Cunning as Zeus
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This thread is in response to something Mountain Dewd said.
Many of us have been around for quite some time, and frequently talk about "the good 'ol days." What was it, exactly, that made the good old days so good? I know for some (myself included), it is simply nostalgia. Memory, the passage of time, and our imagination make "then" seem so much better than the now.
So what is the purpose of this thread? Well, to put it simply, we're going to try to figure out what made 1.0 and 1.1 so great and what aspects of 1.0-1.2 should be incorporated into 1.3. As we all know, 1.3 is the last version of ESF. This means that if we intend on sticking around, this is our last chance to make ESF something everyone can enjoy.
For me, what I loved most about 1.1 was the progression from "noob" to "pro". At the time, I was really into DBZ, so I had the saiyan mentality while playing. I would play for hours at a time, learning the ins and outs of ESF. As a noob, I got beaten a lot, but every fight was a learning experience, and every fight was different. I actually studied the people I fought and looked for patterns and ways to exploit their weaknesses. Some people just waited and tried to LSM, some people were extremely offensive, and others loved to teleport like there was no tomorrow.
I never really got to "pro" status in 1.1, but the ride to 1.2 was still fun as hell. I improved every single day, and people noticed. Once you became "pro", you could begin learning more advanced "techniques", like the beautiful combos used by the best of the best. 1.1 was always a learning experience. Always. You kept learning, you kept getting better. The pros enjoyed it, the average players enjoyed it, and while lots of people complained about being pummelled all the time, I enjoyed the game as a noob.
The problem with 1.2 is no matter who you're fighting, you feel like you've had that fight before. It's 2 hits in the air, 1 hit on the ground, followed by ki blasts or gen beams. That's what everyone goes for. As for "styles", people either run or they attack head on or they just shoot gen beams. There's no variation in how people fight. Defensive fighters seem to get a huge bonus in that they'll either get the hit when being chased or a HOW (which is still a win for them as far as I'm concerned).
While it's fun to go from noob to pro in 1.2, there's nothing to do afterwards. It just isn't fun having everyone fight the same way. This causes people to leave. Who keeps this game alive? Clans do. Most clans are made up of pros, so it's really the pros that keep ESF alive. Once they realize that there's just no variation in styles and there's nothing left to do, no room to improve and nothing new to learn, they get bored, quit, stop paying for servers, and ESF dies a little. That's what has happened over the last couple of years. ESF has basically just dropped dead, the usual suspects return, make a clan, buy servers, quit, stop paying, and ESF dies again.
I'm kinda going off on a tangent, so I'll try to focus. The team is forcing people to play a certain way instead of allowing us to choose how we want to play. This is most evident in the two swoops in 1.3, and how they are controlled and how they react to our commands. This causes stagnation in the community. 1.3 is following 1.2's pattern as far as I'm concerned. Removing the teleport delay is great, but having the 2 swoops there kinda cancelled that out. One was replaced with the other, and now we're in the same situation as before. Freedom of choice and movement is essential to ESF's survival. Don't tell us how to play. Let us figure things out for ourselves. Don't force us to fight the same way as everyone else.
I'm probably going to edit the hell out of this or just make another post since I don't feel I made a point, but now it's your turn.
What say you fellow esf players?
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Thought I'd throw this in for additional commentary on how we (the team) can make ESF better:
EDIT: "So what is the purpose of this thread? Well, to put it simply, we're going to try to figure out what made 1.0 and 1.1 so great and what aspects of 1.0-1.2 should be incorporated into 1.3. As we all know, 1.3 is the last version of ESF. This means that if we intend on sticking around, this is our last chance to make ESF something everyone can enjoy."
I expanded it to 1.2, since 1.3 really just branched off of that version.
Many of us have been around for quite some time, and frequently talk about "the good 'ol days." What was it, exactly, that made the good old days so good? I know for some (myself included), it is simply nostalgia. Memory, the passage of time, and our imagination make "then" seem so much better than the now.
So what is the purpose of this thread? Well, to put it simply, we're going to try to figure out what made 1.0 and 1.1 so great and what aspects of 1.0-1.2 should be incorporated into 1.3. As we all know, 1.3 is the last version of ESF. This means that if we intend on sticking around, this is our last chance to make ESF something everyone can enjoy.
