the point of a game is to have FUN. if any player, whatsoever is punished, no matter how bad their crime, i.e buying a jeep, then they will leave the mod. not ALL players play to win. as nice as that is, we don't all play like that. some people, myself included, often just want to have a nice time. you too play to have fun too. most importantly of all, the view that someone is doing good or bad is completely subjective. even the best commander in the world makes mistakes, but we are not talking about the best commanders in the world. we're talking about the average commander, and the average commander doesn't know that you're scout because there's a machinegunner on the nearest hill that's been plaguing you for some time. the commander doesn't know that you know their CV is undefended and you need a jeep to ninja. If commanders make the mistake and use this, they will be causing a MASSIVE rage over the player that was effected, and that's not why we play this game. and ANY wrong mistake like this will get people uninstalling the game this is just a terrible, terrible suggestion. I don't like this "no room for fun" bullshit you're pulling either. let me say it again: you we're joking right? or you're drunk? there is NO situation where it would be justified to use that. none whatsoever. we currently have bans for griefers.
Ok what Im seeing right now is bunch of little kids screaming "NO U" STFU or suggest something usefull. People not listening explained: In most games it seems that people "Do not listen to the commander". This is basic human psycology, if you just say to the "team" do this. No one will do it. Why? Lets take a look at a real life example, when someone gets injured and is lying on the floor bleeding; people will be walking around thinking that someone else will take care of it, there are only a few people that will actualy take the initative to help. Solution? Point each person out, TELL each person what to do. If you specificaly tell each person what to do and assign a teamate to help them; people will do it, because they know that no one else has been assigned to do it, and they are the only person that can do it. Once the task is complete or he failed, say something like "Good Job" or "Do you need help? Or will you be OK?" just general things like that build your teams confidence in you. Just screaming orders at a faceless team will not get anything done. Pure and simple. No game mechanic is ever going to change human behaviou, you must take the fact that every soldier in the field is a human player, and should be treated as such. That could also mean that your team is full of retards that are intent just humping the armory all day long. This is not the games fault, or the lack of some game mechanic, it is the reason why we need admins. Because we are human... Commanding Is hard to get into Well, I dont understand why this happens. People are screaming that "OMFG COMMANDING IS HARD!! X, Y or Z is hard!" No shit. Commander is an uptop position, so you must be familiar with the game already in order to be able to do a proper job, that is the very reason why when you join the military you are not immideatly given your eager platoon to command, because in all probability you are going to get them all killed. Following the Psycological aspec I covered in my first post, NOT EVERYONE IS FIT TO BE A COMMANDER this is simply due to the fact that they do not understand why people do things that they do, and again no matter how many gameplay gimmicks you implement, there will always be people who are unable to command because they are dealing with real life players and not robots that will stand in one spot for 24 hours untill you give them the next order. Remember that this is also a game, standing is not fun (Thats why turrets are automated) Commanders Rather read a newspaper Now how in the world does this happen. Lets assume you are fairly seasoned player that knows the ressearch tree fairly well, played each map and know where to rush. You seem qualified, but you are bored. Well, sorry, but if thats the case you are not a good commander. As the first point mentioned if you are screaming orders at the team without pointing anyone out, nothing will get done especialy in pub games, and that is the very reason why the commander becomes the team's bitch: Because unlike yelling at a team, the yelling at a comander is pointed at a specific person. Each game has atleast 9 players that need what to do. If you are singeling out each player and ordering each one what to do, there is no way in hell that you have "Nothing to do". This just falls under the point of you not being fit to being a commander. As an example grenadiers are trying to cover light tanks on a front line, the grenadiers get mowed down by the armor non stop, The commander seeing this realizes that his infantry is ineefective, after surveying the landscape he notcies a forest, he singles out the grenadiers telling them to fire from the forest; Voilla, the grenadiers covered by the forest are now are able to provide support to the armor, pushing the enemy back (The map in question is canyon the western pass NF being the gren forces). So if you are noticing things like that, there is no way you can be bored. Conclusion The commanding position is not fit for every single player, due to the level of involvment, it takes some understand of how people behave and initative at the part of the commander. Yelling at a team is less effective then the team yelling at the commander because the com is just 1 person. No amount of gameplay features, gimmicks or crap like that is going to make someone a better a better commander. Techincaly speaking the commander can be the best commander without ever issuing a single "Move/Attack/Defend" order just by talking to his team. Personal opinion For me commanding is one of the most draining activities, it takes alot of focus and I cannot com more then 2 games in a row after which im done and I just need to shoot something. Loosing as a commander is very frustrating for reasons X, Y and Z but that is not the actual games fault, its because of something either the team or myself did during the match. But on the same hand winning as a commander provides some of the best "IN YOUR FACE BITCHES" moments I have ever experienced in any game to date, not even the med/ammo spam from NS or winning was as good as a win in Empires (Yes I have played Natural Selection; I have played the thing from its initial public release, to the moment Empires went public. So don't EVER tell me "You have no idea wtf ur taking aboot dud, it was liek Diz" I also played alot of Savage, all RTS/FPS hybrids) Suggestions -I would like to directly help the team, dropping walls and armories for cover is just not enough, something to activly tell the troops "Im here for you guys" would be awesome Other then that, I don't have any problems with the interface, I never get stuck in geometry, on mValley I dont even use the command door in the dam I just drop everything through either the door or the window, including 3 turrets. Stop whining and be rational...
