Official Scout Thread Mrk II

Discussion in 'Feedback' started by DonMegel, Sep 23, 2009.

?

Should we?

  1. Do this now?

    17 vote(s)
    47.2%
  2. Do this with a few changes?

    11 vote(s)
    30.6%
  3. Don't do this.

    8 vote(s)
    22.2%
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  1. Ikalx

    Ikalx Member

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    Ok, heres a list of ideas I didn't really like/need tweaking from the OP:

    Health cut - a real bad idea.
    Shock mine - should be anti personnel w/o the concussion nade thrown in, or something even more exotic like drain 50% current HP in small-medium radius & Concuss {crazy idea}.
    Scout+radar combo's - remove ('fiddly' & therefore won't be used), replace with simple "if scout is in squad aura range, enemy health and class is displayed on HUD (to all of the squad)".
    Engy Building saboutaged - will only be turrets, right? (as cameras & radars move to scout) Possibly restrict to level 1's & 2's, as level 3's will have more robust targetting systems.
    Vehicle Saboutage - No overheat, possibly think about reducing vehicles effectiveness to standard engines...and at a longshot armour abilities removed and left with bare HP {latter is a crazy idea}.
    Martial arts skill - seems unneeded/exploitable/'fiddly'.
    Bastard - two separate skills in one. Ammo scavenger should be a separate skill, although finishing off foes is a good one, it could be pimped and gorified by adding a 10hp restore and called 'cannabalise' heh {crazy idea, obviously}.

    Ones I liked:

    Explosives - should cap at 3/5 (without/with ammo upgrade).
    Binoculars Tagging (replacing spot) - way overdue.
    Saboutage - like the lack of building saboutage, however, I still think one or two buildings should suffer from production crippling (not health hit/degeneration). E.g. 50% resources from sab'd ref. Possibly replace with saboutage rendering some buildings useless until repaired - i.e. "you cannot spawn a vehicle, the Vehicle Factory is saboutaged" (hopefully shown before build-menu a vehicle - possibly on entering the VF, like hints).
    Commander Saboutage - good idea, although scout should probably not be able to hide while doing it.
    Squad Aura distance Buff - good idea.
    Jammer.
    Silent - (almost) the same as weapon silencer skill, right?

    Anyway, that's my take on your list...my modifications could be just as bad (disregarding crazy ideas, I mean), but mostly I think some of those abilities were just layered on too thickly, resulting in overpowering OR bogging people down in niggling little tasks that would annoy them (in the main, I could be wrong though).
     
  2. Mashav

    Mashav Member

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    Clarifications if you please:
    With what authority is this suggestion/restrictions coming to us as?
    DonMegal, player of empires; DonMegal, developer; or DonMegal representative of the development team?

    i.e. Do these restrictions only apply to this suggestion or any suggestions pertaining to the scout? Is this suggestion the official dev team's innitial proposal or just yours? If there's somthing that you reject, will we be able to appeal to a different dev?

    Does that mean that there will be tests of other "scouts" though? If yes, then my main concerns will be adressed.

    I don't think that will work that well though, especially when attempting to create interconnectedness between skills/weapons.
     
  3. Reef

    Reef Member

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    My point is: trying to re-implement scout almost entirely in one step will - if We are lucky - be terrible in testing/balancing. If We are not lucky it will all miserably fail. There is no such risk with small changes, as if You will fail You will only loose small amount of time. And it's easier to test/balance.

    Has anyone noted that like none of the already existing big 5+ ideas threads was not implemented? Or am I wrong?
     
  4. PwnedYoAss

    PwnedYoAss Member

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    After re-reading your changes, this doesn't look too bad, needs a play-test though, and a large play-test at that.
     
