There are many RTS games of different orientations. Not all of them request people to act fast. The main reason I play AoE is simply because it is one of the most popular RTS games with relatively slow pace. And one of the reasons many people love DE is because there are many QoL improvements allowing them to play this game more comfortably.
And why MOBA is more popular than RTS nowaday is not because it has more tension than RTS, but because people can focus on single character without managing a full base and economy at the same time.
For people who prefer RTS requesting ultra reaction speed and extremely high skill floor, I think voobly version of AoE2, Starcraft or C&C which is just about engineers rush, spaming tanks and micro are better choices.
I agree AoE is not slow, but it is “relatively” slow comparing to the other faster RTS games. And I love how they bring so many QoL improvents to DE to make this game more accessible. Obviously the majority of people love these changes too. I think auto queue is not game breaking and will make this game more accessible for the majority of players.
Actually I want to try other slower RTS games, but unfortunately the population of RTS games is small because people think they are just too fast and too hard, and the multiplayer of most of the RTS games are almost dead. It seems that AoE is the only option of relatively slow-paced RTS which still has popular multiplayer now.
There are a lot of reasons why RTS like AoE or Starcraft are less popular than MOBAs and FPS.
For example :
The mechanics of a RTS themselves are not attractive for a lot of people. As you said, people prefer having just one character to control and play with. When you have just one guy to control, there are many empty moments during a game where you can just chillax. A RTS like AoE or SC is a non-strop stressful activity. You can’t just stop and chillax for 20 sec without it having great impact on the game.
MOBAs and FPS are much simpler and easier for a complete beginner or casual player. You can have fun playing a League of Legends or a Fortnite game almost frome the start. Casual gameplay brings more players, and thereofre more popularity.
For more passionate players, the skillcap of those games is lower and someone who wants to tryhard and play a lot can actually reach top level in a realtively short timeframe compared to reaching top level in a RTS.
To be honest, I don’t think adding a few automated features will change anything in that regard. It won’t make the game more popular to the masses.
We have to focus on what the specific features of a RTS are, and what makes it great.
Macro/Micro management and multi-tasking is a big part of it. It contributes to the skillcap of the game and what makes it interesting in terms of competitiveness and also strategy and learning curve.
That being said, it doesn’t mean automated features are always a bad thing. But there are lines that shouldn’t be crossed, and of course those lines have to be defined.
If there are no lines, we will end up with a game so simplified that high level players will stop playing it and the competitive community will die down slowly but surely. And the top level competitive scene is actually what’s keeping games like AoE alive.
I think the only line we can’t cross is auto micro or auto win. Except that nothing can’t be automated. Especially tedious things like smashing a button repeatedly to produce some units. There are indeed a line we can’t cross, but we are still far from it imo.
After playing some really slow RTS games with lots of automated features, I feel that no matter how automated it is, the faster player still have lots of advantages. So you don’t need to worry about the game will become too easy. It is like some Fighting games with one button special moves, it is simplified but still only the fast player knowing the game very well can perform complicated combos and win. The simplifying features won’t reduce the skill ceilings, beak the game or make the game less competitive, but will just help people more easily get in and play the game more comfortably.
This is embarassing just like auto reseed, auto scout and auto treb pack.
All things that were perfect untill some incompetent devs came and ruined it.
-Reseeding in the mill was a balanced feature to keep your whole food eco set, continuous output should require continuous input. “Go to Mill > Shift + reseed” is the only thing you need to do. “set and forget” features have no place in Aoe2
-Scouting took effort and in return you got a big reward, there was no rng involved only player input. Whatever was visible on the map was caused by your effort instead of an AI, and a fully scouted map was not taken for granted but a sign of experience and good out of the box thinking.
-Auto treb pack changed the identity of the trebuchet, the only weapon in the game that needed to be operated in 2 states. This created a sense of importance and greatness around this superior siege weapon. Now trebuchets aren’t as unique and it results in less idle time making them even stronger and harder to stop.
Good game design had to make way. Unfortunately many think these features have a place without being behind a lobby/mm toggle.
Queue for villagers is really really strong, respectfully is a worst idea for the age, if you allow queue for villager, players with less multitasking and less skil will equal the hard work of other players, is a broken help men
I think most people are fine with auto-reseed, because the mechanic of reseeding farm itself is tedious while not being interesting at all in terms of gameplay.
Sure it makes the skill ceiling higher when you have to do this manually, but that’s not always a good thing.
You could also remove auto-work for villagers. Right now they automatically go to work when they spawn out of the TC. You can set the rally point of a TC on a woodline once and never move it again for like 15 min. So that’s auto-work without any continuous input.
Is auto-work a good feature though? Yes, because these actions are very tedious to do manually, while not being interesting.
Imagine having to manually select each villager that comes out of a town center and manually put him/her to work. That’s the case in some other RTS, like Starcraft broodwar for example. Starcraft 2 improved this by automating this process, and it was a good idea, even though the skill ceiling became lower in that regard.
Yes, it would be require much more skill and multi-tasking to remove auto-work and do it manually, but higher skillcap doesn’t always equal better game.