God that was a ton of reading... Shinzon, you have a very good point, Reef, you have a good point, and so does that other person with the "I'll kill your family ^.^" Avatar munchkin... thing. Shinzon, I believe you are correct, but at the same time, Reef is correct as well... I haven't been playing long, but I understand how to command (maybe not in Empires, at this point, but soon.) You have to make a team member feel important, make him feel that only he will do this. But then again... What are squad leaders for? I forget who suggested it, but someone said something to the effect of Giving orders to a squad/Being able to select an entire squad. The commander literally has NO TIME to go to each and every single person to give orders... Thats called micromanaging, and I didn't see famous generals such as Patton, or Stonewall Jackson going over to individual soldiers and telling them what specifically to do. Maybe the Commander COULD issue ammo crates, and make it so that Engineers can only drop one? Thats where the Squad Leader comes in. Maybe we can do something so that he can give attack or move orders as well? Maybe make it more like a military squad, where theres fire teams, so that he can detail orders to half (fireteam consisting of 2 people) the squad to do something. That would streamline the game, the Commander still might be Monkey, but atleast he would have power on the Squad Leaders. Maybe, if a Squad Member/Leader disobeys, they can be stripped of the Minimap, or they lose the ability to create vehicles? It would cause the squad to pressure the person into toeing the line, and maybe disciplinary action by the Commander like that would only last a few minutes (or he can remove it himself) Basic summary of my opinion: Individual people will probably follow orders better if they are given the specific order, but at the same time, he will have no time to visit everyone, especially if there are more than 15 people on his team. Why are we just focussing on making the Commander more important? Squad Leader just seems to be a title as well. It has no other purpose other than giving you a star over your head which other people in your squad can see. It isn't needed, but it would be nice. The Commander must be able to have influence, if no one knows/cares that he exists other than to be the slave of the team, he won't be an effective Commander. The Team should be dependent on the Commander, but at the same time, the Commander must be dependent on the team. Shinzon, if my view is Naive or stupid, let me know... I'm only a newbie.
You can't implement comm handed out punishments, you really can't. the "benefits" of possibly, in one or two really bad situations getting your team to do your actions due to fear instead of trust, are VASTLY outweighed by the "anti-fun" of being punished, and the very very real event that commanders do not understand a players motive, is pissed off or makes a mistake causing him to punish a player.
Anything that punishes a player is a bad idea, it doesn't make the game any more fun, it still doesn't protect from intentional griefing, and only serves to annoy the players. About the comm micro manading; yes they didn't, but then again they had obidience where they didnt have to worry about what the soldiers will think... Nothing stops the squad leaders from leading their teams right now; hell they can even issue their own squad wide attack/move/defend orders, they can also use squad skills, so it is entireley up to the squad leader to determine how involved they want to be, but not alot is dependant on them; after all they are just another soldier. The commander is the one who must understand everything and be competant, if you have squad leaders with equivelent initative, then bravo If I com I often say "Alpha squad go east, Bravo go north" that selects a wide range of players and tells them what to do, its up the commander to make use of squads, and assign responsibility to the squad leaders...
There are 3 types of players out there. The motivated ones, The misfits and the headless chicken. You, as a comm, have no problems with the motivated ones but you need a "reef like" commanding style for the misfits, to direct their hatred in a constructive way and you need a "shinzon like" style for the headless chicken that doesnt know what to do. Theres no one way of commanding.
