Get rid of the commander target ability

NS solved motion tracking and scent of fear gayness by adding a delay to the target tracking, which is similar to what you're saying.

Basic human computer interaction rules say that important things should be as close and as big as possible (forgot who's law that was) so I'd still vote for having it in your view instead of on the map, but gimping it slightly so it isn't accurate enough for point and shoot hax would be a good idea.

 

So the orange diamond thingies?

 

Didn't he just suggest radar. And wouldn't a radar be better?

The main problem I have with mass targets is that it's the commander's rubbish shite that he has to do. The second problem I have with it, is because it's pretty active most of the time, when someone not-rifleman comes up against a rifleman in the current balance, they get dicked on and have no real chance of flanking, because of t3h target.

A better system is needed, not really removal of the element.

 

See what happened here pickled? You chose the wrong side of an argument and god is punishing you for it. Dizzyone is in agreement with you. The world will soon collapse on its self and demon spawn will rise from the rubble.

Comm WallHacks are a crutch for bad players. Bad comms, bad infantry, bad tank drivers all have there lack of skill bolstered by comm wallhacks. If you were to make the argument that you wanted to keep wallhacks to lessen the gap between vets and noobs, I could understand that argument. It would be a failure of an argument, but still a logical opinion based on an imperfect understanding of ludology.

Every other argument I've seen is pure and utter nonsense. --Just air released from bad players lungs in an attempt to rationalize not losing the only thing that keeps them from sucking.

Flasche wants to try the game without wallhacks. I've played this game before wallhacks were implemented and widely used. I like it much more, and I'm sure he will find the same. I was fucking pissed when people started doing it, and my opinion hasn't varied much since then.

 

You're not going to win this argument by insulting me. It would be so dumb that any time I saw two people that were going to flank or attack a group of people I'd have to micspam for 30 seconds trying to explain who I was talking to, who was trying to flank them, and where they were coming from when I can instead simply drag and click twice to mark their targets to the relevant individuals and be on my way.

Sirlin is the definition of self-promoting douchebag. He writes books based on what I knew about video games when I was twelve years old playing killer instinct against my friends. Did you see the video I linked? What kind of a faggot brings up that kind of shit during a class and then tries to promote their books and crappy cardgames? He also completely made up the definition of yomi. Yomi is a word for the japanese underworld. It is also a vague term which means in everyday japanese conversation to be "clairvoyance" or "forethought." This would be like some japanese guy who stole an English word like "strength" and turned into some elaborate definition about increasing your mental stamina through meditation and herbal supplements and then writing several books around the concept.

 

I feel most of the advocates posting in this thread have been dancing around the issue that, many of the opponents want to keep it in part because they like having the crutch. It became apparent to me that the insensitive truth needed to be said after reading a few of the more ridiculous posts. If you take insult from it, then I guess that makes me the troll of this thread, but at least it got said.

First of all, in that scenario without mass comm targets, you could still select all your units and tell them to attack the area the enemies are at, or micro manage and have them attack a specific target of the group.

Second, the fact that you as the commander can see targets that no one else on your team can see is a break-down of the fog-of-war system.

If your infantry CAN see the targets, then an area attack order is all that should be needed. If your team members fail to identify and kill the targets then they failed, simple as that. I know you thoroughly dislike the idea that as commander you rely in part on the competence of your team, but that's what an FPS/RTS is. Your min/maxing should have to take their stupidity into account and not always simply work around it, as unpalatable as that may seem at times.

 

You don't get it, I don't care who Sirlin is. Sun Tzu may have been a peadophile for all I care, i'll still read art of war. There's nothing wrong with Sirlin's writing: he has a great article on how to write, his "yomi" and "playing to win" articles make very clear several ideas that were only fuzzy in my mind. Let's move on.


Let's discuss this:

Dizzy suggests making the markers vague (enough not to help with aiming) onscreen helpers instead of dots on the map.
Beerdude proposes the orange diamonds that camras currently use.

Firstly, the diamonds track the enemy for the period that they are on the enemy. The system should only let players know that the enemy is there, no more information about them. Knowing their velocity doesn't add any benefits to the speed of combat and whatnot, but interferes with the depth of combat. Diamonds that don't track is a possibility, obviously different from the diamonds that cameras give so people arn't confused.

One thing I don't like about my map solution is that it gives people 360 degrees clairvoyance. A player can look at the minimap and notice enemies that have got behind him.

I feel even just diamonds onscreen gives too much information. It gives information that you can't miss. I want information that is available to the player but that one concerned with other things CAN miss. That's the crux of the issue between solutions. I believe a lot of infantry tactics rely on one player being able to manover around an enemy when distracted, and this is ruined if information about the player is shoved in the enemy's face. The perfect example is district. On district, using the sewers, a flank, is a deathtrap because players know you're in the sewers even if they wern't looking for you in the sewers because of camra targets.

I think what I'd like is something more similar to the heartbeat monitor in CoD, obvious targets on the minimap but only in a 90 (or 120 or whatever) degree cone ahead of you.

Ideally, if I were to run wild with this suggestion, what I'd do:
When a player is shooting, in a tank or using calculator/e-build, then they are "active". When a player is moving around >10 seconds after they were last active, they are "passive". Passive players would get the diamonds onscreen in addition to the dots on the minimap, active players only the dots on the minimap. I might even have the minimap auto zoom to a decent zoom level during "active" and to full zoom when "passive" (disableable, and as well as letting them choose their zoom themselves in those times, and no zoom if the player is 'calculating') just because that's when the map is most useful to you. I'm not tying "active" and "passive" to stamina because people use stamina to cross the map.

