How to encourage players to play as gren.

Multiplayer games are zero-sum. Making it easier for me also makes it easier for my opponents and, therefore, makes the game harder at the same time.

What matters is not "difficulty", which is meaningless in a multiplayer game, but "depth". And I believe that giving grenadiers the option to switch between guided and homing will (as long as they're each balanced against each other, to keep both useful) make the class deeper, not shallower; it will involve more thought in picking the right weapon for the job, and your typical grenadier-player will be able to be dangerous in a wider variety of situations, making it deeper and more complex to play against them (rather than just 'drive wildly so they can't hit you unless they're really good at the aiming minigame.')

Often, what players mean when they talk about a multiplayer game being hard is 'minigames'. Don't reduce the importance of our headshot minigames, don't reduce the importance of our eyeballed-mortar minigames, don't reduce the importance of our guidance minigames, etc. You mindlessly memorize a sequence of actions or a specific trick and think that that makes the game 'hard' or 'deep'

But those minigames are false difficulty; they don't actually add to the game's depth. A game is deeper when it is easy for all players to contribute, because then you cannot rely on simply out-guiding or out-aiming or out-eyeballing your opponents -- you have to outthink them, and have to constantly come up with new strategies to win rather than relying on one difficult trick or control. I don't play a team multiplayer game so I can play those minigames; I play it so I can go up against intelligent, dangerous opponents who I have to adapt my strategies to beat, while cooperating with intelligent, effective teammates who I can work with to win. Aiming, guiding, eyeballing, tricks like that? They just get in the way; what I want is for all my enemies and all my allies to be reasonably effective.

I think that in the long run, that makes for a much deeper form of gameplay than what you are suggesting. As a tank-driver, I want to be afraid of every grenadier, not just the one hotshot who has mastered the RPG; I want every grenadier to have a major impact on my strategy, and I want them all to require that I come up with strategies and plans to beat them. Likewise, I want every grenadier on my team to be able to contribute usefully at killing tanks, so I have to think about how I can support them all and work with them all rather than just focusing on one ZOMG AWESOME superstar player.

Sure, some players can be better than others, and there's nothing wrong with that, but the real difficulty in the game ought to be your opponents, not guiding your RPG.

 

The trick here is not to make homing a sure hit.

The turret missiles almost always hit. This level of maneuverability is too high for the RPG.

I want less turning speed for the RPG so you can still dodge it, if you dodge it properly, but simply moving a few pixels won't suffice anymore.

Hardly overpowered. Makes it easier, yes, but not very much.

 

while we're at it, why don't we get rid of the "aiming" minigame (autoaim for everyone), the "commanding" minigame (remove cv), the "selecting skills" minigame, the "picking which barracks to spawn at" minigame...

The problem is simple. Grens don't do enough damage to tanks right now. The solution is, therefore, also simple. Make them do more damage to tanks.

 

Commanding, skills, and raxes are not minigames, as they (ideally) directly interact in a complicated fashion with the rest of the game -- there are actual meaningful decisions to be made there, not mindlessly rehearsing the same practiced task. They add depth.

A difficult interface or a hard-to-use weapon, though, does not add depth. Insisting that weapons be difficult to use doesn't make the game any more complicated or deeper; it is a cheap way to make the game appear deeper, by imposing an artificial learning curve based around memorizing repetitive skills. When everyone has mastered the difficult weapons, though, you have gained nothing but wasted effort to get to that point... and when only some people have mastered the difficult weapons, you get a game that isn't particularly fun.

It is better to focus gameplay on the dynamic challenges produced by intelligent opponents.

Now, I'm not saying that guided should be removed -- I think that the game would be deeper if both guided and homing existed as options.

But I think that "this will make the game easier, therefore it's bad" is a bad argument to make. The basic mechanics of the game should be as easy as we can make them without sacrificing depth. The challenge should come from your opponents, not from your interface or controls.

 

Aiming, knowing how to use the mortar, knowing how to use the guided function on the RPG well, etc. all "directly interact in a complicated fashion with the rest of the game" as you just said. If you think that hitting a moving target with the mortar or guiding an rpg to hit a target that is actively trying to evade you is "mindlessly rehearsing the same practiced task" then you don't play much empires (which is true, you don't).

Also, can we get it on record that you are, in fact, in favor of auto aim for everyone, seeing as how you omitted "aim" from the list of things that are not minigames? I mean, arguably it is the FPS element that has been there longer than any of the other of them, and it is pretty fucking funny how you think it's just a "minigame."

 

Ah come on, now this is just really bad flamebaiting.

 

I just want to get this guy on record stating that aim is just a minigame (because that's what he's implying without saying it). It's important in the context of this conversation because he seems to want to get rid of everything involving individual skill, and I'm just trying to figure out if this is true or not.

 

I think the point he wants to make is that his opinion of skill is not in the basic usage of weaponry, but rather in the application.

As in: It shouldn't be hard to fire a weapon and do some damage. True skill shows by targeting the right target at the right time, or to position yourself.

The current problem is, it takes skill to even hit in the first place, so most rockets simply hit the dirt without having any effect whatsoever.

It's like mechanical skill vs tactical skill. Not about autoaiming.

