Messages

16

General Discussion / Re: Byzantium is dead

« on: August 01, 2014, 09:24:27 pm »

Renegat means traitor in french, and he's saying you're traitorous scum! It means that he's calling you brave people.



Je suis sur que c'est comme ça que tu voulais les troller!

Reminds me of this old one here:

How do you say "soldier" in French?
- Lé collaborateur

Or this one here:

What's the French war flag?
- White eagle on white ground

17

General Discussion / Re: Byzantium is dead

« on: July 31, 2014, 07:21:55 pm »

In the Stainless Steel mod subforum on twcenter.net someone seems to have the same problems:

visitors can't see pics , please register or login


Check out the topic, perhaps there's a fix for the problem? 

18

General Discussion / Re: CRPG is indeed dying.

« on: July 29, 2014, 02:52:49 pm »

We do have some things we can tweak though that ensure pure melee have a clear advantage similar to what ranged and cav have in their role.

We have ways to make cav vulnerable when they are dehorsed. ATM cav players are protected by their horse because of the anti team wound mechanic that was introduced some time ago. You can't really harm a cav player if he is dehorsed and is near his horse before he gets up. That could be tweaked. Anti cav weapons aren't as good as they used to be, in fact shorter weapons are more effective than pikes/longspears. Even a 1 hander can be better because it deals damage so fast and does good damage. Length is meaningless if they don't deal damage fast enough when we're concerned with fast moving things, and if the damage is too low to dehorse

Damage types and armour - We have cut, pierce and blunt and yet all of them are very similar and ranged have access to both cut and pierce. Ranged could be impacted more when wearing armour with the way it affects their WPF. Heavier armour could be more effective against ranged melee weapons

We have the slot system - if ranged had to use 0 slot weapons you could tweak 0 slots as much as you like to balance them in melee. Weapon weight is a great way to balance - lighter weapons have a much harder time blocking than heavy ones

The more time ranged spend reloading, the more time melee have to play to their strengths - pushing in large numbers. Again something that can be tweaked

Xbows have no real skill point sink and they can be used with low WPF. Skill points in general can be used to tweak the classes - the more points you have to put into cav or PD the fewer points you can put into melee skills

I'm sure if there was an interest in tweaking the role of ranged and cav that could be done without changing a popular game mode. Theres also stuff like ranged ammo amounts, how easy it is to hit targets etc

All those changes are basically only balance tweaks, and I think after all the nerfs cav and archers have gone through, it should be clear that changing the balance won't fix the biggest problem infantry has on the battlefield: they have to reach their enemy on foot in order to kill him. And sadly enough, killing the enemy is actually required to win. So you need to "catch" your enemy in order to win, while two thirds of the enemies actually either run away all the time (cav) or keep you under fire constantly (ranged) or sometimes do even both (HA/HX). And once you reached him the fight is actually basing on interaction (attacking + blocking), where the enemy has to make a mistake in order to allow you to kill him, whereas shooting or lance backstabbing only require the relatively common mistake of being unaware, but there is no "interaction" at all. This is where the frustration come from, the constant feeling that you are not acting, but reacting, and although you are the one who is actually chasing, you are the prey, while the others are the hunter. It's the fact that most of the time an enemy has more or less to "agree" that the infantryman can attack him, unless it's the end of the round or a special occurance kicks in.

You can never "balance" the fact that an infantryman can not pick his targets the same way archers or cav can. It's the very basic gameplay of that class which is the problem, not the strength or weakness in particular aspects. Only a fundamental change in the game can remove the passiveness of that class. And there will never be a solution which shifts how well or bad an infantryman can attack the other classes or can be attacked by them. Which means any game mode basing solely on killing the enemies won't work for infantry. That's more or less a physical law, you can't break it. Infantry has a) slow speed and b) low attack range, so you can be awkward as much as you like, you won't be able to change that fact.

19

General Discussion / Re: CRPG is indeed dying.

« on: July 29, 2014, 12:02:56 pm »

The skillset and versatility of classes is something that can be fixed without making battle have more structured objectives. Cav players are both cav and melee classes..that dilutes the requirement of pure melee. When a cav player is dehorsed he isn't much different to a pure melee character, and when he's on his horse he is a more valuable player than a pure melee.

