I like Zetnus’ idea above… But if not, can we at least have this as a checkbox option in the game lobby? It would be awesome to have one global “hidden mode” that disables all these free info tricks-
Foundation Scouting
Score
Opponent age up notifications
Civ reveal (i.e. if opponent picks Random civ)
Cut trees visible
Animal movement through fog
etc…
This will increase the strategic depth of the game and buff scouting/riskier strategies. Plus it’d be awesome for viewers (builds more suspense) of tournaments, etc.
personally I think it would make more sense if as soon as you get LOS/reveal building blocking it; you get that ‘CHHK’ sound effect, a notification: ‘cannot place building here’ (or whatever it is) and the villager goes idle or moves to next queued waypoint. it’s up to the player to select the foundation and delete it to get refunded.
there’re a few ways to go about it and finding out which is best probably won’t happen until they are tried - or at least get some feedback from the tournament players who are oddly quiet here.
the important thing is to just do something already, and not leave it any longer. tournaments are getting more frequent and with higher prize pools. it’s stupid to leave this in the game.
and those other things you mention too. but i think this bug is the worst and outright embarrassing.
Wouldn’t say its odd… They love keeping things as they are since it means less to relearn or adapt to. They are by far some of the biggest supporters of keeping things exactly as they have been for 20yrs.
On top of the issue a lot of them think this forum is a joke.
Think this is a great idea.
ROFL someone actually flagged this for SPAM
And then they flagged the RoninNZ 's post below me. Clearly someone is just targeting us…
Once they start replying, they set the precedent in some minds where if they respond and interact, they care about the subject, and if they don’t, they don’t. That’s clearly not how forums should work.
For the record, I only generally respond to a thread when I think the subject is utter nonsense or the actual work of god, and the former is 99% of cases. So if I were a poster, and I thought the devs were like me, I’d be praying they didn’t show up to engage the discussion.
food for thought but despite rarely posting on these forums, the devs have implemented numerous balance changes that the forums have considered.
also as something to consider
for those who do consider this bug a feature - why is it not being utilized to its full potential? (the answer is: because people know that it is cheating)
consider this hypothetical scenario:
in teams games, why not just have one player (probably the slinger) put a huge amount of effort and concentration into constantly using this exploit all the time? continuously updating team mates with extremely valuable information on things like enemy army positions, locations of mining camps/ lumber camps and TCs as soon as they go up and are likely very vulnerable, wall locations/existence, castle locations, forward building locations and likely types. just non-stop flaring the map and reporting all this information in real time to team mates without anyone having to actually send units out there.
would that not be utterly absurd to see happen in a tournament??!?
people would probably get angry and say you’re taking it too far.
sooooo, with all that in mind: is it okay if you just use the exploit a little bit? how much is too much? 3 times a game? 4 times? 10 times? 500x? 1000x?
or is there a limit on how many tiles you’re allowed to scan per use?
a limit on how regularly you can use it? once every 5 minutes? once every 2 seconds?
you gettin the point yet?
[a well known streamer] would be 100% in support of this scenario, as he has very confidently stated many times: “this is a feature, not a bug”.
fix. this. bug.
it is destroying the validity of this game as a professional esport.
I don’t think players not utilizing this to its full potential in teamgames is, because the AoE top players are notoriously bad at communicating. Whenever I have seen them play the amount of information they give to their team mates verbally is less than when I play team games. Given, I have not watched them stream close match ups in important tournaments, but then slinging usually is banned, and it would require too many APM to do this consistently.
have to disagree. though you may be right on slinging being banned in some tournaments - i hope this doesn’t become the norm because it is a completely fair and legitimate strategy utilizing normal game mechanics. it is up to the opposition to strategize accordingly.
If all you are doing in a match is building an eco and tributing res, the APM requirement to constantly scan the map using this bug exploit is minimal. and with practice, any pro level player will have no problem doing it.
and when you watch a tournament team game you typically don’t have access to their voice comm or their POV.
even if the aoe top players are known to be bad a communicating; this is just a reflection of how early this game is in the stages of esports. over time as the tournaments become more frequent and with higher prize pools it will naturally attract more and more players. skill level will continue to rise and things like voice comm in team games will undoubtedly become an absolute necessity. think cs:go, or any mainstream esport really, at pro level - there’s no way a team could compete at high level without communicating.
