I suggest you read the entire thing. Because of the aforementioned finite capacity for enjoyment, and the lower end imposed by the choice of games (meaning I won't play anything I have only a minor interest in if I have something better to do) the 'quality of time' as you put it does not contribute anything like the quantity of time. As I already said, I enjoyed portal a lot, but for a miserable amount of time, I enjoyed oblivion quite a lot, but for a very very long time.
So if a game is long and mediocre, it's better than being short and awesome, because obviously people will only buy one game per 400hr period, no matter how good and how many the short games are? Again, isn't that value for money, rather than a game being good? You're putting it against a time line for no good reason. Time entertained =/= quality. If that were really true, then books would be better depending on how long they were, and series would always be better than films. Wouldn't they?
I wouldn't play a mediocre game, if I played a game for 400 hours it would have to be consistently enjoyable for that time. I played a lot of games in between oblivion sessions but I have played a lot more oblivion than any other game I own, therefore I have enjoyed oblivion more and therefore it is the best game I own. I read books over and over again if they are good, so I judge books by the same standards. The discworld series is probably the best series I own (although there is a lot of it so it has an advantage, so yes, longer books are better than shorter books of comparable quality, although theoretically a particularly good book might be able to be more rereadable than an entire series, I have yet to find anything that comes close however). I have probably read the old kingdom trilogy several times over. Films I also watch many times over, in that respect alien is probably the best film I own because I never tire of watching it.
this is just a clusterfuck of circular logic if you hate empires, and it's not worth your time, then please gtfo, all this proselytizing is getting fucking tiresome.
Lol, well I think i'll just agree to disagree with you. It's not a big deal, in the end, and not really something that makes for good discussion.
hahah chris you're priceless clearly you have invested far more than anyone into your theory crafting and anyone who disagrees should just blindly ignore you you cook up these outlandish ideas and then berate anyone who disagrees with you into submission. you are the worst kind of self aggrandizing d bag there is.
And whoever heard of completely ignoring the worst kinds of self-aggrandising douchebags. That'd be insane surely. If I annoy you ignore me, that is why the function exists. I shall hardly suffer for it and you will be happier. Let it never be said that I am not charitable.
I'm not in submission, I just think it's a bit pointless arguing with Chris when he's the only one who feels that way. I'm doing it on several threads which actually have a split view, there's no split here...just Chris. You can ignore him, but he does come up with some good points a fair amount of the time, it's just that his viewpoint of Empires is different, and on those fairly rare occassions when he's wrong, he wouldn't really like to admit it. This thread has probably run it's course...now it's defaulted to discussion about chris, lol. My fault, sorry.
i agree with chris mostly even more when i deliberately try to see both sides arguments chis does however have a fairly calculated logic, and very few emotion in his way of thinking and he is kinda bad in people skills, so people often seem offence in his cunning analyses this might be because i myself think roughly the same way (calculated and non-emotional rationing)
yes well this is how I think too, but trolling is fun. Also I believe this thread is now properly on topic, after all, this was the "chris discussion" thread wasn't it? Great guy. horrible troll. Should be banz0rd
If I was trying to troll people I'm sure I could do it with far less effort, and I wouldn't bother being right either. I would much rather everyone simply agreed with me or better yet, thought of all this on their own so I don't have to type it out. I simply don't see any point convincing people who are plainy unable to do anything about it and don't offer any attempts at reasoned counterarguments, so it is much easier for us both if those people simply put me on ignore so I don't have to read their responses to my threads and they don't have to become enraged by the complexity of my posts.
