Someone send me a note when the game is playable ?

I've pretty much checked out of this game for now. I finally got the message that nothing I do to help inform devs of what subtle changes would improve balance are listened to. Basically told "You are a nub, I listen to nothing you say, I know everything" from Security. And the latest release has all but killed the mod.

Someone please send me a note if they roll it back. There is little chance all the random, wild swings of balance done by nub developers who don't even know how to roll out updates will ever make this game great again.

PS: ever hear of a staging or test server ? Ever hear of BETA, STABLE releases. Let the server owners stage them for you, and decide when a Beta becomes stable.

Message me, I'm unlikely to see thread posts for a couple weeks. Just bored to death with this shit. Both infantry and tanks are so unplayable - so why play?

 

the only thing that was touched was apcs. i mean, there was only 1 release in the past 8 months

im confused. wild swings of balance?

 

What vehicles were touched in 2.7.0? NF Heavy tank, APC.

Let's not forget that you personally insisted that NF heavy tanks were OP.
https://forums.empiresmod.com/index.php?threads/why-heavies-are-unbalanced.19848/
Even though you really weren't the first one who noticed that. We decided to nerf NF weight instead of buffing BE weight because we don't want our late game stalemate to get worse, aka more armor with same DPS.

So, that leaves with APC.
Really, except for "APCs aren't good at fighting against vehicles now" (and it's exactly my purpose), no one has yet to actually give me good reasons why nerfing APC is essentially bad for the gameplay.
I received more positive feedback than negative on this.

So I honestly don't see anything in this thread, except for "nuu, Security hurted my ego, I am gonna tell everyone that he's mean."

 

I've never really noticed ina big way most of the balance changes over the past 6 odd years.
Things are still asymetrical between factions & between chassis, the balance problems have always been there and probably always will - they will just move from one faction to another or from mid to late game.

As I discussed in your thread about balancing heavies - giving both factions the same heavy chassis options would be a quantum leap forward for this game - all those balance issues that no-one has ever managed to really solve would be fixed overnight.

There are really simple fixes to most of the problems in the game but they involve fundamental changes - not script values.

 

Asymmetric or symmetric, I am neutral on that.

A downside is that we'll have to give BE&NF the same tank models. If not, we can't really achieve symmetric balance.
The difference of models is one of the reasons that vehicle combat is hard for us to balance.

And if we give them the same models, it would fuck up our own background story. (Empire vs Faction)

 

I was only talking about leveling the playing field with the weapon / armor payloads.
Why Heavies are unbalanced

with heavies able to be setup the same there would only be bias in handling, nothing handles anyway for either side.

I'm not saying drop asymmetry entirely - just for heavies where it is most counter productive. it has never and will never be properly balanced. the tech tree will be more interesting if you do not have to balance within those constrictions.

 

Security, Back in November NF tanks were seriously OP. Have you talked to Creeper about changes made on Nubs to fix this? The requested simple fix of allowing 30 more weight to BE, could have been addressed immediately but was ignored and now we get this three months later three months later. You claim to know how to balance, but this was not tested properly and dumped and now will we wait three more months for a fix?

The balance was close recently, no complaints other than BE having 30 less than enough weight to carry more than one HE and one ML, or dual HE vs NF's Dual ML, HEMG and full armor. But still BE could compete. It takes longer for NF heavies to research all the good stuff. If BE doesn't take advantage of an early BE heavy, the balance swings to NF heavies. So talk to Creeper to find out if he made any changes that could impact play.

The best weapon in the game is still HEMG and the infantry pistol. Maybe you should introduce the Security Silent Fart and knock out whole squads.

The last few times I played with 2.7.0, we pushed NF heavies into BE main, and pounded relentlessly and didn't take shit down. They pushed two heavies and cleaned out four of our heavies easily. Wild swings of balance - yes!

