Hi there. Thanks for mentioning my article. I only wish more of my suggestions would've been implemented, but it's good to know it's not over yet - although "in the following weeks" is an annoying theme in eRepublik. "In the following weeks" we got the mayor elections and other features. Not.
Anyway, here are my thoughts on the guerrilla module update.
1. "Bonus damage 0" should disappear from the design, because it's pointless and it only clutters the UI. The bonus damage should disappear for good anyway, if you expect new players to join this module.
2. The round duration is too short. Either 8 or 9 seconds would be better. If the browser is slightly under stress because of other processes on the PC, the guerilla fight UI will also be slower to react to input. That leads to very little time to react, which makes the fight rather stressful than enjoyable.
3. Please publish the changes before you implement them, so we don't have to waste time "discovering", but actually playing the damned thing.
4. The freezing bug still seems to be in place, when the players keep moving for a number of rounds ("dancing"). Make sure the developers look into that.
Now a few observations for consideration:
1. If you want to make the fights shorter, then don't make the players wait until the round time limit reaches 0:00, and perform their actions the moment both of them chose what to do. This can make the fights even shorter for the players who actually know what they're doing (and having good PCs and internet connections).
2. Fully document the guerrilla module mechanics. Don't let Clopo and others "guesstimate" how much (or if) the grenades reduce the opponents' damage. And don't say "Reduced round duration", but "Reduced round duration from X seconds to Y seconds".
3. There's a ton of information about the Chance and Skill in Game Design, so whoever wants to read about it can do so. But please be aware of the many complaints about the guerrilla fights: there's too much luck involved. So you cannot afford to make each round to have its own chances of hitting the opponents while firing, because if you do that you will only be able to do two things:
- maintain the luck-based rounds and have the same amount of players annoyed by the lack of strategy, or
- blatantly lie about the percentage you display on the HUD, raising the hit chances "under the hood" so the players perceive the game as "less luck, more strategy".
This is precisely why I suggested that the 3 grenades always make the opponent miss, because out of 20 rounds you can count that you can make the opponent miss 3 times, which is great for strategy. The only thing I would allow to happen randomly would be dodging without grenades, and I would make that a 25% successful dodge, at most. And this is also why I proposed that the weapons have a different damage based on the range, so the percentage displayed on the HUD relates to the nominal damage, not chance.
What if you still want to allow some miss chances? Then don't base them on each round, but rather on the whole match. A player should miss a maximum of 5 times while shooting, and while their opponent don't dodge. This makes 3 (grenades) + 5 (chance) = 8 misses in total. The rest is actual fighting and strategy based on the distance and weapons in the inventory. This makes the game more predictable, and you'll see Clopo and others counting how many shots they missed, so they know if they will have better chances at the end of the battle, which easily becomes more exciting because both players have better chances to hit. This would encourage the players to fire a lot in the beginning, to tempt the miss chances as soon as they can, so they can score in the end. Strategy!
EDIT: In order to prevent abuse, the miss counter should not be affected if the players intentionally use weapons that are out of range (according to my initial article).
4. I hope you'll add all the X-Type inventory items to buy and auto-merge the existing items, because there's no point in wasting them, considering everything is paid for. This would not only fix the inventory limit bug, but also make it much easier to navigate through the inventory items and equip them before a new fight. Quite an improvement, right?
5. Make this module fun to play, and then also consider a guerrilla feed. Otherwise the Friends feed will most likely be flooded, as it was a long time ago, before everyone got sick and tired of the crappy module's status.
Edited by Nicolae Crefelean, 27 March 2018 - 06:51 PM.
