The godsend known as 2.23

THANK YOU DEVS
2.23 has to be the most awesome thing to happen to empires since the Com Crash Bug.

MK2 What a wonderful idea. I mean NF Light Tanks totally were not overpowered enough back when they only had 1 missile slot. Now with enough space for Higher tier missile, other tanks get raped by the same small agile tank, except with double the fire power.

APCs are now nerfed. Why does BE need a decent start vehicle? Hopefully now that APCs hold less weight, more people will go for AFVs which doesn't have any noticeable improvement, even with more weight.

Barracks are now 400. Congrats, We all know nobody wants forward barracks early in the game. What a server you devs are doing to all the squads that rush doing the start to capture land, but can't manage to get a barracks up because they die before they get 400 resources. VERY WELL THOUGHT OUT.

Tired of Boring games ending too soon? Now com vehicles, as well as all the armors get super health bonuses. With noone dieing, games will drag on EVEN LONGER THAN THEY HAVE TO.

Nobody like buildings anyways. Now that armors and weapons are buffed, buildings now go down quicker than ever before. Who needs a 400 rez barracks or a vehicle factory anyways.

Devs totally put a lot of thought into this patch.

 

and lets sab the fuck out of everything while we're at it.

"ok team i need half of you to go scout and sab their shit, the other half stay here and watch for their scouts"


-Mommy, whats a grenadier?
-well Timmy, remember the story I told you about the SMG 3?...

edit: ok kind of a snap judgement (post tells me to spell it 'judgment' wtf?) - and it could work out, but my initial impressions are not good. I don't mean to berate the devs, they do awesome stuff for the most part.

 

Reactive does seem a bit... extremely powerful.

It seems to me armor has been getting better and better without weapons improving. At this point, it takes several minutes of upgraded light tanks fighting to end the combat, god forbid someone repairs. I tried to take out a heavy as grenadier, I lost all my ammo on them a couple times while they were parked in place, they were fine.

I really don't get the draw of some of it. I enjoy some of the change, even the rax price increase, but right now damage is on a scale where a light tank has more health than a factory, and that just seems ridiculous to me.

 

Well if the testers would test... and appear to tests... their would be more balance...

 

... that doesn't mean the developers just screw the entire thing. UNUPDATE

 

Server owners do not install, 23 DO NOT WANT

 

2.23 DO NOT WANT!

For real.

 

Copied from the release thread:

I honestly can't understand the reasoning behind this update.

Aside from not being tested at ALL (and don't blame this on the testers, aside from randomly pulling forum access, you, being the devs, haven't really been too into testing this either) you have managed to exacerbate imbalances already in the game by sneaking in these MKII tanks (which I considered a bad idea, but since I didn't have tester access anymore for unknown reasons aside from being "replaced", couldn't comment on) that not only render medium tanks obsolete, also manage to tip the balance of the game even further in favour of NF by giving their LT's two slot missile launchers.

Seriously, what the fuck?

Now the LT can ram up behind every single one of BE's bloated chassis', and spam its UGML, or whatever it happens to be mounting, into it until it explodes. Not only this, but the armor buff means even a PAPER LT is unkillable by any infantry, and reactive is now the fucking god armor, right alongside 3phase and tracking systems for a recipe for NF winning, since the LTMKII now excel in both anti tank and anti structure (anti infantry omitted because infantry do piss all damage to tanks now) thanks to their ability to mount salvo ML's and UGML which are pretty much siege cannons.

Sure, the AFV can mount cannons. Doesn't really help when you overheat pretty quickly when using them, and do less damage than the majority of easily accessible missiles. Not to mention you STILL can't angle your turret to hit that LT ramming you, and the cannon requires more skill to hit a target with anyways.

As well as this, the MKII have the effect of rendering a huge amount of the art in game obsolete, with games rarely ever seeing mediums, and never seeing heavies and artilliery. Its really a waste. Even when you do see meds and heavies, NF still have the upper hand with their dual ML heavies, that thanks to electrical being the no brainer research path for them, have had decent ML's for the majority of the game.