That would be the best of both worlds.

 

You couldn't have possibly played it before it was implemented, as it's always been in the game, even before 1.0. The only thing thats changed is that it's been fixed, it didn't even have fog of war before 1.08 (oh hi, here are targets for the whole map, enjoy)

Your main argument here is flawed for one reason, the reason that is is widely used is because more players understand the game, and the more their skill level is raised, the more they become adapt at all things in the game, this means that you couldn't possibly know if you'd still like it more because of the skill difference.

Saying you should try to play the game without wallhacks is a waste of time, just get 2 comms that won't use it and see if people like it. I doubt they will, they'll probably be complaining about not knowing where every single engineer went to. Which they have the right to, it's not much fun to chase a jeep across the map while your main force is raping the enemy. Or how many times have you heard "where did their comm go?" Another perfect example of why multi attack is benefitial, this doesn't just happen to jeeps and cv's, this happens with engis, scouts, roflmen, grens, light tanks and sadly even heavy tanks.

 

What Cobalt is refering to is the time not before wallhacks were invented but before they were widely used. Before it was discovered that they were such a massive benefit. I'm 99% sure there was a time like this, perhaps even as late as 1.07, I can't remember people demanding targets back then... but it was a while ago.

People simply being used to an ancient system and not relying so heavily on their other senses doesn't mean that it's impossible to get by without them. You're going to have to elaborate on you're "I don't know where the enemy went at exactly this second therefore the game is worse" example, because I'm willing to sway, but I currently do not understand how that logically follows.

If you need to tell players where the enemy command vehicle is, then as the commander that option is still available.

To be frank, I don't even think you've pointed out a con. I've already said that knowing where the enemy is speeds up combat, but there's nothing fun about just knowing where an enemy, for instance the enemy command vehicle. There's a lot of fun involved in working out where an enemy is likely to go, about hunting down an enemy- it's definitely a more interesting mechanic than "go to where the diamond is". And on the flip side, being the person that is trying to run away, it is DEFINITELY more fun if you can outsmart the person chasing you, double back on yourself etc.

 

I've given cons, I don't see why I should repeat them.

It's about what you're going to be emphasising in gameplay, if you decide its fine to try and mix slow combat with fast combat, than removing multi attack would probably go a far way at doing that.

And I really wouldn't know how it used to be, I've been using multi attack since the first versions, I commed a lot so again wouldn't really know how it used to be without it. But I do know how it is for players not to know where the enemy is, and IMO it detracts from the real game, besides the obvious impossible mix of fast and slow that I've explained elaboratly in a few examples already. You've got insane fast team raping with 50cal mgs on APC's and extremely slow with engi smgs at long range. Remove multi attack and you'll widen that gap. I'm not a dictionary, I could write an essay on this to explain in great detail why there are no bigger cons than tears in gameplay like this, and again, this issue has been discussed for a dozen times now, I couldn't possibly remember all the things I've said 2 or 3 years ago.

 

You won't catch me asking for comm targets on counterstrike or any number of other FPS games. In fact, I would be bothered if counterstrike had wallhacks like empires has. Sorry, I guess your whole argument here is wrong.

That's not adequate. If I can see two people approaching the rear of a position I should be able to immediately relay their exact positions to my infantrymen. Comm targets allow this to be done efficiently and effectively. Any other solution would be imprecise and inadequate.

No it's not. As a commander, your range of vision is actually less than an infantryman. This is why, for instance, you can go to comm view and buildings/units will disappear at a distance, but if you switch back to vehicle mode buildings and infantry will mystically reappear.

No. Once again, if I am the commander, my infantry should be able to know about everything I can see. Comm targets simply streamline this process, instead of me having to describe every little detail about what's going on.

I'm sorry but if you want to keep empires a rts/fps hybrid, comm targets have to stay. That's really the bottom line. They can be streamlined, or the execution can be altered, but they need to be there in some form or another.

 

I think targets means less campers. My only problem with them is they are ugly red squares. Should look cooler some how, I don't care about aesthetics for things like models,guns and maps but simple things like that should some how look cooler.

 

They could be replaced with particle effects and I could create nifty replacements :D

 

I wish you could replace everything with particles. Then we all take some LSD before playing Empires, and enjoy the glory of magical colors.

Oh yeah, the commander wallhax are faggotry in an FPS RTS hybrid.
Cameras and radars can be countered very easily, cannot be spammed, and are actually a pretty sweet mechanic. Or at least they seemed that way to me when I got into Empires, around 2.2. After about 1 hour of playtime you realize that cameras and radars are useless, since the commander will babysit you anyway with the wallhax.

Yes it's an RTS aspect. But in a pure RTS each soldier and tank is just a function of the code, not a real player. Players will think for themselves, make tactics and shit. You don't have to babysit them with "shoot through that rock" mentality.

 

It's hilarious because cameras are useless in comm maps and they're forcible removed from infantry only matches

 

Exactly my point. So how about them particles?

 

Waiting on effective implementation.

Explosions are in progress atm though :D

 

Well, the biggest problem is that it's annoying, not that it's not useful.

I would definately never command anymore if I couldn't give targets, because commanding is frustrating enough.

I say clean up the GUI and then see if its as big of a problem.