Remove tickets... entirely. (And why)

The problem:

Tickets in Empires are pretty much a Battlefield legacy. A way to prevent games from going on ad infinitum and to force sudden death so a stalemate can be broken.

Currently, tickets don't really matter early game, and they only really start to become an issue once they reach a critical level. (Especially during high population matches)

The problem is that this actually exacerbates the problem by prolonging a stalemate because people are too afraid to go out and attack out of fear of being unable to be revived (and thus forced to use the last precious tickets, before they are unable to spawn altogether).

The gameplay that results promotes both tedious waiting for revives and promotes a caustic atmosphere where people are shouted at or insulted for using too many tickets (proportional to other team members).
Matches can go for up to an hour and longer after tickets reaching critical (or even zero) levels. This drains people and causes them to leave. (Just notice how many people leave or go spec after a 2 1/2 game of crossroads)

As flasche puts it in a quote from another thread:

While draining enemy tickets to achieve victory is a valid tactic imo, not being able to spawn is both boring and a waste of time that could be spend actually playing the game.
Nor do I see how this one particular strategy justifies the fun-killing meta resulting from late game low-ticket stalemates.
Furthermore, removing tickets wouldn't prevent a team from wearing down their opponents through careful managing of their resources and proper defense.

To summarise: The current ticket system actually prolongs stalemates and ruins the fun of many people late game.

What would change?

-Commander maps
I suggest having a timer (duration adjustable by mappers/server owners) that counts down from the beginning of the match. Once it hits zero people are still able to spawn, but the new Sudden Death will take affect.

-Conquest maps
Conquest (non-commander) maps could be changed so victory is either timer based (escort) or point based (district).
Support for a "Glycencity" type victory could also be added. Where mappers can adjust which team is time constrained.

Escort-like maps would change so that the attacking team gains extra time with every flag capture. (Similar to the old ticket gain and drain system)
While district could have a victory type based on either glycencity or a point system where a team wins after reaching a certain amount of kills/points. (Or even have these points awarded by cap zones)

-Sudden death
Sudden death would be expanded upon further. The CV would still remain a one-hit kill target.
Damage dealt by weapons (including infantry) would gradually increase as the game went on beyond the point of sudden death. Finally culminating in a situation where even a single bullet could take out another player at range, and where even a light cannon would be able to destroy a vehicle or building in a single hit.
Combat would become all around more lethal as time progressed, eventually resulting in everything dying in one hit just like the CV.

This will promote more fluid gameplay and encourage people to attack rather than dig in as they are encouraged to with the current system.

Due note that all of this is possible, and that I am able to write the code support for this.
Other suggestions have been made as well to break stalemates, though I'll reserve those for a different thread.

Discuss! :cute:

 

Also note that revive could be made more relevant in face of this change by making it inherent to the Engineer class and having the skill (massively) reduce its cost.

 

I disagree with your choice of Sudden Death, and since there is no line item veto I vote "Stongly Oppose".

 

What would you suggest as an alternative?
It could also be a system where weapon damage begins increasing when the comm doesn't die within 5 minutes of Sudden Death. Giving people a small window opportunity where they have an insta-kill enemy CV but otherwise normal weapons.

The idea is to encourage people to attack and move up instead of digging themselves in.

 

This has been discussed before, and I personally found that the most interesting replacement was a simple respawn timer like in Dystopia: people respawn in a wave (not as long as those of Dystopia, say around 10-15 seconds?) instead of the regular 10 seconds wait.

Not a fan of the Sudden Death mode, mainly because it tries to solve an issue before it manifests itself. I would personally swap out the ticketing system first and reevaluate.

 

Why though? I remember a match on tropicvendetta lasting 4+ hours, even well past sudden death. (And games lasting well past Sudden Death tends to happen often once you hit it)

A gradual damage increase might sound overkill, but it de-stagnates the match.
If people elect to turtle in their bases they will soon find themselves under threat of (long range) insta-kill arty or similar weapons.

Also, the maximum level/modifier of this damage increase could be discussed further, just as the rate at which it would increas.
I used insta-kill light cannons as an example. But we could just decide to plateau it at 3x, 2x, etc.

