Opie, it's not really that we have too many engies, we don't. We need those engies as you know, just to build things - buildings. If we distribute that burden more equally, it may be as you say, however smg's are a lot more effective than they have been so it's not as much of an issue as it was (i.e. server was mostly riflemen, who couldn't build). Engineers will still be outclassed in combat which will, as you so rightly say, lead to less people taking the engineer class. So I agree that engies should build twice as fast - without the repair upgrade though. I think every class should build as fast as engineer default and the engy default should be amalgamated with repair upgrade. Or some better value, with testing. What I would see happening after this was introduced, is we'd get freedom to actually introduce more things into the engineer class or enhance what he has already. I don't mean make him more of a powerhouse, but the necessary things for the class are less necessary if the build load is taken away. It used to be all the time that we'd say the engineer needs turrets, cameras, ammo boxes, heal and revive exclusively because they're all incentives to get people to build. This doesn't have to be the case anymore. If we distribute build, we can also rework the class - in conjunction with other classes like the scout, yes, to create two better balanced and more fun classes. The amount of things that we can do to the classes are still numerous. If the rifleman is the soldier, the grenadier is the demolitions, the engineer can be the technician and the scout can be the medic. That's just an example, don't go off the chain at me, but we still have a lot of things we could do. And of course the first step is to distribute build so that everyone is relied upon for this critical game mechanic.
Thats not true the rifleman is the "IM TOTALY SELFISH CLASS AND IM NOT INTERESTED TO HELP" same goes for sniper scouts. EDIT: gren is the only class that you can play totaly selfish and help the team, every class should be like that.
Or you could add a medic class first aid decals and all. Just to add my ten cents, all I want for engineers is the shotgun pistol/Burst pistol. But making scouts medics would be a great idea, but most people who play scouts do it to be the one man army, and hardly ever have I've been in a squad with a scout who does not go off and do his own thing. In my mind in order to give revive(health recovery skills) to scouts you would need to revamp the whole class, and would be better off creating a new class. I play mostly engy, and I will seldom get revive over repair upgrade, because I want to get the repair points faster. And most new player probably don't associate engineers with traditional battlefield medics, I think making a medic class just for healing/reviving will diversify the teams more, because engineers will just be the fix it guys, and medics will be for people who like playing the traditional healer role.
depending on how offensive your team plays and how close you stick with your squad, revive can get you points faster then building - at least it gives you the advantage of keeping the pressure up, which outvalues build ...
the most noticable effect with ONLY changing ebuild speed will be that scouts become OP (since they get ninja raxes up waaay faster) simple solution would be to remove hide. but that will cause immense amount of tears, so i propose to simply make them vulnerable to turrets, this should solve it ...
Why you want to give every class the possibility to build effectively. I see the definition of the classes as following: Engineers: Build, repair and heal. Rifleman: Kill infantry. Grenadier: Kill tanks. Scout: Special things. But engineers are also good at killing infantry. You will often win as engineer against an average grenadier (of course not against the god like forum members). And even the rifleman can only handle about 2 engineers. What will happen if we give the engineer only pistol 1? They will still be effective at their main business but when it comes to infantry fights they will need the support of rifleman or skilled grenadiers. (Because Pistol 1 only will be a hard cut lower SMG damage and accuracy would be more likely) And for the problem that only engineers are driving tanks I support the idea, that tank ammo is increased or unlimited. In combination with buffed vehicle skills we will see a better arrangement of classes on the battlefield. Whereas I still think that 40% engineer, 25% rifleman, 25% grenadier and 10% scout should be the target. The percentage of engineers will be higher with less players on the server. To the vehicle skills: Currently they are only at 10%. This will force no other class then engineer to drive tanks. It should be risen to 20% - 30%. This can be done by server owners in 2.25. Skill overview: Engineer: Cooling, Rifleman: Damage, Grenadier: Armor, Scout: Speed.
ROFL. I cannot see any of opie's points at all. Clearly we are not playing the same game. Let's list the things the engineer can do that other classes cannot: revive people build buildings several times faster than anyone else repair buildings build walls build turrets give ammo replace a repair pad, for free, anywhere and at any time get points faster than any other class Now let's look at this list with the proposed change: revive people repair buildings build walls build turrets give ammo replace a repair pad, for free, anywhere and at any time get points faster than any other class HOLY SHIT SOMETHING IS NOT RIGHT, CALL THE RIOT POLICE WE NEED TO FIX THE UNDERPOWERED ENGINEER CLASS WTF!
