A plan - Symmetrical vehicle combat -> Bringing back counters

so "Advanced Armor" being composite?

Ill be happy to help with any scripting

 

I'm in favor of a lot of the changes you propose, but removing asymmetry from the teams certainly is not one of them. I get that it makes balancing a lot easier, but I feel like if you go down that path you should just copy BE to NF and give it a different colour.
The problem with the current asymmetry is that the BE heavy is just superior in every way to the NF one and the NF LT is far superior to the AFV. I'm sure you can figure out how to balance them without resorting to the easy 'lets just make them the same'-routine that has taken the heart out of the game already.
resizing to make them roughly the same could work, but so could emphasizing the differences. What about you give the BE heavy more firepower (just keep what it has) and give the NF heavy its superior sturdiness back again.
And merge the BE APC and AFV and give it a smaller version of the Heavy as a light tank?

I will respond to the rest of the post tomorrow when I'm less sleepy

 

Congratulations, I think you MIGHT now win the award for worst developer to take over empires. Every prior developer would be spinning in their users graves at the suggestions you have. You are taking away the FUNDAMENTAL GAMEPLAY that makes EMPIRES unique. The gameplay is NEVER suppose to be balanced, its SUPPOSE to be asymmetric. It's suppose to be unbalanced and each side is suppose to have its own version of OP that can always counter each other.

Every dev in the past has known this fact. I can not believe you would come out and say something SO TRAITOROUS to this mod.

 

Im done trying to help this fucking mod, why did i even waste my time with this shit.

 

Other way around, lad

 

Trickster did not know, but even he agrees now and would have done things differently.
Also Donald, the game should be balanced, but certainly not symmetrical in gameplay. Everything in Empires oozes asymmetric gameplay, however with the game becoming more and more symmetrical it just looks and feels wrong. You will have to basically redo every single model on of ine team if you go that route and still it will feel silly. You'd also need to redo every map. I totally agree it is a very silly suggestion to remove asymmetry from the game. However it does need some work to make it somewhat balanced again.

 

Okay
-both NF and BE heavy tanks get 2 ML and 2 CN slots.
The NF and BE are various factions, with other equipment and tactics. That is the point of Empires - you got TWO FACTIONS, not two "teams". There are counterterrorists and terrorists, llike in CS.

-NF CV rescaled to the size of BE, with the handling and physical aspect (physics wheels, scripts) copied from BE
I really dont know how this could help, but it's my opinion that NF CV is a little too big (you have biocomputers in there or what?)

-NF light tank reskinned to replace BE AFV, exact same handling and hitbox.
-BE medium and heavy reskinned to replace the NF ones, exact same handling and hitbox
-NF and BE jeeps should be the same - ideally you start with a 2 seater but have a quick research that buffs the HP and expands it to a 4 seater, with still the same handling and hitbox.
Look at first point. We don't play Starcraft on Marines vs Marines, there are no John Traynors. Who would research "upgraded jeeps"? Better roll out one APC.
But the AFV remodel makes sense, the Imperials were the ones with technology and power in hand at the beggining of the war, so they should afford research of better vehicle than badly fit APC redesign.

-BE's APC needs a seat at the top hatch, just like NF
+1

 

Tama, instead of solely focussing on gameplay, please consider the atmosphere and feel of the game as well. Keeping what defines Empire, what makes it unique and fun, is more important than perfect balance. Empires is not a game for competitions. It's not Dota. It's not Team Fortress and it surely is not unique in having vehicles and infantry and having an rts/fps hybrid gameplay.

 

The game is balanced in it's asymmetry. The game back in I believe 2.2 was perfectly fine because it had counters AND asymmetry. This is a solution that Tama is introducing because there is pushback on putting counters back in Currently, but now if we make everything the same SURE THERE CAN BE COUNTERS. This is a retarded idea and I hope Tama gets run out for it.

 

I think letting different armours being good against certain types of attacks is an idea that has some merit and we could definitely debate that but the uniqueness of each sides adds a great flavour to the game, I think that the two dfiferent teams should have diferent strengths and weaknesses between each other.

What you could do if you are very determined to make both sides the same is you could open up two seperate heavy tank research paths, 1 for double cannons and 1 for double missles, however I think if you did this I think that somthing else should be added to make the two factions have their own unique differences. One thing I have noticed is that the 3 slot HMG of DU is rarely used as APC's cannot very easily compete in combat, maybe some way to bring 3 slot MG's to the late game could be explored.

Please Believe in Empires

Also Daily reminder that BE's shotgun should be an autoshotgun

 

I'm gonna buck the trend here and just put this forward:

• The game has never been "balanced" not to the point that research really was truly situational

I agree to symmetrical heavy tanks & I do want to see each faction have chassis that handle comparably.
I'm not sure I like the idea of pallet swaps though, I like the individual styles of design aesthetically.

But mechanically one team having access to dual cannon and one tema having access to dual missile doesn't work, never really has.

I don't think anyone has looked much beyond the nostaglic thought that "Empires is about asymetry".
There is very little I'm seeing other that hand flailing to make me believe that the asymetrical balance we have, particularly late game, has done anything other than stunt the number & variation of weapons.

I don't think the "lore" is important (or exists), I don't think that we should continue to suffer having scripts that change monthly, nobody agrees on, everyone ends up doing the same research anyway....
There is a lot of merit to parts of this idea, though maybe at points it goes a bit far. I'm not seeing much merit in anyones rebuttal.

