IF the Empires community teaches us anything it's that selfish point-whoring won't go away. What will help is if the cocksure whores get enough money to buy themselves tanks, and they aren't drawing from the team res, then you're pretty much always gonna have a few tanks. Let's face it, there are a lot of good players who are bastards, but you can't really deny they're good at the game. Having those players have a sizable amount of personal res means that they'll have a way to always be mobile and they'll be more motivated to actually play. Usually they just dick around and moan at how shit the team is after a while - this way, they'll pretty much always be playing their best, and without being held back by the team too. Sure it encourages lone wolfing, but at least it doesn't encourage dicking around. And tbh, people will value tanks more this way. What should really happen though, is if you get res for each point you get, and we all know you get more points from being in a squad, the squad that works best together will always be awarded the best equipment. Let's face it, rookies don't get mammoth tanks...and yet in the game we see a lot of people draining resources by throwing away tanks. You get this kinda dichotomy between those players who don't give a shit and get tanks and throw them away, and those players who do care and who don't go wasting tanks and often don't even get any. Empires was a great game where everyone had to work together to achieve victory. When it worked, it was brilliant, and in the coming up to 2.0 testing it worked every time...but it's just not the same now, so people need ways which will help them contribute, any way they want. Let's face it, giving someone some res is nothing like giving them great equipment because they've played alot. It's almost exactly the same as rank points, except for vehicles.
I see your arguments but I still have doubts that this will have a positive influence on the gameplay (especially teamwork). See my old posting: But if the devs want to add this anyway they should reduce the amount of res from 20 to 5 or 10. Veteran players achieve 50-100 points in one typical round. With 20 res per point (= about 2 additional heavy tanks for each veteran player) this would be too game-braking. Also the complete resource flow has to be reworked for every map. For example take this score bord: http://img156.imageshack.us/img156/4963/empcrossroads0000.jpg NF has 491 points. This means that they have up to 9820 more res for tanks!
"personally" i think this wages system is too abuse friendly i suggest this as alternative, witht he only downside that its more work to make: http://forums.empiresmod.com/showthread.php?t=8465 you "could" make it less abuse frienldy by ether fixing point-whoring (hah!) or making it based on something else then point-whoring (set timed interval gain for example)
I understand, but I think we've tried hard enough to stop people who know (yes and exploit) the game to have an edge. It hasn't worked. I think we're probably better off helping them to play, if they're going to persist in lonewolfing and whoring. And truly, giving them res hurts nobody, nobody at all - it just means people can use their own tanks instead of draining the teams (as much). 100 points giving 2000 res isn't so much I think - that's 3 heavies, or 5 lights or so (if i've got that right). I think the point here is, not everyone will be saving up and getting 100 points, and only then getting a tank - the people we're talking about usually get tanks throughout the game, so they won't save up...unless they want to keep a little arsenal in reserve, or be able to afford 2 nuke tanks etc. But that's acceptable, isn't it? I mean that changes their playstyle even...and if they do that, then it's a completely different issue. Right now, those players take tanks about every 5-10 minutes, but because this draws from their personal res first, it's not a problem - they can save up and not use any tanks (which will mean a lower point score anyway - at least until endgame) or they can use tanks like they usually do and no one gets penalised. The example i'm thinking of here is when you have 800 res, want to do something like Meds which cost 500 res, but instead this player ignores you (because they think you're a shitty comm) and takes out a reactive APC, using most of the res. There are many situations like that - the player can see they're losing and need frontline support, the comm can see later on the research done is better than having an apc out there right now. We all know that it can go either way, it depends on the team. HOPEFULLY this kinda issue could be addressed with the wages system. Yep, completely agree. This is your department SIP, you're a good number cruncher, I think you could probably come up with some good values if the devs told you what it currently is (or if you know already). Not sure they're really the same thing...although I like that idea - it basically means the comm could buy 5 light tanks, 4 apc's and 2 jeeps and give them to the team. That's basically the control the comm should have anyway - they should be able to specify which vehicles they'll allow to be built, instead of either completely restricted or unrestricted. It should be unrestricted, managed or closed. Tbh. Of course, it could be argued that your comm could just abuse that too, but I guess that's why we elect officials eh? To keep them honest?... LOL.
