Mintyfresh
Skilled Soldier 18 & Master Commander 21 & 22
- Reaction score
- 4,386
Hi valued members of the community
The delayed support feature as displayed here in this post was announced yesterday and then thanks to considerable community feedback it was fortunately cancelled as per this post here.
However the core issues that has been raised by the development team as something they want to address has not gone away. To quote:
To paraphrase it, what they essentially aiming to do is reduce the information gap between good player and noob player and also reduce the time burden to some extent on defending. Good players with experience know what to do and how to defend which is fine but they also want to make it possible for someone with less time and less experience to also defend. Which ultimately i think is a good thing because learning to snipe is just scraping the beginning of the defending metagame but its also such a basic and necessary tool that everyone at all layers of the game utilizes. I dont have a problem if everyone has the potential to snipe trains and i suspect the only people who would have a problem with it are probably just mad they cant noob crush anymore. This applies both to the information on how to snipe/defend and also to the tools available to assist people in said sniping. There are many snipe scripts and stuff around but if you dont know they exist then they arent very helpful.
However the proposed solution was to simply throw what is essentially an auto-sniping bot into the mix. To me this is like using a tactical nuke to demolish a wall. Yeah it would get the job done but consequences would be far reaching and devastating to the surrounding area. I personally believe that giving a new player such a powerful tool that they can use with zero understanding of how it actually works and does nothing to increase their overall playing ability isnt really a productive course of action. Instead i (and hopefully you nerds as well) favour a method to teach new players what to do rather than give them a powerful bot that does it for them. Information is power after all.
The second part is something i have personally reflected on quite a lot over the years. The dev team seem to be aware that defending is very time restrictive. Unlike attacking where you can fire and forget to some extent at any point you prefer, defending is a lot more reactive. You have to respond to what attackers are doing which often puts people into a situation where they have to either sacrifice time spent doing other things to focus on defending. This has always been a problem to some extend with TW from the very beginning. You either sacrifice your family/job/social time or you sacrifice your ability to defend. In fact the most attacking strategies boil down to simply overwhelming the defender to the extent they cant cope with the time demands and inevitably start to lose.
I honestly dont know if this is something that can actually be changed or fixed without fundamentally changing the way TW is played. Its an integral part of the way the game operates. Its something that the majority of the playerbase either implicitly or explicitly understand. I think this is an inherent flaw with TW, every game has its strengths and weaknesses and this is one of the bigger weaknesses with TW. Its my opinion as someone who has defended countless fronts/worlds/whatever that if you play perfect as a defender than you are unbeatable. The defender always has the (theoretical) advantage in TW due to the nature of having time to react to an attackers move. They have limited opportunities/strategies to attack and you have essentially unlimited methods/strategies with which to defend. The obvious caveat is that its not possible to defend perfectly because we are only human which is why worlds never end up in a stalemate because sooner or later (usually sooner) people make mistakes and start to lose.
The only way i think it would be possible to implement a system that would allow you to defend with fewer burdens on your time would be to also somehow reduce the potential power of a defender in response. Because if you can defend with less time constraints but your effectiveness at defending is not also reduced then people wont be overwhelmed and they wont quit and then the worlds dont end. If it became impossible to defend regardless of perfect play, if the attacker always had an advantage then that would allow the implementation of compensation to the defender (in this case time). As to how that would be done i genuinely dont have a good idea. It would require a lot of experimentation and trial and error to find a good balance between time and defensive power
So the question(s) is i would like us to consider is:
How can the dev team ensure that the tools and information are available to help the players help themselves?
How can the time constraining barriers to defending be mitigated without causing defending to be too strong?
Please let me know your thoughts. I will post my ideas later on once i've had time to think upon it.
The delayed support feature as displayed here in this post was announced yesterday and then thanks to considerable community feedback it was fortunately cancelled as per this post here.
