Twin Peaks:Forever
A plan to give people a reason to log in, unspec, stay for the whole game, and come back next week. The direction, the reasoning behind it, and example numbers for us to tune together.
Where we are
TP Tuesday used to fill an arena with 50 to 60 players from 7 PM to 1 AM. Today, organized CTF is the only CTF being played. Pub has been close to empty for about a year and a half, and the pub nights we started hosting this month are building from zero.
The cause is simple. Pub has run in sandbox mode: zero experience, unlimited cash, nothing saved. When nothing can be earned, nothing can be lost, and there's no reason to come back tomorrow.
Most of the machinery to fix that already exists in the zone. Experience, ranks, bounties and the CTFX classes are all built. They were never switched on for pub in a way that mattered.
Eight questions behind every change
Every idea here has to move a player on at least one of these. If it doesn't, it isn't a priority yet.
Why log in tonight?
What's waiting for me?A scheduled night with a crowd, a multiplier running, and progress that's still mine from last time.
Why unspec?
Why play instead of watch?Because playing earns experience, cash and rank, and spectating earns nothing. The arena calls out who's leading, and I want my name in that list.
Why stay all game?
Even a two-hour one?Rewards scale with how much of the match I played, paychecks land during long games, and the win bonus is shared by whoever was there.
Why come back?
What's unfinished?The next rank, the next unlock, a bounty to win back, a leaderboard spot to defend, a rivalry from last night.
What do I get?
The payoffA name people know, gear I earned, a rank I can point to, and a crowd to play with. Recognition, mastery, ownership and belonging.
Why would anyone watch?
Spectators become playersA live MVP podium, bounty callouts and stat races make a pub game readable from spec. A readable game pulls people off the bench.
Who is it for?
In orderNow: returning vets and old pub players. Next: brand-new players, who need a populated arena before anything else helps them.
How do new players get in?
The first ten minutesTips on login, a training area in the dropship, macros out of the box, and Discord one click away.
And the one that governs the rest: will it still be capture the flag?
Yes. Let people play the way they want, and pay the most for the things that win flags. That single rule shapes everything below.
The rule above every other rule
It's capture the flag.
It's a team game.
A game ends one way: one team holds all five flags, untouched, for 90 consecutive seconds. Kills, K/D, heals, turrets, minerals and bounties don't end games. They're real reasons people play, so we reward them. The biggest payouts always sit closest to the flag.
Nobody gets forced into a role. Team play just pays better. On a team of 10 to 15, one to three players doing their own thing drag everyone down, and the reward system should let the team feel that so teammates push them to help.
Composition matters. Classes and loadouts that don't fit together lose games. The game should teach that through what it pays, without lecturing anyone.
Who we're building for
Game designers have sorted players by what drives them for decades; Richard Bartle's player types are the classic version. Twin Peaks has its own cast, and each one needs something to chase.
The Competitor
Wants to win, and wants people to know it.
WHAT PUB GIVES THEMThe MVP podium, stat-leader callouts, bounty announcements, rank, and a fresh Top 100 to climb.
The Anchor
The medic, engineer or SL doing the work that never shows on a kill feed.
WHAT PUB GIVES THEMMVP scored on contribution, pay for heals, repairs and mining, and a bonus for filling a role the team is missing.
The Grinder
Wants a long goal and visible progress toward it.
WHAT PUB GIVES THEMRanks, class unlocks, tiered weapons, and an economy where cash is worth managing.
The Regular
Shows up for the people as much as the game.
WHAT PUB GIVES THEMTP Tuesday, Pub Hours, Sunday Muster, a full arena, private teams with friends, and Discord one click away.
The Returning Vet
Knows the game cold. Needs a reason to log in on a night with no league match.
WHAT PUB GIVES THEMA clean wipe where everyone starts equal, a Legacy board that honors the old one, and a race back to the top.
The New Player
Doesn't know how to open the store, and might leave before they figure it out.
WHAT PUB GIVES THEMTips on login, Recruit Training in the dropship, starter macros, and eventually bots and a help bot.
The loop that brings people back
Games that keep players for years run on a loop: play, earn, get recognized, unlock, return. If one step pays nothing, people drop out at that step.
Sandbox pub breaks this loop at the first step. With unlimited cash and no saved progress, earning means nothing, so recognition and unlocks mean nothing, so there's no reason to come back.
Switching pub to real progression fixes the middle of the loop almost for free. Scheduled nights and Discord fix the front and back of it.
