Goodspeed wrote:I agree that goons are an issue. We did nerf them in an earlier EP version, and they may need further nerfs. And like you pointed out, a colonial-based meta faces the same problem. In ASFP, where games were usually decided in colonial, most games ended up musk/huss wars which is just as bad as goon/skirm if not worse.Kaiserklein wrote:I don't think people mind games being played out in fortress, as long as it doesn't mean it's a skirm war so often. Colonial games are just as boring when it's musk wars lol, look at brit mirror. It's just nice when there's different kinds of unit compositions and more intense micro. Also not having goons makes multitasking/raids more viable
But the sooner we accept that a fortress-based meta is where the game is headed, the sooner we can start balancing it. Rather than complain about too many games reaching fortress age, people should focus on making the fortress-based meta better. Already we are seeing way more crate shipments in fortress than we did 5 years ago, people are looking towards industrial much more often, and people are building more TCs. Back in 2008, if you even reached fortress you would almost always send exclusively unit shipments.
As fortress-based styles are explored more, the issues will become more apparent. And when that happens, EP team can make changes to improve it. The goon nerf was an important first step in this, though perhaps a bit conservative. Thing is we had to be conservative at the time because we had a mandate to stay as close to RE as possible.
Just curious, in your view, when and why did that mandate to keep EP close to RE disappear? I think a lot of the issues people have with the EP team is because this mandate was slowly phased out with no explanation, and I think the no explanation part played a significant role in people’s anger.