Individual Research Trees

Discussion in 'Game Play' started by spellman23, Sep 15, 2009.

  1. Chris0132'

    Chris0132' Developer

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    Changing the research tree won't help, it can be done as part of a solution to stabilise the early game, but on its own it's useless.

    You could make it so that it's impossible to advance further than half way across the map without tech which takes at least 15 minutes to acquire, and the longer you researh the easier it gets to advance, but that would involve more than just research, you'd need to put things in the map and the game in general which make that possible, as it stands you can advance across the map with infantry alone. You'd also need to change the maps to remove the huge benefit from holding the middle.

    And unless you turn the research into a simple 'unlock all tier 1 stuff, unlock all tier 2 stuff' linear progression, you're still going to be unneccesarily restricting the customisation options.
     
  2. pickled_heretic

    pickled_heretic Member

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    Chris isn't necessarily retarded, but I think he has a very different vision for what he thinks empires should be than most people. Maybe when 2.25 comes out he can borrow a server and try his hand at scripts and everyone will like them. It's what I intend to do.
     
  3. RoboTek

    RoboTek Member

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    It is my belief that a strategic perspective, rather than a tactical one, is the best path for empires to follow. I believe that by taking a research perspective inspired by other games, such as allegiance, you can get a solid design of interlocking core mechanics without leaving one clear best path.

    We really need to get 2.25 out so we can play games to show our points rather than simply conceptualizing. That said, I believe that an individual research-tree is the worst thing for pub strategy ever and a poor thing for even organized strategy. There needs to be a level of organization to the groups, following a general flow that represents a strategic conflict. Guys with varying awesome rigs because a largely tactical battle, marked with many small conflicts. It is the difference between allegiance(strategy) and Age of Chivalry(tactics).
     
  4. Vulkanis

    Vulkanis Banned

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    I had a similar idea where squad leaders pick and choose who gets what and where, and commanders do the same thing accept the grunts aren't his subordinates the squad leads are so a squad lead could disable construction of certain vehicle weapons or individually make someone not have vehicle production rights, also a widget that made everyone auto sqaud would be nice BUT with a toggle option for auto squad on server side, Usually from the games I have comm'd while watching (and spamming abort) lone soldiers running off doing there own thing learn less and die more, so if there auto squaded that may encourage squad team work and coms won't have to deal with newbies running off into NF light tanks >.>
     
  5. Chris0132'

    Chris0132' Developer

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    Actually I intend to annoy trickster until he tests them on a G4TC server, then when everyone says how unbelievably awesome they are, G4TC will be so happy at the influx of players that they will start a server which runs only my version, and everyone will play there, and then they will spread to other servers, and then empires will be marvellous and I shall have saved the day.
     
  6. Chris0132'

    Chris0132' Developer

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    You can't build a strategy game where 95% of the players are playing an FPS with no strategy elements at all. 95% of players on a server get tanks, shoot enemies, die, respawn, and do it over again.

    The strategy elements are all way above them, they dictate where they spawn and where they attack towards, and keep the game different, that's fine, I have absolutely no problem with that sort of variable gameplay, it's a good thing, it improves replayability.

    I have issue with the fact that the system you have for providing that variable gameplay doesn't bloody work half the time. Most of the time you'll have a shit commander or a bad start or boring/poor research or any of the things which ruin the game for the rest of the match. That sort of frequent 'lost game' (by which I mean the game is shit for all concerned, the winners get no challenge and the losers get no kills) scenario is totally unacceptable. You might as well introduce a bug which crashes the game everyone three in five rounds, it amounts to the same thing.

    The obvious solution to this is to put all of the variable gameplay elements in the hands of every player, self-directed research, self-directed building placement like I suggested before, this removes the possibility that you can randomly fuck the entire game up, because as long as one person on your team knows what to build, and all the research paths are in some way useful, it doesn't matter what you research, or that your non-existant commander is a fucktard, someone can pick up the slack, the only way the game can go to shit then is if everyone on the team is a complete noob, and if that happens then nothing short of divine intervention will save the game.

    It does absolutely nothing to preclude strategy, I have no objection to putting commander functionality in for giving orders, in fact I encourage it, some people might want to direct troops or be directed, I enjoy a little commander input now and then, if I have a good squad I like to give orders and work together, but I don't like the game breaking every time I don't have that good commander-squaddie interaction. For this reason I always suggest things which allow strategic gameplay but do not require it. If you and some other people want to work together to create a carefully though out force there is nothing stopping you, but if you don't then the game won't stop working as a result.
     
