I usually have a 1/1 Kill death ratio but end in the top 3 if I play seriously. Does that mean I suck? I always thought in empires tickets only matter in those few games where every ticket counts and you usually know this bevor the round has started.
But its only a problem if the stats are public and maximizing them doesn't help your team win. Stat-tracking based balancing is not inherently bad, but its hard to get right.
I agree I would be cruising around in my 50. cal apc all day or doing safe mine runs and such. I remember when the stats were up I was nr. 1 for a short while and often very high on the list using the death ray back then, getting 100+ kills on district or spreading my pattern of mines. But players with very shitty scores can also have saved the team countless times. I often sacrifice myself to slow down or scare incomming tanks or hold back a pushing squad. I would stop doing that. Being labeled as shitty will be anoying and being labeled as good will also suck as you automatically MUST perform your best or you loose, thus making it harder to just dick around, like holding the bridge on slaughtered and such.
You should really just say "Rank points" instead of kills/deaths. At least that would mitigate that largest problem of this. Most things people do are accounted for in rank, aside from leadership. I'm like these guys, except a fair bit worse. I'll usually have a 3/11 k:d and if i'm lucky, have 30-40 rank points.
thats odd, i never gave a shit about my stats (well i looked at them from time to time because i liked the "whats your favorit weapon" and "how often have you used a certain gun" aswell as "who pwned you most" and "who got pwnd the most times by you" statistics), and i was in the top 20 even since i didnt play much during 2.23. i had 2days less playtime than those guys around my level. does that mean all empires players suck anyway - especially if everyone was pointwhoreing? i mean if you pointfarm and are worse than someone that doesnt, you obviously have to suck big time ... or maybe it was only guys that cared about stats that were complaining most (those - lets assume i was rank 20 - 19 ppl above me) it doesnt prove the 90% dubee insists on ...
I always thought rank point were a bit out of proportion. Destroying a camera or a heavy tank as infantry is exactly the same reward. I wouldnt like the added pressure of being "good". It sounds like it would end up being all about point whoring and not just having fun. imo "perfect" balance = less fun. I had more fun in the older versions when you could truly ninja and grenadier could take out half a base with 9mine. I once took a VF/RAX/REF a vehicle and several personnel on money.
guess most here agree to that 2.12 thing - its not like you could ninja anything easily. it wasnt possible to flip decent comms - 2 well placed turrets and you either failed or spoiled yourself ... what is considerd as "ninja"-ing today is just pathetic ...
If you'd read, even if you switch to spec before your team loses, you still lose points. And saying, "I'm going to play to never die," means either some heavy basewhoring, some behind-the-lines sniping, or something else that could be generally considered useless and will result in your team loss and loss of points.
Few problems. For first proposal, the "winning" team could find ways around the additional taxation, for example recycle bases/structures they no longer need. This could also promote turtling as both teams get the best bang for the buck when they have a small base. Also, one should never punish a team or it's players for doing well. For second proposal, you'd have to determine at what point a team is "losing". If you base off something like number of refineries or vehicles, winning team can adjust playstyle. Also, one should never punish a team or it's players for doing well. I have to admit, that direction of thought I often end up in as well, but seriously... one should never punish a team or it's players for doing well. Home now and working on video.
k so i stopped reading because this whole thing is fucking retarded. why spend your time on a (persistent? (self-updating?)) ranking system instead of working on and releasing a fucking kickass mod that is balanced and doesnt need any major attention and then releasing it to steamworks??? THE STACKING BS WE SEE would be mitigated WITH A LARGER PLAYERBASE which would be accomplished by the ABOVE (not all of the above just this wicked smart post that everyone should agree with)
In short: Balancing plugin is done, at this point I'm only discussing it. It was completed before I joined the dev team (was completed like two months ago) so it hasn't interfered with developing in any way. 2.25 I joined at the tail end of, I'm sifting through code and figuring out exactly how it all is coming together, but I can't be as active physically developing as I'd like to be until I'm up to speed. So I may as well try to improve the mod in other ways in the meantime. I can post at work freely, but I shouldn't be coding a game there, so these discussions do not cut in to potential development time, and they may lead to features or tweaks that improve the "fucking kickass mod" you seem to enjoy so much. 2.25 is basically feature locked. We have some things we're still adding, but the list of what will be in there (as far as I know) is complete AND almost completely undocumented, the perfect combo. Steamworks is a major goal, but it may not be the next big update. There's a debate about "new GUI to keep audience then steamworks to get audience" or "steamworks to get audience, GUI is good enough to keep them and attract more devs to make GUI/future-features better faster". There's also a lot of other things on the todo list, so I can't say that steamworks will be in a year from now (I hope it will, but it's too soon to say right now). If stacking can be addressed in code, new players will not get steamrolled, and part of the steep learning curve will be resolved because they can outnumber the skilled and actually have fun while learning how to play. Saying more players = no more stacks doesn't compute for me, maybe you can explain the logic? More players means more servers, but stacks won't be removed from that alone. Balancer would be best described as persistent, with parameters available by cvar. I made a powerpoint and will narate over it tomorrow after work, followed by posting. Remember you could always turn it off or not put it on your server, I'm not forcing this on the community, but offering it as a tool to make games more fun.
if ppl wouldnt be too retarded to read the so called "steep learning curve" woulndt exist ... its only steep because ppl dont give a shit to inform themselfs about the game they are going to play. in the case of empires, knowledge is power ... damn half of the questions could be avoided by just looking at your controlls, the other half is covered by the wiki (in a form where you quickly get enough overview). you cant avoid that you need to try out everything to find out what tools fit your playstyle more. ok empires gives you lots of stuff to play with, but its not hard to get.
In the end so much depends on so few. A game can often be decided in the first 120 sek. If a comm doesnt set refs very fast that can be it. Its all about pushing and refs. Without the possibility of ninja or effective rush it often ends up as a slow death with little chance to win for one team and a very long grinding victory for the other team "Nukes in 3 min" FINALLY. Then most people goes spec and the noobs cry about team balance being fucked 6 vs 21 OMGWTF! NOOO!, when they see their score, then leaves feeling it was very unfair. unless the enemy comm is a complete tard who gets stuck in enemy base trying to run people over, which sadly inst that unusual, but not that much fun. That is usually how it goes.
I'd say the best way to measure the winning team is via Refs Current res Tickets Total points It would be hard for the winning team to lower these without hampering their ability to win. The problem with not punishing the winning team (or helping the losing team), is that outcome of matches are determined in the first 5 min. Once you get a ticket/ref/research/territory lead in the beginning, victory is pretty much assured. By hampering the winning team, you make comebacks easier and matches more competitive (which is good IMO).
There are effective ways to counter this. An example is ref denial, like getting 2 squads of 2 in seperate jeeps and taking out enemy refs behind the lines. Works like a charm depending on the map. I think the real problem is, teams that lose are stubborn as hell. If teams can't hiold their own, they start rax hugging and don't know what to do next. I think if you fixed that by making the team die faster, it wouldn't be so bad. Empires games are don't last forever. When you lose, just move on.
