wowgetoffyourcellphone's gameplay design

[Lion.Kanzen]

4 minutes ago, Skhorn said:

If i'm not wrong, it is never going to see the light because they need to buy Tolkien's right to continue another game

I played the game before but was boring.

[Skhorn]

That's a matter of perspective, which is why there is a lot of discussions about the design.

Pd:
BFME2 it's not dead. Well, at least not at all and this mod http://www.moddb.com/mods/edain-mod probes it

Edited April 10, 2017 by Skhorn

[DarcReaver]

1 minute ago, Lion.Kanzen said:

I played the game before but was boring.

And as usual ignoring the arguments when proven wrong and just shift over to a different topic. Debating culture at its best tbh

[Lion.Kanzen]

19 minutes ago, Skhorn said:

That's a matter of perspective, which is why there is a lot of discussions about the design.

Pd:
BFME2 it's not dead. Well, at least not at all and this mod http://www.moddb.com/mods/edain-mod probes it

Same with hypoteticalnAoE4 but that is really death. Again to the discuss why a battlalion can't be versatile.

 

by the way Cossacks 3 looks like interesting, but another Classic( the series) that didn't play.

[Grugnas]

I really enjoyed BFME but i never liked the autorefilling battalion system. Imo allowing a player to merge different battalions would have been much better,  this never happened obviously because of the battallion Rank system. Anyway in BFME units die like fly there and a continuos refill of your lanes is needed and battalions are convenient, and as far as i recall this isn't in 0AD current design nor in the design you proposed (i recall you proposed to increase the battles duration).

Making selection groups let you to micromanage different units. As you said, it is a feature of the game; matter of fact i can select more buildings or soldiers using SPACE + 1-9  (alt + 1-9 by default) and eventually click ont the icon of the type of units i want to micromanage in the middle panel.

f.e In the screenshot you posted, you can simply click on the slingers icon displayed on the middle panel to move all the slingers of the previous selection.   None forces you to look for your units in the battle mess and double click them in order to give an order.

This is one of my fav rts:

this is not purely combat oriented but you can notice how the units are managed.

the units are trained one by one and automatically merged into a big battalion, btw having pure control on them by reducing or increasing the battalion size (there isn't a drag and drop selection area).

The difference is on the versatility of disrupting and reforming battalions, even of different size and, in the case of 0AD the formation adopted and the type of soldiers within it.

The main differences are:

1) if you notice, skirmishers always get a half moon shape deployment when they attack because their range is very limited. The effect is reduced as the attack range increases, still avoids idle units in the backlines.

2) a single formation can be disrupted, resized and modified with different units. You could simply select a type of soldier, put them in a different formation shape and bind any battalion to a different hotkey

3) the micromanage you fear, which is even unnecessary as i already showed you by using selection groups, would just replaced by a PLACEMENT micromanagement, basically you have to give different rally points to any battallion which would be unnecessary if ranged and melee units could simply be part of the same battallion.

Using a metaphore,  Ubuntu and Macos have totally different philosophies. While the first has an open source philosophy, the latter is an extremely closed system despite they both are based on a UNIX system. I can't have Ubuntu and pretend to have a Macos despite they are both based on the same system.

A simple introduction of a "lock formation" button is the nearest form of battalion you could obtain without going to drastically change the whole concept. Improve instead of rewrite something that won't have substancial differences but different philosophies.

[WhiteTreePaladin]

I think the key feature I liked most from the battalion system is the ability treat the battalion as a super unit. This means selecting a group of units by a single left click and having a visible way to distinguish groups without having to actually select the group. This was accomplished by having the selection ring continuously change shape. Essentially, the outer edges of the individual selection rings would be connected together and all the inner portions of the selection rings would not be rendered. Banner units were also used to make the battalions stand out for easy selection and targeting. It's fine if the group can be disbanded to individual units for those that want that.

Edited April 12, 2017 by WhiteTreePaladin

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

Here's an idea. 

 

If you guys don't like what I proposed here, then make your own thread for others to rip your proposals apart. Sound good?

 

Meanwhile, none of our proposals will get implemented.

 

Actually, from what I hear the closest thing that'll come to fruition will be:

 

Same darn game as it is now, but you can lock soldiers into a formation if you want to and disband them at will. There you go. I predicted the future.

Edited April 12, 2017 by wowgetoffyourcellphone

[Grugnas]

I didn't want to denigrate your work, inventing things to implement probably requires more creativity and effort than simply changing something exists.

I am just a player looking for news on going stuff which is always interesting discussion.

F.e.  the idea proposed by an user few pages ago is interesting  (allowing an outpost to have territory influence in order to have strategic gathering points), but if you consider mauryan elephant workers designed by someone, it would just kill mauryan peculiarity (if the elephant won't grant territory influence too ).

