Chris Discussion

Discussion in 'Game Play' started by spellman23, Nov 5, 2009.

  1. aaaaaa50

    aaaaaa50 Member

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    Ok, listen, I know I'm not the most articulate person on these forums, but when I post a suggestion I like to try and be intelligent. I think that a simpler solution, like the one I posted above, is probably much more likely to be "accomplish-able".

    Instead of taking power away from the commander, just give more power to the players. If players get the ability to place their own buildings, then the commander doesn't have to. However, the commander still would have the option of creating buildings. This way, buildings become more strategy and less message-spam frustration. Going with your player research idea, perhaps players can get their own research, but the commander still has the option of investing some resources toward small global research items. If we make what is mandatory for every ok-level commander an option instead, the commanders can become more strategic, and players don't have to rely on one player to do the "basic functions."

    Forget my (minor) opinions about your economy system, all I want in posting this idea is honest, thoughtful criticism, and perhaps even the possibility of swaying your opinions and ideas.
     
  2. Tie-fighter

    Tie-fighter Member

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    TBH I didn't read all 17 pages of posts, but I want to repeat my opinion.

    IMHO I believe that Empires needs redesign. Not just some tweaking here and there, but a team of people (who know about gamedesign etc.) rethinking everything.

    I completely disagree with a lot of suggestions in the original post. I personally enjoy the complexity of Empires and would be in favor of even more. Unfortunately Empires lacks depth (which is probably also the reason for slippery slope). This is to some extend a mapping issue but mostly just game mechanisms and balancing.

    I like the idea of reducing the amount of res every additional res gives. I don't like the idea of players placing buildings (this would just be grief and anarchy, unless there was something like personal res like in NS).
     
  3. Meliarion

    Meliarion Member

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    Most of the times the wall griefing is unintentional, players will wall up a checkpoint to stop enemy vehicles breaking though or will leave a lot of walls behind them when using a wall push strategy. They will advance or relocate and forget about the walls until a vehicle comes along and cannot get through, with a commander he could just recycle the walls but under you system he would have to find the player responsible for the walls and get him to recycle them, considering the difficulty of getting people to transfer squad lead this could be an almost impossible task with new players.

    I never claimed that commander recycling stopped wall griefers, I merely said it enabled you to fix the problem something which your system does not allow for, especially for accidental greifing where there the person will not re drop the walls. This is also not one of the commanders primary roles, it is a very small secondary role certainly not the main reason for having a commander in the first place.

    Also you should not rely on third party plugins to make your game functional, you state that "you design the game in the first place so that it can't be griefed" yet you do not do so and the potential for griefing, both by accident and on purpose goes right to the centre of your design. At least the current system has some checks and balances.

    This just greatly increases the difficulty curve for allowing new players to get into Empires as they will have to learn research paths in addition to everything else before they will be productive members of the team, you seem to assume that the vets will not stack together to ensure that they don't have any noob team mates. One of empire's main problems is that it is hard for new people to get into it, this just adds a layer of complexity on top of our existing issues.

    Remember that on servers with vehicle limits less than the number of players you may find yourself unable to get out your full physics heavy tank because some newb has just bought himself a paper light tank.

    The law of averages does not apply to Empires very well because most of the maps that I play have a considerable stack to one side or the other (and no it is not because I'm in BSID). The only way to fix this is to reduce the emphasis on knowledge of obscure tricks and research strategies and to increase the emphasis on teamwork and other easy to understand concepts.

    The disadvantages seem to heavily outweigh the advantages here, the only advantages this idea has is that it will allow players to research niche weapons that are detrimental if used by the whole team. This has its flaws because you assume that people will actualy research and use these weapons correctly and be a benefit to their team instead of researching inferior weapons and being a detriment.

    The reason why I suggested communications improvements in the same post as my commander improvements is that with most of the crud removed the commander can focus on providing soft benefits to his team, such as an overall strategy or provide intelligence to the troops on the field.
     
  4. pickled_heretic

    pickled_heretic Member

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    Chris.

    Next to troll in the dictionary is a picture of this post.

    Chris never gets to tell anyone that he's not a troll or that he adheres to some higher "truth."
     
  5. Ikalx

    Ikalx Member

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    As this is a gameplay mechanic discussion, what are your thoughts on having a simple tech tree for infantry and a complicated one for the commander role?

    Consider if a player could get composite and advanced coolant for her own tanks, and those tanks that the player fielded out of her personal resources would come equipped with what she'd researched? Then, if you took the resources for tanks made out of the personal res first, people could spawn tanks of their own design, and when they run out of res, they have to spawn tanks according to the commander's design - if they use the team resources, they can only use the team research.

