Building range indicators now in game

Age of Empires II: DE II - Discussion
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Which is why most of the game balance should and is usually mainly done around pro level. Yes, small trees and others mods can have more impact in lower rated games, they could even lead to an increase in the ELO of some players. So what? They get higher rated and then get beaten by players who are strictly better without all those mods. Mods and features, that help out newer and lower rated players, but do not really impact high level play are in my opinion something good, as they generally help to develop as a player. Huge boars is a very good example for that.

Counting tiles isn’t fun, I agree. But the current range indicator just goes overboard with its options. Playing around range is a basic core mechanic in this game, you took risks by getting closer and maybe getting rewarded for it. Or you got too greedy and ran for example into tc fire. It makes you pay closer attention on handling your units, as astimating pixel perfect range of enemy buildings is next to impossible without wasting tons of your most precious ressource - time. Their was dynamic and decisionmaking in it, not everything was always perfect. And now comes range indicator just slapping down a circle, I just place my units right outside of it and I’m completly golden. One might think range indicator is just an additional feature to the game, but it also takes away some of the core mechanics making the game what it is.

I think most people against range indicator would actually be fine with it, if a) the range indicator is not always on, you only see it when clicking on the building or when placing it and b) you could not see the range of enemy buildings. It its current state the indicator is just too much.

Not everything added to the game is bad. I am even glad they did add things like displaying villager numbers on resources, auto-farmreseed, shift queue and other stuff. And I definetly do not want single queue back. The game is over 20 years old, macro management back then felt like work compared to the state now. But there is also a limit on how many of those features you can add. All the new ones we get always make something “easier” or “more accessible”. Now the game even starts telling me where I have to put my units and where not. Aren’t we reaching a point where it just gets too easy?

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The difference in the mods between the two pictures help the players see what is already there more clear and easy. Yet they dont add information such as knowing when to garrison your sheep vills in the TC when drushed, when to put your archers to not get hit by a tower or how to build a tower behind enemy woodline so its not noticed but will hit the vills when built.

PS. You could always check how many vills were on different resources from the buttons next to the minimap. What they changed in DE is you dont have to toggle buttons and have it displaye next to the resources yet the info was always there.

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This feature help to reduce the errors which is nice, because you now has to force these errors. Involves your skills much more than your luck. Mandala makes game more competitive instead of make it «only» easier

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I don’t get why people complain about it’s getting easier when they’re playing against human players. Your opponent won’t go blindly under your TC or castle nor are you under theirs. If you want your opponent army to die, you’ll need to do it yourself. The one to pick better fights win, it’s still skill, it’s still not easy.

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RIght
 people who complain about this don’t want to play better, they want the other play worse than them

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Quality of life features are important for longevity of a game, however this often impacts the gameplay and skill ceiling of the players. I would agree that each mod/feature allowed/implemented should be scrutinised as to whether these should be used in competitive standard settings.

Some features allow focus on other areas of the game. For example, autoseeding of farms removed an element of ‘dull’ macro allowing for more ‘interesting’ APM elsewhere. Arguably this is a worthy tradeoff for other actions in your economy or military management. This could be spending more time focusing on microing your army, flanking and raiding on more fronts or expanding your economy/transferring villagers to different resources to make faster unit/ageing/technology transitions. Objectively these actions are far more interesting for player and spectator than frequently reseeding 40 to 50 farms.

In contrast, building range indicators directly influence decision making when placing attacking buildings or moving your army. Less players may lose their scout to TC fire (more forgiving impacting the importance of scouting) and you will be less likely to move in with your early armies and lose units (or have an easier time raiding or tower rushing).

It will also be much easier to waypoint cavalry around all of an opponent’s defences or conversely make it easier to have firing zones of castles overlap in an area. These decisions then become less about the weight of your skill/experience and more about following the telegraphed visuals (painting by numbers). Rather than the need to control units better and improve your understanding, the focus is on staying behind the lines.