  5. blizzerd

    blizzerd Member

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    lalalalalalalalal
     
  6. Ikalx

    Ikalx Member

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    Mmm...well I can be swayed on pretty much everything except the health issue. I think it's kinda critical to creating a level playing field, and if we nerf it, it will merely lead to the scout being unused in certain situations. No one's going to firefight with the rest of the team while on low health, well, a greatly reduced percentage anyway.

    I don't see why a scout revealing the enemy class and health while being in your squad radius is more difficult to understand. You could put a scout icon below the squad aura symbol you usually get, to denote that squad information is active. It would be easy to understand then.

    Cannabalise was a joke, yo! :p
     
  7. o_O

    o_O Member

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    If people are arguing the scout NEEDS 75 health for balance then the shotgun is already overpowered in your imaginations.
     
  8. Roflcopter Rego

    Roflcopter Rego Member

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    remember gren and roflmen already have armour to boost their health. It's fine if you want to keep the scout the same as an engi, because the scout can use stealth as his armour, but in that case it would seem simpler to just buff both gren and rifleman armour rather than take off health from the scout.
     
  9. zenarion

    zenarion Member

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    How come this "shotgun" seems to be the solution to all Scout problems?
    I myself don't imagine the scout as a close-combat class at all.

    That guy is a ninja in my mind. When attacked, he drops a flash bomb, a smoke grenade, and disappears. Yeah, add that. A flash grenade that also covers the area in smoke, so the little rascal can run away and hide again.

    Have the scout be able to weaken enemy infantry somehow too. Like, draining their stamina, or shooting BioBullets, that make em lose HP over time, and not recover stamina. Or making people slow with a web slinging device a la Entangling Roots (or Spiderman, whatever floats your boat).
    Or give the scout a "disarm" ability, so on melee hits, he empties peoples magazines. That is for not killing directly, but making the opposing players smash their keyboards against their monitors, since they've been rendered powerless and exposed.
     
  10. LordDz

    LordDz Capitan Rainbow Flowers

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    Random Thinking:
    Would a modified version of the HL2 Crossbow fit to the scout (It would only work in close range).
    If you want, it could nail people so they can't move/be revived...
     
  11. Ikalx

    Ikalx Member

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    Just something I wanted to point out, if you give the scout buildables, a saboutage, and a shotgun, it becomes very similar to the engineer/sapper/hacker classes from other games. You should be aware that that is what you're doing, and make sure that it's where you want the classes to go.

    You could easily create a medic and sapper from the engineer and scout, however, I always figured Empires wanted to have unique classes and suchlike.
     
  12. flasche

    flasche Member Staff Member Moderator

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    so unique means ignore anything that works well in other games and rather implement something weird just to stick with some word?

    empires ITSELF is unique already.

    if it really needs to be "unique" as a whole, id suggest to reinvent the computer in a very unique way. it would only be consistent. also rifleman aint very unique, why is that? change the rifleman into something unique? i guess not ;)
     
  13. o_O

    o_O Member

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    Without at least a shotgun and the engi cameras there is going to be no role for the scout ever, other then "OP Sabotage platform". Even then its just going to be someone thats helpful when the comm is to busy to give targets. And even then its only useful in fairly close fighting.
     
  14. Ikalx

    Ikalx Member

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    @flasche, many games have different classes, or it'd be pretty repetitive. If you play something that's been done before, if that game doesn't do it well, then you're screwed. Having said that however, a useful generic class is probably more preferable to having a useless broken one.

    I'm not saying don't give it a shotgun or buildables, i'm merely saying don't walk with your eyes closed into something that's been done before. If you're going to create a generic class, at least know that's what you're doing and be happy with it, or you'll make it crappy. In fact, make the generic medic and engineer classes RIGHT NOW and forget all this discussion once and for all, we're getting to it anyway, why not do it now, then add all the unique things we want in, later? At least that way we can know what we're doing and do it well.

    If we split the classes now and remake them better, then add extras to make them powerful in their own right, we'd be a lot better off than where this discussion always gets us. There are a hundred things we could add to an engineers repertoire, and if we decide to make a medic with sabouteur skills or leave that with the engineer/sapper, we still have a lot of things we could give medics.

