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Pick Up Games (PUGs)


yosh56

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Can we please, PLEASE, play TrainingYard and Eyes

rofl, no

One crashes, the other is relatively nominal for a map except for a very wide out-of-the-way path. The one that crashes, is a huge map with lots of openness for a large PUG and is no less balanced than Lakeside.

There is no problem with either of them.

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  • Totem Arts Staff

You forgot to mention that while Nod and GDI struggles to fight for their lives, their harvester took a few minutes of shore leave in Lakeside

Also, that apache rush never took place, and I got lotsa lag spikes. After that, I'm just following the nearest Apache :(

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Pick Up Game Info is here however; I may indeed have it established in a different location however.

[EDITED] BroTranquilty- The link below should be a self-updating countdown-clock to the Ren-X Pick-Up Game. Click to see time remaining.

Ren-X PUG Weekly Countdown Link

The gist is the following.

------

Times: Every Saturday at 7:00 PM GMT (1PM Central US time.) ((That's 0400 for me in Japan... so if I can make it you can probably make it))

JAN 23 1300 (American Central Time)

Status: On with a vengeance

Number of players: 48

Edited Yosh's main post, with the relevant information above. Wanted what I changed to be transparent. First time trying this self-updating clock, so let's hope it works.

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  • Totem Arts Staff
Hmmmm we need more maps if we're going to handle this player count every week..

So we need to keep testing maps and decide which maps will be added to regular servers

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I hope it's a good PUG.

I will have to let you down then :P

Eyes

First time that this map was played since a long time, but yeah... turned out to be dull and campy.

Nod tries stanks, apaches, arties. Meanwhile GDI tries APCs, orcas/chinooks, gunners. Nothing even comes close to succeeding, but GDI ends up being a few hundred points ahead by the end of the game (probably thanks to those MRLS hitting HoN every now and then).

Also infantry seems to be pretty useless on new Eyes, it's all about vehicles. And the low vehicle limit (10) makes it even harder to accomplish anything.

XMountain

Probably even worse than Eyes, since I didn't see any decent rush going on. 35 minutes of some pushing back and forth with vehicles and Nod wins with a few hundred points thanks to the spot at silo where arties can hit WF.

Volcano

Quick game, Nod overwhelms GDI with vehicles and rolls over GDI base within 10 minutes.

I see Volcano become a real Nod map with the new patch, Nod wins a big majority of games on public games here. Even if GDI manages to defend from the early flamethrower/chem rushes from all sides, they struggle to counter arties. Unless team has plenty dedicated defenders and meds are pumped out quickly, GDI will lose early.

Total score 2-1, Nod win 2 out of 3 games. I'm not sure why we ended so early and just when we voted a promising map that I think we never played on PUG (Valley). Oh well, could have ended up being a stale mate like the old Valley. Eyes also looked promising before we actually played it :P

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Overall it was pretty good today, too bad two games where decided by points and not base destruction. I expected more from Eyes though, great map (yeah really Dakuja), but failing communication and campy GDI made the game for us (Nod) hard to win. We even got hit while doing a stankrush cause MRLS where just shooting the whole field to see if something was moving.

Overall I think we shouldn't play these games too much on the safe side, cause it takes the fun out off stuff. Also goes for our team, I mean yeah you should respond to mines going down, but having 5 people patrolling for SBH won't make the game more fun.

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  • Totem Arts Staff

I still think it was okay. On our side anyway. Was plenty of communication, just everyone was on their shit together on both teams, and the maps played aren't conducive to really creative play. Honestly the old Eyes was better for 40 player games; the current iteration left it 'big' but constrained.

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Didn't think it was bad, just boring. It's what happens when you have balanced teams on maps that are very constricted. Just exposing some of the flaws of the game.

Also, I think it would be better if we just let this whole commander/need a leader mentality die lol. Why not just be smart enough to plan stuff together and know how to play the game. It's really easy as long as you don't clog up teamspeak with useless talk.

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Also, I think it would be better if we just let this whole commander/need a leader mentality die lol.

I (still) think about this exactly the opposite way. In my opinion everyone can suggest things, but one (or two people) should make the call based on suggestions and input from the team. That doesn't mean you need a leader who organizes everything into details, but just someone who gives basic guidelines like 'get stanks' or 'gunners meet bar.'

I remember one day I was in 'team B0NG and the only thing I did was mine and defend ALL game cause I was assigned to do so. It wasn't a very adventurous round for me, but I like that we all had 'tasks' which would make the team succeed. If people can selforganize it's also fine offcourse, but I don't see this happen (yet).

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Also, I think it would be better if we just let this whole commander/need a leader mentality die lol. Why not just be smart enough to plan stuff together and know how to play the game. It's really easy as long as you don't clog up teamspeak with useless talk.

You just described a high-level clan game. Hell, you basically just described A1Game Servers circa 2005 where they played 5vall on Renegade, and would beat pubs with a 5 man team. Probably because, they can take field 1v3, never lollygag with their man-power, if struggling with field a person still has a shot getting in with APC, and if field is eliminated they can communicate a 5 man flame or stank rush literally instantly, suicide and purchase and enemy structure gone-in-60-seconds.

