As much as I want to move on.. I miss Empires. Not what it has become but what it was. Over the years it has been moving in the wrong direction and for some reason most are just so involved with catering to a few over what's best for the game. To a certain extent I understand developers not wanting to go against what some people want. They cry if they don't get their way. But at some point enough is enough. So many decent and dedicated players have been lost over changes that should have never been made. While other changes / fixes get ignored. Not blaming current developers or any past developers as they all work hard and have had lots of good and bad additions to the game. But if changes result in reduction in players maybe remove the changes. The people who ask for the changes for the most part only represent a small amount of players. Majority of empires players do not visit the forums. A small minority make decisions and it is why empires is in the state it is in. Scripts... are horrible. Spartacus had some of the best improvements and was working on some amazing ideas. They was not perfect but what he was working on was going to be amazing. Yet a few didn't want to give time to work out balance so a few people cried until scripts was taken from him and now it seems like scripts are done by someone who has no idea what he is doing and has pretty much ruined game play. Turbo jeeps... they was fun. But since a few people had issues they was removed. Restrict on maps... This shouldn't be a thing.. Restricting engineer abilities on maps is just retarded. If a mapper has to restrict a "core" Game mechanism as class abilities then they shouldn't be making maps. Sudden death.. should not exist. Putting the game into a state where people are not able to play is such a bad idea it shouldn't have to even be said that it is horrible and should not exist. But since a minority of players feel the game should cater to them and should not have to play maps they do not like. The majority had to be punished. Map votes and rtv show what majority want and shouldn't be infringed on. Removing maps from rotation.. Should only happen if maps are broken. Removing maps just because a minority do not like them is another way that majority of players have been ostracized. Including admins changing maps that win map votes. Bans...in game and forums. Rules should apply to everyone equally. So many times as long as you was brown nosing the right people you basically get away with what ever you want to do. While others get punishment for doing the same things. Exploiting...As above as long as your brown nosing the right people it's ok. While others get bans. On that subject if it's a map issue then it's not a players fault. It's people making broken maps that should be made to fix the map. Most major games do not punish players. Destiny / The Divishion being a good examples. It's not the players fault mappers are lazy and don't fix broken maps. Most of them being simple fixed as adding clip / push brushes. American servers. I think it was really shitty that a certain server owner did what they could to kill off the other American servers just to shut there's down as soon as the others was gone.. Empires needs a US server as most Americans will not play a game where they get raped by ping. Suggestion to developers -- create a survey asking what people like / dislike, what makes you want / not want to play empires, what needs to change, and what would bring you back to empires. Post links in forums, game client, steam page, moddb, and any other empires related sites. Focus on what majority want.
Turbo jeeps broke maps. That's never fun. Vehicle clips could kinda fix some exploits, but it wouldn't fix everything. If there's anything I learned while playing empires is that players will find a way to break the system, any system, to their benefit. Also jeeps being more effective at killing people then actual guns was a thing, and that too was annoying(though personally I kinda enjoyed trying to rpg snipe the driver as he ran me over.) Spartacus did have good ideas that could have used a bit of time to flesh out, but saying security's scripts are terrible is just terrible. I can't say anything about vehicle mg balance because of hit detection change, but the rest makes for some well balanced scripts. When I was commanding I never felt like any choice was a horrible idea, which was great because half the time I was taking the cv from someone who either dropped out or didn't know what they were doing. Also makes it easier for new comms to command. District is even more awful with level 3 turrets. And homeland is more exciting because you can't drop walls. It's a core empires thing but it can make for some very good gameplay if it's missing. If you really have fault with this then I don't know why you'd support any non-commander map, considering the comm is the most empiresy thing about empires. The rest is whatever to me, everyone feels differently about things but I don't quite like the idea of saying things happened because of the minority voice, things happened because someone wanted it to happen and happen to have the ability to make it happen, yeah?
The problem is its hard to nail down exactly why people leave. Most games have a natural attrition rate that is no fault of the games, and honestly Empires has done well considering we started with ~1000 players online at peak 10 years ago. I can't imagine turning Empires into a design-by-popularity game would turn out very well.
