Recently, Twitch streamer xQc played Tower Unite again but was cut short when snipers ruined the game. He mentioned that TU is one of his favorite games to play but every time he does it on stream, snipers who want attention ruin the experience.
I think it would be very helpful for streamers if there was an option to create private plazas to play alone on. If that is not plausible, at least a hide other people or hide workshop models and visual effects option would be very helpful.
Sucks that the TU stream was cut short, I wanted to see more of TU content from him.
For reference, here’s all the ideas that were suggested when this topic was brought up in the Discord:
Option to hide players in a given radius around you, like how things are in the Arcade, but larger
Option to hide all players, or to hide all players but those in your Steam friends list (or in your group, when that system gets fleshed out)
Don’t hide players outside of your Steam friends list, but disable workshop for them, hide their names, and disable effects (confetti, laser pointers, etc.). Would probably require the first suggestion to be implemented as well.
These are some nice ideas, a lot of this is sounding similar to VRChats trust system and I think some ideas could get plucked from that. Having tiers of players who’s permissions you can set, divided into strangers, group members, and steam friends or something along those lines.
Alternatively something that could be done is having an Alias System for display names in the plaza, allowing a streamer to change their in-game display name without changing their steam name (but the change is merely visible and not abusable, as I believe bans utilize STEAM:ID information, not account names alone), and toggles for varying effects like the flashlight, confetti guns, and other items.
Disabling Flashlights and other items inside stores and other buildings would also be a good idea to help curb streamer harassment.
Ultimately, there won’t be private Plazas. It defeats the purpose of what Tower is.
We have done several steps to combat players getting in the view or annoying players while they are actively playing games. However, there were a few bugs on our end that we discovered and now resolved.
We have a system where when you are playing a game, it will fade players in a radius around you, regardless of their workshop player model scale. This system was not working in the Casino until now. It works fine in Arcade.
In the next hot fix this is what we have addressed:
Players will fade out in a radius around your camera in Casino properly, and will fade while you are in a seated game. This fade system already works in the Arcade. Friends are not faded.
Players who have large potion will be scaled down in game seats (not regular seat, just the ones in Casino).
All flashlights will be disabled while you are in an Arcade game.
As for managing who you see, such as the suggestion to hide players who are not your friends, that is something we can work on adding in future updates.
