Yes, if you die from a mortar shell its most time your own fault. Because you stand still and what teached us good old Quake 3? NEVER EVER STAND STILL IN AN FPS. Nearly all one hit mortar kills are because the enemy stands still and aims at you. If he needs so long to aim at you that you can mortar him he deserves it.
You do know that every other gun in the game requires you to stand still to use it? The mortar is 100% accurate all the time, it's like giving everyone else the SMG2 and you the shock rifle from UT. Which do you think is going to win?
Dizzyone and I asked Krenzo if we could do our changes to Empires. He said that we could give it a try. So these changes only need to be consistent with our plan. Nothing more. The fact that dizzyone didn't rant about everything that he doesn't like last week/month/whatever doesn't mean that game is great. Of course some random person (e.g. Dee) will start say that it's trolling/pessimism. Background information: Krenzo isn't doing a lot of coding lastly. If you have questions to Krenzo ask him.
I guess the healthiest way to look at it is that the real empiresmod is at 2.12, our version is a big idea under development, basicly our version where we will try to fix gameplay issues, its based on a bigger design and we are literally looking into everything, but at the same time trying to change things with minimal effort, as in, no big new features, there are some overhauls being planned, but nothing that isn't already part of Empiresmod some way or another. I wanted to keep it low key tbh, but M00tant enjoys shoving stuff into your face :p I think that just us 2 right now can pull it off, with some help from Angry for the sounds, I fix stuff model/animation/script wise, m00tant takes the heaviest load with the coding.
The mowtar is NOT better then rifles or smgs against infantry! Infantry maps mess up the balance.. Try out shooting a rifleman on mvalley
It has shorter range than the rifles, yes, but unless you're shooting at very long range, it's not likely to be a problem. In closer quarters, such as in a lot of the better maps, like streetsoffire or that one with the big building in the middle and the buildable ramps which for some reason I can't remember the name of, the mortar doesn't have that problem. The only limit to the mortar really is the difficulty, which decreases the more you use it, which is why I don't like balancing weapons by difficulty.
Well even at close range the rifleman should be able to kill a gren quickly and with ease.. Alot of people seem to be talking about the mowtar like its the awp with a 1 hit kill.. The rifle may not be 1 shot kill but It kills in less then a second.. Plus there is a lot of ways to make the mowtar not a one hit kill(health up,squadleader aura,dig-in,ect) But I see your point.. It's just that I love the mowtar so much I would hate to see it go.. I would rather see the maps go It's called crossroads and yes gren's seem a bit overpowered on that map.. lol bsid knows about that
I don't think that it should go, I just don't want it balanced based on skill, so either reduce the skill required to operate it, or nerf it into oblivion in terms of effectiveness. Or even both at the same time. I was thinking maybe something where you press a button and it locks onto a target that has been spotted beforehand, and you have a small area where you can aim your shot within, so that you will get the general location first hit, but you still have room to aim to get the most deadly hit. You could counterbalance that by having it require a setup period, or make it slightly inaccurate, or give it a minimum fuse time so you have to use it at a high angle, or just anything which stops it being used to run and gun and makes it more of a support weapon, like a light artillery piece. Hell I wouldn't mind at all if it required a setup, had a longer range, and had a lock on system where you can never be more than about five degrees out. That way it's still got a lot of skill involved, but it isn't entirely reliant on skill, and it also has some hard caps which stop it from being used on the move and always leave you open to being attacked back, regardless of how skilled you are with it. It also makes grenades (and perhaps a grenade launcher for the grenadier) have more of a use because they can be used at short range, while the mortar requires setting up further back and is more of a support weapon.
http://forums.empiresmod.com/showthread.php?t=3648 I dunno if you can read that thread but it's got a lot of good ideas me and ^dee^ came up with awhile ago.. If gren's are going to lose there infantry defense then maybe sticky nades should be for scouts only? I dunno because thats another one of those only good on a certain map thing.
Grenadiers shouldn't have any anti-infantry capacity at all I don't think, at least not with the mortar/RPG combo, I did suggest a grenade launcher some time ago that had a shotgun function built in, as well as a number of utility grenades, but that would be in lieu of the RPG/Mortar. The grenadier is the AT/explosives class, it shouldn't have a potent all purpose anti infantry defence. Also I can't read that thread, I'm guessing it's the secret tester forum.
Yeah I can agree with that except they need the pistol atleast for anti inf.. But wouldn't that also mean that riflemen should only be anti-inf?(no stickys) It's funny cause it seems like sticky nades and 9 mines are only useful on escort and the mowtar is only overpowered against inf on those smaller maps.. It's the damn map's fault!! LOL Also I wonder if we could move those tester threads into the public so people would stop posting the same things that were already discussed.