It has to fit our reality. Games can last five minutes or two hours, and someone who plays forty minutes of a stalemate and logs off should still walk away with something.
What works at what arena size
Some systems only come alive in a busy arena. We start with the ones that work at 8 players. Thresholds are rough.
Saved progress, ranks, full sellback, cheap basic ammo, rank-up callouts, Discord links, multiplier nights.
MVP podium, missing-role bonus, class caps, paychecks, private teams.
Contagious bounty, stat-leader races, loot economy.
Team cap, the queue with visible positions, and Public 2 opening at 45.
Rewards scale up with arena size, so two players trading wins can't farm the Top 100.
The plan, system by system
Ten groups of changes. Each says what it is and which phase it lands in. Most of Phase 1 is switching on and tuning things that already exist in the zone.
AStakes & progression
A fresh start is a race. A stale board is a wall.
Public TP leaves sandbox mode P1
Cash, experience and rank save to the alias. League, OvD, mixes and private arenas stay sandbox and don't save, so competitive play is untouched.
Full wipe at launch P1
Top 100, lifetime stats and experience reset. Everyone starts from zero on the same night. The current board is kept as a Legacy board, so the wipe reads as a new season rather than a deletion.
Ranks come back P1
The zone's existing rank ladder (Trooper and up) is switched on. Every promotion plays the promotion callout and is announced to the arena.
Classes unlock with experience P2
Four starting classes, then one new class at each threshold. Tested with vets first. See the ladder and calculator below.
Tiered weapons P2
Every class starts with a workable, cheaper loadout that can compete. Upgrades cost cash. Troll weapons (PC cannon, Particle Accelerator, RR) also need experience.
Changing class never costs you money P1
Switching class clears your gear today. It should auto-sell everything at full value instead, so trying a new role is free.
Infantry
Medic
SL
Engineer
The last three come from CTFX, which needed around 100 players to run well. We take the classes, not the format, and balance them for Twin Peaks. *BioChem Trooper is a working name. All thresholds are examples.
How long would it take you?
EXAMPLE MODEL · NUMBERS FOR DISCUSSION ONLYA lone fragger earns less per hour than a balanced player by design. Kills away from the flags pay the least.
Example experience values
| Action | XP |
|---|---|
| Each minute in the match | 2 |
| Flag capture | 25 |
| Kill near a flag (yours or theirs) | 6 |
| Kill anywhere else | 3 |
| Heal or repair a teammate | 1 each |
| Minerals mined and used by a teammate | 4 |
| Turret built that gets a kill | 5 |
| Win, per minute you played | +2 |
Multiplied by arena size (players ÷ 20, from 0.4× to 1.5×) and any event multiplier.
Example cash model
| Item | Value |
|---|---|
| New alias starting cash | $10,000 |
| Each minute in the match | $60 |
| Flag capture | $1,000 |
| Kill near a flag / elsewhere | $250 / $120 |
| Heal, repair, mineral handoff | $40 each |
| Win, per minute you played | +$60 |
| Bounty bonus at 30k | up to 2× |
| Titan Arms / Kuchler / Maklov AR | $5k / $15k / $30k |
Everything sells back at full value. Basic ammo stays cheap enough that nobody runs dry.
BEarning & multiplier nights
Pay for the time people give the game, and pay most for winning it.
Rewards follow your share of the game P1
The game already tracks play seconds. Experience and cash scale with the percentage of the match you were in, plus performance, plus a win bonus for the team that holds.
Paychecks during long games P1
No time limit, and milking stays a legitimate strategy. Everyone in the arena gets paid on an interval (about every 15 minutes) for what they did, so a two-hour game still pays.
Bigger arenas pay more P1
Rewards scale with how many players are in the game, so a 1v1 can't troll the Top 100.
Three standing multiplier windows P1
TP Tuesday for the main event, Pub Hours to bring Europe back, and Sunday Muster to warm the zone up before league matches.
The week at a glance
Pub Hours is 4–10 PM in the UK and 5–11 PM in central Europe: after-work hours over there, and a nod to the other kind of pub.
CRecognition
People will work hard to hear their name called. Others will work just as hard to knock them off the list.
Live MVP podium P1
1st, 2nd and 3rd MVP in the top right during the game and on the breakdown, scored on contribution to winning, not raw kills.