Ranged players are both ranged and melee..that again dilutes the requirement for pure melee. Until you get into melee range, ranged obviously have a clear advantage since they can deal damage and melee cannot. When you get into melee range then there isn't a similar clear advantage for melee in a similar way that ranged has against melee at a distance

Fix those imbalances and we won't need to gut battle and make it have clear, linear objectives

All that is true, but you can not change that without changing the classes substantially, like having to pick one of three classes in the beginning, and let's say for example if you pick ranged you can't equip melee weapons or raise your athletics, and when you pick cav and you get dehorsed you can't block any more or something like that. Changes of this caliber would be needed to grant infantry the same advantage in their domain (melee) as the other classes have in their own resort against infantry. You get what I mean? In the end, if we don't want to invent a completely abstract game for the sake of balance, we have to deal with what the middle ages left us as a base. And yes, middle ages didn't revolve around balance exactly.

20

General Discussion / Re: CRPG is indeed dying.

« on: July 29, 2014, 11:32:05 am »

Of course that's only my opinion guys. Don't take it too dramatic. If the majority thinks that Battle is fine, then okay. I just think the battle mode with the round based team deathmatch objective is heavily crippling infantry in their gameplay, because they struggle more than other classes to "hunt and flee", but it's exactly those skills which make you either effective in Battle mode or not. It's the reason why the ranged and mounted classes have been so overnerfed that they are barely fun any more, and STILL they are massively annoying to infantry.

But I guess you all know the old story by now. I know that the current cRPG "works", but I think it could do much better. That's all.

21

General Discussion / Re: CRPG is indeed dying.

« on: July 29, 2014, 10:58:19 am »

Anyway, these sentiments [exp, grind, low levels] have been lingering around the forums and changes are coming to low level and new players. Sadly, Enver had nothing to do with them.

And what about the retarded upkeep and multiplier systems? And the fucked up battle mode?

22

General Discussion / Re: Horse archery is too strong

« on: July 25, 2014, 03:09:14 pm »

Koaklie needs to '-' more when he's informed how wet he gets over eastern bows, cos it shows what a weaboo he is

What I especially like about Cloaca and his "-"-spam is that they don't count to your rating at all any more. Since I rarely "-" someone, I especially enjoyed encountering a post of Cloaca I could not only "-" and thus influence his rating, I even meant it because it really was bullshit! What a happy day.

23

General Discussion / Re: Horse archery is too strong

« on: July 24, 2014, 04:51:19 pm »

Pretty much none of this is remotely accurate, fyi. In fact, it is mostly the opposite of all historical records and modern scientific testing.

I can fly.

I am a test driver for Porsche.

I know who killed JFK.

24

General Discussion / Re: Horse archery is too strong

« on: July 24, 2014, 02:25:36 pm »

Historical tests had the result that a sharpened longbow can cut through a katana.

No really, I am no expert in bows, and I think this topic was derailed heavily, but my personal opinion is that I agree that the longbow probably was the "strongest" bow.

Since I said I have no clue what I am talking about my opinion isn't really of any value, but hear me out anyway:

I guess we agree that for a long shot with a bow you need a lot of energy. The more energy, the longer the shot. That's obvious.

Now if we look at the bows, I think we all agree that the English/Welsh longbows required the highest drawing power of all bows. I mean just look at the backs of the people who used them! And I think it is relatively safe to say that the average Briton was a bit taller and bigger than the average Turk/Arab, I think what is true nowadays wasn't different back then.

I also think it is nice to know with which techniqes the bows were made, be it recurve, composite or whatever. But in the end it is only determining how the bowyers dealt with the materials they had at their disposal. To stick with a similar example: you can lift an object with a wind either directly or by the use of a pulley. One way (with the pulley) feels easier than the other, because you don't have to put that much energy directly into lifting the object, it's rather spent in the "endurance" which you need to turn the wind a few times more than when lifting the object directly. I think it's "maximum power" vs. "endurance power". It's at least how it's said in German, I couldn't find a translation. BUT: once both objects are lifted they both have the same amount of power stored. So in the end I don't think that anything but the final draw weight matters. Every bow offers a certain resistance, and you have to overcome it to put energy into the arrow. The more resistance you have, the more energy can you put into the arrow. And it doesn't matter how that resistance is created, be it the material or the shape or both, in the end it all boils down to how much force you need to pull the string, since for every historic bow it has been done the same way. If there had been a compound bow I already wouldn't be so sure in my theory, since I can't really estimate the shift of power needed, but I think since the drawing length is limited a compound bow would be weaker than a normal bow of the same size, right?

So bottom line is: the Longbow had the higher drawing weight, which means it puts more energy into the arrow.

But here is the point: I think the arrow kicks in, too! My bet is that the arrows for longbows were much longer, thicker and thus heavier than those of the Turk bows. And not only proportionally, but even heavier than that! In Europe I think you had to deal much more with (plate-)armour than in the middle east, and the fighting was different in general. So the heavier arrows lead to the longbow perhaps not having the range of the Turk bow, but his arrows pack a much meaner punch than those of the Turk bow!

