Here’s some ideas that I personally think would really improve the game:
Combat Stances for villagers
I watch a lot of pro players matches and there are many strategies (or just quick defense tactics) that involves using villagers to attack/defend, and it’s just a huge pain to do it normally, since you have to constantly manually target every single enemy you want your villagers to attack. I think it’d be nice to also give them the choice to change stances, so by default they’d be created on the “do nothing” stance, and this would make them behave as they already do, but then you can change the stance for agressive or defensive if you’re doing some sort of worker rush/tower rush/persian douche strategy or if you have to defend against any of those and you don’t have enough military units yet.
Not only that but also allow them to have attack move.
Visible control groups buttons
This is something that Starcraft II has and that is a huge quality of life imo, being able to see which control groups has units in them really helps you to remember which units you have/are still alive, and also lets you see which control groups are free for you to make a new one. This would also be a great addition for casters, so they can see the control groups the players have and then comment on it.
Btw those buttons can be toggled to be clickable or not, the player can change it in the config.
Another small improvement that I’d like to see that involves control groups is to be able to add units on a control group without having to set the entire group again. For example, my group 1 has 5 swordmans, and i want to add 3 archers on the group. Currently in AoE2 HD I need to select the swordmans and the archers and then press ctrl 1. What I want to be able to do instead is to select only the archers and then press shift 1, and then when I press 1 again I’ll be controling the 5 swordmans and the 3 archers.
That and for units to be able to be part of 2 or more control groups at the same time.
Allow Structures that make units to automatically set their stance upon being created
This is something minor that I think could have some potential to some strategies or just unit management in general. Most military unit are created on agressive stance by default, but sometimes while I’m playing campaign or vs AI I want a group of units to be in defensive stance so they don’t get baited away from my base, and it’s annoying having to change it whenever a new unit is created. Adding a submenu for that on those structures would be something rly interesting imo (that but also adding an extra option to create them on their default stance, since I believe some units made in the castle have a different default stance, and the player might want them all to stay the same as the default for that reason)
Is this the best place to post ideas for quality of life enhancements, or is there another place where the devs will actually read it?
The number one thing I would like is a way to not have to play against the tower rushing strategy, it is no fun and about 33% of the people at my level (well I have played 1v1 Arabia for over 450 hours) do it. It makes me not want to play the game, however the player base of aoe 3, where tower rushing doesnt occur, is too low.
Ideas:
when I create a new 1v1 game, have an option to disallow towers completely, or disallow enemy towers with x squares of starting tcs. Treaty disallows all aggression, I want to only disallow tower rushing, because the fun part of the game is making actual units, not tower/castle wars.
have an option to block players I dont want to play against again (for me that would be those who tower rush- right now I have to keep a manual list of tower rushers, and its too long)
nerf towers again (but then how to defend against someone building a castle next to your home tc, the aggressive forward castle dropping is very real)
Also, in the new AoE II DE, there is no option to name a room, I like to name a room for example 1700 or less ONLY and then only play against players near my skill level. Playing against players of similar skill level is critical for enjoyment of the game for all players.
How about the ability to drag-and-drop a formation in to a position facing the direction you choose, rather than clicking forwards and backwards to get them in the right place?
I don’t think either of those are mechanically viable, at the end of the day even if it’s unfun we need to learn how to counter tower rushes, this is a mechanic that professional players use and that can still hurt u even if it’s further away from your tc.
And not to talk about the implications it’d have in nomad maps.
This is by far the best solution to this kind of thing imo.
I do like your second suggestion. But it would even be more useful if they added the option to queue to control groups. So instead of setting a gather point (or waypoints) you can directly queue units (even from different groups of buildings) to the same control group. There is a hotkey to change the gather point, so it should not be difficult to implement targeting a control group.
I think it would be useful anyway because it will just work like a fast queue redirector with auto selection. Unit above that group selection limit will just not join the group but stay put where the group is located at that time. Also that is the part you will have to micro anyway. You even could add waypoints on the mini map before instead of left clicking the last waypoint click there use the CTRL/ALT + control group number. But they also could adjust that amount to 100 which is 20% of planned total possible pop cap for AOE II DE (500). Current amount is 75, am I correct?
Nice ideas that would make micromanagement easier. They seem easy to implement as well.
My only question is on visual control groups buttons, what are they supposed to show? How many units you have in a group and what’s the most powerful unit in the group? I suppose it’s better than nothing but it’s nothing an experienced player wouldn’t keep in mind already. As long as they run smoothly with the rest of the HUD I don’t see why not.
As they have reached the beta stage already I don’t think they will add more features anyway. Also it’s an extension to something that is already possible using waypoints, except for auto adding to the group.
Just a kind reminder that those in the AoE II: DE Beta are under NDA and should only discuss beta topics in the closed forums set up for it. Some comments above have wandered the line. Be aware!
