[2.26]Test for Sunday, August 8, 2010 at 20:00:00 GMT

Discussion in 'Archive' started by Mashav, Aug 5, 2010.

  1. Mashav

    Mashav Member

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    This test will be a balance test.
    Several games will be played to judge how these changes effect normal normal gameplay.
    At least 20 testers will be required.
    The test will last as long as there are testers.


    Please, do not use this thread for feedback, and hold feedback until after you have attended a test.
    Use the Tester Build Feedback section with the correct header of "[2.26]" for feedback threads.


    Test was scheduled on this

    See this thread for a changelog up to 261.

    Relevant changes since 261:

    -Empty's particle patch 1 now in the svn.
    -empties request: changed sml particle into actual sml particles, and made HEMG into armor piercing for some reason
     
  2. LordDz

    LordDz Capitan Rainbow Flowers

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    I work both days =/
     
  3. ViroMan

    ViroMan Black Hole (*sniff*) Bully

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    damn... Im gana be at a bday party then. :(

    On a side note... if the stuff is in svn now ill mess with it on saturday.
     
  4. complete_

    complete_ lamer

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    you should just remove ebuild and see how many people show up then
     
  5. Mashav

    Mashav Member

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    I can't, and wouldn't If I could. As I've said before, ebuild was put in as a test. It has not received a decent test. It has received a bunch of speculative negative feedback(which is probably right, but entirely speculative).

    If a decent test occurs(20+ people, no retarding around) and the majority of the people there don't like it, I'm guessing it will be removed. If it has actually been tested and rejected, rather then a bunch of people spouting how stupid the idea is(however right they may be) I think one of the coders will be a lot more receptive to removing it.
     
  6. Trickster

    Trickster Retired Developer

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    Ok, Fine. I'll get people for your test. When the e-build change is badly received, it gets removed. No more bullshit about it. If you don't make good on your word, than you can consider the majority of testers permanently out. But for this test, I will get you testers.

    What I require from you:

    A server which is fully updated.
    An svn revision which is fully updated.

    If you have both of those, then I will get you the testers, for this night only.
     
  7. Emp_Recruit

    Emp_Recruit Member

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    Iono why the ebuild thing is in there and I suggested it. I even included in my suggestion and mentioned it to a few devs on SF that it didn't make sense in empires in the current format, especially with scouts with hide and grens with defusal. The general point of the suggestion was to spur ideas of how to make EVERY class viable in relatively equal portions for most of the game. TBH I would rather see something like an autobuild function around certain radius of friendly refineries or something. One big problem with empires is there is just such a huge gap between whats fun to play and what you should be doing to win.

    Development should be focused on:
    1. Getting back to 2.12 type infantry scripts.
    2. Having tank battles not last so fucking long in mid game
    3. Making all classes decently useful through most of the game

    4. Have players working as a TEAM fighting either for specific areas or along well defined front lines.

    The way empires currently works on a lot of maps is you just get wild goose chases happening with half the players fucking around the map in jeeps solo attacking undefended refs /rushing past everything in a single APC because tank weapons and infantry weapons do fuck all damage after armor is researched.

    The best fights in empires happen in the first 15 minutes of the game on canyon/slaughtered where you get well established front lines setup with a good back and forth between the teams. Then after armor/engines are done you either have the teams turtling up against eachother because of wallspam (slaughtered) or people just running around past the frontlines trying to ninjarax/killrefs in backfield/APC rush main bases.

    Tanks need to be slowed down somewhat, especially APCs, and given more realistic damage so being a skilled driver is actually beneficial instead of having ROFL I RAM YOU THEN DRIVE AWAY AND REPAIR BECAUSE IT TAKES 30 MIN TO KILL A TANK. (ROF on weapons needs to be cut back and damage upped considerably)

    I think the above is partly why empires is so unfriendly to noobs because so many things that are useful to winning in empires are so unintuitive and unfun. Driving solo around the map in a jeep sabotaging refs requires 0 skill and is boring as fuck but can yield pretty decent results as a solo player depending on the map.

