Gren + Roflman : the same but different.

I find it useless to argue on the forums because obviously no one here plays the game.

 

I play regularly just had a bad run of matches today so I'm flamin on the forums :p

 

The way I explained this concept whilst bouncing ideas off people in a server was a sort of 'think of TF2'. There are some specialised classes there, engis sit around hitting turrets with spanners, spys go invisible and annoy people, scouts are insanely hard to hit. But then you get classes that are essentially the same, but different. Think about the soldier, demoman and heavy. Thier only purpose is to pew-pew boom-boom, they are all sort of equal, though have certain situations where they excel above the rest (demoman at corners, heavy at close range). Now obviously people prefer one over the others, simply because they prefer that sort of style of play, or are best at exploiting their area of expertese.
So, I'm not saying make empires TF2, cus that would fail, but just keep in mind that the sort of attitude they used in their classes is very successful and entertaining (though personally I find TF2 is way too simple so it bores to fast, but the class system works).

 

personally id polarise the 2 classes more, because this can make the difference more clear and stuff can be buffed without being OP

also this could enable more choice

 

Nobody likes being hard countered.

Having riflemen chewing through everything that moves so long is it isn't a tank, turret or another rifleman kinda sucks, and will simply encourage people to riflewhore since killing stuff in games tends to be somewhat fun and gratifying.

 

thats not what i was saying omni

 

It wasn't? What else could that mean? Dubee would be right to be pissed if he could kill even less than now, grens would be utterly useless. Remember server sizes, 9 to 11 tanks on the field, which is often pretty large, with double that amount of infantry. If riflemen could kill grens any easier than now, tanks will dominate, even if grens are better against them. It may seem like a weird link, but if you increase the power of riflemen against infantry and grens against tanks, tanks are the ones that finish better off, because there are less living grens, and I don't think anyone is saying tanks should be more powerful than they are now.

And as omni said, raegquit will occur if people are flat out beaten because they chose a certain class. It's not fair and it's not fun. Which is why I'm saying keep them balanced in both of the general areas. I thought the suggestion that grens should get resistances to tank cannons/explosive MLs and riflemen get resistance to tank MGs was a really good point, it's exemplary of my point.

 

I found the first part here to be one of the most profound arguments made in favor of your thesis. Everyone needs to read over it and really consider what it means.

 

I think specialization of the classes is fun if it can be done so that players never feel impotent. Good teamwork can result in an effective mix of classes, but this isn't just a RTS, people are actually playing those classes and the last thing most people want in a game is to be useless.

If classes are specialized against specific opponents, players have to be given a way to choose their opponents. That's what you tend to seen in larger persistent universe games where players will choose their class to fit the situation or go looking for a situation to fit their class.

In Empires I can't really see that working since there's no way to know what human opponents will do. Therefore, in my opinion, all classes should be somewhat capable against all opponents. They don't have to be the same; in fact, they should ideally deal with the same threats in different ways as that lends itself to different play styles and the classes can be much closer in capabilities against specific opponents without sacrificing uniqueness.

 

i like blizzards way of looking at it, red and blue green and brown, w.e. as it is i enjoy going as a gren or a rifleman on occasion, i think more can be done on the maping end to increase the riflemen potency while the gren is already being looked at, both classes are great at choke-points, but not as usefull in open fields. I Really dont like the idea of turning the classes into the same things, nothing surprises the enemy like my cv rolling up, me hoping out and sabing there buildings, and off i go agin, or throw mines down in there VF.. I think the user is responsible to figure out how to use each class, not the developer to make it easy..

Empiers has a huge learning curve, lets not sacrifice it.

(the day i lose my tank to a rifleman is the day i grief my cv) lol

 

Nobody is suggesting buffing riflemen, certainly! They're overpowered, especially at long ranges. Just about everyone agrees on that. They don't need to chew through infantry to fulfill their role. They certainly don't need stickies to be as strong as they are now.

