Leaderboard

Syssiton

I'm still putting my trust on the people who are actually doing the work. All this constant whining about "They're not doing a good job in it." has almost put me in a state of depression.

Just for fun

This has happened more than once. I'm not really sure that there is a "fix" for it. As team dynamics change, desired features change. This extends beyond programmers finding certain tasks more interesting to work on, and is more related to the fact that different people want different things from the game. Probably the only way that it will change is if we happen to get a group with a more cohesive vision where the group itself (not just some members) stays around long enough to actually make significant progress toward whatever vision is popular at that time. It might happen eventually. I'm hoping that as the game gets more mature, we will begin to retain enough simultaneously active people for the final progress toward version 1.0 to occur.

Apparently there exists some kind of design document; could it be published prominently at a clear location on these forums? This could help people understand what you works towards to, not just now, but also in months and years to come. Anyway, I do hope this thread is not too frustrating for you and the other team members. Even though criticisms are posted more frequently than compliments, do know that many people greatly appreciate what's been done so far, what you're still doing right now, and what you all intend to do in the future.

Ok, Ty for the info. and good Service

Hello, I am a new comer here. I started playing 0 a.d. for 2 weeks now and one thing caught my attention, the battle formation. I really like the mechanics right now where you can actually work on your formation pretty well, however, I think it might be easier to handle if there is an option to lock the formation. With the mechanics we have right now, all we need to do is for the army themselves to stick into their formation with a lock button(I guess). I love the game, just some suggestion I have since I was struggling a little bit to keep the army in their formation with the auto attack in place and if you put it in passive or defensive mode the auto attack still doesn't really help when they make contact with their enemy. So, I suggest having a "Lock Formation" button in the formation tab just to make the strategy more realistic and easier to handle as well. I am happy for any comment on this idea.

Relax, this guy is some salty.

There are tons of possible strategies, the number of which are reduced due to the map and victory condition. The base fact is that if there is balance there can be diversity. In my mod, Vox Populi, I've rebalanced cavalry so that they counter each other in the sword>spear>skirm>sword way. Infantry have resumed their primary role in the composition of a basic army. Players can choose to delay the training of their own cavalry if they do infantry instead since cavalry can no longer win at such drastic ratios as in A22. One can opt for the cavalry rush which is still viable if you do it right (not just mindless train and blast the enemy) Or one can choose a risky but possibly rewarding boom involving a higher ratio of female population. In late game, you can access a Specialization mini tech-tree where you can go for melee/ranged and after that cavalry/infantry Meanwhile several other technologies added and little balances, additions. Remember this is a new mod under development but progressing. It aims to keep the unique 0ad concepts of citizen-soldier and those things you like to rant about so much They are all parts of a whole that is the unique 0 A.D. style So summing it up, I think balance and new possibilities in the form of pair techs and mini tech-trees can improve this game a lot. Like DE but without some of the bullshit.. There will always be spams but if those spams can be countered(possibly naturally) then it will result in many fun games especially where there are several players in a team. Many games feature spams, it's a specialized army that you need so that you can further research down that path. Mixes (sometimes called rainbows) will always be viable due to the different shielding, damage capacities of the given mixed units. Spams and mixes both have their advantages, bugs can be fixed, units can be balanced, things can be done if we work together in a CONSTRUCTIVE manner and not try to manufacture bigger and better Proof Bombs and the like to wipe out the defences of the other player who loves this game as much as you do. Work together and be sensible, the future of 0 A.D. lies in your hands so please don't drop it. Everyone has a place in this future, we need you all. We need @elexis with his neverending code fixes, commits and instructions; we need people like@wowgetoffyourcellphone to do their best, @Grugnas and the like to create mods to test potential features, @LordGood the artist, many others, and last but not least: people like @DarcReaver to incense us to such exorbitant heights that we end up doing something. I can't match you guys in post count and I guess there will be tons of counterarguments and whatnot by the time I check it out tomorrow afternoon so take your time in replying and stop playing argument volleyball. *Me out for today*

Yes the suspense in this game is killing me literally. Especially the strategical choice of building a clump of cavalry units and sending it over to the enemy after booming for like 15 minutes. AoE II is nowhere near this strategical finesse with all its unit line upgrades, different military building paths and overall tech trees, and stuff like dark age rushing, feudal scout rush or archer flsuhing etc. This one aswell. 100 camel archers are really much better gameplay than AoE II.

Well I admit I was a bit harsh. However, reading these posts "prove me" "give me exact points" "you don't know stuff I know it better" kind of posts seriously start to annoy me on these forums. Especially from people who have no clue and experience with game making in the first place. It's repeating stuff again and again and again and again and again without any benefit for anyone.

Doesn't justify anything It's the wording that makes you sound like an arrogant thug

This confirms what I have said, many opinions and few decisions.

The main thing that I see here, is that people that are legitimised for changing the design are the developers, cause an ethic ethos of "to say something, you have to get your hands dirty", and I don't see this as a negative thing. Although archiving a good design is not easy, with the currents features, a lot could be changed, but some designs are asking for news features... and only coders can do it. So a lot of discussion I think are gravitating around that, and it's understandable in volunteer project. IMHO a dedicated designer would come only legitimised by working in the engine, not with a game design from "outside". I would feel like people would tell me what to do, and this is not good as the main drive here of one person is motivation. I don't know if somebody have been hurt by my comments of need of change or proposals, but always I try to be constructive. People tends to talk always about what's wrong and not about what it's well done. I have said before, and I would say another time: maybe we can't agree on the main game design, but the free open-source engine that you're developing have no price. Replay and multiplayer support would help with or without balanced civs. That can change easy with people with low skills, but is not like adding this features. Yes, sure, it's more attractive and hyping adding formations than a gamesetup unification, but it's not wasted work. I have follow this game since the first alpha, and never thought that I would play with against an AI or entering easily in a lobby. A lot of time have passed, sure..

