The Possible Future of Arena

Ok so it’s no doubt that arena is one of the most popular gamemodes, along with 1ctf, babel, infiltration, and a few others.
In an attempt to keep the gamemode fresh and lively I thought I might bring up a few ideas and points.

  1. Top 10 has been a very successful server, but as it seems it pretty much killed off Arena All Maps. (Contributing to this was also the decrease in players after jagex’s release.) As much as it’s amazing to see everyone’s creations and the variety of map layouts, it seems to have an overbearing effect on the players as they may want to stay with a select few, thus Top 10 was created. As many players enjoy familiar landscapes, they also enjoy a little change. So to spell it out more bluntly, I would like to propose the idea of an additional map to Top 10, suppose a map that has a high chance of being enjoyed by the players, it may be to remove a lesser favorite, or even Top 10+1. As of course to keep this from being too much, you may wish to only switch this map out every 2 weeks or once a month.

  2. One of the more obnoxious events to happen upon a round win event is the additional 10 points the killer gets. (killer is scripted as the player to get the final kill). I’ve gotten the last kill plenty of times to know it can throw you through a loop trying to figure out how many points you really have earned.

  3. Along the lines of points this next idea maybe able to apply to further gamemodes, the idea of an assist point, being as 1/2 (0.5) of a point for causing 50hp damage. I know as of any game it has it’s limitations, I’ve been programming for a few years to know this, only reason I see this may not work is that the damage is not registered in relation of the giver and the receiver.

  4. Getting back to arena, an interesting idea that popped up awhile back, evolving arena maps. It works like so…
    Going further then starting gates, you can set time intervals and the RGB to match parts of your map.
    Example:
    gamemode arena;
    evolvement1: time_interval, RGB;
    evolvement1: 1:30 (or 90 secs), 255,255,255; <-This starts the event half way through the match (match = 3 mins), and breaks the blocks with this color (white). You may also try multiple evolvements as to change the map at say minute 2 and the last 1. (Would be a great way to speed a match up at the near end, and keep people from remaining in one position too long.)
    With such a tool you can create maps the change before the players eyes examples are things such as, new rooms being unlocked, floors caving in, entire buildings being removed. The changes can be grand or minimal. You could even have a map tell a story a story! Example: You could have a map follow the story of Little Red Riding Hood. Her trip to grandma’s house through the woods, until the Big Bad Wolf blocks your path! You need to wait half way through the match, when he breaks so you can continue to grandma’s house.
    Only con I can see is lag if you remove parts of too large a size.

I’d love to hear anyone’s ideas! :slight_smile:
I’d also love to try making such scripts but I have little knowledge of Python.
Number 3 and 4 are more for the programmers of the group, but if you like and want either of the ideas express your desire below. : D

I think that having an extra map that changes all the time on arena top 10 is such a great idea. Not only does it mix it up a little but also gives players the chance to try different maps and even play some of their favourites while the enjoyable, familiar rotation is still there.
Another favourite idea Tyler mentioned is knowing when you have taken at least 50% health away. Personally there is nothing worse when you are having blazing SMG battle or a long range sniping contest between yourself and another player and sadly you loose but you have no idea if your shots hit, or how close they were to dying. I personally don’t agree with being rewarded half a point for only half a kill as they measure your kills. However a new system or adapted system to show this would be so helpful. Maybe a system of your score - being the amount of kills you have obtained and under the kill-death ratio you could have something along the lines of 3.00 ( 3 kills, 1 death) and 5 hits (wording slightly different) As the “hits” would only be counted if you personally took over 50% of their health away or delivered the shot that took it under 50% you were rewarded one hit point. In the cases where you are curious to whether their health had been affected you could simple check under your stats.
And lastly having changing maps. It is like the best idea ever. Being a slightly above average player I enjoy the challenges other players bring but sometimes the map needs a little more. A changing map would bring a whole new element to the game, tactical skills and sometimes just luck (as in you were in a building that is falling down.) You would need to think more then just turn the corner and blast the opposite colour.
Overall I think Aloha should consider these idea carefully as they could improve the gameplay a lot. I know I have said a lot but I am always interested in new ways to experience Ace of Spades and also just have a good time on fun, reliable servers.
Good luck to Tyler,
Karma.