(Feel free to merge this post)

Thing is, waiting is boring. 10 seconds is already pushing it for most people imo.
Another change I have seen proposed before is simply increasing spawning time as the game progresses, which wouldn't mitigate the problem as it still results in more waiting. (But at least still allow people to spawn)

Well me neither. The real issue is indeed games not ending fast enough in the first place.
Though I believe this would help keeping the late game fluid, promoting movement and action over turtling. (As the alternative is stagnation and boredom)

 

Though this is a suggestion to mitigate that. Allow people to continue spawning, but make weapons more lethal as time progresses so that camping becomes unviable.

What about removing the element where the cv is insta kill, but keep the progressive damage increase? That way, the CV will still die in one hit near the end, but so will everything else.

It is. This solution tries to make make Sudden Death is self more bearable as a gameplay element, but indeed doesn't solve the root issue.

That's the thing. In the current version, weapons are already pretty lethal in relation to armour values. At first I wasn't sure if I liked it, but it feels like 2+ hour matches are already a lot rarer than they used to be. Though they still end up killing server.
I have another proposal in the works that would make all weapons more powerful and faster, but at the cost of higher cycle time. Combined with more mobile vehicle handling and a faster RPG this would promote more dynamic vehicle (and anti-vehicle) combat (instead of vehicle humping) at greater ranges, and with a higher emphasize on proper aiming.
At the moment, trying to hit and destroy targets beyond the range of 2 barracks is pretty futile and unsatisfying.
Another suggestion is to nerf the hull HP of heavies and mediums so they could at most sustain 2, instead of 3 RPG (and other weapon) hits. This would both make positioning and angling more important and prevent hull-tanking heavies (which allows them to quickly escape danger, thus prolonging matches in the long run).

Lack of projectile spam (due to higher cycling times) would also improve server performance and client sound quality.

Heat to target would be re-added, but only immobilise a tank, rather than preventing it from firing altogether. (Though maybe I could find some way of adding a mechanic where you fire slower, or have weapons that have that effect on targets)

To summarise: This suggestion is mostly to make Sudden Death more bearable, rather than still allowing games to drag on for an hour or so after ticket have reached critically low levels/zero. (Though obviously tickets would be removed if this were to be implemented)

Another "solution" could be to simply declare a tie. Though I don't think that is something most people would prefer either.

 

Sudden Death suggestion is bad.

This is why I tell people that people who think they have good ideas and think they know what's best for this mod just don't think right about the game. They don't apply things to all the situations and they keep thinking that their way is the best way, when it's not.

It's just not, because it's not well thought out.

Sudden Death fail situation 1:

More people die more quickly = much more spawning, much more death, and much more frustration. Any time you want to move forward, you end up taking a number of casualties because BY NATURE OF INFANTRY COMBAT, FROM A DEFENDED POSITION YOU TAKE LESS DAMAGE. I.E. WALLS.

So you actually LOSE more by attacking, inviting the enemy in. Creating even more stalemate than before.

Sudden Death fail situation 2:

Buildings takes more damage more and more quickly. Engineers constantly have to repair to keep buildings up, and get yelled at more to do so. It's hard enough to keep up a building when it's under fire normally, so with more vehicles doing more damage, spread out over more buildings, engineers get really REALLY frustrated that they can't hold the base up. They also die more often, an added bonus to their attempts at helping.

Amalgamation of New Sudden Death:

Attacking teams get punished, while defending teams lose their outer buildings even quicker. Battle lines move further and further back to original bases, effectively erasing the progress of the game without one team gaining decisive ground.

But it won't really come to that. Instead we have a win that's cheaper than an APC rush - the one hit on the CV. 10x harder to protect against, and the scout's dream.

It's an insanely terrible idea all around.

---

I just finished telling someone this last night, but it seems like people don't have any idea how to assess a game with a variable changed.

Am I being harsh? Yes. I do apologise for that, because it's totally unwarranted, but at the same time I have to be forceful in order to get people to think. This is the least amount of thought that has to go into an idea before you even propose it. Not only "how you wish it would work" but how it will work for the 95% of games out there - in completely non-ideal conditions.

