DarcReaver
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Posts posted by DarcReaver
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4 hours ago, Lion.Kanzen said:
@DarcReaver any advice?
What exactly? The Slinger problem again?
10 hours ago, Alexandermb said:@borg- what are your thoughts on making archers stronger but with a longer attack repeat timer taking around 10 or 15 seconds to aim + the rest of the animation in realistic human speed reducing attacking speed while increasing piercing damage?
At this point from a Realistic view, they are like sharpshooters or guide anti-aircraft missiles aiming and firing in no time. Whitout mentioning the gattling guns of archer champions suchs as athen ranged champion.This only makes sense if you use battalions. Having single units fire with such low frequency makes small amounts of units useless.
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On 6/12/2019 at 2:37 PM, Sundiata said:
Just brainstorming a little
How about expanding the economy just a tad, by using the CC to recruit several economic units:
- Farmers (60% female, 40% male): used for farming, gathering fruits/berries. Can only build farm, fields and coral.
- labourers (100% male): used for mining and logging. Can only build mines, logging camps and CC.
- builders (100% male): used for building anything and everything, except for fields. Can't gather.
- slaves (50% male, 50% female): can be used to boost the output of farmers, labourers and builders, but can't initiate anything themselves and have a very low health. Unlocked in second or third phase (or become available after capturing "gaia settlements")
For the rest the, CC would have one armed trash unit as a militia for emergencies and a scout (cav with very low health which can double as a hunter).
Most of the military units can only build military structures and the CC. Citizen soldiers can still be used for mining and logging, and can build mines and logging camps, but work at a lower rate than labourers.
There is nothing like the healing touch of beautiful young lady. I'd like the healers in-game to be female. They can be recruited from the temple (priestesses) like priests and basically take over the priests' current job. Priests are instead used to boost morale, which was part of their actual function, to make the soldiers believe that their fight was ordained by the gods. This is either achieved by adding morale to the game, or, simply by increasing defense and/or attack stats for units nearby the priests.
In other cases, women should be civ-specific, like the Mauryan maidens or Scythian Amazons, warrior Xiongnu women and specific heroes already in-game.
In the future, if we can have animations for the buildings, it would be nice to see a bunch of animated women in the market place, buying and selling their produce.
yea and while we're at it we can also add more economics like Graders, miners, iron smelters, blacksmiths, millers and bakers and rename the game to "The Settlers: 0AD".
The point is that economy takes attention from the player, and the more different economy units and gatherable resources are available the more complicated the economy becomes and the more it distracts from the game itself.
The question is... why.... WHY?! must the most boring aspect of the game be bloated up with even more unfun unit management and click orgies?
Just automate the economy by placing buildings near resource spots. The the according farmers, slaves, builders, millers or watever can do their duty without the player having to worry about having too much of either type of unit.-
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2 minutes ago, Stan` said:
Well there are two kind of moderators, the forum moderators (which are the team members with one or two exceptions) and the lobby moderators. This thread is for the latter.
For the forums I'm afraid I can't be here 24/7 and that's time I'd rather spend doing something more useful.
If people do want to help us flagging posts and or thread does help as we get emails for those.
Wasn't talking to you specifically, but in general someone should feel at least somewhat responsible for fixing the current mess. Sure there are other, more prestigious task, but If one of you doesn't clean up it'll get even worse.
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How about moderators start doing their deeds and clean the forums? So much spam and useless replay topics that do not belong in the forums they were posted in.
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On 6/9/2019 at 1:00 AM, StopKillingMe said:
This is why:
"That's just the nature of an open source project. Everyone has their own vision and they collide either creatively or destructively. I know I quit 'solo modding' after I honed my skills enough to get a feel for how things work. Modding is a waste of time at this point if you're looking for an end product. The thing is Terra Magna is a testing ground for civs so it wont break so often, Delenda Est and other balance mods are gameplay mods so you're going to be locking antlers with the dev team when we make any kind of progress/clean up code.
You have to understand too, I'm sure many of the devs are just as embittered about this. I know I haven't really had fun playing 0 AD since A16 did away with multiplier counters, and later PA. Not to say I didn't have a smattering of fun games along the way.
My job here is easy enough in that I just have to make things look pretty. I have my own vision for this game, but I'd rather see things centralized and strong than contribute to this 'warring states' period we're going through now."
Posted 9/26/17 by LordGood
Pretty spot on wouldn't you say?
So using this statement from one of the dev team, I can no longer be accused of trying to create conflict, this problem of competing ideas of what the game *should be* being counter productive was predicted two years ago by an active member of the team. @DarcReaver has published a set of documents here on the forums that can only be characterized as representing the desire to produce an entirely new game, while simultaneously dismissing what we are all playing now as "nothing more than a tech demo". I will never agree with that assessment, I am actively playing 0ad, and having plenty of fun doing it.
So yes, I do believe the "Mod" discussion and this whole "everything needs to be changed" stance on the game has gotten out of hand. There is nothing wrong with being loyal to the code base of what we are currently playing, nor is there anything wrong with the desire of wanting to see changes made to it in the right way.
"Delenda Est and other balance mods are gameplay mods so you're going to be locking antlers with the dev team when we make any kind of progress/clean up code."
"Modding is a waste of time at this point if you're looking for an end product."
Not my words, so you can't say I'm the only one that thinks this way.
