Get rid of the commander target ability

Thankyou. That was my point exactly. While the com is giving out targets, he isn't dropping refs, checking his research, or whatever. And when he is dropping refs he isn't giving out targets....I think it works.

 

Ok, this all comes under the category of:

"Games should not be decided by which commander was best able to use the UI, but by which commander had the best strategy." I quote:

The massive difference between starcraft and empires is that empires has the majority of the players in the game as the non commander role, who want to win because they had the best strategy. They deserve to have a fair match, not one which was imbalanced from the start because one commander was able to put down wallhacks better than the other.

With the chess analogy, it's like "While the guy is focusing on putting the pawns in the right position on the board, he's not thinking about the tactics he's going to be using or the enemy's tactics. Brain power per unit time is a limited resource so it's a trade off"

 

I like 'wallhacks' as they are another way the com can support the dudes on the ground. It forms more of a dependence bond between troops and the commander. It's nice to ask for support from the com and get it, whether it's propmtly dropping a rax, filling a research request or giving targets.

What if it was a researchable option? Like 'infrared satellite uplink tech' or something?

 

Reliance on a tedious element that a monkey could do, and actually defeats the fact that REAL PEOPLE are playing rather than bots, is ridiculous. What escapes you here? The fact that in Empires people are supposed to be the ones shooting the enemy, not that they are bots that need to be controlled to do the work.

Mass commander targets are for bots, not people. If you want to play a bot game, that's single player not multiplayer. Commander targets on that scale actually defeat the point of Empires - that you'd actually have to command your troops and get them to listen to you, and relay information to them so that they could survive. The point of Empires is not that you always have to be looking over your troops and giving commands like a regular RTS, it's actually that you don't have to do that and instead command.

Painting each target and treating people like bots is not what Empires is about.

You guys aren't bad players for wanting them, like someone said, you just have no real idea what commanding is about. You think that it's about yelling at people or treating them like crap, but it's not. It's about inspiring confidence and making them want to do what you tell them. It's also using workable tactics to defeat the forces opposing you, and adapting those tactics to the suggestions.

Many of you also think that commanding is like commanding in the army, but it's not. You are voted commander, and there are no penalties for people not listening to you other than loss. You are like a leader who has raised a militia, which you do through charisma, intelligence and maybe a little fear now and then, that if they don't do something, what you have will be lost. Orders aren't met with swift punishment, and there's no one keeping people in line. You actually have to get people to work together to defeat an enemy, but it's down to the infantry how each engagement plays out.

That's the point there. Targets not only treat infantry like bots, they also reduce the decision making of infantry how to approach a situation. And they definately dissolve dozens of tactical strategies. How many times have you taken a squad up to the enemy base, hidden behind cover, and still be gunned down like a rat?

How can you play a game when cover and hide, hide without invisibility, is not an option? It removes any kind of negligence from a player to have a big red target painted for him. Where is the area sweep? Where is the "area not clear" until you sweep it? Not just until all the targets disappear.

Targets eliminate caution. They turn infantry gameplay into a binary of "dead/not dead". There's no need to locate an enemy, just have the damn comm hold A and drag a box.

 

I politely disagree.

 

Ah well, I can't really argue with that

 

Civility? On an internet forum? It's not natural! :D

 

And I agree with your disagreement. Polietly.

Sandbag makes a decent point, however I draw a different conclusion from his example. I read the quote and think "commanders should be better educated and/or structures should be able to automate this work for them (this would be converting the expense of attention into the expense of resources)."

Painted targets are an RTS element. Can you name any modern RTS where you cannot tell a combat unit to attack enemies within an area? When you tell them to attack an area, they don't sometimes fail to notice exposed enemies (exceptioin would be any kind of 'cloak/hide' special units, see scout for our variant). They always know exactly where to attack once they are in range. In games such as starcraft they never miss. In games such as TA or SupCom they use real physics so sometimes they miss but they never are firing blind or unaware of enemies, which is a good example of what Empires is doing. My point is, this is a hybrid game, and the commander is playing an RTS. RTS elements will bleed into the FPS portion of the game (as they should) and FPS elements will bleed into the RTS portion. Saying the commander should have to describe enemy locations via chat/voice instead of using interface is as valid as saying all FPS players should have minimap removed because it too displays info that wasn't relayed by players via chat/voice. They are both interface tools to simulate the flow of information.

