Honest feedback of current state of Empires v2.80 from a frequent player

Anyone notice that really long boring games have become the trend? Two hour games are normally lost due to lack of interest and boredom or com suicide. I lasted an hour an a half commanding one game and when I invited the enemy to kill me, no one on my team cared. Some comments were "That was too long a game", and "Boring as fuck!"

Once match on Booty Bay - I had a group of vets begging me to drive into the water in Booty Bay, and when I wouldn't they all quit. Does that say anything about the current state of the game?

Infantry is boring as hell and it is due to removing all the things that make it fun: 1) Slow tanks = Boring, 2) crappy armor = return frequently to sit on a repair bay. Most vets know how to keep tanks alive, so the game goes on forever. Normally now games are lost due to nubs wasting resources, and that makes it very hostile towards new players. So tanks are more difficult due to how weak they are, and income is super slow on many maps. Infantry is shit due to super OP riflemen. So why do I play this game anymore. I've been looking for a different fix, but the Empires formula is still good, and it's fun to kill lots of nubs, but this game is not supposed to be zero challenge until someone saves enough squad points to squad arty the come and instantly win the game.

Now - my intention is NOT to shit on the devs. I really think they work hard to make the game better. I am not pointing fingers and as a group WE MUST SUPPORT THEM! So this is intended only as a perspective from someone who plays ALOT.

Also I don't think commander has to be dumbed down. A default research path in addition to what we have now to give a decent research - tailored for each map would be good for nub players. Simple/Advanced works - and leave advanced to what we have now. Please don't take away the current button locations. I press them without looking and would prefer to not lose that skill.

JustGoFly

 

Yes, people don't know how to win.
Its not the research or anything else. It's the players.

If I were to go a bit deeper - Squad leads don't know how to Micro or when they need to.
Players don't know when to leave a fight.
Commanders don't ever cut their losses in a losing fight

but for the record I did prefer when tanks were quicker and Trickster nerfed the fuck out of all the armors.

 

Sounds like both teams were playing defensively and neither were trying to do coordinated attacks.

 

I know some of you would disagree, but if we have long games often, that's a sign of "things are fucking balanced".

I can certainly create new tier-3 weapons for our tier-2 weapons, so tanks would actually die.

Also as azk and wiper said, it has a lot to do with playstyle.

 

the existing 3 tier weapons are supposed to be strong already, security.
thats why they are 3 slots.
because only heavies can use them.

 

I feel like resources through a number of small changes over time have creeped up to become, on some maps, way too high.
It is like you never run out of tanks and they are pretty survivable.

At some point in the past, I feel like for a short time all the armors got nerfed quite a bit and it was way better. A few well placed shots from a cannon would rip through plates and you would have to back off. If you pushed you had to commit, but you could also lay back so it resulted in more "waves" of tanks which was more fun. You didn't necessarily die that much more often but when you did you might have to ride with a squad mate instead of go buy a new tank and that was great - pocket engineers make the game better.

But still, I think the biggest problem now is just people have gotten used to slogfests and don't know how to break them. People don't think to flank, cause a diversion or bait tanks into kill zones.
It's like the solution to cracking a stubborn nut is always just to use a bigger hammer. Seiges can be fun, but the most fun is that last 2 minutes when you break the walls and flood in scraming bloody murder.

The whole slippery slope arguement is kind of null for me. A losing team is usually losing for a reason. If you want to see come backs it should come from outplaying the enemy. I'm not a great believer in diminishing returns.

 

Thats what it looks like to me.

 

Games last so long because people dont know how to end because they dont know how to play together to end it.

Its much harder to break a base when everyone is hitting random buildings at their own convenience whilst the enemy players are all concentrated in the same place.

Breaking a base late game isnt about attacking everywhere its about attacking single targets and attacking it together.
People just need leadership to win games these days which doesnt occur at all

 

The argument about learning to end the game is true, has always been true - but my point is not that. The improvements I suggest do not change that point. Nubs now are told not to get into Heavies, which is not good. Heavies now are how we think about Arty - expensive slow, and easily killed. Vets used to feel good that they could fly into a battle and do some damage and fly out, due to their skill in driving and shooting. Right now you crawl in - Boom dead, no matter how good you are.