Oh yeah they can keep the pistol. And riflemen stickies are a toughie. On the one hand they're very powerful if you can hit with them, but on the other you usually can't. I don't mind this because it's fairly easy to build a map where tanks have uncontested rule of some areas, and other are a deathtrap because of stickes and vantage points, with mortars it's somewhat harder because they are effective up to medium range, whereas stickes only work at really close range so you usually need to be hiding right next to a tank route, there's also the point that stickes don't one shot tanks, (except for paper APCs, which could be solved by making stickies researchable so they don't come out until later on) nor even three shot them in the late game, mortars are still lethal right up until the end, there are also a lot more tanks in the late game than infantry usually, so grenadiers (should) come into their own then, while riflemen become ineffective rather quickly. I don't really see stickies as being as much of a problem as I do mortars really. They touch on some of the same areas, but ultimately no amount of skill can extend the range or speed of them enough to make them a serious pain in the arse (except for BE heavy drivers because you can flip them with a single sticky I think).
The mortar is a decent anti-infantry weapon, but it's nothing that can't be handled. The only reason it's so useful in infantry maps is because turrets and riflemen force you to hide behind objects where grenadiers (and nade spam) can get you. If you can advance freely, the grenadiers are no better than any other class. Well, that is except for engineers; they can't place their turrets as swiftly as the grens can drop mines. Also, the mortar isn't much of a powerhouse against vehicles later on. The upgrades don't affect it. With the upgrades, the rpg and mines are your primary source of damage to vehicles. The mortar becomes your anti-infantry weapon only because the pistol can't do its job and an anti-building weapon because you aren't using mortar ammo on anything else. The mortar could use changes, but just blindly nerfing it won't help. Not that buffing it would help much either. It would only make the problems more glaringly obvious. P.S. If the RPG fired faster, you wouldn't need the mortar-swap trick. If you have the BE rpg and the apc has 1 plate of armor, you don't even need to fire twice!
Which is why I suggested rather than making it less effective overall, it should be reassigned to make it less useful as a personal weapon, rather requiring other people to spot targets and you firing from a safe location.
Yes. I liked your ideas, it's just that they reduced it to being an anti-emplacement weapon. With those restrictions, you'd either be unable or suicidal to attack moving targets, and it would be just as inconvenient for hitting stationary targets if you don't have a scout to spot for you.
Sorry but i dont get the point of the whole discussion about the mortar. You Chriss and some other people say, it needs skill to use the mortar so nerf it so everyone can use it. Because it imbalance the game if only some can use it really good. I mean you can say it for EVERY weapon in that game. Its something FPS lives from. The competition with aiming faster and more accurate than your enemy. You can say its not a standart only FPS game. But the infantry part is FPS and it would not make fun if it is not as close as possible to a normal FPS. Im for myself are useless with the nf heavy rifle, that gun everyone says is overpowered. But do I say, make it so that I can use it to? I never thought of it. I just think I suck with it. So i take another weapon to do my job in empires. Every weapon in empires is based on skill. Theres this guy from BSID, Dragoon is his name. Hes just to good with the aussault rifle. So what... nerf the rifle, implement a aimbot or make a peep noice if you move your cross-hair over the enemys head just to make everybody as good as him??? You say the mortar is not supposed to be a anit- infantry weapon... ok. But people like to use it that way. If you cut-out stuff just because people use it in another way you want it you kill the creativity of a game. You say its not fun for people to be killed by the mortar. Ok thats true. Its true because its not fun to be killed by any weapon ingame. I dont see a difference if someone appears for one sec and puts 5 aussaultgun bullets in my virtual head or if its a mortar shell that kills me.
The argument is not that I have issue with guns being skill based, I have issue with them being MASSIVELY skill based. Pointing and shooting with a rifle is easy to pick up and you stand a reasonable chance against a pro after only a few games. It's something nearly everyone knows how to do, therefore it is not going to scare noobs off. Being killed from the other side of a wall with a projectile that also wipes out two other people on your side is not noob friendly, it is something that takes a lot of practice to do, and therefore puts a new player at a massive disadvantage. Yes, it kills creativity, because your creativity is making the game less fun for more people, so why are your needs more important than theirs and even the future continuation of the game itself? A well designed game should be intuitive and user friendly, and that means making it easy to play. Things do not have to be difficult to play to be fun, HL2 is not difficult to play, yet it is an immensely popular game, despite the fact that you get walked through all the puzzles and the enemies die when you give them a dodgly look, and you more or less fall over medkits and ammo with every alternate step. They even implemented a system that scales the amount of ammo and medkits you get from crates to stop it getting too hard. If someone pops out and kills you in a quick burst then it's not as much of a pain because it's a 'fair' kill, it's something you've probably done yourself a few times, and it's also because they were paying more attention than you were, it's something you can replicate, so you don't feel as though they have an unfair advantage (unless the map designer is an idiot and put in a location that gives them massive amounts of cover and perfect sightlines) whereas mortar kills are annoying because you can't do them back. If you can't see the need to make the game open to new players or if you can't accept that your competativeness should take second place to that then that's simply a problem with you.
Just add a visual element for the mortar's arc so you can see where it's going to land before you fire it. Ta-da! Would probably help avoid those moments when you smack your mortar into the wall or turret in front of you, too. =s
Do you guys actualy know that the mortar was nerfed from the way it was? It used to be able to kill infantry with splash alone, that means 3+ chain kills with the mortar... Now it has been nerfed that the only way a healthy soldier can die from it, is if it lands straight on the noggen... The mortar is fine as it, it has a slow RoF and any class can out shoot a grenadier. If he's blowing you out of cover, well that's his job, indirect fire support...