I just took the basic rulesets that were presented in the design document and compared them to the actual "game" that is present in A23. That is all. Even a blind person sees that they don't match. And just saying: Neither did I write the design doc nor did I do the balancing in the past. That was done by someone else from WFG. And to me it's pretty obvious that nobody cares anymore.
I pointed out some stuff to bring the design doc and the current game more in line. It's a fact that the current alpha contains a random mesh of different 200X era RTS game features (i.e. RoN borderlines and AoE II type resource and teching system) without any real coherent gameplay system behind that and it doesn't even remotely represent the design vision. It's the opposite to be precise.
Nobody needs an AoE clone at this point, especially not one that isn't even halfway as complex/well designed as the original game. The HD edition and soon-to-be-released DE editions on Steam are more than enough to please the audience of AoE type games.
On 6/9/2019 at 9:31 PM, StopKillingMe said:I just simply don't agree. There is no way to get any kind of significant play of a mod, the game lobby is where the players are. Again, we all know that the Celts have a distinct advantage, and targeting them directly is the obvious answer. The code is in Alpha, it's not a released game, this makes the game lobby the perfect place for changes to take effect and get thoroughly vetted by a wide variety of players.
The mod discussion or the reworking of how 0ad is designed, what units can train where, and the endless debate of what is "wrong" with vanilla just simply isn't productive. It adds zero value to what actually needs to be done, which again, is a very small and targeted patch that addresses the Celts.
On 6/10/2019 at 4:53 AM, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:I sympathize with your view here. I have also said that since the game is still in Alpha that the team should not be so afraid to experiment (especially when it pertains to simply editing balancing stats).
But I could foresee some kind of balancing group who tries out different balancing mods and then submits requested changes. That way the core game isn't affected and then near the end of the development cycle, the group decides on which mod to fold into the core game.
The core game design is task of the developers. If they are not up to the task, they need someone else to work on this. The idea with having sub mod teams sounds good. However, idk how to make sure that multiple mods are worked on even if it's conceivable that one certain mod is prioritized over the others. Also, I fear that there might be the problem of limiting the manpower for the project even more, by splitting modders/programmers on different sub mods.
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On 7/30/2019 at 8:02 PM, soshanko said:
light cav, sword cav, build lots of zig zag palisades. then use archers. archer cav
lol historical combat realism at its best.
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On 7/28/2019 at 4:25 AM, wackyserious said:
This is a food production balance proposal.
Excerpts from a staff discussion. Tagging @Nescio if you are interested in doing this one.
Why are 3 different types of animals required for 3 same effects/ why so overcomplicated for such an easy feature? Why not simply use 1 animal type per faction?
i.e.
Norse = Cow
Greek = Sheep
other = CHIKIN/pigzDesign path : Build Corral -> train animal -> get food.
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Maybe they should finish 0 ad first? tf is this even a topic
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9 hours ago, user1 said:
Unless and until someone comes forward with evidence(like replays) to substantiate the claims, I consider the ban shall be removed. We'll review the case more if someone posts replays.
@Hannibal_Barca @elexis Anything to say about this?
Why? Just keep the ban until he has proven that he was not the culprit. Even from just reading the comments he makes on this forum show that he's rightfully banned.
I know dozens of this type of guy from my League of Legends times. They all behave as if they were banned accidentally and are TOTALLY innocent in every way (sometimes multiple times in a row) but when reviewed it's pretty clear that they were rightfully banned for swearing, being toxic by griefing etc.
And after being unbanned they even brag about it ("lol these idiots removed my ban").
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10 minutes ago, StopKillingMe said:
I don't really understand what you are saying - if I take soldiers off of gathering resources, the person I am attacking has to do the same thing to defend. It's pretty much a wash. And as pointed out, it's not a nightmare to put them back to work, it's a hotkey. And I guess you have never heard about an army plundering the land of its riches when it defeats them? The resources that the attacking army can gather in enemy territory basically represents plundering and looting, and there certainly is 'authentic historical' precedence for that. And then you go on to suggest that the micro to setup an economy be dumbed down? You build a farmhouse and that's all you have to do? Everything else is done automatically? You are describing "The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-earth II" whose game play became about running around destroying food producing buildings all game...exceedingly inane and boring. The whole point of having to micro things separates the men from the boys, if you stay 100% focused on micro-ing an attack, then your you shouldn't have the bandwidth to boom your economy at the same time, that is the whole point of real time strategy, being smart about what gets your attention, when and where. Take that out of the game and you might as well just be a Total War MP clone.
Because design doc. It pretty much describes a total war clone. Single worker micro with detailed economy (which leads to nowhere btw because it's just unoriginally taken from AoE without putting a thought in it) is repetitive micro.
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“Fastest click wins - In many RTS games, it isn't the player with the most intelligence or the best strategy that wins, it's the player who A] knows the proper order of actions and B] carries them out the fastest. People that practice a general procedure that is usually rewarding and know keyboard shortcuts should be slightly advantaged, and they will still be required; but, the if the opponent recognises their 'cookie cutter' gameplay, they should easily be able to outwit them by identifying and countering the unoriginal/over-used tactics with an effective counteractive strategy.
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Single path to victory - It seems to be a trend that games cater to a specific strategy that is frequently used to attain a victory. That could be rushing, turtling, booming, etc. We recognise these are valid ways to win a game, but we will attempt to not favour one over another. Players should be able to successfully use (and adapt/change) any strategy to achieve a victory.
