That's assuming that people do what they're told, and don't spend the whole game going "me gots an awp" or "How to get ammos", or worse yet, driving the big tank off, then asking how to fire the big tank's gun. I'm sick of being the only engineer building stuff....its not fun at all. If people would go and learn how to play the game before going online, then yes, this game would be better. The only solution I can think of is two things: kick people for having the name emp_recruit (seriously, its not hard to change your name) and make them do a set amount of training like you do in America's Army before you can play at all, before you can be a scout, before you can evem Comm. That requires a global server though.
Making an auth for Empires would be a nightmare for a while, but it'd probably be worth it in the end.
a trainig map has been purposed, and manditory competion has been sugested, but not one has made one yet (i started one, but gave up because of real life stuff).
You don't attract new people with methods like that. If there will be a mandatory tutorial level you must finish before you may proceed... When the word about it spreads out we will be seeing less and less new people. I see a potential kill in intrest in a method that otherwise seems like it could work. People don't like to read manuals. People don't like to be forced to play tutorials(I had a long discussion about this one with a friend today). We need to have the option open for those who are willing to play a tutorial map, but not force it for everyone. For example I'm not too keen on playing tutorials or reading manuals, but I learned the ropes in Empires in approximately 30 minutes.
I think the opposite. I love playing tutorial maps, take the hazard course in HL1 as a perfect example. So long as the map is purposeful (i.e. educational) and fun to play, there is no reason why people should not want to play it. It will make them a better player, perhaps people just don't realise that. I think at least one mandatory basic training session would solve many of the problems described. If people are not willing to spend 10 minutes or so going through the training, then they probably wouldn't enjoy Empires anyway, so we've lost nothing.
That's why America's Army has been so popular? You HAVE to complete training to use stuff like sniper rifles.
AA attracts different kind of people. Their playerbase doesn't spawn from the devilish pits of CS/CS:S(not to say that all Empires players are from there). I remember testing AA way back. I played some of the tutorials happily, but some of them just... I wish you could adjust sights in games. Fire those 5 or 3 rounds from prone at 150m distance, check where they went, tune the sights, repeat until you hit where you aim. I don't know what's the situation currently in AA though...
i dont think a training map should be manditory, i think it should be easy to access and have a recomendation on MOTD, but not manditory.
AA is on the decline right now, due to a bad release by the devs....they added in AI and vehicles, both of which are buggy as hell...the overall playerbase of AA is shrinking as far as I can tell, not due to training though. About training maps, fine - make it a server setting. Or make training mandatory to do stuff like Comm (you cannot enter the comm vehicle unless you do the training)...
no where else to put this...so here's the setup its district, 3BEv1NF for about 5 mins before it becomes 3BEv2NF. stuck at middle flag we have just enough ppl to votemap off, but 1 guy wont vote (on BE). get pushed back by a reving engi and 2 riflemen both with BEARs. they at NF starting spawn, i go to scout and camp. after 3-4 deaths i say "stop respawning and let them win." get called a lamer. WTF?!?!?!? lamer sais they guy useing the most unbalanced weapon in the game and on a team with 50% more ppl. next round: wastelands. that lamer is on NF with me (3BEv2NF of course) whines and complains the whole time about not being BE. wtf dude!!!!! now i remember why i stoped playing for a month or so.
The middle flag in district is a bitch to get to, i guess some cover would be fine, flipped over apc anyone?
I just built a computer for a friend: AMD x2 2.4 GHz, 2 gigs of ram, GeForce 7900 GTX for about $1300. That computer is twice as fast as my current computer which has no problems with slow downs in any maps in Empires. How old are your computers that they're not even up to par with a computer from 2004 let alone anywhere near something from the present?
I've been avoiding saying something similar because others do not have the amount of money I had to blow on a rig, but yeah, I might as well pipe in here, too... I've never had any problems with the Empires maps, even before I upgraded (when I was using a GeForce 6800 GT(which, ironically, fried while I was playing Empires(not that Empires itself had anything to do with it, the card was defective from the word "go"(lol, parenthesis)))). There's really gotta be a point where people need to stop putting the burden of this stuff on the developers and take it upon themselves to make sure their rig isn't the real problem. Yeah, it's true that some of the models need a bit of optimization, and that levels like district need a lot of work, but there's only so much the developer team can do, especially when they're still working on large chunks of content (aircraft, ironsights, blimbs, etc).
