Because they are not used to it.
Small trees gives an unfair advantage against someone who is not using it: he can’t see well as the other one, he can’t micro his woodlines as well as the other one.
Same goes for grid. It’s easier to build walls, it’s easier to spot holes and it allows you to calculate the range of the buildings.
Both those things were not intended in the original game, both are visual mods that give you a big advantage if the other one is not using them. The only reason it’s ok to use them in your mind is because they’ve been there for years
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If anything this one is the most problematic because the enemy idle villagers also have a pointer above their head that makes them easy to spot, so if you’re below whatever elo where people stop idling then you will have quite a big advantage using that. Ok maybe not that big but it’s definitely something that could matter more than range indicators depending on the situation.
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ppl are still going to use age of mandala so it doesnt matter, personnaly i use age of mandala for a long time and many players aswell and nobody said nothing, i dont know why u so mad
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I personally think that all this is just a line in the sand…
Where do mods and changes are considered just a little help and quality of life improvements and where do they make the game broken.
One could for sure argue that a mod that allows you to better place your lumber camp, or to avoid holes in walls,while range indicators helps to better better harm your opponent. Another argument is that using the grid requires more focus than the range indicators.
Personally, I can agree with those arguments, but in my opinion, while the impact between small trees and grid is for sure different than the impact of range indicators, the principle is the same.
So, as I said before, it a line that shouldn’t be crossed, or the game becomes too easy. The problem is, that it’s a line that one day people feel like should be in one place, the other day in another place, and each one of us place its own line.
I think thatNow, on this issue, it seems that are the pros the ones more vocal about it. Personally, I think we should value their experience and opinion, but it’s not like the game is their property, and for sure they aren’t the only ones playing it (otherwise Microsoft wouldn’t make any money out of it…).
For this reason we shouldn’t take their opinion as laws written in stone. If they pose the argument that some features that makes the game too easy should be banned from tournaments, well that’s mainly their territory, and we should trust them. But for the whole game, well I think that if a decent amount of people downloaded the range indicator mod, it means that there is a considerable amount of people who like it.
In the end, new contents aren’t just civs, but such features too. And new content can attract new players (or keep in the game the old ones). I get that pros and old fans (like me, don’t get me wrong, I’m not a fan of the range indicators) would like that the game wouldn’t change a bit (hell some didn’t even want new civs) without that big mass of players that those new features bring we wouldn’t have a DE and the pros wouldn’t probably be able to have so many tournaments.
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Everyone complains about the mods. But what about the following:
- You can see the remaining HP of your enemy’s units so you can target his weakest units.
- You can check the enemy’s units to see which upgrades they have.
- You can see when your enemy takes relics on the mini-map.
- You can see the in-game score, which can tell you when your opponent is ageing up.
- You can see how many villagers your opponent has by checking the cost of Spies.
- You can look at the Market prices to see how much your opponent has been buying or selling a certain resource.
- You can remove your opponent’s cut straggler trees by building palisade foundations on them if within your LOS.
- And of course, once an area is explored it remains visible for the rest of the game, albeit in the fog of war if it isn’t in the LOS of one of your units.
If we would remove all these features, wouldn’t this be an entirely different game? Perhaps a better game than it is now, by the way (I mean, building scanning has also been removed and no one complains about that).
I have been wondering about the following. Could you make a mod (or a third-party app) that constantly tracks the player’s scores and gives you a warning when your opponent’s score suddenly drops (e.g. they age up) or rises (e.g. they build a castle or finish researching an expensive technology)? Could you make a mod that constantly tracks the Market prices and tells you whenever your opponent buys or sells a certain resource?
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The answer is likely no.
Mods work by replacing existing assets and settings. While this can sometimes be exploited to give additional information or clearity, it is very limited. The game needs an existing event (the change in score you mention) to attach your “flag” to.
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I think this range mod is fairly terrible for the game in the sense that it takes away an aspect of skill to this game completely away. Age of empires is a skill based game of warfare I think some mods that make trees look clearer and mods in general that declutter the screen are helpful and not broken and Definitely give you an edge but don’t fundamentally challenge the game for the worst. The equivalent level of brokeness of this range indicator would actually be a hole-in-wall mod that shows with red outline any area opponents can enter your base from imo this would be wrong as it would take all the “skill” out of catching a hole. but there’s no issue with identical trees mod really it’s a mod that doesn’t give you extra information it only helps the clarity of this information. The idle vil pointer is pretty broken too imo btw.
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Because the pro community are the stodgiest people on planet earth. They’d all be on voobly still if DE wasn’t literally the best remake in gaming history making the stance unjustifiable
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xD
No spectator chat
Alt-F4 problem
Error occured when queuing up
Crashes, freezes
You have to reinvite everyone after every single game
No mod support
etc.