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Sneaky Tricks - Many games overlook some aspects of gameplay that are unintentionally (by the game designers) used to a player's advantage. Through many hours of gameplay testing, we need to identify and eliminate these tricks.
- Repetition - If you find yourself doing the same action over and over without thought, then we need to either eliminate or automate such an action. Linear repetitious procedures are meaningless and boring. “
About resources: once more:
Defender has 10 soldiers gathering 10 res every 10 seconds.
Attacker has 10 soldiers gathering 10 res every 10 seconds.
Both bases are 1 minute of walking distance away from each other.
10 x 6 = 60 res per minute per playerIf attacker now turns his men away from his down and starts attacking he no longer gets 60 res.
the defender still gets 60 res.Total difference is 120 resources. Player 1 has 60 less while player 2 has 60 more. You can lessen the effect by either make soldiers move around the map at unrealistic speed (currently the case) and by making the individual collection rates low (lower effect of resource loss). But the issue is always present.That's why citizen soldiers without resource hard caps is a broken design.
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“Fastest click wins - In many RTS games, it isn't the player with the most intelligence or the best strategy that wins, it's the player who A] knows the proper order of actions and B] carries them out the fastest. People that practice a general procedure that is usually rewarding and know keyboard shortcuts should be slightly advantaged, and they will still be required; but, the if the opponent recognises their 'cookie cutter' gameplay, they should easily be able to outwit them by identifying and countering the unoriginal/over-used tactics with an effective counteractive strategy.
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4 minutes ago, (-_-) said:
There was some historical authenticity in there too.
I always had something like this in mind. I even started building a mod and it actually reached somewhere too.
CC trains both women and men. Men being somewhat expensive and costing extra resources. They could take up arms. It costs resources. (At the time, it was a new resource + the usual training cost). Could arm into any of the civ's usual citizen soldiers. (They have to be in proximity of a barrack. But this was scrapped to just a simple time cost). They also cannot engage in any economic activity while being armed. If you wanted the citizen back, you would have to disarm him. Which also happens to cost something. These armed soldiers need to be combined with pure military units trained in the barracks for maximum efficiency. (call them officers, generals, whatever). You can commit such soldiers to a pure non-reversible military role with a time/res cost.
That was a concept I had in mind to fix the thing. But in the end, it just felt like a whole of micro and repetitive actions.
This still doesn't remove the aspect that soldiers not gathering resources leads to the enemy gaining a resource lead while the attacker starts an attack. Considering that all units shouldn't move as fast as they currently do this is an issue nontheless, even with your (more fleshed out and more original concept).
Another issue I have with this is that it adds additional, unnecessary micro for players. In 0 AD it's a nightmare to re-order male soldiers back to work after defending an attack.
This is another reason why combat units usually do not gather resources. Also, this can lead to one player rushing the other, then attack and use his own soldiers to gather resources in the enemy base. This happens in AoE and is highly unrealistic - and it shouldn't work that way in a game that is intended to represent "authentic historic warfare".
It's a much better thing to put automatic workers into buildings, call them villagers, slaves, hunters or whatever and let them gather resources automatically in range of their economy building.
I.e. you build a Farmhouse, when finished 4 farm outlines appear next to it and a couple farmers automatically start generating food. Same with metal mines, wood camps and mines.
Enemy units can raid and capture those structures and claim them for themselves.
combat units do combat, and economy is done by economy building. The player who fights better and captures/destroys outposts wins.
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52 minutes ago, Lion.Kanzen said:
I'm not sure if this is the complete one...
This one was just about the resources. My other ones should be available here:
Also had some other posts somewhere
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6 minutes ago, (-_-) said:
You sure that citizen soldiers is a failed concept?
I guess there could be a way to make it work. Not removing one of the main points from the document drafted in 2003 would be a huge plus.
The question is what someone wants to accomplish with this.
AoE is like "we have female/male villagers" and 0 ad was like "ok let's split women and men villagers so it's different".
There is no further reason for it. That's why I'm against the concept.
I think the game would be better off scrapping the whole Citizen/women system, automate Economy by at least 75% and focus on building up cities and THEN creating armies and fight about map control elements like neutral cities and resources like quarries, Farmhouses and Mines.
The whole detailed economy doesn't make much sense unless you focus the whole gameplay on it in a similar fashion of AoE and make the game a proper AoE clone. Which in itself is rather pointless because there is AoE DE, AoE 2 HD and AoE 2 DE coming out soon.
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7 hours ago, borg- said:
Women's spam is not a viable strategy at the current meta. Even though they can build all buldings, it does not work, for two reasons. Women train faster and are cheaper, but ineffective in collecting metal and stone. Also a simple rush with 15 soldiers is enough for you to lose the game, or at least take away all the initial economic "advantage" that women provide. You do not see spam from women being used even by lower ranked players.
About boom to compensate more than early attacks, really is true and I would like to go deeper into this issue. We had some ideas like lowering the collection rate, or giving a trickle xp to units in enemy territory. I would like more ideas about this.
I didn't say that someone should spam women at the start of the match - I said it's POSSIBLE to spam/boom women in general. The game gives enough incentions to do it, along with houses being able to train women for some factions. This isn't really meant to be an earlygame problem but a lategame problem.
