Please no JGF and spartacus. like fuck no. FUCK NO. I dont want bad players to develop the game. That always ends up badly.
Okay, here's how it goes, since I don't actually want to call you a spaz I'll assume you don't know and explain it. We don't have testers. We had a lot of testers in the past, but over the last 5 years or so that just fizzled out. So now, the devs basically do what any sane person would do and they listen to those people they trust. People they like, sure, but also people they don't like and who make good points that are logical and practical, and seem to make sense. Because you can't just trust this community. You need to find out for yourself who you trust, and then you'll have opinions that are semi reliable. Then, from playing the game and seeing for yourself, you're able to correlate people's observations and what actually happens in game. Then you bounce the change off the other devs, implement the change, and then listen to feedback from the community on its outcome. Simple. One might almost say, Beta. I'm sorry, I'm here to play Empires, not micro machines. You have a problem with turbo being removed? You talk to every other dev that's ever touched this game and not made it official. Not to mention the playerbase that backed them up. Logic? You want to talk about logic? Do you actually know what logic is, or are you just using fancy words for fun? Because, you know, when you draw a conclusion from a plethora of evidence that basically constitute a fact, it seems pretty logical to me. It seems pretty reasonable and valid. Sabotage DoT was one thing that destroyed many games since it was implemented. It annihilated whole bases in 2 minutes and less. How is that a good thing? And by its nature you can't put damage warnings on sabotage, or it renders the ability useless. So your only other option is to make it so slow as to encourage camping, and to suddenly have buildings destroyed for no reason, or to remove the DoT that was clearly not working. Oh wow, surprisingly, the devs went with the latter. Maaan, this community has a fetish about wanting to command but not actually having to command. This is the same fricken thing. Everyone wants to give orders but not actually do the work. A lead developer is pretty useless if they don't do developing, you know. We don't have that big kind of team. Also, it's funny but the people who always champion this always seem to want to put someone in who will change the game completely. Who has no idea why things are the way they are, and doesn't give a toss either.
It has gone back and forth for years. The people who play Empires chose to play on Viper over other servers due to Viper having Turbo. Good example MEG. Every other thing was similar including ping. Viper had turbo. People against turbo tried for many years to have Vickie remove it. But the players wanted it so it stayed. Solution bypass server own and have a Candles remove it with the port. The way it was done at first was great. Making scout assault. That added usefulness to the class. I agree DOT was broken. But changing scout back to scout -DOT just make it a useless class. Also people that have not played in for a while don't know it was removed. A lead developer is normally there to organize, recruit new talent and manage. Good example Who is working on what right now ? What's the goals for the next 6 months ? Why is it that other "free" mods are getting front page advertising on steam but not Empires? But what ever. Your right having no one in charge is great. And the way things have changed in the past year are perfect. That's why we have so many full servers..And retain so many new players right ? Right ?
Right or wrong this is what people say. It's all the little things that got changed. Remember most of the updates came with no patch notes, no communication, and no discussion. So you can see why some players that have been around for years got pissed and stopped playing. Besides the bad updates that ended up getting rolled back, other script changes that ended up getting reverted, and fixing mess ups from the port to 2013. This year all Empires really got was things taken away.. and an amazing new NF barracks. It's not just that Turbo, jeep customizing, and scout DOT got removed it's the lack of any noticeable improvements. Out of all the things that could be done / fix Jeeps and Scouts are the 2 things that had to be changed ? priorities..
... People talking about jeeps like they actually use them... fuck me this community is full of "experts"... I am OK with: Jeep armor being removed, that is understandable, shit drivers can make the teams resources deplete really quickly. Jeep turbo being removed, also understandable because terrible implementation, instant physical push is just pure madness. Jeep HP being nerfed so it can be one-shot by RPG/Mortar IF you barely touch any obstacles at slow speed beforehand (it is common in dense/small areas), this one I had to get used to, basicly you couldn't run into infantry directly anymore, you had to be sneaky and stylish (drift) into the enemy, also you had to be careful not to hit anything at a high speed. I am definitely not OK with: Jeep engines not being customizable, as I understand the standard engine is now default for all jeeps which means no way to customize your jeeps speed/handling/accelaration to suit your terrain, and yes there are differences between the engines. Main problem I have with jeeps currently: HANDLING, I can't believe how much jeeps have been nerfed in the handling department, has no one noticed how BOTH NF and BE jeeps feel like bricks now? If I try to handbrake at full speed I can't do a 180° anymore not even a 90° turn, ONLY if I move at very low speed I can actually STOP at 90° angle, and by slow I mean 20-30 speed. If anyone needs evidence I want them to test handling on both NF-LT and the BE Jeep, and I assure you the NF-LT feels lighter and better at handling. ... A TANK, BESTING A JEEP, IN HANDLING ... EMPIRESMOD.
