So it's Sunday eve around 90pm local time. Before shutting down I decide to hit steam one last time, check messages...friends list. I hit refresh on Empires and there's a dozen players. Huh? I've not seen the likes of this in ages. I wonder if more testing going on? So I jump in and find many players I've not seen before and a couple say it's the first time they've ever played. Some had gotten the Empires update message and invited friends. So great news in a couple of ways. A bit of life coming back, and at least for a few minutes I wasn't the worst player on the map.
I think it shows that old players notice when Empires gets updated. Weekly script changes, hoooooooooooooooooooo!
I want to say, there was quite a few new people. Please, don't be a bunch of dicks and stack one side. I had to play 2 rounds of 80% new players on my team and it just sucked. It makes for some crappy games.
Another set small matches this eve, any where from 10 -16 players while I was on. I'm trying to hang back as engie and support newbies while they learn. JustGoFly is a good teacher, if the all the mistakes don't get him too ticked off. Not good when it's one of the vets is greifing the comm middle of the match on a team heavy with newbies. Go play somethin' else if that's all you've got.
Let me add a different perspective... looking at empty servers every night on one of my fav games REALLY sux far worse. A chance to train new recruits that will be kicking my butt in a couple months is a huge improvement even if the matches are clunky, one side and lost badly. I'm hoping folks stay long enough to get better. I understand for the vets that are used to past teams with tight skills and good team work, starting over is annoying, but ya gotta work with what'cha got. Or don't I guess
I can definitely agree with this. Even though I'm a new™ player I remember seeing some players for the first time that are still around, and they are some of the best people to play with out of anybody.
Things are going really, really promising. Within 30 mins I answered like 10+ questions like how to spawn, how to exit vehicle...etc, from 5~10 individual new players. For once, almost half of the server population were new players. Not being harsh, but I hope that crashing issue can be fixed in no time. At peak we had more than 30 players, but a sudden crash kicked 1/3 of them off, and it happened during CV sudden death, later they rejoined, but still.
There's a world outside these forums, someone must have seen Empires update and they just shouted so loud half their block could hear it.
I think quite a few people have downloaded empires at some point and saw it downloading a new update, so they checked it out to see if anyone was playing. People do have an interest in empires, just the previous startup bugs meant no one really knew how many people tried to play it. No, your right that this is good to play with servers, especially new people that empires really needs at the moment. My complaint was more of a case where it felt like there was a limit to how much you can teach in a minute. There was a round of streets I joined late and had a new person in the comm seat. I did have a feeling he didn't speak much english, simply because he never actually talked in chat, but he didn't really respond to requests for buildings. My point here is that new people either need a commander that knows what they are doing or a a few vets to help teach them to command and cover for his lack of response. That is what I am asking for, vets really need to help new people a lot. AND IF YOU KNOW HOW TO COMMAND, DO IT. Reason I didn't try to take over the comm seat was we were completely poor(on streets!) and nf had a research advantage of about 15-20 minutes before I thought it I should take the seat. Really I was aggravated by nf not just steam rolling us. It just felt so strange to see them play so safe when there was nothing to be afraid of. I do admit, even though BE wasn't doing much for that round, all the new people were having fun. It is such a foreign feeling though when most of the time all I hear is vets whine about how they are losing for any type of reason. Either that or it was another case of not knowing how to help my team win and getting frustrated by that. eh.
I think it's only fair if you show new players from the very start what a bunch of sociopaths the broken gameplay mechanics of Empires attracts.