10 seconds is the suicide penalty time. It's not long.

Also, from a purely personal point of view, I hate that people have that idea. It takes you more than a minute or two to cross a map on foot, but 10 seconds is too long to wait while dead? It takes longer than that to get near an enemy, often 5x as long. How about we buff movement speed instead to compensate? It should only take about a 5% increase to balance that 10s.

Look back at this suggestion. Realise that, bitter pill to swallow though it is, you have not invested the thought into this idea that you should have. Until that changes, from an objective viewpoint it's a bad idea for you to be a dev.

--

I'm not resistant to change. I'm resistant to people who don't care enough to think through an idea.


p.s. A timed game? It's scary that you're serious.

 

The idea is that as mobility makes you more difficult to hit, and artillery would become one-hit kill super weapons, it would encourage people to move around the map, or at least out of their entrenched positions.
With weapons being so lethal, building new bases would become nigh impossible
Another idea would be to delete all walls as well to enhance the flow of the game. Or only increase the damage of missile and other projectile weapons to prevent MG sniping. (And keep infantry weapons, including the RPG, the same as well, to prevent the infinite spawns generating an invulnerable wall of grenadiers)

Valid point though. (I had already considered MG sniping from entrenched positions, hence deleting walls and not increasing the damage of vehicle MGs)

>Sudden Death fail situation 2:

Engineers would probably not be able to keep up at all though. If the max out the modifier at 3x then only a few vehicles would make it practically impossible for engineers to tank the damage. (As intended)

We could even disable repairing, but not construction and resources gathering it self. (But combine that with faster recycling, or destroyed buildings disappearing faster so they can be rebuild more easily)

>Amalgamation of New Sudden Death:

This one I am least in favour of. For reasons you described.

>It's an insanely terrible idea all around.

It might appear as terrible. But by mere merit of ending the Sudden Death/low ticket stalemates faster it has great potential to lead d to more enjoyable gameplay. If only just to end the situation where people can't spawn anymore and spend 10 minutes waiting for a revive (or the map to change).
I don't see this system allowing games to go on 1+ hour after Sudden Death as per current version. Either team would quickly run out of resources, and subsequently vehicles.

>Am I being harsh? Yes.

Well, I am looking for more feedback. People are unsatisfied with the current system, so we look for alternatives. Also, the question is not as much "Is this suggestion good or terrible?" and more "Would this be an improvement over the current terrible system?".

>10 seconds is the suicide penalty time. It's not long.

Unless you add all of those spawns up. I don't believe in a system where people can spend a few hours playing, and between 10-20 minutes of that time is spend either spawning or waiting for a revive. But that's for another thread.

>Also, from a purely personal point of view, I hate that people have that idea. It takes you more than a minute or two to cross a map on foot, but 10 seconds is too long to wait while dead? It takes longer than that to get near an enemy, often 5x as long. How about we buff movement speed instead to compensate? It should only take about a 5% increase to balance that 10s.

Thing is, a lot of things can happen in those 10 seconds. Furthermore, if you add it all up it amounts to a lot of time. But again. Ill expand on that in another thread.

>Look back at this suggestion. Realise that, bitter pill to swallow though it is, you have not invested the thought into this idea that you should have.

I don't see why it would be a "bitter pill to swallow" but okay.
The main reason for bringing it up openly is so people can give feedback and improve upon it.

>Until that changes, from an objective viewpoint it's a bad idea for you to be a dev.

The merit of a developer is now decided (practically exclusively) by how well his suggestions are received by the community, rather than his contributions in regards to fixing existing bugs & issues and finishing features already planned/partially coded? Do we really want to go there?


>I'm not resistant to change. I'm resistant to people who don't care enough to think through an idea.

What?
I identified the problem, and then suggested a solution and reasoning why I believed it would fix the issue. You know, as per the purpose of the Suggestions forum. Also, I am bringing this up specifically so we can have greater discussion about it. (Even if the eventual fix to the problem look radically different)

p.s. A timed game? It's scary that you're serious.