I stopped playing because people kept talking this kind of nonsense and creating a really negative atmosphere. players talking about really minor changes as if there had any real effect on the game or playing experience. Some things people like, other things people don't but it is just negative reinforcement - no-one who is happy that jeep turbo was removed is going to post threads about it or spend time in spec talking about it, when they could be playing and enjoying it. I'm not trying to be shitty but just because you didn't like something and a couple of people agree doesn't really mean it is bad. Some points I make you right on like confusion in some of the patches and a flip/flop on research and perhaps that could be better but you are addressing it using the wrong tact I think. regular (as in frequent/historic/vet/whatever) are much more concerned with the state of the playerbase itself and whilst everyone has an opinion on changes, their favourite version, research values, etc the best way to entice people back is to promote constructiveness, politeness and enthusiasm. You only have to look as far as the scrim and pug threads.
So you pick up on the wrongs people say and come here and repeat them? You know this is why Candles basically quit as a developer, right? Because people gave him crap about this when he's basically about as hands-off as can be. So he says fine, he won't contribute any more if he's basically seen to be some tyrant when he's implementing very few things on his own judgement. And that's how we lose good devs. Mouthing off about things you have no idea about and listening to rumours, instead of actually interacting with those people. Oh yeah, and complaining afterwards when you didn't participate in discussions to begin with. Fyi, most of the patches came with notes, and were based from discussion and communication. More so than any other time in Empires development. Script changes have been whack, I'll grant you, but that's scripts and most of that goes to Spartacus's door. Btw, there's no point having someone in charge when there's enough devs to fill a thimble, that was my point before. It doesn't mean crap if you have a project lead without a team behind them, I think that should be kind of obvious.
Every single patch gets a thread in the News forum. I honestly can't comprehend where people get this idea that there are undocumented changes that are hidden from the community at-large.
The current "standard" jeep engine is superior (or at least no worse) to all previous engines. From my perspective, it feels like the best of all worlds in one single engine. When I read a post like this that doesn't plainly acknowledge that the current jeep engine is a super "best of all worlds" engine, then I get suspicious that the poster is confused and is thinking that are somehow "losing out" on something. "Standard" engine probably needs to be renamed "best" engine because that's what it is. We trialled a hacked up version of viroman's jeep handling script on the nf jeep for about a month or two late last year. As most tests are not permanent, it was rolled back. This was not caused by complaints. The test was simply over. However, after rolling back to the old handling, there were tons of complaints. I heard tons of whining that nf jeeps were now broken and they were perfect before. It was a very funny situation because most players didn't know that they were complaining about the "old" handling and they actually preferred the hacked up viroman nf jeep. So that handling was reimplemented and extended to the be jeep. The complaints stopped almost immediately. In a single sentence, you could say that jeeps handle the way that they handle because an overwhelming majority of the active in-game player base demanded it. You won't find forum discussions on it because the complaints weren't in the forums. They were in the games from actual players. You can read documentation of those changes on the change logs from that time period because we did a motherfucking impeccable job at documenting everything.
Candles no offence but almost every patch not you did was ether a week to 3 weeks after the update or just had some shit like other changes too tired to list or said values no one wold understand so not worth listing. @A-z-K " you are addressing it using the wrong tact I think" Yeah I would have even brought it up. But thought I would take the heat off of Metalsand. People like Metalsand are the players we need back. There are basically 2 types of Empires players. The ones who only play once a week or scrims,pugs, what ever. Then there are the ones who play all week long like Metalsand did. The ones who keep Empires going and make it so new people who try Empires threw out the week have people on the server. Just saying maybe focus more on the people who play Empires and not the people who occasionally stop by, hang out in spec, or don't even play. @most of the people in this thread. @jeep customizing = people wasting resources. So letting new people learn Vehicle customizing with heavy tanks is be better ?
