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Overall
· We are looking to adjust the cost and effectiveness of tier 3 tanks (mammoths, avatars, tripods). We want these units to be more expensive and more expensive to upgrade so that they aren't as easy to spam, but if you do decide to make these units they will pack a little more punch than before. This doesn't mean they won't be vulnerable to counters but it does mean that they will be a more ominous sight when you see them coming.
· We are looking at increasing the rate at which units gain veterency so that it pays to look after your units and retreat them from the frontline when they get damaged. Right now we feel that gaining veterency is too hard to accomplish and therefore it is overlooked by most players and therefore units are regarded as disposable.
· Commando units will be tougher and the idea that we're looking at right now is to start them all with hero veterency. This will allow a hero unit to auto heal and not be a unit that you spend a lot of money on and then they die easily. They will also receive improvements to their skill sets.
· The AI continues to frustrate us in the game and for the comp-stompers out there we wanted to make the AI a little more challenging. The problem right now is that you attack an AI base only to find there are no defenses, or just lots of one kind of defense a lot of the time. Therefore we are making airfields deploy with AA guns, barracks with anti-Infantry defenses and Vehicle factories with Anti-Vehicle defenses. We will also be looking at capping some structures as the AI has a bad habit of building as many refineries as it possibly can, which we're guessing can't really help their economy that much!
· Last but not least we are looking at providing more long range artillery options. This means drastically improving the range of the beam cannon's "venom bounce", giving more options for GDI to spot for juggernauts, and Scrin will have an entirely new option.
· AA will be tweaked. We felt that the GDI's AA turret was the weakest and the Scrin's was overpowered so we'll be addressing that as well as making units like the raider buggy & pitbull more effective against air units.
We felt that the factions are more varied and interesting to play as, but Scrin are still overpowered. They are the choice of new players to the game and experienced players tend to avoid them as they are too easy to win with. This is a shame as they could be a great faction, so we are putting a lot of our effort into improving that faction. We would like to see them become more reliant on tiberium by overall giving ground units less hit points, but to balance that they will repair quicker in tiberium than they did in 1.0.
A successful scrin player will need to be much more aware of where tiberium is so that he can heal / repair. We are giving Scrin increases in speed in order to allow them to more easily retreat to tiberium and this will also give them a significant advantage if they engage enemies while still in a tiberium field.
The Mothership is being completely re-worked. We feel that it's too easy to beat AI with it as it's more powerful than a superweapon and the AI doesn't build enough AA or even acknowledge the threat of the Mothership, and human players are very rarely caught out by such a well advertised and slow moving attack. So the Mothership will have a completely new set of abilities and a new role in the game.
GDI are the faction that we felt had come the furthest from the original game and they're a lot of fun to play with now. Changes to them won't be as dramatic but there are still some things that that we want to improve. Zone troopers for example are far too easily killed by buzzers and we want to make the armory upgrades much more effective to help them deal with buzzers. Orcas will have visible chain gun fire and will be more effective against infantry. Their rockets will be an upgrade option. Overall we want there to be more upgrading options with GDI so that you can choose how to specialize your GDI force. Tanks will have the option of upgrading to railguns on a tank by tank basis in the same way as avatars currently upgrade. There will also be upgrade options for repair drones so that mammoths don't come with repair drones by default. Another item we're looking at is making the shockwave artillery clear bunkers.
Nod also received a lot of changes in 1.0 but we feel that they needed some help with power so we're hoping to introduce a new power structure that will allow them to power cloaking spikes etc. more easily. We're also hoping to fine tune the suicide options with the Liquid tiberium trucks being capped but also getting more HP's and producing a slightly bigger blast. We'll also be stealthing support air units like the aircraft that drops the mines / vapor bomb.
This is list of highlights and there are many other items that we're looking at adding. Obviously as we progress with the mod and test it, some of these items may not work as we had hoped and be dropped or changed and other new ideas implemented instead. But this hopefully provides an idea of the direction the mod is heading in.
Thanks for the news and mod, looking forward to Version 2.0. This further improvements will definitely improve gameplay.
Sounds good,
Will provisions be made for campain play?
Sorry, but this mod is made with a complete focus on multiplayer gameplay, and not the single player campaign. Unfortunately, optimising the mod for both would mean too many compromises and we want the mod to be as good as possible in multiplayer.
can u please make the gameplay faster of all things to fix that must be one of them
other that that, great
That's an interesting request marsionman. I think that preferred gameplay speed is something that will vary greatly from one person to another. C&C in general is regarded as having a fast gameplay compared to other RTS games and most mods actually slow it down if anything.
Maybe if you could explain the benefits of speeding up gameplay it might help, because right now we have no plans to speed the game up anymore beyond the changes we are making to scrin (making their units quicker).
We are trying to bring a more tactical style of play to the game and speeding up the gameplay probably won't fit in with that plan, as it's more suited to the standard game which consists of quickly building then tank rushing.
@TalonH4wk:
Speeding up the game has a few advantages;
1) It means that a player must think more quickly, and play more dynamically than when the game is slower. It also means that advanced use of hotkeys becomes more essential due to the faster rate of play!
2) It provides much more of a challenge to the player when facing AI, because the AI is not affected by gamespeed, wheras the player is. Hence, the player must rely on tactics more =)
3) It gives you a huge adrenaline rush trying to keep up. Ever play Tiberian Sun on maximum speed? It was like bungee jumping.
4) It means that it's easier to take people by surprise and so players must take this into account when using their tactics.
Overall, a faster game would see more use of tactics and the tactical features of the game (like hotkeys and waypoints) which are usually overlooked by most players. I took the time to learn my hotkeys and other tactical aids about a month ago, and it's really improved the way I play my game and the tactics I use. =)
I would suggest increasing the size of the 'game speed' slider in the skirmish/multiplayer options, and having a 'recommended' setting as what is currently full speed. That way nobody has to play at the advanced speed, but those that like it can do so. :)
This is all good feedback, but unfortunately the difficulty for us is getting everything done! ;)
I think if game speed was something we could adjust (we haven't looked into it at this time to see what can be done), then the key would be to allow players to adjust the game speed like you pointed out. Adjusting it without that option would be a mistake.
=)
That's why I made the suggestion!
Yeah, I understand that it'll take a long while to get everything done, but getting in a lot of ideas might help you prioritise what you want to do most, and it might bring about a big change in gameplay early... rather than fiddling about with some things for ages and then implementing an idea thats been left on a shelf somewhere and going "WOW, why didn't we see this before?!" =)
So I'm just trying to help =]
You seem to have it fairly well planned though. :)
RE: The AI.
I love your ideas. Perhaps in future updates you could try to get the AI to be more team-focused in team matches. It would make it more of a challenge but still open up some fun combos for the player. Would be especially fun in 2v2 skirmish matches ;)
The AI is the toughest thing to work on. We've had people thinking that we have already adjusted the AI because of the way the game plays with the mod, but the gameplay is improved purely though the changes we've made to units, structures etc.
The difficulty as well with some AI related changes is that you can get unexpected results as we've found out already. When that happens we may have a feature working the way we like it but the AI starts behaving in a strange way so we have to go back and try another way of getting the same result.
Ahh, well best of luck!
I remember playing against Ryvmech's 'Almost Human' AI on generals maps. That was quite something! Well, I can only imagine it took him a lot of effort to make it that good... I say go for it! :)
I've often thought that I'd like to try my hand at that kinda thing but I've got no experience in code whatsoever so I think I'd be hopeless! Perhaps in the summer I might give it a go ;)