TomUjain

I really really want 64 players, but... The reality is it just does not work. As more and more patches are rolled out the harder and harder it is for this fossil of an engine to keep up. Lag, crashes and maps clearly not designed for that cap begin to become more and more apparent. Unless we shift to a new engine that can handle that cap then all that will happen is you will be forced to take a bigger and bigger performance hit gameplay wise.

Ryz and Poi's cards made me laugh I must admit, but I like the idea behind it for sure. The idea of picking a 'class' and getting minor benefits for said class massively increases the odds of players returning due to goals a similar effect the leaderboard has i've noticed. something simple like achivements or 'leveling up' a class for a few passive abilities might help with retaining new blood.

Oh goody, team balance - my fav topic I don't think giving the commander that sort of power is going to solve the problem, if anything it would compound it. Agent has the right line of thinking, and i've suggested somthing similar before. A solid refined shuffle system should be enough to remove a good 80% chunk of bad games but to address the 'rage quit' problem enticing people to join the losing team via offering rewards for doing is a good counterbalance. The team swap feature can't really be used to 'stack' as it only really works when a slot is open, which becomes difficult as everyone will try to flock to that winning team. Granted you can get 2 - 3 people together that way with timing and this is where a lot of this hostiliy comes from I think; it was a common tacktic for some people to go 'AFK' until a slot was open to switch to their friends team. The rage quits; where upwards of 5+ slots can open up has potential as people who want to 'play with friends' can do so, while also plugging the imbalance gap and balancing out both teams instead of what normally happens -- power getting horded to one side.

The problem is two fold; the current system massively rewards players with credits and VP for 'winning' and massively handicaps the losers with less VP and less credits for 'losing' thus making it x2 harder for the losing team to come back and x2 times easier for the winning team to win. Result? Base locking for 4+ hours or a swift 2 min quicky. Maps like snow, under, field are classic examples of this bottlenecking issue ontop of the massively over-rewarding of the winning team and the huge shunning of the losing team. On classic field bottlenecking is a bigger problem due to the lose of the extended tunnel; this highlights that the more diluted the map is the less likely a problem this is. I do think there is an intresting debait to be had about map design. How is it that, Volcano (for example) heavily favors nod while Islands seems to be more well rounded? One glaring issue here is - the harvester, I would argue if you were to place the harvester in the center of islands then we would have another field/under clone.

The VP system isn't perfect, I agree - but it serves (mostly) its purpose which is to help offset 'stalemates' or at the very least help to offset them. Before the VP update stalemates were pretty common and although rare, some games would drag on for 6+ hours in some cases. I suppose you could argue that this was a better alternative (to promote stalemates) as statstically the server tends to stay full for longer - but on the other side of the coin people tend to leave these games unfulfiled which means they are less likely to play again tomorrow. VP does scale though, and it is easy to aquire through repairs or kills -- and it scales with everyone else so it should be fairly easy to 'catch up' my only issue with the system is it further punishes the losing team and makes it x2 harder for them to pull back from, an effect mostly noted on maps like field or under where one team holds the map and the other is base bound. I don't think much needs to change really in regards to VP, but it does highlight another issue - the steap learning curb for new players.

This highlights a major flaw in our design here. What insentive do map makers have, if all their hard work and effort (typically) results in a map that gets shelved in the downloads section to gather rust? Map makers are forced to beg servers to host their maps for them, and typically that is met with the fustration of being stuck in the awful download screen. We need to change something, because as it stands our setup is extremely hostile to map makers. Would increasing the download speed in game work? I doubt it, not everyone has blazing fast internet rendering the faster speed useless. Honestly I believe the best way forward is to allow 'new maps' a testing phase - and put them into a monthly patch for everyone to play.

I've actually been a big supporter of being able to restore buildings, granted with some form of price / cost -- not sure a vote system is the best way to go about it. In any case its something fresh and new that the other servers are not offering and i'm interested to see how everyone takes to it.

