There’re plenty of more entertaining things to do in order to reward multi-tasking. And you seemed to like the idea of agressive players falling behind with a “free comeback” for the defensive boomer with lower APM.
I know Villager auto-queueing is a massive change. I am not sure how the entire playerbase (worth thousands of daily users) would react to the change. Perhaps the increased friendliness of the game would encourage more people to join the community, or existing players could be alienated. Dota 2 has already shown that complex games can also keep a large audience engaged.
Ok, that’s a fair point. Still auto-queueing Villagers is a massive change, I’m not sure how the entire playerbase would react. Perhaps it’s better to not find out.
PS. What if you could auto-queue but only 1-3 villagers maximum?
Some people in Feudal Age and Early Castle Age can’t afford to queue 5 Villagers. The idea of a small “planning mode upgrade” to queue 1-3 extra villagers when the resources are available could be an interesting mechanic to help players who are focusing on bold rushes, instead of sitting at home.
the game won’t get it. the vocal minority of esports types is more interested in creating artificial skill barriers that make matchmaking impossible because their priority is watching games, not playing them
this notion that aoe was meant to primarily be a multitasking contest is a false narrative. go read any commentary from ensemble studios and that will become abundantly clear. this click-war gameplay that some of the more one-dimensional maps turned into was a flaw, not what they aimed to deliver
the strategy game genre is very broad. it is a rookie mistake to conflate what starcraft is about with what RTS is about. aoe was always a much more ambitious design than starcraft, emulating a 4X game instead of a 2X game. maybe one day an aoe game will revisit that ambition (rise of nations was close), but aoe2 will not. and neither will aoe4 or any future aoe game, at least not while people who don’t appreciate slow starts and exploration-based Random Map gameplay are the ones running the circus
I think AoE was not meant to be a esport game after all by the creator, but it does not change the fact that the game is developed into one.
In my opinion (granted, I almost only care for competitive aspect and tournament aspect of the game), as it is a RTS (“Real-time” strategy), such skills are necessary both for the playing experience and watching experience.
With auto vills, the next step could be auto micro, and in the end we will be playing chess. There must be a line to be drawn.
Is chess bad game? No (in fact I am low amateur dan in Go just saying), but it differs so much from what aoe2 is currently offering to the current player base, imo.
Proper use of waypoint and choosing safe, useful gathering points are meaningful, strategic, and interesting decisions, unlike queueing villagers
AOE1 is unpopular because AOE2 is just a better AOE1. The fundamental delineation between the AOE1 you mock and AOE2 is QOL features removing uninteresting, tedious, busywork in AOE2. These are QOL features similar to the one you are currently opposing.
I am not hyping having to task villagers to wood after building a camp. I am pointing out that the same “skill” arguments that are used to oppose auto villager queue would apply to past improvements we would not like to undo.
The only pro I have seen that even approaches perfect villager creation is Daut, and with his relatively slow APM I suspect he would welcome the ability to redirect some of those actions elsewhere.
Every update to AOE is “unAge-like” in an absolute sense, but in a relative sense, being unAge-like is only significant if it removes something in AOE that was good. Honestly, improved waypoints felt unAge-like to me and now I wouldn’t do without them.
This is slippery-slope fallacy. The question of what is next is best addressed when that next thing comes up.
I don’t think this is necessary, but at least it is better than the other suggestions as it would not function as a noob trap.
Is it really a great part of AOE2 if the better you get at AOE2, the less it is part of AOE2?
Potentially, but don’t forget the benefit to multi TC booming as well. I think you are forgetting that eco balance can be a bigger factor than villager creation. I would say that I get more in trouble from having way too many villagers on wood than forgetting to queue villagers.
At the risk of overgeneralizing, much of the opposition to this change written in this thread is along these lines, even openly so.
As I have said before, having it always on would probably not be ideal gameplay, but that is what toggling is for. I would suspect the most smooth and useful way to implement would not disable, but simply wait until resource/pop requirement is satisfied to requeue similar to the farm autoqueue.
There are two issues with this statement. First, there is so much more to focusing on eco than production villagers: eco balance, number of lumber/mining camps, number of farms, timing of upgrades. If an overly aggressive player doesn’t attend his eco, he will be punished regardless of any potential autoqueue.