    I mean there are just so many things that are in this game that are there for no clear reason and are just shitty. Like heat on tank weapons. Completely gimps having fun heavy tanks as they have the same dissipation as light tanks. Slows down tank combat and makes it boring as all fuck. But its still there. Everything could EASILY be balanced with reload rates and weight(different engines could have different weights to balance their difference in speed).

    Honestly this is already way longer than I meant to post. But the TL;DR is there are so many obvious ways to make empires a better game without significant coding but the only thing that ever gets done is slapping on some new "features" and some minor changes to scripts. The game (3 years now?) is either worse, or not significantly better than 2.12.
     
    Last edited: Aug 8, 2010
  8. Opie

    Opie Member

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    This. times your mom

    Not This

    1. You will never get 20 people. So don't expect it.
    2. Even if you did get 20 damn people, the test would be ruined. And you would NEVER see 20 people again. I offered the best possible compromise solution to the e-build "problem", have you guys even considered the feasibility? That is what should be tested.
    3. Does the damn server work? Will the scripts be correct or will Comms die instantly?
    4. Let try replacing the comm model with pink elephants. Sure it sounds like a bad idea, but we won't know until we test it.
     
  9. Chris0132'

    Chris0132' Developer

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    You should release e build in 2.26 and ignore everyone, people will learn to deal with it. As I'm sure you've noticed you cannot change anything without some fuckhead complaining about it, so the obvious solution is to ignore what they say and instead watch what they do. If you release 2.26 and everything collapses then remove it, if the game works better (I suggest speccing a dozen or so matches) then keep it in.

    In short don't pay attention to backseat devs on forums, they suck, and design by comittee is not a good thing, it results in an unpleasant dross of a game with nothing appealing and no cohesion.
     
  10. Mashav

    Mashav Member

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    Holy crap successful test is successful.
     
  11. Trickster

    Trickster Retired Developer

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    Going around crossing stuff out that i fixed ~brutos
    Bugs:


    • [*]Microphone icons appear in the top right, behind the minimap
      [*]The hills on emp_canyon lack textures, although Keef had them. The textures may only exist in the developer SVN.
      [*]The GUI element to the new wages system blocks out the tank counter.
    • Changing to revive after using repair upgrade allows you to repair (which you cannot normally do without repair upgrade) without having repair upgrade. May work for all skill changes from repair upgrade.
    • You cannot build a vehicle with wages if it's restricted. May not be a bug.
      [*]You cannot build a vehicle with wages if the team doesn't have enough team resources. For example, you may have 300 wages for a 250 resource vehicle, but if the team has only 100 resources, then you cannot build it.
    • Slade reported that he saw many people being invisible (just floating weapons).
    • When Slade entered my jeep, he was standing up on the seat. Not sure if this is just a really old bug that ocassionaly happens or a new one.
    • NF SMG2 uses an untextured SMG3 model.
    • When alltalk is on, you can see the class/location of enemy players. Not necessarily a bug, but maybe the ability to turn this off via a CVAR would be a good addition.
    • Changelevel command crashed the server.
    • BE wall is still higher than NF wall, and cannot be fired over.
    • CV armour bug is still present. Still no indication as to why it happens.
    • For some players, the location output for "sayteam" was messed up in a weired way and sometimes reported "@0".

    Feedback/Suggestions:

    • The resources in the vehicle menu automatically add your wages. It would be better if it had like 300 + 25 (25 being your wages) or something.
    • Opie: Make turrets + sabotage cost wages
    • Decon appears to be really powerful now due to the hull repair rate changes, especially on the CV. The NF CV is going to suffer a lot due to this, as he can be turetted and kept in one spot by just one engineer.
    • CV repair is now really fast, as the bulk of his HP is in his hull.
      [*]You gain a lot of wages. The rates need to be turned down.
    • Wages are an awesome addition.
    • Fix salvage and readd it, especially to the wages system.
    • Trickster: Move the new features to the scripts - Ebuild rates, hull/armour build/decon rates, etc
    • Trickster: Have a new script file in which the points/wages you get for an "event" is declared. 1 point for a kill, 20 wages. 1 point for a sabotage, 10 wages, etc.
    • Many people dislike having to e-build as an engineer, as well as him being totally equal to other classes in terms of build speed.
    • Repair upgrade requires you to have calculator out. Therefore, it is a nerf to your class to take it, as you cannot have a weapon out whilst using it. I saw Opie kill someone whilst e-building a turret. Skills shouldn't be a nerf to your class.
    • E-build changes aren't as bad as first thought, but they definitely need changing in some way. Rushing with the entire team as rifleman does not work, but when we threw a few grens in the mix, as well as maybe one engineer for the sake of dropping an ammobox so the riflemen could explosive nadespam, it did make things pretty bad. My But it appears that no amount of SVN testing will show how overpowered/underpowered things will be. I suggest a change based on common sense, and then a hotfix after a month or so when commanders have worked out how to properly take advantage of it. Can't test 101 tactics in 2 tests.
    • Initialisation research can hammer a team which gets rushed. Once you get initialisation, rush with tanks to take out their radar, and they have no vehicles to fight back with except jeeps. Increases slippery slope, which is bad.
    • Trickster: Add wages toggelable by mapper. This means they can be disabled on maps where they aren't needed, such as pure infantry maps. Also make wages in general a cvar.
    • Zeke: Hull change to repair rates could really ruin bio.
    • Opie: The ability to shoot/reload whilst e-building should be questioned and possibly worked on.
    • Comm heat is an issue. Once overheated, as long as people kept firing on it, due to the overheat from moving, the commander could never move. I don't think this new change is going to work as intended, not at least with the current heat system. When you get "fully overheated" it acts much like when you use all your stamina.

    This is my genuine suggestion for e-build. It won't be perfect, but I think it'll require the least drastic changes after 2.26 comes out.

    Leave repair upgrade speed at what it is now. Take this speed to be 100% build speed.
    Set engineer build speed to be 60% build speed.
    Set e-build speed to be 40% build speed.

    EDIT: I'm adding this as a secondary suggestion, if the developers were actually willing to go further than just what I stated above.

    Set the default engineer build speed to 60-75%, but make sure that when he has 0 build charge, his calculator sits at 0% and builds at e-build speed. Right now, e-build has unlimited charge, whereas engineer only has 100 charge to fill out. This will mean engineers build a lot faster, but let's be honest, staring at a wall holding mouse1/E isn't exciting anyway. We can play with the values, but the point is, engineer should build at e-build speed when at 0%, so as to not make e-build BETTER at building than engineer build. If you don't want to make engineer too fast, then play with the values, but like I said, engy build should ALWAYS be better than e-build.

    Make e-building give points for building. If more classes are going to be building, at least give them the points for it.

    Make sure engineer can still repair/decon without repair upgrade.


    People may want the engineer to be used less, but I don't see why. Engineer is the most teamwork oriented class. No other game has the "support" class used as much as the engineer, they're nearly always ignored. Having the support class as the main class encourages teamwork a lot, and generally makes the game a lot more fun for all when you can nearly always get a heal, or ammo, or cover dropped etc. I don't see why people want to upset that balance. By all means, buff e-build, because from the versions I've played (2.11 to 2.25) I can say that e-build has always been underpowered. But buffing it to the point it is now (assuming repair upgrade is 100%, ebuild is 75%) is just ridiculous. Most people seemed to agree with this sentiment in the 20+ player test we had, so I hope that we can get the feedback implemented here.
     
    Last edited: Aug 10, 2010
  12. complete_

    complete_ lamer

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    empires is fine as is and doesnt need additions that drastically change gameplay

    btw trickster u suck dickx
     
  13. Trickster

    Trickster Retired Developer

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    lamer u smell
     
  14. w00kie

    w00kie Mustachioed Mexican

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    complete GTFO!

    I think trickster did a great job here and this smal playtest

    was a huge win for testers, devs and the empires game in general.

    More Bugs:

    - for some players the location output for "sayteam" was messed up in a weired way and sometimes reported "@0".

    NTF (nice to fix):

    - the way the e-build and repair features of the engi-class are now are inconsistend. E-button builds buildables(no matter if rep-upgrade or not) and enters vehicles , mouse1 repairs and heals and sap-repairs.


    crap, already can't remember if trickster missed anything else important.
     