Then on mangonels (is this really possible???)
 For me this seems more like having an active tutorial during the gameplay. I do not agree that this is in the same category as an idle villager indicator (exclamation points are probably too much though) or the grid to ensure you are actually walled (required due to the 2d design). The green blocks for trees appear ridiculous.

As a result, less experience and game knowledge is required reducing the skill ceiling of these moments. Ultimately is this desirable for a competitive game? There should be more ways to improve not less, rewarding player investment.

If too many of these features are allowed/added, the complexity and skill potential will be heavily diminished. At the core, a competitive RTS is all about making numerous decisions constantly whilst also undertaking those actions as soon as possible. For me, whilst this feature might make the game more accessible to casuals, it is going in the wrong direction for a competitive RTS game. The journey to becoming a good player should not be advanced by adding shortcuts.

I have no issue with this being allowed in non standard settings, although it appears that the decision has already been made. This also brings concerns as to what will be added in Aoe4.

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I used the Age of Mandala mod for some months, then I could figure out distances better and don’t really need it anymore. This shortcut also made it possible to me macro and micro better under pressure. One shortcut, three improvements, I cannot see why I should struggle longer because 20 years ago people had to learn that in a much more hardcore way. Should we ban coaching also because it’s a shortcut?
I’m not going to become a pro anyway, I want to have fun. Losing 10 xbows suddenly to a castle because I can commit X hours/day to this game is not fun. I think now, against a casual player, games will be decided based much more on how/when/where to pick battles than luck to not go under castle fire because we don’t know how to count tiles fast enough. And, about tower rush, it doesn’t matter if you get a range indicator if you don’t know how to properly counter it.

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Moving 10 xbows towards a castle is not something you will have to practice x hours a day. If this is difficult then you are likely to be a casual player playing in a casual setting and not aiming to be competitive.

Using the feature as a training scenario/non competitive settings is fine, which I already stated. But again it’s in the options now.

There is a line to be drawn and everyone draws it differently but it will impact the skill ceiling regardless. Other similar features will worsen this effect.

I think the important distinction to be made is what should be the standard mods/settings allowed in a competitive environment? Adding training tools into ranked games is not the answer.

The Hwang video of mangonel circles epitomises what the game should not become from a competitive outlook. Taking it to the extreme, the game calculates which units will win, why not add a tool tip % chance for victory before entering a battle? The line needs to be drawn early to protect the game design that players have loved for many years.

If people are in favour of reducing the skill ceiling just come out and say it rather than talking around it. It was the same in the discussion about automated villager production, casual players want these features and competitive players do not.

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Perhaps a bit of nuance here, I see a lot of arguments that assume some kind of slippery slope: “what is next? Mangonel fire/tool tips”. We are not discussing those items, so mentioning them is pointless. Here we talk about the range of fire of buildings, which In my opinion be included, like it is in almost any modern rts, like sc2(siege tank range, tower range).

Reasons in favour: more strategic placement of towers and units, defensively and offensively
Reasons against: makes the game too easy/takes away skill in guessing.

I feel that the reasons against are mainly from people who are afraid people are going to take an advantage from something they don’t have : fe a lot of pros didn’t like mq, because they weren’t use to it, it decreases an important rts skill APM requirement. Or when we went to higher resolutions: “suddenly you can see much more of the map at the same time, that doesn’t seem fair!”. Still, game play has only gotten more strategic since then. Let any pro play with a large tree mod and their play is significantly worsened.

Just because a mod makes the game easier, doesn’t make it wrong. You need to judge whether the mod does this in a way it doesn’t compromise the elements we enjoy in a game

So yes, I do say we reduce the skill requirement a bit, but I think that is actually a good thing, and we get more strategic plays out of it, rather then less.

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I think a lot of people’s concerns could be addressed if the developers actually commented on this. All I know is they put it in the steam PUP (Public Update Preview) and then in the live game. Have they ever spoke about these things?

To someone with no access to the developers’ thinking it could appear as though they are simply adding popular mods to the base game. In my opinion this is bad as the character of the game shouldn’t be dictated by what is possible with modding. I’d like to understand their rationale for adding this feature and how they view their role in preserving/managing the game. Where is their limit? If a mod becomes popular will they always add it to the base game/allow it because they feel they are obligated to give everyone access to it? Even if it could negatively impact the way the game plays? I feel this is a bad way to manage a game.

