I feel overall it’s detrimental to the multiplayer experience, I see no reason to have it in the game.
In ranked it just feels weird and out of place. In the early game it can be telling of what the opponent is doing without any scouting (2nd TC, when they age up, if they’re building military). This feels a bit unthematic for the game, it provides info on your opponent at no cost to you essentially.
I also think it’s detrimental late game, higher score doesn’t mean a winning position and vice versa, but having the score lead or not can either make you take unjustified risks thinking you can afford it because you’re in the lead, or a lower score can demotivate you into resigning even if the game was not lost.
In team games it can lead people to gang up on one person based on their score either to take out the perceived strongest or weakest player, again without any real coordination or scouting.
What do you think of this feature? What is actually the point of it, I genuinely don’t get it.
Yes, I don’t like that. Once I gave up because my score was lower, but maybe I could come back. If you see your score drop, you’ll feel a sense of despair.
Yeah I really like that AoE4 designed it so that the game doesn’t display score. I think it’s better for gameplay to have to scout for that kind of information.
But at this point, I think it’s too well-established in the Ensemble games to have score displayed. It would be difficult to build a consensus in the community to support getting rid of it.
Besides, there are bigger problems in terms of things that let you get information without scouting. For example, if you try to build a TC in the fog of war over a settlement that an enemy has built on already, your TC blueprint will not “snap” to the settlement. That tells you not only that your enemy is 2TC, but precisely where they built it: no scouting needed.
EDIT: After writing all this, I realized I’m not in AoE2:DE thread. I may copy my post to AoE2 some time. So, the ‘Messenger’ tech idea was meant for AoE2:DE
At the same time it can also be seen as a little mini-game, where paying attention to it creates anxiety and tension… which can be good things to feel in video games, and a motivator for some to hurry up (click faster, do things faster), or change strategies (i.e., start buying military when they wanted to turtle instead, or start building towers and walls when they otherwise wouldn’t)
I’m a little on the fence with showing the score. I could have sworn when I read this thread earlier you or someone talked about maybe devs should make a tech to reveal the score. I rather liked that idea – some sort of “Spies” tech to have scores appear.
Maybe it can be called “Messengers” tech, where it’s implied that invisible field generals and scouts will do recon on the enemies throughout the game, sending messages back to home to report on enemy.
Every civ would have this tech, researchable at Town Centers – perhaps from the very beginning, like Loom.
Maybe make it costlier for some civs, or make it a team bonus or cheaper for other civs, etc. Or, if we don’t want it researchable from the very start, then maybe some civs can just have access sooner than others
By having a cost, the early early game won’t show scores, and it becomes a calculated risk of whether you buy it or not. Don’t make it too expensive, though. I imagine something like Loom in terms of cheap cost and short research time.
Make it enough of an impact to make you probably wait until you get your econ going nicely. Maybe most will wait until early- or mid-Feudal?.. but not so impactful that it’s overly painful to research.
Making it cost some Food could be a good way to do it (maybe 50 Food total cost?), because Food is so important early on it’d make it a really tough decision to do it too soon. I think Loom is often (or always?) 50 Gold, for comparison.
I might be okay with just 25 Food cost, or “25 Food+25 Wood,” if that’d make it more palatable and less annoying for people than “50 Food,” but I think 25 Food cost might be too cheap
EDIT: Oh, there was this other thread today! That’s why I was confused. Is it just coincidence there are two threads in one day positing the banishment of scores? Very strange. See the OP here → An idea to address deer pushing meta
Hahaha, even the AI definitely do this! or at least did for a long while a year and more ago. Not sure if devs have adjusted this?
