All these changes...

So an idea that just came to me as I thought of this game: maybe just roll everything back to whenever everyone wants? (decide by some poll). This game is dying and is going deeper with each update.

Before I might have logged in to see if there were any players waiting for a game, but they aren't here anymore because they don't find it fun anymore due to all the changes. This means I haven't been coming since there's no one to join (yes I like big team games). I assume it's a similar story with most of the players here who like teamgames. Also, the new lobby design has definitely put me off. Previously, I might have opened the lobby to check how many players werre online; with this new lobby I honestly don't even feel like opening the app anymore.

I know people wont agree with me but some will and I really think some rollback is what's needed. How difficult would it be to do a -say- 2/3 year rollback? IMO, what's needed is that bots need back their old OP power (24k detri is really not worth more than 10k). Or to sometime when things were, yes, OP and FUN (now antinukes even block nukes from outside their shown range haha - so literally any sneaky attacks are blocked, e.g. if you kill an antinuke and fire the nuke at the free spot, another anti will just block it since their ranges are so stupidly big now).

I don't know how diffcult this might be. I'm no programmer but all you need to do is nerf things like antinukes again and add firepower/movement speed back to larger bots right?

From what I see, all the games nowadays are 1vs1s and they rarely go past 40 mins. So why nerf the big bots and nukes which used to make large teamgames so much fun?

These are the things I found fun in this game, and until there is some fun brought back into this game, I won't be back.
PS, this is just my opinion, feel free to like or hate.

quote: How difficult would it be to do a -say- 2/3 year rollback?

Astronomically. Just fixing things that suck would be infinitely easier.

quote: (24k detri is really not worth more than 10k)

It's probably worth at least 15-18k, but certainly not 24k. I'll probably be making a unit AI update soon which will improve that somewhat, but yeah detri is still either overpriced or underperforming.

Starlight also recently got a price increase along with the new model, which was definitely uncalled for since starlight always sucked compared to zenith anyway and I don't recall it getting buffed.

quote: (now antinukes even block nukes from outside their shown range haha - so literally any sneaky attacks are blocked, e.g. if you kill an antinuke and fire the nuke at the free spot, another anti will just block it since their ranges are so stupidly big now).

That's not quite true, but they do block any nukes that pass through their range, instead of just the ones that land inside their range. Nukes still get used anyway but there aren't that many people who can pull it off really well. I think at least reef should be losing its antinuke soon, which would be good since reefs are cloakable and mobile which makes disabling them unreliable.

Nerfing antinukes directly would be bad since there's not much of anything you could do to nerf them that would have an impact in a normal team game. For example if you increased its reload time that it could only stop 2 nukes instead of 3 you'd still have to build 3 silencers to bypass one protector, and double or triple stacking protectors is still a lot cheaper than that. (and you could afford a zenith or DRP for the price of that many silencers)

quote: I don't know how diffcult this might be. I'm no programmer but all you need to do is nerf things like antinukes again and add firepower/movement speed back to larger bots right? From what I see, all the games nowadays are 1vs1s and they rarely go past 40 mins. So why nerf the big bots and nukes which used to make large teamgames so much fun?

I don't think it's quite that simple. A lot of the issues with player loss come from issues with lobby and infra updates breaking things or spiting users in various ways. I would imagine some of the loss came from the changes to commanders (and some ridiculous nerfs) which occurred even before that.

On the other hand I can kind of see where you're coming from as well. ZK's graphics are going stale compared to modern games (in some ways, at least) and the current gameplay is less exciting in a lot of ways than it has been in the past. I don't think that's necessarily from the lack of things that are "OP", but the lack of cool/varied tier 3 units (like flying capital ships) and the lack of cost effectivness for top tier units leave the endgame disappointing (basically all catapults and banthas).

Also overdrive got nerfed recently, which I had forgotten but it makes price increases for superweapons and even more dubious design decision. Making all the top-tier stuff cheaper may not be such a bad idea from that perspective.

A full rollback is, technically, reasonably easy. The game and engine versions exist. However, this would cause all development to cease and old versions are not any more marketable and bug-free than newer ones. Who even knows if it works on new operating systems. I'll also be surprised if you can find an agreed upon time that was 'perfect'. This is just the path to shrinking and stagnation.

All hope is not lost! If I assume that you are talking about balance and design changes then you can revert those changes without doing a full rollback and halting all development. Balance and design is almost entirely implemented in a few hundred configuration files and these are trivial to change. However there are two caveats:

• It is impossible to revert changes that do not exist.
• Even for changes that do exists, it is hard to tease out the effects of a change.

quote: IMO, what's needed is that bots need back their old OP power (24k detri is really not worth more than 10k).

This is one of those changes that doesn't exist. The Detriment is basically unchanged for many years. In 2011 it had its cost reduced from 28K to 24K. In 2013 it lost 25% of its speed and transports became slowed by transporting really large cargo. Around 2013 something happened to the damage of its main gun but it is hard to tell what it was (a change to how gauss works). These changes were over three years ago but are probably what you are referring to when you talk about speed and firepower. However, it never cost 10K and would be ridiculous at that price. In recent years I have seen the lategame open up to more unit types and striders, Bantha is built and is reasonably powerful. A 10K Detriment would warp the whole game.

quote: Or to sometime when things were, yes, OP and FUN (now antinukes even block nukes from outside their shown range haha - so literally any sneaky attacks are blocked, e.g. if you kill an antinuke and fire the nuke at the free spot, another anti will just block it since their ranges are so stupidly big now).

