worse than 3v1 imo, and we'd see definitely see the jerks pulling that stuff. I do miss big 6+ pilot turrets. Dyn freq sizes do go up to 10, if we get enough people. We have achieved 6 pilot freqs in the last year, but it's been rare. --hallu

This past Master of Chaos saw a high level of teaming. We've seen teaming before a number of times; teaming in which one of the teamers ended up champion, as occurred this time. We've also seen teaming where players colluded for a while to eliminate certain people. In fact, that sort of teaming in response to the targeted player teaming in the previous MoC -- as a sort of revenge. The unwritten laws of chaos playing out as they do on a daily basis. I wanted to start this thread so that people could discuss this issue. Certainly Master of Chaos is not intended to be "shoot the guy closest to me at all times" but it is nominally "intended" to be 1v1v1v1v1v1 etc. just as Chaos is "intended" to be freq v freq v freq v freq (whatever the current freqsize is). However, this IS Chaos, and we see alliances form and dissolve within minutes or seconds. We see hunters team cross-freq often when chasing a high bty, with an unwritten understanding between them. Or not. And revenge may or may not take place for backstabbing while chasing. The scenarios are legion. The huge problem with a teaming rule for Master of Chaos is how can it be an objective rule such that the event host does not have to make tight judgment calls (which _always_ leads to dissatisfaction to some parties)? What could be the wording of such a rule? I solicit suggestions herein. The alternative is to let things take their course as they would in Chaos. Next MoC we may or may not see _more_ teaming. Or concentrated hunting of the teamers from this last MoC. Or some other creative response by the pilots themselves. This has been the way MoC, the longest running event in subspace, has always been run. But I thought I'd give people an explicit opportunity to discuss it. Go. --hallu

Can Sath defend his title? Come on down Sat Sep 3 at 5pm ET! Last month, 34 players competed in Master of Chaos. In round 3, it was down to Sath, KinGNewbiE, Rage, 7th, and Candyman. However, 10 mins went by and no kills which should result in no winner! But in special OT, Rage died to Sath! Sath, the Aug 2011 Master of Chaos! In the future, we will stick with the long standing rule that can very rarely produce no winner for MoC. Thanks to lightbender for adding some extra super-spam to the bot to notify the players of the impending TIE when the situation arises. Good luck and see you there! --hallu

FYI internal server error 500 at noon-ish EDT for me

For the amazingly low cost of just ONE bonus point, you can now purchase: Prox Stealth Cloak Multifire Bouncing (Bullets) and don't forget the FullStatus bonus that gives you a fully outfitted ship (no toys though). Do .help bonus for the details. --hallu

I'm sure everyone here knows Chaos zone, quit trying to steal our ASWZ players! Plus Warzone settings are not ASWZ settings. The whole point is some people still like ASWZ. I ended up playing a bit of Chaos because it was one of the only active zones with settings similar but it still feels wayy different. If ASWZ were a living SVS zone, I'd be trying to route players there for more challenge just as I unabashedly promote League, WZ, PB, HZ and anything else skill based and interesting in the game. I don't believe in the zero-sum model of human existence. More and varied SVS play can bring more players into the game. We need more cross zone promotion, not less. The problem for the entire game now is that geniunely new players have little chance of having any fun due to the skill levels in all zones (yes even in TW they mercilessly pounce on newbies and retain virtually none of them). Chaos will of course feel different from any form of WZ since it's not a single purpose/goal zone and is designed as an intermediate zone (wz being an advanced flavor of the game). The other thing is that people in general are notoriously inaccurate at discriminating actual settings differences -- direct observation says that about 99%+ of the time ppl think there was a change, there was none, and 95%+ of the time they don't notice when there was a change. If any of you have the ASWZ server.cfg file (or a server.set file), I'd like to see them for comparison -- ?msg me in game if you do. Perhaps something could be done about the complete lack of ASWZ thx.

At the last Master of Chaos event, Legacy knocked GRAMPS out of his wheelchair to become the new Master of Chaos! Reminded me of Deathrace 2000... a fine film for the kiddies. This coming Saturday is YOUR chance to knock granny on her...nono you'll have to compete against the toughest pilots in subspace for the honor of being named Master of Chaos not to mention getting your name on the Chaos Map! 5pm ET the first Saturday of every month! Be there if you dare!

New map submissions are welcome. I'd also love to see new maps and settings with an eye toward new events (and settings, etc!). Please don't ask to relocate the hallucitron. Due to the way LVZ works, moving it is a HUGE amt of work for me. I have on my list to look into an undocumented feature (which means it's probably buggy/doesn't really work right) that allows movement of these types of LVZ elements -- not a high priority though. Feel free to move other aspects of the map around. Note that Wob's map had the hallucitron in a floating box (in the exact same place). Use DCME for map editing available on ssgn.net. mgb's server help site has lots of useful info about all the above Server Help --hallu

KriLYu and KinGNewbiE win 2v2 Tournament! Congratulations to our Winners, Krilyu and KingNewbie, who defeated Sath and Divine in the finals of the big 2v2 Tournament! http://forums.ssgn.n...2v2-tournament/ ============================== Saturday June 11th at 5pm ET SVS Chaos/League Zone is holding what is sure to be a barn burner of a tournament!! 2v2 is a classic SVS double dueling format. Please sign up in advance on the Chaos Boards as space will be limited! Sign up and get more info here: http://forums.ssgn.n...2v2-tournament/ or talk to your host, Surrey, in the game. Grab a partner and get your game ON!

Ok, cool. Thanks for looking into it! We'll just work around it then. --hallu

Yes. This is in Chaos Zone. --hallu

Since these tile numbers aren't officially supported, there is the possibility that this is not a DCME problem, but a client and/or server problem. Examining the hex values of the map file at those locations should answer that question (probably -- there is a smaller chance that there is something else wrong with the map file that causes this behavior). --hallu

Subspace.co is far better than obscure acronym ssgn. Zero people will stumble across ssgn without google. With google, no one will google ssgn -- they'll google subspace and/or continuum. Continuum has far more hits out there than Subspace, and since the consensus seemed to be that we call this thing Subspace/Continuum, Subspace is the choice. Goal should be for the google >Subspace Game< the domain come up as the top hit. Wikipedia is ok as the top hit, but we must have that page primarily point to Subspace.co. Someone willing to attempt to edit that page? Right now ssgn comes in below dead site getcontinuum.com Secondary goal should be that when someone starts typing subspace.co in the address bar, the browser suggests this site. --hallu