Quinc3y

There is a list on wiki https://wiki.ren-x.com/wiki/Glossary_of_player_terms I enjoy the term "clicker". It refers to the few highly skilled infantry players who enjoy farming kills. I can't quite remember who came up with it, but I remember that the first time that I heard it was on a PUG, when the guy on my team said "clicker down!" with this enthusiasm in his voice, and only after I heard it a few times did I realize what he meant by this. (Now that I think about it, it could have been @Akbaro?) Sadly, this term didn't really stick around and I don't see it used much.

I don't think the map needs drastic changes. It's in an all right state right now in my opinion. I agree with Ryz and Riou that the vehicle area needs some more cover to help Nod. Right now it is definately advantageous to GDI (I also have never seen Nod win this). As for harvester, I think the path is fine (vehicle entrances are tight anyway, probably it's better not to force the harvy into them), but my 2 suggested changes is to decrease the harv dump credits and put the tib field closer to the pipeline exit so that infantry can shoot the enemy harvester reliably from the distance, but not c4 it (because the pipeline exit is one way only). Such design is quite rare I believe, I wonder how it would work. And yeah, performance issues. I've heard many people complain about FPS drops.

@Mystic~ I'm not a fan of the mining idea. It would lead to people doing that instead of actually helping their team - which you can still do using free units or cheap units in many ways. I think there are better ways to help a baselocked team to increase their chances. Some simple things which could help is 1) increase the passive credit tick rate and decrease the harv dump, 2) decrease the amount of VP you get for killing people/vehicles inside enemy base, 3) decrease the amount of VP you get for killing harvesters and damaging buildings, 4) make the penalties from losing buildings less severe... there's probably more. Notice that some of them have already been implemented over the years. Unfortunately the economy & game progression system is a core part of Ren X and C&C Ren, and I don't see how we move away from it. We can do some tweaks like described above but I don't see room for any groundbreaking changes to be honest. And for maps like Field and Under, these are the pinnacle of bad map design, seems like there is no saving of them. I think their design amplifies the weaknesses of the core Ren game mechanics.

One achievement you certainly have unlocked is: Actions Speak Louder Than Words - as the commander, lead a successful rush while muted

It was somewhere between July and August 2015 when my good friend @SinisterPoem randomly found Renegade X and suggested we try it out. And hell yeah did we try it out. Here we are today, 5 years later, and me and him are still rocking... Wanted to say I'm really happy that I had the opportunity to meet all the different people and to spend so much time in this great game. Big thanks to all the devs who put in their time and effort working on Ren X to make this possible. Special shoutout to all the regular PUG players as well as regular EU players with and against whom I've played so much over the years. You all helped me improve at the game and motivate me to keep playing. There are too many people to name them all here. Hoping for many more years of Ren X to come!

I have similar feelings. The gameplay in NvN is definately more stale - although I am not 100% sure why. I think it can be a good novelty to play NvN every now and then (say, once a week or a month), especially in a competitive environment like PUG. But playing it every 3 or so maps on a public server is far too much. Like people said here, there are too many players just fooling around with recon bikes / SBHs and too many newbies not knowing what to do and who to shoot at. Plus, reading teamchat in blue Nod is really hard, which for me is a big issue as it hampers teamwork on public servers.

Just saying that my thread which you linked to is 3 years old, and the map saw many changes since then. I'm happy to say that many of my points were addressed, and Reservoir is much better than it used to be. The biggest issue still remaining in the map in my opinion is the fact that there's only one vehicle exit from each base. This means it's really difficult to get out of a base lock (especially as GDI) and creates stale gameplay. Choke points are bad for the game. Oh, and the map is too small for 64 players, too.