I don't think that the res flow by skill point can be balanced by a calculation. Therefore I would add a server cvar and set the default value very low (5 or even 0).
Abuse can always be fixed by simple measures. Such as healing the same person or reviving the same person within a certain time limit only grants you a max amount of points. I see no issue with abuse. Point whoring can be overcome with wages favouring support actions rather than lone wolfing, for instance building buildings, squad points, etc.
Simple measures? I don't think so. Healing or reviving the same person occurs often in heavy battles. How to decide if it is abuse or normal gameplay. Ok, you can take into account the kind of damage to detect water or acid damage. But what about lonely enemy turrets? With healing upgrade you can heal your teammate faster then the turrets adds damage. Should this give wages? What about building/repairing walls from a teammate? What about building/repairing turrets from a teammate? What about driving a jeep into water and some engineers repairing it? Or should there be no wages for any support actions? Bad idea! And I guess that there are many more actions to receive skill points easily (players are very creative for this). Only thing that keeps people currently away from this is that point-whoring becomes boring quite fast and you only receive skill points. But skill points AND res will be a much bigger motivation. And in general resources are a very important factor of this game (if not even the most important factor). The motivation for most actions is to get and hold refineries (at least it should be in good teams). Adding a new source for resources can have a big negative influence on this major game mechanism. And all of this just because better players should get their tanks more easily?
First of all SIP, players don't do this anyway. Most ways of abusing point whoring is to take 2 players out of the team for a while, so it's not really a big deal. I'm sure the developers can use simple measures to stop the abuse. It's not exactly rocket science. And even if players still want to do this, then that's their choice to do so.
This this this this this. Point whoring is only bad if things that give you points and helpful things are not the same thing, they should be.
Or in other words ten heavies over the course of the entire game. If you give people more money they are more wasteful with it, and it won't exactly be rocket science to turn the resource multiplier down a bit if neccesary. Most of the money will have been spent and lost on tanks which the players were more willing to dispose of by the time it reaches that number, you didn't just dump 10k res on them at the end of the game, you gave both sides an extra ref at the start. All you're doing is adding more res to the game in general, so you can just turn down the ref income slightly to compensate, it's hardly a problem.
10 additional heavies on crossroad is a lot. They will turn this map nearly into tankwars. In general it's sad that I'm the only one who sees the big problems of personal wages. This will make refineries less important or even unnecessary and promote selfish point-whoring. But I won't waste my time and argue against all of you. I only hope that when personal wages will be add the value will be much smaller (about 5 res per point).
I don't really see the problem with having supposedly less need for refineries. Let's say in theory the possibility of allowing one team to build less refineries and have them fund their efforts with other means, this could as well be a positive new development. More strategies could become viable which means more variety, it wouldn't necessarily mean that you force the game into a new direction, as it can always be balanced with the existing features. Don't know if wages is a good way to try it, but then again, I haven't playtested it.
I just feel that's just bullshit. The motherfucking so-called better players are always stealing tanks and abusing shit. That's what Empires is. In many ways this will make their abuse less detrimental to the whole team. Empires is full of this shit where singular people think they're so good and just take all the resources and every other fucking thing and think they should be treated like kings. Well fuck them and fuck that kind of thinking. I've seen noobs build the motherfucking walls over and over again, so don't tell me they won't be getting tanks. And tbfh this game has almost more bastards and noobs than decent players, so that's like half the people this change will probably help to be less dickish to the team. I'm not trying to swear at you SIP and I don't want to rubbish your points either, seeing as there's a lot of chance for this to go wrong if it's not managed properly, I just want to make it clear that your focus is far too narrow regarding results.
Yeah less dependence on refs is surely a good thing, refs = map control and currently map conrol = everything. Wages = team performance and team performance should not only be measured in map control. If a team works together they should be rewarded for it, after all teamplay is supposed to be the bit about empires that's fun yes? Not 'having lots of blue dots on the yellow dots makes me really happy'?