The timer doesn't have to be "fixed". We could have it so that the actions in the game influence it, moving it either back or forward depending on how the game is played (for example, having deaths, vehicle kills or resource gathering influence it in some way).

At the end of the day, the idea is to both break the late game stalemate, and improve upon the way that is currently handled.

Anyway, thx for the feedback.

 

This, this, and this.

For new players and shitty vets, you can say how unintuitive the game is, how the game is unfriendly to new players and say how to fix it, sure.
For example, shitty GUI and the lack of helpful tips.

But for things like gameplay and scripts, you really have absolutely zero rights to comment.
Seriously, go to any game, start as a new player, in your first few weeks, write down your opinions on a list(about scripts and gameplay and stuff).
Review that list after you are 6 months into the game, and you'd realize how dumb you were.

 

I've been playing since about 2007. I also fail to see why I wouldn't have a right to comment on these things.

Yeah, I guess we'll just try that first. Ill try and add support so it can be easily enabled/disabled by server owners (as I don't believe a single test, even across multiple maps, will provide a definitive answer).

 

Firstly when I said that, I didn't realise you were actually a dev. That's random, but whatever. I don't know most people when they become devs, and I'm certainly not the yardstick that they should be measured from, so ok.

So, onwards:

-recycling walls
-having it impossible to both keep up buildings and build new bases
-frustrating core player classes (I.E. those that build, revive, and generally hold the game up)
-disabling repair, but not construction - though construction should be impossible because of damage -> but not disabling resources, which are mainly used for tanks (intended consequence?)

Do these seem like good ideas just to get rid of tickets?

Do you know how many games come down to tickets? Is it 50%? Is it even 25%? Is it even 10% of games?

Also I don't know what's so bad as a 2+ hour game? In my pretty lengthy experience, most of those games get people into the server rather than out of them. Most rounds without tickets don't last hours after that, because sudden death quite often comes after that. Revives have always been an issue at that point, but you think 10s wave respawning is bad because people can't wait.

And yet if the choice is 10s death wait or increasing damage against them, almost everyone who's ever played the game would choose the 10s. If the choice is 10s death or 10 minutes waiting for a revive, again, people would choose the 10s. If the choice was a simple removal of tickets altogether versus this crazy sudden death and timed game idea, most people would opt to remove tickets.

Partly because most people don't remember the long matches any more, and partly because if you want to end a match you apc rush. But mostly because that kind of idea is simply bad, worse than having any of the other options tbh.

I don't even know how you can propose a sudden death that removes walls, increases damage, removes base building and disables repair - all conditions proposed to shore up a simply terrible idea.

Phrased another way, your idea equates to infantry and buildings having reduced health as sudden death goes on.

You know what the biggest advantage to tickets is? You already have an in-built system to manage them - revive.

You're proposing systems to backup a timer, while glossing over the fact that players actually have a way to mitigate ticket use. You're burning a house because you can't get in because you don't want to call a locksmith. Is that logical in any way?

Then you're saying we should build another house that needs three keys to open it. In fact you even mentioned deaths as part of the solution to tickets.

How does that make sense?

Look, dude, I can throw things at people too. I can go, oh we can use some other unspecified system that will be more complicated to change how this simple system works, it'll involve res, deaths and increases in damage. But don't worry - you won't have to wait for anything!!

But that doesn't help Empires.

That's you throwing out something that's so not well thought out that you need to keep fixing every problem that comes up by changing something else. So you implement four fixes to a system that ends up being more complicated than the default one.

That's just not sensible.

 

There is really nothing wrong with the current implementation of tickets, other than it doesn't scale to the number of players online. I played a 40 player map the other day and we hit ticket limit before heavies could be research'd and we rushed heavy research.

No one complains now when we hit sudden death - except as previously stated on high population maps.

The issue is education - not revamp something that works well. If a player doesn't join a squad - BEEP GET THE FUCK ON A SQUAD ASSHOLE! Heck I'd like to see them thrown into a training brig, that they read some stuff and pass a quiz. Then they move from civilian clothes to private clothes. Hell wouldn't it be nice if our rank was portrayed by the uniform we wear?

