[Considering] Building Kill messages

Exactly, counter arguments (even if playing devils advocate) are valued because coding takes time, and coding things that most everyone knows will suck is pointless.

That's the reason for flagging certain suggestions. The dev team will look over the flagged suggestions upon completion of 2.25 and determine which features will be in by the next version (at which time the topic title will be updated). That means this serves as a time for the community to weigh in on all aspects of the feature, perhaps solidifying it as a "must have" for the next version, or perhaps removing the hype and uncovering why it should not be done.

You do bring up a good point, the same is true of player kill messages though. Not sure how to feel about that...

 

Support this. Yesterday I played a game on money, and was range artieing, and i would hit like a spot and get like 3 "you have recieved a rank point for destroying an enemy building" that said, it is better to censor information because then you might think "YES GOT THEIR VF AND PROLLY SURROUNDING TURRETS OH YES HI-FIVE" but saddly you only hit their armory. Missing information plays an important part in Empires. YOUR TEAM SHOULD NOTIFY YOU NOT YOUR HEADS UP DISPLAY.

A lot of the supporters of the suggestion are in favor because it can help them. If it can help them it can help everyone. If it can help everyone that means the opposing force gets help. It is bad for both sides of a battlefield but also good for both sides. Local engineers can be notified of a ref going down, this is the good outcomes, but if an artillery tank driver will be notifed that they hit a turret, not a ref, they will continue shooting for the ref.

 

Stopped reading.

 

To some extent, information is a resource in the game, much like time and ability are resources. Giving everyone free information about everything is akin to giving both teams unlimited resources with which to build tanks. Giving more information for free lowers the skill cap, which is either a good or a bad thing depending on your perspective. Likewise, making information harder to obtain raises the skill cap.

Furthermore, this is going to cut down on necessary team communications, which once again can be viewed as a good or a bad thing.

Some degree of limited information should be given, but telling everyone everything about everything is excessive.

IMO the current system of knowing that buildings die but not knowing what they are is good. A team with people in position to relay information to the artillery batteries gives an advantage a team without the intelligence does not garner.

 

tl;dr version

A soft sea does not make a skilled sailor.

 

If thats too long for you to read then you shouldn't be on forums. Pickled makes a good point.

 

I read it all, it didn't take me too long at all, and it is a good point. I am merrily saying no pain no gain.

 

In a multiplayer game, I would err on the side of giving more information, and making the game's basic mechanisms as easy as possible.

It's no fun to play alongside (or, for that matter, against) players who are completely oblivious. I'd rather have a smooth game, one that doesn't get in the way at all -- one where it's easy for every single player to be a pro.

A game where everyone is playing well is a fun game. A game where they aren't is no fun. So the game should be designed to make it easy to play well. It's not a matter of a hard-vs-difficult game, because the only real difficulty comes from your opponents... it's a matter of playing in a team that will always know what they're doing (because the game makes it easy to know what you're doing), verses sometimes playing in a confused and useless team due to a crippled interface.

 

Bad aiming doesn't make a game completely unfun to play.

Disorganized players do. Anything that makes it easier for players to play in an organized and coherent manner should be added, as long as it's not too hard and isn't coming at some other cost.

Asking for the game to deliberately keep it hard to know what's going on -- and to deliberately keep it hard for a team to operate as a group -- is a horrible thing. People who would seriously suggest that are bad people and they should feel bad for suggesting bad game-design.

I don't mind if my team can't shoot straight. I do mind if they don't know what's going on. I never want to play with a team that doesn't know what's going on, and I can't imagine that anyone does. So the game should be designed to make it impossible to not have a general sense of what's going on -- that basic sense of how the battle is going should be part of the 'skill floor' that, as much as possible, the game literally will not allow anyone to fall below. No matter how stupid or terrible a player they are, the game should grab them by their trousers and inject the necessary information into their brains.

Anything that makes the team more aware of what's going on with their side as a whole is a good suggestion.

 

Before we gone add any new messages we should clean up the current ones:

 

like flasche said, it could drastically change gameplay. personally i don't see much wrong with the currrent system. and for a lone engie who is trying to get a ref it would be hell.

 

I honestly don't see how it would change gameplay other than giving people an alert to a very important piece of information.
The only time I'd say a message shouldn't pop up is when sabotage kills it.

 

Even without turrets and camera's this could still cause unnecessary spam. I don't think it's a very good idea, as someone said, the minimap should show this information. As well as the commander receiving better alerts, it's his job to give this information to other players. If you make things like this easier, it just means that you'll get lazier commanders.

 

I really dont see how this changes gameplay too much, nor how it could be spam (unless turrets, walls, and anything else thats common in the combat zone are counted).

Gameplay- Knowing you destroyed a VF or Barraacks doesnt help you if you dont know 1.how many of said building there are, or 2. how well defended against infantry/armor they are. Generally, if you don't know how many targets there are anyway, knowing you killed something doesn't help all that much. In a perfect world, the scouts would actually scout (and nobody would use the garbage sniper rifle), but it just doesn't happen, or rarely does.

When thinking of what to add or remove, one has to think realisticly, not using the "perfect scenario". For the arguement of spam, how often does an entire base go down all at the same time? Usually just before a team loses.

There are a lot of relatively useless commands and such in game already (like most of the sounds the comm has to put up with), for example:
-One point for reviving
-Vehicle design accepted. Commencing vehicle construction.
-Current map/Next map
-Server messages like visit our ... server
-Something spotted
-I need arty fire/infantry support/... on my target/location/...
as pointed out by -=SIP=-, but occasionally some of the spam comms put up with can be useful, though only if it were prioritised by some catagory (I'd say distance to CV, but that may not always be the case.

 

I don't see why there is anything wrong with having extra, general information. All this would do is allow for a team to better understand what's happening. It wouldn't paint a target on an enemy's forehead, but it would better alert them to the danger of attack.

And compared to troop deaths, this would not cause spam. A base is only 3-7 buildings mostly. Even if they all died at once, it would look exactly like an APC exploding full of troops.
There will never be a game where buildings fall left and right all of the time because that almost never, ever happens. It might happen, if a commander spams armories, and they are getting
blown up as soon as he places them, but that only happens .001% of the time. : /

There was a time when there were no warning messages. Try playing a game without those.

 

Pros
-More useful informationand alerts
-People are credited with their work
-Smart teams may nip ninjaneers in their base in the bud

Cons
-Apparently if you throw a mortar across slaughtered and it kills a barracks suddenly you'll win
-"Spam" (Large buildings die WAY less than infantry...)
-We have to restrict information. (wermacht propaganda goes here)

 

kill messages should only appear to enemy team when your structures die when:
- they are in range of a their friendly radar/comm radar
or
- when they have been spotted

otherwise, the message will only appear to the player only as a generic building kill message

I do agree it should be present for your whole team.

 

Perfect, do this, it makes sense.