Stat-leader callouts P1
Periodic arena messages naming the leaders in flag captures, MVPs, healing, minerals mined, kills, turret damage, and the top three bounties. The ticker in the bottom left of this page shows the idea.
Promotions, streaks and bounty milestones P1
Rank-ups, bounty thresholds and kill streaks get announced. The whole arena sees who's climbing and who's worth hunting.
A Legacy board P1
The pre-wipe Top 100 stays visible as history. Nobody's past is erased.
DTeam play & class caps
Make the team way the profitable way, without forcing anyone into it.
Objective-zone bonus P2
Kills, heals, repairs and damage near a flag pay more than the same action out in a field. Battlefield uses the same idea around its objectives.
Shared win bonus P1
Everyone on the winning team shares a bonus weighted by time played. Your payout depends on the team, so the team cares what you're doing.
Missing-role bonus P2
A team needs at least one medic, one engineer and one SL to compete. If one is missing, the next player to take that class earns a bonus. Overwatch pays players for filling roles its queue is short on.
Pay the supply chain P2
Engineers mine tsolvy that medics turn into heals, tox that becomes turrets, and pandora's element that becomes sterons. Each handoff pays the engineer who made it possible.
Class caps that scale with team size
| Class | Cap | Slots |
|---|
Infiltrators are capped at 2 at any size. Medic, engineer and SL never drop below 1. Everything else scales with team size from the 15-player numbers. Infantry is never capped: we need more quality infantry.
A built-out D6. Every one of those turrets exists because an engineer went and mined tox. Today that work never shows up on a scoreboard. Under this plan it pays, and it counts toward MVP.
EArenas, queues & private teams
Nobody should sit in a queue with no idea when they'll play.
Team cap of 15, and the queue comes back P1
Players waiting to unspec see their position in line. Anyone idle in the dropship for 30 seconds gets specced so they don't hold a slot.
Public 1, Public 2, Public 3 P1
Arenas go back to the old names. When Public 1 reaches 45 (two full teams plus a full bench), new arrivals land in Public 2. Anyone can stay there or move back into the Public 1 queue at any time.
Private teams, CTFX style P2
Up to three private teams of 2 to 6 players per game, first come, first served. They pick their own composition with no class caps, earn at the same rate, and can win the game outright.
Solo private teams P2
Unlimited one-person private teams. Play however you want, as long as it isn't at your own team's expense.
Public 1
→
new players
land here
Public 2
Stay, or rejoin the Public 1 queue whenever you like.
FEconomy & loot
Gamers understand loot. A kill should be a payday and a decision: use it or sell it.
Everything sells back at full value P1
No penalty for changing your mind or your loadout. Cash stays a resource you manage, never a tax on trying things.
Cheap basics, premium specialty ammo P1
Shotgun, pistol, rifle and MG ammo, bullet mines, reps, rep charges and standard grenades are always affordable. RGs, rockets, tranqs, RR ammo, AP, plasma, grapeshot and EMP mines, and heavy and light HE are the premium tier.
Loot drops on death, scaled by bounty P3
Like USL and EOL, players drop ammo when killed. Higher bounty, bigger drop. Low bounty, small drop, so infils and anyone who dies often by design aren't punished, and alt-farming pays little.
Sell loot, carry more of it P3
Disposables sell at the store at full value. A loot bag adds about 5% carry weight for disposables, so picking up loot doesn't leave you overweight and dead.
GBounty & the electron beamer
A big bounty should be both an honor and a target.
30k should mean something P2
The number in brackets next to every name tops out at 30,000. It should be harder to reach, with cash and experience multipliers that grow the longer it's held, and arena messages at milestones and streaks.
Contagious bounties P2
Borrowed from CTFX: fighting alongside or defending a bounty raises your own. Whoever takes a bounty down collects a bigger share of it automatically.
Beamer by class P2
SL, Sergeant and Infil beamers stay as they are. The engineer beamer reaches 75% as far with 2 bounces at 75% drain. The medic beamer reaches 50% with 1 bounce at 50% drain. BioChem and Captain carry none.
HVoice callouts
Small quality-of-life wins that already exist in the client. Click any of them.
IGetting in the door
Every new player who leaves in their first ten minutes is a player we never get back.
Tip of the Day, on by default P1
For new accounts and aliases: open the store, unspec, settings and keybinds, mouse vs keyboard, default movement and strafe keys, change arenas, ?help.