Gameplay needs to be improved first as balancing and counters can be fixed later. I’m not expert player but I played many RTS and would like to play MP if IMO it’s a realistic game. It doesn’t matter if your skill level or experience is tremendous to warrant the developers to tailor the gameplay to your liking. The gameplay needs to be tailored to a strategic way. It doesn’t make sense that the gameplay needs to be tailored to MP. Majority of MP players are not pro. They like the game and they want to play with their friends, same level players(as they progress) and they have their own tastes. I take it easy on new players so that they can last longer and they can feel the game. I don’t mind if I lose as long as my co players enjoy it. Most pros complain about balancing which to me doesn’t make sense. If there is a need to be fixed then air it. There are mods that are showing progress on balancing. For now if you think the gameplay is this and that then exploit and play as what the game offers. I’ve seen some pros who got frustrated with skirm cavs rushes but now they adapt to it. DarcRaver has so many good opinions and some maybe not like delaying the military structure building to P3. AoE has university but RoN has very good Library and knowledge gameplay that makes the game more strategic. The more gameplay or strategy needed to play and win the less likely to occur a spam unit style of gameplay.

It's important because what keeps a game "alive" is its multiplayer and loyal players who play every day, even with a horrible balance. I think it's fair to give them at least a playable balance, regardless of whether they're ready or not.

I don't see a problem with adding unique content proposed by others that keep players interested. Notice Capture The Relic feature is actually part of the design documents and @Sandarac originally implemented it because it was a feature which was desired since. The design documents described as an aoe2 clone variant where one picks it up and puts it into a building. We consciously decided to go a different path from what was described there and not make them garrisonable (actually more interesting gameplay if it's discoverable and players have to guard it) and not make them able to be picked up (how would a pickup feature add to the interest of the game and justify the cost of spending the time to implement that?). Agree (and never claimed that it would). Never claimed that relics or random maps add to the conquest gameplay. Relics and Danubius countered the claim that these features added have no relation to the historic aspect of 0 A.D. The team didn't work on this at all unless you mean me being judicious with Hannibal and the relic feature which was not historically related yet. What has stopped you from developing a feature of any proposed design plan yourself? Why did you spend time on adding Kushites to DE rather than on javascript tutorials? The fact that it will consume months to get a single feature done? I discovered this game three years ago and considered the game a technical demo too after reading many claims by the game promotion itself that the game would be an unplayable alpha. However after actually playing it, I immediately lost the impression that this is a tech demo, but an actually good game. Hence I do not and never did intended to turn the the way the game is played upside down (unless counters count). I would appreciate if someone would go through the trouble of implementing formations that mimic the actual historic usage, but that won't be me (sounds more like years than months to me). There were missing engine features (for instance replay and good multiplayer support) and many bugs (most things falling apart when looking at it wrong) that prevented the game from being what the existing game mechanics intended it to be. This is what motivated me to work on the code. The vast majority of that is fixed and implemented now. Was playing with the thought to implement a narrated historic SP campaign, but actually why would I want to do that if the primary feedback we get after 8 months of development is a complaint about one wrong number in the balancing? So technically, I'm done here.

I would be in favor of a single, receptive lead. Councils slow things down, in an already slow system, that's already full of councils. As long as everyone can voice their opinions, it won't be one sided, but quick and decisive.

eh

A room full of people debating with an empty chair. I'd love to take gameplay lead myself, with the team's blessing of course. I'd certainly be neglecting the art department more than I already am in that case lol

This is a very relevant point, and also the reason why I think it's so important to attract (much) more people to 0AD. I'm really not expecting 10 people to implement the entire design-document and manage the slew of daily user-requests, all on their free time. I think attracting more people can be done "relatively easily" by updating the main web-site, especially using much better screenshots than the ones that are there now. Video-editing features can be used more often to make pretty "short-video's" introducing all of the civ's in a 45sec. format for example.. Creating a development report every month/two months doesn't seem too much work to do, but essential to maintaining interest (it gives people something to look forward to, in between releases). There used to be these cool weekly development reports on the main site (I totally loved them), but every week is clearly overkill.. There needs to be some kind of "PR-department" creating/managing/planning promotional materials so that, for example, pretty screenshots, or concept art created by lordgood can be featured, new models like stanislass' Thracians or alaexander and lion's Xiognu minifaction can be shown off, or code improvements explained and new mods can be presented. This "PR-team" should have access to the official website/facebook/youtube/twitter/instagram acoounts and update at least once a week (if only with a single screenshot), and contact important gaming-sites ahead of every realese. These relatively low investments of time and effort, that don't even need to be handled by the development team (maybe just reviewed by them), would do wonders in terms of attracting new players and potential contributors. Some are bound to be coders... 0AD is still shockingly unknown, and in dire need of some good ol' marketing! It would just be nice to have something a little more coherent to market. Why not include a simple campaign for the first time. That would be revolutionary. Romans for example. Nothing too crazy. You play 5 maps, one after the other, each incrementally more difficult than the last. Then you integrate it with the tutorial (for the first map at least). Generate random maps with the right setting, and modify to liking with triggers and all. Is that beyond the realm of feasibility? How often are the Departments of Computer Science in universities contacted? Can't people write specific, pre-determined sections of code as a part of their bachelor's program or thesis or extra credit? It's an open-source project after all... It's historical so there's educational aspects... Advanced classes in digital art departments could probably model a new civ in less than two days (imagine 20 people working on a single civ as a class-project)...

Hopefully SPI can have a look into this next week.

Here's a sneak peek of the next faction getting ported over to 0AD: the Gorons. Stay tuned for their full roster of units. It seems I didn't take a peek in that file.