XP system

To where though? Nothing else will keep players.

The problem with this game is there is no reward path to keep people playing.

 

The problem with this game is more likely a plurality.

If I had to pick one thing as 'the problem' it is that our community is a group of 'have's and 'have-not's, such that you are either a complete noob or somebody who has devoted over 1000 hours of their life to this. No new community can foster under these conditions. It's like pitting world champion smash bros players against people who are just trying the game out for the first time after hearing some good things about it.

 

As king of Asgard I demand a huge metal hat to indicate my status.

I'll tell you what empires needs imo: *coughtankcombatslashfeaturescough* im saying combat is basic. the arcade side of vehicle customization can be greatly enhanced with new mechanics and exciting weapons. Playtime indicates status most of the time. Like pilots have flight time counter. counting wins is pointless. like, gg u joined the stacked team. or gg you joined the noob team for the tenth time today. I only read a few of your posts, I don't think we require ranking like in most shooter games, mostly because you success depends on 20+ people which is just too many variables for a trustworthy ranking system. We can have match statistics, like how many tanks has my noob team lost, or this specific noob ? what? security has lost 0 tanks again? lock vf. But that should have no affect. I would put those statistics in, jusst because it's exciting to look at numbers sometimes and it could give space for steam achievements. gj u killed ur tenth heavy.

all these things, ranks, publicity etc are pointless if the game isnt upgraded. empires can offer much more than this.

edit when i saw the thread i thought it was about windows XP lel

 

Yes, and based on your "score" which would hopefully inspire team play would actively promote teamwork.

Game progression really does keep people. It's a loop you get stuck in, like in MMO's, Battlefield, CoD, and many others where you do a task, you get rewarded, you want to do the next task because of the reward. It's a loop that continues until you reach the end game where theres no more quests and you get tired of the game, or you reach the max rank. However, a constantly scaling system would be the best way to go about this so it gets harder and harder and ALMOST unachievable. Perhaps, have the top 5 players get a certain garb of gear and then if they get dethroned they lose that garb so its a continuous progression to stay at the top.

 

And, Oddly enough, while I do support Empires in it's current form I don't think we have to sacrifice anything to facilitate big changes. The gameplay, though despite lacking some major variation in combat (Can I say counters again?), is solid. It plays like CSGo in the fact that some guns can zoom some cant, it also has a semi-futuristic style to it like Halo that people can recognize, but what it lacks is some modern features.

Look, I get it, people want to "fix" it, but without "new" exciting features, fixing a game that has a dwindling player base doesn't do anything other than waste your time. Fixing this game up so the code is great is pointless at this point, new features HAVE to be added. Features haven't been added to this game in, well, quite a long time. There needs to be something to retain people, and hence an overall progression system would do just that.

We have to modernize this game, look to the future. The Tutorial also needs to be revamped, and I would say upon first launch of the game it should just throw you in with a step by step on how to customize a vehicle and do all the small shit that is necessary for the overall progress of the game. This stuff, while it might seem like a "long time" of development, is the key to the success of Empires. We NEED that feedback loop, we NEED that reward system, we NEED some way to retain people or this game will continually gain newbies, but lose players overall as the vets and old players continually sign off for their last time one by one.

I know we all joke about how this game is "unkillable" and it has come back from worse, but the writing is on the wall. The game either adapts or it dies. This isn't an immediate death, this is a slow bleed. We are slowly dying internally as our community turns on each other and drives out people who they don't like. It is slowly dying by lack of communication from development, (And I don't mean that as in I hate the devs), it just seems that unless you are in the loop with them you learn nothing or learn what direction the game is going in. We have a chance to patch up the slow bleed, but the priorities of development and the priorities of the community must be shifted in the opposite direction of the way things are going.

We have a, mainly, cosmetic update coming out along with people joining up to help work on these cosmetics. New Sounds, new UI, maybe new Textures from Senor, and this will help with the "dated" appearance of the game. However, we desperately need the core mechanics to have new shit added otherwise we face stagnation and death. We must adapt, we must follow a progression based system in an attempt to prevent our beloved game from dying.

Also, I have to say, I don't think the "graphics" are as big of an issue as people make it out to be. It really isn't. People still play Warcraft 3, people still play many many old games and lately lots of new games coming out that aren't AAA titles have the appearance of "dated" graphics. Blaming it on graphics is simply scapegoating and us not recognizing the real issue at hand, that nothing new is being done and the overall mod is stagnating, which is the saddest part. Please devs, add something new to retain new players.

 

WC3 tapped into a much bigger market than Empires and still has thousands playing it. Granted, it has been dropping, but people are still producing insane amounts of content for it. There are many old games, like the original halo, that still have tons of players. Hell, some guy made Diablo 3 on WC3 that looks about as good as the actual Diablo 3 game. It's insane.

Empires doesn't need a rebirth, as I said the graphics are relatively fine and lots of games nowadays have graphics on par with Empires.

First off, I'd recommend a reward system. This keeps new players.
Second, Revamp the tutorial to ACTUALLY TEACH people to build tanks rather than saying "Ok learn this confusing concept by yourself", walk them through it step by step with arrows pointing to how to build while they do it.
Thirdly, add some new shit. This is why I was looking forward to the TD, it was new. New is exciting. New gets people happy. Granted, a TD wouldn't be as good of an addition as a reward system, but still it is an addition that would bring some fresh life.
Fourth, just communicate. I really enjoyed when Tama had a post about everyone's progress, it made us feel informed. I haven't seen one in a while and while I KNOW THEY DO NOT owe us one, it is nice to know of communication. Right now, people don't want to contribute because they feel they can't do anything/it wouldn't be appreciated. We need to change that atmosphere, along with changing how we participate. If you have a skill that Empires could profit from, please, by all means, contact SOMEONE and help out.


These four things are probably the most essential things I could imagine. I know they are working on bots but, again, that just is good for playing with few players and it doesn't really promote keeping people playing. A system to keep people playing, that rewards them similar to the image below.
Empires lacks this. We have "Kill Monsters" and "win". Those don't loop back around or promote people to continually play. They have to be rewarded if Empires wants to compete. Imagine newbies seeing a customization screen. This is how CoD works as well, you rank up and get a shit ton of new attachments, skins etc that all look cool. They are rewarding you and you keep going because you WANT to unlock it and have it. It's tapping into someone's greedy psyche and making them want something through their hard work of playing.

 

I mean, the statement still stands. Even WC3 had this system in place for competitive play and still has people playing competitive, along with a lot of maps that have some sort of reward. A lot of WC3 maps now reward you based upon how much time you have played on the map.

 

And this is another problem. I talked with the coders, they said it would take 2 years to port to a different engine. Unless more people stepped up and helped out, that would be the immediate death of Empires. People have already tried porting it, every time they fail. We won't survive that so we need to update what we can.

The more players we can keep, the more skill that Empires retains, the more help the game will get. At this point, we need to focus on recruitment and keeping players more than anything else because the players that do stay the more skill that is brought in and therefore could, in the end, improve the game more.

 

Re-assess in what ways? The core gameplay is what makes this game unique. We would have to keep core gameplay as it is, but perhaps reworking the squad menu. The squad menu in Empires is confusing, a nice little menu on the left hand side like in modern games might be best. Would not obstruct the view, would be easier to navigate etc etc. But of course, that is a polish thing, right now we have to focus on recruitment.

Also I edited my last post cause I forgot to get that point across.