If there's one thing I learnt through years of scrimming and scripting in Empires, it's that people completely overestimate how important balancing actually is. It honestly makes so little difference in the grand scheme of things. There are definitely a few versions I can think of which had horrendous balancing/scripts. 2.2 had appalling infantry weapons, 2.23 had plain armour probably equal in strength to a current mid-tier armour, making Grens useless even in the early game. But the game was still fun. You just adapt and deal with it. It's fair to criticise constructively, suggest alternatives etc, but implying that the balance is somehow ruining the game is laughable. 2 of the most celebrated versions of the game, 2.12 and 2.24d had pretty shit balance. But it didn't matter because they were still fun to play. Balance isn't necessarily tied to fun. So I just want to say that from what I've played over the past 4-6 weeks, the infantry weapons are the most fun they've been in a long time, certainly more fun than at any time I was in charge of doing them. The rifles feel deadly in a way I haven't felt since 2.12 and they have proper recoil instead of spread, meaning you can actually compensate for it and really go for accurate headshots and such. I thoroughly enjoyed using them. Grenadier felt a little underpowered vs earlygame vehicles, but I just compensated for this by picking up armour detection and focusing where I saw openings. It's nigh on impossible to achieve true balance, that much I learnt thanks to Dota. Instead, you just go through certain metagames with each patch. A patch comes out and for a month or so, everything feels fresh, new, balanced and fun. Then during the 2nd month, people start to work out the strongest research paths and such, things begin to settle down. By month 3, things are starting to feel stale. That's just the way it goes. During this time, people start whining about how it "used to be better" or whatever. I don't really have much more to add. The game has been fun to me when I've played and I've managed to feel like I'm being effective within my team regardless of the scripts or whatever. I feel as if people are just putting too much weight on expecting Security to balance the game into being more fun, when that's just not how it works. The game does not need to be balanced in order to be fun, the gameplay just needs to be fun, and right now infantry weapons feel the nicest they have in a long time.
And now we're back to the nature of the community and its influence kn the game. It has certainly changed over the past few years. We used to have HSM shouting, yelling and insulting everyone, but that was countered by a couple of players actually trying to be polite and have a decent conversation. Something I've found hard to do at the moment. If we could just stop all the bickering and name calling, or at least tone it down a bit, that would be nice. Also Trickster, I enjoyed the infantry vs infantry combat more than I did in 1.08 and versions before that, but the infantry vs tank combat is a lot less rewarding and fun. The little tank vs tank combat I've done was pretty cool too. The only thing I really dislike is the slightly less difference between NF and BE compared to what it was 8 years ago. This has gradually changed over the years and I'd personally like to see it moving in that direction again. I want to feel like the choice matters. I want people to feel like BE is their side or NF is, that one team suits their particular playstyle better than it does now. Overall the game certainly did get better which is nice to see as that is nit always the case.
Yeah Asymmetry is pretty nice and I definitely support any attempt at trying to work towards that. When I first started doing the scripts I went out of my way to actually remove as many differences between the sides as I could on the infantry side, such as making pistol 1s, SMGs, HMG and Scout Rifle identical on both sides. After playing Starcraft 2 later on I totally change my viewpoint and wanted the complete opposite of that, as many differences as possible. It's a bit harder with tanks but I feel like there should be some room for it there.
Yes, the last SoF match certainly proves that infantry gameplay is fun for sure (at least for one side). And the "strenght from differences" way is a good idea to aim for. Balancing the game isn't the aim, it's the direction. We shouldn't aim for the ideal, but work towards it.
as far as i can tell the dev's are mostly working on the backend and helping the game have more possible changes the only one changing stuff is security, really speaking of, security i posted my smg2 change in spike's smg thread and got no feedback at all i would say people dont even know who the devs are. i sure as hell dont. it seems like its whoever is the most active in the hipchat (which rules me out since i almost never visit) i agree. that is why i say #makesmg2funagain TRY USING THE SMG2 DAMNIT. IT SUCKS
I barely see these devs really playing the game honestly. The best devs are the ones that play this game often and dont suck at the game.
You think devs have free time to PLAY empires? Ohohoho. No. Even simple shit takes forever, so a weekend becomes a choice between to play empires and get nothing done or don't and get something done.
I never even saw these guys play before they were dev? Like does anyone know these people at all before catface dragged them in?
tama was dev before catface was. beerdude brought in tama. tama brought in people catface only brought in james
Also I rather have devs doing little work thats good then not knowing the game at all and devloping. Like thats completely stupid when you barely scratch the surface of empires knowledge and you have to develop it like derp
you dont need to know a game to develop for it. you just need to listen to people's feedback not to mention there are tons of stuff that need fixing that dont require knowing anything about the game also there aren't completely unaware of the game
That is fine if you do engine work and stuff like that. If you do gameplay you sure as hell need to have an understanding to know what people are on about.
To be fair it's amazing anyone still plays, developes or in anyways cares about a decade old Source mod.
First, we don't have any devs that don't play Empiresmod. Second, I've been playing since 2009 (I'm still not very good though). And third, most of the important things we've done since Beerdude left in 2014, have absolutely nothing to do with actually playing Empires, and don't need any knowledge of the game whatsoever. (e.g. all the crashes, crashreporting, the automatic build server - I can merge some code, and 4 other devs PCs will start compiling so that the build gets out there fast and works for all targets) Thanks for your concern though; I agree that a good dev is one that also plays the game, and any dev team needs good players in it as well. I really, really want to play Empires more; but I must limit myself to one match per week, otherwise everyone has to wait longer for the linux client. There's always 101 things that need doing and too little time. I agree that being hidden away in hipchat is suboptimal for a transparent dev team. I will continue to spur on developers to use the shoutbox when the discussion is not dev-specific - it hasn't worked much so far, probably because of ease of use and other conversations getting mixed up - hipchat is pretty hip as chat programs go. I'm working on open sourcing everything but the source code (why not?) - it'll probably take a few months to complete, since I have two kids and am moving across the globe in october.
hipchat is nice until a certain person decides to abuse @all to just point out forums threads for no reason.
I like how guests can use @all as well. Ofc, you can just change the settings of the hipchat desktop client to not do the ping and other annoying stuff when @all.
I appreciate you guys developing because theres noone else doing it, but I'd appreciate you guys more if you guys were to play empires like real empires, like how veterans play it together so you see how its ment to play. I havent seen you guys really play a pug or scrim as in cooperate with the team or talk with the team during the pug ( I saw bob 2 which is one of you guys play during the scrim). I understand that what you have done in developing didnt effect empires gameplay but that doesnt take away my oppinion that developers that really play the game pasionately and understand the ins and outs of the game would be appreciated more. also why the hell do we need a linux client? Seems like a very large investment for a very small return
We need a linux client because there are almost no games on linux, and because I think that the type of player that adamantly refuses to install windows is also the type that nerds out on a really difficult game with a skillcurve like a brick wall. We need a linux client for the same reason that dwarf fortress would have failed without one.
