You bring up a good point there, two times i commed in like 2 weeks i really felt as if i could do more good up front rather than in the back, seeing people not go gren against veh spam, letting random apcs through because there are no mines, etc. Frankly, people seem to have some mental block against going gren. No matter how many times i yell about going gren so the tanks wont steamroll the team, noone listens. Stacking is a weird thing for me. People are either oblivious or they really only give a shit about winning the rounds, doesnt matter how. It boggels my mind why its still a thing after all those years, even among old timers who had to live through bshit stacks. Even now ive seen games where one team is made entinrely of people with 4+ years of experience against some new guys. "Well this other guy is kinda good, its not stacked".
its true, bigger pop games reduce each individual players impact on the outcome, its also harder to stack a whole team and the more players the higher the chance someone takes a heart and plays research-monkey. but this is no issue you can blame spartacus for*, its nothing new its an age old issue empires has. it only was a lot better in times of 2.0 since most where relatively new and a lot of strategies had yet to be invented - it wasnt so much about "just go for the comm" as it is today, that only came after more clans emerged and epic had its epic winning streak with those strategies. *not that anyone did and i dont mean to either, it just something brought up for more then half a century now and it gets ignored for the same amount of time. i know its a lot of work and a lot of new problems that might - or probably better: will - arise. but the time invested in ignoring and putting the arguments down could have introduced comm abilities, removed them because they sucked AND reintroduced them because they werent all that bad in the first place. sorry again if anyone feels offended, i dont mean to tell anyone what to do - i totally understand how this happens and its completely hindsighted, its just saddening.
Something I've done is go to the frontlines and commed from there, being engy keeping things up and building forward armories. Not boomtanking because I can't drive the nf command vehicle for beans. Being gren is also an option. The better pub commanders know they can't rely on team getting a lot of little things done so they go around doing things themselves. It also helps in lower pop games because all of a sudden you have an extra guy on the front line doing something instead of sitting in base waiting for things to happen. I know I've really helped saved a couple of games by building refs while the rest of the team pushed the enemy main. This is when we were really losing too, as is usually the case when I'm in the seat. I agree about that stacking problem though, it's a pretty big problem but with no real good solution that makes the majority happy.
what you say about commanding is certainly true aswell, but there is very little instant gratification you get out of that in comparison to killing or blowing shit up - "yey i built a ref, look at me" what a comm contributes to a round is really abstract and hard to tell, ive seen games won by sonecha solo as comm, ive seen games where comm didnt matter at all. almost all choices a comm can make only have long term effects. now talking about this - comm stall time had a huge influence on commanding overall, comms have been way more offensive and mobile before that. if you didnt move the cv the instant the round started everyone yelled noob, usually comm was there at the frontline pushing one or two guys and had the rax up before the whole team was there. comm wrestling in mvalley north was fucking epic aswell. also comm was a respected job because of that, it wasnt so easy not to get walled or stunned while trying to wall the enemy. but nostalgia aside, it also had negative sideeffects, a lot of rounds ended because of stupid fails. yet i wonder if it wasnt better then failing for 40minutes as its now?
comm wrestling sonecha in mvalley north was the best. most people just couldnt compete with him though because they tried to beat him instead of just denying him. its very similar to hobbes, dont eat the bait, if everyone is like "must kill cv" you lose. a single engi is enough to keep him busy. if the engi succeeds you won, but it also doesnt mean abandon everything and go for the cv, their whole team will come now, secure it with walls and grens, take the rest of the map (or have everyone spawn as rifle, except for 1 engi for ammos and 1 scout for stunstickes - but youll never get a pubteam to do that before theres too many attackers and he gets free from the turret hes stuck on). if he comes with a vehicle rush you just ignore him completely, the comm deals no damage. maybe put some walls so infantry can take cover and some mlturrets so he cant stay forever.
I remember this. Though I find it funny that you say it was great when this is pretty much how hobbes operates and a bunch of people hate that. Especially with that nostalgia comment, a lot of people really hate it when the match doesn't last for at least 30 minutes. Probably has to do with even if they are losing at least they are playing and having fun.
well i dont see hobbes style of commanding as something special, it was rather common. something changed, idk if it was stall-time, but it would an odd coincidence if it wasnt. but since it was so common the majority knew how to deal with it and as said before, at some point, many moons ago, commanding was something respected - not that you didnt take the blame for everything that stayed the same but im not sure how much this is related.
it was. but it didnt increase the attractiveness of commanding. i wonder if you could just go back like that, probably not.
Not unless you actually want to encourage people throwing games in two minutes AND increase the early lead advantage problem
Infantry have a whole minute to get where they need. Game is not based on coms rushing to get raxes up on their own at the start of the game.
at least there was comms that could rush ... ... but i too doubt that the state the playerbase is in now would allow for that. itd only end the stacked rounds faster, so maybe you guys would get bored of stacks finally.
Comm rushes aren't fun or tem-oriented, if you want those glorious 1v1s there's better games to do that. Hell, even vehicletraining 1v1 is better.
i didnt advise to roll back, did i? i dont put many hopes in empires current playerbase, at least thats what i experience the rare occasions i play. ofc i dont mean everyone so dont feel offended. i only wallowed in nostalgia, please disregard
