sparring incenvitves
 

sparring is what used to keep a decent amount of players online when there were no raids or events (which is 70-80% of our daily 24 hours), so bringing people back to spar would also help raiding activity and the overall playercount.

moving the spar complex next to unstick was good and now it's easier for people to get there.
the problem is that people still don't spar since they see no incentive since:
1. they get owned and don't want to "ruin their stats"
2. they see no point in sparring and don't realise that if they don't spar a little bit they'll suck forever
3. you get zero money for kills, waste a shitload of ammo and also have to pay for revs

doing something about this would be nice, i'm not going to suggest what to do or nothing is going to be done

Were there incentives in place when sparring was previously more popular? If not, there may simply be something discouraging people from participating and it may only be necessary to repair that aspect rather than coddling players.

before:
1. players would seek improving their skill rather than laming or trying to obtain better weapons
2. there was no economic reward for kills. now there is but not in the spar complex
3. there were no /sparstats so there weren't any stats to ruin since spars don't add to deaths on your profile

if i walk into a server i've never played on i obviously don't know HOW i can improve, so players are attracted to ULMS or BH PK cuz they get a random kill once in a while although it doesn't help them improve unlike sparring.
after days/weeks/months of ULMS and BH PK these new players will be very discouraged since they keep getting owned in 1v1s and will most likely quit since they havn't improved enough to compete with most players, although they gave up a lot of time PKing (in the wrong places)

i'm not a sparrer type of player but i dare anyone who actually PKs on era to tell me that sparring isn't the basis for all skills required in other PKing disciplines on era. it's necessary to become a decent PKer without having to spend 2k hours playing

What ever happened to bragging rights?

think about this: nobody ever goes to the spar complex but everyone joins TTS or 16-man spar for a worthless EC that 80-90% of the participants don't even have a chance to win
a small incentive for sparring would benefit era in all manners

With such a small community, it has been shown before (poorly) on the unofficial forums, that it is pretty simple and actually a matter of common sense to be able to list the most skilled players in order.

We know who is where, the spar and top player lists generally don't change outside of player inactivity. This is why it is so simple to pick 10 players and call a gang elite. Or why GangWars has become a strategic bout of pairing up players rather than randomized sparring.

Spars are either known victories, or absolute upsets, there's rarely an in between.

I actually agree with Tks logic, players are being brought up by clicking a warper and being instantly healed/allowed to lame people. They earn a random kill every now and then and believe they are playing properly. I've seen them actually revel in the 'ability' to kill a top player, when they magically appear in front of them with a full health bar and shoot them once, and die mere seconds later as we re-build our killstreaks.

Yet when the time comes for a real raid or gang event, where dying is significantly punished (out of action for a period of time, or removed completely), they have no chance. As shown when Myself and Cloyd, or Rainbow and I have achieved 2v4 victories in the past weeks events, by wide margins.

The incentive of sparring has always been to improve yourself and hone your skills. As stated, sparring is the most raw form and basis of all PK you will be doing on the server.

Overpowered weaponry, laming tactics, and 'insta-warp-for-kills' events have lessened the need for any skill to be present for players to believe they're advancing in the game. But then you see the same dozen top players win every event, spar, raid, or award... as they run around you in a circles while you make every excuse for why you died.

They don't join because they will win or even knowing they can learn to play better.

TTS: They join because there's a 50% chance they will be randomed onto Wil's team, and get a free EC. Half the players tend to leave after they get their free team rewards, I see it every time. It truly is a sight to get him to 10 health on my own life (150hp), then watch 8 other players fail to hit him a single time (800-1200hp).

16 man: Half the players who join either afk or ask for 'gun pls', they're clueless. I haven't seen a full 16 in a long time, they even offer double-ec for a full 16 people now a days.

Lol.

tl;dr
We shouldn't have to pay them to come die to us in the arena, they will aim for the incentives and not learn anything in the process. It is pretty difficult anyway to advance and learn anything with the current stats for guns, I actually have to downgrade my arsenal for sparring to get the same 'trying' feeling I used to get.

Back when I was training, even with .1 freeze being around, I had to step back and find a semi-auto gun (ended up with Sten, which has since been my favorite), to further punish my shots and strive to utilize them better. After thousands of spars with Rams, Raven, Slash, Ish, Anfo, Neo, Kaz, Wil, Koho... dozens of others. Making a private ranked spar in my home and training consistently many nights until 5am when the player count started rising again, I still can't get the effectiveness of those players who trained with uzis and handguns back when stats were balanced.

Skill is directly proportional to sparring/training, which is needed based on weaponry requiring skill.

Guns are lame, people don't have to try; sparring dies.

Hue, I blah'd so much in this post.

tl;dr2
The key to emphasizing sparring is to emphasize skill. And the only way to do that, is the make guns require it.

I have said it for quite a while now. The /sparstats reward system needs updated. Pretty sure Tim said he would work on getting a 2v2 spar in there as well. It would also be nice to see a classic spar room where AK, uzi and handguns are only allowed.