The way I see it, the game itself doesn’t have a skill ceiling once you get to the stage of the players interacting with each other. The player with the higher workrate will always be able to overwhelm the player with the lower workrate. At the moment, it takes an exceptional player to perform good microing in two different places on the map at the same time. If something made it so that everyone could do that, then the exceptional player would just micro in a higher number of different places on the map, for example they might then be able to micro in 5 places at the same time, overwhelming a player who can only micro in 4 places at the same time.
But in the early game, this relative skill effect doesn’t exist as much, so it needs to be hard to execute a perfect plan in isolation. If everyone could perform the first e.g. 5 minutes perfectly, the game may as well start there instead of where it does.
Everytime someone needs to compare “continuous output should require continuous input” with basic unit logic. The comparison isn’t even great since waypoints still need to be managed to avoid overcrowding or resource depletion, not really set and forget.
It’s about balance. In a lategame trashwar there isn’t much to manage ecowise, the game just becomes longer because both have perfect food eco.
the mechanic of reseeding farm itself is tedious while not being interesting at all in terms of gameplay.
It’s really not that bad. I find myself not even using mill reseeds before minute 40, that’s the majority of games. The idea that you are controlling most aspects I find very interesting. It’s a simple command; Idle villager > right click. Lategame it’s no effort to queue farms in the mill, it’s just a habit that many haven’t gotten used to so they complain. And you see, from one auto feature comes the demand for another.
Remember how tedious everything looked when you first started to play the game, and you said to yourself “I will never be able to micro my sheep under tc”. Well now it’s just a habit you do without thinking.
That is true, but then you have to ask yourself this question :
Why should micro be considered more important than macro, and all macro should be automated so that players can just focus on micro?
Macro is an important part of an RTS, just as Micro is. They are complementary. Micro isn’t more important or more interesting than macro.
If you think about it, late game Micro is a click fest as well. So maybe we should have auto-micro so that we can focus on macro-ing our economy more? See, that’s just limiting gameplay unecessarily.
Some people actually enjoy the macro aspect of the game. Having all macro automated only suits people who don’t like macro and who prefer the micro, but not everyone is like that.
That will never happen in a game like AoE 2. Even current top players who’ve played this game for decades, still do not perform the first 5 minutes perfectly every single game.
Resetting rally points is not a continuous input. If you put Town centers on woodlines, you can get away with resetting the rally point once every 10 minutes maybe. Sometimes you don’t even have to re-set them till the end of the game. So it is some form of automation, even though it might not be on the same level exactly, it is similar.
Auto-reseed is like auto-work for farmers, they automatically go on a new farm instead of going on wood like in that previous example.
Manually selecting each villager that comes out of a TC and putting it to work manually also becomes a habit after a point (top starcraft broodwar players do it well). After a point you can do it without thiking. Yet that’s still a lot of extra actions that have to be done for something tedious that’s not particulary interesting, while those actions could have been used elsewhere.
I actually wouldn’t mind having to manually re-seed with “Idle Villager-> right click”, but I think having it automated doesn’t cross the line and I’m fine with it.
That auto-work for food, just as we already have auto-work for wood or mines.
You don’t need to make half decent comparisons or include other games that are much more limited. We are talking about Age Of Empires 2 and how it was balanced.
Resetting rally points is not a continuous input.
It is, the interval is just larger.
Auto-reseed is like auto-work for farmers, they automatically go on a new farm instead of going on wood like in that previous example.
Bad comparison since the idle farm had to be placed first. This behavior doesn’t go on forever.
That auto-work for food, just as we already have auto-work for wood or mines.
Yep…
Sure, comes down to you like it and I don’t. However I feel like it’s a trend that many who like auto reseed probably never formed the habit of reseeding farms. It’s the path of least resistance.
They should accept their limitations and when farms run out, reseed them manually and then queue some reseeds in the mill. Their eco will be worse and thats how it should be in my opinion.
Using that logic, auto-reseed is continuous input as well, with an extremly large interval. Yes sometimes you want to turn if off to save wood for buildings, then you turn it back on. So you can actually push it more than once per game, and it creates an inverval between those two pushes. Therefore it’s continuous input with large invetvals.
Yes, but the comparison is bad in a way that actually helps your point. To have the same auto-food as we have auto-wood (when a villager goes automatically to wood from TC), then we should be able to have auto-food rally point, and a villager that comes out of a TC automatically builds a farm and automatically re-seeds it forever.
So I guess that would be even worse from your point of view. Yet that’s the fair comparison with auto-wood.
You turn it in the way that fits you, but we could turn it in the other way as well. People who are attached to manual re-seeding are those who spent many games/hours trying to master it, and they don’t want to feel they have wasted their time doing so, even though the automated feature is actually a decent improvement in gameplay.
There is nothing interesting about re-seeding a farm. It’s just a mechanical action that you HAVE to do no matter what (most of the time), and that doesn’t involve a choice in terms of strategy or macrogestion. That’s why automating it makes sense, because if not, the human player becomes the robot.
On the other hand, other actions like :
choosing when to build a new farm (aka having more villagers on food)
choosing when to put more villagers on wood
choosing when to build this particular military unit
choosing when to add a new lumber camp or a new gold mine
choosing when to add new town centers
all of these are related to the macro aspect of the game and actually require a strategical choice. They are not just mechanical robotic actions, like manually re-seeding farms are.