I have seen recent games won by nukes. You either don't understand how nukes work, have not seen any recent games or are being obtuse. I expected nukes to look underpowered after the interception change because people were used to spamming antinukes everywhere. Nowdays people feel like they can get away with few antinukes and this leads to more sneaky attacks on single points of failure. The antinuke change is effectively still a new change so it is something worth discussing. I think this discussion would lead to a better mechanic than the one in past versions; it felt janky to have to spam antinukes in the back of your base to cover all the corners of the map. It is much more interesting to play a risk/reward game by being able to place an antinuke on your frontline to efficiently cover a large area behind it.

TL:DR, instead of saying "revert everything" you should open topics to discuss each of the things you think was a regression. This thread may still go off topic and end up somewhere useful. It would be best to start with a useful OP though.

quote: Around 2013 something happened to the damage of its main gun but it is hard to tell what it was (a change to how gauss works).

Did the nerf to daggers affect detri? I don't know exactly how daggers were nerfed or whether that applied to all guass guns or not.

quote: Actually Starlight got that price increase in 2014. Though i guess that mostly just shows how much people use it.

I wonder if that wasn't a response to the old economy system. I remember back when OD was linear and payback was infinite detris and starlights were common in team games and probably op, but that's only because they were made cheap by the infinite income to one player. Now you almost never see them except rarely in FFA, and I think they'd still probably be pretty rare even if the price dropped to 30k and they were buffed significantly (like making crater puncher not suck). I think the whole superweapon price scale (not including silencer) should be reconsidered as a matter of being outdated.

Just call it "countable infinity" like mathematicians do. :P

Superweapons were quite buffed "recently. Starlight after the rework has a broader beam okay okay it just looks broader then and Zenith pack a much bigger punch than it used to as well. The DeRP has become much less viable though and nukes are harder to pull off (at least antinuke on Leviathan has been removed).

However striders are not what they used to be since people started to easily counter detri with terra holes.
Bantha became less powerful because reaper monospam became the meta in late game flat map teamgames.
Funnel is a husk of its former self because it was a boring monospam unit which you didn't have to manage at all.
Catapult is useful as it always was due to being the biggest range mobile unit in the game (besides Warlord).
Dante on the contrary actually spiked in popularity in recent months as a late game unit for 1v1s and small teams. In large teams it is also being built more often than it used to be.
I have no idea about the viability of the sea striders since whenever I see a map where sea is important enough to facilitate one, I dodge out of its way.

Besides you can never get back to things were back then because it is not only the game that changed. It was the players too. Now they know how to make detri useless with only a couple of conjurers, how to handle shieldballs and so on and so on. The meta changes: about a year ago it was all about high alpha skirmishers since a lot of them gained overkill prevention. Then with Firewalker and Wolverine buffs it become a skirmisher-artilery-porc meta. And now we are at the stage were heavy hp units have become much widely used and I suspect that the meta will continue to develop into that direction for some time now since meta shifts are very slow due to ZK playerbase being so small (and shrinking).

[GBC]1v0ry_k1ng don't you want to have your leverer+ravager balls back though?

quote: However striders are not what they used to be since people started to easily counter detri with terra holes.

People bury banthas too, but they still get built (and as a staple of team games at that).

quote: Funnel is a husk of its former self because it was a boring monospam unit which you didn't have to manage at all.

No argument there. Funnels got nerfed too hard and in a nonsensical way (ironically the slow rebuild interval prevents AA from disarming their shields effectively).

quote: Catapult is useful as it always was due to being the biggest range mobile unit in the game (besides Warlord). Dante on the contrary actually spiked in popularity in recent months as a late game unit for 1v1s and small teams. In large teams it is also being built more often than it used to be.

I think dante and catapult are fine, I was mostly only talking about the -really- expensive stuff above bantha.

quote: Bantha became less powerful because reaper monospam became the meta in late game flat map teamgames.

Well, on that note bantha is technically a bot. Why should it win on flat ground in the first place? It's just a symptom of the glaring lack of variety once you hit strider level.

quote: The meta changes: about a year ago it was all about high alpha skirmishers since a lot of them gained overkill prevention.

Scalpels also got nerfed after that. :P BSS were a longstanding issue but I think they're pretty well balanced now and I think the steady improvement in unit ai has been a driving factor for that.

quote: Then with Firewalker and Wolverine buffs it become a skirmisher-artilery-porc meta.

Firewalkers did get a cost decrease, but wolverines actually got a reload time nerf (and move speed too, I'm pretty sure). The only thing that's improved for wolverines is unit ai, and it only really makes them slightly less stupid. Also after the buff to gauss it's now pretty easy to stop a wolverine advance. Porc/arty meta isn't really novel either, at least it's been that way as long as I can remember (firewalkers too, although not as much as now). Team games just tend to be porcy in general.

quote: The DeRP has become much less viable though

They still get built on occasion, and probably way more often than starlight. Also like half of its shots do no physical damage, which is ridiculous for a 32k metal weapon of mass destruction.

WRT crater puncher my main complaint is that it just doesn't.. you know.. punch craters. Digging a deeper trench doesn't count, and it kind of sucks that the most expensive superweapon in the game is bad at killing mobs of units and small buildings.

quote: Well, on that note bantha is technically a bot. Why should it win on flat ground in the first place? It's just a symptom of the glaring lack of variety once you hit strider level.

Sounds like an argument for the introduction of the starlight tank.

Or better yet: Make ALL Drones uncloakable and reduce reef speed. No reason a reef should be fast. This makes it vulnerable to typhoons, daggers and etc as well as giving emp a chance.

Steam release can help a lot. It just has to be as clean as possible (we have hard trainwreck example with EVO), but I guess it takes longer than expected? Because how long it was 2 years?

And from lobby point NOTA lobby was literally perfect except it was closed source LOL. They basically got it right from first try.