I think we can compare it with modern calibers a bit. The Turk bow is a 9mm gun, whereas the longbow is a .45 ACP. While the 9mm has a good range of about 200m or even more, the .45 ACP is so slow, it's subsonic ammunition by default! (In most cases, there is always some special cartridge). With tracer ammunition I could fire my gun and then watch the bullet travel to the target... But heaven forbid you get hit by a .45!

The .45 has a much bigger cartridge than the 9mm, but due to the heavier projectile it's slower and thus has the shorter reach. Still it hits much heavier than the 9mm.

And the same thing happens with the longbow. It was designed to be able to punch through plate armour on short range with the right tip, something which a man with a melee weapon often fails! And of course it was designed to engage the enemy as soon as possible, so they also tried to get the range as high as possible, but it was only secondary to the armour piercing aspect.

The Turk bow on the other hand had the main purpose of having the longest reach possible. In the middle east warfare was different than in Europe, it was more mobile, and they relied much more on ranged fighting than on melee, and in the end a lower percentage of the Saracen troops was armoured compared to European troops, and the armour usually was a bit weaker, as far as I know. (I know about the fact that they often wore cloth over their armour so the Europeans thought their majority was unarmoured, which is wrong). So the main objective was to be able to shoot before the enemy could shoot, and be it only for hitting their usually unarmoured horses first, depriving them of their mobility.

But since I think that in a direct fight of lightly armoured Muslims against heavily armoured Europeans the longer reach of the Turk bow would be negated by the lower stopping power, whereas the longbow has only slightly lower reach but is more deadly, I think the longbow is the more useful tool in general. Edit: but only because I had to consider the armours of the possible enemies, too.

25

General Discussion / Re: Eiherjar Ulfrik doesn't pay his debts.

« on: July 23, 2014, 04:46:55 pm »

Sorry, I wanna apologize.

Didn't want to insult any retards around. I bet you are much smarter than NA players.

26

General Discussion / Re: Eiherjar Ulfrik doesn't pay his debts.

« on: July 23, 2014, 04:46:06 pm »

Well, Foxxy, Ulfrik is an utter retard (in the very literal meaning of retard).

He is mentally challenged with an IQ of maybe 90, maybe less. I know him from Ts, so I know what I'm talking of.

He's a person from the lower (white) class of German society, so you really can't expect anything intelligent, reasoned or productive from him.

Just let him be.

Still makes him a really smart NA player with that IQ.


Commence the flamewar!

27

General Discussion / Re: Can I reasonably expect a change to the current EXP/Multiplier system?

« on: July 22, 2014, 05:23:26 pm »

"upkeep" could be altered to "rent fee" or "gear maintenance" or something. Gear Maintenance would only need to be paid at start of every map.

Before a battle, you prep your gear and make sure everything works as it should. There is some cost related to this, smith needs a coin for the armor repair or fletcher need a coin to make more arrows... and so forth.

Actually the idea I had the moment the upkeep system was announced was to raise the level cap a bit and have a "wealth" skill. It's a skill without a governing attribute (like STR or AGI), which raises the worth of equipment you can wear. You get a basic equipment value which raises for every level a bit, but if you want to have more equipment, you have to spend points in that skill. So let's say on level 33 (the new soft level cap) without any skill point in that skill whatsoever you can run around with some cloth armour and a bastard sword, and that's it. But you will have amazing stats. On the other hand, if you spent 10 points in it, you can ride around on a plated charger with plate armour, but your stats will suck. Or you can spend like 5 points, have reasonable equipment and reasonable stats.

This system allows a much wider variety of builds, it allows weapons to finally be balanced properly by their value (which upkeep didn't allow, since it was not strict enough), you can keep your permanent equipment as long as you want, there is no RNG at the end of the round determining if you go broke or not, you don't have to downgrade equipment if you lost a few rounds in a row, clan members don't have better equip by default than random players who don't benefit from banner balance, you can't run around completely OP for a limited amount of time like you can with upkeep, owning a fief in strategus or trading a lot on the marketplace won't allow you to simply IGNORE the equipment restriction system any more, and utlimatively your equipment is not determined by the performance of the other people in your team. Only advantages, where ever you look. chadz said that my system would be "interesting" or something like that, but that they would probably stick with the upkeep system since it is what they implemented now and wouldn't want to create another system. If they only asked the community about the system change before starting to work upkeep and announcing it when it was already too late.

