What PB2 was lacking and PB3 must have to succeed

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What PB2 was lacking and PB3 must have to succeed

Postby Assassino Jack Black » 2 January 2021, 15:57

PB2 has become an awesome game with a huge replay value provided by the infinite possibilities of custom maps created by the community, or better, PB2 has become not a game, but an awesome plataform for games over the years, where it's own community creativity may flourish, this along with the accessibility granted by the non-profit policy of the creator (Eric Gurt) are what made (and still makes) this game so special. But when comparing to other games i loved, PB2 was always lacking in some key aspects which kept me from getting actually hooked, and feeling motivated to invest more time in the game.

As i said, the infinite possibilities given by the ALE (Advanced Level Editor) motivate me to play and create unique maps as i see the huge potential it has as a plataform for games, the big problemn is i forsee much of this potential being wasted as a lot of the game gems and masterpieces, only really reach their potential when you have a close to full match of players who have any idea of what they are doing, and PB2 at it's current state cannot provide that for most of the time ('PB2' Discord Servers also can't right now). This kills my motivation to keep playing and creating maps, and limits PB2 to a merely casual game which is much much less than what it can really be with the ALE.

A big portion of this problemn, i believe, would be naturally fixed by a substantial increase of the player count possibly brought by a future PB3 release (i also believe an effort of the community to advertise the game and of the developer to bring the game to plataforms such as steam would help to make this happen), but i will give attention to 2 aspects which could be improved independently of the player count, and that would also help to maintain the players interested for a longer time.

1. Social Aspect
When playing any game, specially cooperative/competitive ones, interacting with friends and other players can make the experience much better and deeper, be it discussing strategies, aspects of the game or just having a good time. It also makes it much easier to fill lobbies with reliable players, and therefore appreciate more complex maps. The PB2 in game chat helps a little to bring this kind of experience, but in a very handicapped way.

How it could be Improved?

a) Friends/Invite System
PB2 friends system always seemed merely cosmetical instead of functional, besides just seeing who is online, players should be able to easily see which friend is playing which match, be able to easily invite, be invited and join friend's sessions, and this without having to refresh the page.

b) Communication - Voice chat
PB3 should support in-game voice chat and the use of headsets as it is a much superior way of communicating with friends and teammates over the normal typing chat, it needs to be easily accessible so anyone can plug in a headset (or use laptop's built in microphone) to talk in a match, mute others etc. Accessibility is key, having to use secondary software as skype or discord should not be the case.

2. Grinding Aspect
Having long terms goals that require lots of effort to achieve, or are simply challenging, and being able to show off these achievements to your friends and other players is a nice way to encourage players to invest more time into the game and get actually hooked by it. We've had a sip of it with PB2's new Levelling System and with experiences as the Star Defender secret skin you earn by completing Eric Gurt's map, also with things as winner's lists in saw/traps maps provided by the custom map developers themselves, i think these kind of gimmicks should be expanded in PB3. Things as simple as winner's lists by themselves made me invest much more time learning and playing certain maps just in hope of completing them and being a part of the list, i can only dream how wholesome it would be to cooperate with friends while voice-chatting to create strategies to be on top of leaderboards of some very awesome and complex maps...

How it could be Improved?

a) Competitive play (Approved Maps)
We've already had great grinding incetives in this area all over PB2 lifecycle with the Ranking system and the feature of having your achievements immortalized in our player's profile page (maybe having something more visual to know someone reached legend of PB2 status in-game would be nice, like the player nickname apperaing in a different colour). The only problemns in this area were the connection issue, that discourages (or straight out exclude) lots of players like me from that kind of competition, and the decline of player base that makes approved matches be kinda empty nowaydays. However i believe these 2 problemns will be naturally fixed as PB3 will probaly bring more players, and having more players would also allow Eric to get more servers and tackle the connection issue, so i won't extend over that.

b) Rewards (Campaign and Custom maps)
For the Campaign and it's related achievements i think just like the star defender map, special rewards like secret skins should be given, when you complete the campaign, complete some harder achievements, one for when you complete all the achievements, always thoguht that kind of incentive was lacking to encourage people to actually care about the 'achievements' list of PB2.

