badosu

Generally buffs are more desired imo for balance changes. In this case buffing skirmishers in general. Balance against melee comp seems good.

Can't you see many issues pointed out are viewed as actual issues by the dev team as well? The thing is players will never know any work is being done, won't enjoy any of those fixes until the new release and will keep being disgruntled meanwhile. Having a more up-to-date installation channel addresses that issue. Frankly, after experiencing this development model somewhere else I can't understand how a collaborative development model can be sustainable without it.

> but why would we if we just get told we're wrong by every dev that is on the forum? A big part of the balance work was done by Nescio, he has a lot of knowledge in this matter and might actually agree with you. With so many threads discussing the same thing with a lot of noise distributed along them I find it hard for all devs to have read all the suggestions and dismissed them. There's a place where visibility to dev team is more preeminent and a civil focused discourse can be reached.

Forum is not the proper place except for informal discussion, you're basically waiting for a dev to read your comment and decide to work on it? Feel free to suggest a fix on https://code.wildfiregames.com/ . E.g. "Decrease build times dues to ...", attach a replay and gg

I don't think you understand we're on the same side here, we know civ differentiation needs to be improved, that bug was reported and should produce a ticket to be fixed, etc etc.. How are we going to test this? After 6 months? I will state for the last time: have some way to provide frequent fixes/balance changes weekly. If this is an alpha that should not be an issue. This should address most complaints.

We all have the same goal here. I just think we have deficient processes to provide successful releases, either an overarching informed design committee or a feedback-cycle powered development process. Neither of both are present. And yes, if there are bugs surely they need to be fixed. What I mean are things like general sentiments about gameplay without an established meta, while valuable themselves in some way they don't provide actionable information.

To be fair, no suggestions for improvement or a qualified argument was presented. The closest one being stalemate on team games. One can for example provide a suggestion to have units deal more damage or champions being more powerful on late game as finishers, there are many ways to address the issue (if there's such an issue), none were presented.

Weekly lobby would address these issues imo, accompanied by a better way to discuss with devs (discord channel with slow-mode on perhaps?). And yes, generally I agree balance changes are something that takes a while to settle before any conclusion can be reached while at the same time I also agree that we'd require some better communication.

That's the idea Lack of player feedback is the biggest issue with the development process imo. There has been a major improvement with player involvement on a24, but there's still room for improvement. Making a weekly update that includes the new changes would be awesome, or at least in an alternate lobby/installation.

I guess there's some confusion with terminology. I'll make it simple: if you can test the gameplay/balance changes for the next version you can provide feedback that it's less fun and avoid issues with the new release. Does that make sense?

That is an incredibly puzzling post. But ok

Maybe having infrastructure to test balance changes in next alpha more frequently would help?

True Slingers were really not that great, it takes a lot of training and skill to be able to use a sling effectively over a certain range. I had this idea where you could spam slingers well but they'd be incredibly inaccurate and squishy. They would be ineffective for the population cost but great at early game harass. Perhaps a nice way to differentiate britons and gauls further, tying to their current early game strong late game weak idea? (cc @borg- @Nescio) That said I reserve the right of balearic slinger champs to be OP I agree with skirmishers being able to handle close combat better, which stat can best balance that I'm not sure.

A saying as old as the internet itself: don't feed the troll. As for banning, I don't feel strongly either way, I certainly like the lackadaisical approach that we have currently but I've been on the receiving end of the trolling itself. I feel the bigger issue is more about the extremely low quality content and signal-to-noise ratio. Especially considering we have to read that crap, and that only people involved in development effort itself can truly appreciate what has been done (tks @borg-@Nescio the whole 0ad dev team and reviewers @Feldfeld @ValihrAnt). Even not polished feedback from players is welcome, and even with a certain level of salt, it's at least legitimate. Just a soft-ban on certain subforums (that require some level of intelligibility) would be enough in my understanding, they can still trash talk anywhere else. (PS: I don't want this to takeover the discussion, just my 2 cents)

It seems to me we should have more well-defined roles for javelins and slingers given the results? At closer range I'd expect for javelins to be way more effective, basically as skirmishers they should be more suitable for close combat (perhaps more effective at supporting infantry?). As for slingers, what role they could even have?

Copy-pasting A24 Invitational rules (RIP) if you find any use for it: The tournament will consist of a Ro8 (Bo3), Ro4 (Bo5), Finals (Bo7). Both Ro8 and Ro4 will be done on a Saturday and the finals on a Sunday. So the tournament will last a weekend. If both finalists agree the finals can be scheduled to a better date. Rules are simple: - First game on Balanced Mainland - Each player prepicks a civilization before game, civs used in previous games can't be picked again - Loser picks next map Map Pool: - Balanced Mainland (small) - Balanced Hyrcanian Shores (medium) - Wrench (medium) - Cross (medium) - Slopes (small) - 2 last maps to be defined OP! That would be certainly most entertaining.

Hmm.. checking it, thanks for the feedback

RC3: Fix for goats 70 food now, on alpine sheep are used instead balanced-maps.pyromod

RC2: Fix DiskPlacer usage since it was merged and modified into upstream, fix hyrcanian shores flora changes. balanced-maps.pyromod

Release Candidate, if no bugs are reported I'll release this on mod.io next week:

First release candidate for A24, as far as I can see only remaining thing to fix is the new stanza command to deny entry for unmodded players on balanced map host. Issue was that all berry templates are now inside `gaia/fruit`, which is very handy, thanks! Please test, I won't be testing extensively so it will be what will be released if no complaints arise. balanced-maps.pyromod

@ValihrAnt provided some useful data showing that there are possibly changes to fauna templates messing up with the counts, so even if gen is successful food won't be balanced (everything else will).

Yeah, I fixed that, unfortunately the top bar replacement is a bit tricky with the new handlers architecture without a proper way to deregister, working that out.

balanced-maps updated, currently dev version (requires adjustment for blocking joins when hosting balanced-map against players without mod), find on balanced-maps thread on map making subforum

Dev version, only install if you know what you are doing. Proper update requires further adjustments to avoid people without mod joining room if balanced-map being hosted. balanced-maps.pyromod