I dont like a game in which everyone is exchangeable. Diprip like aiming for mortar... Its like giving the rifleman a accoustic signal everytime he moves his crosshair over the head of the enemy soldier. Remember the mortar kills in one hit. Hey its not SOOOO hard to aim with the mortar as it is now. Maybee if you cant life without a mortar aiming help... make two modes a inacurrate (with spread) with a diprip aiming help and a accurate without a help. EDIT: ANNNND... a big learning curve makes players play the mod longer.
Can we remove scouts while we're at it? Most people use it as a sniper class and don't contribute anything to their team. Removing scouts would increase teamwork.
Engineers should also get an SMG and an RPG, plus make it as accurate tracking as the HL2 one, also, engineers should have a gravgun. Scouts just need a revamp, probably make the scout rifle [I actually wrote sniper rifle...] more like the NF Rifle2, best at medium range, and possibly bring back in a system that shows us the direction we're hit from. Or even just remove their rifle altogether, since we're all antisniper.
Yea, but think of this: 5 people does teamwork. They doesn't respawn, they wait until all of them in their squad is dead. Then they do a squad revive, and to get to that location, their squad leader needs to run there. And revive is actually good, there's no more pain than to get shoot when doing a helpful contribution to your team, just to be shoot down. Reviving is useful, like if you're teaming with an engineer, you can go long way, so therefor we shouldn't nerf teamwork for the better of lone playing, there's singleplayer for that. Maybe add a 0.5 second cast time for the revive?
Removing the Scout Rifle would do better, as it would encourage more teamwork between scouts harassment abilities and allowing their team to move in for the kill (sabotaged buildings, sticky stunned vehicles, invisible bastard with SMG2 hiding in the barracks, etc)
Sometimes if you try to make a new thing that requires teamwork think if it's really possible in a pub match and what's needed to make it simpler.
I don't understand that and I read it over 5 times... :\ What are the planned new ressearch items that are down the pipe line? about 9 mining: You would indeed have to rebalance quite alot of stuff in you are going to "Fix" it, or just add an alterante version to a mine
But please not to simple. I think you know that you need tricks and easy to use but hard to master weapons to make a game interesting for more than a month.
Having weapons which are heavily reliant on being difficult to use to balance their power is not conducive to building a good fanbase. As I explained before to someone else, it promotes people to master them and become much more powerful than new players, which makes new players completely useless and basically stagnates the community. Multiplayer games should be easy to play, and have as little mastery involved as possible. If you can't play a game simply because playing it is fun then perhaps you should stick with other, less well designed games.
I respectfully disagree. I like games where it takes a while to get used to everything, that even once you "Know Everything" there is still room for improvement, that means that there is always some weapon to master some "Trick" that you can learn. In many games where I see some people differ in their skill level; I would watch them, then I realise what they were doing just from observation, and I would better myself. There should always be a high degree of personal skill involved in multiplayer games, to me thats what gives them their "Zing" if I wanted a game that needed a relativley low "Mastery level" I would go play halo and teabag morons...
I feel that having 'tricks' and weapons you need to practice to use actually reduces the depth of gameplay. If 'tricks' have too much impact on success in the game, they can potentially crowd out other things -- like teamwork, cooperation, planning, alertness, being in the right place at the right time, and so on. Instead of coming up with better strategies to use the mortar effectively, and adapting those strategies intelligently based on the situation, say, your 'skill-based mortar system' lets people who have practiced more than their opponents be lazy and just use it stupidly but with mechanically-practiced skills. Conversely, the player who doesn't know all those mechanical mortar 'tricks' but pays attention to the battlefield and uses it exactly as needed is going to have their contribution devalued. I think that the game's system should favor the latter rather than the former -- it should reward people who use the right weapon for the situation, not people who have practiced and practiced repetitively until they practically have an aimbot built into their brain. Note that Empires is mostly informed by a philosophy like what I described above -- consider the heavy impact your position has on your accuracy, say. A player's skill at aiming the SMG is only a minor advantage compared to many other games, since it is so heavily overwhelmed by your position and whether you have the advantage of surprise. That's deliberate and, I think, a good thing; I feel the mortar should work the same way, and reward people who use it intelligently, not people who spent a few hours practicing it. Does it have to be a tradeoff between those two things? Not directly, no; of course you can always practice it and use it intelligently... but inevitably, the more impact you let what you called the 'mastery level' have on success in the game, the less impact all other things will have. At the end of the game, some people win, and if you put in 'tricks' that make weapons require unnecessary practice to use, those tricks will sometimes crowd out genuine strategy, at least on public servers. (And let's make it clear we're talking about public servers here. On private servers where everyone has mastered all the 'tricks', it doesn't really make a difference one way or the other whether those tricks exist in the first place; it's only important in situations where you have people who know the 'tricks' possibly playing against people who don't.) I don't think anyone wants to 'win' a game just because their opponents don't know how to make basic use of their weapons; for that reason, the basic usage of things like the mortar should be as streamlined and simple as possible. The meat of the gameplay should be in knowing when to use the mortar, not in knowing how to use the mortar.
I think we should keep the balance between "tricks" and teamplay. I mean whats a "trick", killing plain-apc's with fast mortar/rpg double shoot is for example a "trick" because most players on public servers dont know it. Its also a "trick" because it can win games in the first 10 minutes. So should we remove it because 80% of all players dont use/know it?