I doubt very much that an in game download system will work either, considering the size of some of these maps and also considering some people are still on basic broadband speed - let us not forget that votes to change map / game ends quickly etc.... will also 'break' the download and simply kick the user back to title screen. As it was suggested, the best way I can think of is to compile all the 'tested' maps into a zip file and put them into a monthly patch or add them to the roaster but not offically so downloads are not required. The altnerative is to struggle with what we have, and increasing our speed 1000+ times won't solve the problem fully; or we are more forthcoming with putting out community maps.

If this is something the team is struggling with, i'd be happy to take a stab at it - i've got enough code experience to get by, granted i'm no expert but willing to have a wholesole attempt.

RenX is craving game modes bad, so I commend you both for doing this - my only real issue is it would be nice to add the game 'modes' as options in the game over vote menu which players can vote for before it boots to the 'select map' vote menu.

In all honesty, I think the most annoying part is expecting to join to then be greeted with a downloading screen. I do feel players would prefer to download the map(s) via the launcher where they are free to do other things instead of been stuck on a black screen. Granted we might have a similar issue speed wise - but I don't think people will mind if the launcher was a bit more forthcoming with the player; for example when trying to join, if the player does not have that map a pop up error will say ' you do not have this map' instead of making them boot the game and boot straping them into a black screen. It might also be helpful to have an option next to the server name (or even a forum thread) which lists all the custom maps / content the server is using - which they can access via the launcher at leisure without bottlenecking the download server.

A lot of things in crates are over powered / unbalanced, such as epic units -- but that is the whole point of them being in said crate, its random and unprodictable. Adding hotwires / techies to the mix really won't change very much in the grand scheme of things as the primary source aka the bar / hon has been destoryed anyway, lets also not forget the risk factor of getting your newly crate spawned hotwire / techy back to base alive dodging snipers, tanks and SBHs. My point is, if you do manage to get back alive -- its going to be a very dull and boring game for you as you will be pretty much forced into base defence and re-mining duties for the entire session.

It all depends on the angel we want to project. As a 'drop' in a crate, I doubt very much this will change very much gameplay wise - one argument I have made in the past is, when a bar or hon is destoryed the remaining hotties / techies are pigin holed into defence due to that class going away. This is an issue for both teams due to the loss of mines, but a huge hit for GDI due to SBHs. As it was pointed out already the loss of bar / hon pretty much means game over, mainly due to the loss of this class. Hardcore RenX players will argue that the loss of the hon / bar should yeld this harsh punishment, while those more open to my line of thinking shouldn't pigin hole players into one role or void base defence so heavily.

It could be used as 'another game mode' where the mechanics allow you to buy back buildings, adding a bit of spice and varity from the default. I'm not saying we should make this a feature on all maps however. We could also give the ability to buy 'defence structures' similar to how the survival mode works.

Team balance is a tricky thing to get right, and even a manual shuffle fails to perfect it at times. The fault, I believe is how the game is designed. In a nut shell: a bad team is more likely to lose a key building, further and permanently handicaping the already bad team. The shuffler has a high chance of re-applying the same awful team thus mimicing the potential problem for upwards of 3 games in a row. 64 players is also not helping adding to the 'bottle neck' effect we feel on maps such as field / under where one team holds the field / tunnels / everything -- because it can. Add to that the buff AOE and VP ranking system and you can have (potentially) 32 heroic rocket men melting your entire base before you can blink. Having units wail on a building for 2 hours on AFK mode isn't something we should be rewarding. To counter this I believe VP should be awarded to buildings, increaseing armour / health the more damage they take over time to encourage more tactical takedowns. So how do we perfect the team balance system? We need it to shuffle people based on their last game and score up both teams based on that data. This, naturally poses a threat to the whole 'play with friends' commity so we need a system in place that rewards people for moving to the losing team by either making them spawn with a special unit / credits, or allows them to move over with friends. Make no mistake here, 'good players' are one thing, but good commanders are another. Almost all matches are defined by the strength and tactical prowess of the commander, not the skillful players - this naturally becomes a problem when one side focuses on K/D while the other focuses on winning.