28

General Discussion / Re: Horse archery is too strong

« on: July 22, 2014, 04:38:19 pm »

French forces used arbalest because it's require much less training than a longbow, and because feudal France army was clearly a massive amount of peasants.
The lords were afraid to teach to peasants how to fight. (military training)

Weren't the French medieval armies actually known for not conscribing peasants most of the time? As far as I know in France the nobelty had the opinion that it's better to not have the peasants being armed. If you consider the French revolution, they were right in the end 

29

General Discussion / Re: Can I reasonably expect a change to the current EXP/Multiplier system?

« on: July 22, 2014, 04:32:29 pm »

Removing upkeep would be great. Then everyone can go gothic plate and ride an elephant. All the time........

Yeah, because upkeep is totally the only system which allows a limitation of the overall value of the equipment wielded. At all.

"Remove upkeep" has always to be understood as "replace upkeep with something different". Since most people don't really know how that replacement would look like, and they only care about upkeep being gone, they write "remove upkeep".

30

General Discussion / Re: Can I reasonably expect a change to the current EXP/Multiplier system?

« on: July 21, 2014, 10:14:45 pm »

Yeah, I'll just flat out say it, I think it's absolute crap, especially on public servers.  It's become a special occasion when I can have x2 for a round now, or it at least feels that way.  If I put anything heavier than a Byrnie on, I seem to lose money, yet I see people run full plate all the time.

cRPG is a great concept, and I keep coming back to it, but it's the multiplier system that kills it for me.  I don't even play all that often, so when I do sit down to play, mostly on the weekends, it grates at me even more to be stuck at x1, and then the repair bills kick in and I just think "there's another three-five minutes of income gone."

I noticed some recent changes to team balance, and I still see games end in stomps with 20 enemies still standing, but at least it's being looked into. Is this ever going to happen to the EXP system?  I keep reading that the multiplier system was only temporary, but it doesn't seem that way.

I can tell you one thing, if Melee: Battlegrounds has a similar system, I'll probably pass on it as well.  Don't need to develop a love/hate relationship with too many games.


EDIT: I'd also like to add that it makes other game modes, like Siege, almost pointless in terms of progression, and that sucks because you get to fight a lot more in non-battle mode, but it's hardly populated.  Also, I still don't know what this "Rageball" thing is, or why it's on my server list. 

I think the devs of cRPG are incredibly skilled programmes, and it's really amazing what they managed to create from such a limited and basic thing like M&B Warband MP. There is no doubt in it.

What they incredibly suck at though, is game design. Honestly they never managed to introduce anything else than what Warband already had, some half assed team deathmatch and siege modes. And don't let me even get started on how you develop your characters or earn your XP/money. It's such an incredibly stuipid system, it started to hurt my physically the moment they announced it, and over all those years it only became worse, because one might have thought that after some time they realize what gigantic pile of crap they created there. But nope, they just stuck to it and tried to make the best out of it, which in the end resulted in a system which barely does the job and is only marginally better than the system before.

I don't know how you can not recognize how imbecilic the idea is to restrict people only temporarily in their choice of equipment. Having to save some money to run around in black plate on a plated charger is unbalanced either way, and when I get trampled by such a behemoth it is only little comforting for me that he can do that only like once in a week. Let alone those people who are in a clan or have fiefs in Strategus and have more money than others on average. What a great idea to give the most professional players advantages on public servers (this includes the fucking banner balance system).

The upkeep system is doing a really bad job at restricting players properly, and you always see the same cookiecutter builds and equipment loadouts. Every class has a hand full of viable builds which all look the same, and all of them play the same. There is little room for effective hybridization, and due to the poor performance the upkeep system is showing you see like ten percent of all items on eighty percent of all players. The different characters on a server differ only on two direction: the level and the average amount of money a player has at his disposal. Which means if you are a random, casual player, the first thing you can look to buy as an armour would be a buttplug. Take care it's at least a chainmail one, better plate. Leather buttplugs won't protect you at all.

As dumb the XP/money gain and the character development are, as dumb is the gameplay itself. It doesn't encourage players to do anything else than keeping [W] pressed and running towards the closest player like some kind of heat seaking missile, with the same amount of intelligence.

If the kickstarter project the devs currently have running gets released one day, and it turns out to be a copy of cRPG just on another engine, then they will have the same problems they are having right now, including the equipment restrictions, character development, XP and money gain, general balance between different players and the balance between the classes. And all they will do to fix those problems will be nerfing stuff. Because it's the only thing they really know to do.

After all I have seen I can safely say that the devs won't fix the problems cRPG has anytime soon, if at all. They simply fail to see the retardedness of some decisions, or they are too proud to admit a mistake, and thus we will be stuck to what we have now, until one day the server gets shut down. cRPG might have become a great thing, but the chance was missed. It is good, yes, but that's utter shit if it could have been something awesome.