*Ahem. I was there... So are some other people in the current dev chat (idk if that counts as dev team?), but I know that devourawr, security and varbles all play. I see them online fairly regularly. All of whom are more visibly contributing to empiresmod. GUI, Scripts and Maps respectively.
My 2 cents as a player: Tama and Thexa are great devs who've brought a lot of professionalism into the back-end side of empires, I only wish the mod could pay them to be full time. On the other hand, Scrim players always seem to be light on genuine qualifications and heavy on inflammatory personalities and controversy.
This. We have not had this luxury since... forever? Most do not understand the intense struggle of working on a game, especially when it comes to internal components.
You really don't need to play, you need to have a basic understanding of the game but thats about it. It really isn't very complicated. Sure it has some emergent gameplay but it isn't as deep as we like to think, it's just very replayable. To be honest half of being the "Best" player is just understanding and making the most of all the idiosyncracies in the game. The "skill ceiling" is a bunch of undocumented & most unintuitive crap down to a pretty rudimentary GUI. Aiming to please those that already play is a false economy. Being a good player doesn't make a good dev, the community doesn't really have the best ideas about how to make the game better. Most "vets" are committed to the past and look only at how changes would affect the Current game play - unable to see beyond that and think about a game that evolves way past what it is now. Besides a couple of things, nothing has ever Really changed, Empires is the same game it was 6 years ago.
This is the mentality of a bad dev team summed up pretty nicely... using the software you make is a requirement for making good software, if you dont you get crap like early itunes and shit.
all you need is a group of people you can trust to have a somewhat balanced perception. you are only butthurt its not you. a developer is probably the worst person in the world to judge his own creation. he knows all his assumptions first hand, the view is biased.
OK, Why is playing a game a specific requirement for developing it, if you already understand it? I mean, besides reboots all games were made by people who had never played them before....
You don't need to play it, but you do need to watch others play. That's about the only thing a developer really needs to do: understand how their users are using their product. Then you know what you can change to go in the desired direction. And the desired direction for Empires being the one that brings in new players, brings back oldtimers and keeps the current players. Ofc. all balanced.
thats pretty vague, but at least youll get a majority to agree and thats something :D but if im completely honest to myself, i gave up to believe that this will ever happen on source.
That's on purpose. Any I'm not here to dictate how nor do I even have a solid line of thinking on this subject True... We need Source2 or something like that to make it happen.[/QUOTE]
A-Z-K stepping off the neutrality line once more in defense of his currently messed up Empires. It has changed since 6 years ago, by a large margin. In that time we saw balance go away, counters go away, heavies become the MBT (Which changed gameplay completely mind you), Mediums reduced to basically worthlessness, 1 and basically only one standard research path because all others are completely worthless, and Rifleman turn into a class which can wipe entire squads. But of course, nothing has really changed except for the main gameplay but that's not important apparently.
Do we have analytical tools that can help us properly balance the game? Honestly, I'm not a fan of eye-balling values since that concept depends entirely on whom wishes to do what. Appropriate judgement has to be used, of course, for the betterment of the game and its players.
Come on mate. Maybe you've misunderstood the spirit of what I'm trying to get at here; that the game has been pretty much stagnant other than a few changes to the meta. You say the game has changed by a large margin, but then go on to list meta changes. Things which looking in from the outside wouldn't be obvious at all, they are small. All the things you mention just kind of back up my point that people playing this game for years are stuck in the minutiae. I'm talking about an entirely bigger picture view If you've played thousands of hours and continue to play hundreds more, sure the game has changed. But for anyone returning to the game having played it years for example it hasn't really moved. No new vehicles/weapons/tech, no additions to the commander role, etc, etc. I do agree with you that research in the past had been more varied, on occassion - there were also LONG stretches where it was even more narrow than it is now (couple of years of rushing Full Chem heavies?). As for Mediums ever being the standard tank - not really. Sure heavies were expensive and took a long time to research - but people frequently rushed a single tree and went straight for heavies anyway. Heavies have always been 100% better than mediums, not different, straight up better. So the only changes that have come about is how long they take to get at & how many you can afford.
I agree with you guys. Nothing has really visibly changed. That's my intention with the tank destroyer, to bring significant change. On a side note, lots of invisible changes are happening, more optimised code, a better workflow, etc...
I've come back after about 8-9 years. I've played the game well over 400 hours (even though steam only counted a fraction) and I can tell you the game certainly has changed. It mocht not have gotten al lot of new assets, but it sure as hell has gotten new rules and the old ones are almost all changed in some way. Saying it hasnt changed is just plain wrong. It has. Unless you only look at new toys, assets, skills, but then you have a very narrow view. I'm not saying I'm agreeing with the people in here btw
From my memories of playing in the past, I remember almost always getting mediums. In fact, I remember counters would prevent you from getting heavies because if you rushed straight to heavies after getting mediums, or just rushed straight to heavies, the enemy teams mediums would destroy your heavies because of counters. Mediums essentially WERE the MBT for a majority of the game because you would have to use them until your commander got the necessary research to counter the enemy. I remember MANY games going similar to this - Com gets armor, engine, weapons, Depending what enemy had they would get mediums or get another armor. IF they got Mediums, they would instantly save up resources to get another set of armor, engine, weapons to prevent them from being countered again. IF they did not get mediums, they got mediums and got new engine and weapons Once either of those were done, they moved on to heavies but saving up for heavies with constant mediums rolling around on the field could take a while especially because there was MUCH less resources available. Once they got heavies, again, usually another armor, engine, weapon to suite the fact of the asymmetry for the team. At this point, it was GG and I don't recall many games lasting long with heavies on the field. Hell, even mediums back then could end the game much easier than currently.
