Is community growing or not?

[Duckwarrior]

QUOTE (SpaceJunk @ Sep 29 2009, 02:05 PM) Maybe it's about time some of the new content goes vanilla. I.e. the default circle crosshair is very annoying and it probably doesn't help new players.

Also, a lot of hi-res graphics would still look better downsized than the original ones.

I think that you have posted this reply in the wrong thread?

[takingarms1]

QUOTE (Broodwich @ Sep 29 2009, 05:42 AM) people have been saying we have been losing people and shrinking since ive joined. when i joined there were something liek 450 actives iirc

It's definitely been up and down since I've been here. Also typically we get some shrinkage when school starts IIRC.

[Makida]

I think SpaceJunk means doing that might help retain more players.

I think this game should be advertised more. ^_^

Other than that, I agree with Ducky, esp. that there should really be more room for non-squad-level play, and there shouldn't be as much pressure to rush players ahead and get everyone playing the same way and on the same level. Frankly, lately I've been finding side games more fun than main games... Yes, side games aren't as intense, or as demanding, etc., and sometimes that does make them more boring. But a lot of the time, I'm not playing Allegiance to have an intense and demanding experience, dammit, I'm playing to have fun. Sure, it's nice to be in a real big, intense game once in a while, but frankly it's not always the most enjoyable thing to do, and this community holds that sort of game up as the highest goal that every player should not only be pursuing, but should be pushed and rushed towards as soon as possible.

I think one thing that should definitely change quickly is the newbie servers. I've said this before, and I'll say it again: Newbie servers should not just be places for new players to try out controls and the like before immediately jumping into the big games. They should be places where new pilots can hang out for a considerable time, and play their stupid cap-ship war games with a reasonable number of other new players, without touching the big games with a ten-foot pole until they themselves get bored of the stupid, un-coordinated games, and decide to join big games at their own pace. The way it's set up now betrays an entire attitude that this game isn't about, say, fun; it's about preventing veteran players from being, god forbid, possibly annoyed by having to play with less-than-expert noobs. So, for example, for a noob who's never played before, a cap ship game is fun. But that doesn't matter, because that doesn't teach them what they need to know.

It shouldn't bloodeh matter if they pick up bad habits, what matters is that they have fun, and therefore will want to stick around.

I think there were between 800 and 700 active players when I joined, but I definitely remember that there was pretty much *always* a newbie server game on, and with a fair number of players, and the fact that I got to spend a considerable amount of time on that server helped me like this game in the first place.

[One-Man-Bucket]

My one point plan to fix allegiance:
* accept noobs right away and with no whining about stack

Refined plan:
* auto accept is always on

[takingarms1]

I love the Duck as much as any heterosexual male but I must demur... one of the compelling aspects of the game is the challenge and having difficult people cracking the whip is part of that. And a little drama can be fun. Those who are easily offended and leave tend to be prissy annoying types anyway.

That being said, I despise the elitism disease as much as any community carebear. It would be good to have multiple games going as well. Without even considering skill level, that would allow people to leave one game if they are being abused and go to another. The only practical way to have this happen however is to set a player-number limit on the game. Most people don't seem to want this, unfortunately, but is it possible the next time a side game starts to name it "small game" and set a 20 player limit on it?

[Duckwarrior]

It would be voluntary. Newbs, Inters and Vets would all still be mingling on open servers.

There would still be a hierarchy on the rank restricted servers, there would still be more and less experienced players, and a learning experience taking place. The learning wouldn't go from Newbie to @CDT to being expected to know everything in large, jerky steps though. Eventually AS will keep ranking these guys up to a point where they have to play on Vet or open servers.

People would also be forced to command, and would probably feel more comfortable commanding players who are broadly speaking of similar experience to themselves.

