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New apporaches to the 22 player expirement expirement?

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After around almost a month and a half of the experiment, id say its not working as well as intended anymore. The first few days did give great results but now today it feels mostly the same pre-lobby size reduction with 1 taw room dominating the game with the occasional small second taw during some peak hours. it also kinda damaged the playerbase as a decent chunk of zk either refuses to play in protest or outright left. Overall despite me perfecting smaller lobbies i think the 22 player experiment overall did more bad than game and instead I think we should take some lighter ideas that wont damage the playerbase while also help decentralize the 1 lobby monopoly without angering a good chunk of the player base.

1. "Lobby roles"
Allows player to apply to a pinged role similar to a discord ping in game for certain lobby sizes, so if somebody wants to start another lobby they could do a ping to that role to players that applied for something like a "2v2-4v4" role and so on. Can also go the other way as well. Would only affect people currently playing in game.


2. Different/New/Reworked lobby split was already probably suggested but bringing it back up
Make a command that can start a poll only people on wait list can vote on to make all players on the wait list start another lobby during a long lobpot game. Could also do the same command for spectators as well with a special condition of even it failing people who voted yes would be put into the new lobby!


3. Bringing Fight Club back!

Title says it all! Can also try to get more other events in!


These ideas can be tried while during both the 22 player and 32 player Taws. There's also the idea of also just downright improving Taw itself by....

1. Add BAR maps
I'm not that big on BAR but i can say its maps are pretty decent and also kinda big too, can add some of these bar maps into the pool to make larger games feel a bit better.

2. Adjust map pool system
adjust the map pool to make it do overall slightly bigger maps that adjust with lager player counts better. maps like ISIS and other small maps probably shouldn't be a voteable option in a large team settings.

3. Discourage/Nerf proc
I probably expect this to be controversial and i know zk proc is kinda weak compared to other spring/recoil games but sometimes lobpot can get quite porcy. This can sometime make lobpot games a very boring drag of just boring proc wars until somebody gets enough impalers, silos it, or until a sw is built for sizeable progress to actually happen. this is can be done either indirectly or downright directly.

4. Modded Event taws (and probably other lobbies in general)
Make taw modded either by soft or full mods (maybe even full on other recoil game ports!) on as a weekly event similar to FC back then to mix up taw and make it more interesting and less stale.

Though of course improving the taw experience wont really help with the 1 lobby monopoly problem. Though i do overall hope some or all these ideas would be tried soo both small team enjoys and large team enjoys can both be happy without angering the other side while fixing issues in zk! :)

+2 / -0
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+2 / -0
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1- Agree. Not sure about the details but there's a need for some kind of "!promote" feature on the battle rooms. Something to help call players to rooms without going to lobby and discord chat and typing there

3- what is fc?

(why did numbering go back to 1?)

1,2 - Agree. they added BAR maps, but apparently there's no remake for many of the classic ZK maps and they're too small for the team sizes currently playing them.
On the other hand, many BAR maps are over 20x20 and would feel too big.
I find big team battles on small maps tend to be fun in ZK, for some reason. I agree the pool should be a bit more skewed towards at least 14x14 and larger for battles bigger than 4v4.

3- Disagree. Imo they already did. ZK's full of affordable and strong assault units and cheap artillery that struggles to hit mobile enemies but wrecks statics. Silo with stun missiles can kill or at least disable the relatively expensive static defense, with the exception of a few berthas in the back line, but that's a relatively expensive option that ends up being countered by the more aggressive team just making a superweapon.

4- Agree. Modded TAW, like a week-long or weekend event would be interesting
+3 / -0

38 hours ago
quote:
3- what is fc?


Fight club! (i shouldve clarify on main post)

[quote](why did numbering go back to 1?)
quote:


Went back to 1 for seperation of improving taw and passive ways to promote small lobbies.

[quote1,2 - Agree. they added BAR maps, but apparently there's no remake for many of the classic ZK maps and they're too small for the team sizes currently playing them.
On the other hand, many BAR maps are over 20x20 and would feel too big.
I find big team battles on small maps tend to be fun in ZK, for some reason. I agree the pool should be a bit more skewed towards at least 14x14 and larger for battles bigger than 4v4.


maybe the ultra large maps can be added if zk ever decides to go back to 32 player taw but yeah forgot some bar maps are extremely massive.

+0 / -0

35 hours ago
Me
Me but lighter
+7 / -0
1: Observation: If someone is already in a lobby, they are less likely to switch to another lobby. If most players are in TAW, they are not likely to switch. This is a neutral psychological observation. Because of this, it's not sensible to expect multiple different lobbies unless by revving up the marketing machine. For variety, a rare 10% chance for "special rounds" on TAW may be added.

2. Observation: Maps with narrow fronts have less fighting space. Given the equal rate of porc-ification, a narrower front will always get stalemated earlier than a wide front. A diagonal map is the exception to this rule, as it has a wide front but is effectively just as porcy as a narrow non-diagonal map. On a diagonal map, breakthroughs are easily stopped thanks to the triangle geometry which gives a movement and defense-coverage defender advantage.

3. I propose an experiment with 0.84 metal and 0.84 energy generation to see how long early-game and mobile battles can be dragged out.
+0 / -0
O.o wtf ??? is the value you choose science? 0.84 metal is super specific.. any eason why it cant be 0.83 / 0.85 metal?
+0 / -0

12 hours ago
I think the automatic hosts would benefit from having different formats rotated often. Say, daily, to keep it fresh. Small-teams-monday, lob-fest-tuesday, 22-is-still-a-magic-number-wednesday.

Group and split the automatic hosts in the lobby-UI and give a clear label what mode it is in.

Add functionality for admins and a few chosen ones to configure (time-based) the deployment of auto-hosts; maybe add some options for enabling/disabling particular forced overflow handling, etc. Allow it to be scheduled on time, day, as default, etc.

+0 / -0