A New Player's Suggestion on Bouncy Walls

[RockChurch]

I'm quite new to Altitude, but am enjoying it very much. I've not got a lot invested in the game, and I've got a fair bit of experience with the business side of software development.

I see and appreciate that there's a real dilemma with bouncy walls. I see the issue thusly:

New players must have bouncy walls, or they will quit the game and never replay. As users progress, they would probably appreciate hard-wall servers, however there is little to indicate that there is this 'other world' of hard-wall servers out there. Unless the user starts reading these forums or gets adventurous, they won't seek out this 'other world'.

A big part of the issue is that the current default filter displays only the bouncy servers (above the fold). This has two effects: a) new users are fed into these servers (this is good), and b) these servers are overwhelmingly the only ones that are populated (this is bad).

Since, for most people, it's preferable to play against real people on a bouncy server than play against bots only on a hard-wall server, at any given moment, many of the people on a bouncy server would actually prefer to be on a hard-wall server.

--

Now, there is a certain threshold where a player could move to a hard-wall server and perhaps would not prefer them, but would not immediately turn away. There is another threshold where players would likely prefer playing on hard-wall servers. Both of these thresholds are different for each player and I don't think can be identified by rank alone. So, you've got three classes of players as related to bouncy/hard-wall preference: Bouncy-Only, Experimenters, and Hard-Wallers.

I see two priorities in dealing with bouncy/hard-wall servers:

1) The very most important priority is to ensure that the Bouncy-Only's don't unwittingly join a hard-wall server.

2) Next, and somewhat less important is to have Experimenters exposed to hard-wall servers

3) Thirdly, have both bouncy and hard-wall servers populated.

Now, with the current bouncy rules (the default filter), priority #1 is satisfied well, but not #2 or #3. I think a solution should be sought which adds satisfaction for the later two, while not sacrificing the first.

--

There's a suggestion in here somewhere:

My proposal is this. Remove the default bouncy filter (keep the 'has players'), and add the following:

- Default sort is by bouncy, then by ping.
- Better differentiation between bouncy and hard-wall servers (perhaps different colours?)
- For new players, a *brief* message is displayed when attempting to join a hard-wall server which suggests against joining (with some information as to why). Eg: "Hard-Wall servers are significantly more challenging, we suggest you try a bouncy server.
- At a certain threshold (safely above the Bouncy-Only threshold), remove that message and add one to Bouncy servers, which suggests the user try a hard-wall server.
- For both messages have the options 'not now', 'never show', etc.

I think with those changes, you will effectively satisfy the three chief bouncy/hard-wall priorities. As soon as hard-wall servers start appearing 'above the filter fold', you'll start seeing those servers a lot more populated.

This is a bit of an opus, but hopefully there's some thoughts that help the developers and the community get closer to where everybody wants to be.

RockChurch

[ryebone]

Originally Posted by RockChurch

New players must have bouncy walls, or they will quit the game and never replay.

That is definitely not true. Bouncy walls were introduced only with the Steam release. Everyone pre-Steam learned with hard walls, figuring out to avoid them by trial-and-error instead of being coddled. While it's certainly a small sample size, and many probably did quit due to the difficulty of learning with hard walls, the ones that stayed are clearly more dedicated to the game, interested in making themselves better and thus making the game more enjoyable for everyone involved.

[Mei Mei]

What?! This game had no bouncy servers prior to the steam release? Whose idea was to cripple the game like that?

[RockChurch]

Originally Posted by ryebone

While it's certainly a small sample size, and many probably did quit due to the difficulty of learning with hard walls, the ones that stayed are clearly more dedicated to the game, interested in making themselves better and thus making the game more enjoyable for everyone involved.

You're thinking like one of those 'elite'. I feel safe in saying that the developers are at least equally interested in making the game accessible (and profitable) as they are ensuring their dedicated players are happy.

Having no bouncy servers may make the 'elite' happy, but it makes the game less accessible, and alienates a large percentage of new players.

The thing is that you don't *have* to alienate the new players and make the game significantly less accessible in order to make the dedicated players happy.

You can certainly make both groups happy (perhaps even happier, because more new players means better competition, eventually), but we're not quite there yet.

[innerlyte]

Originally Posted by ryebone

Bouncy walls were introduced only with the Steam release.

