I considered that for atomic but apart from there being no proper way to do it, and my aversion to hacky solutions, I don't like the idea that new fronts will just open and close without player input. It would mean that an effective strategy is to build your base next to the wall in the hopes that the server fills up and you can make a land grab quicker than the other team. It kinda fucks up any strategic aspect the game might have, and would probably mess up the combat as well as it would result in a lot of cheap shots because the impassable terrain suddenly became a third front.
Or new fronts can open up when certain events happen, like an earthquake or something makes a cliff come apart, revealing a passage that makes both teams vulnerable. Or something like the rocks from starcraft 2 practice league. Maps would be fresh and exciting, always a random chance of what would happen next. I can see it now, if someone made a map like this the rest would evolve into an evolving battlefield.
No, maps would be shit because you win or lose based on whether you got lucky. Doesn't matter how you dress it up, it's still fucking with the layout at random.
Oh cool then we can just play the same map over and over again, because most maps in empires play the same, they usually follow the 3 R's of recycled gameplay - Rush, Research, Rape - I don't think there is one map in empires that doesn't follow those rules, so in the end, you are playing the same thing over and over again, just with different layouts. evolving battlefields could change that, make the game thrilling, sudden death mode know what I'm saying. Meteors and shit falling from the sky, random missiles raining down, prebuilt minefields exploding the fuck out the place, all being the keys to open the newly revealed gates. Incorporating the z-axis thrill without the jetpack. But of course no one understands it because they are still in the mindset that maps would have to be the nonrandom-no-skill-needed-samemap that they are going to play again when it gets renominated. It's why this game suffers, because it becomes boring as shit.
I really don't see how randomly fucking with the map is going to improve that. Open up a new route suddenly? People will rush it. Figure out which areas of the map can change? People will plan around it. Having a good actually balanced game where both sides are fighing heavily over ground? Tough shit because a hole just opened up in the back of one of the bases and now the game is over because the random number generator decided to ruin the game. If I get tired of existing maps I can always make new ones.
there are multiple easy ways to prevent this for example you could make it a wall (you cant think of this like a huge gaza strip wall, its more just map layout that changes as parts are made more open or more claustrophobic) has multiple "phases" of destroying itself this picture is an exadurated simplification, first phase (green lines remove) it becomes accessible to infantry, but not convenient (lots of boxes or whatever break up the corridor leading to it, maybe even small climbwork on crates so it takes far longer then just walking birds eye perspective) second phase (blue lines remove) it becomes accessible to infantry in a straightforward way, the map now enables infantry to without too much searching find the exit and entrance, and fast infantry combat can happen third phase (orange lines remove) it becomes accessible for tanks one could even add in more phases, basically it all comes down to how it works best at a certain spot in the map, could be that any such pathway stays "open" at any time, but as more people join, the paths "width" widens, as to allow more people at the same time to have fun on it, and with few players to cramp them together a bit to make it feel more crowded some things should be taken into account though: at any time when it narrows again people inside should be able to get out of it again no matter what, and people shouldn't be able to grief it by just leaving the server and joining again (timed delay + a certain percentage of random time) to set the mood and give an example: a small warehouse filled with crates, when the player amount reaches phase green the small infantry doors could open up, allowing people in the warehouse and run around the passages, but some passages are blocked by forklifters or whatever to make it a "small" maze, or at least to hinder people a a bit blue phase: the forklifts are moved out of the way and 1 garage door at each side opens up enough to duck under, a small but relatively straight corridor between the racks filled with crates opens up leading to the enemies side orange phase: the racks are moved in a way so that light tanks and jeeps can move trough, and on each side a garage door opens up enough for these tanks to drive trough the building the point of course is that this functionality ISNT what the map is about, and probably this should be done in small subtle ways for example not a big road cutoff, but opening an alternate but relatively equal route, or even opening up 1 more refinery for capping, or maybe both id advise against something like this deciding about anything more then 10 % of the map, but you could have 3 or 4 of these things, very subtly put away in a city map it could make certain big (unplayable unless 50+ players) maps quite playable with only a medium amount of players (20-30 ish)
Either it's a significant part of the map (functionally or area wise) being locked off, or it's not going to make any difference. If it is a significant part of the map being locked off, you're going to get a big shift in layout as soon as the area goes from inaccessible, to accessible, and that's binary, you can't have it be partly accessible, either you can get to it or you can't. If it's a res node, it becomes important as soon as you can build the res node and not before. If it's an alternate route, it becomes important as soon as you can launch a decent attack down it and not before. Plus, having so many moving parts as you're suggesting is just going to make the map stupidly confusing, a complex map is fine, but a complex map that constantly changes with no distinct pattern? That's just being deliberately annoying.
