albator wrote:
PS for trolls : it is better trying to help than just say it wont work. Just wait and see.
The problem is not in improving the BA itself, making the mod more interesting and 'balanced' at the same time (balance is always biased towards some kind of 'perfect rules of engagement' opposed to 'bad moves' so you could say most mods are equally balanced or unbalanced depending on which strategy you comment on ...).
The problem is with attitude of many players ... won't say the majority, will just leave it at 'many'. Lots of players prefer stagnation and not-evolving game where their old tactics still work and game plays the same. They like it when their experience of latest game meta awards them victories and they don't have to constantly adapt to new balance every month. Just notice how minor latest BA update were. Small tweaks but lots of discussion. Why? Because details matter a lot to some people, often more than the bigger image. I wouldn't be surprised if BA couldn't go any further from 7.04 without starting altogether a new project, based around different, more refined gameplay principles.
The next problem is with the Spring population, which is a bit small for gaming community with many different mods to play. Naturally, after shifts from one mod to another, 'most popular' mod arose. Your BA. You won't have problems joining a random BA game around the clock, but you will have problem join other mod game or getting people to play it without depending on your friends or arranging battles based on an approved schedule.
Your typical 'lazy dude' will usually not bother playing anything else than BA in multiplayer for the ease of finding players to fight with and against and to reduce waiting times. Many also automatically assume that most popular mod is best, so there is no point downloading other mods, especially when many AIs don't work on them or work poorly or if the mods were made mainly with multiplayer in mind (can say this pretty much about every mod out there, AI has always been an addition or possibility but not the reason to create the mod in the first place ...).
If we had much more players, I believe other mods would have their fans all around the clock and no one wanting an instant multiplayer battle would feel any pressure to join a BA game or entirely forget the idea.
And now consider the entire project - refinining BA, under a different mod tag. At the times when we were getting updates 7.01-7.03 most people still played 7.00 and didn't care about updated BA versions until final (7.04) version came out. Pretty much says they weren't interested in testing new updates. They just wanted to play. If by any chance 7.04 changed from ground-up what 7.00 was all about, they would refuse to play it. With a new project offering no new gameplay but refined BA gameplay, I would expect even less people interested in testing the game, promoting it and then possibly shifting from BA to 'new project BA'.
Triton recently mentioned about heated discussion with some BA players. I'd like to see the entire discussion or most important parts of it, because depending on what and how was discussed anything further can be said about the future of this project. I wish it very best, but just tell me - so many different mods are around, but somehow those 'BA whiney players' don't play them in big part. Their entire world seems to be centered around endless 'stumpy vs raider' or 'combomb is imba' arguments.
What happens when you fix those?
They will find new reasons for whining but most likely they won't visit other mods to see how they have done the balance and gameplay part. BA is all they need. They need BA to curse it. They need BA to praise it. They need BA cuz they won't bother playing anything else. So, tell me, how is Triton's project going to replace the BA mod and be natural evolution of it's predecessor and not end up as 'yet another elite mod almost nobody is playing?'.
and i listen to people, main reason why ca is not popular are new releases every week