That's not entirely true. You could still manually adjust a collidable object's damage and elasticity settings from within the editor. Remember the Blue Moon servers? Either way, bouncy maps/servers were not prevalent

[lamsbro]

I see 4 problems:
1) death by map collision sucks, especially when you're new
2) lying on the ground slowly dying also sucks
3) game balance (especially for explodet) is affected by bounciness
4) splitting the community by wall type makes it difficult for people to find games

Solutions:
1) rubber hull provides new players with low collision dmg (this is already implemented)
2) change it so all planes can go from stall to upward (albeit slowly) with afterburner, even if they have no energy (this makes it possible for anyone to get out of a ground stall, which would otherwise result in a slow and unfun death)
3) remove bouncy walls, but consider lowering normal collision damage (dying to map collisions sucks even for experienced players, its a big enough disadvantage just to lose your speed and some hit points).

[Ajplagge]

Superstrong rubberhull option that slowly degenerates to regular rubber hull as you level up?

[Harmonica]

I like RockChurch's suggestions a lot. They seem realistic and immediately effective, and would not require further rebalancing. Doing a rapidly-deliverable fix like this would also provide further time for the (seemingly endless) discussion about how to reconcile the different wall types.

One question: How prevalent are bouncy walls for TBD and other non-Ball modes?

I still argue that some less-bouncy variation of Bouncy would work better for Ball (since, on normal-wall servers, the ball usually spends most of its time either sitting on the ground or lamenting slowly through open areas, even on servers with pre-Steam players,) but are there any redeeming features or implications of Bouncy for other modes?

I've never really tried TBD (or other modes, aside from Ball) with Bouncy walls -- are there any interesting or fun changes to gameplay? If no new tactics have developed and gameplay is largely the same, is there really any reason to offer two distinct wall types?

[TheBored]

Maybe make wall damage inversely proportional to your level? New players are "allowed" to hit walls constantly, vets are not.

TB

[TomBRowkaH]

I don't think new players should get some kind of handicap because they are new. For example, the current implementation of rubber hull allows you to hit walls and not die, but at the cost of sacrificing another more useful green perk.

I don't really think bouncy walls are necessary to learn the game anyway. You already have the option of choosing rubber hull. I think instead the hard walls should be toned down a little bit so that you don't die instantly from hitting the corners, etc.

Also, out of the many friends that I have showed altitude to, none of them have wanted to quit because it was too hard not to crash into walls. I think the game is intuitive enough that new players can learn the controls quickly enough to survive on most maps.

The bouncy walls also have a lot of unintended effects, the most noticeable to me being the obvious problems with the explodet. The walls also allow mirandas to warp through a player and into a wall without fear of death.

[GGQ]

I'm another player who never thought bouncy walls were beneficial. I wouldn't have liked Altitude if it had had bouncy walls. Dying to walls all the time while skilled players flew circles around me made the game challenging and enticing.

[eth]

I'm an experienced player and I don't think dying to walls suck. Why? Because its a simple reminder that I just flew very, very badly, and that should naturally give a harsh penalty. You know what? If anything, I'd like a HARDCORE mode instead of FUN BOUNCY where you take 1000% collision dmg, so if you so much as graze a wall you die. And yes I'm completely serious(this would be FUN for me btw).

[Massi]

Originally Posted by eth

I'm an experienced player and I don't think dying to walls suck. Why? Because its a simple reminder that I just flew very, very badly, and that should naturally give a harsh penalty. You know what? If anything, I'd like a HARDCORE mode instead of FUN BOUNCY where you take 1000% collision dmg, so if you so much as graze a wall you die. And yes I'm completely serious(this would be FUN for me btw).

This is would be so amazing if this were implemented. I think we should just take out bouncy walls and make them use rubber hull. Isn't that the whole point of the perk, so you don't die when you hit walls. So if you have rubber hull you don't need bouncy.

[Stormich]

Most of us learned to play on hard walled servers getting killed by the vets all the time, nobody complained that it was hard. It's the way a game is. Bouncy walls is like taking away auto damage you get from splash damage weapons in FPS or removing fall damage. It lessens the game experience. I fully agree with the scalable bounciness with levels having more damage deflected early levels and 0 damage deflected at level 60. To be honest I wouldn't really mind the splitting of the community which is happening if only we had like 2-3 full hard wall servers for the guys that still want the full game experience.

[Vania]

Better solution:

1) Get rid of bouncy servers.
2) Autoequip rubber-hull perk for new players.
3) Warn new players when they try to equip a different perk.

[Slevin]

Originally Posted by Vania

Better solution:

1) Get rid of bouncy servers.
2) Autoequip rubber-hull perk for new players.
3) Warn new players when they try to equip a different perk.

This is the best solutions so far. What's the point of rubberize-hull perk if there is a bouncy wall? It's a waste in my opinion, if you still keep the bouncy wall, at least change the rubberize-hull perk to something else more useful (change it with new perk). If not, maybe add +3-5% bounce for rubberize-hull perk against wall and take +5-7% more damage against explodet mine/missile (so explodet player wont bitching about the perk).