Based on performance, game-flow and map design having the player limit set between 40 - 50 is where we should be. Anything above that (as we know) causes things begin to warp; In game lag spikes increased likelihood of crashes / FPS drops Breaks map designs (base locking is a common symption of this where all points on a map become contested) FPI have dabbled with this issue a few times. The issue is well, us -- I prefer to play in games of 30+ anything lower and I will not join, and I'm not alone in this viewpoint. The issue is that we can have 10+ people waiting to join but these 10+ people will not go to a different server; they will all wait for the 50 / 50 server to open a spot. This results in what I call 'the bottle neck' the way around this was to up the player limit to 64 which is enough to house pretty much 90% of the people wanting to play all at once. The only way around this is to 1) bulk out the community enough so that several several can be filled out at once 2) invent a system that entices people to join empty / low player servers.

I disagree, I have always been a believer of having the ability to 'buy back' buildings (at a heavy price) - the yard might be a good playground to test the waters on this, besides it'll add a new style of gameplay which might turn out to be a blast. Don't forget that as you 'rank up' your damage and rate of fire scales (inc buffs), building health does not nor does healing aka 10 heroic rockets = one dead building very quickly. The 'ranking up' system pretty much put an end to stalemates, granted games can drag on for hours but thats normally due to both teams faffing around with getting together rushes -- or due to being down to one building (offline AGT for example) and stuck with basic rocket units. If anything losing buildings is what can cause stalemates. In the rare games where both teams are down to basic units / tanks then you can expect a 4+ hour session (normally) where as having the ability to get back a building would cut that 4+ time in half. I am getting flashbacks to old wall games where it wasn't uncommon for games to last all day (12+ hours) in some cases. However introducing a 4 hour timer mechanic would remove this problem completly and default the winning team by points.

Its a great addition, I had a blast with it! I would like to see some form of objective / direction though instead of endless waves of mobs. Perhaps a chance to 'beat it?' have a cap on the waves, say 20? Then you automatically win. It would also be nice to have a few more maps on the menu as well, aside from that I think it is a solid game mode.

Rule Updates Removed advertising rule -- you can now promote (if you wish) a product / service in chat, be careful as excessive use may be treated as spam however. Harassment rule updated Note on 'team shuffling' - we've had a few people (to not mince words) request shuffles just because they don't like losing. 9 times out of 10 Yumi (me) does the shuffles, so sometimes I won't be around to respond. To make this clear we define a 'stacked team' (see above) if one or more of the following applies; Session ends in 20 mins or less No back and forth from both teams (to qualify team has to have some form of success e.g. put together several rushes -- and do atleast 1% damage to a building, destory a building or break out of a tank / inf deadlock at least once Big surge in player loss If the shuffle qualifies I will log in and assess and manually shuffle within 5 mins of the start of the next round. New Server Starting early next year FPI will be upgrading to a beefy server. News on the Mutators Although no deadline has been set as of yet, HIHIHI (aka dave) has plans to re-introduce the custom tanks made by Iridesence. They will be very rare drops from crates, they've gone through exstensive balance testing to ensure they don't ruin the game in anyway but should add a lot of new ways to play. All our other mutators will be offline i.e. the x5 mines for hotties / techies, increased ref tick, commander prompt etc... etc... due to the recent update but should be back in very soon. We will also be supporting / hosting the survival game mode for RenX and hopefully have it as a game option that players can vote in as a game mode but for now its going to be a stand-along thing. And finally... Want to wish you all a very Merry Christmas! I know RenX has had its drama / moments but you, the people reading this are the backbone of the community and I hope FPI can continue to be a home for you guys. A lot of exciting stuff is going on behind the scenes and I can't wait to experience it all with you guys next year.