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Afaik PUP isnt meant to see the opinion of people about the feature, but about finding bugs and fixing them before the release. If something makes it into the PUP, then it is pretty much guaranteed to be part of the next patch. Only exception would be if it is turned out to be buggy, so they need some more time to fix the bugs and then it will be in the next patch.

The devs in general dont really communicate about there ideas. You also see very few posts of devs on this forum for that reason. I would like to see more communication from the devs in general. At other games you sometimes see weekly or monthly update on where the devs work on and their plans for the future. It would be great if we also would get those guides for the AoE series as well.

I dont really see why this is bad. If something was already possible with mods, then why dont put it into the base game? The same is done with the grid mod for example. It became popular and DE just put it into the base game. I also dont see the issue with visual mods. Visual mods just display the things that are already known in a different manner. That is totally fine to me. Displaying the same info different doesnt have to do anything with the ‘auto everything’ discussion. Visual mods dont replace any actions of the players. You still have to do all actions manually.

The addition of something like auto scout needs to be much more controversial to me then the range indicator. Such feature would replace some actions of the players by some automatic system. I do understand we dont want to go in that direction with the game. Luckily such things arent possible with just visual mods.

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Agreed it would be helpful to have input from the developers. Also, the vote is likely skewed towards casual players that are not playing competitively and are not using the ranked queue. If the poll was should building range indicators be allowed in ranked queue, it appears likely that it would be heavily in favour of not allowing this feature (assuming that people that do not play ranked do not vote to skew the further poll). It makes sense that casuals are the majority but why should that affect a feature that they do not use such as ranked queue. Say top 1k players voted (or more), it would be a slaughter against inflatable armband features in competitive play.

Furthermore, this does not give more strategic planning, the range indicators are assisting existing strategy/tactics. Again, another analogy would be like stabilisers on a bicycle. The bicycle does much better without them but it can help learners. Ranked should be a game mode where players are freed from these crutches. Personally, I am a player that will not benefit from the removal of this feature, yet I understand the importance of keeping a high skill ceiling in an RTS game.

Other mods also need to be considered given the overall impact these are or might have in changing the gameplay. This is not “other RTS” games whereby any feature used in other games should simply be implemented without proper reasoning, this is a well established game that still is growing in popularity.

Therefore, an easy solution would be to allow certain mods/features in ranked queue and then everyone else can use whatever they wish in their own private games. Surely they can do some kind of poll based on players that have played x number of games in the ranked queue. Give the players what they want as relevant in each game mode based on the majority that use them.

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This is already part of the game: Visual mods are allowed, data mods arent. So everything that just display the same data that is already visible in the game on a different way, is allowed. But features in which some kind of AI takes over your game play arent allowed. That seems pretty reasonable to me. We dont really need a poll for every single mod. A lot of mods are in use by just some a few players. No one really want to vote for these kind of mods.

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The point being made here is that some visual mods should not be part of competitive play. Just look at Viper’s response (the GOAT) which is a subdued response given his position in the community. Therefore, given the number of visual mods now available, it makes sense to ensure that the competitive part of the community wants all of them in the ranked queue. The poll for map rotation and adjustments to ranked mapping was a great step forward. If most people do not use the ranked queue then why oppose this change? If the competitive players have not been consulted (which appears to be the case), then this should be addressed. That sounds pretty reasonable to me


Again look at the Hwang video with circles around the moving mangonels and then overlap that with building range indicators on a grand scale. Someone needs to explain how that is improving the game in a positive way? If it was, then this would clearly be a mod that would be used in tournament spectating to provide “clarity to indicate the information already available to us”. It destroys the presentation of the game and it obviously will not be used as it will be a detriment to the advertisement of the game.