    Sounds a little complicated, but makes sense...and could be a way to preserve both mechanics for anyone who wants them, and yet remove reliance.
     
  6. Chris0132'

    Chris0132' Developer

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    I think my original suggestion is far better.

    Which is why I suggested it.
     
  7. Ikalx

    Ikalx Member

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    Yah, I know. I meant other people (although this is a thread based around you :p ).

    The main reason I make any suggestion at all, is because I believe that your suggestion fails primarily because no one would implement it. No one would implement my modification either, but I was wondering if it'd appeal more to people - which is the first step.
     
  8. Chris0132'

    Chris0132' Developer

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    Yes, but as everything people want to implement is retarded and wouldn't help anything, I tend to think that having good ideas nobody can understand is better than having bad ideas which are popular.
     
  9. Ikalx

    Ikalx Member

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    You are right :)
     
  10. spellman23

    spellman23 Member

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    While this may be correct, there is definitely a reason that you would be in such a situation.


    First, is it a universally good idea? If so, why can't anyone else understand it? If not, to what subset of people is it a good idea? If only yourself, then there's a problem. Not necessarily with you, but a problem nonetheless.

    Second, implementation of a good idea/mechanic such that no one can understand it is NOT a good mechanic. Instead, people need to be able to understand it, or at the every least it's something they can extrapolate from what's going on in the game.


    Note that I concur that "bad ideas which are popular" should be avoided if possible. As many know, often times the idiot masses don't know what they actually want. However, there has to be a reason certain things are popular. It may be a failure of a mechanic, but it resonates with some desire in the player base. Thus, it would be wiser to identify what that is and build a good mechanic around it to exploit it (and perhaps encourage it).

    Similarly, many times "good ideas nobody can understand" have a central core which makes it a good idea. The problem with no one else understanding perhaps is in all the other stuff. As with the other things, find the kernel of awesome and re-build.
     
  11. aaaaaa50

    aaaaaa50 Member

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    Seeing as how everyone ignores whatever I say (even though it's right at the top the last dam page), I am forced to conclude that my ideas are "retarded and wouldn't help anything." :eek:
     
  12. Chris0132'

    Chris0132' Developer

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    Actually I read all of them I just don't feel compelled to reply to them.
     
  13. Varbles

    Varbles Simply Maptastic. Staff Member

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  14. Deadpool

    Deadpool SVETLANNNAAAAAA

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    Omg Time Cube
    Another Believer!?
    Will You Be At The "wakening"??
     
  15. Meliarion

    Meliarion Member

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    I was going to quote it and just say something useless and unhelpful, then I found I had some more time and decided to read and critisize it.

    I am not opposed to this idea but I think we should start out with refineries being free and placeable by engineers and see how that works out before expanding it to all buildings. There should be an option for the commander to disable building placement by players and the commander should be able to recycle all buildings. The only buildings that I can see really benefiting from this are armouries and repair stations so perhaps you should just start out with those placeable by all before expanding it to all buildings.

    I am not quite sure what you are suggesting here but it suffers from the same problem as most other player research plans. That is that when you make players the primary driver in research you will either end up with players not researching or researching the wrong things and consequently putting out bad tanks. This is less of an issue with the commander system because only those who understand the role and the research should be opting in. So rather than one player handling all the research you end up with each team member doing their own research, which allows for more intresting stratagies (if communications in Empires allowed you to easily communicate such things) but it also greatly increases the ability of your team to screw up. It also raises the learning cure required to get into the game, not a very good thing.
     
  16. LordDz

    LordDz Capitan Rainbow Flowers

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  17. =PVCS) Cpatton

    =PVCS) Cpatton Member

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    I enjoy how you contradict yourself from post to post.

    The bad games do not always come out of bad commanders, the bad games come out of people playing that don't want to work as a team. Why? Because the mod has developed and fostered teamwork, to a point of making it a critical element in the whole game... Hence a commander. Someone who is in charge and can organize the whole team. From a unified tactic being used and a unified strategy being executed, a team of the same people is many times over more effective than without this. And no, this mechanic is not broken, it is a very dear feature of empires, adn eliminating it might as well make it a (slightly) squad oriented game, only a little more teamwork required than TF2. I have TF2, payed $50 bucks for it, and haven't opened the damn game in 2 years.

    There are mechanics in place to make commander work, and there are easy, simple answers to making it even better.