 

this is the definition of 'aiming.'

 

Nope, this is the definition if tactical awareness and hitting the best target.

Take the standard SMGs for example. It's comparably easy to hit a target, but hard to pull off headshots properly. That's "aiming skill". But even if you're bad at aiming you can hit targets by spraying them without thinking. Now, hitting the best available target could be better explained with the following: you engage 2 foes, one sees you and fires at you and the other one is unaware, so you take out the bigger threat first and fire at the already alerted enemy.

Now RPGs have a high learning curve for the aiming part and really bad feedback, so most grenadiers don't know if they have any impact at all. If it were easier to hit tanks, the frustration factor would be lower, but you would still have to concentrate fire on only 1 side or attack weak spots. It should be hard to master, but not so hard to hit.

A tank may eat over 20 RPG hits if you try to hit him from each side constantly. You don't even have that much ammo.

This is what SHOULD seperate a good Grenadier from a bad one.

 

targeting the right target = aiming.
targeting the right target = aiming.
targeting the right target = aiming.

that's all there is to it. you suggested in your earlier post that TRUE SKILL is AIM and POSITIONING, which I would agree with 100%. You simply said it in different words.

Listen, if RPGs and Mortars did 1000 damage a shot, everyone and their mom would be playing gren from start to finish of a game - IRRESPECTIVE of how hard it currently is to score hits with these two weapons, people would be getting instagibs left and right with them. So to me, the problem and the solution are painfully clear.

 

Targeting any target = aiming
Targeting the right/best target depending on situation != aiming

You still need to aim in the latter case though, but aiming and positioning and awareness are 3 different skills.

Edit: Apart from this topic, the point was, that RPGs are hard to master, because they require their own way of aiming AND positioning. Where the aiming part itself is too difficult for the effect of the weapon.

So yes, back to the original point we had already several times ago, either make aiming easier or the weapon better.

And by aiming easier, we're not talking about autoaim. The same could be said about the other option... make it so strong that 1 hit kills heavies. I guess we can all agree that this is wrong on so many levels

Myself, I could even live with slightly higher RPG speed, so you don't have to lead that much and it's harder for tanks to dodge plus you need less time to guide the warhead.

 

so this thread has gotten massively TL; so DR.

My thoughts:
- Make the RPG faster firing or faster traveling
- More ammo on spawn (and in general)
- Make the guided turn faster (I never knew they were guided until now)
- Make homing secondary with a hold and lock on time
- Make the RPG a little stronger


I think homing would do the most to make more people play as gren, but not necessarily make gren more effective.

Also: Who said pistol1 is terrible?

 

A summary for those just picking the thread up:

There are currently two camps of people contributing to this thread.

There are the people who frequently play gren already and have a lot of experience with the class. These people usually are drawn to the grenadier class because of some of the intricacy and complexity involved with using the two primary grenadier weapons (RPG and Mowtar) with efficacy. These people are adept at using the grenadier in both an anti-tank and anti-infantry role. These people mostly want to see tweaks (small damage increases, or mechanics which alter the damage against hulls, or small speed/guidance buffs to the RPG, etc) in the damage of grenadier weapons, especially in the late game, without any overarching change in grenadier weapon mechanics.

The second group of people are people who are probably in one of these three categories: they never play the grenadier, they only play the grenadier in a limited anti-tank role, or they don't play much empires at all. These people want changes to grenadier weapons in ways which fundamentally alter the way that the grenadier operates. Some of them strongly support changes which make the grenadier easier to use, but not necessarily any more powerful against tanks than they currently are. This group tends to suggest things like homing RPGs, replacing the mowtar with some sort of anti-material rifle, etc.

 

Yeah listen to the people who actually play the gren class. We realize how lame it would be for a weapon to guide itself.

I think its lame that someone who never played the game can hop in and be just as good as me, some one who's played for 3+ years. If you want people to stick around make it so it you become good like in every other successful game. Not like those flash ads that everyone is good at..

Click here to hit the tank with an RPG and win free cash!

 

But the thing still is, hitting the tank with the RPG is like shooting it with paintball rounds...

 

Were not saying don't change it. We already stated what would fix it. Homing would just be over the top.

 

Homing is autoaim, but instead of moving the cursor it moves the rocket.

Just make the rocket faster and guide better and it would be alot easier to use. The RPG is hard to use because its slooowww and doesn't track the crosshair very well.

 

The problem with this line of reasoning is that it breaks the balance between tanks and the grenadier. What value of damage should you balance these weapons around? If the grenadiers damage increases with skill and experience there will come a point where the grenadier is balanced against the tanks, better than that point and the tanks are too weak, worse and the tanks are to strong.

The new people starting to use the grenadier will realise that the weapons are not very useful against tanks and stop using them in favour of something else, such as the rifleman's stick grenades and the grenadier will not be much more popular that it currently is.

If I can't rely on my team to be able to deal with tanks, then I can't rely on other people and teamwork is mostly useless because I will have to deal with such problems myself instead of trusting others to do it for me.

 

After lots of thinking... yeah.

Give the RPG more speed and maybe even speed up the reload a little bit. Test this for 1 week and see how people react.