The main issue is choke point maps where it's tough to "end it". Arty is one option for those maps, but that seems cheap, although I do find arty to be fun. I do feel that light tank (especially NF) is fun, and mediums (BE is more fun), but heavy tank battles become a grind. They are too slow, and armor is too weak to differentiate yourself from another player. A turn of an NF heavy is no longer an option and speed doesn't exist anymore. Gas used to have the best torque and now is the worst. Fission or even Coolant is good torque, but only by comparison to the nerfed engines we used to enjoy. Coolant is way to slow and only for maps that need Arty, or fire from a protected position, like Booty Bay. Even when tanks were fast, there was a faction of the vet players that wanted MORE SPEED. They were happy enough to use a light tank to show how fun it is to rush into an infantry team and slide sideways killing them all. A fast light tank can't do serious damage, so that would be inappropriate for heavies, but the ability to get away - torque up. Gas used to be designed that the more damage you took, the faster you could move to top speed. I think it was a mistake to mess with engines, and much of this was done pre-2.79, but nerfed again in 2.80+.

As for balance - I would agree we are at a very high level of balance. I usually complain about balance, but other than BE SMG2 Rifleman, and rifleman in general, I believe the teams are balanced. I know how hard that is to achieve, so kudos on that Security!

Arguably, I think I like the increase in turret quantity. It has made the long research of turret upgrade worth it for some scenarios. If you take the time to build 26 turrets, you have an advantage by upgrading them. Turret placement is a puzzle piece that com's can learn well, and I find interesting.

I repeat: Since armor is weaker - the com is weaker and squad arty is a serious problem. Most games end this way, and that in itself should draw attention to the issue.

Research is a big differentiating factor in how well teams do, it should be, and making a map to show what works against what and a com taking the time to learn that is what that position should be all about. If I know more than you, I should be able to kill your team easier. Take that away and the game becomes even more boring. Remember the old days when Absorbant was good, but as soon as someone yelled "THEY ARE SHOOTING BIO ML'S" you quickly researched compo, but you didn't go right for compo because it was too expensive? That added a layer of complexity to the game that was easy for any com to comprehend.

 

Heavies are most definitely not "easily killed", not unless youre using dual guided anyway.

 

We played a 90 minute game of Old Slaughtered last night. It was like a merry go round. My team was driving continuously from repair pads to the slot to fire a few times and then come back for repair. The enemy team did the same. I wouldn't build Arty, which could have ended it earlier, and after an hour of firing down the slot some of their better players quit, so we won. Second match of Slaughtered went much faster since two Arty tanks destroyed the enemy base quickly. Anyway - my point stands. Find some way to make heavies as fun as Lights and Mediums and I can get back to complaining about balance. I do feel the balance is good, and just as Security said - no one team can overrun the other easily.

I think slightly better armor, slightly more differentiation among the engines - more speed on Electrical, and slight buff to Gas, make Absorbant worth researching, and faster turning would be a change for the better. The weapons are arguably OK. Small changes to fine tune please.

Right now the two major research paths Deflective/Fission, or Compo/Gas. Since I think Gas has very bad torque and you lose tanks on chokeneck maps, I hardly ever research it. I do research Coolant engine though. Some have been going with Reactive, but it's too heavy when matched with heavy 3Phase on BE, but is OK on NF due to the ability for NF to carry more weight. I feel it a mistake to research Absorbant, Capacitive or Regen on any map.

A long match should be due to two teams with extreme focus and repeated attack/repair, counter-attack. Most empires com's won't rebuild - which is the main reason they SHOULD lose.

 

Reactive is good for BE with a fission Engine. 4 layers of reactive armour are enough. Depending on the weapons, you get something like 5/4/4/3 as far armour is concerned.

 

Repair pads seem to have gained quite a bit of favor from the last time I seriously commanded, I would recall that I rarely placed them until the later stages of the game, but now it seems having one early pays off quite a bit.

So to provide a hypothetical that could speed up games, what if Repair Pads were removed/researchable?

 

Repair Pads benefited massively from the res inflation we've seen in the past year or two. It used to be that 250 res was actually worth something like another bit of research and you had to place them sparingly. Now that theres so much res in the game you're not doing your job as comm if you have less than 10 repair pads everywhere by endgame.

Don't make them researchable, just make them 350 res and make research cost money again.