Second, “he should be punished” for not doing X is a statement without support. Why? Generally, punishing is a negative term, so there should be some value in having the requirement for X to warrant such punishment. Advocating punishment for its own sake without support is sadism.
I will leave that to address all the rest of your comments regarding punishment.
You are defending the most mindless, automatic aspect of AOE2 with a charge of “Taking the thought out of it”. This is absurd.
Repeatedly make buildings or farms: meaningful, interesting, strategic decisions (location, number, type)
Repeatedly micro units: meaningful, interesting, strategic and tactical decisions (location, timing, assessment)
Repeatedly make units: sometimes meaningful strategic decisions (number, type)
Repeatedly make villagers: MINDLESS, AUTOMATIC, TEDIOUS, detracting from everything else meaningful and interesting in the game.
Precisely
This is a fact, but it is not a justification
Two comments:
a) The very essence of seeking change is identifying a fact and saying “it could be better”
b) Execute what? Meaningful, interesting gameplay such as eco balance, unit choice, positioning, etc.
Or mindless, automatic, uninteresting villager queueing.
Here you delve into an interesting topic of AI-assisted gameplay. It would certainly be an interesting topic to explore, and may even be a great game to play, but implying it is the end state of autoqueue neglects a serious gameplay drawback of AI-assisted gameplay replacing regular gameplay: it would split the game into a game outside the game. You would have the game, but then you would have the game of developing the best AI for the game (similar to how collectible card games operate with deck building). This would remove the beneficial aspect of having an individual game be a succinct unit.
Rewarding multitasking for its own sake is a senseless objective with a fairly evident flaw: Having a popup screen come up in the middle of the game is multitasking. Requiring two key-strokes instead of one for every hotkey is multitasking. If you give no other justification for something other than rewarding multitasking, literally anything can be justified under the value of “rewarding multitasking”.
Necessary why? For what value? Saying something is necessary without supporting it is not a good argument.
This is also slippery slope. Draw the line where there is purpose and value in drawing a line, not just because of some imagined threat down the road.
While I have disagreed with @MatCauthon3 about many things he did say one of the most correct statements in this thread:
My personal take is that a lot of the counter arguements presented come from a “but this is what we do” perspective. It’s a skill and a way of playing that’s been ingrained into us. I understand the gut reaction to reject change as there is this feeling of well if I had to go through this so should others, and I’m already good at it so it must be something worth keeping. I don’t even think these are active biases but subconscious ones.
But yer I’ve not seen a single reason that justifies manual villager queuing as a good mechanic.
I will keep reading and updating my opinion on the arguments presented but for me atm the arguments for adding it MASSIVELY outweigh the arguments against it. To be clear I’m not going to campaign for this change or demand the Devs make it as I’m happy with the game as is; that being said if it is an option to add it I think we should!
Slippery slope is only a fallacy if we haven’t seen progression along this line.
We already had that. First was auto reseed. Then auto scout. Whats next? Auto unit production in general? No thanks.
But he won’t be punished as much will he? So should we introduce otger mechanics to prevent players from being overly punished? Not watching your archers? Not to worry rgey will auto split mangonel shots!
If I leave my base open and my opponent sneaks archers or scouts in, am I not punished for that?
If I don’t scout my opponent and he goes scouts when I’m preparing for archers am I not punished for that?
There is nothing sadistic about expecting bad play to be punished.
So I expect you’ll be pushing for auto unit production next?
This could be said of literally any task in the game. Managing all of these tasks at the same time is what separates the skill levels of players, if you just start removing tasks because you think they’re mundane then whats the point of base management at all, just make it a battle sim. Hell dont even make me set rally points just give me sliders for resources.
A little over the top sure, but the whole point of a base building RTS is to manage your base, economy, and military all at the same time, while making strategy decisions, better than your opponent.
Yeah, I think that adding an auto-queue for Villagers might be too extreme as a change. Perhaps it would be fun, but who knows how the community would feel (we’re talking about thousands of daily players and 20 years of experience).