[Jimen]

Dividing games by skill level is virtually impossible, simply because it's virtually impossible to have a working system to measure skill. AllegSkill is nice but no one pretends it's much more than a stopgap solution to an unsolvable problem. Considering the game's most obvious features (the heavy focus on teamplay and the difficult learning curve), I've got two suggestions. First, expand teamwork stuff. More squads or squad-like entities, which are easy to get into, and have a lot of events. There's no problem with the current squad system, nor with the relative closed-ness of squads, but right now it's a choice between pickup games or squad games, and newer players certainly aren't going to be playing squad games. The other is to improve documentation. Sure, the wiki's great...as long as you're looking for raw ship/weapon/station stats, community info, or all the info you could ever, EVER want about how to fly a scout. Ever tried to find detailed info on straight-up ripcording there? There isn't any, so a newb won't even know something basic like "how do I control where I ripcord to" without asking someone or figuring it out over a week or two of play. Want to learn the techtree to improve your grasp of tech in general? If it's on the wiki, I haven't seen it yet; the closest thing is the articles on the techbases themselves, and they won't tell you something like what you need to research to get tp2.

Honestly, the other thing I think would be breaking the tendency of comms to flip out over the slightest disobedience, but that's a lot harder than either of the above. I've seen way too many commanders flip out when something goes wrong (regardless of whose fault it was, even if it was their own fault) and do things like start constantly insulting their team until they get mutinied, or leaving without warning and dropping command on a hapless newb who doesn't even know how to pass command off to someone else. Never gotten booted, probably due to my low rank, but plenty of other people complain about boot-happy comms as well. Unless someone's being actively and intentionally counterproductive, or just plain ignoring the chat, there's no reason to hair-trigger boot people.

[Icky]

Allegskill is as good as it will get, besides having a panel of judges rating every player. Allegskill is a very very very good and accurate measure of how well a player picks and joins the team that is going to win.

We almost need to combine this with the contributions thread, since they are heading the same direction.

[RHINO_Mk_II]

QUOTE (Icky @ Sep 29 2009, 12:58 PM) Allegskill is a very very very good and accurate measure of how well a player picks and joins the team that is going to win.

I've been losing rank steadily ever since I tried to join the team I thought would win. I must be a horrible picker.

[MrChaos]

Allegskill has it's limits. As Icky said above it does a good job of performing it's intended function. It is head and shoulders better then anything we've had previous to it. What it is not is a panachea to solve all problems and issues in the game. There are also some areas it can be approved on tbs. The fact the data base we draw off of has some dreck in it is one spot imho. The decisions in implementation effect things too. Purposely choosing to take every game from the beginning of the data files that counted are good examples. The inflated rookies item. Having to reduce the ranks from 0-50 from the 0-30. Hell even the choice of Confidence Intervals effect things. Some are minor, some are major, some are the best option, some are unavoidable given it's part of the details and some are my opinion leaking into things.

Remember the system does not see you as a rank but rather how you fit in with relationship to the rest of the community. It's 95% confident in it's conclusions and as a result your place in the community is across a range of values. Ranks are just a single number for the comms and players to use in game. The actual system for autobalance, which is not yet in place using AS, would not use ranks but rather Mu and Sigma in an intelligent fashion.

Anyone who comes in with some asinine half baked stupidity with the ranking horse @#(! is going to get me all over them. Your opinions are not mine to bash you about for but rather I'm directly addressing all the old strawman arguments and cast of usual suspects. Not because I'm defending the system in place but I'm sick to death of those who have zero actual clue passing judgment on a statistical system based on their feelings, and "knowing" it doesn't work. Go soak your heads. So please for the love of getting my CareBear fur covered in your blood just accept this is the ranking system you have to work with and the information above in this discussion.

There has been some talk amongst the server providers about doing exactly that and SURPRISE my intention was to do something like what Duckie described initially with Solap. Given the router issues and ensuing silliness I'm less inclined to do it after all I don't want to be told twice in the same week I'm personally responsible for killing Allegiance for my epeen.

So what Duckie said, even with his opinion noted, but at the end of the day we need to accept these are the tools in the toolbox and maybe we can get this implemented to some degree.