What is this? A personal wage? From a bit of testing I've found out that the mechanics work as such: Per rank point you get, you also get 20 personal res. This means that when you buy a vehicle, it will take res out of your personal wage first. This wage value is completely arbitrary, and hardcoded. This means there is no differentiation between actions. Of course, now that the e-build change has come in, you no longer get rank points for building stuff, so that means a majority of your rank points will come from offensive classes. If this change is not changed to a script before any kind of release this means you are going to see a team of riflemen and grenadiers entirely, since the best way to get a tank - is to kill lots of people for res. I might also point out that whilst a team has complete map domination, a turtle situation can allow a team to farm up enough res for their top players to get high tier tanks without refineries and pull out an epic rush. This I think is actually quite good if a team manages to do that. However, a script needs to be added instead of being hardcoded in order to make this work. 20 res across the board is not good enough, and in my opinion, support actions should allow you to obtain more resources than shooting someone in the face. Specific targets such as refineries, barracks, and vehicle factories should yield more personal res than turret, for example. Killing someone with your fists should give more res than killing someone with NFHR. The list goes on. If anything, I would really like to see some sort of official developer response on this huge change that seems to have gone unnoticed as to the plans for it, what is trying to be achieved by this, and who is in charge of it so that we can help. Also are you really calling this version 2.26? Seems like a pretty massive change.
Hopefully this is only an experiment which will not make it into a final version. There are many ways to get skill points without enemies (like healing people underwater, reviving people after they killed them self with HE grenades, ...). Because they are all become boring after time nobody uses them. But if they also mean resources then point farming becomes a lot more attractive. Also the difference between new players and veterans will even bigger. Not that they have already advantages by their skill points now they can even buy more tanks if the resources are low. Together with this even less people will go around to build refineries. Why walk a long way to build up a refinery (and receive no points for this) when you can stay at the main battle to kill random infantry and receive even more personal res for this. Gameplay will likely change from controlling the map and the refineries to kill as many people as possible at the main battle. I really don't like in which direction the Empires gameplay should move.
It means there is no differentiation between points. Don't add a whole new mechanic of some things have higher or lower points to wage ratios, just rebalance points to make more sense. More points for killing refs and raxes. A fractional damage based point system would also make sense but thats separate.
It's funny how a lot of things that were going to be in CT finally come to Empires...except we spent a lot more time thinking and discussing them. You guys, Empires, you need a think tank - not this shitty forum, but a proper selection of 10 guys or so from different sides of the game coming to agree on something. I could probably reel 10 names off for you right now, if you wanted. I do have a question though, where the heck is HSM? I thought he was giving game direction now, and yet...I know there are things happening that i'm sure he'd be against - not this specifically, tho. I definately urge you guys to create a team purely dedicated to developing game mechanics so you guys don't have to just implement them in the basic fashion - and better you don't have to spend time thinking up these cool things.
Okay some responses. This is a bug. Will be fixed. Okay this isn't that bad. Atm we have mostly 80% engies at the start of the game. This should go down to 25%. All classes should be used about equally. I don't really agree. If you are camping you can usually make more kills then deaths. Also the enemy has to throw himself at you to gain any chance at penetrating the defense. Of course this will end as soon as the enemy has nukes and arty. But then the game is meant to end anyway. Atm we have a emp_sv_wages variable that sets the wages for every point. Differentiating is a good suggestion however and after glancing at the code it seems easy to add that. This will be more tricky. Dunno if I can really tell in that part of the code how the player died. The version thing will go away soon anyway with steam.
I agree with o_O's comment in that the rank points need to be rebalanced and wages can work from that. I guess if rank point rewards could be turned into a script file so a scripter can fiddle with it, that would be awesome. It must be possible to differentiate between how people died, since the server displays an image of the weapon they died to in-game.
I just....sadden. Wages are good, but unless this is done properly, things are going to go so fucking wrong. Yes, a script would be nice, with every action declared and a value settable. But going to steam without a dicktonne of tutorials and information added, with the game in the current unintuitive forum it is currently, is suicide. Steamworks is a one-off playerboost for this mod. If used properly, it can keep the mod going for another few years. If not used properly, it can make sure the mod dies. Also, the whole "classes should be used 25% each" thing will never work, and it's a stupid idea to follow. Why do devs insist on "fixing" what isn't broken. Buff e-build a bit, sure, but leave the engineer build speeds and stuff the way they are. Engineer is the most fun class to have people as. He is the support class, and having lots of support = lots of teamwork. Otherwise, you're going to turn 75% of the team into rambo, and the other 25% into having to do mind-numbingly boring jobs. They'll basically be the build/heal bitches.
Why wages should be good? It will only lead to more selfish point-whoring. Also it will only help good players to get even more points, because when the team has no resources they will still get a tank. I also hate it, when noobs are buying and wasting shitty tanks while you are waiting in the VF. But I think that in this situation it's up to the commander to restrict the VF and tell certain players to get the tank (mostly works without problems). Communication and teamwork are the solution and not personal wages. There I totally agree with Trickster.
All classes shouldn't be used equally. There should be one basic unit with other specializations, such as 2.25. It's been this way in video games and its been this way in real life. If engineers should get a nerf, it should be towards their weapons which is already subpar to riflemen. There is nothing wrong with having 80% engineers at any point in the game. Even entire teams of engineers will yield enticing battles. Building changes were stupid.
Therefore I already suggested to give engineers SMG1 and scouts SMG2. Then we can balance the SMGs without changing both classes at the same time. Suggestion: SMG1 should do lower damage with same accuracy. SMG2 should do much more damage with slightly lower accuracy.
You're going to nerf the SMG2's accuracy? The gun that can't fire 3 shots in the same 90degree FoV? You're going to buff SMG1's accuracy? The gun that has virtually no spread and is a sniper? SMG1 needs a small, small, SMALL accuracy nerf, SMG2 needs a small, small, SMALL damage buff and accuracy buff.
PreDominance: SMG1 accuracy shouldn't be buffed: "SMG1 should do lower damage with same accuracy." And for the SMG2 the damage should be increased from 22 to about 45. Therefore the accuracy should be slightly nerved. Trickster, PreDominance: Don't focus on the values. Main idea is to give engi and scout separate weapons so that infantry weapon scripters can balance them better. Result should be that engi is still strong at building and repairing but weaker at infantry battles without also affecting the scout. This should slightly remove the amount of engineers without touching their main business. Maybe we should split this thread into ebuild and wages discussion.
How about instead of promoting kills we make it gen wages through gaining squad points and killing buildings? I think it needs to be used to promote important team aspects of the game instead of just going rambo with a rifle.
In addition to the dev team you have, I wouldn't say that. Think tanks by themselves are, but many times you get around to adding something good but in a basic incarnation that needs work. And hey, CW is crumbling too, so maybe you should be as happy as that as CT, eh? I should say I support wages though, it's a great idea and should be in.
It seems that I'm the only one who thinks that personal wages only increases selfish point-whoring and reduces teamplay.
I haven't put any thought in to wages because they shouldn't exist. You don't make a good game by throwing features in over and over again until they're successfully balanced.
