"Spec for Small"
Filed under: Powerball
With the new Powerball zone up and running this topic has started up again on the forums. The small pub map has been good for Powerball. It’s done two positive things. First of all it’s solved the problem of PB being impossible to play during off-peak hours. The days of 2v2 games on the large map waiting in vain for people to show up are gone and good riddance. The second thing it’s done is brought in a lot of new players to the game.
The problems start when peak hours come up. The unsuccessful attempt to run a SmallPub League had the freqs capped at 6v6 which is about the maximum number of people you can have playing and still have a decent game. When it gets to 8v8 and above SmallPub starts to become unplayable. This is the point where the bot should switch to the traditional full sized map and everyone is happy. Except they’re not. Here comes the spammage:
“Spec for Small”
All it takes is a few people to do this and the large map game is killed. The people who don’t really care which map they play on will spec too and pretty soon we’re back playing on the small map with huge freqs. Now this is fun for a short time, sort of like an event where there’s mass carnage and no skill. The problem is that this has become the game style that is played night after night in peak hours of PB. It does nothing to help the new players develop and it’s turning Powerball into a garbage zone - good for an hour of fucking around in - instead of the most skilful zone in Subspace where the best players compete.
As an entry point for new players to PB SmallPub has been a success. But for SmallPub to become the be all and end all of what Powerball is about is not, and it’s starting to hurt the zone.
Here’s what I wrote on one of the threads with a possible solution:
Now a 90/10 split between pub working and pub not working doesn’t sound too bad, but that 10% covers PB peak-time when the large map should be up and the 90% covers off-peak when nobody would want to play anything other than SmallPub. This also brings up another current trend in SS, something I’ve been meaning to write about on here, where the bot has become king. You see it a lot in Premier League games with refs. If the bot can’t handle something that comes up during a 4v4 match then the ref seems powerless to do something about it. If the bot can’t do it then neither can the staff.
Just like PB. A minority can force the bot to keep the small map up despite the number of people playing and the staff seem to be saying ‘If the bot can’t do anything about it then what do you expect us to do?”.
I think we’re at a crossroads for PB right now. The staff can either go the whole way and make SmallPub the only pub. Set a max freq size of somewhere between seven and eight, then spawn new pubs. Something like Hockey Zone was pre-ASSS. Or they have to step in and enforce the change of maps more effectively. The main problem is that it’s easy to kill a large map game by speccing and faking out the bot to keep the small map in with large freqs, while it’s next to impossible to keep a large map game going under this kind of sabotage.
Meanwhile the real loser is going to be what used to be the strength of the zone; it’s leagues. SmallPub league failed. CashBall and Classic league are still going strong, but if public play PB and league play PB continue to drift away from each other eventually the league pop his going to be hurt.
The zone is going to go through a lot of changes in the coming months with the switch to ASSS. First on the staff’s to do list must be to finally sort out how pub is run and which map is the real Powerball pub.
With the new Powerball zone up and running this topic has started up again on the forums. The small pub map has been good for Powerball. It’s done two positive things. First of all it’s solved the problem of PB being impossible to play during off-peak hours. The days of 2v2 games on the large map waiting in vain for people to show up are gone and good riddance. The second thing it’s done is brought in a lot of new players to the game.
The problems start when peak hours come up. The unsuccessful attempt to run a SmallPub League had the freqs capped at 6v6 which is about the maximum number of people you can have playing and still have a decent game. When it gets to 8v8 and above SmallPub starts to become unplayable. This is the point where the bot should switch to the traditional full sized map and everyone is happy. Except they’re not. Here comes the spammage:
“Spec for Small”
All it takes is a few people to do this and the large map game is killed. The people who don’t really care which map they play on will spec too and pretty soon we’re back playing on the small map with huge freqs. Now this is fun for a short time, sort of like an event where there’s mass carnage and no skill. The problem is that this has become the game style that is played night after night in peak hours of PB. It does nothing to help the new players develop and it’s turning Powerball into a garbage zone - good for an hour of fucking around in - instead of the most skilful zone in Subspace where the best players compete.
As an entry point for new players to PB SmallPub has been a success. But for SmallPub to become the be all and end all of what Powerball is about is not, and it’s starting to hurt the zone.
Here’s what I wrote on one of the threads with a possible solution:
The only problem I have with smallpub is when the freqs get to 9v9 and over. It's impossible to play on the map when that amount of people are in the game. The map changes to large then the smallpub zealots spec and kill the zone. The people who don't care spec as well and 5 minutes later it's back to a 12v12 skilless fuckfest.
Obvious solution is for mods to force the large map when the pop is there for it. They do this only in the situation where the 'spec for smallpub' retards are cheating the bot to keep the small map up when the population is far to big for it.
Smallpub is for small populations, the large map is for large populations. If people are abusing the bot to either keep the small map up for large freqs, or keeping the large map up for small freqs (by switching freqs or refusing to score until the freqs are big enough to stop the map change) then a mod should step in and make the change.
It's not that hard to police. It's obvious when people are forcing smallpub on the zone when the pop is too big for it, and it's equally obvious when there's not enough people playing for the large map to be used.
90% of the time the bot is correct in choosing the map. In the other 10% a mod needs to step in.
Now a 90/10 split between pub working and pub not working doesn’t sound too bad, but that 10% covers PB peak-time when the large map should be up and the 90% covers off-peak when nobody would want to play anything other than SmallPub. This also brings up another current trend in SS, something I’ve been meaning to write about on here, where the bot has become king. You see it a lot in Premier League games with refs. If the bot can’t handle something that comes up during a 4v4 match then the ref seems powerless to do something about it. If the bot can’t do it then neither can the staff.
Just like PB. A minority can force the bot to keep the small map up despite the number of people playing and the staff seem to be saying ‘If the bot can’t do anything about it then what do you expect us to do?”.
I think we’re at a crossroads for PB right now. The staff can either go the whole way and make SmallPub the only pub. Set a max freq size of somewhere between seven and eight, then spawn new pubs. Something like Hockey Zone was pre-ASSS. Or they have to step in and enforce the change of maps more effectively. The main problem is that it’s easy to kill a large map game by speccing and faking out the bot to keep the small map in with large freqs, while it’s next to impossible to keep a large map game going under this kind of sabotage.
Meanwhile the real loser is going to be what used to be the strength of the zone; it’s leagues. SmallPub league failed. CashBall and Classic league are still going strong, but if public play PB and league play PB continue to drift away from each other eventually the league pop his going to be hurt.
The zone is going to go through a lot of changes in the coming months with the switch to ASSS. First on the staff’s to do list must be to finally sort out how pub is run and which map is the real Powerball pub.