Secondly Infantry is so unfun now that it's even more insta-death than before. I thought the last changes made to rifleman was crazy OP, but I got used to it, and it made some sense to make Rifleman vs Engineer always favor the rifleman. But now - we can't rush anywhere without being picked off with a less than half load burst.

PS: The work Misfire is doing to get bots in this mod is being unsupported by the development community. This latest release has set him back many hours, but he doesn't complain, so I will complain for him.

I'm on vacation - have a nice week. Spew whatever you normally do, nothing has changed - right?

 

quote for posterity

 

It would be nice to have script tests again. It seems like we only ever find out how exactly these changes affect gameplay until the next update. Why exactly are script tests not being scheduled? I see a server named "Script Test Server [Test Tonight]" but when the fuck is "tonight" and when the fuck did this server appear? Was there a script test and no one was told about it?

 

It is probably posted on the dev side of the forum so we, unimportant nubs, can not see it.

 

I can see the dev side of the forum. There isn't anything related to a script test there.

 

ohh ya, kinda forgot you made dev.

 

November? JustGoFly please. I joined the dev team in December.
Not to mention patch release is not my button to push, I can't release an update on my own.
Now it really looks like I hurted you and you are just irrationally mad.

In my first patch, I nerfed Pistol 2 and Shotty pistol. So I don't know what you are talking about.

AGAIN, you are making conclusion from games, without considering the skill difference.
This is what you've been doing and I considered this VERY ANNOYING.
I can kill you with every single weapon in this game, does that mean anything?

You are telling me that 30 weight nerf is enough for "OP-->Useless shit"?
That's so much bullshit.

Infantry was literally untouched in 2.7.0. Except for SMG1/Shotty pistol/Pistol 2

So, to be honest, I don't know why the game is now 250 times worse for you when I am in charge of the scripts, even though I really didn't touch anything.

I asked Lazybum to set me a server and I tested with him.
I still don't think 30 weight is that big of a swing.

 

You can hardly call your changes properly tested if you only tested them with one person. You should setup a public test next time and try to get as many people as you can to participate. Simply making a forum thread about them and maybe testing with one person is not enough.

 

I divide script changes into 4 categories.
1: Major changes, would require multiple/intensive public tests.
2: Moderate changes, would require public test.
3: Minor changes, private test is enough.
4: Micro changes, don't need to test.

Moderate changes and above = I am not sure what will happen.
My script changes in 2.7.0 are either 3 or 4.

Not being a dick here, but obviously I am not going to wait for a week just to see if "shotty pistol damage 22->20" is going to fuck up the game horribly.
It obviously won't, but I still tested it with Lazybum.

If I want to make all armors cost 30 except for Absorbant and drop the chassis cost of all vehicles, that's definite 1 or 2.

 

Your changes hardly constitute as minor. Quite a bit was changed, it wasn't just one or two things but many. I'm not saying that you should wait and test one very minor change to shotty pistol, but these changes in 2.7.0 are hardly minor and have the potential to affect gameplay significantly.

 

This might sounds a little too confident.
But these changes were minor to me because I knew what would happen after implementation.

I know there existed some risks. So I tested them and there was an issue : I forgot to increase the weight of HEMG.
I have to admit that APC nerf worked even better than my expectation.

I assure you that I will NOT push changes without testing if I am not sure what would happen.

 

That certainly is too confident. You're not immune to human fallibility and no developer is. You should be testing the shit out of your proposed changes with "public script tests".

I mean we apparently have a script test server. So lets use it? Perhaps make these "public script tests" a weekly thing?

 

I feel sorry for you Security.

All people should really agree/accept on is a roadmap for what gameplay should eb changed to.
Then you just have to leave the actual changes to get there up to someone and hope they get it right.

If you debate every value that gets changed every time and have to schedule tests and such nothing will ever get done.
At any rate it doesn't make a huge difference, all changes are minor - any changes that anyone put forward someone will disagree with. In it's current state the game cannot be completely balanced.