The end-of-game break becomes airtime P1
Extend the post-game timer to 30–60 seconds and run "commercials": join Discord, visit the league sites, ?helpme, ?helpmacros, download the macro pack.
Discord everywhere P1
Links to the CTF and Free Infantry Discords in the menus and help windows, a QR code in the dropship, and pointers to the class guide channels.
Macros in the install P3
A labeled base macro pack ships with the game or downloads straight into the Infantry folder.
An in-game help bot P3
A bot that answers questions by private message, trained on Infantry and CTF basics, building on the chat access Soup is already working on.
Bots for quiet hours P3
Already in development. They fill low-population hours and power the training area below.
JRecruit Training in the dropship
A training area inside Twin Peaks, so we never split the population into a separate tutorial zone.
- New aliases spawn as an Infantry Cadet with a rifle, shotgun, and unlimited ammo, grenades, energizers and reps, and can't leave the dropship.
- NPC briefing stations cover CTF, keybinds and movement, the store and class selection, then the practical course.
- Combat lanes against bots: still and unarmed, moving and unarmed, moving and shooting. Each lane opens when you've earned its experience.
- Turret lane with cover and physics boxes: grenades, explosives, RGs and repping.
- Final exam: beat a hostile bot and turret together. The last NPC sends you back into the dropship to pick your first class.
- Faction-themed dropships: Titan and Collective get different lockers, armory and art.
It's on by default for new aliases, skippable at any time, and replayable. For someone who's played before it takes about 30 seconds.
No teleports or summons, and the floor at the exit portals can block the Cadet class.
Ideally they don't count toward team size. If the server can't ignore them, that's a dev question for Axidus.
Ideally the client opens class selection automatically. If not, the last NPC says "Press F11 to choose your class and take the battlefield."
The world around the game
League of Legends never needed its lore to change a single mechanic. It gave players a reason to care about the champions between games. Twin Peaks can have the same thing. This is long-term work, and here is a taste of it.
Twin Peaks Formation
Two flat-topped summits and the richest co-deposit of titanium oxide and tsolvy on the planet. Between them sits a mining town built for nine thousand workers, evacuated in eleven days and still running: the streetlights still come on.
The western peak is Erzberg. The eastern peak has two names, and which one you use tells everyone which side you're on.
Thirty years ago, a Collective officer destroyed the extraction program on this mountain and disappeared. Today, Siegfried Steiner II leads the Titan Militia back to the place he burned.
Stake your claim. Control Twin Peaks. Ensure your survival.
Carried by everyone on both sides because it works.
Collective prestige. Hard to find parts for.
Sits on top of tsolvy. Not all its blood is from weapons.
The name nobody trusts and everybody wears.
Built from scrap in exile. Badly, but armed.
An in-game codex P4
Store items, factions and places carry a line of history: the Maklov in your hand has a story.
Voiced NPCs in Recruit Training P4
Faction briefings that make finishing training feel urgent: your team needs you on the field.
Serialized stories on Discord P4
Alternating Titan and Collective chapters, with nods to real squads and players.
Seasonal promo art and trailers P4
Cinematic key art like the image at the top of this page, for league seasons and pub events.
Goal first, details last
We lock the top of this structure before we argue about the bottom. Each level gets agreed before the next one opens up.
Overarching goal
One sentence. What does success look like?
Project objectives
The handful of things that have to be true to reach the goal.
Phase objectives
What each phase has to accomplish, in order.
Details
Numbers, balance, prices. These come last.
Rebuild a public Twin Peaks population that shows up on its own, night after night.
Draft wording. If you'd write it differently, say so. This is the first thing we agree on.
Give pub real stakes
Pay most for the team play that wins flags
Put players' names in lights
Bring people in and connect them to the community
Make the game learnable, and worth caring about
Phase 1
~2 weeksVets and old pub players have a reason to play a full night and come back next week. Launches with a TP Tuesday.
- Leave sandbox; wipe with Legacy board
- Ranks and promotion callouts
- Rewards by play time, win bonus, arena size
- Paychecks in long games
- MVP podium and stat callouts
- Full sellback, cheap basic ammo
- Team cap, queue, class caps, Public 1/2
- Tips, Discord links, end-game airtime
- TP Tuesday, Pub Hours, Sunday Muster
Phase 2
after launchProve progression and team-play rewards work with players who know the game, before new players see them.