Not really design around popularity.. But restoration of popular things that shouldn't have been changed. ×Turbo jeeps - didn't break maps. Maps was broken to begin with. Turbo just needed tweaking. Also could have been disabled server side for scrims / pugs. × Tank cross hairs - what we had before was so much better. ×Sounds - again what we had before was much better It's ok to try new things. But if they don't work then they don't work. @Ranger it's ok of you disagree. No one ever will fully agree on things. But that's the point. People may disagree about things like turbo jeeps or removing gimmicky maps or restricting engineer abilities because mappers are to lazy to balance a map. The question is do you want a game you think is perfect. Or would you rather have a game with a few things you disagree with but is still enjoyable to a broader range of players. Keeping servers more populated. Scripts- If you think current scripts are good. Then you are part of the problem. Grenadier - you have anti tank class that is now useless against tanks. Mines are basically just speed bumps now. RPGs are like water balloons. Mortars are still anti infantry. Engineer - you want new people playing this class but have maps that strip everything but revive. Turrets are so unless is there even a point in keeping them in game ? Scout - again Spartacus had this one pretty perfect. Tanks - making everything equally useless isn't balance. It just makes for bad game play. You want the OP research. But you balance with research time and price. Risk/reward. Also hard counters. Promoted more communication and kept the game interesting. Used to play 40+ hours a week. Now I try to give Empires a chance with the updates only to see that the game is just going down hill. Normally a group I talk with have the same discussions about how things are so bad now. We want to like Empires but it's just so bad and the few that have influence seem to only care about how they feel empires should be. As opposed to what's best for the mod.
I didn't say current scripts were good, just not as terrible as you make it out to be. Rock paper scissors isn't fun for anyone but the winning side or commanders, that leaves out half the server. Soft counters like in 2.4 were good, and they still exist to a point just a little less so. I didn't really like the direction of 3 slot weapons and quite how security was normalizing everything, but if I wanted to keep with empires current trends it's probably what I would have done myself. For me at least, I feel like one of empires long standing problems was how hard it is to get into commanding, and making research more safe certainly helps here. Hard counters and adding cost back in(though I kinda like cost) would just have me hearing even more yelling at new comms and I'm just bit more tired of that then anything really. That scout was thanks to empty, he was the one who redid infantry scripts. Even then though, scout kept most of it's bullet resist and still has smg2 and shotgun, you can still play it just like before. Not going to disagree about grens, with skill you could take on meds by yourself before but now it just feels like a chore even with a second gren, even though the actual survivablity of tanks hasn't increased all that much. Not sure what happened there. It's probably why I go rifle with stickies now. Mortars are anti everything, they are actually a bit better against tanks than rpgs if you got dem skillz. You really are underestimating what could be done with turbo jeeps, but it's ok. Most people don't know what could be done with them. And honestly nearly every single map would have to be redone in some fashion to make for turbo jeeps that don't break things, because half the time it wasn't quite the map design itself but that combined with cameras and walls from engineers that broke it. There was a less torquey version of turbo that couldn't be used to blast off into space, but I dunno what happened to that. A turbo that just increased max speed a bit would be decent I think, just not one that instantly increased speed. How many maps actually strip everything from a engy? Like 2? Yeah a lot more restrict walls, but maps couldn't function at all if you could drop walls everywhere. Nuclear would be a brenodi win everytime if you could drop walls in it, district would be even more of a standstill, I don't even want to think about escort. Funnily enough these are all no comm maps. Maybe you just don't like no comm maps? Which is fine, but they are nice to help fill a server and it's kinda nice when it's the whole team being responsible for a win/loss instead of one idiot in a tonka truck.
