About suggestions : Why sometime the best is the ennemy of the good

Age of Empires: DE I - Discussion
1

I see a lot of discussion and suggestion about comfort and “improvment” of the games,

Suggestion about “realism” or suggestion about “comfort” or suggestion of copying evolutions of moderns games

But i think the only relevant aspect for a game is Fun. The experience you’ll get in the end.
And fun is about having a lot of stuff to do, and having a lot of possible decision.

For me this is simple. with wall and no gate, its a matter of open or closed situation
Sometime you’ll make wall, sometime not. => choice
If there is gate :
you will always make wall, because there is no inconvenient. => no choice, no strategy

if there is no choice to make, the game become predictive.
And if it become predictive, there is less different strategies to apply in a situation.
So the game become linear etc etc. no fun

I’m not fundamentally against gates, its just that i dont think it will bring more fun.

most ppl think that a game will be better if they have less problematic to handle. more comfort.

I think its the opposite. Fun come from imperfection. Fun come from the way you will handle things, especially because solutions to handle theses things at your place, are missing.

Fun is about to not queue villagers. to be precise to the timing you will click to make another one.
its about looking in statistic after 10mn and see that you have 35villagers and the opponent have 42 and you say “****!”

If you can queue villagers, when you will look stats, all people will have 42 villagers.
its boring.

Fun is about giving a lot of opportunity to make the difference by the discipline of your execution of your strategic choice.

That’s why i dont think its a good idea to make automated farms. (right click to rebuild, ok though)

You can only remove thoses kind of “task” if you replace them by something else to do.
But… if you replace them by nothing you’ll endup with a casual simplified game, more linear on the level beetween player, so with less competition, and game that will more and more look the same.

You think Comfort is an ally. It is not. It’s a game killer.

So of course I make a general statement here and we can always discuss element by element if it could be good or not to change this or that.
But i just want to notice that Fun doesnt comme from something more easy to do. It comes from challenge, discipline, frustration all the little stuff that are not going like we would want it to go, and that need for us to adapt constantly.

So before suggesting some change, ask your self if it will bring more challenge/fun to the game, or only “comfort” or “realism” (sometime useless, when speaking of fun)

My two cents.

2

What do you think about land trading? Would you like it? I do. I think that, currently, matches in mediterranian-rivers maps last longer than those that take place in maps without water masses. The same system (trading one resource for gold and limited amount of trading) but with markets

3

for me, the less risky proposition are the endgame one.
because there is no influence to everything that happens before.

I remember there was some problem on the long terme because the map didn’t had any ressource left.
Even wood !

So maybe increasing the wood capacity of trees would be a good idea. Or planning to make them “grow again” after 20mn or something.
Or having trading beetween market as well

It can make the game last longer, even if winning the game with no ressource was kinda fun, because you had to be very careful about every single units and fight for some trees

But i will stop posting ideas and reflections, because people who “disagree” often express their disagreement on my karma, but rarely the opposite ^^

4

You contradict yourself when you say having multiple decisions makes a game fun, while saying that auto queueing villagers takes the fun away from the game. That’s because having good timing, in your example, is not a decision. It’s an obligation. So you are taking away the fun of the game by forcing people to focus on micro play, rather than macro - which is where all the trully meaningful decisions happen.

This kind of conversation used to happen all the time in the StarCraft community. StarCraft: Brood War had some insane micro play possibilities, whereas StarCraft II added a lot of technologies that removed the need to execute such intense in-game actions. A lot of the people say it dumbed down the game too much, but I think that they mostly made the right decisions.

In my opinion, having to micro your macro, like having to manually click stuff instead of autoqueuing, add no value to the game. You merely force the player to be mechanically accurate all the time, which for most people is too stressful.

In regards to gates, though, I kinda see your point.

5

Again, If you remove some task to do, without replacing them by something else to do what’s the point ?

You queue villager, ok fine.
So what you do for the first 10mn of the game ? you just explore ?

In your game with queuing, you have no opportunity to show skill, sense of timing and discipline.
Everyone will be 40pop at 10mn of game.

In my example, some will be at 40, others, that “forget” to relaunch a villager, at 35.
it’s this kind of elements that differenciate pro and rookies.

moreover having to do this create choice. “will I relaunch a villager ? or will I Focus on micromanaging my army/explorer” ?
It Create MultiTask, and expert are able to handle both while rookies aim to master both.

