Auto-Villagers

Age of Empires II: DE II - Discussion
185

I understand it’s unlikely my voice is relevant, especially here of all places, but I would just like to state my vehement disapproval for adding additional automation to this game. However, I do not think anyone’s opinion on this matter is wrong, for it is certainly a subjective problem.

Essentially, the question is thus: where on the “Real Time” versus “Strategy” continuum should AoE 2 lie? This continuum is defined by how constrained a player’s attention is while playing the game. Each additional quality of life feature that gets added to the game pushes the game further from the “Real Time” side and closer to the “Strategy” side. This includes features like better waypoints, automatic farm reseeding, and even seemingly minor features like new hotkeys to append units to control groups. Each individual feature added is certainly not necessarily a detriment to the game, but is also not necessarily a positive, and so careful attention needs to be paid to exactly where on the continuum the game should land.

The debate over where a game should lie on the RTS continuum has happened many times before, and in particular this is reminiscent of the design discrepancy between the original Starcraft and Starcraft 2. See this article for an interesting take on the result of those differing decisions on how that game is played. But the essential component is this: removing purely mechanical difficulty from a game changes the essence of the game.

Which is why I do not think automatic queuing for villagers should be added to this game. Features like this change the game on a fundamental level, so much so that they should be reserved for an entirely new entry in the genre, not a remaster of an old game.

To go a step further, I would also advocate for the removal of the automatic scouting feature, and possibly for the removal of certain other recently added quality of life features. For example, I do not think it should be possible to shift-click monks to collect every relic on the map; I think something is lost when your attention is not split a million different ways when you’re playing.

Unfortunately, I do not think there is an obvious line in the sand that can be drawn to decide which features should be cut and which should not. Certainly the game could be pushed too far to the “Real Time” side, e.g. by requiring player input for villagers to drop off resources once collected. I think the general idea, though, should be to stay true to the spirit of the original game, and not push it too far away from what it once was.

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186

Created an account just to ensure that in case any developers read this thread they seriously reconsider this implementation. I believe the reasoning as to why it is a terrible idea has already been presented in the thread so let me just emphasize its importance. As mentioned earlier, the game has been in a good state for a long time and while some of these QoL features are great to see I’d argue this would kill the pro scene of DE for good.

I’m not trying to be over dramatic, I’m an optimistic guy overall. But if this pattern of automation continues I foresee massive drops. Drops of pros, of casters, of mid- and top tier players that is the brick and mortar creating the hype in the streaming community around this game. Because as mentioned before there has always been a high skill cap in the game and if there are no high skilled players playing on DE, what happens to the community? I know Microsoft focuses on lowering thresholds for new player to join the game, and that sentiment is absolutely legit, but this time it is uncompromisable. It is wrong. And I for one would hate to see a mass migration back to Voobly, because rest assure this will happen soon if this continues, so let’s try and bring some sense into the backlog. Talk to professionals before adding features, if there is a need to reduce skill gap there are endless possibilities that doesn’t end up pissing off the very essential top tier.

To the devs, thank you for all the hard work. Please consider listening to all your players, not just new joiners that scream very loud.

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187

If that indeed becomes a problem, can’t they just remove it from ranked games?

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188

Please dont implement Auto Queuing for villagers, it would destroy the game.

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189

That would be a lesser evil, absolutely. But there is something to the sentiment of pampering the low level players with support features that I strongly disagree with. Sure, things like reseeding farms etc are things that can be automated but don’t fiddle with core functionality of the game. If that is what you learn when you start playing the game you will find it impossible to ever play ranked games.

I believe the way forward for this community is to identify the ways to lower the threshold without disrupting the essence of the game, while at the same time giving new players the resources they need to learn why this game has stood the test of time. It’s not because it was easy to learn, but because it was hard. It’s not about being elitist, I am fully aware the sponsoring of MS comes from new players joining the game and we can’t afford to be too conservative. But we can at least be reasonable.

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190

Queueing villagers definitely goes into the category of simple mindless repeatable tasks. So it’d not be that bad to have it automated… But I think the auto should get disabled the instant you run out of resources to produce a vill, so that you’ve to turn it back on. This way you can’t ignore your economy and still get villagers all the time.

If I recall correctly, some other game had this kind of auto-queue, but it ate the resources of the villager being created +1 for the next one in queue. That’d make it not absolutely optimal. (Essentially the endless production locks up 50 extra food in the TC, so you need 50 per 25s and 50 to start up the queue. Run out even for a second, you queue stops when it can’t lock up 50 food anymore.)