If you were to remove all maps that are broken because of turbo jeeps then you would have no maps to play because no map was designed with turbo jeeps in mind. Jeeps are for fast and cheap transport and nothing else, don't misuses it. The game doesn't need 5 people in a team of thirty, spamming turbo jeeps because it's fun, actually I think Lazybum used to do that, or was it someone else? kek. The fun of the game is teamwork. I can't believe you're trying to make a serious point with turbo jeeps. Note: The mortar is actually an anti-infantry and anti-structure weapon. It's artillery. The only problem is that you can bunny hop and stuff which I don't really like. I'd probably prefer to give it more explosion radius or even damage as long as you have to plant it on the ground to fire it. A deployable mortar would be fun in a way. Everyone could use it, chaotic bombardment, trenches etc. But then again, you get an early game artillery war which might not be the best thing kek. You say grenadiers are ineffective against tanks. That's probably because you try to kill a heavy on your own. The keyword is teamwork. A heavy won't try engaging a squad with rev and grenadiers unless it has double HE, BIO ML/CNN or HIT. The missile at maximum power is fine, not sure it requires a research. I agree about the mines. I'd like pressure and remotely activated mines. Anti-infantry that don't hurt tanks (not explosive) and anti-tank mines which are only activated by all vehicles. Anti-infantry could damage utility vehicles, AFVs, APCs and LTs. Can be done with current scripts but would take some time. This could lead to the addition of mine flail vehicles/tanks. Many ideas have been suggested regarding the anti-tank capabilities of grenadiers, including direct hull damage, new weapons (with research or w/o); all of them have their pros and cons. 9-mines were not an intended feature. It's what Lazybum said previously. People will always find a way to use things to their advantage. In this case, it was a good thing I guess. Anyway most things that could improve the game have already been suggested and discussed in detail. The problem is the manpower and time. Maps get fixed all the time so you're wrong there. But it's just one mapper so it's slow. Asking people what they want would slow down development about 128.36% more and would lead to chaos as the people cannot share the same vision and just spit out ideas derailing development. Developers can only get ideas. Not saying current developers have a vision, I don't know. Even if they do, it doesn't matter 'cause they're just unable to implement things at the moment. About the NA and EU server... I'm not gonna justify anybody's actions, but I'm gonna criticize your words. You make it sound like "poor Americans won't play with bad ping, they need a server". For over over 8 years EU has been playing on NA servers and I can't remember one single serious complaint about the latency, while certain people have multiple types whined and even poached in servers like EPIC to get people on VIPER. NA have been hurt by the EU server through ill actions indeed, but to imply the purpose of those actions was to shut down NA servers and kill Empires, is not only wrong but also stupid. Now, I don't really give a damn about this, I couldn't care less. It's not important. Just leaving this here cause you make it sound important.
People leave because being part of this community is sort of a way of life sometimes. When life changes, empires is no longer a part of that life. It exists for people where they are at at a giving point in time, and then when they are done with that time, they move on. It's like that long term relationship that just was never gonna last forever, but you weren't sure when it should end. Eventually something small changes and it just ends. There were times in the past when empires had maybe 1 server, and maybe 5 people on. You'd get lucky and some time between EU and US time zones you'd get a good 10 man game going. The mod has 'Died' more times than I care to remember. I honestly doubt Krenzo ever thought the mod would last this long when he started working on it. I mean, I joined this forum in 2007, and it is the second forums. This mod was started in, what, 2002-2003 ish? that's going on 15 years. This game has been the pet project of budding game designers and coders to play with for a long time. It will keep on being this sort of project that is passed on. Also, emp_money with artillery is where it's at.
And that one guy doesn't know every single tiny little misaligned vertex on every map out there, but if it just so happens that a problem gets repoted, he made fixing it quite easy compared to the years past. So report bugs instead of complaining they never get fixed, because as much as I hate to admit it, I can't read people's minds, which would be pretty useful when there's plenty of people with this mindset.
Besides a few maps..Jeep turbo was mostly broken because of the NF rax. That has been changed. The few maps that could be exploited could have been easily fixed with a clip brush. Even the old NF rax could have just modded the collision box to block people from getting on top. Or someone could have taken over what trickster started years ago. A more realistic turbo. Not even saying they should be on all the time. But it definitely helped seed servers. Spent many nights with just a few of us on. Where we would screw around with jeeps until we had the population to play a real match. 9 mines was not intended..But was considered a feature..Not a bug. Heavies should take team work. But lights should not be able to drive through a mine field, Turret farm, or a group of grens with 0 fucks given. As for EU.. They have never been without a server. They chose to play on American servers.. Main reason being that EU vs NA American servers would always populate more. What I was saying was basically the reason behind not having an American server was a little sketchy. As in it could have been handled a lot better..Just going to leave it at that. But regardless yes Americans do need their own server. If you want more players. It's already hard getting people to even try Empires. Having no US servers makes people in the US not even want to bother with it. I know the price is higher but the reason the price is higher..majority of Americans are picky about ping. "Asking people what they want would slow down development about 128.36% more and would lead to chaos" Majority of the time Developers here do not even play the game. So asking people who play would help them focus on what the players feel are important. Communication is an important thing. It's not like Developers are restricted to what people want. But it would give that an idea of what people want. Most importantly it gives the player base a feeling of being heard. That is the main reason most mainstream games now are starting to do a "State of the game". For years people have said that "man power" is what's holding things back.. At the same time not one thing is being asked for. There is a community of people with talent. Even more now then in the past. Yet developers do not ask for any help. For the first time in many years Empires has mappers, modelers, Coders, people doing scripts, and people doing plugins. It's has been many many years since empires had this many people working on things. Plus all the other people in the community with skills. But their is no organization, communication, or goals. Or if there is then it's being kept very secret.. Lead Developer needs to set a plan. Even if no deadline is place. Just kind of outlining where they plan on taking Empires. Lack of communication is the #1 thing that keeps killing this mod. Example - Game updates can put Empires on the front page of steam. If pushed correctly. - Events can also be pushed to everyone who owns Empires. If done by Developers. - Game news can also be pushed to everyone who owns Empires. If done by Developers. - Updating Moddb would bring in more people. Also Front page advertising for big updates. All of this should have someone besides current developers as it is a lot of work. But has been needed for a long time.