The 400 res barracks is a good way of punishing a team and a commander. Again, I don't really understand the reasoning behind this, since all it serves to do is slow down gameplay, and punish a team even more for losing a forward barracks, making that slippery slope in empires even more slippery. Not to mention, walking across the entire map is pretty dull, and not having APC spawns, and the BE APC being even further nerfed (seriously, do you guys have something against BE? sure seems like it) makes this even worse.

Oh, and congrats on making infantry completely useless. yet again, I don't see where the problem was before, but now even a standard armored tank is an unstoppable killing machine, thanks to the buffs to armors, and god forbid they get a better type, since absolutely everything is better than composite was, meaning the grenadier is rendered even more useless, even quicker. The only thing that can kill a tank is another tank, and if your were unlucky enough to lose ground at the start of the game, you won't even have that luxury.

I honestly don't expect any developers to read this. After all, they managed to completely disregard the majority of the community's suggestions, and shoehorn a ton of new "features" into the mod without any consultation or testing, features that could potentially kill it.

I really hope you don't intend this release to be the last until 2.3, because in that case, we are fucked.

Vehicle handling is fun again by the way, congrats.

 

Never had one official play test if I remember correctly.

This patch disappointed me and I'm sorry for saying it devs :/

Couldn't agree more BTW
(caught hti s all laten shit)

 

Their was a official playtest after every fucking pug...
I never saw more than 10 people
2 or more threads in the tester forum are about those official tests...

Their was a tester thread for every change that omneh listed in his thread.

 

First of all, stop blaming the devs as a whole, nobody deserves to be treated like this if it is not their fault. Most of the changes you are claiming about were made by me, for the sake of changing the game in the long run.

Second. Testers had acces and the files to test, only a very small group showed up for test. Nobody is being blamed, don't misread that part, nobody is blaming testers. It's how things went.

3rd. This patch was released with the idea to release early, release often. It would give us the only possibility to quickly get things tested and we would be able to react more quickly, than to delay week after week.

It's a bit too early to claim med tanks are obsolete, MKII's cost as much as med tanks and can do less, the only problem here is the light, and the light tank has been left practically unchanged for 2.23, it was a high priority change, that I was trying to get done for 2.24 (sadly was not able to get it done for 2.23 due to some technicalities.

If you dont see meds, heavies and arties, no wonder you can't kill MKII's. The game is more than just the light tank, sadly, these kind of faults lie deeper and they are just being exposed now, this is why the game is radically being changed. We can finally see what the real issues are instead of changing balance constantly.

cost of a barracks is meant to cripple you early, and it's meant to take a bigger bite out of your resources, apcs cost around the same, it was changed so that more strategies would become viable. Apc's have spawns too. Earlier version always meant the person who spammed the most barrackses would most likely win pub games, this is a change also aimed at making sure the barracks spam on trick pony isn't as powerful anymore.


It's kind of hard to say that infantry is useless, they're a big part of the game, yes you will need tanks to win, tanks have been buffed vs infantry, no one likes walking, so stop walking and get a tank.
More powerful tanks, means a screwed team will get raped earlier on, while I definitely can think of many stalemates caused by this, it's a double edged sword since the losing team is actually losing and not trying to keep a dead game going, where in the end they get to ninja with arty strike, even though the lost 30 minutes ago.

Please play the game with a fresh start, I ask you to give it a shot, try the things you don't expect to work, like meds or heavies, get research you don't usually take, maybe even plasma lol. Because without playing this version, there won't be much progress to rely on.

And a reply to weedy, whether or not it was in this thread or not:

This game was considered dead before we started, the only thing keeping it alive as far as development goes is us, how can you kill that which has no life? This just seems like a personal lash against the devs instead of a solid arguement against changes made.
So if you're in for the cheap enjoyment of flaming the devs, go ahead, it won't last long.

