Squad Leader Selection Suggestion

NEWBS always join the game first. Vets go spec and chat. So Newbs also always get squad lead. I know COM can change it - but normally they wait until someone asks.

Maybe the game can ask a random squad lead question to anyone who opts in as squad lead "Press ATTACK HERE Command to accept squad lead position" - before they get squad lead otherwise they just join as a member of that squad.

Just an idea. I have not researched every single thread to see if this has already been discussed - but please abuse me freely as this is fucking empires.

 

please explain why this is needed?

if you want to lead a squad, make one. if you dont have members, invite them.

 

stop being mean to new players

 

Regulars shouldn't go spec.

 

Solution: remove spec entirely, and make people auto join teams with no option to switch.

 

I'd give a pile of reasons why this is a bad idea, but it's perhaps been beaten to death more than any other idea ever. Dig through some old threads to get your answers.

 

Lawl. Spec has been disabled many many times. Guess what happened? People stay in unassigned and the same shit persists.

Also this thread sucks. Quit the fucking suggestion threads. Seriously, stop pretending this mod has an active development team. It's plainly obvious you are not trying to be helpful, but instead trying to display your "extensive experience" in playing this mod. If you wanna be helpful, organize some fucking pugs. No one gives a fuck about your shitty suggestions.

0/10 JustDontTry

 

He means remove the N menu entirely. If you can't go spec and you can't pick your team, then you don't need the N menu at all. Just make people automatically autoassign immediately after joining the server. That's what he means.

And yes, it works pretty fucking good on pubs in other games that I've played. This community would lose their collective mind, but that's about the only "negative" that I've heard when the idea is brought up.

 

Forcing players to teams means you have to deal with players that are AFK and you have to force players to play. I don't know about how others, but I personally prefer to spec for some maps and play others. I'm far more likely to play if I can sit there waiting for a map I want to play to come up than if I have to wait outside the server. If I have to wait outside the server then I have to either keep a close watch for when the map changes, which is more work than I can be bothered to do and so I'd just stop playing Empires for the day when a map I'm not interested in playing on rolls around. And if I'm in a shit round where I want to ragespec, then I can't do that. Meaning I'm far more likely to, again, stop playing Empires for the day instead of just waiting for the next round in the server. It's easy to just pass off all the arguments against keeping spec as people not wanting to change, but there will be real effects on how long a server can keep a sustainable population if you remove it. It won't make it any less likely for players to join the server, but it sure as hell will make it less likely for some of them to stay.

Plus, then you have to deal with the number of AFK players that are always there at the start of every round. One round might have no AFK players, on another round a third of a team might end up have AFK's for the first two or three minutes into the round. These aren't people who are AFK because they left the game running while they went out to dinner, these are people who are AFK because the map changed and they wanted to get a smoke or take a piss. Long enough to influence the starting player counts, but too short to get auto-kicked for being AFK.

 

Yeah, I've heard the "QQ, I can't ragespec!" argument before. That's just whiny people whining. It's a non-argument for me.

I've never heard this one before.

I think you may be right. If we transplant this change into the current player habits ceteris paribus style, then starting populations could fluctuate wildly with players taking a shit while a map downloads.

But I think there are two flaws in that argument.

The first is that you won't get a ceteris paribus change. Habits will change. It's not a question of whether or not players will try to give birth to a mexican baby while they download the hippest version of District. The pertinent question is how many players will still try to clog their plumbing while they wait for the perfect version of Money to download. I think you'd see habits change enough to make the problem manageable.

But how could you manage it? That's the second flaw. Your server plugin could boot simply players that are afk for the first ~30s of the round and then use the typical autokick protocols after that.

Or even better, it could boot players that haven't chosen a class/spawn before the round begins. Obviously, you can put exceptions in for late joiners (i.e. a player joining 10s before the round starts should be given ~30 total seconds to pick their shit and spawn).

Granted, this still doesn't provide a foolproof solution to the original issue of mismatched team population numbers. But I would chalk that up to the inability to completely solve any problem of this nature. For example, stacking still exists yet the game hasn't died. If you ask me, an issue like stacking is a lot bigger than the issue of messed up team counts because the latter is easily solved mid-game when a handful of players join. The former is only solved mid-game when a handful of the right players join and pick the right teams.

