PUG on February 15, 2000 BST / 2100 CEST / 1500 EDT / 1200 PDT

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mi4PzHj-pJ4

Empires does things to people, what you read on the fourms is a crescendo of down time and madness.
But when I play empires I turn into this cancerous asshole that sucks the fun out of things mostly because of how competitive I am.

I have stage 1 Parkinsons, its been dormant for awhile now sense high-school graduation and the prospects have not been hopeful.
They said I am expected to get dementia at a earlier than expected age depending on my lifestyle and choices.
But so far I have been fine, my hands have only been acting up under stress situations and concentration.

Other than that I just get twitches sometimes.

 

Just a reminder I was commander on BE for the midbridge game. TFW team actually gave a shit. TFW they listen when i told them shit was going down at main. TFW they generally complied to my orders. These are all good feels. Lets have another pug soon.

 

TFW I had 1 single squad doing that, and the rest of my team were headless chickens, including a 2man squad which actually locked up and wouldn't let anyone else in and went off to do their own thing.

Seriously, I had a squad of 5, then squads of 3s and 2s. Shit was not ok.

 

There's a common thread in all this. People not taking shit seriously, people not knowing what the flying fuck to do even though they should, people being rusty on gameplay, people putting their egos ahead of everything else. Quite simply, if I'm in a game and there are vets just going around being useless or saying "I don't feel like it", then they should just fuck off. If there are vets that are fucking around and playing the game like it was two years ago, they should shove their ego's down their throat and listen. It doesn't matter how many hours someone has, it doesn't matter how many versions they've been through, it doesn't matter that someone played back in 2.12 with laser rifles or learned how to use tanks without handbrakes. None of that shit matters if they go into a game and they don't have a tenth of a clue on what to do. I'd rather take a team of people that've only been around for a year but know the game and the balance decently enough over people that know the game perfectly from two or three years ago and think they're hot shit. And I'd rather take people that are only decent at the game if I know they'd give it their best throughout the whole thing over people that are amazing at the game but are going to give it 100% for 10% of the time and 15% for the other 90%.

I'm not pointing out anyone in particular, and I'm not blaming anyone in particular. They people I quoted about not giving a shit aren't unusual amongst people who've been playing the game for a while; rather that kind of opinion is endemic amongst the veteran population. That they tend to be the rule rather than the exception is the problem.

 

I always give a shit, regardless of much of an ass I make out of myself.
What the fuck is the point of doing something if you are going to do it horribly and half assed?

 

I feel like most of the people that you quoted (except me) have been quite competitive & srs at some point or another.

So I feel like I should conclude that environmental changes may influence whether a player gives a shit or not.

Do you think anything in particular might influence that behavior in one direction or another?

I feel like leadership is important and good leaders set the tone of a match.

 

From playing competitive empires, and playing solo in other online games, I learned a most important lesson. Always take initiative, don't count for other people to just do things on a whim, be firm. You can't be 100% certain that the team is being carried unless you carry it, and you can't be 100% certain that the team is being supported unless you support it. So when comm yells "killspawn", I take the initiative to leave my funzone killing brenodi, and killspawn back to base because if I don't do it, I'm not sure if anyone else will.

You need to be a good leader whether or not you are in the comm seat. Personally I am going to blame on linear maps like bootybay or slaughtered for making players unimaginative sheep, they can't handle maps that actually require creativity like palmbay and would rather just rtv it. As much as FN is an ego whore, he's a good model of how to play the game, because he cares about creativity and imagination. If FN had guys like Ounin and Suprore playing for him, he'd be screwing us over by pulling off odd tactics that catch everyone off gaurd. Sorry lorddz if you are reading this, but I really don't like bootybay for the effect it has on people.

I think maybe a competitive match needs to be held so that people get into the spirit, but of course we don't have clans anymore, but a PUG where teams are chosen and we play a 2/3 game to see who wins would be nice.

Yeah I really had fun that round, the team felt very synergised. If anything started going wrong our team acted like a hive mind and was able to like allocate itself appropriately without affecting any other part of the map.

And we won because we all contributed. well actually because the BE comm went for a swim. Oh btw, I think the PUG came out great so congratulations on hosting it.

 

In the vein of what Candles said I'm going to throw this out there...

There will be more pugs. There will be good ones, there will be bad ones.

But the people who participate in them have to help make them good. Empires will get fixed, its time to cheer up people, stop pissing on bonfires and start building them.