You making demands about foundation scouting needing to be banned, but slinging being allowed shows how removed you are from the reality of how this game is played competitively…
The fact is, a majority of top players don’t like slinging and don’t want to play tournaments with it. While there is no majority opposing foundation scouting. Even though many think it’s dumb and “should probably not be in the game”, they don’t really care that much about it.
Your constant demands like
do something already
are actually astounding. Do you really think the devs will just abandon a ton of higher priority problems because a few casual players on the forums think something is really important, while the top players don’t really care about it?
That’s some grade A point missing right there. Well done.
The fact that you focused only on my opinion that slinging is fine shows you’re not here to discuss the foundation scouting bug. I hope slinging is never banned but frankly don’t care. I think the foundation scout bug absolutely should be a top priority because it is regularly exploited, and is essentially cheating.
I agree. But if, say $20,000 is on the line… boring may very well not matter.
I did preface it with ‘hypothetical scenario’. It’s a thought experiment intending to demonstrate the ridiculousness of people supporting the bugs presence. If someone is okay with players doing this at all, then they must also be okay with the extreme end of the scale.
Yes- I imagine one way to implement is is display the “Random” string in all UI areas (start of game loading screen, Diplomacy, chat, score shield, unit stats area, etc.). One example in how the civ could then be revealed in game is only through their town center- selecting it when in LOS could display the actual civ.
In this example, units would not give away the identity of the civ (i.e. Random player’s scout). But it also means if you try to go “blind” without prioritizing scouting your Random enemy player’s TC, the Random player has some element of surprise in his/her strategies without fully revealing civ in the early game. Civ architecture sets would narrow it down but not give away the civ entirely in most cases.
Look, I agree with toning down foundation scouting, you can read my point on it earlier on if you want some evidence of that.
This argument is nonsense. Literally no player, regardless of who, playing any position in a tg at the highest level, is doing few enough things to also incorporate effective palisade scouting while concentrating on all the other things that need to be done to not lose. Keeping track of enemy units, watching uptimes, microing scouts and getting the teamwalls up, coordination with unshared sight in the dark ages is already a massive task and the idea that some team is just going to flog their enemies by having one player dedicate a huge part of their micro time to abuse foundation scouting is simply not realistic in any way.
I think getting rid of it because it gives players near-costless information in a crunch is a much more serious, much more effective argument.
hhhh. doesn’t anyone know the meaning of the word: hypothetical?
I’m not recommending the tactic, or even suggesting it would actually be abused to that extreme end of the scale.
A more real/likely scenario (of utilizing the exploit in a more serious manner) would be that it could simply be used a fair bit more than it currently is - that might mean only 2 or 3 or so times in a game, at (as you imply) critical moments. Or where time is available to do so.
and most of your points there don’t actually work against the hypothetical scenario (keeping track of enemy units - exactly what they would be using the exploit to do. watching up times - hardly micro intensive. microing scouts - no need to use scouts at this stage, that’s the whole point of abusing the exploit. dark age scouting - this is not the stage of game where the exploit abuse is concerning)…
but anyway, clearly nothing is going to change with how little the majority of people care. seems they care more about fighting than actually trying to discuss the topic.
I have yet to see a single reasonable, logical reason to keep this bug in the game.
Yikes. What an incredulous and absurdly disrespectful retort. I don’t know what to say about the demeanor other than I’m now twice as likely to support leaving it as it is with no changes just to spite anyone who thinks responding with “blablabla” is reasonable or effective.
You can’t see enemy movements in the pitch black, scouting properly will be even more important and necessary, and using palisade scanning to track an enemy military that you haven’t already located? Nigh impossible. Ridiculous proposition.
Neither is luring boar, finding sheep, queuing villagers, building houses, or walling. But adding it to the list of things you already do is going to make the micro more cumbersome whether or not it’s a difficult task.
Ab-surd. Literally absurd. Coordinating your scouts with your teammates to take picks, prevent walls, fight off opposing scouts, archers, or drushes is a crucial part of high level TG’s. Not to mention laming and preventing lames. You can always do more with your scout and scout micro is a massive part of the dark age / early feudal age.
You can’t abuse it without proper scouting to see the map. Try hovering a palisade over the black areas and see how much information you get out of it.
As someone who cares, having absolutely bunk justifications for wanting to change something is way worse than having no justification at all. You are not helping the cause by pushing your absurd hypothetical and you are making things worse by disrespecting those who are addressing you critically.