For custom maps, maybe giving the map makers more control over XP rewards for achieveing certain things in the map, over statistics that can be collected over multiple games about who played the map to be able to make more in depth leaderboards, give special rewards that are permanent in the map for specific players and not only for one match. That already exists in PB2 and is possible but very complicated to do (you have to use Web API related triggers i believe, or do it manually by asking players to DM you with pictures, video, etc), so maybe make it more accessible for map makers so they can make much more than just winner lists... that may be too much trouble to implement, so i guess we may just have to learn to use the Web API thingy better.

One last and more personal wish as a map maker, is to make voting for maps more accessible as loads of players who could vote in our maps just can't, because of not really wanting to play approved maps to get the necessary kills to vote, even if they are far from being 'new players'. That would encourage map makers a little bit more, as it is very frustrating to see loads of people enjoying your map and they can't rate it because half of them are guests, the other half doesn't play approved matches, and it ends up being very rare to even get players which can rate your map. I have a topic in this forum dedicated solely to this specific issue (TL DR: use the levelling system as an alternative to allow players to vote, instead of only kills in approved maps).

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Re: What PB2 was lacking and PB3 must have to succeed

Postby broforce1 » 17 January 2021, 12:47

i just want to give a small hint that not everyone can read a topic thread like this with decent grammar cuz, not all people does use good grammar to read such criticism like that lmao

let me reply to ur ideas first before i start talking about my opinion.
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1. Social Aspect


well PB2 is not like before with society in MP, so basically the game became worse in society these days because u know in 2019 newgens just showed up which really ruins everything and suck on greetings with players politely, so if eric released PB3 Mp, it will have the same shit and good as well if the same people would play, but don't really worry since that it's going to be a new game this nowaday, also it's really hard to approve this since that dealing with something like that is really hard, the community would be better for sure since PB3 is quite modern.


Friends/Invite System

i a bit like this idea but, most of the average friends u have are actually offline, in PB2 u can find ur friend pretty ez, there might be better mechanics for PB3 if it's gonna have a new website.

Communication - Voice chat

i wished that idea to be in PB3 since that PB2 cant support mics, because using discord as voice chat might lag my PC while i'm also loading the game, it would be nicer to use PB3 mics instead of opening discord each time, but i'm a bit afraid of having problems in voice chat since that there will be annoying people will make earrape as well, but it could be solved by muting them.

2. Grinding Aspect


not sure if we really need something like that because we need more support for players who ragequit, most of the players these days in MP doesnt really care to be in a winner list, u can really make something like that In ALE

a) Competitive play (Approved Maps)


yes that idea seems to be suggested a lot and i think there would be better than this in PB3, basically, there are roles and status that can be given for players on their status, if they have done something unique then they will get some role, but if everyone will get achievements then it would be boring and ez to get.
b) Rewards (Campaign and Custom maps) isnt that PB2 XP and other funny features enough?


btw, there should be limits for those types of ideas, all that i got that those ideas are belongs to encourage any new player to play the game more often but u see that the game would be to wobbly to have such good ideas, PB2 already had these features that encourage the player, i think i agree that those ideas might make the game in pb3 much entertaining and funnier to play, but to be fair, PB3 is just a game and operating ideas like this would be hard at some point because if those ideas exist then some ideas that might be needed from PB2 to PB3 like being one of the top players or online players or top map makers of PB2, most of this stuff would get vanished and I dont think it will have a point, and it might be a bit off to the game and it's own features according to PB2.

also i wanted to say that PB2 didint really lacked so much, the game features was a bit successful and the game did really succeed with those features (except MP), im sure PB3 will be even better and it will succeed with so many things, so the only thing that PB2 was lacking was the MP lag and we are sure that PB3 will fix this and it will succeed at this point (even without those features that u have made).

in my opinion, PB3 is just a game like PB2 but with more features and a better engine, eric just decided to remake PB2, and he didnt really decided yet to have a bigger game with all of this, the game is not released yet to start talking about those ideas because those ideas require a specialized website for PB3, i still not really sure if eric really decided about making a website that can really support these ideas.