To eliminate digging in - remove the sniper rifle. Holy fuck, I started a match with six ASSault, two engie, and smattering of rifleman and gren. I told the team - ASSAULT switch to engie or we lose. We lost! This game is not about sitting and sniping. One guy was talking "Hey this is great, I'm invisible, I can sit here and watch everything".

We don't have an issue with people camping. They are easy enough to target and get out of holes. But how many squad leaders target enemy players?

Some maps we know "Tickets won't be an issue", others we conserve tickets. That is more of a map issue for the value the tickets are placed at and not linked to the number of players in the game. How would a nub know anything about tickets, squad commands and the value of a squad if they didn't get some initial training? Most join - lose miserably - quit for good.

I joined the practice server yesterday when I saw four nubs playing. I went to spec and asked "Anyone need training?". I heard "We know how to play". I asked "Do you know how to nine mine?", "Do you know what engineer cameras do? I see no one has placed any.". They didn't but still they think they are experienced players.

Please do not dummy the game down for new players - find a different tactic to train them.

 

the problem isnt tickets. if people are free to use them without the threatening of a ban, the game will end. the only problem with tickets was solved when ticket bleed was added when no racks existed. as it stands, games dont end, like the 2 hour one you and i were apparently privy too. they will though, if you just let the game and the players do their damn job.


ugh, i hate time limits. removes the epically long maps that happen once in a while. time limits were only added because district sucked. empires commander maps dont suck


a longer spawn time would never solve the problem. people would leave and the map would take even longer to end

thats only because the commanders are away from the combat, in a normal game they are not. its a custom map. you cant balance empires based on tropicvendetta or minigames.


in short, long games are fun. games which are forced to be long by external factors are not (oh no im talking about admins again!!!!!!! someone bring something up and derail the topic!)

i also never heard of this guy until he wanted to be a dev

 

Don't just take the seat, I wasn't really talking about you.

Speaking of your suggestion, allow me to make it short and offensive, "time limit" for RTS like Empires is a stupid idea.
You can make it so that the game has less tendency of going forever, but for fuck sake, don't just set a time and say : Nope, we don't want games to go longer than that.

 

I think removing tickets and seeing what that does with playing time / the metagame will be more than enough of an impact.

In the case games really last forever, we might have to introduce something again.

• Longer spawn times, perhaps? Don't know when or how it would be decided when a spawn time would be longer. The simplest idea would be to increase the spawn time after, say, 30 minutes. How much time is added per x minute(s), we can discuss.
• A time limit seems too arbitrary and is especially a bad fit for a game such as Empires, which has tactics on a higher level than "let's take some guys and rush that point" (at least, I hope :p)
• Tickets were frustrating because they were used up more often by new players learning the game, causing an entire forced metagame to conserve tickets, mainly by SCREAMING at the newbies at the top of your lungs to WAIT FOR REVIVES FFS. After that inevitably failed, it would be a "fun" game of playing "spec from a fixed position".
• And that's why I think tickets need to go: they inevitably lead to newbies being screamed at and at the end of the match, people have to wait for revives or go to spec.

Overhauling sudden death is simply not required, or even a good idea, until we see the impact of the aforementioned changes.

 

Longer spawn time is what we have in League of Legends and few other games.
At 5 minutes, you die and you respawn almost instantly, like <10 seconds.
At 50 minutes, you die and it takes a minute for you to respawn.
TBH, this might actually works.

An outright time limit is just bad, I doubt most players would disagree.

As for newb feeding?
I swear to cake, in Empires, newbs don't really cost you the game as frequent as other famous games out there.
Even if a newb used 30~40 tickets and you lost, I assure you that he wouldn't had been the key and it's not purely his fault, as there are so many countermeasures to stop him from wasting tickets, and your teammates just didn't want to (or couldn't) perform them.
What countermeasures? Revive, squad revive or just save his ass before he gets killed....etc

In games like lol, a single fucking mistake at 50 minutes and it's gg for you, newb or not.