But I don't see the need for grenadiers to overlap with the rifleman role -- I don't see why grenadiers need any more anti-infantry capability than scouts or engineers. If tanks (even APCs) have an advantage over riflemen, and riflemen have an advantage over grenadiers, and grenadiers have an advantage over tanks, (and if rifleman weapons are fixed so they actually have to get reasonably close to use them), then the team that wins will the the one that coordinates and works together as well as possible.

TBH, most of the people who play grenadier right now are the people who really want to mortar enemy infantry. I don't think that that's a particularly big secret, because that and 9-mining are all the grenadier has been really good at, historically. Nobody goes grenadier to help their team win the game, because generally, class-skill and everything else being equal, other classes are currently better at nearly everything the gren can do.

But if the grenadier could actually raep tanks, you would see more people going grenadier in order to raep tanks, not just to dick around with the mortar. That would mean that there would be fewer riflemen, in general. If rifleman weapons were nerfed somewhat, so they weren't so obscene at long range, and something was done to stickies, then this effect would be even more pronounced.

Obviously if you start from the assumption that most people on the field are riflemen then the grenadier is screwed (unless you turn him into an alternate-flavor rifleman, which is... honestly, stupid.) But if he's made strong enough at his main role to become appealing to people who simply want to win the game (or kill tanks) rather than just people who want to dick around with the mowtar, you will see a lot more grenadiers and, therefore, a lot fewer riflemen.

One of the primary reasons for rock-paper-scissors relations between classes (even if they are 'soft' counters rather than 'hard' counters) is that it encourages this. If you try to make each class a bland mishmash of the same roles with slightly different flavors, whichever class has even a slight advantage is going to get every single player flocking to it. If you give each class a sharp weak point, though, players will dynamically balance classes out as they try to exploit enemy weaknesses or avoid enemy strength, and this will make for more varied games with a more interesting array of opponents and allies.

I know some people are 'gren4life' or whatever. But most people aren't; that's why riflemen and engineers are the most common classes. If riflemen required grenadiers to provide support against APCs and tanks, and grenadiers were better at actually providing that support, then people would use grenadiers more often. Nobody is going to flock to grenadiers just to get a slightly different-flavored rifleman unless you actually make them better than riflemen (at which point nobody will play rifleman and we'll have the same problem.)

 

making classes the same but different is how the metagame develops - a sophisticated metagame is essential for hardcore players to stay interested.

making the classes specialists turns empires into rock paper scissors, which is boring and stupid.

 

This way the Riflemen would be helluva easier against everything.
Stickies are easy to use. So are hitscan weapons that the rifleman is armed with.
Anti-vehicle capabilities of the Gren are on the other hand hindered by the shitty RPG, and the hard-to-use mortar.
So I disagree with the suggestion that "everyone should be able to do everything", since it does not promote teamplay.

 

Fortress Forever.

Team Fortress 2.

 

Firstly, I'm starting from the point that grens are at the moment really quite weak against tanks compared to roflmen - I've seen single ammo+ roflmen take down tanks a hell of a lot more than I've seen grens do so. Anyway...

I'm not making this shit up on a theoretical basis, I can give you all the evidence and examples you want to show you how not to structure rock paper scissors gameplay. Basicly, exactly what you are saying is a bad road to travel. So just to clarrify my point, the classes are fundamentally equally capable. Nublets will see the sticky nade what hurties tanks and through the sticky nades at the tanks. The Nublets will see the rpg and pew pew it at the tanks. In terms of effectiveness they are roughly equal. The RPG can obviously fire further and faster and has more ammo cappacity, in return the sticky is like a suprise kick-in-the-balls, a one off event that is incredibly painful if executed well. This is not to say they are the same, they are very different and will KEEP DIFFERENT PLAYERS OCCUPIED. Yet, when it's man Vs tank you will probably tend towards gren because their versatility shines through. Providing they are roughly balanced, slight descrepencies won't matter because players' styles will prevail. In the same way that in TF2 I just can't play demoman, even if his nades were twice as powerful, I'd still prefer the heavy - that's just my play style.