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At least this game lives on unlike a certain orc vs human game.
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Thats the issue, mods give you an edge, users play in a different way when a feature gives you a hand. If we are going to argue that seeing the range shifts the way people perfom, the same should be stated about the rest of “edges”. Maybe in a higher elo the small trees mod is only implemented to “declutter” the screen but i assure than in lower elos that advantage plays a big role, the same as huge boars, idle vills pointer, huge numbers, better grid mod, transparent overlay, etc.
When talking about ranked we have to take into account all of the mods, and having now in options something that any player could download before, seems like an understandable answer.
If we are talking about the competitive scene (tournaments that involve proplayes), they can decide their own criterion, where they want to focus the skill on. Small trees are the only allow mod because ther skill is good enough to wall, okay. But in that case i supose that they have the same skill to be aware of how many tiles away from a building their units are.
By allowing some of them and restricting others, the game changes how its play, the same issue occur with auto-farms, people can focus more on micro. With small trees people pay less attention to walling. But if you arent concentrated in counting tiles… thats bad?
Saying that the game is lowering the difficulty should apply for all the benefits that you could get with a mod, not some of them only because proplayers argue that.
Look, we can talk about advantages or disadvantages, but there is simply no precedent to ban Age of Mandala.
It is a graphics mod which has always been permitted.
It does not give otherwise unobtainable information
It doesn’t give a different category of processed information than grid mod, which has always been permitted.
It is not overpowered compared to other visual mods: small trees has a much greater effect.
It is not more distracting than other accepted mods (age of cubes…)
And if we have no precedent for banning Mandala mods, there IS precedent for implementing simple QOL options into options rather than mods (grid mod, resource quantity).
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You may not like it and thats a valid opinión (i personally don’t mind the change)
But it is not unfair, both players can use it, it is not like one have and adv over the other
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I think if the range would not always be shown, only when trying to place buildings or when clicking on it, it would actually be fine. Range indicators are nothing new, many other games outside the Aoe franchise use them. But in most cases they are used to get a better feeling, so you can use them less over time as you get a feeling for it. Being able to always see the range pretty much throws this whole experience out the window. You do not learn to play around range of things, you learn to play around a stupid line. If you atleast had to put in some “work” to see the range, clicking on the building for example - fine, extra information for extra work I guess.
I don’t get why people compare it so much to small trees. I also don’t understand why they didn’t add that mod as a possible option in settings. Small trees reminds me more of people that turn down graphic details, so pretty but distractings effects are not shown. It does not actively change how you play the game, just adds more clarity to it so you are not lost looking at way too big trees. Range indicator on the other hand influences in a completly different way. It pretty much tells you where you probably don’t want to go and what path you should take to get around different buildings. Before range was always very abstract, knowing how far something can reach was not really possible on the pixel perfect level. You took risks by getting closer, maybe getting show at but at a chance for a better position. And this playing around range is now completly gone, atleast for buildings. I mean now I just place my single crossbow exactly out of enemy tc range behind the woodline to really annoy my opponent, and finding this perfect position doesn’t even cost me any time at all.
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The idea that my opponent can do this is extremely frustrating. I constantly lose archers in that manner when doing risky moves and that’s how good risk/reward works. Congratz to Johannes and devs for ruining a part of the game. It’s just tragic that this was allowed to happen.
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You still have to know where build a tower besides the range, and still have to pay atention to scout to avoid the TC…
What are the mods used in the first photo?
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If ranges are to much help, it should be stated the same about having a display of how many vills are at each resource, AoE2 didnt have that option and plays a huge part in economy and build orders. We should take that out aswell.
Stateing that range is an issue also argues how the game is espected to be play. We should review all the changes made from AoE2 HD, not only the ones that the pro scene accuses from “broken”.
Some people here really don’t get that just cos a feature was added to the game that helps the player doesn’t mean it’s bad like auto reseeding or more less clutter or better viewable resources but something like range indicator is taking the decision making aspect of where to put units and buildings out of the game. Any mod that gives you the perfect answer to your decision is not good for instance if a mod showed you where a hole was in wall that’s broken if a mod sees what units your opponent has on your screen and tells you what counter units to make that is broken it’s not because this decision is not available to you to make already without mod its that it takes the decision making aspect of the game out of it. If I could describe age of empires as a game it would be a RTS where skill and decision making will give the edge over the other player. Smalls trees mod doesn’t improve my skill or decision making ability or maybe by a negligible Amount compared to Range finders
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All MP ranked issues, the majority plays SP and they don’t complain nearly as much about things like spoiled ranked MP do