Hi, So I have been thinking a lot lately about how to make the experience for new players better in AoM. Though I should clarify that I don’t think that the main reason for the decline of RTS is that they are hard. I think that it is because they are not fun. Plus some of the systems are way too archaic.
Initially I thought this would be an easy thing. I want to know every ones opinion about this stuff. I’m gonna keep this short we can dive into details later:
1- I am HIGHLY OPPOSED to Auto military queue (AMQ) and Auto villager queue (AVQ). I feel like they make the game easier by removing some fun parts of the game. Clicking a lot is fun. And as long as people are matched with people of appropriate skill this won’t cause any issues.
2- Aging up requires knowledge. In nearly all AoE games, The fun content is locked behind skill. A huge part of game is reserved for mythic age while a good number of games will never reach mythic. This is essentially locking a part of the content of the game (and a fun part of the game) is locked behind whether or not it is a good idea to age up.
There are a lot of scenarios (Especially in team games) that ageing up is not a good idea and staying in Age 2 will help you and your team a lot. I think this needs to change. It will make the game more easier but I think we can afford that since the game is already difficult enough.
3- I want every ones’ opinion on this. How would doubleing the amount of resources available in the base work?
Fun wise, while being ofc subjetive, i would agree its more fun when theres all thing available. Sadly thats in a vacum.
Theres players than enjoy early aggresion more and it would be forcing thst part out of the game like it happened for a bit with the Fort patch.
Design wise that handicaps some civs wirh aoms current asymetrical design in which some are better early on and loose out in this later stages of the game and hoy mythic more for a Quick finisher than their starting point like others would do. For example its getting atlas and trying to finish off the game with a good implode vs going heph and getting armory upgrades and vaults to boost your late game.
God powers are also a thing and are very strong and fast mythic also bring those into play and their impact (this was the reason cost was increased from 1000/1000 to 1200/1200). Some civs have better timings than others.
IMO you should be able to punish a Greedy player that is aging up. Thats 1300 / 24000 resources they arent spending in units and there should be a significant gap in thar for me to take advantage. Otherwise if thats not posible it Just becomes a rsise to ahí gets faster and clicks its power faster.
For me, i would like for them to bridge the gap. I liked how we got blessings in Skirmisher and other modes that help people play with others. QoL changes to UI would go far into making the experience better and also giving it a purpose. If there were badges like in gauntlet for pvp or ranks or anything really past the simple elo number (which is meaningless in game and only relevant because externa things like aomstats exist).
Theres no in game ledesrboard. Theres no clans display. No special rank events.
You obviously haven’t played AoE 3. The lack of an automatic villager queue is not “fun”; it’s just a pain in the ass. It’s like going to a restaurant and being told you have to do 15 squats every time your food arrives, just “cause.”
An automatic military queue is a double-edged sword. This isn’t StarCraft. We have rock, paper, scissors here. Consequently, you can build yourself an automatic army by spending all your resources and limit, only to find that the enemy has countered you because they’re crafting their troops based on the situation, not mindlessly. I think both of these features are perfectly balanced.
“Early and late” are both relative words. “Early” aggresion in star craft is very different from AoM. Since TC in AoM can attack it is not likely that you will lose units until enemy has a sufficiently strong army to take down TC while in star craft A pair of good microd helions can end the game.
Yes unfortunately all AoE games are designed like this. But what we can do is to make 3rd age the longest age. Right now there is a lot of skill required in order to know whether it is a good time to age up from 2 to 3. We can remove that and make classical age like archaic age. It is an age that you have to get out of.
It is possible to stay age 2 and win. But it is never possible to stay age 1 and win. Both archaic age and classical age need to be trimmed down a little and then the balance should revolve around that. I know this required some huge tweakings (even greater than fortification patch). But it will massively increase the apeal of the game for new players.
Having the most fun unit locked behind age ups that are not likely to happen is not a good idea.
Every thing else that you mentioned are true. Because the game was designed that way. But at least a good portion of them should change. The god powers should be balanced out.
“A greedy player who is aging up” is also a relative term. We never call a person who ages up from 1 to 2 greedy (unless he ages up like super fast). But we do tend to call players aging up from 2 to 3 greedy. As I said I know lots of stuff need to change but this will make stuff a bit easier and more fun to newer players.
These will also help a lot I was more talking about the gameplay design and how much “fun” should be sacrificed in order to achieve “the optimal play”.
I have played RTS without AQ. (Mainly AoE IV). and I don’t like it: 1- It makes come backs more difficult. 2- I like it when I click a lot. 3- Sure making villagers manually is hard but is hard for every one. It is like giving every one in CS trigger bots (Trigger bot is a cheat that shoots your gun the moment some one enters where you are aiming). does it make the game easier? absolutely. But it removes the main fun part of the game! Shooting! AoM is a “strategy” game and usually the strategy should be the main point but with it’s current design it is not.
Training villagers manually is a hard skill to have but a fun one to have.
EDIT: @Cajocu01 YOu didn’t mention your opinion about increasing the available resources in the base.
To allow all Pantheons to convert their villagers into militia.
To provide all Pantheons with hero ships.