Saying that grens shouldn't have more combat ability than engis is laughable seeing as they are a support role. Scouts don't use power, they use stealth - melee upgrade + hide + good hiding spot = LULULUL I BEAT YOU ALL IN THE FACE. So really it's just between riflemen and grens, and what applied to tanks aplies here. If you want to go anti-infantry, you will naturally tend towards riflemen. Their rofls are are able to be used long range, HMG and ARs are fine mid range and close up they are also fine. The gren has no real long range capabilities, some skill and planning is needed to fight mid range, yet close the mortar is a one hit wonder, much better than the roflman's measly bullets. Again some balance is needed. In return to the rofl's broad spectrum, grens need some field of excellence. This would naturally come in 1 off massive damage hits from the mortar. Riflemen won't give up life when they see a tank if they have no attacks, they'll give up empires. Grens won't pretend infantry doesn't exist if they can't fight it, they'll pretend empires doesn't.

 

In a Man vs Tank the Rifleman does more damage. Really. The maps of Empires aren't grenadier-friendly.
Never as a tank driver I am threatened by grenadiers in person, only by their mines. My main fear is other tanks.

Also, what throws most players off balance is that the game looks somewhat realistic, or at least grounded in reality somehow. But then you have your arcade Quake3 gameplay, that suggests that grenadiers whould use RPG, wich causes people to wonder what the hell they are supposed to do.

Then to the second confusion: the grens have not only a shitty anti-vehicle weapon but also a shitty anti-infantry mortar, which also is only useable by "pros", and in their hands behaves like a weapon from Unreal/Quake, ie jumping around and shooting at people a few feet away.

And here I am, thinking that I was playing a somewhat realistic, team-based shooter, with some ground in reality. Grenadiers are played by people who polish themselves into an "ultimate grenade fighter, stuff of legends", not by people who want to help their team by countering armored vehicles.

Face it, the grenadiers are now some kind of weird mix between a guided-anti-person-sniper and a guy with a "noob tube" á la CoD4. At least that is what I feel. And I am by no means a skilled grenadier, or Empires player overal.

This grenadier class lack of effect and specialisation scares ME away from playing that class. I actually thought I'd be able to attack enemy armor and win, seems that I expected wrong, too bad. Sure, it's a "support" class. But what the hell do i do with it, besides spam mines in bottlenecks? No other weapons the gren has are effective at doing what they are supposed to do.

Mortar is tricky as hell to learn. And I guess I'm not alone to feel that way either. This thread is on the other hand full of people who are good, very good at this game. Bet you guys forgot what the learning curve on this was, amidst the discussions of how good 2.12 and SMG3 were. Noobs like me really have a hard time finding a use for this horrid weapon!

RPG is shitty, boring, unsatisfying, weak and lame. I had to crack open the BERPG view model to remove that nasty shield that blinded me to half the battlefield. Other than that, the RPG is useless against anything armored more than a jeep. It really is. Fix that somehow. Bio RPG? Plasma RPG? Nuclear RPG? Put some research into that, it wouldn't hurt a bit.

Overall, I agree with Aquillion.

 

Nobody really disagrees with you that the grenadier right now is weaker against tanks than it should be. This has been an issue with the class for quite some time that has only become an issue now that the class seems to be lagging in its anti-infantry capabilities as well. In fact, the power of infantry against tanks as a whole right now is pretty questionable.

This game may "look" realistic but nowhere is any part of the gameplay grounded in realism. This game is really more like an arcade shooter than any sort of realistic shooter. Headshots aren't fatal (indeed, many do less than 50% damage, especially against a rifleman). Some weapons require 10 or more bullets to kill a person at any sort of distance. The falloff for damage is pretty extreme. Tanks engage each other in unrealistic melees where one or the other rams and destroys its opponent. This game is even more run-and-gun than counterstrike and with few exceptions most of the guns suck at any distance greater than the length of a barracks. Most people engage others in close combat with sprint held down while madly running/jumping/strafing which is something many other more realistic shooters try to do away with with some sort of mechanism (such as being stunned by bullets in CS when getting shot). One hit with melee upgrade does as much damage as being shot 12-13 times with an SMG.

