Is Empires dead, dying, or just on hold...

Nothing more. I, for one, am thankful for the time you have put into it, and don't expect more as I realize you have real life to attend to.

 

So much crying but think about it.

How many mods are as old or older than empires and still alive?

How many mods do have a constant community?

not many

 

Natural Selection

 

counter strike?

 

How many of those mods have gone commercial?

 

A lot, I guess :p

Which isn't a bad move, tbh, Empires is worth A LOT. If you'd "finish" it in like two years (so, pretty much in its completely finished state, the way you envisioned it) and go commercial, a lot of people would buy it.

 

Earth's Special Forces
Action Half-Life
The Specialists
Sven Co-Op
SourceForts
Hidden:Source
Dystopia

I'm a little fuzzy on Empires exact release date, so there may be more or less.
Didn't bother with non-HL1/2 mods.

 

This thread has taken a horrifying, emotionally scarring turn. I, for one, would pay full price for empires, and this is coming from someone who hates paying more then 20 bucks for games.

In the meantime, I'm going to curl up in the corner with a handle of tequila and my shattered dreams.

 

Personally I suggest mappers, skinners, sound guys, & modelers to start posting their work here. (As it is currently empty as all hell.)

It might give the mod more publicity & might encourage people to start making new maps, models, sounds, & skins, thus bringing new life into the game.

I can tell you right now I accidentally found Empires while I was looking CS 1.6 & HL2: DM maps. :p

Also don't forget to tell your friends & any clan mates or buddy's you have in other games about Empires.

 

D: D: D:

 

lol that suggestions thread needs to be put down!!

all these people want what we 2.0 testers got, but your too late! ya missed out! lol :D

 

Its kinda cool that pubbers are making Empires mod mods (altering scripts etc)

 

I think what people want, in general, is news that despite having reduced time to do things that Empires will either continue to progress (albeit slowly) or if thats not possible then handed over to someone else / an expanded team rather than being allowed to die off. Anything to counter Moo's gloom spreading...

 

1. Empires isn't polished at all. It's hard for a newbie to start playing. It can't be changed even by a wonderful hint system and a manual. But that's not the main problem.
2. Commander maps aren't fun. I can say which team will win 10 seconds after commander vote has ended. One team loses refineries and then can only 'counterattack' with 9th mining the CV. Games are much easier to win by (slightly) better team when turrets got nerfed (limited and research time go higher). I'm not saying the reverting turrets settings would solve the problem.
3. Huge balance changes are done all the time without any plan eg. standard MG was changed before 2.0 or 2.1 release. APC vs infantry fights are now totally unbalanced. It changed whole game strategy. One single change that wasn't planned and tested early enough. And we get such changes almost every release.
4. Krenzo doesn't have a lot of free time - that's a fact. After Empires 2.2 you won't get any big updates to free version of Empires but there *MIGHT* be a commercial continuation.
5. Whining on forums doesn't change anything. Neither does suggesting another 100 features.

 

I think the problem really is that a few individuals have to do all the work, if more would be interested to develop for empiresmod, the load wouldve been a lot less to something you can combine with work and school, not forgetting that the quality and feeling of progress would be more advanced, which would work inspirational and motivational on all dev members. The team is small, I'd say thats really the main reason why Empiresmod is not what it should be and that there isn't a real reason to continue working on it.

1. A lot of polish has nothing to do with coding, ok sure it would require coding to be implemented, but its mostly graphical that's really absent, I'm not doubting Krenzo's graphical skills, but seeing how much he has to do already, from coding to fixing models, maps, everything really; I would say it's out of his hands.

2. This is not due to major imbalance, it's a few important parts of the main gameplay that are at blame, a lot of people refuse to have these changed, this is fixable, not the faith of every classic match.

3. I think the things you have pointed out are a bit misleading, while the apc is unbalanced vs infantry, stickies can easily take out any tank, so rather than blaming it on this single thing, you should look at the pacing, because the pacing is the real issue here, you're combining fast paced RTS elements with slow RTS elements that do not scale up, this can work out, it just needs to be looked into. The MG is something I did, it's not tru that I did not have a plan; I balanced weapons based on an overall plan, I think you're just mentioning this because of 1 slot stacking, which is really a no issue that can be fixed with no effort.

4. A continuation is always great, but multiplayer games don't sell; if you do want to start going commercial you would need a good playerbase to support the commercial version, I think that taking Empires commercial as an indie project would be a real bad move unless some major backup is provided. Empiresmod has failed to create a playerbase and in its current form I think releasing Planes would not bring back the players that are hoping for the big change. I've never really shown my distrust in releasing aircraft over the current game, but I do believe that it will not add that what most people expect it to deliver for the game. If there is any future in Empiresmod, IMO it would be a future in better tank combat, thats the biggest fun factor that sets empiresmod apart from other games for the mainstream player.


Good luck to the devs with whatever they're going to do in the future!

 

About #1. New players should RTFM before they even open the game. Many don't. Empires is much more complex than your average FPS, but IMHO, that's why we all play it. I came to Empires from CS:S... It took me at least 8 hours to figure out most of the FPS part of the game, and another 40 to get good at it. It probably took me another 40 hours to get good at commanding. As far as commanding goes, I've been playing since (probably a little before) the 7th of January, and only in the past week or two have I felt that IMHO, I'm a good comm.

As far as #2 goes... I have to agree with the fact that you pretty much know who's going to win two minutes after the start of a map.

With regard to #4, where did you pick that up? If it goes commercial, good for the development team. They've done a great job with it and deserve to get paid for their excellent work.

 

Other mods make big posts on moddb to attract new coders/artists whatever.
Other mods post every 2-4 weeks some random "we are alive" stuff on moddb
and so forth...

And also Empires is a great game and like all really great games it needs
to much thinking for 90% of all gamers.

And to you mootant, why do you say stuff like the developing will end after
2.2. Yes you are in the developement team but i would like to read it from an
official post. Your random "sneak peak" phrases only let me guess that the
dev team doesnt have a straight line and everybody arguess with each other.

 

I'd be motivated to work on maps if people show some interest, these days when i start up hammer i get a weird feeling and shut it down. I could always release the unfinished emp_seacity, which i didn't work on much after interest in it dropped.

 

Is that the seacity I think it is? :D

 

Yes, it's mostly displacements that aren't done.