Roll the game back.

Discussion in 'Feedback' started by Empty, Feb 25, 2017.

  1. D.D.D. Destroyer

    D.D.D. Destroyer Member Staff Member Moderator

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    Yes let's rag on a team of volunteers who don't get any material benefit for not putting more hours of their limited spare time into the massive and thankless time sink that is development, I'm sure that's the best course of action. Not that there are currently any actual major issues present.

    The thing about feelings is that they are subjective. I, for one, don't think that way about our mechanics at all, and can't think of any changes that would have caused this other than the turret turning speed limit making them jittery. Which is unnatural, but iirc was meant to be tweaked.
     
  2. Misfire

    Misfire Always Lost

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    One of the issues with empires is that so many have huge differences in opinion about what the game should be.
    The opinion of the guy adding code can be far from other players. Currently I don't see arbitration between opposing views and what goes in, goes in.
    I don't know how it was done in the "old days" but some how empires managed to find a decent middle ground and thrive.
     
  3. Lazybum

    Lazybum :D Staff Member Moderator

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    I had something else written up but misfire kinda pointed out what should be said. I think the difference between now and in the past was that generally speaking any change was just to improve what was there, without changing empires core gameplay or even it's more apparent stuff, like tank aiming. Everyone saw what this game was and it were fine with it, just people wanted loads of quality of life improvements. Like buildings now telling you why they can't be dropped or giving prediction to vehicle mgs. These are things people wanted because it would improve the quality of empires core without changing it at all. Things like turret aiming or even the sounds do change empires core a bit, and manage to do it without really improving it.

    In the case of turret aiming it's obvious, it's not as instant feeling like when you aim with a gun and that's just how empires worked forever, not to mention it fit's empires rather arcady feel. For sound it wasn't a case of higher quality sounds of what was there, it was complete changes to basically all of them. That changes how people experienced empires, at least for older players. Newer players of course don't have these preconceived notions, but generally almost all the feed back has been from older players.

    It's not a popular idea with people, but empires should be developed for these older players. What should be done for newer players is removing a lot of the jagged edges make empires hard to get into that even vets could benefit from, like a more functional vf menu or clearer instructions from the comm with better tools. You know, things that would improve the empire experience, not change it.

    Personally, empires is just too old to really change, it just needs to polished at this point.
     
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  4. Misfire

    Misfire Always Lost

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    See D.D.D here's a great example of the diverse opinions. You and I have worked well together, but we sail different directions here. While I 100% agree with fixing bugs and game play issues, a lot of other work done has been to "improve the game". "More realism", "better features". All this while boring bugs and exploits went unfixed.

    While some feel they're improving the game, other of us think it was great already.
    And I definitely don't like the victim card coming out when new features are criticized.
    As one of the volunteers, I see valid feed back, less so ragging.
     
  5. Misfire

    Misfire Always Lost

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    One more thought I'd like to throw out as many want to blame x, y or z person or patch for loss of players.....
    Empires used to be busy everyday. 2-3 servers on busy days, even though it was well after it's "prime" (2005-2008).
    Then Valve broke ALL mods with their push of SDK2013. Many mods died never to return.
    Empires also went dark for months. A few of us managed to run and play SKD2010 server/clients using special command line options. But since the average player didn't know these tricks (or didn't want to go to the extra trouble) game play was similar to today. 5v5 when we put out specific friend invites.

    Candles, Dr.Hatchewas, Vicki and few others worked to convert Empires to SDK2013 and it lived again.
    However, the players never came back. It never recovered from the 2013 outage.
    It struggled along for a year or two and did begni to see improvement. But again trouble stuck.
    Just as things began to improve in a small way with new plugins, dumb bots, and constant grass root advertising to players on steam, the server wars began.
    Between player admin in-fighting, intentional server crashing and new patches being released, everyone blamed everyone else. On top of that, player stacks reigned supreme crushing almost any new player. I have friends I got to play but never came back. One commenting on how toxic the place was.
    So IMHO.... without a fair and trusted central authority to guide dev and player relations, we come to where we are today.
     
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  6. D.D.D. Destroyer

    D.D.D. Destroyer Member Staff Member Moderator

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    I will hark back to what Security said a matter of months ago. We're a volunteer project with very loose structure and little management, people work on whatever they want, and power to them for doing it, because they're doing something. If that something happens to be fixes, great. If it happens to be new content, also cool. On the flipside, it's absolutely reasonable to comment on that and - as you said - offer feedback on (among other things) how useful the time spent on some feature was. The trouble starts when the changes are to the detriment of the project overall (which is subjective and thus difficult to discern in an amount of edge cases) or the feedback is presented in a poor or offensive manner (then you're reddit).
     