Some of these are unintentional, but I posit that many of the gameplay elements I stated exist because of deliberate gameplay design. A lot of empires players and developers seem to believe that realism in a game of this type is silly, e.g. "fuck realism" and therefore realism, when confronted by fun, should not be a prevailing goal in gameplay design.

You posit that most of the people who claim to be/are exceptional grenadiers think of themselves as John Rambo or some other larger-than-life one-man army. I posit that your implicit suggestion that most exceptional grenadiers are lone wolves and they fancy themselves as one-man-armies is false. The "pro" grenadiers in this game are capable of feats of comraderie and teamwork far beyond that of the average empires player.

You imply that grenadiers should be a specialist anti-tank class without stating any reasons why. Some people may think that the term "grenadier" implies that the class is equipped with anti-tank weapons and is designed to deal with tanks specifically. I believe that this assumption is ultimately harmful to your overall argument. While some members of the empires community seem to define the "grenadier" class as an anti-tank class, historically, the nomer "grenadier" was a combat role for infantry equipped to assault trenches (rifles, grenades). Many weapons defined as "grenades" are actually designed to be primarily anti-personnel.

The last element in your argument has to do with the learning curve of empires. I know I don't speak for others but in all seriousness I was using all the classes with proficiency after 2-3 weeks of playing, so I never really viewed the learning curve of empires to be that much of a challenge. The mortar is by far the hardest of the weapons to learn but to suggest that it is some sort of herculean feat to become capable of killing infantry with the mortar on a regular basis is pretty absurd.

The RPG in real life is equipped with both a shaped-charge and encased in a shell designed to fragment, and is therefore designed to fulfill two roles in combat: Anti-tank and anti-personnel. I believe that the real-life RPG should be a metaphor for the grenadier: a class designed and equipped with tools to deal with situations that would call for both roles.

inb4 tl;dr

 

Zen just went so derailed he was in the middle of the atlantic yet he somehow said 'Overall, I agree with Aquillion.', despite sort of agreeing with me towards the more relavent parts. So, once more to clarify:
Riflemen atm are too weak compared to tanks.
Grenadiers are inexplicably even weaker than this.

So buff gren weapons till they are more in line with roflmens', then buff them both in the anti-tank field. IMO riflemen are roughly in the right place in terms of anti-infantry, grens are too weak. This one's a bit more of a challenge because just going BUFF BUFF BUFF may not solve the problem. I'm more inclined to adding another weapon that can be switched out with the mortar, that is a more general point a shoot explosive launcher, a bit easier for nublets but less versatile. I'm sure our weapon modellers could make some great concepts for this.

 

I am not sure that I could agree more.


I think there are 3 real questions.

1: How good should grenadiers be against infantry (Better than engineer/scout, as good or better than rifleman)
2: How good should rifleman be against tanks, relative to grenadiers
3: How good should infantry be against tanks.

Generally, people seem to believe that 'grenadiers should be able to fight off tanks on their own, kill engineers and scouts, and be able to get the occasional rifleman kill. Rifleman should be able to harass tanks in close, but they should never be as good as rifleman'

Personally, I just believe they should be good at the same things in different situations. I even made a post on it, I will not rant about it here.


On a related note, I wonder if pickled's statements appear as persuasive to those who didn't already agree with him.

 

I just want to put some values into this discussion.

In my opinion current rifleman is ok.

All I want is to give the gren a huge buff at his main job (killing tanks). And therefore I only want to buff RPG and Mine.

Current damage of RPG = 105, Mine = 110.

New damage for RPG and Mine:
110 damage to infantry
130 damage to Jeep/APC/LT/AFV
160 damage to Medium/Arty
200 damage to Heavy

50% more speed for RPG.

RPG max ammo = 10 (was 5).

Maybe also change to mines to dual use sticky/normal mines. Throw it on the ground=normal mine. Throw it on enemy tank=sticky mine.
Sticky mine will do the same damage as normal mines and explodes after 3 seconds. But you can throw them 50% farther.