- Class unlocks, tested with vets
- Tiered weapons
- Objective-zone and missing-role bonuses
- Supply-chain pay
- Bounty rework, contagious bounty
- Private teams
- Beamer changes
Phase 3
longer buildA brand-new player can log in, learn the game, find a crowd, and stick around.
- Recruit Training and bots
- Loot drops and loot bag
- Sergeant, BioChem, Captain
- Default macro pack
- In-game help bot
Phase 4
ongoingGive Twin Peaks a world players care about in and out of the game.
- Lore codex for items and places
- Voiced training NPCs
- Serialized faction stories
- Seasonal key art and trailers
How we'll know it's working
Targets to be set by the committee. We track the same four things every week.
Blind spots and open questions
These are the ones I've found. Your job is to find the ones I haven't.
Class locks hit vets hardest
Vets are who we need first, and locks add friction exactly for them.
MITIGATIONLocks wait for Phase 2 and get tested with vets. A short fast lane is on the table.
An empty arena makes everything worse
A new player alone in pub with locked classes leaves in five minutes.
MITIGATIONPopulation first: scheduled nights, then new-player work.
The rich get richer
Contagious bounty plus loot can let a strong group snowball over newer players.
MITIGATIONBounty-scaled drops set a floor. We need a ceiling too.
15 aliases per account
Progress is per alias, so alt-farming is easy, and vets with many aliases redo unlocks on each one.
MITIGATIONFresh aliases drop almost nothing. Decide on multi-alias vets before Phase 2.
Private teams and the queue
If a private solo team skips the queue, a full Public 1 can be bypassed.
MITIGATIONPrivate players wait in the same queue and count toward 45, unless the committee decides otherwise.
Dev time is finite
Everything we ask for competes with league and site work.
MITIGATIONPhase 1 is mostly settings and announcements on purpose.
Open questions for the committee
- How much of a grind should this be?I lean toward more grind. Is roughly five months to Captain at 8 hours a week right?
- What is each action worth?A win, a capture, a defense, a heal, a mineral handoff, a turret kill.
- Are the unlock thresholds and class order right?
- How much cash does a new alias start with?
- Does loot come out of the dead player's inventory, or spawn free?
- How fast can a good player hit 30k today, and how fast should they?
- Do private-team players count toward 45, and do they wait in the queue?
- Do vets get a fast lane?None, a short launch window, or based on league history?
- Do ranks carry a perk, or are they bragging rights?
- What do we call the BioChem Trooper?
What I need from you
I bring the vision and the systems. The devs bring the skills to build it. This committee pressure-tests both before we commit anyone's time.
- 1
What's missing?
What did this plan not think of?
- 2
What are your hard no's?
And the reason behind each one.
- 3
What blind spots do we have?
Where will this break, get abused, or backfire?
- Think critically, and bring an alternative. We can find a million reasons to say no. A no with a reason and a better option moves us forward.
- Yes-men don't help either. If something looks wrong, say it now, while it's cheap to change.
- No balance debates yet. Whether the Kamenev battle rifle's kinetic damage drops 0.25% doesn't matter until we know how we get people logging in.
- Pet projects go in the parking lot. Good ideas included. We come back to them when their phase opens.
Committee questionnaire
Starting numbers
Placeholders so the ideas above are concrete. None of these are up for debate until the goal and objectives are locked.
Tiered assault rifles (example)
| Weapon | Price | Damage vs Maklov |
|---|---|---|
| Titan Arms AR (starter) | $5,000 | 90% |
| Kuchler AR | $15,000 | 95% |
| Maklov AR | $30,000 | 100% |
Rifle grenades and shotguns follow the same model.
Experience gates on troll weapons (example)
| Weapon | XP needed |
|---|---|
| PC cannon | 20,000 |
| Particle Accelerator | 35,000 |
| RR | 60,000 |
Cash still required on top.
Other settings
| Team size cap | 15 |
| Public 2 opens at | 45 in Public 1 |
| Idle in dropship before spec | 30 sec |
| End-of-game break | 30–60 sec |
| Paycheck interval | ~15 min |
| Private teams per game | 3 × 2–6, plus unlimited solo |
| Loot bag carry bonus | +5% |
Multipliers
| TP Tuesday, 6 PM–midnight ET | 1.5× |
| Pub Hours, Mon–Sat 11 AM–5 PM ET | 1.25× |
| Sunday Muster, 1–7 PM ET | 1.25× |
| Arena size | 0.4×–1.5× |
| Bounty (cash) | up to 2× |