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Buildable coms

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7 years ago
I don't like this feature. It removes a lot of the prestige and hi jinks around com play by making the unit rebuildable, without delivering any particular benefit - they dont see life in competitive play.
+9 / -0

7 years ago
It does feel clumsy.

I've had some fun custom games where coms were super cheap etc., but ultimately the only impact this has on real games is people tanking their teams chance of winning.

Coms are not powerful for cost, especially when you're building a 600 metal factory to get them. That's 1800 metal for something that probably gets beaten by a 400 metal mace, which already is hardly used.

There is no competitive use case, there is no time this is a good option. It's taking space in an already busy UI.
+0 / -0

7 years ago
They're not here for competitive play. They're here to lure total lobsters who would otherwise go play some moba.
+2 / -0
7 years ago
They add one thing:
Shitcoms in game.
That's it really.

I agree we should remove them, since keeping your commander alive>>>>>>>>>>>>>>rebuild a new one.

Also, making comms a frontline combat unit just encourages shitcom gameplay, or just rush com into enemy base and win.
+1 / -1


7 years ago
quote:
They're not here for competitive play. They're here to lure total lobsters who would otherwise go play some moba.


They reduce the impact of our moba features by making com play lower stakes :(
+0 / -1
7 years ago
quote:
com play lower stakes :(

They don't give free storage right?
+1 / -1
I'd argue that the original com you start the game with represents your avatar with in-game "character development" mirroring a moba. When you make your heroes producible in the late game at a time when they have not the faintest chance of having impact, this turns them into a unit, and a bad one at that.

Basically, it dilutes the 'moba' experience. There are a lot of players here that have played Mobas. I've been in the mobas. I believe AUrankAdminAquanim, AUrankAdminGoogleFrog, GBrank[Fx]Drone, and PLrankOrfelius have all played too. None of these players build additional coms. PTrankraaar is the most com-centric player there is, he consistently makes his com a central lynch-pin of his game-plan. But even PTrankraaar doesn't build additional coms. It's rare in mobas to control multiple characters while also having an army and economy behind it.

Building additional coms is not moba like. And even if it was, the way coms are done in ZK is shit compared to a moba. They're near the bottom of the power-curve, they don't look that fancy, all the flashy stuff is bad, they're slow and relatively unresponsive. I can't really see how this design choice could help secure that crowd. They're in the same factory as dante and bantha. If people want to do something cool in the late game, building a grinder com that you could have been working on since the start of the game simply pales in comparison to the raw power of any strider.

The only game I've seen where building additional heroes later in the game was a realistic option is warcraft III. That was mainly because said heroes worked of a third resource (XP) to scale, and ended up with insane impact. ZK is nowhere near the equivalent.
+2 / -0
Skasi
7 years ago
quote:
The only game I've seen where building additional heroes later in the game was a realistic option is warcraft III.

Sins of a Solar Empire. Dominions 3 and 4 (probably 1 and 2 as well). Iirc Heroes of Might and Magic 3 (probably others as well).
+0 / -0

7 years ago
Im off to play HoMM III, see you next week :D
+3 / -0

7 years ago
How comms actually perform does not matter. What matters is that the lobster constantly has access to a single unit capable of sinking all his APM and resources into. It can well be a regular unit in the powerscale sense but it's still a hero in the attention sink sense. Without rebuildable comms, if your original comm dies, you're stuck actually playing the RTS game. In an ideal world that's good but RTS is an unpopular genre and people nowadays are clearly more into MOBA so there has to be some feature to attract them, this is important from a playerbase/dedgaem perspective.


I see it as a thing similar to clusterfuck. Ideally there would only be small teams master race but most people prefer giant 20v20 lagfests for whatever reasons and ZK lobby philosophy reflects that - no room limits, no spec limits, shitmaps galore etc. There are objective reasons why smaller teams are better but people simply like clusterfuck, the same way people like coms and having an attention sink.
+0 / -0


7 years ago
Buildable coms was a bit of a safety valve and perhaps something that could reveal imbalance. I think they can be removed now.
+4 / -0
To please the crowd who want role-playing in the game, perhaps limit the number of builable commanders to the commanders the player lost. Make it cheap enough to be cost-effective and/or buildable by constructors.
+0 / -0

7 years ago
Buildable coms makes some problems - there is some player who starts buildimg them again and again. So somebody makes three coms and morph them at once. Of course it may be direct loss. I would suggest that coms should be buildes but hey should be limited in attack power. Be allowed with one anti riot weapon and some bw, speed, hp modules. Also as compensation for removed battle modules they could build also units like athena.
+1 / -0

7 years ago
quote:
Im off to play HoMM III, see you next week :D


So great game. Except wog pack.
+0 / -0
quote:
AUrankAdminGoogleFrog wrote
Buildable coms was a bit of a safety valve and perhaps something that could reveal imbalance. I think they can be removed now.


make it a game option and disable default.
+0 / -0
7 years ago
quote:
reveal imbalance


Considering the fact their never used, I haven't really seen them in play.

Perhaps remove this for being so useless?
+3 / -0