Now, that is great and all, but between lesser numbers on teams opening defense for more structure lethality, and the fact that it may not be the best to organize games with too high an entry requirement, we really just need a commander to gather the people who are "subordinate to the cause", and evenly balance "lollygaggers" between the teams. If you want, with 2 separate servers, you can even balance one with higher level players versus themselves, and one with lower versus lower. "High-Profile" PUG, and "Entry-Level" PUG.

Either way, like Ryz said, the Commander is both not necessary, but infinitely more helpful than not. I have organized successful rushes in pubs without commander, it's possible to rally support, but it's definitely not as easy, and it's possible to be successful with your own manpower management (1 good defender against sbh is all it takes to win walls on pubs). We need to integrate Commanders into game if possible, but players need to do critical thinking themselves too and not put the Commander on the pedestal.

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Idk exactly what are the full options the commander has but:

What if he could before the game start ,define some squads and that he could suggest/order a squad a target.

eg. Im in squad#2 and the target on my screen is the ennemy pp.

-Squad #1 is Bar (preparing a Rush)

-Squad #4 Defend Base

-Squad #3 Attack on sight

other squad could have different target on their screen ...But i think mb it would be hard to code

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  • Totem Arts Staff

I would really like a squad system. The problem is, everyone has to do what they are told. You can organize people into 3 categories:

-Vehicles: The people assigned to this squad will get nothing but tanks and are never seen out of one.

-Infantry: Controls the infantry path, provides support, and helps defend

-Defense: 2-4 people that will never leave the base

If this can be accomplished, then as a commander, can mute the other 20 players from speaking on ts and listen to only the leaders assigned to those squads.

It may sound boring to do one thing the entire map, but all the person has to do is focus on their job, not other peoples job. If I'm assigned to defend the base, I shouldn't give a crap about what's going on in field or any other place. I should be patrolling the base until someone types RUSH in teamchat, then I can prepare myself.

It may be boring, but that's what a job is. And the job lasts as long as the map goes. Next map, you can be assigned a different task, and if you do your job properly, the game shouldn't last that long anyways.

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these 3 categories sound good :)

I would see squad job has primary only but if he want to go on other front at anytime he could.

But Commander could ask the DefSquad to stay on their primary when its needed.

I wouldnt go for muting tho becoz if someone( an vehicule guy) see something important and want to say it to the defense guys ,he should be able to speak it loud

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I wouldn't mind LavaDr4gon's suggestion either, except slightly more complicated. Tank stuff has to do with "Tank Repairs" so should include tank repairs, and everyone needs to be able to call out split-second warnings. So, leaders should have "global listen" and "squad chat", squad members need "commander listen" and "commander chat". That way, a callout can be relayed by a leader, and individuals can call out things. Text chat can be used as normal to chat to both enemy and between squads.

This also makes it easier to facillitate "using tank people for infantry rushes", as a tank commander can tell roughly 2/3 of his command to just grab a gunner instead of a tank and deploy with infantry for 1 life.

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How about muting people on teamspeak.

That won't work, cause the adventage of TS is that you can communicate with each other without typing and otherwise it would devaluate the PUG to a PUB. I think more clear rules are the most important, for example:

- If an enemy attack is incoming shout on TS 'rush incoming from bunker to bar (for Xmountain)' for example and not just rush.

- If something is urgent use TS like 'hit that building now'

- The rest of the communication goes through chat, but the main problem is that nobody reads it and tell us to use TS instead.

I know I am one of the persons who talks quite often on TS, but I also know that when it's clear who is leading I just use it for the necessary things and besides I always try to keep chipchat out. For the past 5 PUG's it wasn't clear to me who was in charge of the team and like last time I heard multiple people saying they where the commander. If we get that clear and the rules of communication also it would be cool. I just can't stand simple plans like 'gunner rush' failing cause only 3 people show up, while it's absolutely unclear what the rest does... Usually it's just as the 'pub games' where Nod goes stealth and GDI gets meds and in my opinion a PUG isn't about that, unless it actually works.

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I've never been able to play in one of the PUGs so I may be talking out of my ass here. Official "squad" support in-game or on TS would be cool, in fact it would be in the tradition of Command & Conquer. In the RTS games, how often did you have different groups of soldiers you'd send to attack different buildings?

But couldn't the commanders creatively break the team into "squads" as-is now? Like at the start of a match the commander gets on TS and says "Everyone get flames, then nicks starting with A-L attack the barracks via inf path, M-0 attack the wf via field." Granted this only works if people actually DO it, but statistically the same number of people will do/ignore it from A-L as will from M-0.

Oh and that dude whose nick is all squares gets to stay and defend. ;)

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I am glad that we are having this discussion about how to improve organisation and communication.

I think we should open new topic to discuss details about it.

There are just a few things that I would like to say:

Keep possible variables in mind: not all players have microphones, levels of skill and understanding RenX gameplay can differ between players, matches can be either public or organised PUGs or mix of both (group of organised players on pub server)....

