Default attack vs. buildings; balance between Capture and Attack

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

Not sure it's "cluttering" anything when there's currently zero buttons there to begin with. Adding the word "random" artificially inflates your case.  

[chrstgtr]

8 minutes ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

Not sure it's "cluttering" anything when there's currently zero buttons there to begin with. Adding the word "random" artificially inflates your case.  

It’s random if there’s no reason it is an upgrade instead of a built in feature. The same way we could make defense towers buildings that do nothing until you click an upgrade tower to get arrows. 

Adding a bunch of buttons to do basic things doesn’t make the game more fun. And, yes, that is cluttering the tech tree even if there is nothing already there. It creates a mental load where one shouldn’t exist. 

[Gurken Khan]

15 minutes ago, chrstgtr said:

there’s no reason it is an upgrade instead of a built in feature

From what I remember it was argued that iber had too much of an advantage when the joints were able to fire.

[Grautvornix]

Sure, but this could be a way to increase the value of walls without changing their resistance to attacks.

Not sure if walls are popular element in the current version as they are relatively easy to attack and destroy. 

Garrisoning troops does not add much defense as far as I have seen and these troops are still quite exposed and get killed quickly. Walls also do not reduce attack range of an enemy shooting over the wall thus hitting everything that is in range inside a wall ring.

I'd like to use walls more to deny access to a valley or protect farms or markets or to simply protect a CC. Certainly an element of turtling...

I believe, a good wall system with towers and fortresses was effective to some extend (e.g. troy) until siege engines were refined. Attacking would mandate having adequate siege equipment and not a few (strong) cavalry etc. taking down a wall element.

[Grautvornix]

2 minutes ago, Gurken Khan said:

From what I remember it was argued that iber had too much of an advantage when the joints were able to fire.

But - I believe the proposal was not to do that by default but as a research technology (addon at later stage with individual cost per tower (e.g. stone).

[chrstgtr]

5 minutes ago, Gurken Khan said:

From what I remember it was argued that iber had too much of an advantage when the joints were able to fire.

Yes, and that was ridiculous. 

Many posts on the forums should be ignored because they’re made by people who have absolutely no idea what they’re talking about. 

[Gurken Khan]

5 minutes ago, Grautvornix said:

But - I believe the proposal was not to do that by default but as a research technology (addon at later stage with individual cost per tower (e.g. stone).

Yes, that's the current proposal from @wowgetoffyourcellphone. They used to be able to shoot by default. I guess I'd be fine with that tec.

 

4 minutes ago, chrstgtr said:

Many posts on the forums should be ignored because they’re made by people who have absolutely no idea what they’re talking about. 

That may be. In this case I feel it was the project lead who told me that (I might be wrong), and the devs appear to have sufficiently agreed with it, else it wouldn't have been implemented. (Although my understanding is that a lot of devs don't actually play that much.)

[Grautvornix]

"Many posts on the forums should be ignored because they’re made by people who have absolutely no idea what they’re talking about. "

@chrstgtrAre you suggesting to ignore proposals unless they are coming from an expert? (Point taken - I know my suggestions a shooting mostly into the blue and are not realistic to implement nor historically solid,  but I though this might trigger discussion and thought processes).

Personally, I'd thought however Wow knows what he is talking about...

Edited yesterday at 18:33 by Grautvornix

[alre]

shooting wall joints were canceled because they didn't have any positioning restriction and this made it possible to cram a lot of firepower in a small space. this is what I remember.

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

1 minute ago, alre said:

shooting wall joints were canceled because they didn't have any positioning restriction and this made it possible to cram a lot of firepower in a small space. this is what I remember.

 

Indeed, this was the real reason and I think it's still valid. At least with my proposal you'd have to pay handsomely for the exploit so much so it'd might not be worth it. 

[chrstgtr]

Just now, Gurken Khan said:

That may be. In this case I feel it was the project lead who told me that (I might be wrong), and the devs appear to have sufficiently agreed with it, else it wouldn't have been implemented. (Although my understanding is that a lot of devs don't actually play that much.