After a certain point you reach a critical mass of workers and start gathering so many resources that only pop cap/amount of barracks for training units start to become an issue. Sort of the "AoE lategame effect" - and in 0 ad it used to be even worse with training women from multiple houses along with Town Halls.
The "build women in houses" tech allows to multiply your economic force after a certain point to absurd gathering rates (unless I'm mistaken and it was removed in the last alpha).
By artificially slowing gathering rates you only accomplish a slower game start and delay this point-of-no-return to be a couple minutes later in the game. But this is a design choice anyways. If people are free to spam as many workers for their economy without outer limits you always get to this point - which can be fine if it's intended to be that way. It has advantages but also drawbacks.
Another option is to cap workers by having a hard cap on resource spots.
Without hard caps on resource spots means that your only limitation for economic growth are your own resources and pop cap (to train workers). Each individual unit then serves as a small multiplier of your economic force. And the economic growth rate is (gather rate) x (gather multiplier)^(number of workers).
With hard caps means to limit economic growth along with map control. If someone only has 1 metal mine (or other resource) in his reach he can only get a maximum of / metal/minute. While with 2 mines he can have 2 x Z metal/minute, for 3 mines 3 x Z metal/minute and so on. Same for other resources.Version 2 creates a maximum number of "useful" workers - because after a certain point additional workers will not give the player more economy but only block pop cap instead. This way you limit the effect of loosing resources during attacks, because after some point a player will have soldiers that cannot serve as gatherers anymore because there are no free resource spots left. At this point the player can attack and defend freely without risking to loose resources from walking around.
AoE does a mix of Version 1 and 2 with their food production from farms, while other resources are not limited.
Empire Earth, Wc3 and Star Craft also use version 2. You can have up to 24 workers on minerals (5 per goldmine in wc3) and after that point each additional worker will not increase your resource income anymore. Unless you expand and take different resource spots on the map.-
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15 hours ago, wraitii said:
I never understood why we limited women to only some buildings when it's possible to plop them with soldiers and build them with women. No that topic specifically, I'd commit a diff right away.
Women can be spammed massively, that's why they are not allowed to build all types of buildings. To reduce the snowballing effect of multiple worker units when someone reduced build times of units in some alpha years ago.
This issue can be reduced by making gatherers more efficient but less spammy (i.e. doubling the training time) and put hard caps on gathering spots (one of many options).8 hours ago, borg- said:I think it would be more interesting if we could train women or men of our choice. Men would have collecting statuses like citizen-soldiers, better in wood, stone, and metal, women in collecting food. This makes the player have to make some more decisions.
You can ofc do that, still doesn't really fix the old issue that military units doubling as resource gatherers is an issue. It has down sides in controls (if you use them to attack the enemy you need to micro a lot to get them back on track again). Also as soon as your military quits to march to the enemy you immediately start loosing resources.
Just a quick math example about my point: You have 10 soldiers, each gathering 10 metal every 10 seconds.
Enemy base is 60s away and also has 10 soldiers.
If you march your soldiers over to the enemy you loose 6x10 = 60 metal just for walking over to the enemy. While your enemy mines 60 metal. This leads to a 120 metal difference between attacker and defender.
That means three things:
1) you need to make infantry/units move quick around hte battlefield to keep the resource loss low, and you need to outmicro your opponent because he potentially has more resources for defending - which gets larger for every second the enemy is not forced to fight with all his soldiers. I.e. 30 seconds of not loosing a unit means another 30 metal difference difference that can be used to make defensive units.
2) the attacker puts a lot of risk into his rush because he needs to disrupt the enemy eco while the enemy is already ahead - and this is not by choice but by design, that's why it's an issue and there are only very few games that mix military and economic units.
3) to lower the negative effect of this you can make soldier gather rates low, to reduce the amount of resources lost when launching attacks (which is why most soldiers do not gather super fast). This makes economy snow balling harder. It's like having an exponential mathematic function. Id you take following assumption: 1) each soldier gives you a 10% bonus to your resource income (fast gathering rates) and 2) each soldier only gives a 3% bonus (slower gathering rates)10% bonus stacking means: 10x1.1 = 1.1, 10x1.1^15 = 15 additional workers mean 41 times more res/minute.
if you apply only 3% you need 10 x 1.03^48 = 48 workers instead to get 41 times more res/minute.It's a bit abstract but I hope you get my point. Right now these effects are not showing all the time because the individual gathering rates of all units are relatively slow, and you need a lot of workers anyways. If you switch those stats you'll get lots of issues though.
In 0ad currently each military AND economy unit gives you a low bonus, and over the course of the game you get an exponential curve at some point if you spam enough soldiers. This can't be wiped unless you rework the way the economy works though.
6 hours ago, StopKillingMe said:Your constant attempt at belittling me are not going to work. All it does is reveal who incredibly immature you are as an individual.
I've met quite a lot of people here and I haven't seen anyone being as immature, stubborn with such a toxic, griefing attitude. You're just stating nonsense that does not help anybody.
Telling people that the devs should stick with the design doc - LOL.
I've written a large essay around 1,5 years ago how the current "game" you love so much is completely the opposite of what's stated in the design doc. I won't list up all the points, but almost every gameplay mechanic present is nowhere even remotely related to the original vision. That's why I proposed the design doc should be revisited (and it currently is).
If you enjoy the alpha - well that's completely fine. Different people enjoy different things.