or the tenacity of your selective reasoning (read: stubbornness) Chris, I understand that the game is not yet refined. one thing that i think will be necessary for empires upon release is a single player walk through short tutorial. Cmmmanding, squad points, squad skills, player skills, buildings, and research all need to be explained. There also needs to be an incentive for first time players to complete a short (20 minute or less) basics tutorial (probably without the commanding and research), which I think should be that their name be restricted to "emp_recruit" until they complete the short basic tutorial. A couple tutorials added to the game (sort of like a single player mode with a voice guide instructing the player on what to do) would instantly make teamwork easier, and instantly make the game fun for newcomers as they would understand how to work with the team. This small amount of overhead effort would take the confusion out, because the main problem with empires is that it is not intuitive except to hard core RTS players, and even then, still not all intuitive. Chris, your arguement that each person is geared by self interest is valid. It comprises a large section of the main player base of CSS, TF2, DOD:S, and a bunch of other mods where TKing your team is a load of damn FUN sometimes. Here in Empires, the point is most of that TKing bullshit is *not* fun. PRecisely because we *DON'T* intend to cater to the TKing self interested Rambo self important bastards in CS:S that think they are so cool for pump shottying like 6 people in a round (side note: they end up being the same people who think its so funny when they drop a flash nade on their team mates and the team mates get slaughtered). That is also cool here, but in the end you still get the disappoint ment of losing if you *don't* work as a team. As much as you see this as a lacking in game mechanics Chris, for this particular game it is the core strength of its game mechanics. Self importants with no interest in coordinated communication and teamplay elements, will consistently lose or be shat on, and leave the game. Those that participate in team elements, will be rewarded, and can pull off interesting squad or team maneuvers, and win the game or at least have a damn fun time fighting it. *that* is exactly what empires wants to encourage, and those that leave are, for the most part, those that we do not want here in the first place. Your request to cater to their selfish whims is denied.
in stead of teaching people how to handle the crappy game mechanic that is made confusing by adding crappy gui and crappy ingame information dealing and wrong or contra productive logic, we should fix it somewhat, then put effort into a tutorial my point here is, the core of this game is awesome, but so much is still needed to be done, and all i see is the devs trying, and 80% of the community trying to trow blocks of concrete in everyone wheels
I tend to agree. If you have to tutor you gamers on something it is obviously badly made, you should not have to tutor people on anything, it should be immediately apparent how to use it and if it is particularly complex, the immediately apprent bit should lead on to explain the next level of complexity. The idea of not wanting to cater to as many people as possible is quite ludicrous, failure to do this is simply a sign of bigotry, laziness, or incompetence, pick one.
Heh. What I'd really like to see if a design document that formally states the core mechanics that the devs want in the game and a fairly detailed look at their implementation. i.e., saying "we want a commander" may be completely valid, but the document better also explain how the hell we plan on using it/implementing/selection/etc. Once we have a cohesive and well-defined set of good mechanics, we can then fill in the gaps, build a proper UI geared towards them, etc. Unfortunately, this is verging on ripping Empires apart and building from scratch. I know the devs would rather not since we have a decent amount of code we're currently re-using. However, many members have pointed out serious basic flaws in the design that need to be addressed somehow, and the duct tape patching doesn't cut it.
you know what? FUCK a tutorial. you can't justify backwards gameplay and unintuitive and clumsy user interface just because "well we could teach it to them". Not just that, but a tutorial isn't likely to get made and certainly won't cover everything that needs to be corrected before empires could be considered a retailable game. And I don't mean retailable as in polished, i mean it in the most basic sense of "this game isn't broken" EXAMPLE: you can teach a player that refinaries need to get built. great. you can't make players spend 2 minutes wandering to the corner of the map to build a refinary. it's. not. good. gameplay. EXAMPLE: you cannot allow a game to be ruined because one of the commanders did not know how to command. I know us vets are used to getting 1 decent "which way will it go" game in 3, and one amazing "the winning team changed from one team to the other, more than once!" game in every ten, and we love the game so we LOVE these moments. but that's just not good enough. and you can't actually teach people how to be a great commander, how the hell do you propose tutorialling that? As long as a commander can absent mindedly forget to start the next research, not place a refinary when needed because he didn't read the chat... As long as the game can be decided 20 minutes before the game actually moves to a next map: this game is not finished. so fuck a tutorial. Sometimes I even think "fuck this game". There are a lot of good suggestions on these forums and how often do they get implemented?
With both teams so similar, and the space so small, there really is no time for the game to "Develop". The biggest issue is that both teams are equal, and the winner is determined by which one does something faster. anyhow, I think the first thing that needs to happen to fix this slippery slope is to be able to change how teams fight. There just needs to be some differences between teams that are equally better than the other team in the same area.