 

I'll start by pointing out that this is a soft 'anti'. It's soft as in it comes under the category of a lot of the arguments for and against the topic that are insignificant when compared to other points being brought up. Similarly, increased learning curve for new commanders (more things to juggle), (leading to) easier for new players to fuck up a team, ugliness of many red diamonds on screen... are all insignificant arguements for the removal of wallhacks in comparison to the real gameplay issues that wallhacks bring.

In response though, I'd say three things. Firstly, I understand completely what you mean. With wallhacks removed though, commanders providing targets on the ground will still be an option for the commander, though more time consuming. Of course, without mass targets to apply to everyone all the time, the commander will have more time for micromanaging the troops, giving directions and enemy locations.

Secondly, there's the real issue of what happens when you don't get targets. typing TARGETS TARGETS TARGETS and getting them means you can assume you're now on level footing with the enemy. Not getting them can be really frustrating. In essence, the dependence of the troops on the commander works both ways and is in no way a bonus other than the bond, and can potentially lead to gameplay issues such as a commander that doesn't provide targets.

oh, and finally- there are still loads of ways (including providing targets if possible) for the commander to interact and give support to his men. Even as soft antis go, this is pretty soft.

 

I've thought about this and feel that it's already been covered:

In empires, the players can move to the area and attack targets as they see them just as in any other RTS

As (I think) cobalt put it: Players do their best to facilitate the commanders orders, but they make mistakes. This could be their aim, this could be not spotting the enemy imidately. That's part of what being a soldier entails. As the commander it's not our job to ensure that our troops see the enemy any more than it is their job to ensure that the troops kill the enemy. You just decide where you'd like your men to attack the enemy.

In other words: if we want flawless players, why stop at wallhacks? Why not give them aimbots too?

If you want your troops to specifically attack a certain area, for instance: you have men on a field fighting the enemy south of them and you notice as commander that there are troops east of them about to flank, then the facility you previously had with wallhacks is still available to you by creating an attack order to the east. All of the tactical options are still available to you with static "attack this location" markers.

 

You agree that giving the commanders mindless buisy-work is a good game mechanic as long as the buisy-work has some pay-off. Which by the way was assumed by my example.

--Which is better than pickles position, that buisy-work is useful in-and-of its self (as a way to make commanding more challenging), but still, paying commanders to play hop-scotch is a good way to make a hop-scotch emulator. The abilities, restrictions, risks and rewards allowed to commanders is what defines their roll in this game. If the goal of a commander role in empires is simply to design a role in which someone is to be buisy, then great, lets make the GUI more obtrusive to boot.

I was under the assumption that the role of the commander was to be strategic, to use critical and creative thinking, to organize a cohesive plan for a diverse team in an attempt to solve an over-all problem. My mistake...

 

I mean...I know your arguments too, it's not like I don't use commander targets. But I also know that I do tell people what's going on around them to help them, if I can. I say things like "l33t muffin, the enemy cv is behind you, take cover" or "Jaus, you've got a guy incoming from the NW, watch out!" etc, but I notice a lot of commanders don't bother, they just paint targets and move on - mainly because they're getting hassled for targets all the time.

In the big maps of Empires, you sometimes need targets, but what I really don't want to see is targets on the s-bend in slaughtered, or to be drawing a massive box over crossroads and painting 20 targets. Gentlemen, that's just not right.

 

Your quote doesn't cover it... for example, the statement "mass targets do not represent attack move"... is that your opinion? If so, I disagree, that's exactly what they represent. That and automating the process of your commander/your teammates having to describe the enemy location to you.

If you want to remove information from the interface, why stop at removing commander targets, why not remove the minimap and HUD entirely.

 

Little logic flaw there. The HUD and minimap are constant, the largest flaws in commander targets is its nonpermanence and that it's a big load on the commander. Over and above any "wallhax" concerns, the problem is it's the commander painting all this, once again putting a load on someone who already controls enough of the game.

