Empires 2.52 Released

Discussion in 'News' started by ImSpartacus, Sep 28, 2014.

  1. Trickster

    Trickster Retired Developer

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    Honestly, Dota has shown me that there's no such thing as balance, only a different metagame. Each version is always going to have an optimum research path and an optimum tank build, it's just a case of changing up the meta every time people eventually find that. It took me a few years to finally understand that true balance simply can't be achieved, and that the game could be a lot more interesting if you actually just stopped trying to achieve it, and instead just tried to make things more interesting.

    Perfect balance does not equal perfect fun.
     
  2. ImSpartacus

    ImSpartacus nerf spec plz

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    Oh, so we're switching roles now?

    Well Trickster, I know you've been playing Dota a lot, so you might not be aware, but Empires is currently as balanced as it's ever been.

    [​IMG]
     
  3. Ikalx

    Ikalx Member

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    Trickster, I think you're wrong. The beauty of a game like Empires is that we can tailor the research to be more effective in particular situations, meaning that no one thing has to dominate. We've seen the effectiveness of this before, and why both cost was useful and also why trees are balanced around themselves.

    At times you could have gone for the biological tree, where Bio MG was good and regen was effective and not overpowered, with Bio diesel having a key perk - useful for late game. Now the use of the tree used to be that it was fast and cheap to research. You could get good equipment in a short time in order to equip your team with the means to defend themselves. It wasn't great for the attack, but it would stave off enemies.

    Then we had the physics tree. Good weapons, decent armour, fast engine, not too slow to research and with better scope to progress through the chassis, with late tier weapons being available too, it meant you could stick to a tree throughout if needed. Cheaper, too.

    At the same time, chemistry had a very poor armour. If we had the armour we had now in that time, chemistry would have been insanely overpowered. As it was, it was still the most reliable choice with UML being high powered and HE CN always being useful, not to mention a good, if slow, engine. HT MG has never really been a favourite of any team, though, because of its slow rof. Even when it's good (like now) people often shy away from it. (Actually that's a psychological thing, I think, because people like slow powerful weapons or fast weaker ones. With the sound being not a boom, nor the tracer looking more than a vehicle round, people don't get the feedback and mentally they feel it's weak.)

    Electrical, on the other hand, always had something Brenodi teams would need to dominate - rails. Guided and Homing at that time weren't so strong or easy to get to, but they were still useful if you really needed them, and it had a good engine and access to defences. Downsides were lack of MG's and Tier 2 cannons. It creates a jagged graph, and still does, because the lack of MG means you'd have to outfit Mediums with Missiles and standard cannons (which were worse then), or you'd skip mediums entirely and get badass tanks, but if your team folded in the mean time, you'd lose. Your decision would cost, or win, the game.

    At last with mechanics, it really shouldn't be a tree in and of itself. It's an access to gameplay research, and should be treated as such - as the hub. It's not a research tree because it's not an option. It's mandatory. It also doesn't have the characteristics of other trees, namely weapons. Meaning it absolutely HAS to be paired with another tree.

    I suspect it's only a tree for convenience, but that's confusing for all players, and should be discontinued in the GUI update, if at all possible.
     
  4. Candles

    Candles CAPTAIN CANDLES, DUN DUN DUN, DUN DUN DUN DUN.

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    2.24 in a nutshell. Or 2.3, I can't remember.
     
  5. Trickster

    Trickster Retired Developer

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    I just feel that whatever happens, players will find a research path that is generally going to be the most useful for a majority of maps. Obviously you can find a situation where on some specific maps, other paths are useful, or when you're specifically countering the other team. But I'm talking about "in the majority of occasions". It's not just that though. I've realised that it doesn't even need to be the most powerful combo. It doesn't need to be the combo with the highest DPS, or the combo with the best armour engine (bio/3phase or whatever), you have to take into account one very important factor that I consistently overlooked:

    The effectiveness of this combo with the lowest common denominator on your team. That makes more of a difference than you can ever balance around, because if you did try to balance around it, you'd have a really boring game. To put it in context, the most powerful research path has changed pretty regularly over the past few years, but the optimum research path in scrims has remained virtually the same for the past 5 years. Rushing 50cal and just generally sticking with physics has been the most effective combo in scrims because having the ability to mow down infantry with skilled players means that you pretty much guarantee yourself the win. That strategy will never work in anything less than the scenario I just stated. It proves (imo) how much player skill comes into play with regard to how your vehicles need to be used to make your research choice effective. No amount of balancing can compensate for that unless you want to make the actual behaviour of every research incredibly generic and boring, which I really hope is a direction we never take.
     