But expecting OTHER people who play RTS on a regular base to like it regardless is not. defending this by saying "but I have 10 other people who play the game regularely aswell kthx" is just as bad. A healthy community grows overall and if a game is good you don't have 10 guys playing but instead you have thousands. And this only happens if the game is actually good. 0 AD vanilla is mediocre at best at this point.
And stating that Borg only plays god mode and sets off above all others is just random malice. Balance and game design are tightly related and you cannot change one thing without the others. Since you're not even understanding this super basic principle you've disqualified from being taken seriously by anybody in any discussion about balancing or game design.
I have years experience with modding, gameplay editing and different RTS games on my belt, and have lots of friends who I tried to play 0 AD with. They all abandoned it after a couple of games because they found it boring for various reasons - and most of them are into Medieval/ancient RTS game (won't start another discussion at this point though, I think everyone knows my points by now).
@Lion.Kanzen Yea buddy, if there's a more polished state I'll give my 2 cents towards the process. But until then I'll remain a bit in the shadows. Sort of busy with other stuff at the moment.
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15 hours ago, StopKillingMe said:
No - you are the *clearly* one who doesn't get it. We *are* playing this game - and competitively. It's quite obvious you are not a competitive player if you think that training military units for a rush from the CC is an effective strategy. It isn't. Good players boom women and techs first, then build two or three rax, then attack or defend. If you start by training military units from the CC, you will lose.
Trying to tell me that this is a tech demo and nothing more is ridiculously absurd. There is a game play lobby and it's easy to get a 1v1 rated game pretty much most of the day. So you don't know what you are talking about.
I don't care how much whining some of you do - Celts and specifically Britons need a nerf. Slingers need a nerf. The people that are actually playing this game day to day know this - the people that are denying this or making excuses are either not playing, or are more interested in their mod than vanilla.
The Meta as established by top player Borg is to batch train women and tech up, then get up one or two defensive towers at your woodline, build 2 or 3 rax, and then from there different strategies can branch out. If you don't play Borg's established Meta and you come up against someone that does, you will lose badly. Britons are ridiculous - you get an extra scout, building the starting farmstead and storage pit increases your pop and delays the need to build the opening house, and you can go all in on a Slinger rush in Age 1 and it has devastating effect. There is no Meta that has any kind of rush from military units from the CC - the fact that you think that is an issue is a clear indication that you are not playing on the ladder.
Once again, the Celts (Britons) need a nerf, and if that makes a new civ suddenly OP, that would be a very welcome change. You give Borg Britons and he could easily take on 3 or 4 human 1300 level players and win. You wanna win on the ladder? Get a hold of a Borg recorded game, copy his startup build order, play Britons, spam Age 1 Slingers, attack, and keep attacking. If you are doing this effectively, the fact that your opponent is in Age 2 doesn't matter. There is no effective counter for massed slingers, they can destroy towers, houses, farms - you're toast. These are cold hard *facts*, that are coming from experience. And that is what makes an RTS good or not good, how it plays on the ladder. DOtMW had Korean rush problem, AOM had the Poseidon cav rush problem, and both of them were fixed easily. This is not a difficult problem. It is easily fixed, as will the next OP civ that emerges will be just as easy to fix.
Compare the gameplay to Starcraft, the amount of tactical and strategical depth, or any other game that currently is played by larger online communities. Oh and did I mention that Starcraft from 1999 is played by thousands of people simultanously? And even old Age of Empires has more rooms open at the worst time of day on gameranger.
The game is nothing more than a tech demo at this point, face it. And the community is small.
13 hours ago, Servo said:Not everytime a game is based on multiplayer type of game to be gauged as good. Single player and modded games are equally important.
Indeed. But then the developers need to deliver quality single player content. Which isn't the case either. You either tell a story or you make compelling multiplayer. You can't not do both.
13 hours ago, StopKillingMe said:I'm not playing your mod - the people I play on the ladder are not playing your mod. I'm not going to install your mod and then not be able to get a game, I don't understand why this concept is so controversial, I don't understand why every road has to lead to your mod - this is an open source game, improving gameplay with something quick and dirty is better than nothing, and will be far better than getting into the quagmire discussion about your specific mod, especially since there are other mods besides yours. Your massively changing the core game. You just expect everyone to accept your one man show as the new game?
You want to rework the entire game and its not even in beta yet - I'm suggesting we just need to dial back the Celts a bit, and keep playing what we have. Huge difference. So respectfully - why do I have to wholesale accept the massive changes you have made in your mod, bearing in mind if I install it, I can't even play it on the ladder, right?
13 hours ago, StopKillingMe said:I'm just going to restate my opinion:
1. Mods should not become part of vanilla - they are a separate thing. What we have now should be preserved and incrementally improved.
2. A process for patching for balance needs to be established, independent of any other objective, focused 100% on improving competitive MP. It should not depend on any other need, like adding units, changing what buildings can train what, or anything else like that - it should be solely focused on improving what is currently being played.
3. Balance changes need to be clearly communicated to the player community, what is changed, why it is changed, and what the desired outcome is.
4. There is really only one effective proving ground for game balance, ladder play in the Game Lobby.
Patch 1.01 should be solely dedicated to solely nerfing the Celts, and nothing else. Ladder play once this patch is implemented will reveal what needs to be done in 1.02, probably in as little time as a few weeks.
Welcome to ignore.
That's what I wrote in the first place.
