flasche please read the thread more thoroughly you're basically just repeating what I've said I intend to do.
i got dragged away, sorry. i should not criticise what i dont know yet. and i should not give you shits for stuff you didnt brake yet.
"your skill choice early game is very important and can change depending on the map" Empty isn't this not even more a reason to implement it? Research should be important and variable from map to map. Thats why research shouldnt be generic it should be round breaking. Look at it from a different point of view-> empires full vanilla nothing researched except rax, if you want a repair pad you go research repair pad first etc etc like how a real rts works.
How long do you want these matches to last? Edit:What I mean to say is that you can't do that with the current research system because it take forever to get anywhere. So if you wanted infantry or building research it would be much better to have it on a separate building or research system. So you can get better tanks and better infantry/buildings/whatever at the same time. It's also how most rts games do that.
I aim to drop match length down a fair chunk. Atm we're getting primarily 40+ minute matches (excepting early game rushes) I'd like to cut it down to 30 minute matches as the average like we used to, and I'd like to see more variety in match length (atm you usually see a spread like 40 min 50 min 40 min 10 min 50 min and I'd like to see a psread like 10 min 15 min 30 min 35 min 20 min I think the game should be able to be won at any point, while at the moment the game only tends to end if there's a large stack, a successful ninja, or endgame tanks are fielded en masse. The idea being to increase the power of individual players to cause the game to come to a close, more momentum to actually end it. I don't want to snap the game in half though, if the game keeps ending before med tank research I'll make an effort to slow it down again. I have no desire to see the game always end in the early game blitz, lategame is fun too, but I feel llike empires atm is either a desperate early rush to secure the map and win, or holding out for lategame tech to finally have the momentum needed to win.
Very nice; I'd love to see an overhaul, and I like how you have the armours and weapons arranged in tiers that get better but need to be researched consequetively, which I think will make balancing easier, and researching clearer for the beginning comm; it will be easier to see how improve weapons because they are in one line, instead of spread out everywhere. I want to suggest with the overhaul, to add a few more utility researches that improve things for infantry, such as but not limited to: +50% mine damage for grenadiers +30% main weapon accuraccy for soldiers +20% engineer build speed +30 HP for all infantry Scout sniper rifle! I also think it is important to have the chassis upgrades take a long time, so that weapons/armour will be switched around before bigger tanks are researched.
I rather like it when they go for at least 40 minutes, but I'm one of those people who don't care about winning or losing as much and just enjoy playing it. Slaughter grinds aren't fun true, but base swapping 3 times on duststorm is all kinds of fun and I don't mind it if it takes 50-60 minutes or so. Ah, my original comment was aimed at paradox, I find it strange when people don't realize how long they end up making the game with certain suggestions.
I like it when a game ends between 5 minutes and 20 with constant rushes and chaos, losing sides taking sides etc etc.
all it does is kill the server i wonder if people only do early game rushes because it is impossible to do a rush late game
I'm not interested in rushes but more interested in teams getting an upper hand and being able to press that advantage and actually winning in less than 30 minutes if they're good. Ideally matches should be ending earlier than they currently do, but not through full frontal attacks on CVs, but actually eliminating bases. Of course I can't save empires from it's own worst enemy, the players. Ultimately if people continually use cheese tactics OR take map control and simply camp the final rax instead of making the final push, there's no amount of game design that can fix that. People just need to stop being cunts. I think it should still be possible for games to go long if the teams are very closely balanced. Particularly on maps like duststorm I've seen very long matches even with much more fragile tanks (back in 2.1 tanks were a lot less healthy) I don't mind a huge match now and then, my problem is that EVERY map seems to take 50+ minutes, regardless of how close it was going to be (that is, a completely stacked team still takes fucking ages to win, which isn't fun for the weak team at all, best gameplay solution to stacking is to just let them have their win fairly quickly imo)
If it's 10 vs 10 I'd like to see a 30 minute match or so. 15 vs 15, 40+ minutes, 20 vs 20 I'd like to average a long length, maybe almost twice that. I still really love the long matches we used to have (no kidding it used to be a few hours minimum), but I'm aware that not a lot of newer people have been in that kind of environment.