I think arena all maps has low turnout for 3 reasons.

1. v 1.0
Simply put, there are two different versions of the same basic game, which severed the community. Not much can be done with about this of course.

2. Too many maps
The map rotation is too large. There are a lot of good maps to choose from, but players mostly do not want to suffer through some of the bad ones or wait for their favorites to come up. I think this is why Top Ten and CS maps still are very popular. I think these suggestions are good, and maybe having it be a top 20 + 5 newest or something would be good. This reduces the map pool and still gives the opportunity to play new maps.

3. Some of the maps are terrible for arena
Some maps, while very cool looking and enjoyable to run around in, do not work well for arena. Some because they are too large with a lot of clutter in them (sherwoodforest comes to mind), or have camping trends which drag out matches and the game mode.

I think some of the ideas are great, but may be hard to implement (assists and changing maps), but don’t let that stop people from trying! They sound really neat!

-barron?!?!

I like the idea of evolving maps, closing of certain sections/ paths.
If this happens if the player is trapped they could just be tp’d to a nearby path or just have the server say to everyone paths 1 and 2 are collapsing get away from them or you will trapped in! Then when its collapsed just kill the player

I like the idea of 10+1 (I was actually thinking about doing this the other day), but I’d want it to cycle more often than that. Having it change every two cycles is what I was thinking. I don’t think anyone will be overwhelmed considering they get 10 maps they are incredibly familiar with, I’m sure they can handle one new map every once in the while. Nevermind that you’d have to wait a year to see your map come up.

I’d want the +1 to be a cycle of the more popular arena maps (ie: not prison) and any new maps released (considering they’ll never get played on arena all maps)

Also, we’ve been wanting to change a10 for a while. See the “Arena Favorites” topic for an idea of what we are trying to do. Unfortunately we didn’t have a concrete plan, just that we didn’t want a poll because that favored maps people knew instead of whether they were good or not (ie “I’ve never seen half these maps, so I voted for planeassault and indiaarena”)

2. One of the more obnoxious events to happen upon a round win event is the additional 10 points the killer gets. (killer is scripted as the player to get the final kill). I've gotten the last kill plenty of times to know it can throw you through a loop trying to figure out how many points you really have earned.
/ratio will always tell you the correct number of kills you have, though I'm not sure it resets on map change (I think it does?)
3. Along the lines of points this next idea maybe able to apply to further gamemodes, the idea of an [b]assist point[/b], being as 1/2 (0.5) of a point for causing 50hp damage. I know as of any game it has it's limitations, I've been programming for a few years to know this, only reason I see this may not work is that the damage is not registered in relation of the giver and the receiver.
The problem is more that there's no half points and a kill has to be registered to get a point. It could be something added to ratio though.
4. Getting back to arena, an interesting idea that popped up awhile back, [b]evolving arena maps[/b]. It works like so... Going further then starting gates, you can set time intervals and the RGB to match parts of your map. With such a tool you can create maps the change before the players eyes examples are things such as, new rooms being unlocked, floors caving in, entire buildings being removed. The changes can be grand or minimal. You could even have a map tell a story a story! Example: You could have a map follow the story of Little Red Riding Hood. Her trip to grandma's house through the woods, until the Big Bad Wolf blocks your path! You need to wait half way through the match, when he breaks so you can continue to grandma's house. Only con I can see is lag if you remove parts of too large a size.

Pretty awesome! I don’t think lag would be a problem either.

i’m pretty sure ratio does not change on map change. when the next map advances you’ll see your old ratio even though you have no kills and no deaths. also when people join after the map change has already occurred they will see your old stats even though they’ve been reset.

Agreed, it would take much too long, I’d assume you’d be using an external program to edit the map rotation? or a script to change the maps on map rotation loop? (ei: map1, map2, map3; loops back to map1; maps rotation change; load new rotation(reloadconfig.py))

Reviewed the topic, and it looks like it’s going nowhere fast, maybe a different approach, off the top of my head I can think of grabbing 5 to 10 admins or gaurds that know arena well enough to know what the general public like and have them choose the next maps, would cause less confusion, you only need to deal with 5-10 people that deal with each other more then less, and you get the maps you want.

