Balancing Gauls is Easy.

[Feldfeld]

But ptolemies are just as good as celts !

[DarcReaver]

15 hours ago, StopKillingMe said:

No - you are the *clearly* one who doesn't get it.  We *are* playing this game - and competitively.  It's quite obvious you are not a competitive player if you think that training military units for a rush from the CC is an effective strategy.  It isn't.  Good players boom women and techs first, then build two or three rax, then attack or defend.  If you start by training military units from the CC, you will lose.

Trying to tell me that this is a tech demo and nothing more is ridiculously absurd.  There is a game play lobby and it's easy to get a 1v1 rated game pretty much most of the day.  So you don't know what you are talking about.

I don't care how much whining some of you do - Celts and specifically Britons need a nerf.  Slingers need a nerf.  The people that are actually playing this game day to day know this - the people that are denying this or making excuses are either not playing, or are more interested in their mod than vanilla.

The Meta as established by top player Borg is to batch train women and tech up, then get up one or two defensive towers at your woodline, build 2 or 3 rax, and then from there different strategies can branch out.  If you don't play Borg's established Meta and you come up against someone that does, you will lose badly.  Britons are ridiculous - you get an extra scout, building the starting farmstead and storage pit increases your pop and delays the need to build the opening house, and you can go all in on a Slinger rush in Age 1 and it has devastating effect.  There is no Meta that has any kind of rush from military units from the CC - the fact that you think that is an issue is a clear indication that you are not playing on the ladder.

Once again, the Celts (Britons) need a nerf, and if that makes a new civ suddenly OP, that would be a very welcome change.  You give Borg Britons and he could easily take on 3 or 4 human 1300 level players and win.  You wanna win on the ladder?  Get a hold of a Borg recorded game, copy his startup build order, play Britons, spam Age 1 Slingers, attack, and keep attacking.  If you are doing this effectively, the fact that your opponent is in Age 2 doesn't matter.  There is no effective counter for massed slingers, they can destroy towers, houses, farms - you're toast.  These are cold hard *facts*, that are coming from experience.  And that is what makes an RTS good or not good, how it plays on the ladder.  DOtMW had Korean rush problem, AOM had the Poseidon cav rush problem, and both of them were fixed easily.  This is not a difficult problem.  It is easily fixed, as will the next OP civ that emerges will be just as easy to fix.

Compare the gameplay to Starcraft, the amount of tactical and strategical depth, or any other game that currently is played by larger online communities. Oh and did I mention that Starcraft from 1999 is played by thousands of people simultanously? And even old Age of Empires has more rooms open at the worst time of day on gameranger.

The game is nothing more than a tech demo at this point, face it. And the community is small.

  

13 hours ago, Servo said:

Not everytime a game is based on multiplayer type of game to be  gauged as good. Single player and modded games are equally important. 

Indeed. But then the developers need to deliver quality single player content. Which isn't the case either. You either tell a story or you make compelling multiplayer. You can't not do both.

 

13 hours ago, StopKillingMe said:

I'm not playing your mod - the people I play on the ladder are not playing your mod.  I'm not going to install your mod and then not be able to get a game, I don't understand why this concept is so controversial, I don't understand why every road has to lead to your mod - this is an open source game, improving gameplay with something quick and dirty is better than nothing, and will be far better than getting into the quagmire discussion about your specific mod, especially since there are other mods besides yours.  Your massively changing the core game.  You just expect everyone to accept your one man show as the new game?

You want to rework the entire game and its not even in beta yet - I'm suggesting we just need to dial back the Celts a bit, and keep playing what we have.  Huge difference.   So respectfully - why do I have to wholesale accept the massive changes you have made in your mod, bearing in mind if I install it, I can't even play it on the ladder, right? 

 

13 hours ago, StopKillingMe said:

I'm just going to restate my opinion:

 

1.  Mods should not become part of vanilla - they are a separate thing.  What we have now should be preserved and incrementally improved.

2.  A process for patching for balance needs to be established, independent of any other objective, focused 100% on improving competitive MP.  It should not depend on any other need, like adding units, changing what buildings can train what, or anything else like that - it should be solely focused on improving what is currently being played.

3.  Balance changes need to be clearly communicated to the player community, what is changed, why it is changed, and what the desired outcome is.

4.  There is really only one effective proving ground for game balance, ladder play in the Game Lobby.

 

Patch 1.01 should be solely dedicated to solely nerfing the Celts, and nothing else.  Ladder play once this patch is implemented will reveal what needs to be done in 1.02, probably in as little time as a few weeks.

 

Welcome to ignore.

That's what I wrote in the first place.

However, balancing stats only works if the design is solid. That isn't the case yet.

[StopKillingMe]

1 hour ago, DarcReaver said:

The game is nothing more than a tech demo at this point, face it. And the community is small.

Sorry to break it to you yet again - but we are playing rated games against each other daily.  No amount of spin is going to change this reality.

[Guest]

There is no concept of "Ages" in 0AD. Which I always found wierd.

I played multiplayer fairly regular and still spectate a lot of matches. All the armies composed of the primary and secondary infantry. This usually means the two starting soldiers. Therefore, you can absolutely win against a P3 opponent if you can get a strong enough economy. Hard, but not very hard.

The only relevant factor from phasing up is the HP bonus and a few techs plus the almighty ram of course.

I still think Rise of Nations have a superior concept. (Not the fact that it literally encompasses all of human history up to this day). Then again, I like Rise of Nations very much. Much more than AoE. (I like guns and nukes too..so theres that as well)

[Feldfeld]

4 minutes ago, (-_-) said:

There is no concept of "Ages" in 0AD. Which I always found wierd.

I played multiplayer fairly regular and still spectate a lot of matches. All the armies composed of the primary and secondary infantry. This usually means the two starting soldiers. Therefore, you can absolutely win against a P3 opponent if you can get a strong enough economy. Hard, but not very hard.

The only relevant factor from phasing up is the HP bonus and a few techs plus the almighty ram of course.

I still think Rise of Nations have a superior concept. (Not the fact that it literally encompasses all of human history up to this day). Then again, I like Rise of Nations very much. Much more than AoE. (I like guns and nukes too..so theres that as well)

The few techs are very important though which is why it's better not be late at p3.
Also i think rams are overrated but that only engages me

[StopKillingMe]

8 minutes ago, (-_-) said:

There is no concept of "Ages" in 0AD. Which I always found wierd.

I played multiplayer fairly regular and still spectate a lot of matches. All the armies composed of the primary and secondary infantry. This usually means the two starting soldiers. Therefore, you can absolutely win against a P3 opponent if you can get a strong enough economy. Hard, but not very hard.

The only relevant factor from phasing up is the HP bonus and a few techs plus the almighty ram of course.

I still think Rise of Nations have a superior concept. (Not the fact that it literally encompasses all of human history up to this day). Then again, I like Rise of Nations very much. Much more than AoE. (I like guns and nukes too..so theres that as well)

I don't know why you find that weird.  That "Age of" franchise exists, no need to copy it.

[Guest]

1 minute ago, Feldfeld said:

The few techs are very important though which is why it's better not be late at p3.

Am I the only one that sees this as a bad thing.

Every single match run on rails.

[Guest]

2 minutes ago, StopKillingMe said:

I don't know why you find that weird.  That "Age of" franchise exists, no need to copy it.

Empire Earth series. Rise of Nations. Age of Empires. And probably some other rts I never played.

If you played them once, you would see how conceptually different they are.

Not all uniqueness is good.

Edited June 6, 2019 by Guest

[Lion.Kanzen]

19 minutes ago, StopKillingMe said:

I don't know why you find that weird.  That "Age of" franchise exists, no need to copy it.

Bingo , we are trying to make our new things... but this no justify an spam of slingers or rams, or horse breed . broken gameplay is broken gameplay, not uniqueness.

or you are worried for a kind of adventage?

 

[GunChleoc]

I don't understand why you are so adamant against developing things in a mod before creating a patch. It allows players who don't know how to deal with SVN and patches to participate in the testing. Being a good tester is an entirely different skillset from being a good programmer.

[StopKillingMe]

On 6/6/2019 at 11:59 AM, GunChleoc said:

I don't understand why you are so adamant against developing things in a mod before creating a patch. It allows players who don't know how to deal with SVN and patches to participate in the testing. Being a good tester is an entirely different skillset from being a good programmer.

This is why:

"That's just the nature of an open source project. Everyone has their own vision and they collide either creatively or destructively. I know I quit 'solo modding' after I honed my skills enough to get a feel for how things work. Modding is a waste of time at this point if you're looking for an end product. The thing is Terra Magna is a testing ground for civs so it wont break so often, Delenda Est and other balance mods are gameplay mods so you're going to be locking antlers with the dev team when we make any kind of progress/clean up code.

You have to understand too, I'm sure many of the devs are just as embittered about this. I know I haven't really had fun playing 0 AD since A16 did away with multiplier counters, and later PA. Not to say I didn't have a smattering of fun games along the way.

My job here is easy enough in that I just have to make things look pretty. I have my own vision for this game, but I'd rather see things centralized and strong than contribute to this 'warring states' period we're going through now."

Posted 9/26/17 by LordGood

Pretty spot on wouldn't you say?

So using this statement from one of the dev team, I can no longer be accused of trying to create conflict, this problem of competing ideas of what the game *should be* being counter productive was predicted two years ago by an active member of the team.  @DarcReaver has published a set of documents here on the forums that can only be characterized as representing the desire to produce an entirely new game, while simultaneously dismissing what we are all playing now as "nothing more than a tech demo".  I will never agree with that assessment, I am actively playing 0ad, and having plenty of fun doing it.

So yes, I do believe the "Mod" discussion and this whole "everything needs to be changed" stance on the game has gotten out of hand.  There is nothing wrong with being loyal to the code base of what we are currently playing, nor is there anything wrong with the desire of wanting to see changes made to it in the right way.  

"Delenda Est and other balance mods are gameplay mods so you're going to be locking antlers with the dev team when we make any kind of progress/clean up code."

"Modding is a waste of time at this point if you're looking for an end product."

Not my words, so you can't say I'm the only one that thinks this way.

Edited June 9, 2019 by StopKillingMe

[Stan`]

You should really use the quote feature of the forum. It makes it hard to distinguish your words from theirs

[GunChleoc]

There's a difference between creating a mod that will be your own game (what LordGood talked about) or creating a mod to test out changes aimed at vanilla more easily. I was talking about the latter.

The same way, you can use a knife to kill someone, so knives are bad if you're a peaceful person. So, by your logic, if you're a peaceful person, you should never, ever use a knife under any circumstances and good luck with trying to cut a slice of bread.

[StopKillingMe]

I just simply don't agree.  There is no way to get any kind of significant play of a mod, the game lobby is where the players are.  Again, we all know that the Celts have a distinct advantage, and targeting them directly is the obvious answer.  The code is in Alpha, it's not a released game, this makes the game lobby the perfect place for changes to take effect and get thoroughly vetted by a wide variety of players.

The mod discussion or the reworking of how 0ad is designed, what units can train where, and the endless debate of what is "wrong" with vanilla just simply isn't productive.  It adds zero value to what actually needs to be done, which again, is a very small and targeted patch that addresses the Celts.

Edited June 9, 2019 by StopKillingMe

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

7 hours ago, StopKillingMe said:

I just simply don't agree.  There is no way to get any kind of significant play of a mod, the game lobby is where the players are.  Again, we all know that the Celts have a distinct advantage, and targeting them directly is the obvious answer.  The code is in Alpha, it's not a released game, this makes the game lobby the perfect place for changes to take effect and get thoroughly vetted by a wide variety of players.

The mod discussion or the reworking of how 0ad is designed, what units can train where, and the endless debate of what is "wrong" with vanilla just simply isn't productive.  It adds zero value to what actually needs to be done, which again, is a very small and targeted patch that addresses the Celts.

I sympathize with your view here. I have also said that since the game is still in Alpha that the team should not be so afraid to experiment (especially when it pertains to simply editing balancing stats). 

But I could foresee some kind of balancing group who tries out different balancing mods and then submits requested changes. That way the core game isn't affected and then near the end of the development cycle, the group decides on which mod to fold into the core game. 

Edited June 10, 2019 by wowgetoffyourcellphone

[LordGood]

On 6/8/2019 at 7:00 PM, StopKillingMe said:

My job here is easy enough in that I just have to make things look pretty. I have my own vision for this game, but I'd rather see things centralized and strong than contribute to this 'warring states' period we're going through now."

 Posted 9/26/17 by LordGood

Lol woops 

games pretty though innit?

[StopKillingMe]

I very much enjoy the game, and yes it looks great

Edited June 10, 2019 by StopKillingMe

[DarcReaver]

On 6/9/2019 at 1:00 AM, StopKillingMe said:

This is why:

"That's just the nature of an open source project. Everyone has their own vision and they collide either creatively or destructively. I know I quit 'solo modding' after I honed my skills enough to get a feel for how things work. Modding is a waste of time at this point if you're looking for an end product. The thing is Terra Magna is a testing ground for civs so it wont break so often, Delenda Est and other balance mods are gameplay mods so you're going to be locking antlers with the dev team when we make any kind of progress/clean up code.

You have to understand too, I'm sure many of the devs are just as embittered about this. I know I haven't really had fun playing 0 AD since A16 did away with multiplier counters, and later PA. Not to say I didn't have a smattering of fun games along the way.

My job here is easy enough in that I just have to make things look pretty. I have my own vision for this game, but I'd rather see things centralized and strong than contribute to this 'warring states' period we're going through now."

Posted 9/26/17 by LordGood

Pretty spot on wouldn't you say?

So using this statement from one of the dev team, I can no longer be accused of trying to create conflict, this problem of competing ideas of what the game *should be* being counter productive was predicted two years ago by an active member of the team.  @DarcReaver has published a set of documents here on the forums that can only be characterized as representing the desire to produce an entirely new game, while simultaneously dismissing what we are all playing now as "nothing more than a tech demo".  I will never agree with that assessment, I am actively playing 0ad, and having plenty of fun doing it.

So yes, I do believe the "Mod" discussion and this whole "everything needs to be changed" stance on the game has gotten out of hand.  There is nothing wrong with being loyal to the code base of what we are currently playing, nor is there anything wrong with the desire of wanting to see changes made to it in the right way.  

"Delenda Est and other balance mods are gameplay mods so you're going to be locking antlers with the dev team when we make any kind of progress/clean up code."

"Modding is a waste of time at this point if you're looking for an end product."

Not my words, so you can't say I'm the only one that thinks this way.

I just took the basic rulesets that were presented in the design document and compared them to the actual "game" that is present in A23. That is all. Even a blind person sees that they don't match. And just saying: Neither did I write the design doc nor did I do the balancing in the past. That was done by someone else from WFG. And to me it's pretty obvious that nobody cares anymore.

I pointed out some stuff to bring the design doc and the current game more in line. It's a fact that the current alpha contains a random mesh of different 200X era RTS game features (i.e. RoN borderlines and AoE II type resource and teching system) without any real coherent gameplay system behind that and it doesn't even remotely represent the design vision. It's the opposite to be precise. 

Nobody needs an AoE clone at this point, especially not one that isn't even halfway as complex/well designed as the original game. The HD edition and soon-to-be-released DE editions on Steam are more than enough to please the audience of AoE type games.

On 6/9/2019 at 9:31 PM, StopKillingMe said:

I just simply don't agree.  There is no way to get any kind of significant play of a mod, the game lobby is where the players are.  Again, we all know that the Celts have a distinct advantage, and targeting them directly is the obvious answer.  The code is in Alpha, it's not a released game, this makes the game lobby the perfect place for changes to take effect and get thoroughly vetted by a wide variety of players.

The mod discussion or the reworking of how 0ad is designed, what units can train where, and the endless debate of what is "wrong" with vanilla just simply isn't productive.  It adds zero value to what actually needs to be done, which again, is a very small and targeted patch that addresses the Celts.

 

On 6/10/2019 at 4:53 AM, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

I sympathize with your view here. I have also said that since the game is still in Alpha that the team should not be so afraid to experiment (especially when it pertains to simply editing balancing stats). 

But I could foresee some kind of balancing group who tries out different balancing mods and then submits requested changes. That way the core game isn't affected and then near the end of the development cycle, the group decides on which mod to fold into the core game. 

The core game design is task of the developers. If they are not up to the task, they need someone else to work on this. The idea with having sub mod teams sounds good. However, idk how to make sure that multiple mods are worked on even if it's conceivable that one certain mod is prioritized over the others. Also, I fear that there might be the problem of limiting the manpower for the project even more, by splitting modders/programmers on different sub mods. 

Edited August 19, 2019 by DarcReaver

[sphyrth]

@wowgetoffyourcellphone thrashes the game, but gets respect because he puts on the work with Delenda Est.
@DarcReaver thrashes the game, but gets respect because he knows what he's talking about and can back up his statements substantially.
@BabyStar1, 2, 3, ... N thrashes the game.... just thrashes the game.

As a contribution to the topic, I miss the Rush Factions (that is assuming that they haven't all nerfed). In this case, the Slinger Rush is being implied, and I still love the Naked Fanatic Rush. In teamplays I like a Combo of Rush + Late-game Factions going against Anti-Rush, Mid-game Factions. That's only IF 0 A.D. doesn't consider 1v1.

Let's take DotA for example. You can play 1v1 with DotA, but it's clear that the game is designed specifically for 5v5. So every nerf, buff, item changes, even map changes - they all revolve around the 5v5 experience.

But in 0 A.D. I don't know how you can do that. So, in this case, you can see why Darc wants the devs to have a clear flow of the game (that isn't a broken copy of AoE).

[Dakara]

Hello everyone,

I do not know if nerf the technique of slingers rush is a good idea, you must be able to play in many different ways and there is not a single way to play.
In addition, compared to the old version of the game, the slingers have already received a debuff crushing damage (which I find justified) On the other hand, giving more opportunities to play against slingers rush can be interesting.

These are just loose ideas but we could for example:
- Make a redesign of the technology that increases the armor of the towers. Make it accessible P1. Technology would increase armor against overwhelming damage (Tech level 1 Phase 1: cost 200 wood and 100 stone Tech level 2 Phase 2: cost 500 wood 400 stone) -Increase the resistance of the house to capture if there are women in it? I mean make the catch slower (is it possible since women do not have a capture attack?)

-Increase from 80 to minimum the hit points of some civilization homes (150 wood houses), this is sometimes really punitive in early game.

-Increase slightly the armor of the cavalry to the piercing (this buff includes a big nerf for the archers ???) so that the cavalry does a better job on the slingers.

-Nerf slightly the Gauls lategame by reducing the power of the hero Vercingetorix (20% -> 15%?)?

Another problem: Nerf slingers could too nerf the Athenians civ and indirectly make the shooters powerfullllll

Thank you for your reading and possible return.

[pAris]

5 hours ago, DarcReaver said:

That was done by someone else from WFG. And to me it's pretty obvious that nobody cares anymore.

If that is indeed the case, then wth is the wfg team doing? Aimless as a piece of drift wood?

Given that the last Alpha was released over a year ago, and the next alpha still seems pretty distant, a more vocal dev team would be nice. OpenAge devs posts weekly reports. Most of them are empty, but at least the community knows the state of things.

[Stan`]

@pAris You can easily follow what the team is doing by looking at :

• Phabricator (https://code.wildfiregames.com)
• Trac (https://trac.wildfiregames.com)
• The revision log on the right of the home page (https://play0ad.com/)
• The current changes in A24 (https://trac.wildfiregames.com/wiki/Alpha24)

There was a plan to make a more formal report with Sundiata, not sure what happened to that.

About anything art related you can look at @LordGood's twitter and the art forums, and sometimes @play0ad retweets things.

11 minutes ago, pAris said:

If that is indeed the case, then wth is the wfg team doing? Aimless as a piece of drift wood?

The plan is to update the design document and move on from there https://code.wildfiregames.com/source/design/

Of course it takes longer than expected, and the holiday period isn't making it faster

[Rolf Dew]

In terms of staying up to date, there is plenty of forums here showcasing the tasks that the devs are working. True the art team has also been very active, other things like coding is also active, as Stan has said, it is even on the homepage. Everything is there, one just has to look for it.

Edited August 19, 2019 by Rolf Dew

[pAris]

I dont recall the forums being this toxic back in 2017. Trolls..trolls everywhere.

Anyway, fare thee well. To v24 and beyond.

[Rolf Dew]

1 minute ago, pAris said:

I dont recall the forums being this toxic back in 2017. Trolls..trolls everywhere.

Anyway, fare thee well. To v24 and beyond.

The toxic posts is a rather recent development it seems. The forums were not really toxic until recently.