    Last edited: Sep 19, 2009
  7. Empty

    Empty Member

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    But individual research makes the game retarded. You kill a reactive Guided heavy, with your railgun heavy, then go around the corner and get raped by an absorbant APC with DU.
     
  8. Chris0132'

    Chris0132' Developer

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    As opposed to you either kill every enemy tank or lose to every enemy tank?

    Personally I favour variety.

    Really speaking we need to be able to tell what a tank is loaded with by looking at it, so people would avoid things they are hugely outclassed by. You could hack together a little interface which lets you see the loadout of an enemy if you shoot them with a special weapon or something, or add specific impact sounds/effects for different armors. Making particles which overlap with the base effect for that weapon would be easy enough, reactive could have an electrical burst, regen could burst green, reflective shoots sparks, that sort of thing.

    There are a whole slew of issues which is why I wrote the giant post before explaining a lot of them and their solutions.
     
  9. Mashav

    Mashav Member

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    Btw, how are you intending to do this with the scripts?
     
  10. flasche

    flasche Member Staff Member Moderator

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    how much would you oppose something like this? its similar to your approach in a certain way - the general premise that commanders shouldnt decide what equipement players use.
     
  11. Chris0132'

    Chris0132' Developer

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    I don't, but I have a few things I can do with scripts and particles.

    As long as it unlocks everything in stages I don't suppose it's that bad, but the reason I suggest having player directed research is that I want people to pick something and go with it, and because it allows for putting a lot of power deep into a tree, because you can't pursue two trees all the way down which means you can't get two super techs, but if you really go after one tree you can get its superweapon, which could be a really powerful regen armor, or a really powerful railgun weapon, or a 3 slot missile which fires big salvos in arcs so you can use it like artillery, things which give your tank a powerful but very specific role or bonus.

    I like specialisation, I don't like not having choice in how you specialise.
     
  12. RoboTek

    RoboTek Member

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    ^Abbreviated for size

    Imagine for a moment a game. In this game, you spawn streams of units that mindlessly attack the enemy base. You can order them, and there is a chance at any given moment they might listen to orders. If they are of the applicable unit type, they randomly have a higher chance at following those orders. You can research vehicles, and getting vehicles will randomly be chosen by some of these guys. The vehicles they get will depend upon your research, and will be equipped with random equipment selected from what you can get. They will use these vehicles as effectively has possible when they get them.

    This is what I view the 'base' of empires right now, from a strategic perspective. The core elements that promote strategy are the ability to choose what your guys can equip, and the ability to choose where certain buildings are made. The things limiting strategy are the lack of control of unit direction, the lack of several valid combat strategies, and the lack of ability to change the global strategic significance of locations beyond the already established map.

    Strategically speaking, Empires is at the same level as the flash game Age of Warhttp://www.gamingdelight.com/games/ageofwar.php

    Because you have never seen strategy applied to a game like this you assume it simply isn't possible. The truth is, players don't need to know everything. They just need to have a good reason to follow orders, or even some vague direction that comes from experience. Admittedly what we have now isn't much strategically, but you desire to remove it completely.

    In order to grant true strategic significance there are a few minor things that could tremendously help, other than fixing the research tree to make things more valid and diversified.
    1: Instead of voting to remove a commander, select a player and elect them to become commander. Everyone gets a box on their screen with instructions, it would pop-up in the corner. Immediately after the nominee receives enough votes, the commander is immediately slain and the selected individual is teleported into the command vehicle. A given person can only start a vote once every half hour. One vote at a time.

    2: Add the ability to give more strategic significance to locations on the map. The easiest way to do this is to add 'cash buildings' that generate cash for the team (not refineries). They would be fairly strong and expensive, but would recover their costs every 5 minutes. This, combined with the already existent walls and turrets means that more strategies are possible for commanders, including having a resource outpost in the middle of nowhere. Different buildings than this could be added, but the idea is that there are proper installations with strategic significance. Removing commander targets
    and adding a location that automatically does this for all players (like the listening post idea) would help with this tremendously aswell. In addition it would free time for a commander to actually think.

