This is the attitude that is needed. Risk is what will drive this game forward. If something isn't liked and proves negative, it can be rolled back, but not trying it BECAUSE it is a risk is the stupidest thing I have heard. Yea, maybe don't risk your life to do something, but a video game that is very far behind modern shooters, lacks a system to keep noobs, is unpolished but has a very unique gameplay has almost nothing to lose. Vets are leaving, noobs are leaving. Seriously, something needs to be done that is "risk" worthy to hopefully strike a very big reward.
I disagree on most of these points, except the vet thing but that's been true every other patch. I wouldn't call this xp thing a risk, I'd call it a time sink with probably no payout. Security with the script changes is a risk in some ways sure, but it also takes like 5 minutes to change scripts.(yeah there's testing but it doesn't take a long time) I'll give in a little and say if this thing is already 80% done, as in just the stats and xp thing, yeah sure might as well finish it and give it a whirl. If this was some brand new idea I'd say why bother? I think the part that I kept coming back to that you seemed very adamant about was skin unlocks. When it comes to art I really really would like someone to just boost current art assets, like how redskull made nf jeep and nf med and smithy made cameras. Or just improving textures like firewarrior has done. If you really want new skins of some sort how about adding in environment specific textures? Like how there's a snow skin for infantry on snow maps or how be heavy has a desert texture(I swear this exists and I'm not making it up, but I feel like I haven't seen it awhile.) These add quite a bit of polish and heart to empires, things that said someone gave a damn. Hats will never say that. I will recognize the one major consideration to this, and that's if the artist just wants to make hats. If someone really wanted to spend time to make a specific thing then more power to them. It's their time and they are free to enjoy it however they want. If someone wanted to just make empires better in any capacity I would say work on something more significant. I gave a list of things that are new, not just fixing shit. These wouldn't just make it easier for new comers, helping them have a positive experience and wanting to come back, it would probably help draw in older players. Shit that makes life easy is something every single person who has to lead in some capacity would love.
Aint noone going to stay for a prettier barracks or a prettier camera, the graphics on this game are soooooooo outdated even if you got a really good graphics designer/art guy, noone that comes to play empires is going to stay for that. Aint noone going to stay because that 1 bug that happens because you fire a bullet whilst proned on an LT thats 9 mine flipped on his back is fixed. Aint noone going to stay because of the things we have been doing ( since everyone is leaving and has been leaving consistently ). We gotta change shit up, take a chance and not listen to some of these negative bitches up in here. They might stay if we get more radically different scripts which security is working on. They might stay if we get a more polite community-> aint going to happen They might stay if we add a reward system. It's all mights and maybes but atleast thats 10x better than no fucking way people are going to stay cause your goddamn camera or turret looks nicer. Or because we fixed a bug they never encounter or notice. Also you can tie in so much features into the stat/level system. Our problem with tank limits could be solved ( you need a certain level to purchase unlimited vehicles , at the start you can purchase 1 vehicle, the next lvel more and more until you reach like level 10 etc ) We need more features not more fixes
Where in that list I made did I ask for bug fixes? You saying you wouldn't love better tools to lead a squad or command? Are you serious? At that point I would quit empires forever, that's a horseshit mechanic.
how is that a horseshit mechanic? It's better than the other proposed one where we tie points in the game to amount of tanks you could buy and that was received ok ish. It wouldnt be al ot of levels. But just so super newbies couldnt buy a heavy and just lose it. It'd be something like , every level you can buy 1 more tank every game ( medium or heavy ), and at level 5 you get unlimited to get from 0 tanks to 1 tank it'd be leveling up once. And to do that it'd be something like get 25 points in all games including 1 revive, 1 repair 1 kill etc etc all the basics. It'd be super easy
Its not like you cant purchase vehicles in general, only mediums and heavys. Also you'd need like 4-5 mines to insta blow up a medium I think. Unless the noob put paper on it then he just desrves to insta die
All I am advocating for, is something new and exciting. We are honestly facing a crisis because now the vets are leaving, and noobs aren't staying. The game has changed too much to retain vets, but too little to be appealing to noobs. I commend the devs working on Bots and the Tank Destroyer. It's new. It is a new feature that HOPEFULLY will attract people. However, an e-penis to the game desperately needs to be added in an attempt to keep people. Other very very successful games have done it, so it works. We should do it. The game doesn't have much longer when the vets leave because then there will be no one to populate games and no one to even teach the noobies how to play. Empires will become a relic that no one knows how to play anymore once we all leave because it will be impossible for noobs to decipher how to play via the tutorial. As more and more vets leave, it will only depopulate faster and faster. Yea you can say "It's gone through worse!" however, that was steam's fault, not a population that left.