Yeah, I usually had higher score early on in 2Human vs 2AI games, and so I would get attacked first by AI and teamed up against by them, too. Once I figured this out, I purposely started going slower in early game so my teammate had the higher score and AI would attack my teammate first instead of me I don’t do that anymore, but I definitely went through a phase where I did this
If devs add the Messengers tech, I hope they cascade it to the AI so the AI don’t have cheater insights on how other players are doing to dictate their attack target (unless and until they research the tech)
I don’t think that’s a huge issue, is it? I don’t know very many good players who would spend time trying to plant a TC all over the map to try and see where their enemy has placed a 2nd TC. And the odds of it happening by chance are so slim
Yeah, there are, unfortunately, other exploits for gaining info on your opponent as the TC thing you describe and also checking the opponent’s hunt without having LoS, which you do see used in streamed advanced/pro player games. But, thematically, those feel like bugs, which could (would) hopefully be fixed, AND they do cost your APM, whereas the score really is a feature of the game itself and just there for you to see.
I only play AoM, so I don’t know how it works in other AoE, does the score have any other sort of a function in those games? Or is it also just kind of there?
These sort of things just feel a bit un-sportmpanship like to me. That’s why I’m also not super in favour of having it as a tech. There are only 2 other in-game techs that give something similar that come to mind. Omniscience, but if you can afford it you are definitively winning, it’s just to avoid laming. And the apollo tech, which allows you to see what buildings are researching BUT here you still need to have LoS, which you have to provide yourself!
There’s also Loki’s god power I suppose, I’m not a super fan of it tbh (even though I play Loki too) just because there’s no real counter play to it, but there you can argue that it’s a god power and his particular bonus.
@Darkness01101 Ahahah I guess I already have plenty of multiplayer excitement, the score just adds anxiety if anything. The other thread is indeed a coincidence!
There’s something strange with the score system in Retold. The numbers get really high even if you lose everything. The old score system should have been kept. And it should be optional, as it always was. Although I prefer it with the score. It’s always good to know how the enemy is managing their economy.
In AoE2 score is used quite a bit at the high level. Players can use it to know when their opponent has clicked up to the next age, because after spending the resources their score goes down. They can also see if their opponent is pushing deer with their scout, because their score is not going up thanks to scouting, which can imply something about the kind of strategies they might be going for.
AoE4 does not display score to players at all in ranked games, but it can be turned on in lobby games if you want it. Spectators can see the score, however.
Yeah, I actually think having it as a tech is the worst of both worlds. First, any price for it is going to be more than most players get out of it in terms of value. But second, it would pretty explicitly countenance the use of score as an alternative to actual scouting.
As for Omniscience, I don’t have any problem with it, for the reasons you describe. And Apollo’s Oracle is a really interesting tech IMO. It’s thematically appropriate in a way that score or TC-scanning are not. Same with Loki’s Spies.
I like seeing how how good or bad I am doing in games as well as teammates too. Also it has been part of AoM from the beginning and I don’t like removing things.
I mean they got rid of the minimap marker for total and wonder which is in my opinion a good change and makes things more interesting.
But score should be removed too in my opinion cause I experienced myself in multiplayer that enemies attack the one with lowest score together as soon as possible. And yes I saw in ranked matches that higher score doesn’t have to mean anything in late game either.
We should have more customization options to test how it would be: If the menu had this option, it would be interesting to test it a few times to see if it changes anything in the match dynamics.
while we’re on things that should be optional but ain’t, resource gauge on harvest, yk that hp bar thingy thats above resources that are being collected
bit of context, i don’t mind resource gauge on harvest, but all past games that included it, all DEs basically, had it as a toggleable option, in retold there is no option to disable it, and as context, aom retold is on the same engine as aoe3 DE, and that game allows you to turn resource gauge off, devs just have to readd that option back to the menu instead of hiding it away
Ugh, I just realized this is in the AoM:R thread and not AoE2:DE, lol. Sorry if my words don’t apply very well to AoM:R, as I’ve never played it! But the issue sounds similar to AoE2
Shoot… I meant ‘Messenger’ tech for AoE2:DE. Hope devs put Messenger tech in AoE2:DE and call it something different for AoM:R, like ‘Penetrating Vision’ tech or something
I don’t do that anymore, but I definitely went through a phase where I did this