    #1. When the commander starts researching something, report it to the team in chat as a special color (out of my ass I choose forest green for research). OR on the right hand side of the screen, have just a one line of text not very wide that says "Research: <current research in green or if none 'NONE' in yellow txt>"

    #2. When the commander is researching, on the right hand side of the screen, whether he has the research open or not, it should report in green what he is researching, and in blinking yellow<>red text, it should display NONE if not researchign (as this is almost ALWAYS BAD).

    The purpose of the two simple, easy additions above alert both a commander and the team when no research is being done, and the team has an exact idea when research is NOT being done, so that they can either bitch at the commander about it, OR VOTE HIM OUT.

    #3. Make the commander vote more promenant. Put the option in teh main menu during the game: an option right there, in big letters that says "REMOVE CURRENT COMMANDER". If the team CARES about the research being done (which is the only real problem with noob commanders) then they can vocally ask the commander to be removed, and the noobs have an easy to reach way of voting to remove him. If the team doesn't care enough to fucking vote him out, well that tells you something.

    #3.5. Fix the mother fucking bug that if someone researches something, and crashes /gets out / gets voted out, the research cannot be canceled by anyone that hops in.

    #4. And a main paradigm shift in commanding. To ensure that there is always a commander, make commanding vote visible to both teams. So you know if a commander is being voted in on the other team or not, and if there is a second commander available on a team, he/she can switch and opt in as commander. Commander countdown doesn't start until there is a commander opted in on both teams.

    My suggestion #4 makes it so that there will always be a commander, because there must be for the game to start. In addition, almost all veterans don't really appreciate a game steamroll, and many who might be in the mood for commanding but don't opt in on their team because another has already opted, can now see the situation on the opposing team and switch to help. I guarentee you most commanders would be fine with such an idea.




    Chris removing the commander is sort of like removing risk & reward mechanics from a game. It's safer, but the game is less diverse and less interesting. Removing the mechanic, in any of the ways you suggest, would basically remove everything I find interesting about the game, and that goes the same for many other players here.If you want TF2 or Battlefield, go play it. My suggestions are easy to implement, do not take away any gameplay elements, and make it easier to balance, monitor, and directly effect the commander role. And I guarentee most commander problems will be solved.

    Most players bitch about bad commanders, but then again, most players can't command either. They have opted not to learnt he mechanic, and rely on someone else to operate the role. Why is that? Because the game already has quite a learning curve for oinfantry, even greater for squad leaders (which I would say about 50% of long time pubbers are oblivious to). If the operator fails, teh team fails. If the team fails, the operator fails. And if the enemy operator is better, usually the team loses. And that "bad mechanic", is also what is very beautiful, unique, and a must have for empires. Enhance it, stop denouncing it.
     
    Last edited: Nov 23, 2009
  18. Sandbag

    Sandbag Member

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    I can't believe people are taking this "remove the commander" business seriously. Without the commander, there are no grand team based tactics. you don't defend the bridge on slaughtered while your team makes the push up east valley - you are completely back into team deathmatch.

    and empires deathmatch is not good. A bunch of different hitscan weapons at long range, it's like a crap Counterstrike.

    The biggest fail on this thread though absolutely has to be this, which nobody seems to have picked up on:

    This isn't even speculation, it's just silly. "he is a team member who is forced to do repetitive, unentertaining tasks all game". Like place refineries at the moment a player arrives, provide mass attack every couple of seconds, and quickly fight through the slow research interface to the next research the instant the previous one is done? These are repetitive, unentertaining tasks that we are trying to remove from the current commanding. In it's place the commander will have time to actually manage his team and his troops. When was the last time you managed a flanking manouver? Once a game? The actual strategy and commanding part of empires, where you make a decision for your troops beyond the mind numbing research path you picked at the start, is now 1% of what commanding in empires is really about.

    The commander currently is so wrapped up in little necessary chores that he doesn't have time to actually micromanage his team. Often by midgame, a commander is so wrapped up in this juggling act that the only "commanding" he actually does is "all the people in this area, vaguely go over here". Except that he has to spam that in chat, because to actually give players move orders means they don't get the mass attack spam. Commanders should be acting as eye in the sky for their squads, organising and directing players instead of hoping the players know what to do. When was the last time you hand built two tanks and an artilliary tank from a VF, then commanded the tanks to protect the artilliary while the artilliary bombarded an enemy outpost? Never. That's because there is so much bullshit to work around that you never have time to actually do fun, RTS stuff. Commanding really shouldn't be a chore.