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All building RANGE indicators, as Age of Mandala, make the game MORE STUPID. I saw players at 2000 ELO Rating at Voobly and Aoe 2 Definitive Edition, who attack using tower rush. But they attacked very stupid
 The players need BRAIN, intellect to build towers and castles properly. These RANGE indicator mods ( Age of Mandala) will help EVEN the TOTAL new players to use tower or castle rush at the SAME level as TOP players who have 2500 point ELO rating.
It is as removing all units and put ONLY one unit, to be used in the game, For example- attack using only Paladins. The game become very stupid


I saw a turn based strategy game at Internet, for Genghis Khan, where the players receive FREE resources, before every turn. So the players just need to recruit some units. There is NOT a Economy part in that game.There the battles at at REAL time too.

Putting Range indicatror mods make the game very stupid and Boring


I preffer to play at EXPLORED map, than using range indicators. The EXPLORED map add strategy in the game from DARK age. While, at BLACK, Unexplored map, the REAL game begin when the players explored the map. It is usually at Feudal or even Castle age.

I think, all RANGE indicator mods( Age of mandala) must be prohibited in the game

There are tons and thousands of STUPID games at Internet

Please, do NOT transform Age of Empires 2 Definitive edition into the NEXT stupid, boring game.

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You really have no idea what you’re talking about. I doesn’t really matter if you know how distant your tower is if you don’t know how to choose properly where to place it and how to counter a TR. One very simple example: you have stone to 3 towers because you’re a noob who doesn’t know how to properly macro and do BO. A casual player do a TR against you. You place 3 vs your opponent’s first tower tower. The TRer place new towers in other strategic spots and you lose anyway. There is no advantage to have information you don’t know how to read and use.

Imagine this scenario: I play Britons and think my xbow are going to be 12 tiles from a castle and more than 6 tiles from a TC on the other side if I move they to x spot. I move they there in stand ground to harrass some vills on the TC, go quickly to my base to place a defensive castle with my stone vills, press 1+space to get back to my xbows and find out they were 10 tiles from the castle, not 12 as I thought some seconds before. How am I not a competitive player just because this small 2-tiles mistake? I lost 10 xbows to a silly mistake and my opponent got 10 free kills thanks to luck, not skill.

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But there isnt really any reason why we shouldnt allowed some visual mods. Visual mods are like it says: Only visual. They only display stuff that is already into the game visually different. The gameplay mechanics are completely untouched.

The info that already was part of the game and visible for everyone is with this mod processed differently. So you can access the same info more easily. The unit control and things like where to build the towers are still up to the player. It is still the player that needs to make these decisions.

You arent forced to use this feature. And the look and feel is something subjective. Personal preferences arent really an issue, since you can still turn it off if you dont like the presentation.

I have to admit i havent tried the ingame range indicators, since i heard they arent even better then the Age of Mandala mod, so i stick with that mod. I think it is done pretty subtile, so for me it dont ruin anything.

There is a huge list of visual mods. You cant really moderate them all. That doesnt seems reasonable to me. Drawing the line with visual mods are fine, other mods arent seem pretty reasonable to me. Visual mods are only able to show the known data differently. They make sure you still have to play the game and make all decisions.

Not really sure what you meant with competitive part of the community. Is that like the pros? They are really a minority of the players that used to play ranked. There are many others who also enjoy playing ranked. I am not sure why a minority should decised for the majority.

I cant really take this seriously at all. @Darkillermon already explains why. The difference between total new players and top players is clearly bigger then ‘knowing the range of buildings’.

I have no idea what you meant to say. I just dont see the analogy between (dis)allowing the range mod and only able to use one unit only.

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This is pure biased speculation, countering what is close to a supermajority against you by projecting your preferences on everyone you consider significant.

Already done since antiquity. It’s visual vs data mods.

Wouldn’t mind this. Better than your projections. Maybe require voters to have actually tried the mod as it seems to have a lot of haters from people who have never tried it and have inflated views of its impact and obtrusiveness.

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Such dramatics post about Build range
 What if you make the same conplain but with the minimap? Is not the minimap a visual help more powerfull than building range?

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I am very against this.

Then don’t use it. Thanks for coming to my TED Talk.

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