Unfortunately there aren't many people left here, which means everyone has a voice - so use it to do something positive. Because riding the fail train is unacceptable now.

 

I'm not necessarily saying the team wasn't trying, though a few definitely weren't. But they certainly weren't trying where I asked them to on the map. I mean, we had Security's squad which was pretty much doing everything I asked, and we had a few single players that were also doing that. But I tend to organise people heavily by squads, and when I don't have those squads, I find it difficult to manage things. So when we have 13 players on the team who aren't the Commander, I expect 3 squads. 2 full squads I can deploy where I want, and a smaller squad where I can pick individual players out of it to go and get specific refs and what not. What I got was more like 5-6 squads, and when they only have a couple of people in, I'm simply not capable of organising that. I cried, moaned and bitched like a little girl repeatedly, but I just couldn't get people to squad up properly, thus I basically couldn't organise them.

 

And you choose to spend your time on Empires? Really? Most of the time Empires is like ripping out your spine and beating yourself with it like some kind of demonic piñata, trying in vain to find candy, so you can kinda understand why I'm surprised.

That and sitting at computers in general isn't that great for a body...

 

As someone who hasn't played Empires seriously for like 2 years and then played this PUG i got this strange experience of being a noob in a game that i once intimately knew. My impression was that Empires got even more idiosyncratic and counter-intuitive. My compo-LT was blown up by single mines, my 3-phase heavy tank could either drive a straight line or was going in circles, taking curves was not an option. The engy rifle felt lacking, the NF rifleman's weapon was so OP i had pity with the other classes.

It was obvious that the balancing is done by a guy who lacks a basic theory of game balance for this type of game and instead relies on the opinion of people text-walling the suggestions forum.

And then there is the tank handling, oh boy. It breaks the basic assumption that newly researched tech is atleast as good as what it replaces. The intuitive thing would be that a new vehicle engine is as good as standard but improves in a specific field or two. But the current tradeoff is either you get good heat dissipation or you get functional vehicle handling and this is just a terrible thing to do.

TL;DR
Empires is shit and the devs are shit :D

 

Really?

 

Wut

Who were you, fgt?

I can't believe you were there and I didn't notice.

I'd say you're a mediocre leader and a mediocre communicator. You have room to grow into a great com. You can keep people in the loop and keep moral up. An excellent com for a pub or public pug.

Trickster is a great leader and a mediocre communicator. He's got a great plan in his head, but he doesn't always explain it well. If you've played with him, you can fill in the blanks and thrive. If you're the nooby squad in north midbridge, you don't understand that holding north is essential to securing nf main and it's probably ok to just defend that area instead of continuing to try to push (and get rolled over). Trickster is charismatic though and that goes a long way.

EDIT The word mediocre has some shitty connotations and I want to make it clear that I don't mean to insult anyone. I should've used "medium" because that's what I meant. I'm a pretty poor leader and poor communicator. Someone like FN is a great leader and a pretty spectacular communicator.

 

I was the guy with the MacGuyver avatar (surprise!). usually at the bottom of the scoreboard.

 

McGyver was Nimbus.

That's actually relatively accurate. That's why I enjoy scrims so much more than pub play, because I don't really have issues with communication there, everyone knows what I mean and I don't have any issues getting my point across. To be fair, I used to be a lot better at communicating in pubs than I am now, but time away from the game has taken away from my ability to really organise people. That's not to say I was ever great at it, but I was still far better than I was in that pug.

But to be fair, in a more general sense, that's really a better example of a wider problem. Having been playing other games like Battlefield and Dota, I'm absolutely crying out for tools to show my plans ingame. I found myself desperate to draw on the minimap, and ping to show attention to specific areas. I needed to be able to set waypoints for squads and other such things in a much better way than we can do now.

The day that kind of thing is possible, will be the day your average commander almost doubles in their ability to do their job. It'll make such a huge difference to the game I doubt it'll be possible to quantify it.

 

ALL things are quantifiable given the proper perspectives.

 

I can prove anything with the right assumptions!

 

Hey, its a weekend.
If I want sit on my ass, i've earned it.

With this weather bullshit lately I don't even need to do my normal shit seeing as I almost die just getting to bus stops.
I had to buy a mask because the air started to hurt my face whenever I was outside.
Single digit weather and wind blowing in your face SUCKS.