However, balancing stats only works if the design is solid. That isn't the case yet.
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34 minutes ago, coworotel said:
Honest question... The things you think the game need, are they implementable as a mod, or do they demand engine changes? Can you give some example?
Mods cannot do it. No game needs mods even before the core game is finished.
That is because mods are not meant to create/simulate core gameplay mechanics. Mods are only for adding additional content to the game (like editing graphic sets, adding units/factions etc.) or make total conversions (i.e. change game setting to sci-fi or medieval) AFTER the game is finished.
ofc they can take content of the community mods to include in their base game if it fits. But the mods itself will never be a replacement for a good, polished vanilla gameplay. The game has to be finished in its own way, with its own gameplay design by the developer team.-
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On 6/4/2019 at 5:55 AM, StopKillingMe said:
Once again, I will restate clearly, the only objective for balance patch 1.0 should be to address the fact that Celts are being overplayed.
So here we go again, yet another attempt (that no doubt you will tell me is wrong):
Remove slingers from Age 1 CC for Britons and Athens, all slingers now trained from barracks in Age 2
Reduce slinger attack to 8.0 pierce - .5 crush, slow attack speed to 2.0 seconds
Implement quickly, see how that affects ladder play, prepare for next patch. Easy peasy.
On 6/4/2019 at 7:12 AM, StopKillingMe said:Well congrats, I will no longer be participating on this forum anymore.
15 hours ago, StopKillingMe said:This post is a perfect example of why I won't be participating here anymore. Everyone knows what the issue is, the Celts need to be nerfed. In vanilla. But every thread now turns into how the most important thing is the borg mod. I and others are not playing the mods, we are playing vanilla, so the solution is obvious. But for some reason any attempt at actually addressing the issue is met with "how dare you speak to us this way", "you're not being respectful enough", etc. I've got better things to do with my time then to try to coddle the egos of a bunch of people that clearly just need to grow up and get over themselves.
Don't you get it? The game isn't finished. Core gameplay mechanics are either missing or not fleshed out. There is no point in playing it "competitively" or expecting a solid gameplay experience. Take this 0 AD alpha as a tech demo, nothing more.
If you change some weapon stats of a unit it won't make a difference, because another unit will be spammed for rushing. That's because you can train military units from your main building, among other issues with resource gathering and overall gameplay speed.
Stop complaining and l2p Age of Empires/AoE 2 if you want a solid competition. 0 AD is the wrong place for that.
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6 minutes ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:
Back then, charts were all the rage.
flip charts are best charts.
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3 hours ago, av93 said:
@Lion.Kanzen please, can you try to not "triple post" and tag the videos under spoilers? I said that without acrimony. That would help to follow the debate, thx
If we talk about characterization of the unit, slingers could have less HP and less range (although some slingers were better regarding reach than some archers) because as you said, they need to be in a wide formation, thus fewer ranks could shoot, and also would be killed easily by melee charges. But if we speak about realism, they should punch more than arrows.
But my main concern should be that the 3 roles should be differentiated and used.
In theory you have multiple approaches:
Option 1) You make slingers and archers the same role (ranged anti inf) with only different stats. And each civ only gets the type of unit they used the most - i.e. Egypt and Persians used slingers, while other factions use archers exclusively. It's then pretty much just a skin difference, a bit like the difference of Meso Civs in AoE having eagle warriors while regular civs have scout cav.
Option 2) You differentiate slingers and archers by stats : Both are available to most factions by default.
slingers have high damage and good accuracy on shorter ranges and relatively low rate of fire.
.They also are fast, but have low health - this makes them good early raiding infantry to do hit & run. Archers have lower damage, but good accuracy on all ranges, fire faster and deal damage more consistent and have better armor/health than slingers while being slower.
If you further out this system you could apply a modifier for ranged unit rate of fire with its shooting range. In CoH you have 4 different combat distances, in which you can modify accuracy, penetration and rate of fire of a gun. I.e. infantry rifles take 0.95sec. to aim at a target at 35m but only 0.6 at 6m.Option 3) You differentiate multiple archer/slinger classes (this option profits from battalions)
Slingers are on par with basic archers, the characteristics are similar to option 2. But you also have certain advanced archer/slinger units that players of certain factions can deploy.
Ie. egypt have basic slingers instead of normal archers, but they can deploy composite archers later in the game.You can then train a battalion of Slingers, consisting of maybe 10 Slingers that move and fight in a loose formation. Archers come in larger numbers per battalion - maybe 20?- and fight is close formations. Also Archers could have a "rain arrows" ability that allows them to barrage a certain area with fire arrows to scare or instantly burn enemy units ("weapon critical damage"). Slingers could have a chance to stun enemy units upon hitting them from close range.
Some factions also have access to special slinger units/upgrades or special archers that allow unique tactics compared to other factions. And battalions allow to either make larger amounts of cheap "trash archers" or a bunch of elite archers, depending on civ and map choice.
This version would be mostly interesting if you can apply armortypes to units and add flanking damage. Slingers would be used to "dance around" enemy units, trying to hit them from side/rear. While archers can inflict damage more consistently. from a "closed frontline". This sort of reflects the characteristics of both unit types more accurately, but is certainly the hardest option.
Option 4) You use multiple archer/slinger classes and use them regardless as assets for the game, leaving it up to the player which units to use. Stats like dmg, rate of fire etc. are done for each unit similar to option 2. This is the version currently present and has large drawbacks, esp. in terms of inner faction balance. This is prety much the easiest along with option 2.