I’m almost positive it was done under/by Nescio. He did many things that made absolutely no sense. It resulted in an absolutely awful alpha that drove off a large portion of the community and the game hasn’t recovered since then. When someone tried to give him input he would get mad and reject their suggestions. Then he would get madder when people didn’t like the product he put out. Good riddance

It goes without saying, but you can’t properly design a game if you don’t understand it and you can’t truly understand it unless you play the game. The current iteration of devs are much better about listening to player feedback. But before it felt like many devs eschewed  any input from actual players. 

[chrstgtr]

4 minutes ago, alre said:

shooting wall joints were canceled because they didn't have any positioning restriction and this made it possible to cram a lot of firepower in a small space. this is what I remember.

 

1 minute ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

 

Indeed, this was the real reason and I think it's still valid. At least with my proposal you'd have to pay handsomely for the exploit so much so it'd might not be worth it. 

No. That change predated the complete stripping of arrows. Turrets could shoot arrows until a24 or a25.

You both are describing a change that occurred before a21 (when I started playing). I think there was a spacing requirement or something installed that prevent people from spamming turrets (but I’m not really sure because I wasn’t around then and have only seen old forum posts on it) 

[chrstgtr]

17 minutes ago, Grautvornix said:

@chrstgtrAre you suggesting to ignore proposals unless they are coming from an expert? (Point taken - I know my suggestions a shooting mostly into the blue and are not realistic to implement nor historically solid,  but I though this might trigger discussion and thought processes).

I’m saying people who don’t understand how the game is played shouldn’t be given any weight in gameplay discussions. It’s really not a controversial position. 

For example, about once a month, a new player makes an account and says “rams are OP—my 100 archers can’t kill them! Please nerf rams!!!” One way to react would be to say this is a really common complaint so rams must be OP. Another way to react would be to say these are new players that don’t yet understand that you need melee units to kill rams. This second reaction also knows that if you make rams super susceptible to archers then rams will quickly become useless. 

[chrstgtr]

@wowgetoffyourcellphone @alre

 

this is the change you guys were talking about. The fix then was to have a min distance

https://trac.wildfiregames.com/ticket/3811

 

 

[real_tabasco_sauce]

2 hours ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

I'd really like it if individual (non-shooting) wall joints (we call them towers currently) could be individually upgradeable to shooting towers. 

There's no need.

Firstly, as others have said wall turrets shooting arrows was problematic because you could cram so many close together. It was also a bit of a buff for iber and just made for an annoyance even after an iberian player had been fully destroyed.

We have towers for arrow shooting, and walls for blocking movement. Let walls be walls and let towers be towers. Trying to blend gameplay mechanics like this is unnecessary and distracts from the actual gameplay purpose of these structures. I'm glad wall turret arrows were removed tbh.

[Atrik]

31 minutes ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

We have towers for arrow shooting, and walls for blocking movement. Let walls be walls and let towers be towers.

IIRC you once suggested to make wall towers turret points for sieges like bolts and catas. Maybe that one can give a good purpose to wall turrets and worse thing that can happen is having a bunch of sieges a bit harder to destroy but not as annoying as structures like towers.

[chrstgtr]

57 minutes ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

There's no need.

Firstly, as others have said wall turrets shooting arrows was problematic because you could cram so many close together. It was also a bit of a buff for iber and just made for an annoyance even after an iberian player had been fully destroyed.

Turrets haven’t been OP since I started playing in a21. They’ve barely had a use case beyond garrison against rush (something iber is susceptible to) when you play iber. Nonetheless, I don’t care if they exist. But we should eliminate their existence if they’re just another segment to a wall. right now, turrets just seem like a bug where you garrison and nothing happens 
 

[chrstgtr]

@wowgetoffyourcellphone @alre

https://code.wildfiregames.com/D3706 

https://code.wildfiregames.com/rP25135

Confirmed--turrets could attack until a24/a25 (can't tell on the date). Unsurprisingly,  it was a Nescio written change. 

Little real reason is given to explain/justify the change, which wratii kind of hints at in the commit thread. 

Basically, the notion that turrets were OP and needed to have their attack removed is a fiction. 