  6. Z100000M

    Z100000M Vithered Weteran

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    History revisionism of the day:"DUMG/50 cal. was bad on pubs."
     
  7. Trickster

    Trickster Retired Developer

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    Except I never once said it was bad in pubs in that entire post. You've entirely made that up, as you do pretty frequently with these things. DUMG/50cal hasn't been part of the optimum research strategy since 2.24d, and that was due to Reflective being so overpowered back then due to the bug it had.
     
  8. Z100000M

    Z100000M Vithered Weteran

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    You totally didnt.
     
  9. Ikalx

    Ikalx Member

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    Your example proved that a weapon that kills a lot of players very quickly, for a relatively cheap cost, is a good weapon.

    It also highlighted one of the issues people have with vehicles in the game, in that they can totally outclass even the most skilled team, when outfitted with the right weapons.



    I'm going to assume you didn't want to highlight the exact weaknesses of this system.
     
  10. Candles

    Candles CAPTAIN CANDLES, DUN DUN DUN, DUN DUN DUN DUN.

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    Wow, why does this sound so familiar?

    :P
     
  11. flasche

    flasche Member Staff Member Moderator

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    neither of you stated that first ...
     
  12. Trickster

    Trickster Retired Developer

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    I said 50cal specifically (the weapon, not research), not DU. And I didn't say it was bad in pubs, I just said that basing your entire strategy around rushing that one thing is something that wouldn't work in pubs, whereas it does in scrims.

    I just kind of realised that even though I'd made all these changes over 3-4 versions, people didn't change their research paths at all, despite there being superior alternatives. It was more valuable to the team to have research they were comfortable with than research that was potentially optimum for that map. It's a shame and I really hate the fact that the playerbase takes that route, but there's nothing you can really do about it without going extreme and nerfing things into oblivion.
     
  13. Ikalx

    Ikalx Member

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    We used to have a more clued-up playerbase. The fact of the matter now is that the vast swathe of people just don't know, so most of the voices shouting for something are wrong.
     
  14. Trickster

    Trickster Retired Developer

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    It breaks my heart just how right you are. I remember people passing around research trees and discussing advanced strats in spec, trying it out against eachother regularly and just generally being up for experimentation. It's shit like that which allowed Pickled to find bio-plasma and whatnot. That kind of thing just wouldn't happen now.
     
  15. Beerdude26

    Beerdude26 OnThink(){ IsDownYet(); }

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    Sounds like we need some kind of, I dunno, commander prep time with like the research tree laid out and you can click on it and shit to discuss a strategy with your team, maybe we can call it a "tactical discussion time" or something :p (Yeah I know all of the GUi stuff has to be fixed)

    Seriously though, I think a tactical discussion time of around 3-4 minutes would really mix things up. People could think about who's on the other team, what their styles are, etc.
     
  16. ImSpartacus

    ImSpartacus nerf spec plz

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    Not a bad long term idea.

    You could use the com vote period. I don't think you really need to nail the com down before strategizing. It's hard to expect people to vote before they can hear the plan of each com.
     
  17. Lazybum

    Lazybum :D Staff Member Moderator

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    The problem is a lot of people like to sit in spec til the round actually starts. It can be for a whole bunch of reasons, but the point is it is very hard to really make a good strategy when you thought all you has was 5 people to start with for the first few minutes then all of a sudden your team doubles in size.

    I like the idea though, but there is some difficulties right now.
     
  18. ImSpartacus

    ImSpartacus nerf spec plz

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    The solution is obvious - we nerf spec (plz).
     
  19. D.D.D. Destroyer

    D.D.D. Destroyer Member Staff Member Moderator

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    Or implement the feature and watch people adapt to it before changing anything?
     
  20. ImSpartacus

    ImSpartacus nerf spec plz

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    Nah, let's nerf spec.
     

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