Terminology doesn't matter. My point is, the e-build building really fucking fast, has been in SVN for a while now. And it sucks.
Ok. That doesn't mean it's live. That doesn't mean we are going to release 2.26 with this change. That doesn't mean something else is in the pipe that will replace it. All that means is we don't have a replacement yet.
ya, test officially failed. This one was only a possible one... the one tommorow has more notice beforehand and will hopefully have people.
tl;dr why don't we use the svn version to play scrims? Slow down on the coding stuff that is possibly unstable and just focus on balance. Give a change log to both teams before a scrim. See what they do. Run 2 or 3 games for the scrim. Use the competitive teams and an unbroken SVN and get them testing it. Thats the best way to balance empires. This means that JPL, BSID, EPIC and CW need to start having a closer relationship to the devs, and that the devs need to take the time to talk to the teams before the match about the changes IN GAME, as well as an after scrim talk with the devs about how things felt and such. If you want to do a successful playtest to balance empires, that's how you do it. Also, the devs need to stay the devs. BSID needs to stay BSID. JPL needs to stay JPL. CW needs to stay CW. EPIC needs to stay EPIC. Those 4 clans essentially represent the major groups of people that play this game, in terms of committed time, use of tactics, behavioral tendencies, personality, etc. The best results will come not from mixing a group of random ass pubbers who don't do shit during tests anyways, but turn it into an actual event. You've got an excellent PR guy that can get demos of the tests as well to post on the front page. If you want to show the mod's development, this is the best way. Do it. now.
Then get enough people for a large enough test that we can take feedback seriously, and complain after. We could, but that's up to the clans. It would certainly be nice. Ultimately we just need testers. If the clans got together and could reliably supply enough people for testing then fine. But if they can't or we get a bunch of non-clanners in for testing it may not work as well. Having to separate testing by clan just seems like a bad policy. If we get a bunch of people together we should test. If 6 jpls 8 EPICs 3 CW and 15 BSIDs show up, we shouldn't delay the test because the clans are unbalanced. For balance tests, all that really needs to happen is for games to play out normally. Random pubbers playing the game makes it a more realistic test for average gameplay. For bug tests, then we do need more disciplined people, but we also usually need less. Stuff has been waiting in the SVN for nearly 2 months without a decent test. Any bigger plans for larger initiatives for testing don't concern me as much right now, as getting at least 1 decent test of the stuff already in is a priority. Test Tommorow btw
Pointed out that e-build buff will result in stupid amounts of rifleman at game start. E-build buff is meant to mean less engineers. (All) Reef: well, if it actually be all team rifleman on the start (All) Reef: so what Summarises test for me. And I'm the one who had to fucking invite everyone because Mashav is the only developer who initially actually turns up. BSID SVN server is on an old revision when we've been on 264 for ages. Mashav doesn't even have admin to do stuff. not needed -Kylegar
For a game to play out normally in the svn version that is unstable and prone to bugs from time to time, you'll need to have two teams that are playing for more than the luls. Get the clans to scrim a 10v10 on the SVN, tell a couple devs, and have them sit in and see how the match plays out. The most important part is having the devs sit in. It's not the clans that need to be reliable. When 2 clans set a match, they are most often there to play it, or get fillers to play it. The scrims generally are for bragging rights, and they take them seriously enough. what isn't working right now would be the devs saying "lets play test at this time". The clans are much better at getting 20-30 people on at the same time to play a game on a closed server than the devs will ever be. Again, important points: Let the 2 teams playing against eachother set the time and the date. Get the devs to sit in on the game to watch, maybe even make demos. After the test, stick around and discuss. Discussion will be most helpful and relevant immediately after a scrim. I don't see any downside to this. Clans get to give their input on what they feel about things, Devs get to see a real game of empires (something that is only seen once every 1000 games at the most), and then devs get feedback as to what made it fun and not fun, from people who know their asses from their faces, and prefer to speak out of the latter most of the time.
I had a big post, but I did something and the forum ate it. Sufficed to say, Clan business is their business. Anything involving them is going to need to be their initiative. I would certainly like a lot of testers, no matter where they come from. Im more then willing to sit in and stay around after tests to get feedback. There is two things that really needs to be commented on Dismissing 99.9% of games isn't really an option when balancing. The most important thing is getting tests with a decent amount of people on the SVN.
you should release a version (go live) with the e-build thing. if people could tolerate mkiis for so long (way too long), people could definitely survive with e-build wizardry. something like that will require testing beyond what the testers can do. since empires itself is a "beta," it would not hurt to have one version for like two weeks with this and remove it if it really is shit. such a drastic fundamental change can't be tested that easily with the current testing organization.
If we decide to go live with the e build thing, we need to polish it up a lot more. Some things like stop calculator animations while e building, etc.
Get the balance right first. No need to do any other work on the e-building to make it look pretty until you find a balance that people can live with.
