One of the major factors in playing empires has always been who gets to comm. And many times, noobs have taken control of the comm veichle, which caused two things: 1. It made people loose games, that could've been really awesome without "n00b comm gg! -.-" 2. It made the community become a ....well, you know ...a bunch of assholes... to make new players learn that comming is not easy and that they need to learn a lot more about the game itself before they can even think about comming, using the gtfo of the comm or fck off tactic. It does work, but it discourages many players from playing the game, thus making the game nearly dead with a very limited number of players. This factor (problem if u ask me, really) has been the boon of empires for years and I cannot remember much about people trying to solve this problem apart from the kick comm option (like as if that matters anyways). Therefore I have a proposal, it is serious and it may take quite a while to implement, but I think it just might work. I'm suggesting a sort of a player respoct/skill level. Here are some of the base ideas: 1 . This is a factor, consisting of ranks/badges/levels, that could be awarded by community voting or by games played/won as commander or as experience to gain levels by actively playing games. 2. Certain titles, such as "experienced commander" should allow the player to have an option to seize the comm veichle in case some undesired newbie takes it. My reason for this: comm veichles get stolen plenty of times simply becouse the comm is right next to it building sth. and waisting a whole lot of time to get the guy in the veichle kicked via kick comm vote or the highjacker even taking the comm somewhere the enemy team can wall him in. 3. These titles would also give more experienced players some innate authority (ex. vets), which could help keep newbie trollers in check without unnecessary kickvotes, since the titles/badges would be a clear indicator that somebody has acquired some sort of knowlege and experience about the game. I am very well aware, that this would take quite a while to implement into the game so it would be hard/impossible to abuse and even to implement it into the mod via programming (if any of the dev knows this to be impossible, please do write a comment so I won't have any false hope). Another thing that could be beneficial to this would also be enabling admins to create pubs with a rank limit, so some games could be played as well as possible (also goes for testing). If anyone of the dev team would be interested in implementing this feature, I'll be willing to give a hand too (I have very little idea how to write programmes, but I could help with planning etc.). So, what do you guys think, would this kind of a feature help improve Empires, or not? Also, here's a nice song for all of you: www.youtube.com/watch?v=ngM1qTEZUes
Why not just lock everyone from taking the cv for 30 seconds if they weren't the last person to be in commander mode in it? Also the last com would have a button or squad menu option to unlock the cv for emergencies. and if the com got voted out it wouldn't lock.
I also suggested a button to unlock the cv for previous com in that case and although it would be a little bit less convenient, it's a hell of a lot better than 11/10 games being fucked over completely by someone jumping in and grifing the com.
Or maybe if the previous com is alive and within x units (about a barracks length) the cv is locked to everyone else, so the com could get out and build shit without being griffed.
Back in the day, we would put a star rank next to our name if we thought we were a good commander, like Jephir [COM ***]. Obviously there were flaws with this system, and we did this more because commanding was opt-out instead of opt-in, so it was important to pick someone who at least thought they were good, instead of a random newbie who didn't know what he was doing. However, whether someone thinks that a person is a good comm or not, is subjective. There's no universal metric to determine how good a person is at commanding. Personally, I wouldn't trust any titles or badges that a person had any more than that old self-ranking system we used to do. So while an override system is an interesting idea, I don't think it would solve the problem.
Too bad we don't keep stats. Can't opt in com unless 50 hours of play minimum or low population. Can still get in after the start of the round though unless current com is near the com.
The best solution I've found so far is to be calm and have one vet type in chat that the newbie should get out while another slowly explains it over mic.
I actually like the idea about the cv locking. It would definetly prevent cv snatches when the comm gets out to build for ex. a radar. I do agree with Jefir, that balancing this system would be hard to balance. The best way I personally think, would be to actually add somethink like an xp point level, where you get points for when u play (not necessarily comm), but comming would give you higher xp points, especially if you win (meaning you did something right as comm). There are still a lot of details to work out. But the main thing, I think should be making sure, that the comm that has been voted out gets some priorities. The system should not prevent anyone from comming. I've seen cases, where a vet told a noob what to do while in the cv, and we won, cuz he listened and did what was right. I'm not saying, that we should deny anyone the possibility to comm, just to prevent people grabbing the cv to greif or becouse they don't know what they're doing. The "respect level" someone would get with ranks is just a bonus to better dstinguish more experienced players. Take me for example. I can do really well as an (rev)engi or a gren, but what I'm not good at, is leading a squad properly. So, when i become squad lead becouse someone disconnects or anything, I like to pass on the squad lead. But here's the problem: I don't always know who to give it to, cuz i simply don't know people enough, but if i know that someone is a vet, i surely give it to him. But if there are no (to me) known vets on the squad i cannot be sure. This is a nice little example what it would help achieve. The only real problem, I see in establishing a similiar system to this is that noone would want to write the scripts. I don't really know any of developers to propose this idea and I personally have very little knowledge of programming to voulenteer for wriiting it.
I'm not sure any in game mechanic could solve this fundamental problem, best thing would be to have some really good tutorial videos to refer people to and more vets who can calmly talk people through commanding. Elvis and Craig pretty much taught me to command in 2 rounds.
I wish we kept stats. I wonder how many people I've killed. Or how many miles traveled and stuff like that. Would be cool. But to be honest. I haven't played a game in the last month or so where the comm was stolen or couldn't get a new guy out. My suggestion is to lower the percentage of people it take to fs space.
It really does take too many people to FS-Space a comm out as it is. Either people need to be educated as to the importance of the comm and how to kick one, or the threshold should be lowered.
All suggestions are null and void. This suggetion forum is just to keep the frustrated from going mental. You suggest things, you think it helps, it makes you feel better and less frustrated but in the end it never gets implemented even if the dev says good idea. Panem et circenses
You should post a new thread about this. This has happened a lot indeed, but I still wouldn't say "all suggestions are null/void". It's acceptable since suggestions are always easier than implementation, like one hundred times easier. (except for maybe scripts.) I do agree with you on the other half. It's totally okay to wait until your grandson to finally implement something, but it's just not good to completely forget about it.
F S Space percentage is a server option. Just reminding you all of that. It's 66% by default I think, or 60.
judging from my bf3 stats you propably killed a lot more then 100000 enemies maybe 2-300000 or even 500000.