[hyperion]

7 hours ago, chrstgtr said:

@wowgetoffyourcellphone @alre

https://code.wildfiregames.com/D3706 

https://code.wildfiregames.com/rP25135

Confirmed--turrets could attack until a24/a25 (can't tell on the date). Unsurprisingly,  it was a Nescio written change. 

Little real reason is given to explain/justify the change, which wratii kind of hints at in the commit thread. 

Basically, the notion that turrets were OP and needed to have their attack removed is a fiction. 

@borg- clearly stated he approves the patch, and there are reasons given even if you disapprove. Also that was at a time when balancing was mostly discussed in PMs, which is luckily no longer the case.

[chrstgtr]

51 minutes ago, hyperion said:

@borg- clearly stated he approves the patch, and there are reasons given even if you disapprove. Also that was at a time when balancing was mostly discussed in PMs, which is luckily no longer the case.

Here comes @hyperion just disagreeing with anything I say again. Shocking.

Nothing I said was untrue. 

As to the "reasons" given. Those reasons are: (1) turrets stats are bad--has nothing to do with whether they should shoot--and (2) turrets are walls, which clearly they are not. 

Even now, when people are trying to justify the removal of the attack function they do so by harkening back to a pre-a21 period when turrets could be closely placed together, which wasn't the case when the attack function was removed. 

You want to get rid of turrets attack function? Fine--I don't care. But pretending it was a masterstroke by Nescio is a lie. Defending basically anything done on the gameplay side of a24 is discrediting. 

Edited 14 hours ago by chrstgtr

[hyperion]

a23 was much better than a24 in my opinion, that so called "reset" was silly in my book, just that you implied @borg- is a bad player with no clue of gameplay and that there was no real reason given which I consider a lie. I'm not at all against reverting the patch.

Feel free to create a PR, whining won't change anything.

[chrstgtr]

2 minutes ago, hyperion said:

a23 was much better than a24 in my opinion, that so called "reset" was silly in my book, just that you implied @borg- is a bad player with no clue of gameplay and that there was no real reason given which I consider a lie.

I said no such thing. I said some devs, like Nescio, eschewed player feedback and wrote patches that made little sense in the a24 era. I have no doubt this patch would've been pushed through by Nescio no matter what any player said for or against it. There's a pretty clear history of that happening all over a24. 

My point has always been that people that don't understand gameplay shouldn't be the ones designing the game. 

[Stan`]

18 hours ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

Firstly, as others have said wall turrets shooting arrows was problematic because you could cram so many close together. It was also a bit of a buff for iber and just made for an annoyance even after an iberian player had been fully destroyed.

Walls are still problematic. I remember threads about @Hannibal_Barca abusing walls by making fans out of them causing pathfinder havoc.

18 hours ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

There's no need.

In MP matches, probably not indeed. IMHO we should have a tech filter restricting some techs in MP. With the modifier manager we can now disable techs on game start this way they would not pollute you but we could still have some stuff for SP players.

Regarding the balancing PM maybe we should just open source it.

Regarding Nescio's position, I think they were more into what he believed was historical accuracy than what you'd want as gameplay. Their opinions were just radically opposed to yours.

He did put in the work to make patches though.

[Grautvornix]

Sorry to add my twocents, but this might indeed be one of the reasons for so many disagreements in balancing causing some changes back and forth and back again: MP vs SP.

I have to admit that I like the proposal to add a fundamental switch if the game is played MP or SP.

[real_tabasco_sauce]

4 hours ago, Grautvornix said:

I have to admit that I like the proposal to add a fundamental switch if the game is played MP or SP.

8 hours ago, Stan` said:

IMHO we should have a tech filter restricting some techs in MP.

Personally, I think campaigns could make up for some of the historical/realism lapses that are needed for good multiplayer gameplay, but the fundamental gameplay should be consistent between basic single player and multiplayer. Ideally, players learning in single player should help prepare them to go up against player opponents.

Campaigns could have special campaign-only units or abilities, but I think if someone sets up a single player match it should be the same gameplay as multiplayer.