chrstgtr

Yeah, they’re used. But the way that with eyes used kind of elicits an eye roll, so the situation might actually be worse than you realize. 99% of time they’re used to just frustrate the attacking player. Walls confuse pathing and give an extra object for siege to attack before moving onto a more useful building. So they have an entirely passive existence Wall typically don’t serve any active purpose of making defenses stronger, which is what you probably want them to do. the proposal might make them less likely to be used in the annoying passive way since they’ll be easier to destroy (but they’ll also be easier to spam, so maybe not). To be determined if the proposal does anything to make them better for building active defenses

I think he meant the turtling meta isn’t desirable. Also, walls aren’t useless. They do a good job of slowing an invading army and are regularly built for that purpose. Making them more easily destroyed helps eliminate that “build to only frustrate” meta that walls are in.

This is why I think any change should be only done to the inf spear modifier. Against cav I think this is just a such obvious solution. Almost everyone agrees that champ cav are too strong against cs spear inf. Any other change would mess with other balance. It’s targeted and gets what everyone thinks should change.

Eh. 10% isn’t that much in the cav vs one discussion—cav is already much faster than inf. Getting the Brit speed hero doesn’t suddenly let make inf much better than cav with the tech, for example. Functionally, the tech means you can raid other side of map for an extra second or two before returning to your side to fight inf. That extra second or two doesn’t change that much. You also see people forget speed tech and still become dominant because they massed champ cav. That shows there is more going on than the speed tech. the cav vs spear example you give isn’t representative of real fights. In real fights, you have a bunch of range killing that spear too. It’s also pretty common that you see a player get a “good exchange on res” with spear vs cav but can’t keep up fight because their pop dropped so much and the backing enemy range units are able to overrun the remaining base honestly, haven’t seen any difference with the popularity of sele or Persia champ cav. Sele and Persia have both always been relatively unpopular (esp compared to the civs you mention) bc Persia/sele are slow civs. Persia is just played a little more now because people figured out that immortals are good.

I don't like the tech either. But I don't think it is a big deal as the % increase is just too small. It really only matters in cav vs cav fights. The problem is that champ cav can beat their supposed counters (spears) in straight up fights. Until that changes, champ cav will always be the best unit and optimal strategy will require players to spam as many champ cav as possible.

This isn’t how players use them, though.

Not really. They're interrelated but not the same. A slow paced game can still be a difficult game. And a fast paced game can still be an easy game.

Sounds like your gripe isn’t with the game pacing but with difficulty.

Great. I always find these stats interesting. It would be amazing if we can consistently retain these users.

I don't have MP stats. Anecdotally, it is pretty clear the MP community hated a24. There were a ton of old players that stopped playing. There was an effort to stay in a23. Complaints about the alpha were endlessly expressed. Etc. Enabled feedback is a datapoint. There isn't a reason to think that either SPs or MPs are more likely to enable feedback than the other. To the extent that the feedback stats are more representative of the SP community a24 was also a massive failure there. It's also certain that the MP community couldn't drive that entire drop off. So there were definitely uninstalls. All this is to say that the "let's break it before we maybe fix it" is one that losses players.

That isn't what the data says. The data shows that the number of players basically fell off a cliff with a24.

That's because sahara isn't actually low wood. It's pretty medium wood. It's most defined by being high food--more date trees and usually good hunt. It also has slightly more mines. If you want to see low wood--see savannah. Very low wood. Lots of mines. A map like wild lake has less differences between biomes. There are trees around the lake regardless of biome. The biome effects are most noticeable on something like mainland.

Look harder. I found this in under a minute using a targeted search. The thread doesn't discuss why most players want current speed times (probably because it was widely accepted that current train times are desirable). Actually, only one person pushes back on shorter train times. It was you. You don't give any reason for wanting longer train times other than noting that other games have longer train times. Notably, your latest reason for wanting longer train times--to reduce spam--is directly refuted by...yourself: when you say "The problem with changing training times is that it does nothing to fix the fundamental issue [with spam]." This is quick way to lose the player base. After greatly increasing the player count during COVID, the player base almost immediately decreased with a24's release and it hasn't recovered. In the face of criticism, some used your exact logic to justify a24's changes. It's obviously a failed strategy. Purposely "ruining" 0ad would be a disaster

Your small sample size is very unrepresentative of the current meta. Vali is so much better than the vast majority of people that his play style is very different compared to how most people play, including the very best players. So all your conclusions that follow aren't valid. To be honest you haven't really explained it. Instead, you've bounced around from idea to idea and now, for the first time, seem to be complaining about some unit spam meta instead of any of the other things you've previously mentioned. I've given you reasons why longer train times failed in a24 and you keep saying some variation of "well, go figure out a way to deal with it." No wonder why you haven't address any of my concerns. Also, players hating it is a reason in itself. There are countless threads where players say that devs don't listen to players and failure is the reason why they are leaving the game, the game struggles gain a following, the game isn't better, etc. Almost every time devs come back and asks "what do you mean" or "can you give me an example, we never do that." Well, here we are again.

This. Everything that OP talked about in his last post isn't about clicks. The vision says 0AD shouldn't be "the most clicks wins." I don't think anyone reasonable wants that (see any thread on sniping). Players are limited in the number of their clicks in early game because they simply do not have a robust enough economy to do more than a few things. And, in the grand scheme of things, 0AD isn't a "the most clicks wins" type of game compared to other games within RTS and other genres. Again, if the game is moving too fast for anyone, I suggest to simply change the game speed to .75x speed or something lower. Changing the the actual train times messes with the underlying balance of the game and no one has put forward an argument on why that should change or how it would avoid a24's problems.