So provided ideas and suggestions should aim to improve wide variety of those cases, not just specific ones.

One of our problems is that on TeamSpeak we have one channel per team, which we have to share for coordination of multiple unrelated actions, which is not exactly ideal. There is "priority speaker" option, which could be used to recieve instructions from commander clearly, but I don't remember that function being used in past PUGs.

But, there is possible solution for this.

From what I have heard, there is plugin that makes UDK and TS talk to each other, so that could bring for example, automated channel switching depending on which team you join.

I don't know what exactly this plugin is capable of.

However, I believe that there is even better solution: Mumble

https://wiki.mumble.info/wiki/Link https://wiki.mumble.info/wiki/Games

It's open source, so it can be relatively easily modified to suit our needs.

It could offer much more complex voice chat relations.

I would ask you guys for feedback on this idea: "Temporary Squads".

Ability to make squads in-game mid-match.

Add a option to Alt menu to "make squad", with optional player-defined "squad type", which displays "Join [player]'s [squad type] squad" on the top of the screen for everyone on player's team. Just like a survey.

Only that after time runs out, squad gets their own channel for text chat, and if there is TS/Mumble integration, even their own voice chat.

They would be able to voice chat among themselves, but would not hear any voice chat from other non-squad teammates, except for commander's broadcast.

I think it's something that could be used for both Pubs and PUGs.

Also, RenX isn't the first game to require group of various players to work together.

I think that there is no shame in checking out how other games solved the 'commander' problem or problems related to that.

We have Natural Selection (2), Planetside (2), Savage (2), Empires Mod, Nuclear Dawn... all games which involve chain of command in some way.

So maybe some of those already implemented mechanics that could help us with better communication and organisation.

Shit, sorry for wall of text.

If you made it trough all this, here is small cookie for you:

quiz1083outcome1.jpg

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Good idea Testman, however, there's a function in teamspeak which we can also use.

If we form squads of 5 people or so and have 1 squadleader of that squad, and have a couple of those squads we'll have less noise in the channel. The overall team commander can talk to all squad leaders using the 'whisper' command (he needs to set that to a hotkey) in teamspeak, then he can say people what to do and listen to the squad leaders

By using the whisper command in teamspeak you don't have to be in the same channel to hear eachother. That's how you filter a lot of the noise.

But that takes away a bit of the fun I think.. it's really organised.

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  • Totem Arts Staff

Can we have PUG subtopics? The PUG matches have expanded tremendously over the months, starting from 24 players to over 50. Now we have lots of ideas and thoughts simply from a competitive game once a week. We are always trying to improve the PUGs and even Renegade X itself form these matches.

Some subtopics examples:

PUG announcements: Announcing any PUG cancelations or changes

PUG Roster: List of the regular players that show or any volunteers to be commander

PUG analysis: Analysis of each PUG match

PUG improvements: Any feedback on improving the PUG, like improving communication

Ren X improvements: PUG matches really show what kind of game Ren X is. Things like map improvements or anything that improves Ren X as a whole.

This should keep things organize and neat, so we don't fill this thread up.

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We could try to structure the PUG almost like a tournament for a week.

1) Split into 4 randomly generated teams.

2) Both team sets conduct a best of 3, simultaneously

3) Winning teams do a best of 3, while the losing teams do a best of 3 simultaneously

This should help keep the games competitive, sanely sized, fun, and challenging. It also gives players even more to work towards.

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We could try to structure the PUG almost like a tournament for a week.

1) Split into 4 randomly generated teams.

2) Both team sets conduct a best of 3, simultaneously

3) Winning teams do a best of 3, while the losing teams do a best of 3 simultaneously

This should help keep the games competitive, sanely sized, fun, and challenging. It also gives players even more to work towards.

I wouldn't mind this, or just dividing off the more frequent community members into a stronger-level pug server, or even just having a large game again but with permissions set to where people don't hear each other and just the commanders, and speak goes only to commanders.

Either way, honestly, we were told changes would be announced early-ish this week so we would know what's different in next PUG. Either the change won't be that durastic, or the change won't require any work on the players themselves, or the changes probably already should have been announced by now.

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I think, since there is no reply here, that there won't be a PUG. Last week there was decided to skip it for one week. Although I will be playing for an hour or so tonight.

I am more concerned about the testing sessions, will at least have a look at Tomb tonight. Hope more people will test maps.

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It's actually doing the opposite.

There's lots we can do to help increase the size of the player-base. New features definitely help, but stuff like this (PUGs), community maps, introductory tutorials, etc help a lot. Plenty of people working behind the scenes to improve stuff too!

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Is RenX dying?

If so we need something news so people will return

I have the feeling it's exactly the opposite, with these patches, new maps upcoming (als thanks to you) the future of Ren-X looks (more) bright!

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Is RenX dying?

Its pretty stable atm with some mild growth over the last two months: http://steamcharts.com/app/13260#6m (>90% of that 'Unreal Development Kit' stats should be from renx).

What was happining on these huge growth months in these stats? Patches ?

Was thinking if there was a new video montage every 2-3 months that we could spread on STEAM and other places could help keep the flame growing :)

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