    3: Grant the elected commander the ability to teleport back to the command vehicle whenever he wanted. This would help stop the ridiculousness have an accidental capture, and more importantly it would enable commanders to fight if they grew bored and the situation was stable, making commanding more desirable. If some other player was in the vehicle, they would either die or be kicked out when this happens.

    4:Grant the ability to attack from unexpected angles after significant effort or investment. Right now this is best accomplished by granting some technology to climb mountains or walls, but it could also be accomplished by flight or boats.

    5: More, better commanders. Perhaps just a smoother commanding system to help facilitate this (you get stuck on stuff very easily, things go invisible, and it can be very jerky).

    Chris, you claim your ideas don't hard strategy, but they do. Going up to a group of soldiers and convincing them they can do whatever they want harms a strategic war effort in real life just as it would in a game. Small packets might work together, but strategy is an overall thing. Enabling and encouraging people to be different defeats that.

    PS: Chris, if you want to see strategic gameplay from a group of individuals, I suggest you play Allegiance.
     
  13. Chris0132'

    Chris0132' Developer

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    If the players aren't aware of the significance of their actions and they aren't making the decisions than that isn't strategy, it's just going to a place, shooting some people, dying, and repeating, which is exactly what I said it was to begin with.

    You can add more things in for people to shoot at, you can add more ways for people to shoot stuff, but it doesn't change the fact that you're going and shooting things and that's all you're doing. The only player who has a strategic element is the commander. All the other players simply have a gun, and something to shoot at. You can give them orders but that only tells them where there is something to shoot, it doesn't change the nature of their going and shooting, it just helps them do it without wandering around looking for something to kill.

    You could get exactly the same effect if the game randomly assigned a group of enemy buildings as a target for the player, randomly unlocked technologies in one of a number of predetermined fashions, automatically deploy a base from a random pattern in any wide open area a team captures, and gave the player wallhacks whenever anybody entered within fifty feet of them. That would essentially provide a perfect simulation of all the strategic elements that a player would experience, with none of the problems.

    All the buildings, the research, the resources, they all exist for one purpose, to bring players together so they can shoot each other. The buildings mean they attack over different battlefields because the positions can be different each game, the research (ostensibly, although not in practice) means they use different guns each time and provides pacing to the game, ensuring that it progresses through a number of different fighting stages before it ends (again, this doesn't work very well). The tanks provide a different style of fighting (although in practise they mostly supercede infantry entirely, although with large playercounts the infantry tend to fight among themselves as well while the tanks do the actual work).

    Empires is a game where two teams kill each other, what makes it different is that it has a lot of elements which give it large amounts of replayability, the maps are essentially different every time, because a building adds a spawn, some cover, a place to get tanks from, it changes the layout a lot, and the customisable tanks mean people don't play exactly the same every time (although it could be improved considerably by doing as I suggested and making it player directed, more differences that way). The 'strategic' elements are simply a means of facilitating all of these gameplay changers, unfortunately they are also a very imperfect way of doing it.

    If strategy makes the game end faster (by making a side win) that isn't a good thing, because it means less fighting occurs, less stuff for all the other 31 players on the team to do because all they can do is fight. Games should be intense action, which means players need to know where the enemy is, and need an incentive to fight them, currently players know the enemy is going to be near res concentrations and res concentrations are what allow you to get good (and therefore more fun) tanks, so that's your incentive, plus you just get points for killing people which is also fun. This in itself is imperfect because the res concentrations make the game unstable, so we need other things to fight over, personally I favour the idea that people would fight over a location because it's in the way, same reason people fight over the S bend in slaughtered, although with less shitty mapping involved, more linear maps would probably be advisable therefore, although ensuring they have terrain differences as the fight moves across the battlefield is vital, as well as a degree of nonlinearity which allows the base mechanic to do its magic, but people would need to be forced into the same area enough to make them fight each other.

    Basically, commanders are unneccesary, and don't add much that cannot be either player controlled/automated (targets can be done with my listening post idea, information is neccesary in empires as the large maps make it hard to track people). Buildings can be built from vehicles, commanding can be an entirely secondary idea which, if you have the people willing to do it, will still allow you to form a cohesive team, but which if you don't (and you probably won't) will not cause the game to suck.
     
