Everyone is screaming about the New Morale!!

[BSM_Skkzarg]

Well, most ppl are at least. And most are screaming for a patch to either "fix" it with some tweaking, or just set it back to what it used to be. Of course, alot of the ppl making the noise are those who just got the game - the folks in Europe. But if you look at some of the old threads, us Americans and Canadians were screaming the same thing recently.

One thing before this degenerates into whether the current morale needs fixing.

Alot of ppl that were active in here when WE/MI was first announced, as a group got together and requested that WE/MI be made more accessible - specifically to the "modding" sector of the community. CA did exactly this - making all sorts of things editable - from the stats on arrow fire to - you guessed it - MORALE!

A lot of the ppl who wanted this are even now playing with the files and are releasing "mod"s fairly quickly.

So - before we all start calling for the CA team to work on something that needs "fixing", lets consider that they made it like it is to allow the community to tweak it as needed. If we ask for more morale tweaking, your asking the developers to do what we said we wanted to do in the first place!

I do agree that a "toggle" for morale could be used - for the ability to use old or new style. But any other morale changes need to be done by the community - as that is after all why people asked for the ability to mod the data....

If the community does not tweak it themselves, but requests the developers do it for us, then you cannot expect that future requests asking for data availability will be met with much response, as CA will only see it as "Why give it to them, they won't use it, they will just ask us to fix it anyway!"

Something to consider.....


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BSM_Skkzarg
"A mind is a terrible thing to taste."

[Puzz3D]

We will have a fine, realistic mod available soon for online play for those who want to use it, and it's great that CA/DT has allowed modding of the game. However, the default morale for online play, as it now stands, is robbing many who would not use a mod of some fine gameplay. Lowering the morale by 8 points brings morale back into the picture as an important consideration during the battle without fully returning to the old STW setting. Units still operate very well at this new setting as some recent online battles at 5000 koku showed, and they can almost always be rallied if they do rout. Cavalry works very well. I think there is a nice compromise point on this morale issue. At this lower morale, you really have to think about whether to go for honor upgrades or weapon/armour upgrades in the 5000 to 10000 koku range.

MizuYuuki ~~~
Clan Takiyama ~~~

[This message has been edited by Puzz3D (edited 08-28-2001).]

[Erado San]

We all like modding, but if the core isn't right you'd better improve that first. This goes especially for the online side of things, but also for the SP players. So if Morale and Balance are optimised, we all have a much better idea of what this baby can do.

Yes, I agree the negativism in the forums is not sensible. Thank God there's also a lot of constructive thinking around here.

[Kraellin]

bsm,

thank you! i've been saying this as well...dont like it, go mod it. it's really not that difficult to do now.

also, at my request, tosa has added a new upload link for map swapping for testing and mod swapping tests. if you upload a file using this link, your files show up immediately on the download page for this so that others can go get those maps and files right away for testing. heck, you can even alt-tab out of the game, download a file, swap it out with one of the xpack files and click back into the game and test it. bing, bang, boom.

magyar khan has also made a very nice troopstat/logfile reader for the xpack. this makes altering troop stats very quick and easy. alter yer stats, upload it using new upload tool, friends download and install and voila, yer a beta tester for mods.

also, Target was quite correct about lowering just the morale in xpack. in tests with yuuki and tosainu, we lowered ALL morale stats by -4 across the boards....mongols win every time when they take 16 units against the japanese. so i dont think a quick fix to morale is going to bring back the old stw system by itself. it's going to take a FULL re-balancing of the game, morale, stats and interactions. the upside is we can do it ourselves. the tools are there.

so the answer to anyone complaining about morale or any other 'balancing' is, dont like it, go fix it!

heck, we've already got folks making cannon and civil war mods. go read the mods forum, folks :)

K.


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I'm sorry, but i never apologize.

[MagyarKhans Cham]

there is only one disadvantage with modding is that it should be carried by a wide group of players and must be advertised on the main sites.

therefore an ingame slidebaroptionbutton would have my vote for now.

[Gothmog]

Regard to the posted by Kraellin:

Great idea.

One thing about those "custmized mod" though. Usually such a mod has one deadly flaw: they are just too biased, tuned in favor of the developer (in this case also an addicted player) and developer only.

It's really hard to do the mod as a hard-core player and stay perspective. The game company, however, don't have this disadvantage, for their goal is not to win the game, but to win the customer.

[Kraellin]

gothmog,

i tend to agree to an extent, but in reality, how long do you think it will take CA to do a patch/mod? one month, two? in that time we can be making and testing mods AND then be able to go to CA with something coherent and workable, and not just a mob carrying torches and pitchforks, and say, hey, we've tested this and we found that by doing this and that, we get a game that we like. in fact, this may be the single most reason CA opened up the files a bit. they prolly got tired of our rants and said, 'hey, if yer so smart, you fix it!'. hehe, ok, maybe they didnt say that, but the fact remains that we could do this and present them with a total community-tested data package that we can more or less agree upon or even one that can be tweaked to different degrees online, like magy suggests. and isnt that what they said they wanted, for us to give them feedback? and what better feedback could there be than us actually changing things to see how they work and tweak the bloody thing ourselves so we have empirical results and not all this squabbling that is currently going on that amounts to little more than rabble-rousing by a few.

and bsm, one note here to go along with what you said in your initial post...have you ever noticed that posts that present solutions tend to get ignored and drop to the bottom of the list, while posts that flame, rant, and whine tend to float to the top and stay there...wasnt there some old line about sh*t floats. i totally agree with your original post, in your case it was a matter of 'cream rising to the top', not the other ;) i'm glad someone else realizes the implications of all this whining and squabbling. heck, if i'm CA i'd just delete the forums from my 'favorites' lists and move on.

one shld also remember that EA and CA, neither one, own Shogun. Dreamtime owns Shogun. they're the head cheeses. looks at yer credits folks. it aint EA or CA, so yer not even ranting at the right targets. lol. typical of this sort of behavior.

now dont get me wrong, there are some legitimate complaints, but let's douse the torches, put down the pitchforks, roll up our sleeves and fix it.

K.


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I'm sorry, but i never apologize.

[Pachinko]

HERE!HERE! Thats right BSM_Skkzarg!

P.

[BSM_Skkzarg]

LOL thanks all, but don't go pounding me on the back. There are a lot of ppl out there - trying to put out useful info, ideas and such to make the game and the community better. You are correct, whining does seem to get more attention in the forum, but the fact is that the ppl who make the decisions are not going to be swayed be a thousand voices saying 500 different things.

I am just glad that there are those out there who look for solutions, instead of reasons to complain. The game isn't perfect - so if you have a complaint voice it - along with an idea on HOW TO FIX IT! And be willing to consider other ways to resolve it as well, since ideas are the stuff of creation!
Qapla!

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BSM_Skkzarg
"A mind is a terrible thing to taste."