There is a ressource that doesnt appear in RTS game but very very important, its called APM
Action per Minute. that the ressource each player improve and bring to the game.
That the action that make a diffeerence beetween good player that can do 2 things at the same time
and bad player that will need to chose what they want to sacrifice and what they want to prioritize.

Queuing is just a safe way to handle economy, without caring too much, with all people being the same in the end.

6

Having to go and train a new villager every time right after the previous is trained is not fun, it’s just tedious. And it’s not about skill either, it’s mainly about reflexes.

And there are plenty of other, much more interesting things to do in the early game, like exploring, deciding what resources to gather and what building to build, remembering to build new houses as needed and microing hunters so that the animals get closer to storage pits.

7

@Tgaud said:
Again, If you remove some task to do, without replacing them by something else to do what’s the point ?

You queue villager, ok fine.
So what you do for the first 10mn of the game ? you just explore ?

In your game with queuing, you have no opportunity to show skill, sense of timing and discipline.
Everyone will be 40pop at 10mn of game.

In my example, some will be at 40, others, that “forget” to relaunch a villager, at 35.
it’s this kind of elements that differenciate pro and rookies.

moreover having to do this create choice. “will I relaunch a villager ? or will I Focus on micromanaging my army/explorer” ?
It Create MultiTask, and expert are able to handle both while rookies aim to master both.

There is a ressource that doesnt appear in RTS game but very very important, its called APM
Action per Minute. that the ressource each player improve and bring to the game.
That the action that make a diffeerence beetween good player that can do 2 things at the same time
and bad player that will need to chose what they want to sacrifice and what they want to prioritize.

Queuing is just a safe way to handle economy, without caring too much, with all people being the same in the end.

Of course you have opportunity to show skill and sense of timing with queueing. Just look at StarCraft II: Legacy of the Void. All the rest of the macro game is available to you. You shouldn’t feel better because you can click on the villager button every X seconds. You should feel better because you took meaningful decisions during the game.

The points you raise have already been answered in the StarCraft community. There are certain micro actions that should be kept, but it’s a consensus that mechanically insignificant stuff like having to manually click each villager are just plain boring, and don’t add enough depth to the game. They just make the game more difficult just for the sake of being difficult. The exciting micro happens during battle, not during macro actions.

Pros will beat rookies through strategy and well executed builds. They don’t need to execute tedious actions immaculately to make them ahead of others. Strategy games are supposed to be strategy-oriented, not mechanically-oriented. Clicking on villagers every X seconds is a mechanical action, not a strategical one.

I disagree entirely with your assumption that making macro more micro oriented makes the game better. It just makes it more stressful.

8

@qweytr24 said:
Having to go and train a new villager every time right after the previous is trained is not fun, it’s just tedious. And it’s not about skill either, it’s mainly about reflexes.

And there are plenty of other, much more interesting things to do in the early game, like exploring, deciding what resources to gather and what building to build, remembering to build new houses as needed and microing hunters so that the animals get closer to storage pits.

Agree fully. I simply can’t agree with any argument saying that unit queues are bad…

9

Again, if you want to remove some mechanics, without replacing it by some others… whats the point.
We will end up with some RTS like all the RTS who have failed before, just for casualizing the game because of lazy player “bouhou i dont want to click its too hard”.

RTS is not only about strategy. Or go play something on an Excel sheet.
RTS is about execution, APM, timing, precision, discipline, focus.

And all of thoses are included in the simple, mechanic, to build a villager every 18seconds while doing everything else at the same time.

You want to remove it ? Fine. But you’re removing what’s was keeping busy people.

Because taking the decision to build your ressource gatehring poing closer to the ressource, is clever, but is not something time consuming. Its not a mechanics
So the game will become veryy veryyy slowwwwwww

You’ll just look at it, passively. Waiting to reach bronze age to finally make some army.
And then, it will only be an army focus game.
Economic will totally be inexistant because your villager will be produced automatically (queued), production, same. Farm, same.

Sorry but this is not age of empire.
Age of empire is not starcraft, its not army only focused

I won’t get into this ship.

So unless you propose some other interesting mecanichs to replace the one you want to delete, it will be without me

10

Totally agree with Tgaud.

11

@Tgaud said:
Again, if you want to remove some mechanics, without replacing it by some others… whats the point.
The queue mechanic was added in RoR. If you want to remove that mechanic, without replacing it by some others… whats the point.