But on other hand villagers are the core part of the economy, having their production automated is quite a huge step. If a player suffers from idle TC, this is a huge handicap. Definitely affects lower level players much much more than the ones higher up. Brings up the floor a ton… But I can’t agree if it’s good or bad.

For now if I was deciding about stuff like this, I’d not even poke this idea with a long stick but wait for a long while to fix other issues before taking another look.

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191

Just add everything automatic like vills creating, units creating, splits, scouting, follow build orders so you can just backseat and watch playing for you, converting units in range, ping enemys for teammates and so on

  • but leave it as frikkin option in the game lobby like next to “allow cheats” so that these lil noobs get their ■■■■ and we can keep the great game as it is.
    Matchmaking = competitive, game lobbys = casual, deal with it and learn the game or drop to your elo if you suck.
    U will find enemys with as little skill as u have to play fair games, that’s how matchmaking works or should work atleast.

how can people even think about these things :man_facepalming: :man_facepalming: :man_facepalming:

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192

This guy gets it. I’m growing tired of discussing this things. I command myself to the devs, and their criteria about not killing the spirit of the game

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193

Like someone said, if they want to nobify the game like this, do it for casual games. The so called “useless APM” tasks are actually skills that differentiate players in the competitive scene.

194

This doesn’t work. Gather points can’t use shift-clicking. At least, not yet. I wouldn’t actually be against that feature as it’s only a step ahead of shift-clicking and after getting used to shift-clicking I’ve often found myself trying to use it for gather points and getting frustrated and being like “Oh yeah, it doesn’t work for gather points.”

But automatic unit production?! No, can we please keep macromangement as part of this game. This is an RTS, not a MOBA.

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195

Might as well just make creating villagers automatic by default. No longer being able to produce them individually and instead each TC just produces a villager every xx seconds. Remove the food cost and re-balance the game around it. Then you can just make the game auto uninstall too because why bother playing that dumpster fire.

I wonder if people advocating this are the same people saying Dark Souls is too difficult and needs an easy option. It’s part of the game people, what happened to learning and adjusting accordingly? Why does everything have to be changed because you’re unwilling to spend time learning and improving.

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197

I just ask for an idle TC icon like the idle villager icon. Something that you can toggle on or off. I know people say look at the queue but when you have multiple TCs and there’s a lot of stuff going on it’s easy to lose track. It easier to spot if it’s by itself and blinking or makes a little noise instead of grouped with everything else being made. It just passively helps people remember to make villagers instead of actively doing it. Similar can be said of idle villagers—it just reminds you instead of tasking them to a resource for you. This would help lower rated players without doing it for them.

I also get super frustrated that I can’t highlight 5 villagers chopping wood and shift click them to build things which would leave what they are doing after they drop off the resources. Why is it programmed to wait until the resource is depleted? That makes no sense. If they are miners, that could take minutes. I need to click the drop off point, wait, and then shift click making buildings. It just seems like an unnecessary extra step. I forget to do this all the time and it frustrates me because they haven’t built anything yet.

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198

While it isn’t good for building it’s great for planning your ressource collection, and ESPECIALLY to prevent your villager to slaughter all your sheeps at once.

199

That’s a lot of assumptions and bad arguments on your post.

And I’ve beaten Dark Souls twice.

200

Auto-villagers would destroy DE. Personally I would probably return play AoE 2 in Voobly, if that would be implemented.

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201

Where in AOE2?

Might try it, but it’s a different game. Just because it works in another RTS, it doesn’t mean it will IN aoe2

202

This would destroy the game even more than the auto-scouting.

Just please - if you keep adding this non-sense add it as an option in single player/unranked games.

It is ludacris that someone can be using this and other person not.

Please do not keep destroying the game, devs

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203

So go and play that game. Why the need to change this game that much?. People were rooting for graphic updates not for a material changes in the gameplay.

I play this game casually with some friends, I find the fact checking my TC in dark/feudal age one of the single more important thing to keep the production of villagers.

this game is not total war, this game is a micro and strategy. If checking your tc periodically (even more know that you have auto scouting) so difficult and cause you frustration, this is not a game for you. Just go and play other games that suit you better, what’s fine, but stop ripping the essence of this game off.

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204

Well you can also go play original AoK if you don’t want any QoL changes, right?

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207

I actually think you are so obnoxious. He made some valid points about removing the complexity of the game.

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