whatever you can come up with to make building less boring I'm all for. But don't ruin the games military atmosphere pleez.
Guys. Dumpster fox actually brings up a good point. Sure, RTS is usually about some form of resource gathering, structure building gameplay... but this is EMPIRES. This is also FPS! And what is FPS about? Fast action, ass-blastn' gameplay. So, the combo of the two does not mean you going through this whole ghey build process just to build something like an armoury. Maybe you have to do something more, like move around it to diffrent areas, or even a cheezy minigame that is OPTIONAL. But you have to remember, if you played FPS, and just started, and your team needed engies... would that person stay long after hearing "You need more metal to build this turret!"
Well, this topic is old, however it's worth to bump, because a good minigame has been successfully implemented in a very popular game. I had plesure to test it. It's fun. The game that I am talking about is "Gears of War" 's Active Reload. There are two ways of reloading in this game: "noob way" - You press the reload button and wait (something like 1,5 or 2 seconds) just like in every other game Pro way: You press the reload button once, and then the bar appears and the slider starts to run from left to right. The point is to press the reload button the second time in the right moment. If You press it: in the perfect moment (it takes some practice to learn, but not long) - the gun reloads very fast and You get a +8% damage bonus in the right moment (it's easy) the gun reloads faster (less than 1 second) Too early or too late - Your gun will jam for 3 or 4 seconds This picture is showing a slider in the failed position, but You can fail on all the black space: I think You understand what I mean. Notice that this minigame takes less than 1 second. The point is that players actually focus on reloading a weapon. Do You focus on reloading weapon in other games? No, it's just a second or two of doing nothing. Thats boring. Maby if building in Empires was interesting, You would like it and it would be fun? Someone mentioned that the game could be easy as f.e. guiding a stream of nanobots on a target. That's cool but I think it's not easy to implement. The solution we would probably like most is the one that the devs will flag "fun and easy to code" so we will see it soon. So we need many ideas and we need devs to read this topic and choose the right one, so NO criticism about other ideas from now on please. Only post new ideas. Then we will make a poll or something to choose the right one (ofcourse that will happen if at least two ideas will be posted ) Currently I have no idea what the minigame could be. Empires will be considerably more interesting if the minigame will be implemented, so I guess it's worth to think about it for a while. I am talking to the players that read this message: please think about it. If You think that Your idea is considerable, post it. The other idea I came on is the radar structure. It's useless. The only usage of the radar building that I know is to hide in enemy's radar to camp/dismantle it with a good cover. If we invent a minigame that is not as short as it's needed to be to implement it for building, we can enable speeding up researching upgrades at cost of players time. Less players on field, more on inventing new weapons. The radar minigame can be much longer (researches last for 60 to 180 seconds). Ideas like snake or tetris suck. Empires atmosphere would be destroyed.
My suggestion: Tell me what game they used for crafting items in puzzle pirates (Because I don't actually know). Integrate that game into empires. Or you could base it on the carpentry puzzle game. Actually, now that I think of it, you could have several different games-one of patching up armor, one for building electronics like turrets and radars, a piping puzzle game for refineries, etc
So what happens when like 5 engineers goes to build a building? ''come on people! We gotta get all the apples eaten by the snake! C'mon!''
Here's a thought: You get a bunch of irregular-shaped pieces and a grid. The building is built as soon as you manage to arrange them all so that they all fit onto the grid. Make the grid itself larger depending on the complexity of the building.
I always argued that a pretty animation of the building being built will quench the "Bored Factor" cmon... Its less then a freaking minute to build anything, how A.D.D can you all be? :p Now building a LONG section of wall ALL BY YOURSELF now thats just plain tourture I agree, and no amount of eye candy is going to fix that up...
What about when you try to build, you have to shoot at the building with your calculator until the little bar fills up and turns green? Man, Ive had hours of fun watching that yellow bar creep across the screen. I know Im cheating with my Repair Minigame Hax Skill, but hey, its fun!
I have an idea. When You start building, it happens normally, but under the yellow build bar there will be a text like "for advanced mode, press secondary fire". If You press it, a grid appears (i have no idea of shape of the grid - that's developer's decision, could be simple chess-grid). In advanced mode You use Your mouse not to turn Your sight, but You can click on the grid fields. One grid field is 1 point needed to build (rax/radar/armory needs 100 points, turret afaik 70). If You go to advanced mode and some otuer engineer builds in simple mode, You will see fields filling, one (or two with repair upgrade) field per the tool's energy point. The minigame is about clicking the remaining fields. You still loose 1 energy point per click, but You can click it faster than with simple building. With repair upgrade, if You click on a A1 field, both A1 and A2 are built. When all fields are highlighted, the building is finished. Alternatively it could be drag&drop of some kind of elements or something. What do You guys think?
Yea, and if you hold fire and then open class change meny, u can even build without your hands (read mouse)!
As bullshit as this may sound, This is only going to increase the 'elitism' in empires matches. Imagine the SEEU vs BSID game that took place on saturday. SEEU are a very good clan, but BSID have the experience of empires that really helped them a lot in that game. now imagine for a second that even though SEEU was better tactically, more accurate and more of a team than BSID, when BSID and SEEU place a barracks opposite eachother, BSID build it quicker. they instantly get the upper hand. their builders can start attacking and their attackers can start dying and respawning. massive advantage to BSID. and it wouldn't make sense, it wouldn't be fair, it wouldn't be fun. but fuck all that, at least you won't get "bored" building. all this will do is give excellent players another boost and poor, new players something else to be crap at, to let the team down on, and one more difficult thing to learn when getting to grips with the game. this suggestion has nothing to do with teamwork, or strategy, just releaving the bordom of building. and about 3 - 4 games after this is first added, you too will be utterly, utterly bored with the minigame too. build animations: great. getting players to think about what they're gunna do after they've built: great. crappy pointless suggestions: bad.
Ultimate mini-game for building Here is "Teh Win!!1!!" idea: Have a friend stand beside you at your computer desk and try to push your hands off of the controls when you build. Or, even better, they could try to punch you in the face, while you dodge them and continue to build - It's Empires X-Treme! This has been just one of many smart-ass replies from... D-Gen
How about something simple (i.e. not so &(&^%(#$ lame :p): You have a meter on the engineer's tool that oscillates back and forth. Each time it swings, it does so at a different, faster-on-average speed. If you release and click the mouse button when it is exactly at the top, you get five energy back. If you are really good and can keep up after a couple of dozen swings or so when it has built up enough speed to oscillate like crazy, you will have built an entire building without losing any energy!
No thanks, I've enough fun trying to avoid enemy fire while I build. PS: Get repair upgrade, best skill in the game.
You'd only use it while you aren't under fire. Just holding down the button works as usual. Yes, yes, it is, but it can still run out while you are building a base.
why not just ad a radio to the calculator thing :confused: . Its got a folder and if you dump mp3s in it tada it will play those when you turn it on.