So what can go wrong? Even though I'm fairly certain that this balancing system is better than anything we had in the past, of course it is imperfect and the games won't always feel balanced. I will give a few reasons why and share my thoughts on this. First of all, we might be wrong in our assessments of a player's skill / playstyle. The balancing team is, 90% of the time, just me and Xeon. While, I dare say, we are experienced in balancing and have a good knowledge of the playerbase, we can of course be biased and under/over-estimate some players. Also, there's been a lot of new players recently, about whom all we know is that they're new. Obviously, most new players will be still learning so we just end up splitting them in pairs, but this isn't always optimal. New players can still add a lot of value to their team if they, for example, stick to repairing tanks instead of trying to tank or play anti-infantry. Overall, this is one of the reasons why we are looking to expand the balancing team - to get a wider perspective and knowledge on as many players as possible. Secondly, sometimes, it is difficult to create two balanced teams out of the group of people who show up for a PUG due to vast differences in skill or playstyle. The best example is when we only have one elite infantry player. Since we can't find a pair to balance him/her out, we normally end up making a larger split, which, from my experience, doesn't always work out right. Another example is when there's only one defender with a mic. Having such a person on your team can be a ton of help. Or: only one infiltrator - his/her team will have an advantage, particularly in smaller PUGs. In such cases it is hard to find the right balance. Let's look at the big picture though. What is this balance that we are seeking and do balanced teams always lead to balanced gameplay / close matches? Surely not. Whether we like it or not, Ren X is a complex game and there is a number of factors which influence the course of a round and its outcome. Even if we had a sophisticated way of measuring the players' skill/usefulness, which would take into account all their traits, and if we had a complicated algorithm to compose the teams based on it, I am 100% sure some games would end up being one-sided (although, on average, the games would be closer). There have been quite a few PUGs in which team A would stomp team B on the first map only to get stomped back on the next map (by the way, this is why I'm not a fan of rebalancing after the first map). What does that say about balance? In my opinion, in this case it's safe to assume that the teams are relatively balanced, even though none of the maps provided balanced gameplay. Let me give a few reasons why even the best balanced (theoretically) teams can produce one-sided rounds: 1. The luck factor. Example: team A might take the risk and attempt an early rush. If they luck out and nobody spots it, the rush succeeds, they basically won the round. If they fail, they will likely lose the round due to having lost the first harvester / wasted too many credits early game. 2. Players not sticking to the roles which the balancing team assumed they will have. Everybody plays the way they wish to, and there are a couple of jack-of-all-trade players in our community. However, this might affect the balance a lot. Let's say a player who's normally a dedicated infantry player decides to practice playing MRLS. In that case, the enemy infantry players have free reign on the infantry path. 3. Players having better or worse days. None of us are robots and the levels at which we play vary. Performance of elite players is particularly impactful as these players can decide the course of the game. 4. Infiltration. A solo kill of a crucial building can result in a quick stomp despite the teams being balanced. 5. Snowball-ish design of the game. We all know how important early harvesters are, and how crucial some areas of certain maps are. Killing the first enemy harv while defending your own, or taking control of the hill on Whiteout / plateau on Walls first can lead to quick, one-sided games. And that is even if the fight for harvesters / crucial areas was close. Even if the teams are relatively balanced, once team A gets locked in base, it can be very difficult for them to break out, depending on the map layout. That doesn't have to mean that team A is worse skill-wise than team B. Team A is just fighting an uphill battle, because they barely lost the important early fight or didn't have their priorities right in the early game. 6. Another snowballing aspect I would like to talk about is PUG-specific. There are quite a few regular PUG players who, as Xeon put nicely, "can't keep their cool when they're losing". Combined with them being vocal, they can easily break their team's morale and affect the satisfaction of the whole team as well as the perception of balance. Let's say team A has several such players (even though we try to split them evenly across teams). The usual chain reaction is: team A loses the first map (due to whatever), these players start to complain on voice / chat, their team gets pissed and loses their focus and morale, which leads them to losing the second map. Their commander gets tilted. PUG goes to shit. Does that mean that teams were not balanced in the first place? Maybe, but maybe not. Them losing the first map could have been unrelated to team balance, see above points. I made this list partly because it often gets on my nerve when people blame team balance whenever the gameplay was not balanced or when they do not get their satisfaction from a PUG. As you see, it is not that simple. The task of the balancing team is just to increase the chance the games will be balanced. There's no way to assure close games and a 2-2 PUG score every weekend. Of course, we can always do better and sometimes we do miss the balance. But sometimes we do our job right and that's when it would be nice if people understood and recognized that there are other factors which influence the course and score of the PUG and which could have led to them not having fun.

By the way, mining was well analyzed by boxes in this topic almost 2 years ago:

Some good points made, Ryz. Obviously, skill balance between teams is an important factor, especially infantry balance. Infantry balance is the first thing we look at in PUGs when we manually balance the teams. The infantry players who keep on stacking teams on public servers are largely responsible for the poor gameplay experience for everybody, and we all know who those people are. At the same time, it's important to keep in mind what Havoc said about core mechanics. The game has plenty of snowball factors: veterancy, economy, and map design (choke points) are the main three. They make comebacks / getting out of base very difficult - and then there's the skill difference. Those who play in PUGs know that one-sided games can happen even if the teams are balanced skill-wise. Sometimes we have Team 1 roflstomp Team 2 in 10 minutes, only to get roflstomped back on the next map. So from that perspective, a team balancer would of course help but I don't think it would be as revolutionary as some people think, because the core design of C&C Ren / Ren X unfortunately plays a big role in this issue.

Some good points, Ryz. Let me add that, if GDI takes control of the cave, it's difficult for Nod to do anything about it either. I've noticed that it's hard for arties to line up their shots into cave because of the little bump at Nod cave entrance... small things like that can be annoying. And well, choke points in Ren X sometimes are just unbreakable. No offense to anybody, but I honestly don't know if the new Mesa is any better than the old one. Maybe it's not as much Nod favoured... but the gameplay is meh. Seems like there is a reason why people rarely vote for it.

Well, I don't know about that XD I'm happy with my name!

Call me a nerd but my first thought when I read "Cerulean" was Warhammer 40k: https://warhammer40k.fandom.com/wiki/Knights_Cerulean

(Jokes aside, I think the fact that poi - and plenty of other strong infantry players - keep changing their names is a good reason why there are so many hacking accusations flying around during games, why people trying to vote kick people with new names and high K/Ds, and why so many newbies insist that "the game is dominated by cheaters" and "mods aren't doing anything about it". I mean, if I didn't know Ren X, I would too feel that way if I were casually playing the game when suddenly a guy you've never seen before joins and bangs 100 kills within 30 minutes)