    Last edited: Nov 20, 2017
  7. Misfire

    Misfire Always Lost

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    :)

    "people work on whatever they want"

    Do to the nature of things atm, that's pretty much sums it up. No matter if the feedback is done well or badly, generally any coding being done keeps chugging along.
    I will say that what does go in, Thexa has done his best to make sure the code is stable and maintainable. Whether the change is welcomed or not is another topic.
     
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  8. Lazybum

    Lazybum :D Staff Member Moderator

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    Gimme code access plz, you'll have cute code monkey that's been well trained to not throw shit at things he doesn't like.:3
     
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  9. Sgt.Security

    Sgt.Security Member

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    First reply for months, yay.

    I agree with your statement, that, if an engineer can snip with a pistol better than a rifleman, there's serious weapon stats problems.

    EXCEPT, that is not true under the current official Empiresmod scripts.

    While we are at this, I would like it if you can name me other problems you have with weapon stats.
     
    Last edited: Nov 21, 2017
  10. D.D.D. Destroyer

    D.D.D. Destroyer Member Staff Member Moderator

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    I still miss Spartacus' take on NFHR where it fired several pellets with a single shot. That was fun and easy to use, yet hard to master.

    Also BEAR is way too effective at close range due to its standing/walking accuracy, particularly when compared to NFHR.

    And guided missiles deal too much damage given how easy it is to land shots with them - unless I'm missing something critically important about dealing with TOW guided heavies.
     
  11. Misfire

    Misfire Always Lost

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    And I believe you. This is why I raised the specter of hitbox in my post.
    I've recorded proof in the past, but would hate to have to do more of that.

    "While we are at this, I would like it if you can name me other problems you have with weapon stats"

    I've not tested this one in a while, but will do so again soon since you ask.
    2 infantry items... NF rifle with aim update still had a wider spread than stock BE rifle.
    Second, in game I have better hit stats single fire mode with a engie smg than the stock NF rifle.
    I won't know if the first is still true until I test again. other than that, I'm ok with stats.

    I bring up one more because of much moaning among other players.... cool down time for melee.
    Not something I've studied closely, but it does seem like insta-kill in hoard numbers when used at a spawn points.
    I think this could be a side effect of player lag that just gives the meleer and avantage, or perhaps some game mechanic thing when players are bunched up.
     
  12. D.D.D. Destroyer

    D.D.D. Destroyer Member Staff Member Moderator

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    The problem isn't the cooldown or the connection, it's melee upgrade. The damage is increased to 200 from....40-70? That, in combination with your typical barracks meleer's experience, is an absolutely lethal combination, quite hard to beat. If melee upgrade was brought more in line in terms of damage, this issue (and a number of BS deaths in certain scenarios) would go away.
     
  13. Misfire

    Misfire Always Lost

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    I mention cool down because of the speed at which I've seen it used a couple of times. Not that I have a stopwatch in game, but "kill-per-second" might describe it. Health upgrade... bah
     
  14. D.D.D. Destroyer

    D.D.D. Destroyer Member Staff Member Moderator

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    Melee cycle time is one second, or thereabouts. It's totally feasible to destroy an entire squad before the first guy can respawn.
     
  15. Sgt.Security

    Sgt.Security Member

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    As a side note, I've been talking about this for years, melee upgrade should be removed from the game.

    It is not generally useful and it's too OP under certain circumstances.

    There's just no need for a skill like this.
     
  16. D.D.D. Destroyer

    D.D.D. Destroyer Member Staff Member Moderator

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    At the very least, its effect should be reduced. It triples the damage dealt. In comparison, rifleman damage upgrades are 15% for infantry weapons and 25% for vehicles, while health upgrades do 30% and 25% respectively.
     
  17. Xyaminou

    Xyaminou Member

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    The problem is melee's rate of fire which is a direct result of bad hit detection. Fix hit detection (yeah right...) and then you can have a melee with a slow rate of fire so it's not insane.
     
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  18. Misfire

    Misfire Always Lost

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    I'm thinking we need a separate "fate of melee" thread?
     
  19. complete_

    complete_ lamer

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    You guys are chasing the idea of "balance" which will never happen. Ever.

    The real idea you should be chasing is fun. Is it fun to get your ass kicked by a rifleman who is 1/3 across the map? Is it fun to kill someone quickly 1/3 across the map? Is it fun to melee someone? Is it fun to be melee'd?
     
  20. Lazybum

    Lazybum :D Staff Member Moderator

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    I live for gren boxing matches.
     

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