 

That sounds more like an argument for structures that automate it than an argument to have them removed.

 

Well, there are several ways to go about this whole thing.

• Have everyone and everything for both teams always displayed on the minimap. (Obligatory extreme example)
• Limit the amount of attack orders a Commander can give.
• Modify existing structures to give out perfect "wall-hax" targets.
• Create new buildings that provide tactical information.
• Etc.

In general, change Commander targets/orders and/or give another means of "wall-hax"/tactical information. There are lots of other suggestions out there. To say this has been done to death is an understatement, but still nothing has been done. At the very least, could we not experiment a little?

P.S. I haven't gotten any replies to that last topic yet. Are my posts so horrible that people have stopped to even criticizing me?

 

If you view a game as a 2D space, objectives as locations you must travel to, and obstacles/restrictions as literal barriers. The best game is neither the game with the most barriers, nor the game with the least barriers. I don't think anyone has implied either of those to situations. We are discussing a legitimate increase in game-space complexity, not advocating walling our-selves into a room.

Anyways...

Let's create a semi-finite example that illustrates some points, and that subsequent posts can mangle to support their points, shall we? :p

We are all playing a friendly game a crossroads. The NF commander wants: Alpha to attack the enemy raxes, Bravo to build turrets and generally fortify positions, and Charley to rush through the left side into the enemy base.

If the commander actually tries to issue those commands to those squads, the commanders entire team would be saying, "OMG WTF GIMME BACK MY W411H4X!!1!, how will I know what to shoot at without my precious precious WALLHAX?!"
If the commander knew this would be the case, they could choose not to give those actual commands and instead try to describe those tasks using their mic, which is one currently used practice.
They could also, give the order and quickly remove the order restoring the wallhacks, hoping that the squads were paying attention and got the gist of the blinked commands. Which is another semi-frequently used tactic, usually accompanied by mic descriptions.
It is always (at least) the secondary objective of all players to cause as much destruction to the enemy team as possible, yet in this, and most scenarios the "attack everything the enemy owns" objective overrides the main strategic objectives, because the wallhax mechanic is giving a larger pay-off than strategy is giving.
The fact that the commander is forced to use unintentional(from the developers perspective) methods to hint at main objectives, because the main objectives system is being occupied, is a strong indication that the command system is broken.
--and of course, all the infantry on both teams have to play a dumbed-down version of an FPS as a result. Not because they want a dumbed-down version, but because they want to achieve the objective in the best/easiest way possible, which in this case includes wallhax. Much like if you put a mouse and some food in a maze, and the mouse climbs over the walls of the maze to get at the food, because the maze developers didn't cap the top of the maze.

So to recap, broken RTS and dumbed-down FPS. The pros are, tedious RTS, and faster FPS?

 

That's because it is

 

Sorry, I will now respond to you directly.

Experimenting a little is a very useful idea to allow more people to create a balanced opinion of their own on this topic using personal experience. There are two down sides to this idea. One, is it assumes that it will facilitate a more balanced decision, because the communities opinion matters most. Even though the communities opinion might matter, HSM is right, the communities opinion doesn't matter enough. Two, players often have a difficult time separating the choices they make in games from choices they make about games.

"Modify existing structures to give out perfect "wall-hax" targets." ignores half the issue.

"Create new buildings that provide tactical information." I wouldn't be apposed to a new comm placed camera as a base defense measure. Although it doesn't really address the issues in this thread.

"Have everyone and everything for both teams always displayed on the minimap." A compromise against my point of view, which would be okay, but I don't think it even addresses the concerns of the opposing point of view, e.g. pickled's concerns of wanting to give-out the wallhacks.

"Limit the amount of attack orders a Commander can give." new argument about the limit. 1 = too few, 4 = too many, 2 = pointless, 3 = maybe?. --Or was this more of a total limit on the number of attack orders the commander can currently have issued? Then issues with orders vs. player count come-up.

 

Well put, however it sounds like a solution to most of the problems you have pointed out is right here. The only problem it doesn't address is "dumbed down FPS" to which I say if your teammates/commander can see and describe the target to you (eg: 2 o'clock 20 yards on the ridge) then we should streamline the communication process and let them paint the target.