Indeed promoting an expansion-wise direction could finally depose the annoying self trading strategy (70k metal in 1:30h of game with 54 traders in a FFA game).

The mercenary camp is an amazing feature to add.

Did you ever play Popolous the beginning? there were savages strolling aroud the map able to be civilized with a sorcery or with priests who used to convert units.

Taking spark from that,  strolling gaia women could be captured and enslaved.  Slaves could lose efficiency over time instead of losing hp which probably would be out of control.

Edited April 12, 2017 by Grugnas

[DarcReaver]

10 hours ago, WhiteTreePaladin said:

I think the key feature I liked most from the battalion system is the ability treat the battalion as a super unit. This means selecting a group of units by a single left click and having a visible way to distinguish groups without having to actually select the group. This was accomplished by having the selection ring continuously change shape. Essentially, the outer edges of the individual selection rings would be connected together and all the inner portions of the selection rings would not be rendered. Banner units were also used to make the battalions stand out for easy selection and targeting. It's fine if the group can be disbanded to individual units for those that want that.

The question is : what do you want to accomplish by a "disband" function. As has been stated already, single units are more of a burden than a relief for the player. Units cannot be distinguished from each other due to lack of easy-to-notice art features (compare to age II, AoM or SC II). There is no benefit for single unit micro aswell. 

I can't think of reasons why it would be beneficial for the game itself and for game controls to have manual disbanding options for formations.   

 

Edited April 12, 2017 by DarcReaver

[DarcReaver]

5 hours ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

Here's an idea. 

 

If you guys don't like what I proposed here, then make your own thread for others to rip your proposals apart. Sound good?

 

Meanwhile, none of our proposals will get implemented.

 

Actually, from what I hear the closest thing that'll come to fruition will be:

 

Same darn game as it is now, but you can lock soldiers into a formation if you want to and disband them at will. There you go. I predicted the future.

Which leads us right back to my original application as gameplay developer  Without one there won't be progress just like we anticipated.

Great stuff.  

Edited April 12, 2017 by DarcReaver

[Zeta1127]

Darc, I just don't see the problems you see. Formations, and the full implementation of naval combat, will solve a lot of the problems. Perhaps some tweaks to the tech tree to address the progression problems are also needed, but other than that I think formations, naval combat, and a somewhat more rigged tech tree are all 0 A.D. really needs.

[DarcReaver]

4 hours ago, Zeta1127 said:

Darc, I just don't see the problems you see. Formations, and the full implementation of naval combat, will solve a lot of the problems. Perhaps some tweaks to the tech tree to address the progression problems are also needed, but other than that I think formations, naval combat, and a somewhat more rigged tech tree are all 0 A.D. really needs.

Nope. The UI is a mess, units are not apparently easy to differ in regular fights. Formations are already implemented, but they just create more micromamagement for adding/removing units from them. The variable size of formactions even creates problems with grouping and spacing out armies on most maps (forests are in the way and mess up the unit positioning with Formations > 20 soldiers).
On top of that individual unit micro doesn't do anything because units can't be healed efficiently and die too quickly.

Just adding a couple of techs/working on the tech tree won't do much.

Edited April 12, 2017 by DarcReaver

[Lion.Kanzen]

If you use intelligent Battlalion stance in unit.ai isn't  need to  train units as battalion, example:  rise and fall, units group themselves. And you can control as you want without this limitation.

[Zeta1127]

I don't get this ant size unit argument at all, formations are an integral piece of the puzzle that hasn't been fully fleshed out yet. Formations aren't fully implemented so units stay in formation during battle. 0 A.D. harkens back to the CnC and AoE/AoM way of doing things, with the twist of historically accurate citizen-soldiers and formations add into the mix.

Healing may need some work, but the temple and healer dynamic is sound.

Perhaps you are right about the training times being too fast, and things like making farms require farmsteads are good ideas, but other than that I just don't see most of the problems you see.

[Lion.Kanzen]

I see dead people, I'm mean  problems.

 

------

the dude exaggerate with some things. But this not mean the game haven't problem , but his solutions are non flexible, too much radical.

[DarcReaver]

5 hours ago, Zeta1127 said:

I don't get this ant size unit argument at all, formations are an integral piece of the puzzle that hasn't been fully fleshed out yet. Formations aren't fully implemented so units stay in formation during battle. 0 A.D. harkens back to the CnC and AoE/AoM way of doing things, with the twist of historically accurate citizen-soldiers and formations add into the mix.

Healing may need some work, but the temple and healer dynamic is sound.

Perhaps you are right about the training times being too fast, and things like making farms require farmsteads are good ideas, but other than that I just don't see most of the problems you see.

Once more. Every game you mentioned had a distinction between unit types. Each unit is easily. 0 ad doesnt have it. 

Citizen Soldiers concept sucks @#$%. Healing is useless, yes. And apart from that your statements make it pretty clear that you don't have a clue tbh.

Compare this to:

To this

Units are easy to notice, contrasts are in between the unit types, and the models differ from each other enough to create an overview.

This is the main reason why lots of RTS do not use "authentic" unit skins by default.

Edited April 13, 2017 by DarcReaver

[Lion.Kanzen]

Quote

Citizen Soldiers concept sucks @#$%. Healing is useless

Why?

healing can be better much better. But CS is bad concept? I don't think so, you can prove that.

this worst example, the units are unrecognizable for me.

 https://wildfiregames.com/forum/uploads/monthly_2017_04/orc.jpg.be3ea65cd6839a0f9c7e07f5c01c5b7a.jpg

Your examples are only based in good micro, I can do same disorder in AoE2 .

 

if that thing even be a battalion I haven't idea which units are they.

 

Edited April 13, 2017 by Lion.Kanzen

[DarcReaver]

12 minutes ago, Lion.Kanzen said:

Why?

healing can be better much better. But CS is bad concept? I don't think so, you can prove that.

this worst example, the units are unrecognizable for me.

 https://wildfiregames.com/forum/uploads/monthly_2017_04/orc.jpg.be3ea65cd6839a0f9c7e07f5c01c5b7a.jpg

Your examples are only based in good micro, I can do same disorder in AoE2 .

 

if that thing even be a battalion I haven't idea which units are they.

You can clearly see following facts:

a ) color BLUE units are not color RED's units
b ) units from BLUE are clearly not the same as RED
c ) there are units with huge axes/hammers/logs that obviously attack close range, while BLUE's units seem to have rifles or something similar

 

And no, my examples are not based on good micro. And you're still not understanding the difference.

Once more:

 

Compared to this:

 

 

Edit @ the picture - so, there are ~ 200 dead cavarly bodies and long bows + some priests. Even if I have not zoomed in I can see it easily. So nope, no disorder really.

If you put in a battalion, you'll at least have a much easier option to select units of a certain type at once. This already makes the UI much cleaner to use and creates order. Then it does not matter that much that unit's are harder to differentiate from each other.

Edited April 13, 2017 by DarcReaver

[Lion.Kanzen]

Quote

if that thing even be a battalion I haven't idea which units are they.

You can clearly see following facts:

a ) color BLUE units are not color RED's units
b ) units from BLUE are clearly not the same as RED
c ) there are units with huge axes/hammers/logs that obviously attack close range, while BLUE's units seem to have rifles or something similar

 

And no, my examples are not based on good micro. And you're still not understanding the difference.

If you don't use formations is obviusly you don't. You can do that in 0 A.D to form units

but you are using the examples at your own convenience.

 

[Lion.Kanzen]

You haven't an argument vs citizen soldiers. We can have many variation to be more flexible. You are in wrong way.

Healing needs more love.

why battalion must be a box of units with have the possibility to merge or disband the battlalion?

you started the mod the game as developer designer ?

[Lion.Kanzen]

 

 

A little gift  

[DarcReaver]

4 minutes ago, Lion.Kanzen said:

You haven't an argument vs citizen soldiers. We can have many variation to be more flexible. You are in wrong way.

Healing needs more love.

why battalion must be a box of units with have the possibility to merge or disband the battlalion?

you started the mod the game as developer designer ?

I've had dozens of arguments against citizen soldiers. I do not bring them up again.

@#$%ing read my posts you troll

 

 

 

[Lion.Kanzen]

Hahahaha, always answer the same.

is because the realism of the epoch. Only needs some extra stuff and you can convert your peasants in soldiers.

Mostly  of people that are new , are confused the first time. But with the time, the concept work from early, and in late phase you can mix soldiers with champions. Few soldiers are working.

you can't expect all soldiers were medieval or modern full service professional with a commander in the battalion marching to the war.

 

Confess  you want a classic game with few personal preferences.

for example if they removed SC this game becomes more to be a AOK clone. We can have a mode where soldiers only fights.

why not? You still angry? Why don't search a conciliation by both sides?

[DarcReaver]

The game IS an AoE clone. And a   s h i t t y   one on top. Citizen soldiers do not save the @#$% concept, they just make it even worse. The whole point of this thread (and my threads) is to make the game more unique by creating a unique gameplay concept. 

The suggestions are ripped apart into nonsense and there is nothing useful coming from the other side. 

hippocrity.

Edited April 13, 2017 by DarcReaver

[Lion.Kanzen]

The game started to be developed after AoK. Remove the CS and the game are more clone.

have/quitting that don't have much impact, there you need only change some things.

 

-battalions is great idea, but no like BFME. 

-unique, all your ideas are ripe-off from  other games. The game will be unique if the mechanic will be different even if the game stop to be a RTS.

you and me have similar ideas. But there 3 facts  where don't have an agreement.

SC.

Battlaions concept

etc