 

you're missing the point I was trying to make. You we're implying asymmetry rules out balance and it is exactly that kind of reasoning that leads to the 'lets make everything the same kind of thinking. I was just stating you can have asymmetry and still have a balanced game. It is just more difficult to do and requires really listening and being in tune with the actual players (and not just the loud part). Something you can only really start doing if you record play statistics.

 

Or listen to the community, or re-add counters but both of those ideas have been shot down by the developers.

 

call it lore, call it justification, whatever, but ask yourself this: Would you play Counter Strike if both teams were the same? Would you play Battlefield if both teams are the same? Would you play C&C? Dune? Natural Selection? COD?
They all have in common a backstory which adds conflict, justification, reasons to want to win. You can ignore and dismiss that all you want, but it does bot make it any less important. Without that lore you quietly dismiss Enpries is not Empires.

 

Asymmetry is what MAKES this game. A long while ago, there used to be hard counters and it worked AMAZINGLY. I remember winning as NF, I remember winning as BE. It is asinine to assume that symmetry is going to fix this, its the research that has been torpedoed continuously that has caused this issue. Symmetrical combat will be bland, it will manage to destroy the fundamental gameplay that makes Empires combat so fun and rewarding.

The game is never balanced, NF always has it's research as does BE but back when there were counters, the NF strategy could counter BE and vice versa. Variation occurred in the research, something this development and others have completely gutted.

 

You know what.. When I started playing again. Couple of weeks ago I was under the impression the game was at least as fun as it was when I left around 1.08 and that brief period around 2.0. After realising it wasn't anymore I thought at least the current dev team is trying to bring some of its glory back again.
However... if this is truly what they think Empires should be like I'm gone again. I do not want to tarnish the hundreds of hours of quality game time I had playing a game that was fun and unique with whatever this is to become. I hold those memories of Empires 1.03 up to 2.0 way too dear to allow myself to do that.

 

I'm in favor of asymmetrical gameplay; each with their own unique (balanced) strengths. It allows for far greater interesting strategies to evolve from such implementations.

 

Of course I'd do things differently, but that's only in the sense that I learnt and broadened my thinking over the time I was involved. My opinions changed as I got more experienced and had actual ingame evidence to make judgements on how my changes were affecting gameplay.


With regard to the idea of the thread:

Please stop thinking that making the game more balanced will make it more fun. There are enough things people complain about with Empires, but I can't ever remember a time when either side was so much more OP than the other one that it warranted eliminating all the differentiating depth between the 2 sides. You're fixing a small, arguably subjective problem with a huge fundamental change to the game which will essentially amount to removing content entirely. It's ludicrous and I can't understand where the justification for this comes from.

Put simply, you shouldn't ever be removing content to balance in any capacity, especially not in such a huge one as this. But even beyond that, it's fixing a problem I don't believe even exists in the first place. It's just butchering the game.

 

I will just leave this one comment here for anyone dismissing story as an important component of a game, equally important as any game rules and mechanics. Anyone focussed solely on 'gameplay' (actually rules and mechanics) is like an accountant fixed on numbers and thinking that is what defines a company. Numbers certainly are a part of a company, but what defines it are its workers. And I do not mean its robots on the factory floor, but its human workers who are different because they all have a different story. That story defines and is defined by their appearance, their thinking, their rationale, the choices they see, they make, everything that sets them apart from anyone else. The company becomes the common denominator, the aggregate, the more that the sum of its parts, it is unique, because of its workers. The same applies to any work of art including games. The story defines it, alters our perception of it, makes it unique. Makes it stand out, makes it worth the time/money to invest in.

 

im against the idea. like others have said, removing content that works would be devastating and im personally against the idea of "mirrored" teams. and i dont think symmetry will balance empires. i do think there are problems with the nf med and heavy but i dont think the solution is a reskin of the brenodi tanks.
thanks for at least posting about the idea

 

I agree balance is less of an issue than people think.
My favourite scripts were the ones that you did Trickster, armours, engines and weapons all Felt notably different and required different play styles. Maybe things weren't that balanced but like you've said it doesn't matter that much. A good team can roll past being 10% down on dps or moving a little slower.
Besides fucking up the Fusion engine so it stalled and wouldnt start, which hurt Physics (At the time people were mostly rushing one tree until meds/heavies) they were good fun.
Before that I don't remember much, just the Full Chemisty era really.

I don't remember the meta before then being anything more than Rush full Chem heavies, then dpending on the map you'd dip into another tree. Maybe you'd pickup a counter armor instead of a weapon depedning on who was ahead of the research curve.

But anyway, I think giving both teams the choice of either Dual ML or Dual Cannon is a good thing. The rest I'm not fond of.
But Asymmetry doesn't make the game for me. Pocket Engineers and squads make the game.
It would be a lot less different than people think if teams had access to different chassis is all I'm saying.

Everyone be liek "You're ripping the heart of the game out" but I really don't see it.
The bottom line is that the NF LT is pretty much better than the AFV despite another plat of armor.
The Mediums are kinda same-same, as much as makes no difference (despite the BE one handling like a go-kart and the NF one like a shopping-kart)
The Heavies.. depending on the map can be pretty imbalanced. Definitely the NF heavy is not fun to use in almost any situation I would have more fun ina BE Heavy.

I don't see it as being that earth shattering.

I wouldn't want a re-skin. That does go too far for me.
I can live with the shitty handling.

But why we can'tr just add an NF model with 2 cannons and call it quits there I don't understand. That is the most fundamental change mechanically