However, adding a Planning Mode feature to “pre-queue” 1-3 Villagers as soon as the resources become available could be a good feature to help attacking players to be punished less when playing against defensive boomers with lower APM. You still need to keep your attention on the queues, but you have a few extra seconds to do more micro on the battlefield.
Would be nice if you can quote my full sentence, since the post is so long already…
Necessary why? For what value? Saying something is necessary without supporting it is not a good argument
I guess I can expand on that. As you pointed out, building vills are sometimes just another pop out window that you have to click once in a while. Tho I dont necessary think it is a bad thing - in retrospective, building units and microing them are just clicking pop-up windows, after all. I think the ability to process “pop-up windows” in real-time is the skill I mentioned here.
Auto seeding to some extent is same as auto vill creation, but I think auto seeding hit so late in game (I often dont use it anyway) so I think I cate less about it.
This is also slippery slope. Draw the line where there is purpose and value in drawing a line, not just because of some imagined threat down the road.
After all, if you take only the strategic part of the game, we should literally auto all the economic aspects of the game. However I think the real-time aspect of the game is equally important. (It basically reduces the time you have to think about strategy imo)
Along this line? the two things you mentioned aren’t even along the same line. Reseed is a somewhat improved farm queue. Auto-scout is straight AI-assisted gameplay. I may even support you in opposing auto-scout on those grounds, whereas I doubt you would find any substantial following at all opposed to reseed after trying it for some time.
You are not punished for leaving your base open. Your opponent is rewarded for the meaningful and interesting decisions of scouting and observing the map state and stealthily exploiting that weakness. Your punishment is only valuable as the necessary flipside of your opponent’s reward. If your opponent does not do these things to earn that reward, you will not be punished.
Assuming neither of you scouted, your opponent blindly producing your counter more blind luck than punishment. This is hardly good or bad. It just is.
I have not advocated punishment be eliminated at all costs, only that seeking to punish more things for no other reason is bad.
The problem comes when you wish to have (not performing) meaningless actions be part of that “bad play” so as to have more punishment.
This once again showcases the lack of critical thinking involved in slippery slope arguments. While initially auto unit production sounds promising for some of the same reasons, it is not nearly as clear cut as villager production, and there are much more significant potential downsides to it. Most notably, auto unit production lends itself best to creating a single type of unit. While this is often already the case, I could certainly see a problem in having the mechanics of the game favor more stale, homogenous army types further.
I am actually really surprised that auto scouting was added to game, feels like that is one of the more dynamic aspect of game
If we add auto vill, do we add auto vill escape (to TC) / auto military production / auto sheep scout / auto rebuild economic buildings?
Also in game aspect, as a lord somehow I feel like things that are “personal” (e.g. assignment of a worker in TC) should not be autoed and I as the lord should assign it myself. Its pretty difficult to tell whats wrong about it tho.
(btw, in fact sometimes you just stop making vills. While most of the time you should, it is actually much more common to stop making vills for upgrades (aka more often than not it is ok to stop making vills. Example: FC build, extremely important military upgrades). I will consider it similar to auto military units.
Fair criticism. I think I truncated too much in that quote.
I think the difference between the “pop-up windows” of villager queueing and building units, microing, and I would add eco-balance is that the “pop-up windows” are one dimensional. There is one single correct move to make, whereas all of those other things are subjective with many possibilities and diverse strategies and tactics surrounding them. Even in the relatively one-dimensional game of microing archers against a mangonel, you still have meaningful choices of split and retreat; split, split again, and try to Liereyy the situation; or lazily scatter formation and take some hits more safely.
Economy management (eco balance, upgrade timing, and resource control) are part of strategy, so removing all economy as part of “auto everything” would actually be eliminating meaningful strategy and not conducive to taking “only the strategic part of the game”.
My main concern about autoqueue is that there is a certain point in imp when you don’t need to produce more vills. With autoqueue on this moment would be quite easy to miss with disastrous consequences. Another solution would be to make queuing units free (with only the ones currently in production costing resources). This way one could queue as many vills as they deem necessary at any point. However, that would be a major overhaul of basic mechanics just to deal with minor QoL issues.