 

Sorry, but what game have you played that forces you to play? Ruling out matchmaking only focusing on games that have dedicated servers?

This game would lose all players if it did that shit. It's not an empires player's rights, it's the rights of humankind.

 

You can call it a non-argument all you want, but that wasn't me being a whiny person whining. That was me looking at how I play, looking at how others play, and thinking, "How do I act now, and how would I act differently with this change?" It's a perfectly reasonable conclusion in my view, disregarding it entirely isn't going to make it any less valid. The ragespec part was all of two sentences, I don't see why you didn't even mention the rest of the paragraph. Forcing people to play isn't going to make them more likely to play the game. People want to take a break, denying them a moment of reprieve isn't going to encourage them to play more.

I'm not trying to look for a perfect solution at all. But every solution I've seen that breaks down to "Remove spec and autoassign everyone" seems to have greater cons than they might have pros.

Also, thought of another argument. This would make it incredibly difficult for people who record rounds to get footage, and there's a good number of players that spend some of their time flying around in spec recording what people do.

 

NS1, most of the servers have "no movement" monitor plugin. If your character stops moving for 5 minutes you get a warning that in 30 seconds you will be kicked.

 

QQ a little more for me.

When you want to support an argument, you don't just state the conclusion as if it's self evident.

There's no way for either of us to know if removing spectator & team choice would impact server populations in either direction.

But we can be reasonably confident that the current strange behavior of spec'ing for a while before joining a team (and potentially stacking) would not be possible. The players that practice that behavior would QQ massively.

That is the argument against the move. The same QQ argument applies to a lot of weird shit in this game. It feels like a cop out to me.

Cmon, we both know that recorders would just ask moderators to manually place them in spec.

 

By that same token, there's no way for either of us to know if people would change their habits to suit the removal as opposed to just not playing the game. Empires players are pretty damn stubborn.

This is a different type of QQ argument. Other ones like "don't remove the scout rifle" and "don't change some minor mechanic" are people complaining about some small part of the game that a majority of players don't have to deal with. For example, I honestly can't give too shits about the scout rifle because I don't use it. Whether it's there or not doesn't matter to me.

Spec does matter to a lot of players because they interact with it. It's a place where people can rest after a hell of a round, it's where discussions about gameplay happens. You know that pug that happened last week? That happened because of a discussion that happened in spec. Important strategies and reflection on previous rounds? Happens in spec. Ideas about developing Empires are developed in spec. I know that a lot of players sit in spec for a minute or two because they want to take a short break, and I also know that people are more likely to not play if you require them to sit outside the server when they want to take a break. It's anecdotal evidence, sure, but it's over two thousand hours of anecdotal evidence.

And personally, I don't like joining a game and getting thrown into the thick of things, and I hate joining in the middle of a round. I like to join, spec until the current round is over, and then join the next round. I know myself fairly well, and I definitely know that I would play less if I was forced to either play the game or stay off the server.

EDIT: In fact, I'm sitting in spec right now after that helluva' round of Slaughtered, because I don't feel like playing Canyon. More likely than not, I'll play the next map. The moment I leave the server though, I'm going to play Saints Row IV or Beat Hazard.

That requires admins to be on that are willing to do it. And judging by the quality of the server admins as of late, that's unlikely to happen.

 

Being a child 101

 

Herp de derp, that's why it's not an argument.

There's always the QQ argument. It's not specific to this one situation.

You, yourself, made a masterfully worded post a few weeks ago that neatly articulated how changes will always harm a certain party. You can't turn Empires isn't a legitimate game without alienating part of its existing community. Admittedly, you worded it better than me.

Those sorts of "benefits" will always organically emerge in this sort of situation.

It's obvious that the current community extracts some sort of benefit from spec otherwise they wouldn't QQ about it's loss.

And that's it. We always come back to the QQ argument.

 

So here's the final question: Does empires have more to gain or more to lose from removing spec? Every single change will boil down to that question. I believe that the benefits of spectate outweigh the negatives and that removal will alienate more players than it will help keep, though it's awfully clear that not everyone agrees with it.

Also, if everything reduces down to the QQ argument, and you said you disregard the QQ argument, then wouldn't you have to disregard all arguments for and against a change?

 

As in if you read it out loud it would sound like "cue cue"? Yes, yes I do.