  14. RoboTek

    RoboTek Member

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    The problem with your perspective is that you view it like you have tunnel vision. Players in your world are shallow and impulsive, unable to appreciate their part in a greater whole when they aren't deciding what they are doing themselves. The fact that you see a game where people get random things identical to a game where a single commander arms and deploys buildings for an unwitting mob is both telling and disturbing.

    You don't care about winning, winning to you is something that happens and killing other people is the delicious path. I just played a game in another mod where I charged towards an objective a dozen times before getting there while enemies attempted to attack me, got to it and began accomplishing it while they attacked at my back, died, then repeated the process. I play games about the struggle for victory between groups, and I like it especially when the struggle holds strategic significance. The games you describe are glorified deathmatches, and you clearly want the games to become more and more like this. I played another game where a commander told me to hang-out in a sector for 20 minutes, alone, with no enemies. I followed orders because he was a good commander and managed to uncover and kill a small fleet of stealth bombers, saving our team. Those are the games I love.

    People don't need to know what is going on. People just need to appreciate that that what they are doing is affecting the whole in a glorious and complicated system.
     
  15. flasche

    flasche Member Staff Member Moderator

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    it would naturally unlock itself in stages as certain weapons just dont fit on all chassis types. you'd prolly make some more 3slot weapons tho ;)
     
  16. Chris0132'

    Chris0132' Developer

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    All games are glorified deathmatches, strategy games are a deathmatch between two people, the objective being to use your weapons (units) to kill the enemy (the other player) while he tries to stop you and do the same. An FPS just uses different weapons.

    If a player wants to, he can make strategic decisions on his own if you give him the information, I cannot imagine many players will give a damn about whether there's some dude giving them orders or whether the game does it. Most players are FPS players and play a First Person Shooter to Shoot People.

    Putting all these vital game mechanics in the hands of a probably unreliably commander is not justified by the fact that you like being given orders by someone, As I said you can keep the ordering part, and if you want you can only research things if the commander says so, but in the meantime everybody else in the game will be doing what they like to do, if everybody liked to obey commanders unthinkingly and not just go and shoot people then they will do that without being forced to do so. If you add my suggestions in and they don't do that, obviously my suggestions have improved the game because they are now doing something other than that, which means they must prefer it.
     
  17. spellman23

    spellman23 Member

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    Contrary to Chris' belief, I believe people play Empires because of the RTS elements, although shooting things using tanks is a major component.


    I've found that in NS many of the players have a tactical and strategic sense about what's going on in the map, the tech, proper placement and movements while reinforcing certain spots and ransacking others. Maybe it's the smaller size, or it's the interactivity with commanders and that fact that one sides doesn't have a commander, or perhaps they're just better players.


    Basically, I find your assumption that all FPS players are just morons with guns with no picture of the strategic side of the game to be wrong. Sure we have the Halo-tards who have been spoon fed FPS gaming from consoles, but in general I've found any game with strategic elements (even stuff like Section8) your average FPS player has a decent strategic sense of the game, and is willing to invest themselves into that if given the chance.
     
  18. Maxaxle

    Maxaxle Member

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    My personal opinion: Unlocking 1 or 2 weapons/armors using rank points would be much better.
    [flame]
    Chris' ideas are craptastic, and would only work in his imagination.
    [/flame]
    The most we can do right now is try beta testing the idea somehow (beta testing solves everything :p).
     
  19. blizzerd

    blizzerd Member

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    over the time ive come to realise that Chris on intellectual level is far above the average poster here, but on a social level he is kinda lacking

    his ideas are often true pearls of ingenuity, but he really "sucks" at getting them trough to everyone else,

    it is my opinion that this "flaw" so to speak in his social abilities have distanced him with the general public in his real life and internet life besides with a select few that can look past his social incompatibility issue

    this created an isolation from general people and made him have a "grumpy, self- and ego centred image, combined with that people just feel personally attacked and "looked down upon" when debating things with him

    i feel that even if he sometimes actively seeks this image as to distance himself even further in "social isolation safety" people should respect him and his ideas with at least considering the option, because mostly when he has an active opinion, it is based on a solid foundation
     
  20. Korpi

    Korpi Member

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    Yeah he's had some good ideas. However, it doesn't mean that when he comes up with shit like this we should all accept or consider it just because of it or because someone's feeling sorry for his social retardness. Me being against this ridiculous suggestion has nothing to do with Chris.
     

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