Well it depends. Do you want a 50 minute match that feels like you have no chance for the entire match? Because I see that a lot more than I'd like. That's the kind of match I want to kill.
I see no-hopers less than we used to, which I like. What would be good is if there were more ways to turn a losing team around, without having to resort to apc endless rushing. In that respect, your upgraded rpg's might be good. I do have fond memories of them, although at the time everything was unbalanced. We need more good strategies for losing teams though. And the more good strategies we have, the more we restore the real balance of winning teams actually feeling like they're winning too.
Stuff like budget armor and compact engine are features I really like in terms of giving losing teams a shot, so I wanna incorporate some of that into my designs.
Really, this is going to sound bad, but I'm starting to think that the idea of trying to reduce snowballing and the slippery slope might've gone too far. There's a fine line between balance that allows a losing team to comeback and balance that just causes a losing team to spend a long time losing and not coming back. Part of this is map design and resource allocation; on Duststorm, you can have maybe 33% - 25% of the refineries and still comeback easily enough; on Slaughtered, once you lose that first refinery, you're really far in the pit, especially if the other team gets their ref on it because of how much a single refinery is worth. But at the same time, you can chokepoint so hard and have so many resources in reserve that even if you can't win, you'll last twenty more minutes easily enough. You can't really say "I want comebacks to always be possible" but also say "I want games to be faster." Invariably, you hit the point where a losing team has to last longer so that they'll be able to make a comeback, or you have to slow down the game so that a winning team doesn't snowball. Snowballing isn't just something that makes a game unbalanced, it's something that helps to end a game that ought to end. Ideally, we'd be able to balance it and say, "If a losing team has no chance, then the round ends quick." But decreasing a speed that a round goes goes hand-in-hand with preventing a losing team from coming back.
I think most of our changes haven't actually reduced snowballing, they've just slowed it down, which at first seems like it's not so bad but then you realise it just drags the game out. Stuff like making buildings and tanks incredibly hard to kill SEEMED at first to reduce snowballing, but in reality drags the game on more than anything. Changes like making jeeps cheaper and research free have somewhat helped, but I think free research has changed the ecosystem in bad ways, free research gives a losing team a chance of keeping up on the tech side, but it also removes a lot of the feedback from the winning team. ("We've controlled 90% of the map for the last 35 minutes, how come the enemy team has 5 nuke heavies?") wages also contribute to this problem. It's tricky to solve and I don't claim to have all the answers but I think giving the game more momentum one way or the other will help. If you can't turn a game around in 5 minutes what chance do you have in 30?
It really depends. Most of the problems we have with losing teams come with the absolute lack of defensive options we have. Defence isn't an option at all in Empires. That being said, I've seen a lot of insanely epic games where a losing team has defended and come back to smash the enemy. It doesn't happen that often though. You usually need full servers for that to happen. @Candles. It doesn't sound bad. We made that same point before in reference to resources and other things flattening out the game so that no one's actually winning. You may have a point with helping the losing team generally not helping the game, but I think there's still a way to do both. Possibly things that buff infantry instead of vehicles might be the way forward.
The real problem with our rubber banding changes has been they affect the winning team as well as the losing. Building HP was increased to help the losing team, but it makes it harder to regain turf from the enemy because the winning team's buildings are also really hard to kill. Free research helps the losing team stay in the game, but the winning team now has shitloads of res due to wages etc. One change that we still haven't seen and I'd really like is for refineries to have diminishing returns, the problem with res isn't so much that one team ends up with more, it's more the ratio. Take 4 refs Even split, both teams are getting 2 res a second. But if it's 3 refs to 1, the winning team has THREE times the res of the losing team. This is an exaggeration, a lot of maps have a pseudo diminishing returns factor where your mains refineries are some of the best on the map, but it's still an issue.
