I think, EMPIRES is a very good mod with a lot of potential, good ideas... and now relative (!) balanced. But there exists only a little number of players. Why?! Is there missing some promotion?
It's a horrendously un-intuitive game with a toxic community and elderly graphics. Empires has a long way to go before it can be attractive to the mainstream Steam gamer.
It's simply too hardcore for the casualfag who just wants to pew pew and be good at the game in a few rounds.
No, I don't think so. First: mainstream Steam should not be the goal. Players, who are interested in strategy and ego-shooter are the goal. Second: Empires is for free! Everybody can play it - for this aspect, Empires has a very good quality. Third: the elderly graphic is not the problem. Look at minecraft! The idea is important. And I don't think, the community is toxic. I had a lot of funny games and the players are more polite, as in other shooters. You underrate the players. There are millions of players out there... if only 0,1% were interested in this mod, we had a huge community.
people that played the game before were turned off by the bugs and gameplay, and dont want to try it again. people who thought the earlier versions were better people that think all mods involve a modified infinite ammo gun for single player people who dont actively seek out games pretty much pr and advertising
it's actually very intuitive compared to nuclear dawn and many other games.. although when i first joined a game i thought PEOPLE ARE TANKS
9 mines? upgrade turrets? unbuilt walls? revive whoring? killspawning? rax-mining? And that's before we get into comming... When I first joined, I thought cameras were used by the commander to watch the game. So, I put them on high ground out in the open so the commander could pan around 360 degrees and see a lot.
We're PR pushing when we get this next patch out, but as complete_lamer said, people get permanently turned off from a game because of bugs, and we have a lot of them right now.
Biggest problem is keeping people playing for the first week or so. Since steam I see alot of people who play for like 2 days but never come back because no one ever helped them or was mean to them just because they were confused about what to do. The biggest improvement we could ever make for the benefit of the mod is for the community to be much more welcoming and friendly. If helping new players in their first few rounds was every "vet's" first priority this would be much less of a problem. Also be much more tolerant of new commanders and give them all the assistance you can. Its a part of the game that can be intimidating but shouldn't be reserved only for 10% of the playerbase. It is also very simple if you have someone with a mic talking you through it. I remember when I first jumped in the chair Secret Agent Elvis talked me through the whole round and it was very smooth. After that I wasn't nervous about doing it anymore and the more potential commanders there are the less totalfail rounds there are. Not having a commander in a round will kill the server. I do see alot of people helping newbies and those are the guys I see playing the next week. So come on everyone - pull your weight, make some new friends and make sure we have enough cannon fodder! Edit: Also..... 19 people viewing on the forum?! GO PLAY!
You might wanna ban me then when new patch releases, and pr starts. I'll just go raging on my mic to every single noob that pisses me off. PEACE AND MUCH LOVE
The idea behind empires is unique and an amazing element, but it is currently not being applied right by players, and it is a very difficult thing to create perfectly for developers. It's the case with almost any RTS hyrbrid, the genre is always limited in some way. That said, many gamers are coming home from school or work, don't want to deal with the stress of winning a game of empires, so the easier way would to just go on CSS or CoD and just run around and shoot people, because those are fast games where rounds end in only 10 minutes [maybe 1 or 2 minutes for Counter Strike]. When searching for mods, most people want to test like every one that they see, and might play a couple rounds on each, so in a sense they're mindset is always in a rush, and when they get to empires they find that for the first 5 minutes you are just holding W and eventually you have to hold down your left mouse button to build something, then finally being able to kill people, who never seem to die and have an unlimited amount of grenades. Therefore, they spend a total 10 minutes, end up thinking that all you do is hold W for the whole game, leave, and go back to a game without a flawed starting phase. I just basically summed up my first impression of this game, which I doubt is different from many other players.
My first impression: WTF WHY AM I emp_recruit. Second impression: Oh neat, mid-game streets of fire, lessee.... *quit for months, come back to meet Zeke and Youzy *
All I remember is for a long time I was lost on every map, I never knew where to expect the enemy to come from until I learnt all the maps (there are lots of maps) & for a good while I didn't know which players, vehicles & buildings were which side. Ahh - happy days RPG spamming my own barracks from the middle of duststorm
People who run away because they dont understand how things work, and the community was mean to them wouldnt make it in this game anyway. When i started playing i did have a basic understanding because im a battlefield fag and i played emps back when it was on 1942. (Basic understanding, how to use things in your world, how to use minimap. knowing that bullets from small arms dont hurt tanks. and other such things) But other then that. the only time(s) i actualy received somthing you could call "Help" when i started was a vet screaming at me "YOU FUCKING NOOB, *insert reason for rage* THATS NOT HOW YOU FUCKING DO IT *possible explanation?* NOW YOU KNOW YOU WORTHLESS FUCK." Bottom line, if you cant figure things out on your own or adapt to random situations, you cant make it here.
My first experiences with this game, getting banned from vipers by magnus for grefing the cv in the water on cyclopean. @azk really? Was that really your magnus opus? Xd