    It's been said before, but I feel at this point that we're merely trying to skirt around making generic classes, and getting left with one good class and one fairly useless one. It's possible to remix those two and then add even more useful stuff to flesh them out properly.
     
    Last edited: Sep 28, 2009
  15. DonMegel

    DonMegel Member

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    I could also see the Scout going in an assault direction, maybe shotgun and SMGs, timed explosives, auto build cameras (toss and they build on thier own)

    I feel like we keep flirting with what the scout should be but are having trouble nailing it down.
     
  16. zenarion

    zenarion Member

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    Mostly because people like scouts for a bunch of different reasons.
    Some like crouching snipers/hidden sabbers. Some like the assault idea.
     
  17. Aquillion

    Aquillion Member

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    This seems like a good plan in general, but there's one other thing I'd like to see:

    I'd prefer it if hide were completely revised, making it so it doesn't require crouching / crawling (and in fact even works while running), and doesn't require cover. Of course it would need new limitations, like making it a tool you have to use with limited energy/ammo, or whatever.

    Why is this necessary? Several reasons. First, a hide method that requires that the scout move differently than other infantry discourages them from moving with a group, and is part of what encourages 'lone wolf' scouts. It would be much better to have a camo-device or whatever that can be activated in short bursts to flank enemies while working with a group, rather than crawling and falling behind.

    Second, Empires maps just generally don't work well with anything that requires cover. There are too many big flat maps, period. The scout needs to be able to hide effectively even when there's nothing nearby.

    Third, Empires is a game built around fast-moving vehicles. There is no room in it for crawling around slowly on your belly. Maps tend to be big, and a crawling scout can't cover ground fast enough.

    Fourth, crawling is dull. Everything else aside it is just not very fun. You feel like Solid Snake for the first five seconds, then you realize that it's all basically luck whether an enemy glances in your direction anyway.

    (For the last point, it would also really be better if hide were more 'binary' -- if you were either completely invisible or completely visible. Maybe only make you completely invisible to people in tanks or something, but the point is, it's frustrating to rely on something that feels like it's so heavily luck. Of course there would have to be additional limitations to keep scouts from crushing people with this, but overall I think it would be better.)
     
  18. SnowDrakE

    SnowDrakE Member

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    I wholeheartedly support this idea.
     
  19. Ikalx

    Ikalx Member

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    Doesn't that suggest to you that we have more than enough things to fill 4 classes? Maybe we should be looking at including everything else as a 5th class.

    Before you start railing at that, hear me out. If we don't know which role the scout should fill, and people keep talking about the greatly differing things they'd like to see, why don't we just get every single thing everyone would like to see in our classes (when they're discussing seriously ofc), and then see how much stuff we have and how many other classes we need?

    While the scout is underpowered and niche, we can't step forward because there are too many things we could add, so we can't choose between the alternatives. If we add a 5th class just to take what we don't include in the scout, we could have everything we want in.

    This takes thought of course, but it's not too hard to see an Empires with engineers, medics and scout/support classes. While no one wants to look at an extra class, no one will change the scout because if we make it more stealthy for instance, we can't make it a support troop. We shouldn't be tied down like this imo.

    So while Empires might not want a 5th class right now, it might be a better idea to take things that don't really work in our 4th class, and save them for building a 5th. This can be aided by remembering that we will have aircraft at some point, and there may be a whole host of things we need to add to the game to flesh out that aspect. While making a 'pilot' class may be too niche, i'm sure there'll be a lot of other things we'll want in.
     
    Last edited: Sep 29, 2009
  20. flasche

    flasche Member Staff Member Moderator

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    like rifleman, grenadier, medic, engineer, lonewolfspecopmegapwnzorclosequatercombatuberkiller?

    because thats what i read out of most of the scout change threads.
     
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