Apart from that there is nothing that can be done. It's pretty annoying for me and i'm sure it is for others as nobody really spars me because they don't really have a chance of winning. I'm not bragging, just saying that people don't spar because they don't want to lose. So it must have something to do with their stats or an ego problem as they can't be seen losing.

Who knows why they don't spar much... It won't harm updating it to see if it increases activity.

I agree with rogue as far as skill needs to be important for people to want to spar, but that's not what people find fun anymore. The game has shifted to the one click lamability that is raiding (BHPK rather) now and most people just don't get the same enjoyment from spar. I like to step in every now and then with my trusty pink ak and win/lose a few but I get frustrated with lag and laming and stop. Maybe I get frustrated easier than others, but whatever. It doesn't seem that there is an incentive to spar, so yes there needs to be some sort of update if we're gonna hope for a more skill centered playerbase in the future.

Remove all these OP guns they are releasing with ridiculous stats then we won't have laming in the spar. Nerf all guns and things would be a lot better. Then we would have another crying matter. You just can't win.

Honestly, era could have a future but with this current community it does not have a future.

What i've noticed lately (on the forums) is the voice of many gets things done. Exploit that. but...

You're not thinking of the 'pick up and play' aspect of Era anymore and the incentive for 'newer' players to get online and ultimately buy a subscription. I'm not justifying the ridiculous stats on some weapons which I don't doubt there is but if Era went back to 'strategic' based PKing than I don't doubt a lot of the 'strategic-less' players would be discouraged from partaking in Era.

Era was designed to follow this guideline; Join the community, Do a certain job or even all of the jobs to be able to pay for a decent weapon, join a gang or start pking and building a reputation for yourself.

In my personal opinion I think to be able to balance weapons properly you would have to delete half of them, if not more. There is what? 60+ weapons on Era? That all "NEED" to have separate/unique stats, It just won't happen. I personally think that is why other gun based games are so popular, there isn't 100 weapons to try to balance, they all have their weakness and strengths.

tltr; Delete half the guns, balance the remaining guns, make weapons cost a lot less, make era revolved around pking again.

Yes, 2vs2 spar is in the works. Just gotta find time to implement.

@rogue
yeah i actually forgot about the team EC bullshit, but even before it was implemented noobs would still join TTS (maybe not as many)

sparring doesn't have to be particularly fun. players MUST do it to improve though and there needs to be an incentive since, as of now, it's the only PKing activity which decreases your wealth and it's not the most enjoyable especially for noobs

i see how .05 freeze guns can be annoying in poorly designed gang bases but there's no doubt that they're harder to use effectively in most situations: holding D is retarded and any skilled played will own a D-holder since his speed and direction are fixed therefore he's easier to hit.
when i havn't been playing for a few weeks i use BAR as my primary weapon because it requires a lower rate of button clicking to be 100% effective therefore it's easier to use and can compete with any gun on the game.
if you're having trouble against noobs using .05 freeze guns you should consider changing your PKing approach and focus on close-range combat and circling in particular. when .1 freeze became minimum freeze era turned into a boring defensive game which limited the more skilled players since they couldn't press buttons at their maximum potential rate

I stopped sparring because of the high amounts of lag.
I used to hover around 70-80ms, and now that I'm around 180-220ms on a good day, It's not that much fun and doesn't make for a great experience in general.
Even if you're arguing that people shouldn't spar for fun, spars where both sparrers are above 200ms won't make you better at the game, just better at laming, since that's most people's main response to lag.
(And for good reason: It's easier and less frustrating than trying to compensate for the lag.)

Wanted to thread about the lag issue itself for a little while but I just saw this so:

I've noticed this more recently, and Fiber is completely correct.
The past 2-3 days I've been at unstick trying to gather some people to the spar arena. Most everyone who ends up there is over the 200 mark, which used to be unheard of.

Even my own ping is 140 at most times with random spikes of 200 at a usual interval of 5 minutes, while I constantly can maintain less than half that playing League of Legends on foreign servers (50 max on NA, 80 EU, and generally even <150 when I tried the Asia server... never receiving spikes even close to the +50% I get on Graal). Similar or even better (hosted maps on Wc3 give me like 10ms) performance on battle.net servers for various games.

This leads me to believe the heart of the issue is Graal itself.

Spars themselves seem to be extended in duration by large factors, the average used to last 30-40 seconds, now it takes over a minute or two to bring down these intense laggers using every lame tactic you can just to register your hits on them. This not only makes each individual spar reach bore-point, it extends the queue time making less people want to sit around and wait.

It is not only less enjoyable trying to lame the **** out of someone just to make them receive damage while you watch them catch 20 bullets-to-the-face and not get hurt. But it takes more time and ammo for the same kill/win stat you'd get before.

I suppose this contradicts my prior post. But these lame guns are the only thing we have to deal with the insane amounts of lag most of the player base has.