And it may be possible to keep up with producing villagers from one TC even without queues, but it becomes just impossibly tedious when you are also making military in several other buildings at the same time.

You don’t need to be clicking everywhere all the time to have fun. (or if you do AoE is not the right game for you) The time in between is also important and can be used to plan out strategies and check out your town that everything is working as it should.

12

they still have to build the vill so what is the point of removing action again. does it really matter if its done at 17s point rather than 18?

13

Making a game more tedious by removing abilities like queuing won’t make the game more fun, sure it’ll make it make it difficult but difficulty does not always mean fun

14

@qweytr24 said:

@Tgaud said:
Again, if you want to remove some mechanics, without replacing it by some others… whats the point.
The queue mechanic was added in RoR. If you want to remove that mechanic, without replacing it by some others… whats the point.

And it may be possible to keep up with producing villagers from one TC even without queues, but it becomes just impossibly tedious when you are also making military in several other buildings at the same time.

That’s what is multitask.
Good player can do both, it gives stress and pleasure to succeed in such task
But yeah you need skill.

You don’t need to be clicking everywhere all the time to have fun. (or if you do AoE is not the right game for you) The time in between is also important and can be used to plan out strategies and check out your town that everything is working as it should.

So tell us, where is the fun ? maybe AOE is not the right game for you. It’s not a casual game

15

@CoiledBenis said:
they still have to build the vill so what is the point of removing action again. does it really matter if its done at 17s point rather than 18?

Yes because after 10mn it make a 5 villager differences in your economies.
It’s important to make difference over quality execution of build orders.

16

You still have to go to the TC and train each villager individually whether you can queue or not. There’s just as much multitasking in both situations. Where the difference really matters is in the late game, where training units in several buildings at the same time would be very annoying without queues.

17

@keepintouch75 said:

@CoiledBenis said:
they still have to build the vill so what is the point of removing action again. does it really matter if its done at 17s point rather than 18?

Yes because after 10mn it make a 5 villager differences in your economies.
It’s important to make difference over quality execution of build orders.

it does not? have you ever heard about elo ranking? it means that you play against people who are at your skill level. if you are a good player you just make the vills with out much slack but worse player doesnt and queuing doesnt affect that.

and sure go a head and waste 200 food by queuing 4 villagers

18

@Tgaud said:
Again, if you want to remove some mechanics, without replacing it by some others… whats the point.
We will end up with some RTS like all the RTS who have failed before, just for casualizing the game because of lazy player “bouhou i dont want to click its too hard”.

RTS is not only about strategy. Or go play something on an Excel sheet.
RTS is about execution, APM, timing, precision, discipline, focus.

And all of thoses are included in the simple, mechanic, to build a villager every 18seconds while doing everything else at the same time.

You want to remove it ? Fine. But you’re removing what’s was keeping busy people.

Because taking the decision to build your ressource gatehring poing closer to the ressource, is clever, but is not something time consuming. Its not a mechanics
So the game will become veryy veryyy slowwwwwww

You’ll just look at it, passively. Waiting to reach bronze age to finally make some army.
And then, it will only be an army focus game.
Economic will totally be inexistant because your villager will be produced automatically (queued), production, same. Farm, same.

Sorry but this is not age of empire.
Age of empire is not starcraft, its not army only focused

I won’t get into this ship.

So unless you propose some other interesting mecanichs to replace the one you want to delete, it will be without me

Just because you can queue, that doesn’t mean there is nothing else to do. I’ve only played very few games of AOE as I mainly played Rise of Rome. And let me tell you, almost never is it the case that everybody has the same amount of villagers. People use different strategies, some have a better map etc. Even with a queue you still have to make sure that you steadily pump villagers early in the game. Also there is always something to do. So you don’t just sit there and wait until you start to fight.

19

@qweytr24 said:
You still have to go to the TC and train each villager individually whether you can queue or not. There’s just as much multitasking in both situations. Where the difference really matters is in the late game, where training units in several buildings at the same time would be very annoying without queues.

Any player can do that.
I can do that while cleaning the house.

20

@Tgaud said:

@qweytr24 said:
You still have to go to the TC and train each villager individually whether you can queue or not. There’s just as much multitasking in both situations. Where the difference really matters is in the late game, where training units in several buildings at the same time would be very annoying without queues.

Any player can do that.
I can do that while cleaning the house.

i hope i get to play against you free elo quarantee