There probably are even more options, those were just some I could think of in the nick of time.
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30 minutes ago, wraitii said:
It appears to me some people enjoy the game, so I would not say this is an absolute fact. One can also create an almost perfect AoE 2 clone, which is a good game, purely by editing templates.
Now, regardless of what the team will decide on balancing, I would like to say that borg has worked hard on his mod to make something that (it seems) people like, and that is a valuable achievement, which we should all recognise and applaud.
Nowadays there is AoE 2 HD, AoM : EE and AoE 2 DE in the makings you already have 2 superior clones of AoE 2 on the market, supported and published by major game companies along with superior graphics. So there no longer is a need for another AoE clone since the base products are vastly superior in every aspect at this point.
But at least "we want to make 0 AD an Age of Empires clone" would state a goal/vision for the finished game. If you cannot compete with ideas of your own - steal them and work on improving small details to smoothen the template. Altough I sort of doubt you're capable of that because it could have happened 10 years ago/the core gameplay could've been centered around this. I'm also quite sure the base community would be larger by a multitude if that was the case. AoE 2 HD has a player base of more than 10k people at all times.
about the "community enjoying the game" I heavily suspect that most of the people "enjoy the game" for reasons that have nothing to do with the gameplay itself. They either like that their favorite faction is in the game or that you have unit Y available, not because the game itself is compelling.
As an example for external feedback I only ever saw people on YT creating content for 0 AD who said "alright this looks pretty" "okay some XXX here and there", then some battling/skirmishing and afterwards I've never seen them play the game again on their channel. Sure - some players only present unique videos per game, but there are others who have a pool of games to choose from and play those from time to time during their streams/videos. For all those "pool players" 0 ad never made it into their game pool, for reasons unknown (or maybe known?).
As a random sidenote: my RTS mates which I invited to play 0 ad with me all stated "oh well it looks nice but it's boring".
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45 minutes ago, Sundiata said:
This discussion is weird.
There's serious balance issues with the game.
Borg made a balance mod to address these issues. Big success, no negative feedback.
Help Borg implement those balance changes that don't affect core gameplay/historicity etc. in the vanilla game.
If you're unhappy with the balance changes, then comment something substantive on what you'd like to see changed and why.
This discussion is turning into borg having to defend why he improved gameplay. It's making me cringe...
Don't behave like an autoimmune disease.
It's the core game mechanics that are lacking. The balance itself being bad is just another minor side effect of that.
If the core game is bad, a good balance can only improve the game to become sub-par/mediocre at best.
Good core game mechanics/features with a bad balance can be fixed with stats changes to become enjoyable.
QuoteI don't want to take strong position but I think that a reason why devs could be hesitant to implement those big changes in main game is also because we don't know what to expect. All those changes are very complex to balance, and we can't garantee that borg-'s mod is balanced simply because there really is too few testing. Even if, in the very few games i played in the mod, I didn't find any imbalance, i can't say if the mod is balanced and the same reasoning should be applied to the positive feedback it receives. It is not enough. Small changes can lead to big imbalances. I am not against putting the mod in the base game since it would lead to some progress in that direction but you can't expect balance complaints to stop.
Also, it may not seem like it with the sizeable complaints about balancing but don't forget that a23 is much more balanced than a21 or a22 were.@Feldfeld It's not about hesitating. It's that noone has a clue how the game is supposed to be in the first place. That's what is missing. If you have an idea what you're working towards you can adjust the components necessary. That way you automatically start the balancing process. Because every new feature along the way towards the goal, the finished product, serves a purpose and can be balanced around that purpose.
BUT If you don't know where you're going you end up with a couple of loose ends that do not fit together - which we have right now.
And balance complaints will always be there, no matter what happens to the game. Even in chess there are people who complain that white is better than black because white always starts the match.
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3 hours ago, borg- said:
My priorities are also pathfinder, lag, among other things, but I do not know how to do that.
But I know how to make a good balance, and why not? if we have who do, and how to do, why not? Why not make the game even better?
58 minutes ago, fatherbushido said:There was different organization (one head, committee, ...).
The last official info about wfg I have is that it was decided at 2014-08-03 (see meetinglogs) to agree on merging the balancing branch of one member and to open a poll to give him the head of the gameplay balance. I didn't find public results of that poll. But it was kinda implicit that he was in charge of that.
I remember asking agreement before committing balancing changes, then don't asking him (sorry for that). So did other members. (We most of the times used forum, irc, trying to fight against our own biases or not, grepping opinions or not, phabricator also). I had asked several times clarification about that.
Due to past issues about that (see commit history above) and to other facts, there was an implicit conservation policy about committing balancing change.
I assume he is still in charge of that as I didn't see any announcement about that (or I missed it).
On the last 5 years, grepping for balance in commit message:
[...]
Obviously balancing is necessary to make a good rts. But what kind of players are you refering to? (I guess you refers to online multiplayer players?)
Well, the main question always was : how is the game supposed to be played? All the current features ingame are not glued together. They're taken from AoE II and other games and combined roughly to represent "something" which isn't clear.