Not sure what's in worse shape right now, Era itself, or the server it's hosted on.
Combination of the two has lead me to not renew my subscription as of the other day, and play less each day as the same old annoyances rise.

the community has changed. back in my early teen years the game was so much more competitive. there was a hierarchy of skilled and respected players/gangs and everyone wanted to be accepted and noticed. I'm sure this concept still exists today but no where near on a scale as it was 10 years ago.

the reason why I started typing with better grammar on the internet was because I wanted the high end players to respect me. it's crazy how much of an influence the overall community had on other players. it's not the same anymore. no one wants to impress anyone. they just want to build their bank account and inventory up and get the lamest weapon so they can breeze through any sort of hostile contact.

sigh, the servers became so terrible that you americans no longer believe that lag helps you play era but penalises both players equally and just makes the game more defensive

i'm from Italy and my ping is 10-20ms, on era though it's 230-300 as of now..i remember when it used to have 120-180 on era and people kept complaining about my lag and saying stuff like it was the only skill i had

Isn't the main source of lag on Era nowadays the DDoS protection?
I guess 200 ms is better than 1800ms, but still...

Same as always. Douchebags ruin the game for everyone.

But yeah, less lag would be the best incentive to spar for me.

New Era incentives!

Take 5 steps on the Gmap get $5!

Take 20 shots from a weapon get free box of ammo!

Type 50 letters get $400!

Really guys...really...you think this is the way to fix Era...

How about delete the surplus of guns you have go back to 10 guns MAX, and work from there. The economy on Era holds on too tight to the other aspect of the game, something that never used to be there while Era was successful. Make everything accessible in a reasonable amount of time and you will have new players and constant competition.

I understand you're being sarcastic, but what was the underlying message of your post? That we give rewards for doing trivial things?

I haven't seen anyone advocating giving incentives for stuff like that. It always has to do with PKing of some sort.

Point being that the playerbase has became so accustomed to some type of economical reward for every single thing you do in the game. Era's "fun" on the server is determined by how well you play it's economy..no one can just pick it up and play it and be decent you have to invest hours and hours to be on par with the lowest tier of players. I just feel this has been a poor direction for Era to move in and this addition only further reinforces going that way.

this x1000

back when daz was the manager I tried suggesting that we take ourselves away from being so heavily involved with the economy and try to make more of an arcade style of game play. you could still build your inventory and collect items but the core of era's game play is pking and should be treated as such.

the server needs some serious change. people are losing interest. seems like the only players are ones that play out of nostalgia or because they are rich and feel like they don't want to abandon the game. new players straggle in every so often and they are most likely people who found out about graal from the iphone servers and decided to give the pc version a try.

era has potential to be fun again. the concept of graal/era is awesome. you have a little character you can customize and you can run around and kill people. but the game play sucks and isn't on par with other games in the market. from a new player's perspective, why spend so much time trying to make money to buy a gun that won't even put you near an even playing field with other players? nobody is going to buy into this that way. unless you have been playing this game for years you won't have any chance in this game.

I don't really see how giving players an incentive to spar is counterproductive to what you're suggesting. Giving people rewards for actually playing the game gives them less of a reason to mine for 1000 hours when they can just PK for money.

It's essentially how most games do progression these days. CoD gives you experience for killing people, which unlocks things. LoL gives you IP for playing games, which lets you unlock champions, Etc. That's essentially what you have to do to get away from people needing to work for 1000 hours to buy a decent gun to be competitive. What other way is there short of just giving people free stuff for doing nothing?

The similarity between the examples I gave is that they're easy to pick up because the difference between what the top-end players have and what the bottom-end players have isn't huge or game changing.
In CoD, the gun you start with is competitive with the gun you unlock at max level. In LoL, the champions that cost 450 or 1350 IP are balanced with the champions that cost 6300 IP.
It has nothing to do with incentives.

I agree that Era could and should be easier to pick up, but I think you're in the wrong thread.

Hey everyone who is arguing for incentives to spar, here's a good one:
P1: You suck at sparring and pking.
P2: To suck at sparring and pking is a bad thing on era.
P3: You don't want to harbor anything that is a bad thing on era.
P4: To avoid sucking at sparring and pking on era, you must spar and pk more.
P5: Avoiding sucking at sparring will ensure that you don't harbor one thing, sucking at sparring and pking, that is a bad thing on era.
Conclusion and incentive: Spar so that you can no longer suck at sparring, then apply that non-suckiness you gained from sparring to PKing.

Yeah, but the problem with that is that's harder than idling at unstick.

And as we all know, the only people lazier than staff are players.

(obviously /sarcasm)

bumping old topic, but I noticed that sparring activity hasn't really increased since the change (it has increased though). but one thing that has been a factor throughout the whole thing is venom_fish though. I noticed that a lot of people start sparring when he is in the complex.

game recognizes game BRO

who needs to spar when its not about who is the best pker its about who has the most money.

booyah

Sometimes I like to just spend an entire afternoon rolling around in all my money.

People like to spar William because they want to prove something, they want to prove they are an up-coming player who will one day be among the best.

In all honesty the only thing that will boost PK activity over all, gang raiding, sparing etc is making everyone on the same level/par. (Frankies Load-out system)

frankies' system is the trouphe