For me, what I loved most about 1.1 was the progression from "noob" to "pro". At the time, I was really into DBZ, so I had the saiyan mentality while playing. I would play for hours at a time, learning the ins and outs of ESF. As a noob, I got beaten a lot, but every fight was a learning experience, and every fight was different. I actually studied the people I fought and looked for patterns and ways to exploit their weaknesses. Some people just waited and tried to LSM, some people were extremely offensive, and others loved to teleport like there was no tomorrow.
I never really got to "pro" status in 1.1, but the ride to 1.2 was still fun as hell. I improved every single day, and people noticed. Once you became "pro", you could begin learning more advanced "techniques", like the beautiful combos used by the best of the best. 1.1 was always a learning experience. Always. You kept learning, you kept getting better. The pros enjoyed it, the average players enjoyed it, and while lots of people complained about being pummelled all the time, I enjoyed the game as a noob.
The problem with 1.2 is no matter who you're fighting, you feel like you've had that fight before. It's 2 hits in the air, 1 hit on the ground, followed by ki blasts or gen beams. That's what everyone goes for. As for "styles", people either run or they attack head on or they just shoot gen beams. There's no variation in how people fight. Defensive fighters seem to get a huge bonus in that they'll either get the hit when being chased or a HOW (which is still a win for them as far as I'm concerned).
While it's fun to go from noob to pro in 1.2, there's nothing to do afterwards. It just isn't fun having everyone fight the same way. This causes people to leave. Who keeps this game alive? Clans do. Most clans are made up of pros, so it's really the pros that keep ESF alive. Once they realize that there's just no variation in styles and there's nothing left to do, no room to improve and nothing new to learn, they get bored, quit, stop paying for servers, and ESF dies a little. That's what has happened over the last couple of years. ESF has basically just dropped dead, the usual suspects return, make a clan, buy servers, quit, stop paying, and ESF dies again.
I'm kinda going off on a tangent, so I'll try to focus. The team is forcing people to play a certain way instead of allowing us to choose how we want to play. This is most evident in the two swoops in 1.3, and how they are controlled and how they react to our commands. This causes stagnation in the community. 1.3 is following 1.2's pattern as far as I'm concerned. Removing the teleport delay is great, but having the 2 swoops there kinda cancelled that out. One was replaced with the other, and now we're in the same situation as before. Freedom of choice and movement is essential to ESF's survival. Don't tell us how to play. Let us figure things out for ourselves. Don't force us to fight the same way as everyone else.
I'm probably going to edit the hell out of this or just make another post since I don't feel I made a point, but now it's your turn.
What say you fellow esf players?
---------------------------------------
Thought I'd throw this in for additional commentary on how we (the team) can make ESF better:
We're all concerned about the direction ESF seems to be heading, and some of us are concerned about how disconnected the team seems to be from the community, or at least the part of the community that actually plays the game. Most people don't realize this but very, very few people who post on these forums actually play ESF on a regular basis. The problem is that when something like the Open Beta comes along, the people who never play decide to try it out and say how awesome X and Y are. Meanwhile, the people who actually play are trying to explain that X doesn't work out at all and Y needs to be tweaked. But because the people who don't normally play far outnumber the people who do on this forum, it seems like the team is voting for the majority, when that just isn't the case.
The people who don't normally play don't care what happens to the game, because...duh, they don't normally play. The rest of us like this game, want to keep playing it, and don't want it to get screwed up because someone suddenly has the idea to throw everything away and copy a mediocre game. In the end, we're probably going to get shafted again, but we'll deal with it, and the same people who have always been good at the game will become top tier players in 1.3; something the team was hoping to avoid. But, as always, we'll get bored of being "numba 1" due to the system, and we'll leave, new players will join, get their asses handed to them by the next best players, leave, so on and so forth. It happened in 1.2, and it will happen in 1.3 unless they take the pro level into consideration this time. Attracting new players is all fine and dandy, but we need something that makes us:
1) Want to become "pros"
2) Want to stick around when we're pros.
That would keep people from leaving, give people a long term goal, and would make the ESF experience enjoyable for all. Most of the time, the best players are kind enough to take the time to teach everyone else how to play, so they'll be providing the next generation of pros with the know-how.
It's win-win for all. Stop forgetting about us.
EDIT: "So what is the purpose of this thread? Well, to put it simply, we're going to try to figure out what made 1.0 and 1.1 so great and what aspects of 1.0-1.2 should be incorporated into 1.3. As we all know, 1.3 is the last version of ESF. This means that if we intend on sticking around, this is our last chance to make ESF something everyone can enjoy."
I expanded it to 1.2, since 1.3 really just branched off of that version.