The Modern Spring player, for better or worse / Autobalance

[Nixa]

Well I've observed a few things over the last year to do with new players to spring.

They are:

Unpatient
-but refuse to play anything less than 8v8
Always kick for no reason
Don't know how to manually download maps
Start on others spots
Only build advanced solars and metal makers
Religiously play BA on DSD
Abuse others for sucking even though they suck twice as much
etcetcetc

Prime Example - IKILLZYUO, SirMavrick, road - but... above all others - STUCKEY!

For better or worse

[Dragon45]

nixa nixa

[REVENGE]

that avatar is hot

[Neddie]

I mostly deal with new non-*A players, they generally...

* Are shy
* Play in private games with friends
* Play between 1v1 and 3v3
* Start out with the custom AI supplied
* Come in clusters of nationality, usually between two and five in number
* Are skittish

[Hacked]

i like to think that i'm kinda to others during and outside of game play

[maackey]

The Modern BA player, for better or worse...

I've never had any of those problems with anyone playing any other game or mod.

[Hacked]

assholery found in some spring games is to be expected. the internet offers anonymity, since the games we play using the spring engine are free, its just something we have to deal with.

without a tyrannical sort of moderation system, the best we can do is behave ourselves the best we can

side note: im gonna regret saying this, but the japanese online games ive played do not generally have these problems. the games are in japanese and are therefore inaccessible to many of the english speaking players other games attract. there is no name calling, much less abuse, and before each game, the players will say something to the effect of "glhf" to each other. if you do something wrong, the worse they will do call you stupid and resume gameplay. most will prolly say "w", kindof like a japanese lol

no offense, its just an observation

[smoth]

they are making fun of you, you just cannot read it.

[Hacked]

then their text is invisible and i didnt see it

[Caydr]

Check the infolog, it's there.

[[TS]Lollocide]

Actually, the only valid points are 1, 2, 6 and 7.

And I maintain that people get abused in games because they have in some way unbalanced the game 'TEK2NOOK' or other bold, shit strategies and have therefore left whomever is infront of them to fend for themselves. aka the: "Wtf are you idiots doing, its 3v1 down here and I can't hold this shit open!" to which they respond by building t2 defense an inch outside their base and consequently get killed 5 minutes later.

[pintle]

no name calling, much less abuse, and before each game, the players will say something to the effect of "glhf" to each other.

Sounds a lot like XTA tbfh.

The only "abuse" I have ever seen in a game of S44 is Journier, which hardly counts as actual hostility.

Gundam games have, in my experience, never once included any douchebaggery.

By a _long_ way, the most aggressive, hostile, rude, abusive and unfriendly players on spring are the handful of "proper" BA players (Regret you go in this bracket too fwiw).

A lot of people play BA DSD and suck without realising they suck? How long have you been playing in order to reach this inspired conclusion?

The "decline" I have noticed, in the past 4+ years of spring, has nothing to do with noobs and their emergent playstyles (switch the word "DSD" for "altored") and much much more to do with cliquey idiots: long term players deliberately trolling established players and content devs, and flaming newbies while offering basically zero support or guidance to said FNGs.

[Otherside]

dont stereotype all new spring players as BA players plox.

New people that try other mods are rarely any of the above.

[Hacked]

now that i think about it
when i first tried out nota
there were only 2 players in that battleroom
and they were pretty supportive
juzza and morphdog i think

even now, the nota games are well mannered, friendly, and much much more nab tolerant

do you think it has something to do with being a minority or just the spirit of trying something new that causes players to treat each other well

[[TS]Lollocide]

Noob tolerance is inversely proportional to the amount of players a mod has.

To simplify that statement for others:

The more players a mod has, the less tolerant they are of noobs.
(Because noobs are easily replaced with other players)

The less players a mod has, the more tolerant of noobs they are (Because more guys learning = more guys playing.

[Wombat]

lol stuckey, belive it or not but i still remember banning him on meph_lair :D now think how stupid human being might be and still suck balls after... 2 years of playing?

[Molloy]

The problem is the players have too much control and too much choice. Whenever this happens everything gets dragged down to the lowest common denominator.

In the short term most players want a particular type of game. Long winded, predictable and defensive. You can give them that in the short term but ultimately it gets very boring because you don't have any rushing, raiding or the kind of play that makes each game different from the next one.

Example: maps should have a hard-coded player limit. That'd stop hosts from cramming 8 players onto maps that are balanced around a 4 player layout. Of course since the maps are effectively all third party you'd never be able to enforce this sort of common sense.

It's sort of the same problem with the mods. Someone could come up with the best balanced mod in the world, but that wouldn't make it popular. People would still gravitate towards limited and defensive mods that reward turtling. If, say, on day one when this engine came it was XTA and nothing else, the playing standard would be alot better on average than what we have now where the average joe decides what the balance should be.

[Gota]

Cause those that don't want to take responsibility for arranging stuff under one umbrella in most cases don't want to allow anyone else to do it.

[JohannesH]

Simple cure to shitty and/or annoying players: dont play with them

[Nixa]

Woops, shoulda put the modern BA player
It's true, I'm a NOTA player myself and noobs are much easier to tolerate, but thats simply because the style of the mod favours linear growth rather than exponential meaning noobs dont get put a mile back at 10 minutes.

I agree with hardcoding in player limits to maps, but as a comprimise I released a dedicated new large game map thats 20x20 and supports 8v8
http://www.springfiles.com/show_file.php?id=2239

The problem: New people don't want to wait for everyone to download it and therefore so far it's had 0 games in a week (well half when I hosted and crashed ).

The Question: Why do I bother spending hours making these things if noone has the patience to wait 5 mins for everyone to download them.
The Answer: Tbh I don't anymore, the only new map I've seen semi-succeed in the last year has been Nuclear Winter, and even that has much the same gameplay to DSD due to it's size and layout

So, the NOTA players in this community are in luck, they'll be getting the dedication to all my new maps, at least they're willing to try them!