If you need a hand setting up the server Contra send me a PM and we can get you started with the basics / host etc... Just bare in mind that competition is pretty steep due to the small community it normally ends up being CT vs FPI which means the other servers barely get any attention. give me a shout on Discord (tomujain) and i'll be happy to help you out. I do stress though that setting the player limit to 100 would (as ffreak said) cause a lot of lag and server related crashes - the game is simply not designed for that head count.

Let us all take a step back for a moment and reflect on whats important -- the community. I believe the devs have as much passion and love for RenX as we do (the community). As I said in my last post it is very clear the community is divided / feels strongly about 'team balance' (aka stacking -- if you want to call it that) I don't think stacking is used as a verb to spread hate (although some of that anger does seem to be vented into it) as Agent pointed out, I do, however believe its core meaning has been overly diluted somewhat. At its core when we say a game is stacked it normally means 'unwinable' games, granted sometimes these can't be helped but I do believe 'team balance' related issues is a big problem, too much of a problem - if it wasn't this heat and anger wouldn't have gotten as blown up as it has. I will also say again, I would (ideally) like for friends to play together but the majority (inc myself) of people don't. Ever heard of the navy seals? or the British SAS? They work in small teams against --- well, an enitre army in some cases. You can't denie that 2 - 3 people (more so if these players are good) do not have an effect on the game. I have seen it 10 fold, granted this isn't always the case and a win is not always on the table -- but a noticable effect will be felt, more so if it is done frequently enough for players to notice (Jpoi?) So what can we do? Be patient, take it step-by-step; I am a big supporter of a solid robust team shuffler -- as I said to Havoc, if and when I have to do manual shuffles I normally leave the people playing together alone (if I can) and am able to (most of the time) sort out the problem with 'poorly balanced games'. We don't need to turn off the 'swap teams' but I do believe that giving indentivies aka an epic unit? should be awarded if people swap to the LOSING team aka 5 - 10 players down. As it stands the big flaw here is if the team sees no hope -- they quit (very common) and it further hampers the team. The 'winning' team then has no reason to swap and instead get spammed with 'losing' team swap requests.

I think we can all agree that the main concern people have here is with the script that auto assigns teams. FPI went knee deep into anti stacking last year and speaking from experience it only adds fuel to the fire. There will always be a poi, even if all these 'good players' left the game the power void would be filled by someone else thus making this a never ending cycle of bitching and moaning that ends up going nowhere. We also can't expect perfection, regardless of what 'system' is put forward -- bad games will happen from time to time it is unavoidable, the main concern is the frequency. If 3+ or more games in a row end up being the same (which is more common than you think) that is when we have to go back to the drawing board and admit there is a problem. On the other side of the coin sometimes we have weeks, sometimes even months (though rarely) where game balance is perfect. As I have already said, i'm not against people playing together - and I strongly believe that if we were able to fill out multiple servers aka 'dilute' the skill index this problem would barely be noticable, it is only because the community is so compact and small that when the sting comes, we all feel it 10 fold. Being realistic here, It is very easy to throw flashy ideas at the devs and say 'do this' but I do believe we can get by with something simple such as the ideas Agent put forward regarding forum leaderboard info.

I also would like to add (this applies to everyone) that a core part of a lot of our problems is how segregated the community is from the dev team. I do feel strongly that we both would benefit from more open communication (as Havoc recently did with us) we need to remove this 'Them vs us' mentailty this is not the devs game, it is OUR game. I also feel strongly that both sides of this argument be met if some lee-way is allowed. Having a strong robust team shuffle system is a huge step in the right direction -- every time i've been called into do a shuffle player numbers pick up and the games tend to last longer, are more fulfiling and fair.