    Last edited: Aug 8, 2010
  15. Trickster

    Trickster Retired Developer

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    Added your bug to my buglist. I'll add all of the bugs to mantis after a couple of days.
     
  16. w00kie

    w00kie Mustachioed Mexican

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    great, plz makes sure u mention the inital reporters. maybe making it easier to reproduce them that way.
     
  17. complete_

    complete_ lamer

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    the thing about this is you dont know what the commaders intention is. Is he saving for a rush or is he low on res? Now we can easily solve this with another checkbox on the vf tab but god knows this is never gonna happen because still dont have by-chassis restrictions
     
  18. Omneh

    Omneh Member

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    Honestly, I wouldn't have a problem with all the classes having a build ability (which I assume is the point of the e-build change) if it wasn't tied to e-build.

    E-build is in general a bad mechanic. Staring at walls, holding the E key and watching a bar fill is really not fun in any way, and feels very unpolished and unproffessional, especially in the case of the engineer in which having to press E to build makes absolutely no fucking sense.

    If the other classes could get some kind of basic construction tool in addition to their other weapons, perhaps a construction pack that is thrown onto buildings like a sticky grenade, which then autobuilds the building it is attached to at e-build speed, acommpanied by a distinctive soundeffect and lots of sparks. These build packs could be limited, like grenades, or have a fixed recharge time (unless you restock ammo) like the sandwich in tf2.

    If thats too much, well, a limited build tool that is visually different to the engie tool would still be an improvement on e-build. Since we now have a weapons modeller, there shouldn't be any obstacles to a better implementation.
     
  19. Opie

    Opie Member

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    I agree with everything said above. 'Cept for the whole rifleman thing. I was lead of bravo on canyon and we attacked you from the west. I didn't see any riflemen. I quickly (and from quite a distance) killed the engineers and we should have been able to build a rax right outside your main at the start and quickly end the game, but comm was busy. So I didn't face any riflemen in that first wave that I slaughtered. I still think Riflemen>grenadier in the first wave with at most 2 engineers with revive in a squad. Once the land is grabbed, then yes, both teams ran into the problem that no one could take down any structures because we were all pew pewing each other. But my main point in here is supposed to be I still think a all rifleman rush in the beginning of the game is the best rush. I was able to quickly to secure the area as a lone rifleman and would have had plenty of time to set up a barracks. I imagine it would have been easier with additional when the lolligagers behind me would have caught up.

    Even in our test here engineers were not used in full potential, even tho a few people still had in their minds that they needed to be engineers. How many walls did we see? How many revives? I don't remember even seeing any ammo boxes.

    As for crossroads, why did be win? Was it because they outgunned in middle? No. BE got their butts handed to them in middle. BE also had a person quickly e-build 2! raxs outside of nf base.

    As for your suggestion... boy that does look familiar. But I would still set rifleman build speeds maybe at 30%. But yes, as you were saying we need to get some actual numbers down and look at some values.

    Three more additional things need to be reviewed.
    Should we be able to build and shoot/reload at the same time?
    Was comm heating while driving a problem in that latest build?
    Reviving becomes easier since building no longer takes "repair" ammo (it used to be called build ammo). Is this going to be a problem?
     
    Last edited: Aug 9, 2010
  20. Trickster

    Trickster Retired Developer

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    Well, when I sent pure rifleman north on canyon, we got our asses handed to us. From what I heard, 1 engineer on the other team set up a level 3 and that was that. And of course, that level 3 went up in about 5 seconds flat due to the speed of building, especially as there's no charge and everyone around that engineer could help him build. If I sent 10 players to a location, I'd say: 7 rifleman, 2 grenadiers and an engineer. The engineer would purely be there to drop 1 wall and an ammobox, so that the riflemen can nadespam. Grens can take down turrets, job done.

    And yeah, I suggested those values about 2 months ago or something stupid. You probably did too.

    Either way, they seem like the most suitable values for release, and then we can tweak them further after that. I do have one more suggestion though, which I'm going to add to my original post.

    I added a bit to my main post, although it could do with some refinement:

     
    Last edited: Aug 9, 2010

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