Fix the mod - No doctrine rework

Illegal_Carrot Offline

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Posts: 1068

« on: November 01, 2010, 03:25:23 am »

So I've been pondering it for a while; seriously discussing it with other players, and examining it from every angle.
And there's is absolutely no fucking reason for yet another doctrine rework.
It's just going to sap resources from the mod which could be put to better use, and will probably outright kill the mod. It's a shitty idea, and it's being done in a shitty manner. Welp.

Not that long ago the mod was dead. Zero players online, zero games being played, and no work actually being done. Nothing. Then the campaign was implemented, which actually brought some life to the mod. People began playing again, old players returned and new player registration dramatically increased. The campaign had saved the mod by giving players a reason to play, and adding a whole new level to the persistence aspect of things.
The campaign ended just recently, and already we've seen a huge drop in both players and registration. No one is interested in sticking around, because no one is interested in playing an unfun, unbalanced POS run by devs who don't update the mod, don't even play the mod, don't give a shit about their player base, and who seem to be more interested in using the mod as their play-thing, rather than actually creating a decent, presentable product. They've forgotten that without a playerbase, there is no mod. That if the community is unhappy, there is no future. And the community is unhappy.

The doctrine rework isn't going to fix this, and in fact will only make things worse. The current doctrines aren't half-bad and could easily be fixed with a small amount of tweaks. Little things that would take mere minutes to implement :
-Hard-cap all officer units: bam, no more unstoppable marauding Infantry officer death blobs, FOO spam, or CCT spam, etc.
-Make Asymmetric Warfare only affect AB units: bam, the stupidest, most unfun, unbalanced, most complained-about ability in the mod is balanced.
-Remove suppression from Incendiary Assault nades, and make all Assault-like abilities throw a max of 5 grenades each: voila, the most spammable abilities in the game have been brought into line.
etc.

These simple changes would take moments to implement, and yet would increase the playability of this mod by a dozen times. But instead, all we get, at best, is "It won't make it into the rework, so don't worry." Yeah, the rework. That's exactly what the community wants right now: to be stuck with buggy, unfun bullshit for months while the devs design, develop, create, code, implement, test, balance, release, then further balance things. And for a reason only God knows, they're doing all twelve doctrines at once, which will make things even more complicated; longer to create, and harder to balance. These new doctrines are, of course, all dev-created, with little to no input from the community. The 'discussions' that were held were a fucking joke, and it was nice to see the mods pat themselves on the back while the community sat slack-jawed at the reworks before them. Which leads us to the reworks themselves.

They're terrible. They do literally everything worse than the current doctrines, and kill any sort of individuality. Almost every single doctrine gets a recon-like ability, an anti-infantry offmap and an anti-tank offmap. Armor players will no longer fear ATGs, because they can instantly reveal all weapon crews, and just drop a White Phosphorous strike on them to instantly kill it, same with Blitz and Precision Strike. Luftwaffe can unlock MGs, mortars, and snipers, therefore negating the largest problem facing PE (and Luft in particular). Etc. It kills all strategy and all tactics. It kills the reliance on teamwork and cooperation, and instead makes every doctrine self-supporting and all-powerful. The doctrine buffs themselves are also retarded in buffing way too many units with way too much stuff. Heroic armor and criticals are given out everywhere, units are buffed that shouldn't be, and all the abilities do way too much shit.

Instead, the devs should be putting their attention towards what actually needs to be done, and towards what the community actually wants:

-Another campaign. It's what brought life back to the mod, and it's what will keep players interested. People want one, and it'd be the best thing for the mod right now. Without one, the mod is already dieing again. It needs to be built in to the launcher, and have a warmap. It needs to be more automated, and less complicated. Now that we've had a campaign already and established the ground rules, we know a lot about what we have to do, and how to do it. The entire mod's effort needs to be put into developing this campaign, not designing more 'cool' (ie overpowered) shit, or wasting time with yet more doctrines.

-Implement an RCA doctrine. RCA players, and the mod as a whole, have gone far too long without a doctrine, and there's really no excuse. One could easily be created by simply taking the old doctrine, and removing/balancing everything that got it removed in the first place (ie the insane power and number of offmaps), or even by having the community draw one up themselves.

-Fix huge balance issues that have been plaguing the mod for an inexcusable amount of time. Things like Asymmetric Warfare, Incendiary Assault, Assault nades, vehicles that fully operate while repairing, Infantry Officer death blobs, etc. As I mentioned before, the necessary changes are blatantly obvious, and would take less than a day to resolve every major balance concern. Further tweaks, balances and changes could be done very easily, as well, if the devs would just listen to the community for once.

There's a lot that should be changed, and even more that needs to be. But the basis is the same: another doctrine rework is the last thing the community wants or the mod needs. We've already seen a decline in new players, we're losing veteran players like crazy, and everyone is unhappy with the current state of the mod.

I wish I was alone in thinking this, but I'm not. I've spoken to dozens of players about this, and it's pretty much universally acknowledged that the mod's current trend needs to stop.
Some things I've heard, from experienced players, and long-time members:
"I can't believe the devs have let the mod rot like this."
"I have lost all confidence in the development team to do anything right anymore."
"If I thought the devs could actually do something right, I might donate again."
"Somehow, CoH:O is more balanced than EiR."
"Fuck this, I'm going to OMG."
(I'm not going to post who said what, but they can admit to it if they want)

This post is far too long, and yet I'm still not done. I could go on and on about how the new doctrines are terrible, how the devs seem to blatantly ignore the community's pleas, how the community is desperately unhappy with EiRR, how we're losing even our most dedicated players, or any other topic like that; and I will, if asked to elaborate. But for now, I think you get the point.


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