Eric would see about that eventually and all of these ideas are really hard to operate for PB3 website, however, i still liked those ideas and i encourage it despite it has some negativities toward PB3 features, maybe we can talk about that later as soon as PB3 gets done.
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Re: What PB2 was lacking and PB3 must have to succeed

Postby Phant0mB0nnie » 17 January 2021, 16:02

I think these are some good ideas.
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Re: What PB2 was lacking and PB3 must have to succeed

Postby Ayano » 18 January 2021, 14:19

So I'll give my opinions and views about these.
Assassino Jack Black wrote:a) Friends/Invite System
PB2 friends system always seemed merely cosmetical instead of functional, besides just seeing who is online, players should be able to easily see which friend is playing which match, be able to easily invite, be invited and join friend's sessions, and this without having to refresh the page.

Yeah I do wish we were able to tell if a friend is in a specific match, and being able to invite players to a lobby would also really be nice.

Assassino Jack Black wrote:b) Communication - Voice chat
PB3 should support in-game voice chat and the use of headsets as it is a much superior way of communicating with friends and teammates over the normal typing chat, it needs to be easily accessible so anyone can plug in a headset (or use laptop's built in microphone) to talk in a match, mute others etc. Accessibility is key, having to use secondary software as skype or discord should not be the case.

I'd still personally use discord to chat and play with friends. I've played some games with Voice chat and sometimes I just feel alienated from the crowd since I do not speak nor understand their language. I know this is more of like quality of life improvement ingame in terms of communication but I just can't help feel alienated when it does happen.
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Assassino Jack Black wrote:a) Competitive play (Approved Maps)
We've already had great grinding incetives in this area all over PB2 lifecycle with the Ranking system and the feature of having your achievements immortalized in our player's profile page (maybe having something more visual to know someone reached legend of PB2 status in-game would be nice, like the player nickname apperaing in a different colour). The only problemns in this area were the connection issue, that discourages (or straight out exclude) lots of players like me from that kind of competition, and the decline of player base that makes approved matches be kinda empty nowaydays. However i believe these 2 problemns will be naturally fixed as PB3 will probaly bring more players, and having more players would also allow Eric to get more servers and tackle the connection issue, so i won't extend over that.

PB 2 was already competitve, back in the early years people were either earning or farming their kills to be in the Top 100 Global Leaderboard, there is also a leaderboard for x in the Players page of the site. I used to be in the top 40 during the early years of the game, Ping wasn't a problem for me be it my own ping or my enemies' ping. I don't mind playing with or against someone with high ping as long as it was a fun match. Ever since Ping limits were introduced people started being toxic over the people with high ping regardless if they played well or not. Plazma League exists as the competitive side of PB 2 which occurred after PB2's prime years. I was actually supposed to participate in the very first Plazma League while in GeNo but I had irl priorities and I did not really match up with the match schedules since I am from Asia. Personally overtime the top 100 or the legends or pros or [slap anything to make oneself feel good] just became some title without that much meaning to me anymore, I did not even bother hitting the leaderboards once more since I had no reason to. I did not bother to join the other Plazma League events since the Competitive side of PB 2 isn't your wholesome or cringe community like how you see in discord, Imo its a pretty toxic environment people will seriously talk shit nonstop. Everytime a new seaon starts in Plazma League you will just see and hear the same people 90% of the time. Idk anything about that PL drama whatever, never cared and probably never will
Assassino Jack Black wrote:b) Rewards (Campaign and Custom maps)
For the Campaign and it's related achievements i think just like the star defender map, special rewards like secret skins should be given, when you complete the campaign, complete some harder achievements, one for when you complete all the achievements, always thoguht that kind of incentive was lacking to encourage people to actually care about the 'achievements' list of PB2.

Having rewards from community/official events would be really nice, it may also help with the friendlier competitive side of the game. Having access to unique skins only obtainable via events/achievements for actual flex purposes.
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