For every server you have /ratio carries on until you quit, some people quit after every map to reset there ratio. On a side note of this, fixing it may be useful to catch hackers, as the reset on their ratio will spike, instead of dimming with each continuing map.

I figured there would be a few issues with this idea. As for adding it to the ratio, I don’t think it would be appreciated enough for the work put into it.

This is a bug in the source code, and can only be fixed with an update to the game, AoS .77 in other words.

There’s a bunch of ways to do it. Manually would be fine if it was infrequent, but a script wouldn’t be too hard.
there’s a “rotationadd” command to add a map to rotation and a “revertrotation” to revert it to the config’s rotation. So it’d just be a matter of adding a new map, reverting it later and adding a different one.

Yeah, it wasn’t really thought out. The biggest problem I have with most ideas about arena is that most people have not played most maps, and A10 isn’t helping with that at all.

For every server you have /ratio carries on until you quit, some people quit after every map to reset there ratio. On a side note of this, fixing it may be useful to catch hackers, as the reset on their ratio will spike, instead of dimming with each continuing map.
Resetting accuracy would be more useful than resetting ratio for hackers. Hackers tend to have increasing ratios in my experience.

This is such a great idea. Stops the rounds going on for full 3 mins. But let’s just not remove TOO much of the maps so people won’t be trapped or cause people to be in the open of all sudden when they were in a house or some enclosed area.

I had forgot about the ability to change rotation without the use of the config file, so that is very nice.

Resetting the accuracy would be indeed useful.

Trapping people wouldn’t make them very happy, so I’m sure the map author will do his best to prevent such an occurrence. Generally you’d want to keep the map changes to a minimal. Leveling a building may be too much for a smaller map, causing an almost chaotic firing range, perhaps a simple hole would be blown into the wall of said building causing a new entry/exit point. As for larger maps it might be more acceptable to remove a building. Again it’s all up to the author and what he feels would be a good balance, and as always the possibilities are magnificent.

I love all the ideas. I had my own idea that’ll help all maps and top 10. Have a /votemap system. Voting is the same as a votekick. If a votemap succeeds, it will switch the map after the current round. Have a log so votemap data can be used in top 10 selection.

The servers come with a votemap already; “Time to vote!”, “/votemap <map_name>”. A very nice function, however the abuse/spamming of this command could become most unforgiving. An array of maps will be past just to jump to a specific map and it may end up being replayed if it is voted for again. This would cause more people to leave do to the lack of change.
I’d love for such an option, but it would need to be controlled appropriately.

If anybody has ever played MCSG (Minecraft Survival Games) they have a voting system which I think is very easy to use.

What it does is randomly selects 3-5 maps for people to vote on. If they want to vote for the first map chosen, they type /v 1. If they want to vote for the second map on the list they type /v 2, and so on. It shows how many votes have been chosen for that map so you know what’s going to be chosen. It automatically shows which maps are going to be chosen every 30 seconds, and if you want to see them manually, you simple type /v. The map that you vote in is a lobby. After 3 minutes the map with the most amount of votes is played on. You can only vote for one map unless the maps shown are skipped.

This might be a good voting system, I personally don’t know. It’s one which has been around since they had multiple maps, and I’ll take a screenshot next time I’m on so you know exactly what it looks like. :wink:

Chappy.

P.S. There is also a /skip command used. If 50% (I think they might’ve made it 30% for 120 player servers, and 60% for 24 player servers) of the people vote for a /skip, 3-5 new maps a randomly selected for people to vote for, but aren’t the same as the one’s just shown. The timer isn’t reset, so there could be a skip within the last 3 seconds. I don’t think this should be implemented, because there will be loads of times where the un-popular maps wouldn’t be voted for.

Hmm sounds like the ‘match making’ voting system, which might work well in this case.
I’d prefer this over the votemap system already in place. Nice find chappy. :stuck_out_tongue: