Board Thread:Suggestions forum/@comment-32013442-20180117064757/@comment-33763020-20180121170606

Sildarflame wrote:

Barangolo wrote:

Sildarflame wrote: Barangolo wrote: I'm a bit lost regarding the causality of this suggestion (i.e. Orcs are like other factions -- HENCE elves/dwarves are created weaker -- BECAUSE evil cannot amass too many to compensate for their weakness -- HENCE let's create a new Orc entity that is stronger because it consists of more Orcs), but I understand that the essence of the proposal is to create stronger Evil enemies when bundled, as they are weaker individually. I think this does not add any improvement to the (already sophisticated) battle aspect of gameplay, being the banner bearers. Banner bearers do exactly that: they improve the combatants' stats, therefore making them stronger when in groups. This suggestion would mostly give it a different twist, but basically result in the same concept, being stronger enemies in groups vs as individual combatants. On top, this creates significant technical challenges that may even slow down gameplay.

As this is a balance issue, I must say I feel the game is quite balanced as is. I recently created a base in Ithilien and experience a very high frequency of Mordor invasions to my base, where I would not stand a chance if it weren't banner protected or quagmire trapped on the perimeter. When I started building the base and had no full fence yet and made the mistake of not planting a banner right away, an invasion with bombardiers and Olog-hai pretty much wiped out my full squad of 30, proving the point that on open (=unprotected) terrain Evil is quite strong due to explosives and Trolls, even when not in numbers. Odds are well balanced out, in fact when moving around with forces they eat into resources significantly, even when unit hiring is down to 20-25 coins. I do not see the need to create any more (complex) variations to topple this balance even more in favour of Evil forces, especially when these are just variations on existing balancing solutions. I know that evil factions are very powerful Baralongo. The problem is not evil npcs running around in their own land and being too weak. (Walked into Mordor recently?) The problem arises when you want to invade somewhere else such as gondor, lindon, etc with your army of 30 orcs. If you are on single player, there are no restrictions because the lag affects just you. On a server however, evil players have to use a limited number of units as large armies just make the game unplayable for everyone. OK, this makes more sense. So if I understand correctly, your suggestion is aimed at reducing lag on multi-player? I haven't switched sides to Evil (and will most likely not), don't play multi-player (yet) and don't know about programming possibilities or lag dependencies, but it looks more complex to me than that, from both technical, as well as gameplay mechanics: if a technical feature gets built in that requires a more complex set of rules, wouldn't that just increase lag, even if the number of NPC's gets reduced? Also, from gameplay perspective I'm pretty sure that by increasing NPC "horde" (not "hoarde", since that's treasure piles) power by bundling them, thus requiring less troops thus decreasing lag, players will still take the same amount of NPC's with them for war as before, as long as the finances are the same: if you can afford, you'll take an army as big as you can, not an army as big as that "creates reasonable lag", because when two (or more) armies stand opposed, why would they lessen their chances of victory by taking less troops than possible? So lag would remain the same, just Evil becoming stronger than before and in a battlefield (with same lag) even more powerful, resulting in game imbalances. To balance this out and make sure Evil can buy less troops as these are now stronger, purchasing cost for Evil troops would have to be increased significantly (where's the ceiling?..), making playing Evil even less attractive and influencing all types of other fields such as regular cost of reforging perfect armour/weapons vs troops, etc. If lag is the issue and both sides know this, then they could solve this by agreeing on a reasonable amount of soldiers on both sides, but we know this would never work either, so we're back to game mechanics and balance being decisive on who brings how many troops. And let's be honest: what's the fun in releasing hundreds/thousands of NPC's on each other in open field, where tactics play no role anymore? It would simply become a calculated clash in which the pre-programmed odds decide who wins. I would advice you to limit your troops to a fair number that still doesn't cause lag, but where you can still reasonably steer your troops. If you look at realistic wars, there is a hierarchy of layers and there is never a general that single-handedly steers hundreds of thousands of troops: there are lieutenants, captains and sergeants amass, multiplying on each lower level, so they can manage the number of troops they have individually, but always in limited numbers. If you want to have realistic gameplay in this mod, you would have to have a group of friends with each different roles to manage a different part of your army, but not one person managing hundreds (or even thousands) of troops.

In the end, this is a balance issue that I'm sure Mevans spent much thought on trying to reach and it is full of compromises, as you can't please everyone's playing style. The stronger the NPC's, the weaker (relatively) real players become, up to the point where survival becomes impossible against NPC's, making exploration type gameplay and many other styles impossible. So your interest (in a massive all-out war style on multi player) would hurt that of many others, only because you want to play with huge armies against each other.

I would much more advise you to limit the number of troops you use, as it makes gameplay more manageable, than steering a large force that you cannot manage even if there is no lag whatsoever. IronJaw333 gets what I mean. It is not that evil players have a lack of powerful units, but on servers there are (generally) rules on how many units one can have within a close area, say, 10 chunks walking distance. For an example, on The Official Server for this mod, (affectionately know as TOS,) players have a mob restriction of 30 units within a reasonable distance of each other. That includes cavalry, which count as 2 mobs each, and trolls/ologs/huorns who all count as 5 mobs each if I am not mistake. So all of these mobs are fairly well balanced as IronJaw pointed out, evil players can just save up for uruks. But what about the new players? They have no real way to build up a decent army with the troop limits. Want to use regular orcs? Not a good idea. They get weakness and slowness in sunlight, and 30 orcs vs 30 gondorians/dwarves/elves even during a night raid is a disaster for new players early on. If the new players were able to hire a "group" of orcs that somehow bypasses the mc lag issues, while still being affordable and effective, then they will not need to sit helpless until they can afford ologs/uruks etc.

Anyway, that was part of the idea. Not sure I follow your reasoning. You say that the troops are fairly well balanced after all, but now you're saying that "new players" have "no real way to build up a decent army with the troop limits". I don't understand the difference between "new" and "old" players. If you mean that new players (i.e. ones that join a server later) need to build out an economy first to acquire troops with which they can equal troops of those who joined earlier, then it seems to me that the limit of 30 troops in fact makes it much easier for the newly joining players to catch up, as it is not that difficult to get to the point where you have 30 troops, but once there, the older players cannot grow any further, so they loose the advantage of having joint earlier fairly quickly. You will always have a benefit if you join earlier of course, but that's not related to balance, it is a fact of life. It would make little sense to adjust a game to favour new joiners and "lift them up" in no-time to the level of those who have been there much longer, as they have been working hard to create the means of buying good troops and it would not be fair towards them to make it much easier for those who have done much less work to get to that point faster.

Also, this is a matter of when someone joins and not which faction, so I do not understand how this affects balance between Good and Evil: if you say that it is fairly well balanced, then once old and new players have reached their troop limit of 30, odds are equal, aren't they? Sure, you stand weaker if you use regular Orcs, but as you rightly point out, Uruks withstand sunlight and once you have them, the balance is there.

By the way, I haven't played on servers yet but now that I hear about these restrictions, it makes gameplay even more balanced in my opinion. These are good rules to prevent lag and make sense in general to make sure nobody gets too powerful by having been there for longer to outnumer others! It does make me wonder however (30 seems like a low number) whether MC in general is equipped for total war at all or the Faction aspect of this mod, if already such numbers create such lag. I admit one of my criticisms towards Minecraft in general is the lag and how this chunkloading aspect affects gameplay, but I'm sure this issue has been a major point of discussion on all levels since the game got created.

I feel like the discussion on balance is a very subjective one and I don't have an opinion since I don't intend playing Evil :). If you feel that it is not well balanced however and feel you're at a disadvantage, try looking at it from a different perspective: you're that much better if you stand your ground under difficult circumstances :). I don't believe that it is impossibly difficult to play Evil (in fact, I may just try playing it at some point to see what the difference is, though I don't fancy the dark and negative atmosphere that is inherent to the Evil faction), so the differences are probably more marginal. It gives you the opportunity to prove your worth if you feel that you are more challenged than those playing for the Good side. You may also want to trade places with friends to prove the differences in difficulty. Or try it with a whole server: everyone swaps sides in the next round/season to see how that works out or play on two different servers, with Evil on one and with Good on the other. Just some ideas :).