 

These are the positive changes I see:
Added: New version of the minimap icons, size lowered to 75%.
Added: Mapping features
Added: The ability for player to opt in/out of commanding.
Added: More features for weapon balance scripts.
Fixed: Various exploits that could cause the server to crash.
Fixed: No more spontaneous deaths standing on top of ammo boxes, walls, etc.
Fixed: Handbrake no longer stuck after death in vehicle while handbraking.
Fixed: Fixed some issues with the spectator control bar.

Devs, good work on those parts.

--And that's about as positive as I can be about this update, but I'll keep playing. At the very least it adds variety.

 

You made my beloved NFAR actually usable again. For this, you have my eternal gratitude.

But seriously, why is everyone flaming already? The thing has been out about 8 hours, no-one can have a proper opinion on it in 8 hours.

Granted, a lot of the testers pointed out the LT problem, and it might sound stupid, but maybe in 2.24, just don't have an LT MKII, but keep the AFV MKII.

The armour balances (in case you didn't notice) apply to both teams. What is strong for BE is strong for NF. Absorbant AFVs with HE are going to be a bitch to take down, and the main advantage of the AFV is the massive firing range in comparison with the LT, you can now shell with HE from afar, so stop whining that its completely imbalanced.

And in case you didn't notice, the AFV has 4 slots, not 2. Do you know what those 2 slots could be used for? LT protection. Get a pair of rifleman or good grens in there and your AFV is unstoppable.

And so what, raxes cost 400? They're more useful than a VF, a radar and they cost a fraction of the price in 2.22, now its more balanced, now a rax is an investment, it'll make commanders thing twice before spamming it in a last ditch effort to hold somewhere, before it dies 2 seconds later.

You're all approaching this with the attitude of how you played 2.22, things have changed, adapt and survive.

Also in case you didn't notice, we finally have another official map, and a fucking good one aswell.

 

Could it be that the game runs faster now? I have more fps.

 

Havn't played the update yet but what i can figure raising the hull was just way way way wrong. I think it is good that you brought plain armour to the same level as the rest of the armour, but it was bad that you raised hull.

For christ sake no one likes to just sit and fire at things that don't die. And now you made grenadier useless, GOD DAMN IT!

Gj at fixing comm vote and vehicle handeling!

Also i like that you raised Rax cost, no more fucking rax spam that makes it totally futile to try to dissloge an enemy wiht 5 raxes at one place, that really sucked. Also this made it more strategic in where you focus your team, and what you prioritse. But then again you fucked the grenadier totally so any team not rushing better vehciels will lose becuse you devs fucked grenadier over. GJ LOL.

So sence gerandier are useless, raxes can't be defenced by infantry any more, the only viable tactic is APC rush with anti vehicle machinguns, don't bother with machinguns vs inf.

Next patch raise grenadier dmg and mine dmg or fail.

 

Thank you Trickster, for not teleporting to conclusions ("jumping" is a bit of an understatement here) like many others did. I think many people are rather confused because they think the changes applied are either:
A) permanent
B) will never get a counter
C) will never be tied in more with other aspects of the game

But this is exactly what we're working on tbh :p

 

seriously though, if testers don't turn up, get new ones! I'll turn up to tests on weekends if i get about a weeks warning.

 

I've tested this only little time, but what I've seen is that the game is now more about tanks, actually more like all about the tanks. Grenadier is not very useful against tanks anymore, so you need tanks to fight tanks. If you don't have or can't get tanks, you're f*ck'd. If commander restricts and enemy tanks attack, it takes too much time to do anything about it. Basically infantry are there just to look how tanks fight against each other.

But I have to test more. I don't want to blame anyone for braking anything. After all we are all just testers. But what I think is that too severe changes were made at once. Little tweaks here and there could be better than changing the whole gameplay all of a sudden.

 

We schedule it after the pug, thinking that many testers who are in the pug will also jump over to the testing server when the pug's over to continue playing. We usually only get 16-20 testers on a good night though

 

I personally like 2.23

Thank you devs .