The main problem is that we have too few commanders. One of the reasons of this happening is that players don't listen to the commanders. Some players obey, some of them just want to have fun riding a jeep around, some think 'someone else will take this order, I can go do something else'. One of the ideas to fix this (Yes Sandbag, now I see how bad it is, but still it could work so I wrote it) is to force players to obey orders. That would make more players to command, because they would be listened. They would actually command their team, not (like now) yell suggestions over the mic and watch the team failing... to their death. And the view of the situation is quite good, so You suffer even more. Other reason is that the commander can't do anything by himself, he needs to have team's help to do everything. Any action (without researching) needs help. Constructing vehicles manually as a commander is not effective, but commander can do it too. He can ride his CV, too. When the team doesn't follow orders, the commander becomes extreamly annoyed by this situation. Second way of fixing it would be to take care of that problem by giving a commander some cool skills like energy beam, droppable mines and drawing on the map. That would help to entertain commander when he is bored. When there are 20 players on the team, commander usually has things to do. But when there are 3-6 players, he knows what is doing what, he gave orders with his voice and wide explaination what he expects to do and why, and what is he researching - but it still doesn't take him full time. Third problem is that commander is not respected and all his decisions are undermined. That lead us to commander dropping ammo, feeding players and such. I still have a weird feeling that we are solving the wrong problems.
How would you exactly "Force" players to obey? There is no way to do it without creating features that are destructive to the game. If someone is really intent in driving a jeep around, there is absolutley nothing you can do about it
Yes they are and some other guys that steal your vec and drown them and think they are funny. But these are all guys that dont want to play "hardcore" and theres nothin you can do against it. Every month i give myself a dosis of css. Everything i do in those 3 hours of gaming in griefing. I dont play "right", i just camp or die because i try to rush. I dont think a game should ban/kick people because they are not willing to play "correct". Everything thats possible is correct, its a game. If it shouldnt be possible the developers have to implement something that stops people doing this. Online games are more like a sandbox than a boardgame
Maybe jeeps should have better weapon upgrades so they can still fight alongside (but perhaps not dirctly against) heavier vehicles, ie even a decent jeep mounted rocket launcher would be useful for tank hunting or mine laying ability for a fast area-denial. The point is to make no vehicle be "lame" to build becuase they are so useless, but to make it so every vehicle can still have a use at any time in the battle. I find it boring and repetitive with the upgrade system at the moment, once one kind of vehicle is bettered, you are told to buy 10x the new kind of vehicle and everything else except APC is made redundant. I think if you can have "paper" heavies you should also be able to have "pimped" jeeps. The more variety of customization and uses for vehicles, the more interesting and tactical the battles.
Most of this has to do with weapon balance. With new weapon costs and single slot upgraded ones things should get interesting.
THIS - IS - EMPIRES! *kicks sandbag* More seriously, though, I don't think that giving commanders the ability to dish out individual punishments is going to make it that much more fun to command, directly or indirectly. I think that making more people want to command on public servers will require something flashy, with direct impact on the game. It doesn't have to have a major (or even a significant) game balance impact, really... it is more psychological than anything else. In fact, the thought that I most had when posting this thread comes back to this, which someone else mentioned a bit back after saying how much they were drained by comming: This is basically the reason why I think it would be better to go for the 'carrot' rather than the 'stick' in encouraging people to listen to their comm. Doing things for your team -- even minor things -- is, I think, just going to be more fun for most comms than playing daddy-with-a-whip and smacking down everyone who drives a jeep. This is why I tend to favor the idea of some sort of comm beacon (granting minor, squad-aura style effects to everyone nearby) that the comm can drop every so often... sort of like the Populous Ankh or the call to arms spell from Dungeon Keeper, these would be both an order to rush that location, and a bonus to those who do. There could be beacons for specific orders (an anti-tank beacon, an anti-infantry beacon, an assault beacon for attacking bases, a build/repair beacon, a roll-out beacon that calls everyone to the VF and then to a certain location with their tanks... all providing small benefits to those who do.) Possibly, beacons could also provide slightly more points than usual for doing what the beacon orders. This could result in people just using them for points, but I don't see that happening... after all, there's lots of easier ways to grind for points already. Additionally, of course, there would be a restriction on beacons (one every