9-Mining is a ninja tactic and an advanced anti-defusal-Grenadier-tank method. Let's take a look at the implications. Ninjaing is where you sneak into a base and blow it to bits while the enemy is off doing something arguably constructive. If you've ever played the game, as I know you all have, this is very difficult. First, one enemy can end your sneaky terror effortlessly, as most classes have guns and Grenadiers kinda dont. Second, any turret anywhere will ruin your day, as they'll shoot you to pieces before you can do anything sneaky, and even if you decide to break the turret, your sneakiness is alerted to the commander and the entire team, which is definitely not sneaky at all. Third, 9-mining takes a long time, and is rarely, alone, instantly fatal to buildings, though it is after a few shots of explosives. If you, a class that not only cannot hide but carries the loudest and flashiest weapons in the game and is built for spamming explosions everywhere, can sneak into the base, they deserve to lose. But why 9-mining? Think about it, if you gave the Nader C4 packs, it would have the exact same effect as dropping 9 mines in the same place, except that it doesnt explode when the CV moves and its easier to detonate. Still would take the same time, probably use the same animation, and would be pointless and overpowered. 9Mining is balanced because it takes a long time to set up, cannot be interrupted or its ruined, requires an anti-stealth class countered by virtually everything else in the game, is tricky to get to work effectively, and alone cant kill anything worthwhile. As an anti-defusal-Grenadier-Tank device, its just the above, replacing the sneaking with tricky-time-sensitivity, lag compensation, reaction times, enemy prediction, and long setup. If you can accurately predict where the enemy will be, set up 8 mines in that place, and detonate them right when an expensive tank rolls by, you deserve the kill. Here's where C4 would be overpowered, if you leave a remote-detonated thing in the middle of the road and wait for tanks to come by, it removes the tricky setup and long re-setup, it makes a weak, quickly replaceable mine that defusalNaders cannot avoid. Granted, 9mines cannot be avoided by naders with defusal, it would mean that the nader could set down a whole minefield of defusal-proof mines that are detonated at arguably the best time, doing the most damage possible and likely flipping the tank. Here, 9mining takes a lot of skill, replacing it with anything else would overpower it, and removing it would remove one of the few ways a grenadier can effectively defend against a Defusal moneytank without any turrets or tank backup. 9mining used to any worth is a tactic of skill and luck. If you can sneak a grenadier next to a CV, he deserves to blow it up. Since its so easy to defend against ninjas 9mining the good things, its not the ninja's fault that you forgot to put up a few turrets.
What I really wonder is superlagg, how can you judge something that isn't even implemented yet? The biggest part of you trying to convince that 9mine should stay is based on that c4 would take the same time, have the same effect and pointless and overpowered. I would say thats a mildly amusing statement to make, so I'm going to put my money on you fucking with us.
Halo has an extraordinarily high skill level, it just isn't a very intelligent one, it's about quick aiming. I don't object to intelligent tricks as long as they aren't annoyingly complicated, but being able to run and gun with the mortar isn't one, it's a reflex based skill, and it confers a huge advantage on anyone who can do it because the mortar is a one shot kill gun in most situations which can also shoot over things and damage tanks. Well yeah, because that's an incredibly overpowered thing that isn't readily apparent, and makes the game very unfriendly to new players who don't know it. It also makes the game completely reliant on it if it becomes well known, because then everyone has to kill the opposing APC or lose. Having a pair of grenadiers at the start is less likely than one, and therefore would not be as overpowered, because you're losing an engineer to a class which basically, once it kills the APC, is kinda useless for a while because vehicles aren't very prolific at the moment. I also don't object to 'tricks' which aren't very powerful, a slight advantage yes, but not a major one like being able to take out an enemy mobile spawn in one shot.
For you, but not for the people who get blown to bits. Hell even I can use the mortar reasonably well, and it is fun blowing up lots of people with it, but I don't think it's a good thing. It is not at all constructive in terms of making the mod easy to pick up. The game already has a very high level of complexity, throwing in massively skill balanced weapons is not going to win it any prizes. It's more or less like grenades in TFC, they didn't add to the gameplay, all they did was promote either standoffs (which we have in empires with grenades, and if you took grenades out I have no doubt would be surpassed by mortar standoffs) or annoy new players who get blown to shit as soon as they step outside. They were so overused that they became an environmental hazard more than a weapon. Now empires doesn't have that much because as I said, all classes have grenades, and only on district is the map small enough to concentrate infantry that much, but the annoying factor is exactly the same.
A grenadiers mortar is not anoying its just more effective as a riflemans gun in more than 50% of all cases. Dont blame a weapon just because people find a "better" way to use it instead killing buildings. Its the old "oh hes creative" lets ban and forbid it... Oh yes why not make that mortar targeting system a skill for the grenadier EDIT: HEY HEY make every "skill helping" system a skill for that class. That is balanced i thought. The skilled one gets one skill more because he dosnt need that helping skill. :D
So you have a gun which in your own words is often better at killing infantry than the weaponry of the infantry killing class, is capable of damaging vehicles and buildings, and can fire over walls, and you say that there is nothing wrong with the weapon? Have you been paying attention to what you're writing?