That area is fine, as was the spawnpoint, it's just the spawn point was too close to the cap-point, and now that fucking pool ruins every map.
no, you are wrong, on all fields ON ALL FIELDS it has a predictable pattern, hardcore the triggers at certain steps in the filling of a server to make it even more so since passages open up more and more as player base goes up for example 6 triggers, once at 10 people, once at 20, once at 30, once at 40 once at 50 once at 60, and if it hit 50 then the player amount falls back to 49, it needs to hit 40 before it triggers backwards the point is to have small parts of the map do this, and have like 4 or 5 parts in 1 map, together it is an important area but each on itself it "could" be neglected without too much bother also never make it a direct passage to the enemies main or something, that's dumb you can have it partially accessible, i explained that in my previous post... especially in empires where its very easy to make it accessible for people but not for tanks if its a res node it becomes important as soon as you can keep it, if its impossible by any team to keep it for longer then it needs to refund its cost then its not relevant to have it, its only to deny the enemy to have it the map will not be stupidly confusing unless you make it so, ive been mapping long enough to know +- 50% what you did wrong in king the moment i ran trough it for the first time, most of it can be fixed without redoing half the map and what i am describing here would be perfectly for king you know what, im just gonna save this threads location, and make a map to prove you wrong... i would be making fun of you by now if it wasn't for you being correct "most" of the times these kind of debates come up, and you having the most sexy voice ive ever heard
Winning and losing based on more than cold repeatable tactics? Blasphemy! No, it needs everything but that area cut out.
I highly doubt that. If winning or losing is based on luck why am I bothering to play the game? My input is not important if the game decides what happens by itself.
Nobody said "luck", we're talking about strategy that isn't cold and perfectly repeatable. Empires is boring. On pubs, there's only a handful of good strategies that work for each side on each stock map. Take Canyon. How does a pub match start? Split your team in half, move through the two paths, build two raxes and push into enemy territory while taking refs. Boring. What if the northern and eastern chokepoints were blocked? You'd have to send your entire team through the other path. But then what happens if the formally blocked pathways open a few minutes into the round? Now we get to see a ton of vehicle combat in the wide-open NE. Such a scenario is basically impossible with the stock canyon. Would it turn out well? Poorly? I don't know, but it would be interesting and maybe fun. Get off your high horse. No one is "helping" or "hurting" anyone. There are ideas with potential and ideas without potential; that's it.
My ego is a weather balloon and you keep blowing it up. :p Don't worry, weather balloons are built to get really really big...
I would have posted claiming that no-one can surpass me in arguing, but I think I lost the will to argue every single point into the ground about a year ago.
i.e, luck. If something isn't repeatable, then it is being affected by apparently random uncontrolled and probably unidentified variables which cannot be accounted for or predicted. Or, in laymans terms, luck. Either you're simply adding another layer of repeatability (canyon becomes advance west and fortify while preparing for eastern land grab later in match) or you're simply putting it down to luck. The former does nothing to make the game more engaging that a new map wouldn't do, but does make the game a lot less obvious to anyone who hasn't perfectly memorised the layout progression for every map that uses it, and doesn't add anything like the variation an actual new map would. Essentially you're suggesting rehashing existing maps with stupidly complicated and hacky entity systems rather than spending a bit of time to make a new map, which I suppose would make sense if empires has a mapping community entirely composed of people highly skilled at entity work but with zero imagination, but otherwise makes very little sense at all. Hell go play one of the huge number of custom maps, whatever sort of gameplay you're looking for there's probably a map that encourages it, unless of course the gameplay you're looking for is outside the capabilities of empires in which case no map will help you.