XYZ minutes? Something like that) Would everyone listen to them? No. After all, like someone else said, people ignore comm auras now. But we can't solve everything, and people who are determined to ignore the comm will always do so. Beacons, though, have several major advantages; in a way, they answer almost every issue that has been raised in this thread. * To people who complain that comming is complicated and labor-intensive, beacons provide an easy way to give some kinds of orders. Rather than frantically selecting everyone in an emergency, a beacon can let your entire team know when (say) something important needs to be attacked or constructed, using only a few clicks. The comm can then turn to ordering individual units. * To people who want the feel-good feeling that they are directly helping their team, well, this directly helps the team. * To people who want more ways to make people listen to them (especially on public servers), this lets them give out incentives. If implemented and used well, beacons could make the comm's desires and plans instantly and easily understandable to the team at a glance, which, I think, is a good thing. Can a good comm do that already with VC? Yes. If we had enough good, capable comms willing and able to do that work over VC, we would not have this thread, and it would not be ten pages long. We don't have enough people like that, and the mod can't rely on having people like that. This suggestion would make it easier for people to be a 'decent' comm without having to be an 'excellent' one, without getting in the way of the excellent ones... some of those excellent ones might find the beacons to be useful, maybe, but the mechanical bonus is small enough that it is no great loss to the team if they are only rarely used.
By players driving jeeps around I meant the ones that buy a jeep on duststorm and circle their own base (around) indefinetly. Yes there are some players like that. Aquillion noticed an important fact: I must say I disagree with the beacon aura effect. Auras don't do the trick till now and they won't do the trick unless they will be very overpowered. (Everyone cares about the ultra-powerfull accuracy aura now? No? ) There are other 'carrot' methods to encourage players to follow the commander's way of thinking, f.e. Ammo crates droppable by the commander. That is a considerable carrot, something that activly tell the troops "Im here for you guys". Maby auras can be rebalanced, dunno. The idea of beacons can be improoved: lets mark the placed beacon on the map (flashing for a few seconds after placing it). We just got back to the idea of marking commander strategies on the map (by waypoints, without any kind of arrows in this implementation, but arrows could be cool). Commander could drop a smoke grenade or two every few minutes on the same basis that he can drop buildings. Commander could make a given player 5-seconds 100% invisibility every few minutes. That would trigger the "omg commander, You saved my life, thanks!" reaction. Players after saying that are very vurnerable to suggestions, like "yea, that was close, now get me some refineries!". I hope we can find more carrots.
One thing that remidns me of: Back when I played Enemy Territory, the one guarenteed way to get people to listen to me was to play a medic and revive them. If I hit them with revive and then used the 'follow me!' voice-button, they almost always would. Dunno how applicable that is, but yes... people are more likely to listen to you if they feel that you're actively working with them already. Partly, this is just a visible sign that you are paying attention to them and know what you're doing... if some random crazy person shouts 'follow me!' and runs into the path of an oncoming enemy tank, I'm likely to ignore them. But if they're an engineer who's revived me repeatedly, I'm more likely to pay attention (maybe they're planning on dropping a wall the instant before the tank hits, making it stop and then distracting it so I can slam it with an RPG... or something.) It works the same way with the comm. For people to listen, the comm has to have the team's trust. This is hard to do on servers where people aren't inclined to listen to the comm to begin with... I still can't stop thinking about the idea of a comm revive. I know that there are problems with it, but there's got to be a way to make it work... and reviving a player is the most surefire way I know to grab their attention. It could only work when there are no enemies nearby, say, and when the dead person is near a teammate or friendly structure. The revived person could be left helpless for a few seconds (unable to move or shoot), and it could create an audible noise, so that trying to use it to 'ambush' the person who just killed them would just waste your comm points and get the person you revived killed again anyway. Yes, there are other options... but nothing triggers the 'OMG, you just saved my life!' response like actually bringing someone back to life. Auras, ammo, even buildings... all of that people can ignore. Everyone appreciates being revived, though.
That rarely happens, don't You think? That's true, but implementing commrevive would require tons of hacks. The system would become very unintuitive. You wouldn't be able to revive a player, because an enemy is nearby or no friendly units/buildings are nerby, or something, or something else... In the end, this wouldn't be usefull. The idea is good but I think there is no good way of implementing it. We still can invent new carrots. We should.