I thought the only person working on bots was misfire. I think he was making them a server plugin because that's all he has to work with. I really wouldn't say the game is changing too much for vets, game is honestly not that different then it was a year ago. Questionable things have happened that might have scared off a few, or at least scared them off forums, but I wouldn't say any of that has a huge lasting effect on player populations. Judging from what I keep seeing from in game if there was a reason people just up and left empires is because they got sick of it. From same old maps, same crap maps, from vets stacking, from new players making things really hard for no good reason other then they don't know better, from the gameplay itself feeling stale, these players just get either sick of the negatives or tired of the same old same old. Or the biggest reason players leave, they get busy in real life. I know that's a big reason I don't play much nowadays, that and every time I do look it's fucking slaughtered or some shit. Progression I feel would keep players playing at most maybe an extra hour or 2, if stats meant that much vipers should have had a bigger keeping of players when it had stats but it was pretty much the same players I usually saw. Empires is a similar position that titanfall is in, that game too is at like 100 players or something on average. It does have leveling and this extra league xp thing, but from when I was playing it I highly doubt any of that was the reason the players kept playing it. They just loved the game itself, it was the only game that let you played in big stompy robots and run everywhere on ground like a ninja, it was neat. The whole e-peen thing works for other games because they have a huge playerbase that has a higher potential amount of players playing for that reason, empires rotates around what, maybe 200-300 unique people? The chance that someone will actually be playing just to get another level is slim. Personally, I just hate the idea of devs who implement such a design, it's like saying we can't make the game good enough but we can cheese it a bit and give this treadmill instead.
It's going in the code, no longer a server plugin. Last I knew, it was multiple devs now working on it. Yea this is an issue, but I have to say vets are tired of the changes. Numerous. They feel tank combat is stale and the empires they remember is just gone. And yes, these players are tired of the same old same old, which is why new shit HAS to be added Vipers implementation of the system was a complete wrong doing on the whole idea of "stats". They recorded VERY SPECIFIC data, and then made that comparable, in a team game. If you go about stats, you can't record specifics such as "Most roadkills in a jeep" because then that makes people only get roadkills in a jeep to be the player with the most roadkills in a jeep. You have to keep it vague if you want to do stats. Titanfall also costs money, unlike Empires. Empires is free and plenty of noobs see it and pick it up, we just need a way to retain players or bring back old ones and new features do just that. It's meant to be a thing to keep you working towards something. It would work in Empires because people like it, there's no reason to stay for the 5th match when you played 4 already because every match, while we SAY it is "different" everytime seems to always play out the same. Same research, same maps, same players. Day in and day out. Something has to be thrown in there that stays with you over every match to make it interested. Edit: I would also say get Trading cards and make achievements work so the Achievement hunters and the trading card collectors come to this game, but I don't know what that would entail .
because they fail to come up with their own unique ideas. much like ... also those huge companies put hundreds of millions in their next big graphics demos, so they cant take risk and they copy everything everyone else does in the fear to miss out on something. THEY cant take risks because they are accountable to shareholders. thats why all those AAA titles are more or less the same.
While, yes I do agree, they all have elements that have proven to work. Some people buy games for Graphics, obviously you aren't going to download Empires for graphics, but you also aren't going to stick around when you see that each round is now more or less the same.
Oh, it's cool to hear bots are getting better support. Empires really needs to help seed servers. I think you are forgetting at face value it had that simple point system, where it ranked players based on points kinda like what you want here, expect what you want doesn't flip flop around. I also don't remember it having a "most whatever" system, though it did keep a general "pistol 1 has killed 1000 people" deal.
From how I remember it, and that was a while ago, it had a system where you could compare who had most kills with X weaponry. The system I propose for point tracking, not even XP, is a simple private system for your own viewing. It wouldn't compare players. The XP system would give you a rank, but the rank isn't dependent on other players, it is just a linear XP gain for you. You can't go up or down based on others performance, it is only going up.
if you cant play without getting some arbitrary xp, i can hand out xp to you. here you just earned your first xp only 99 more for level 1. but while were at it. do you really think i stayed on this forums to get 3rd most posts or 3rd most likes? no i dont give a damn shit, im here to discuss the game, politics and whatnot - it merely happend. i enjoy that i (internet) know a whole bunch of guys from all around the globe. it quite interesting how you guys see the world. i never even gave a 2nd thought about my post count (other than "omg i post too much")
Ah, but even still, my point was that vipers did have e-peen potential but I don't think it really changed player retention much at all.
Yes, to some it doesn't matter. But when you are awarded for leveling up, that changes the game and to some that DOES matter. Appealing to the crowd Empires does anymore isn't working, it has to appeal elsewhere.
if this ever gets implemented and is a success, i will publically excuse myself to you and admit i was wrong. until then my hopes in gamers are that they play for fun. though i also have to admit, fun is subjective, it definately might be fun for someone to grind for levels. i just want to believe this is a minority and the vast majority draws the fun from the games actual mechanics.
