chrstgtr

Every post ever from you

Statements like the one you quoted above are also just not true. 0AD's representation of civs isn't a "snapshot." For example, Ptol is in no way a "snapshot. Ptol's heroes are its founder (305-282 BC), a middle ruler (221-204 BC), and its final ruler (51-30 BC). That is not a snapshot--it's literally its entire existence. Compare this to the Roman heroes who lived after the first ptol hero and way before the last ptol hero. The heroes for Gauls spans an even wider period. The rules and historical features are applied in an entirely inconsistent manner.

It is the Punic Wars period. I think it's a silly restriction that leaves out the most popular Roman figures. But here we are.

I see where @roscany is coming from but don't fully agree. It's the reason why I think this is a good candidate for com mod testing.

It's not a full campaign mode. It lacks a lot of hallmarks of a classic campaign mode too. It was only a side project for one of the devs. "Competitive" doesn't mean SP. Most MP games aren't "competitive." There just isn't anything to suggest the long-term SP audience is larger than the MP audience. I don't know how long you've been playing. But the AI for 0AD is really dumb. It literally doesn't know how to use all the buildings. It attacks the closest/building and then follows it until it kills it. There are literally videos online where players exploit how dumb AI is to win 1v7 while only making women. That isn't an AI that can retain many long-term SPs because once you get decent at the game it very quickly becomes too easy and boring. You, again, have absolutely zero basis for this. There are literally hundreds of thousands of downloads/installs. Yet the observable user count doesn't go up. That means most users only for an extremely short period of time. So short that most users cannot possibly learn all the features that exist. I do not understand how you can possibly think adding more features will retain more users when the typical user hasn't discovered most of what already exists. To them there are no "old features." Everyone wants a game where it's mechanics work together.

Something has to be done about sniping, and I think something like this should be integrated into vanilla. This seems like a good thing to test in the community mod. There was a thread a while back where we discuss different possible area attack options--what I think you are describing is how I would probably prefer it.

I'm just talking about what the user base most likely looks like. When you have hundred of thousands of new installs/downloads and virtually no observable user growth then you have a retention problem. That is obvious. With how many downloads/installs we have, I think it is pretty likely that most new players play the game for an extremely short period of time (because it is too difficult--learning curve that a better tutorial could help with) or never play it at all (because there isn't a campaign mode--more on that later). It's often said that the SP community is larger. But there is virtually no evidence to support that. The inverse is largely true too. It's been said many times, but the SP experience needs to improve if we want the user base to grow. Some of those SPs will then convert to MP, which will cause the MP base to grow too. I think a better AI and campaign mode are the obvious ways to improve the SP experience. A dumb AI means that most players will eventually get bored by the game because it is too easy. I don't think I need to explain why a campaign mode is needed. One thing that is almost certain is that the retention problem will not be fixed by new features. New players are much more likely to be initially overwhelmed than wanting for a new spy functionality (or whatever).

It isn’t clear how many SPs there are or how long they play for. We do know that there are (at least) like 2K total players a day (split between SP and MP). But it isn’t clear how many of those players downloaded the game that day and are testing it out vs. how many of those players have been playing for multiple months. No matter how you look at it, though, there is a huge retention problem if there are 300K downloads and we only observe a steady 2K players or so (i.e., no real growth in user count). It also means that some portion of that 2K player count is probably a stream new users that come play for a short time before they leave and are replaced by another new user that will only play for a short time. We also see this constant stream of new players in the forums where a new user comes along makes a few posts for a week or two and then disappears (sometimes forever) Personally, I suspect there are about an equal number of long-term SP and MP users, which reflects what we see on the forum.

/thread

Sure. Also balance concerns. Just saying that I don’t think an auto upgrade for stone is going to make any one phase any faster, which kind of defeats the purpose of the bonus.

Sounds like it would be easy to forget about and wouldn’t drive gameplay. I would go bigger (eg, do it for metal and wood too but maybe that is too similar to Mace)

This doesn’t make sense. Again, this changes unit balance, which isn’t what’s being discussed. Just do something like +10% health across all units. Or make it an auto upgrade like it was before with phasing

Agree. All the other stuff impact unit balance instead of actually address the underlying concern that all units die too fast.

Personally, I think units die too fast and have died too fast since a24, which removed the auto health upgrades from phasing up. I think the obvious improvement is just an overall unit health buff. It makes battles last longer, which is more satisfying, and makes retreating a bit easier, which I agree is needed Also, agree with @real_tabasco_sauce re melee units needing a speed buff. Glad you’ve come around to this idea. This is more about melee/range balance, though.