However the core issues that has been raised by the development team as something they want to address has not gone away. To quote:
As we all know, support for incoming noble trains is essential for high level players. When we added the option to send noble trains as a full feature back in 8.35 in 2015, we already made the process easier to understand for new players, and easier to execute for everyone who knows what they’re doing. After many years and uses of this feature, we did notice however, that defending against noble trains is still very difficult. While many players are rightfully proud of having mastered these tactics, new players or even those with less time still have a lot of trouble with both planning and successfully executing support moves for incoming trains. And, of course, some players utilize external support and tools, which could be a barrier to players unaware that they exist.
To paraphrase it, what they essentially aiming to do is reduce the information gap between good player and noob player and also reduce the time burden to some extent on defending. Good players with experience know what to do and how to defend which is fine but they also want to make it possible for someone with less time and less experience to also defend. Which ultimately i think is a good thing because learning to snipe is just scraping the beginning of the defending metagame but its also such a basic and necessary tool that everyone at all layers of the game utilizes. I dont have a problem if everyone has the potential to snipe trains and i suspect the only people who would have a problem with it are probably just mad they cant noob crush anymore. This applies both to the information on how to snipe/defend and also to the tools available to assist people in said sniping. There are many snipe scripts and stuff around but if you dont know they exist then they arent very helpful.
However the proposed solution was to simply throw what is essentially an auto-sniping bot into the mix. To me this is like using a tactical nuke to demolish a wall. Yeah it would get the job done but consequences would be far reaching and devastating to the surrounding area. I personally believe that giving a new player such a powerful tool that they can use with zero understanding of how it actually works and does nothing to increase their overall playing ability isnt really a productive course of action. Instead i (and hopefully you nerds as well) favour a method to teach new players what to do rather than give them a powerful bot that does it for them. Information is power after all.
We not only planned to make this a bit easier for players who are still learning the game, but also to help high level and experienced players to execute their strategies with less hassle. They could focus on their defensive tactics instead of a timer near the keyboard, and there would be way less need resorting to external tools or scripts.
The second part is something i have personally reflected on quite a lot over the years. The dev team seem to be aware that defending is very time restrictive. Unlike attacking where you can fire and forget to some extent at any point you prefer, defending is a lot more reactive. You have to respond to what attackers are doing which often puts people into a situation where they have to either sacrifice time spent doing other things to focus on defending. This has always been a problem to some extend with TW from the very beginning. You either sacrifice your family/job/social time or you sacrifice your ability to defend. In fact the most attacking strategies boil down to simply overwhelming the defender to the extent they cant cope with the time demands and inevitably start to lose.
I honestly dont know if this is something that can actually be changed or fixed without fundamentally changing the way TW is played. Its an integral part of the way the game operates. Its something that the majority of the playerbase either implicitly or explicitly understand. I think this is an inherent flaw with TW, every game has its strengths and weaknesses and this is one of the bigger weaknesses with TW. Its my opinion as someone who has defended countless fronts/worlds/whatever that if you play perfect as a defender than you are unbeatable. The defender always has the (theoretical) advantage in TW due to the nature of having time to react to an attackers move. They have limited opportunities/strategies to attack and you have essentially unlimited methods/strategies with which to defend. The obvious caveat is that its not possible to defend perfectly because we are only human which is why worlds never end up in a stalemate because sooner or later (usually sooner) people make mistakes and start to lose.
The only way i think it would be possible to implement a system that would allow you to defend with fewer burdens on your time would be to also somehow reduce the potential power of a defender in response. Because if you can defend with less time constraints but your effectiveness at defending is not also reduced then people wont be overwhelmed and they wont quit and then the worlds dont end. If it became impossible to defend regardless of perfect play, if the attacker always had an advantage then that would allow the implementation of compensation to the defender (in this case time). As to how that would be done i genuinely dont have a good idea. It would require a lot of experimentation and trial and error to find a good balance between time and defensive power
So the question(s) is i would like us to consider is:
How can the dev team ensure that the tools and information are available to help the players help themselves?
How can the time constraining barriers to defending be mitigated without causing defending to be too strong?
Please let me know your thoughts. I will post my ideas later on once i've had time to think upon it.