That statement is so delusional I don't even know where to begin. No one did such a thing and accusing someone of something you made up in your own mind is ridiculous. Plus there has always been an NA server and still is an NA server.
I don't know about devs not playing the game, I used to see tama(who's name was bob2 for the longest time) all the time, and thexa could be seen often enough. Security used to play a lot when updates were a bit more frequent but I don't think I've seen him too often in the past 6 months. He like many others got hit by the real life truck I think. I don't know what you quite mean about devs not asking for things either. Not just devs but regular players ask for things and not much comes of it. Sometimes yeah people go I wanna do that, but not every time. Generally most things that happen and get implemented from non devs are people who simply put the effort in and met some sort of quality control. They wanted something in so they made it, simple as that. Key point here is if devs said we want X it doesn't mean all these skilled people will do it, because it's not what they want to do. For them it's less about helping empires somehow and more helping their own gameplay experience. That said they are always looking for new devs, it says so on the main empires page under developers. It's not much of a secret either.
Development means not often playing the game, or not playing the game with your developer name sticking out if you do take some time off developing. In the past 10 years I've rarely seen mootant, Krenzo, Kylegar, empty, etc on when they had some bit of programming they were working on or testing. I've known mappers to spend at least 5x longer mapping than playing the game. It's a side affect of devoting your free-time to development rather than enjoyment.
"The moment you think something is good enough is exactly the moment you stop improving it." Honestly, no one should be saying that the scripts are good, especially the one that's doing the job. But I do believe that I am qualified to say : I have improved the scripts. (In case you don't know the reference point, I took over at V2.6.9) Oh and yes Lazybum, same as many previous developers, I also got hit by the real life truck. But no, I am not THAT busy. I came to a realization that this project isn't THAT worthy of my time, anymore. Not because I lost interest, but because people can tamper with the effort quite easily. I am a firefighter, and I found that people are pouring gasoline into the burning building. What's worse? They think it's water. https://forums.empiresmod.com/index.php?threads/hi-friends.21047/page-2 But no, I am not quitting, I just wouldn't spend as much time as before.
I wasn't gonna embarrass you publicly. But since you are being a little bitch. You are the one that's been pouring most gasoline into the building, for the past 6 months. Thank you for ignoring the warning that regular events will kill the population. Thank you for being pretty much the biggest political reason why literally dozen of vets are quitting, including server owners. As a side note you are selfish as fuck. "Let me turn off my server when there's no people playing, just so I can share the population during hot time at minimal cost." I am sure other server owners are stupid because they leave their server on 24/7, just to make the game "look alive". So yes, it doesn't matter if I make the scripts better, a guy who has $30/month to spend can just kill the game in all possible ways. And yes, you think you've been pouring water into the building. Mrdie really should have taken a lesson from you. I would like to use this as a good opportunity to announce you as one of the greatest killer of Empires. But of course, you can always blame it on "vehicles falling through", if that would make you feel less guilty.
Your thoughts don't matter here. I still remember what I said : "Feel free to experiment on our already weak playerbase." I probably should have used all possible swear words instead of a passively aggressive statement.
Ya know what would help the forum population? If www.empiresmod.com had a link to the forums. Just sayin.
