Remove tickets... entirely. (And why)

Recently? Hell no, and that's a good thing.

I think that was Ikalx's point - stroking the ol' 'I've been here longer than you' boner.

 

I've seen it happen.

Pretty much this.

 

Actually, my point was tickets stopped that being a common occurrence.

I used to like 6 hour games, actually, but then I'm probably about the only one who had all day to spend. Or all night. Or both.

And I know I don't play as much as before, but is this kind of hour thing where I say 4 hours and it's actually been 2 hours 45 minutes. Kinda like in the summer league video where HSM says "lol! beat in 10 minutes" and it's actually been 3?

 

Ah, I get ya. These forums have started to make me assume the worst in people. A skill I desperately need in the real world - gets me in trouble thinking everybody is just dandy.

The thing is, I think removing tickets entirely is too drastic. I'm all for alternatives - dynamic ticket counts per JGF's suggestion (which don't solve the underlying issue), or that suggestion from way back (flasche, maybe?) about just ending the game as soon as tickets hit 0 on one side.

 

I've been here longer than a lot of people playing Empires, so you're not wrong about that. But it's not like I can use that as a good thing, since I still suck at the game most of the time :p

I've tried to get tickets removed before, but I've never had a good enough idea that simply outweighs the reason they were brought in. With increasing spawn times no one wants to wait, and with wave type spawning no one wants to wait. It's like...what? People want no consequences at all for a lack of tickets, or to replace tickets.

I don't get it.

 

Why? Some maps end in stalemates because they (and vehicle balance) are broken.

Take money. Without tickets the map would last for hours because you don't burn through your reserves fast enough. (Part due to vehicle balance and the map it self, and part due to the insane res levels)

One way to fix that would be to have less income, but more starting res. You don't need tickets for that.

 

Never. Ever. Balance around District. Empires is not District.

What? District, Urbanchaos and Escort are literally just Team Deathmatch and Rush as in Battlefield 3. There's tickets, there's people with guns and there's flags or objectives. It already is just another FPS on infantry maps. Hence, my previous statement.

 

This sounds like an argument for keeping tickets to me. The problem I see is - while yes in an 'ideal' world games would not stalemate and tickets would not be necessary, this is not an ideal world and removing our patch for these problems just introduces a slew of other ones.

I have really taken a liking to just ending the game at 0 tickets - comms could definitely try for the stalemate still by removing their spawn points but it would hopefully end up hurting them enough that the other team could finish them at that point. Could also be made more difficult for them to pull off by making it so starting rax is non-recyclable but that's an entirely different discussion.

 

i am laughing my ass off. the consensus was "NO DONT TOUCH TICKETS"

i didnt even vote in the poll and i can tell you my vote was "no to everything, yes to the lesser crappy current incarnation".

you can make the case that it becomes that scenario once tickets are near 0, but there is a reason why they drain by 400 tickets in the first place. its only going to make stalemates longer. you might even see people switching teams just to beat their own (the possibilities are endless!)

as long as you consult like this before you do so, i hope




games only last hours if they start as a 3v3 game

res is not why money sucks!

 

The game ending at 0 tickets just cuts out Sudden Death Mode, all the issues inherent to the current system (newbies are raged at for using up tickets, gameplay slows down to a crawl as 0 is reached, etc) aren't addressed. In fact, that proposed solution makes the first issue even potentially worse: imagine an entire group screaming at you that you made them lose the match. All because you just spawned.

 

I remember some kinda recent ~3 hour games, but the most aggravating one was UC with walls once upon time. It took like half a fucking day.

 

So how about the trivial solution? Commander maps go into sudden death after 90 minutes, non commander maps end after 60 minutes.

 

Yeah, you're right.

I guess a potential solution to that is to always maintain an inherent slow (~1 every 30 seconds) ticket bleed and increase the base # of tickets proportionally.

The main difference between this game and other games that use tickets I think is that running out of tickets in other games usually spells end of match - but in empires it is merely the beginning of the end.

 

And get yelled and cussed at for the rest of the night when you use the last ticket and cause your team to lose the match? Seems pretty daunting to me.

I also spoke to people in-game (and outside) who were supportive of it. 9 "strongly opposed" votes, 2 of which seem to be due to the Sudden Death inclusion, hardly constitutes a consensus. Though it is still notable, and I aim to refine the idea further until some form of consensus is reached.

>games only last hours if they start as a 3v3 game.

That particular match of crossroads was well over 10vs10 for a considerable amount of time. It happens even at higher populations.

>res is not why money sucks!

It's partially the reason. Though I guess if it were just infinite it would still suck most of the time. (Because barely anyone bothers rushing an APC into their enemy's main at start nowadays)

I guess we can really keep tickets on maps like district if people want to. Though I think a glycencity/eastborough system would work as well. (Based on "Influence").
Also: Revive will remain useful. People use it on comm maps early (and even later) on because it allows them to keep pushing/fighting.
The time advantage of keeping someone in the fight without them having to wait 10 seconds (+the walk distance from the barracks in seconds) first far outweighs the benefits of not using a ticket early game.
A low res chokepoint map like Canyon is a great example of that. (Two revive engineers can hold off a numerically superior force)

>One layer of what makes empires different from other games will go away, making this change a movement towards just another FPS on infantry maps. Boring infantry maps will lead to those being removed - "They used to be fun - what changed?".

As Beerdude put it. Non-comm maps are already like Battlefield.

Potential to end very interesting games. We had a 1 1/2 hour match of Duststorm tonight that remained fluid and interesting throughout. It's not the length that matters as much as the game slowing to a crawl.

That would still end up with newbies being flamed. ("We could have won the game if X hadn't used 30 tickets")

East Borough and Glycencity seem to deal with this pretty well.

 

After some thinking, what about this:

We add more victory conditions for mappers to use, while removing tickets on a lot of the maps where they just slow down the game.

In fact, I am not really sure if even money needs tickets, mainly due to Arty. Even slaughtered allows for effective Arty usage.
Though we'd keep support for tickets in if mapper want to play around with it. (Perhaps even the option to enable or disable sudden death upon zero tickets)

As for Awesome's suggestion: Support for that is already in the game. (See Glycencity and Eastborough)