You forgot heal. You forgot destroy buildings. Now leaving out the 1-2 people in an average game who actually know how to play the game that are on a server at any time, those 2 people know how to do all of this very well and indeed make engineers very good. What do the others do? Revive, no. Repair buildings, 1/4 of the people will repair a damaged buildings, the other 3/4ths will not. Build walls? Only directly behind turrets. Build turrets? No unless the map is crossroads, then 1/4 of the engis may build a turret. Drop ammo? Never Repair a tank that is not their own? Not even once Points? You play too much on teams with several good players on at a time. For at least the 4th time. I am not saying that the engineers are freakin' underpowered. I am saying you have to think about the people who play the damn game, idiots. They will not do the things mentioned above. They know it is a good thing to have engineers at the beginning of the game now, they understand they can build much faster which is good for the team. Besides the few good players, they do not do anything else beneficial for the team as an engineer, instead, they shoot their smgs and shoot the smgs more, most spend the rest of the game as engineers, which is bad, which is why change is good. The problem is, they are all going to go RIFLEMAN. Why? Because almost all of them do not do ANY of the above things. Instead of doing the above, they shoot their smgs. They will realize they can kill better with rifles. If you think that all of them shifting from engineer to rifleman is a good thing, you think there is no problem, awesome. You will still have a couple of the better players who stay engineer and do an awesome job for the team, probably better than the rest of the team combined. Again, the problem is not going to be particularly with the engineer. It is going to be with the RIFLEMAN. If the problem you are trying to correct is there are too many engineers then you will have solved the problem. If the problem you are trying to correct is that there are too many of a single class, then you did not fix the problem. That is as clear as I can put it. You will have full teams of riflemen (with speed upgrade) (minus 1-2 revive engineers) to start a game, instead of all engineer (with build upgrade) (occasional scout or rifleman). If that is not a problem with you, then fine, it is not a problem, but SURELY you see that is going to happen. Don't think about how YOU play engineer when you try. Think about how EVERYONE else plays it.
TBH Ikalx, I didn't know how to respond to your post. First line I disagree with. We do have too many engineers, but not because engineers aren't extremely valuable, but because people don't use engineers like they should be used. I am all for distrubuting the burden more, I do believe engineers should have a slight advantage to give a bit of an incentive for earlier engineer besides just a reviver. I think it wouldn't even have to go as high as 2 times the e-build speed as the other classes. To the rest I have no response.
I've seen this argument before, and I'll have absolutely none of it. It goes something like this: I would hate to see what a game looked like if game developers only paid attention to what knuckle-dragging troglodytes did when they played them when they were balancing and making improvements. Your fundamental argument is also flawed. Most retarded newbies play engineer regardless of their ability to build quickly. The biggest culprits are whole squads of people who have no idea how to draw their guns to shoot but will continue to fall over each other trying to revive as I rape them with my assault rifle or tank MG. Another big one is a type I like to call "turret-tard" who picks level 3 turret upgrade from the beginning of the game and spends the first 10 minutes of the game finding the perfect spot for his level 3 and constructing it, at which point it kills maybe 1-2 people max and then gets artied or nadespammed to death in the first 20 seconds of its life. When it dies, he builds another one and repeats the entire process again, netting maybe 5 kills the entire game like this. I wish you could deter people from playing engineer just by removing fast build, because it is clearly the most retarded class of them all. If anything, the nerfs have to be more expansive and potent in order to deter people from being engineers. On the other end of the spectrum, most of the good players are not good because of how well they play engineer. They're usually more famous for their ability to drive, or to shoot, or to play a gren (or all three, like me), not how well they can stare at a wall and left click to build shit. Even the people who are famous for their engineering skills are not really famous for how well they handle the engineering abilities, rather they are famous for their ability to shoot while also multitasking the trivial engineering abilities like reviving and wall-dropping in clever and effective ways.
It wasn't really going anywhere, just a comment on the situation. And frankly, if we do have a problem with riflemen, all we need to do is institute more interesting weapons for the engineer to use. Right now, most of Empires doesn't lean on what usual FPS's lean on - interesting fun weapons. Riflemen get fun weapons in comparison to the rest of them, and grens get fairly decent weapons with the addition of the somewhat unique mortar weapon. I think we seriously need to look at accentuating and adding different weapons so all classes can have fun weapons to use. That's the backbone of the FPS regardless of the RTS elements. Pickled arguing against this, is it wrong that I find that ironic?
Getting a little frisky, are we? The main difference between your posts and mine are that mine usually have a point.
Not really...but you're a handsome guy, I could be persuaded. And obviously the size of your magnificent weapon is pretty big. Yours are usually pointed, but no, the main difference between our posts is that you act like an arse, I don't.
There's also the part about where reading your posts is kind of like eating the 10th bowl of gruel you've had for the day.
At least let people some really low e-reair too, otherwise the game will just be pure source of rage. Now it's fucking hard to make people save buildings, think of hordes fucking useless riflemen. No heals, no ammoz. Enjoy!
Empires has basicaly two classes, the cannon fodder and the hero units. Every standard game goes basicaly like this: You have an army of random engis, rifleman and some scouts that do most of the time nothing usefull. That army of only build engis and prone camping rifleman has two main purposes. It makes it harder for the enemy to kill the hero units (people that acutally know how to play) and distract the enemy from the real threat. A single engi/gren that knows what hes doing can defend or break through a chokepoint alone. He just needs enough cannon fodder so the enemy cant instakill him all the time. People always pretend that empires is a team orientated game, its not its more like surfing on a wave of clueless guys hoping that you can controll them good enough with walls or a destroyed turret to make your team win.