Gameplay balancing can only work when the game is in a stable version and the basic gameplay decisions are set. Which includes (simplified):
- how much is the balance economy/warfare (in terms of player micro)
- how detailed is the economy setup/how do map control elements work
- how much is tactical/strategical micro
- how is the basic counter system/tech tree (shared tech tree or unique tech trees for each faction)
- which factions are included and how unique are they designed
- etc. I just pulled those out of thin air, there are probably a lot of other points with even higher priorityEDIT: Nescio put some nice points:
edit2: these @#$%ing quote mechanics, half my post is gone... fck this.
- content (actors, animations, icons, maps, sounds, etc.), which have to be up to the art department's standards
- features, which require serious reviews from the programming team to ensure code doesn't have unintended consequences
- balance tweaks (e.g. how much health a structure has, unit attack damage, which entities are available to which faction in which phase, etc.); these happen occassionally, as @fatherbushido pointed out, but not frequently enough, according to many people on these forums
In general borg was right : the game is judged by its vanilla content and gameplay. Mods can NEVER EVER be a replacement for a stable, fluid, working game. They can be used for total conversions, adding content (especially for single player experience - campaigns, missions etc.) but not for adding basic things as counter systems or tech trees.
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4 hours ago, Stan` said:
Which is why @Itms found two people to work on the design document, and we have @borg- working and experimenting balancing in his mod. You can find said design document here. The markdown source can be found here.
If you wish to contribute in some way, please feel free to do so by contacting @Itms directly.
I'll check out the design doc and see if it fits my views. If so I will start contributing.
Of course this isn't perfect, and I would be much more happier if the game had perfect balance in the first place. However, I was asked what, in my own point of view, were the pros and cons. Since the goal is to try to find pros I thought it was a pretty good one. As @wowgetoffyourcellphone said, balancing needs experimenting (and other stuff). Mods are a good way to experiment things between releases, as they don't follow the same schedule. It also allows one with no prior experience on balancing the game to learn things. It's kind of a way to get people to be competent with the balancing of the game by having a deeper knowledge.
Not to start a game design <-> balancing discussion yet again - if your game fails to setup even the most basic rulesets for gameplay you've failed at the task of creating a game. The game is a game because of game mechanics. Not because of gfx. Else it's a tech demo or a development skeleton for advanced applications. Ofc you need to create/modify a game engine to fit your needs, and those engine related issues have to be cleaned up prior to gameplay. But still both interact even at a very early stage of development.
In the industry, of course yes. Here it's a bit different, all external people are potential game developers. You could also be.
Yes you are right - potentially everyone can be a developer. But not everybody should BE a developer. There are dozens of good scripters out there who are good at creating code, or artists who are great with 2d/3d art. But they have no idea of how the game making actually works. But it really depends on how you define the term developer. A dev is usually someone who has overall understanding about the inner processes that are required to create and finish the game, along with knowledge about the game content. At least from my point of view. Ofc you can say that everybody is a developer, but the core people are "lead devs" or smth like that who hold the definition above.
That is not the problem here
The issue is that we have to ensure we are not breaking the game, that's what the review process is for: Ensuring quality. @elexis learnt the hard way that stacking patches on top of each other for years make the game unmaintenable and makes it require a lot of cleanup sometimes a full rewrite., so now he is very careful about everything he does which is a good thing.
Since I've seen myself how hard it is to manually sync multiple svns from different people into a single, most up-to-date repository I can absolutely understand the amount of cleanup required. However, I didn't say anything about stacking patches on top of each other - I stated it's important to focus to get the important core features working and only after that has happened there is a need for optimization along with side effects like moddability etc.
Actually there has too much time passed anyways to not possibly break anything significant. But since noone cared for years that's sort of.. your problem (as a team)...
It's implemented in @borg-'s mod, and it seems to work quite well, but just because a code works doesn't mean it's good. We can't rely on quick and dirty code. Also, even though I do code, I don't have the programmer's hat, I have exactly the same impact there as say @Angen except I have the rights to commit my own code once it's reviewed.
tldr; The patch isn't implemented not because it breaks mods, but because we aren't sure this is the best way to do it.
Which is absolutely fine. But that's what internal testers are for. You know...... Gameplay developer along with players to test the internal version from time to time to provide feedback and issues. Also, you can't always have "the best way to do it". It's impossible because your resources and time are limited. You need a realistically working version of a script that can be optimized in the long run.
Of course, and we sometimes help them to adapt.
Well we are kind in a unique situation to be honest.
(sarcasm)
(/sarcasm)
Hmm looks liek the quote system got f'ed up. I'll again reply in the post directly.
2 hours ago, elexis said:You propose someone to write a different design document.
My point was that the ones who do the implementation should not leave things up to chances but should attempt to keep the game enjoyable (even if you don't consider it enjoyable).
I stated that there are significant differences between the design document and the current "game" that is presented and published. I proved my points multiple times and stated options to put the game in line with the existing design document. I also proposed that a game design dev (or at least someone familiar with game designing) should be included in the team who actually is responsible for the balancing and design aspects of the game. Because that's what the game needs. A proper design followed by some intensive care from balance testers prior to release, instead of fiddling with randomly setup numbers and call that "balance fixes".
I also stated that the design document should be revised to actually provide a unique vision. Noone needs AoE II clones when there is AoE 2 HD and AoE 1 DE which provide the same, but better. Afaik no dev actually plays the game at all. That's how enjoyable the game is in it's current form. Not even the game makers want to play it.
great way to greatly change the game
in Gameplay Discussion
Posted