 

Rather than repair pads being researchable, I'd like to see some infantry items removed until researched:
Gren Mines,
Engineer Revive,
Rifleman Stickies,
Scout Sabotage
This could be a horrible idea - but might be worth exploring.

Still I'd like to see a score for players, like Nuclear Dawn. They have a 1..80 score. Players who have been on for a year might achieve a 40, so this is just a gauge of how much you know about the game, how much you have played, not how good you are. A team full of 80's would be embarrassed to play against a team full of 1's. And that alone would help balance match's. In the future you could test if res is increased for the lower cumulative scored team. But that would just keep more vets in spec until mid game, when they would jump in a grab heavies on a nub team that has high resources.

Repair pads are essential, and now more so than armories. If you don't have at least two repair pads, your team is in trouble. I am seeing com's drop them everywhere in pairs. Plus they are cheap. If you increase the cost please only go up 50 and see if it changes anything. Then 50 again until it changes the gameplay, then decide if it is having the desired effect. The desired effect should be what increases the fun factor of the game.

If vehicle speed were improved we'd see more pushes into enemy territory, rather than choke neck fighting for an hour. Zooming past the enemy and having two or three chase you is a way of clearing out a choke position, enabling the rest of your team to follow. We can still do that with jeeps and scout speed, but that rarely works due to mines. So a lucky dodge and manuever gren might make it through. I made it through Slaughtered choke twice in a jeep, and squad artied the mid VF, which was only a minor setback and didn't change the continued fighting between mid and S bend. The mandatory game changer for Old Slaughtered is Arty. Arty has become a mandatory weapon due to how OP it is. We used to consider Arty a pussy weapon for an unskilled team, but now it's an attempt to keep from running a map for two hours.

I did find the game more interesting when we had more res, and research cost money. It required more skill to be commander, and money management was part of that skill. It would remove nubs from com though. We tolerate their random research now, since it only costs time. Putting a nub in the com vehicle enables a skilled player to buy some of the time needed to research and the random research can sometimes be used properly by vet players. If you get HE Canon, ER Canon, Plasma or Rails on BE - each are still very decent, which is why I think Security did a decent job of balancing the weapons. NF - Any missile is good - UML, Guided, Homing, Bio - we love them all now. Everyone has their preferences, which is how this game should be.

So my beef is with speed and armor of HEAVIES only. Lights and Mediums are good and in many respects you could win with only mediums on NF rather than heavies due to their better speed and maneuverability. I believe this is true only on low resource maps that are not choked.

 

Fuck no, removing revive from the early game is such a horrible mistake. The rest im fine with, but dont touch the only skill which promotes teamwork by a fuckton

 

I'd choosing to remove all of the more powerful features of each class to make early gameplay more interesting. If you choose to research engines/armor then you don't get to revive - except squad revive. No mines to take out early rushes - choose your poison. Maybe you choose to research revive first, since everyone is normally engineer. Maybe Armor/Engine next. Or try for a rush and delay revive until they are in a vehicle.

What makes this game great is the large number of variations. The push recently is to dumby things down so they are all the same, which would be wrong. This is an attempt to multiply those variations - and making more strategies available.

If you didn't have revive - everyone but a refinery builder would switch to Riflemen, Gren early game. This completely changes the game play - until revive is finally researched.

 

I think we can agree that some form of infantry research would be good. I agree that waiting on the infantry research as I proposed would severely change the game, and maybe not for the better, although I do think we need to entertain some concepts that could be tried out.

If the squad leader had the ability to do squad research. pr selection of initial skills for his squad, similar to how individual player skills increase, that might be a better idea. You'd then have an infiltration squad, and a gren squad, strong rifleman squad, or skill all levels over time. Obviously my choices are what we already have, but adding new ideas like a more powerful shotgun, or even the sniper rifle, or various sensory skills would work too. This game shouldn't be all about the commander. Squad play is important too.

 

Actually, scratch what I wrote about a tiered system. You should go with a whole new branch of research for "Small Arms Combat".

You could research (Have pre-requisites?) bio grenades (Makes a gas cloud linger for 15-20 seconds dealing a lot of damage, upgraded SMG, upgraded armors, armor piercing RPG's, DU Rifles, etc.

This definitely would make infantry more viable.