I wish Poi nothing but the best and hope poi can return oneday when things have settled down / moved forward. I know full well that stacking has become somewhat of a buzz word recently and its effects massively exaggerated. As I pointed out in my last post we should be encouraging people to play together but also understand the effects this can have on public games, it is well documented (in demos) the damage poorly formed games can do to the moral and motivation of the community -- we've all been in awful games, and it becomes painful when this drags from session to session in 5 min rounds. The leaderboard is a very very rough outline of the issue -- a more accurate portrayal would be re-watching clips from (and I use the term loosely) 'Stacked games' as I made clear with Havoc, and in my last post -- having good players does NOT mean a win, but the effects will always be felt by the other team (be that in stronger inf control / tankers / rushes etc...). I am not saying it is right to cuss out or punish said players for playing, I believe this is one of the reasons CQC was invented. Typically most people in public sessions will be playing solo - so adding in skillful players (2 - 3) and get them to all hop onto discord voice chat will (as I said) drastically improve your odds of winning. I know several people want to paint me as the 'Anti-stack' guy but I would love nothing more than for people to play together its fun and helps the community thrive -- what we need to consider (as I pointed above) is most people play solo (normally) so, in an exaggerated example it would be like placing 10 random people against 10 organized people on skype -- who would win? Roll the clock back two years before FPI started kicking up a fuss about this issue, back where stacking was encouraged and in its prime on CT and we drastically reduce the length of gameplay and 'fun factor' -- this IS NOT a problem if everyone or most are playing together but the snag is -- most people are not. This defaults to game design. This thread, this 'forum chat' and other forum threads similar in and out of game are a reflection of a problem, over-blown or not it is a problem regardless of how you want to spin it and we've all seen the damage badly formed games can do.

If I may chime in here... Stacking has always been a huge issue, the whole reason FPI was founded in the first place was due to my fustrations with the great 'CT stack' as I called it back then, typically after PUGs where games would become one-sided slaughter fests. (not always but enough to annoy me at least) I don't know if it was on purpose or not but it annoyed me enough to start a server. Poi is right, there are a select few who stack together; but only ever moan or scream about it when they are on the losing end of it. I've seen this many-a-times. I never had any ill-will towards JPoi and even approched Poi several times to try and sort something out. The problem is JPOI have been stacking for years, and simply playing one or two matches a week apart was not enough to un-do the fustrations which (fair or not) JPOI was involed in. Granted others have as well; but not as obvious as JPOI who pretty much became the avatar of stacking combined with their skill, they created the perfect storm. Although I can't speak for CT; I did try to cool down some of the hostility towards JPOI but (as I said before) I felt applying the ban hammer and forcing people into a corner wasn't a healthy or sustainble way to fix the problem. I want to point out that mods do not always see chat (I don't) and need a prod from time-to-time -- my door is always open and if Poi felt generally harassed or upset I was there to listen. We define harassment carefully -- simply calling someone a "Dirty stacker" (as an example) is not strong enough (in my view) to inflict mutes / bans I get similar remarks thrown my way and brush it off -- its called having a backbone. However any direct, personal attacks (that I was made aware of) I would always take very serious. For years I screamed to the high heavens about how dangerous and counter productive stacking was, it has only been recently that the devs have actually started looking at this as an issue. For the record I don't think playing with friends is a bad thing, but I do feel that reason can be exploited easily - the handful of good players we have in this community equal roughly 5 "normal" players, so having 2 - 3 of them on one team will have a noticable effect (but won't garentee a win) we have clear evidence of this. Regardless I don't blame JPOI, or any of the other 'stackers' I blame the game design. As I have said many, many, many times before -- this issue will not go away until we set down the foundations for solid team balancing; else the headache and the casualties will only get worse. No body likes to be in one-sided slaughter fests. By all means encourage people to play together, but understand not everyone *is* playing together, get 10 people to all hop onto voice chat in a public game and you will dramatically increase your chances of winning -- we know this, the data is well founded on this. Granted this is not a problem if both teams are on voice chat aka PUGs (unless teams are poorly formed) but on public matches the effects of 'playing with friends' are lethal. Somewhere we need to draw a line in the sand and design a more robust system with the tools we have. I do my bit, and will switch to the other team (losing) to help when I can and have also made sure that FPI DO NOT all stack together, and if we do -- we do so rarely. I feel that the majority of people who pratice this are selfish and don't share my viewpoint aka 'their fun, above everyone elses'