    I don't know when the last time you guys read the press for empires, but featuring heavily in every article is the excitement of being the general in an RTS where each of your men is a living thinking player that you can actually talk to and respond to you. This is a HUGE selling point. Commanding really doesn't need to be a chore.

    There is SO much that commanding could be in empires. To dismiss it entirely because the current system is shit isn't just unimaginative but totally leading empires down the wrong path.
     
  19. Ikalx

    Ikalx Member

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    They're not retarded ideas, I just think giving building drops to squad leaders is a bad idea. Why? Because you very very very often have a squad leader that doesn't know how to use squad points even. So there's really no point in giving them more to do, that you will rely on them doing, is there?

    Giving building drops to everyone would be better than just a squad leader. In tandem with personal resources, it does ensure that the maximum amount of time possible, someone will drop a building you need, where you need it. If you only give it to squad leaders who have accrued the necessary points, you will find only the veteran and clan squads will use that mechanic.

    Infantry spawning buildings is not something I particularly like. But I would like it if we had about 2-3x the buildings with infantry having a selection of buildings to drop other than vf's and radars...i'm on the fence about raxen as they are crucial infantry gameplay and should probably be (also) in their hands.

    My feeling is we need more in the game, and then we can change what the infantry and what the commander has. We make sure the commander has access to most things, but infantry would have specific infantry buildings and maybe if they could choose possibly 3 researches from a choice of 15 or so, that would be good. I'm thinking armour, engines and one weapon, just as a straight timer from an easy choice selection. No opening trees, no res hit, just a straight countdown of 2 minutes to engines, 3 minutes to armour, and maybe 5 minutes to weapons that is available from the beginning of the game.

    If infantry can drop armouries, bunkers, turrets and so on from a pool of personal resource, that would be great. Raxen could probably be dropped through another method, or maybe just have the cost to be a lot higher for infantry. Resource nodes should be capturable flags that spawn refs that can be destroyed, turning the flag back to neutral. We'd have to make it cap'able by 2 infantry to prevent the lone scout issue, or something like that.

    Commanders could still drop everything, have their own reseach going for the team, and be directing the team. Added to that, we should really pimp out the role with more diverse things, as the burden of reliance becomes less and less.

    And remove targets. That shit is so f'cked up I can't believe. I'm like a shitty target benson now.

    Edit: Also, spot on, Sandbag.
     
    Last edited: Nov 23, 2009
  20. Chris0132'

    Chris0132' Developer

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    Never because why would I bother giving orders to people who are just going to ignore me? They are there on the ground, they can see what needs doing, why do they need me to tell them what to do? If my job is to give them intelligence why can't the game do that for me? You want to get rid of targets because it's pointless information spam, yet you also want it to be the commander's job to give information to his troops? If it's his job then it's just going to be more target spam although perhaps with a different system for doing so, but just as boring.

    Unless you add some sort of bonus for doing what the comm says, in which case it becomes less about doing sensible things and more about doing what the comm says no matter what that is, like charging straight at the enemy becomes brilliant because if you follow the move order you get extra health or something.

    As I keep saying it is not an RTS, it is an FPS and that means that you cannot expect people to follow orders because if they follow orders it interferes with their FPS play, I don't want to have to move and shoot according to what someone else tells me, I can play FPS games so I know how to move and shoot in a fight, and if they don't follow orders it breaks the RTS element. You can't have both. If the commander just gives general orders to people, what's the point? That's not interesting, it just means I sit and select half the team and then click a general map area.

    I wouldn't give those sorts of commands to tanks even if I did have the time, because I know damn well sitting and guarding an arty tank is fucking boring, I would be amazed if they followed the order and if they did, I would be rather sad because they are sitting there with their thumbs up their arses while they could be actually playing the game. When the hell does an FPS require you to guard a tank against the possibility of attack? Never. The only time you get told to guard something is when a huge attack is scripted to happen, but in an RTS you put guards in places to deter attacks.

    As I said, in an RTS the commanders fight each other by directing the units, and the units are like the arms and hands and bodies of the commanders, an RTS is like a beat em up with mouse control, you move the units to hit the other player's unit, just as you move arms and legs in a fighting game to hit the enemy. But in empires the players are not units, they are players, it's like suggesting people be content with being a fist or a foot in a fighting game and being picked up and thrown at the enemy. Either the players can play the game and thus do not obey orders, or the commander can control the players in which case the players can't play. Unless the players voluntarily want to do everything the commander says without question, you cannot reconcile the two, and as there are far more players than commanders, which one does it make sense to side with?
     
    Last edited: Nov 23, 2009

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