To give all Pantheons a skirmisher unit similar to the Peltast, effective against archers.
To introduce a new technology for cavalry allowing them to charge against infantry to open up a front, because the current cavalry gets stuck and is ineffective against archer spam.
Reduce the cost of tower upgrades and Survival Equipment.
To allow all pantheons to create new villagers that only cost gold, similar to the Norse dwarf.
Strategy involves choosing a minor god, selecting available upgrades, positioning buildings, and selecting unit-types. Clicking on workers is not a choice; you can’t just decide you need 15 vills and then attack like in StarCraft. If you stop producing vills, your opponent will 100% win. This has nothing to do with strategy; it’s just a pain in the ass. It’s like setting an APM limiter or slowing down your mouse sensitivity.
While true i was meassuring them by ages. I guess i should have said people enjoy classic age play and heroic age play. Not all people like the mythic battles as their fav part of the game.
Its part of the game thou, some civs are better at each stage, and is part of the strategic variety to be able to fight classical against a siege that shine slate game, or sit back and take it slow if you know you will win if you get to your endgame. Otherwise you might as well play mirrors.
The age 1 is less active theres no “dark age rushes” like in the other aoe games. I dunno whta to say about the latter part. When the for patch came to allow people to defend better and give bildings more pressence it wnet like this: Top players said it appealed to casuals. And even now on the discord servers theres complaining that the early tempo of the game is gone and its all gold starve and slow plays.
I get no change will make all people happy. But i also dont get where this security comes from saying “this will bring X playerbase” where are this voices coming from?
You can play anything you want and have fun with it. Just gotta make peace that you will not win as many games if you played the meta. Thats never changing in any game. Take games like LOL, you can play any champ you want, but theres alawys some that outshine others. Players can come to terms with that and play those if they rather win more or know they wont win as much but play what they enjoy more.
No amount of game design is gonna change that. 1 god is always gonna have an advantage over the other. Either aggro is sometimes better than booming or booing is sometimes better than aggro. You will never have both equal and thats fine imo.
Yea, i missed that. I personally dont like it. AoM is alreaady prettu defensive with you getting 4 free starting towers. There used to be the case that there were more resources in base and what you saw was 2 tc plays into fast mythics.
Thou thats what you want to see more off and not classic age fights so that would benefit you.
You could just play mirror matches, seems you want a whole different game.
The thing is these are all relatively easy to do. Something needs to be in order to distinguish a “good player” and a “bad player”.
At least AoM caps at 100 vills.
That is true but nearly every one likes mythic. And people who do like classical age fights they usually don’t hate mythic, They just prefer classical age. This type of system is locking content behind skill.
That is true. As I said we will need to tweak a lot of stuff. The least we can do is to make classical a bit shorter and make heroic a bit longer. To be honest the amount of content that is locked for mythic is just absurd… .
My own personal issue with AoE series in general has always been about more “fundamental” stuff. Like the current topic. Aging up, Dark age rushes, etc… . Unfortunately there is no way to tell how it well end up since changing these is so easy task and will break the game in many aspects.
A lot of pros who complained about fortification patch still stuck around and kept playing. Except for magic who was liking the patch initially.
Yes none of us have any concrete evidence about how a change will impact player numbers. But the thing is the gap between the casual player base and pros is very evident. There must be some attempts in order to breach this. In CS the gap is all about “Aim” and “team work”.
There will always be a gap. But the pro games need to be in a shape that the casuals would enjoy the game play. No casual will like a match that ends in 10 minutes while no one aged up to mythic. No one likes a game that ends because a kronos rush succeeded.
A casual player will be disheartened to see that “getting even slightly good in this game means that I have to give up the phoenix unit that I love so much”.
Most players are already in peace with that fact! I play whatever God I want knowing that some gods are not “meta” in this patch and will probably be weak. A lot of players are actually. I am talking about a fundamental design flaw of this game.
In order to be good in any game some degree of sacrificing of fun is neccessary. But AoM requires you to sacrifice A LOT. You might go 10 games without ever reaching mythic. This situation is even worse in 1v1s. Atleast in team games one guy from each team gets to experience mythic.
Yes but there are also degrees to this.
I saw a mod in work shop which doubled it. I haven’t tried it. But it has been downloaded like a lot. I was wondering if there are ways to implement this for casual without disrupting the higher level players. To be honest I think for a game that required every unit to be made out of gold there is very few gold in the base.
You are making every civ the exact same…. This will remove one of the most fun aspects of this game…. Ever one who plays this game is amazed by the amount of assymetry it has….
Yea i dont think people that like a early fights hate mythic. But you would be taking that away. You are always gonna lock things behind skill. Your champion in a MOBA isnt getting full items all games, nor full level. If its lets say call of duty you are not getting all the Cool power ups all matches, etc Etc.
Just because something in the game exists doesnt mean you have to reach it all games or that every player deserves to get there guaranteed.
Just that change that seems small to you breaks certain match ups. For example, a civ that is bullied through classic age by other civs and has a very strong power spike in Heroic age. You are solving their problem just like that.
Its not “the least we can do” it would be quite a big change.
Thats all RTS thou, not just aoe. Theres more knowledge you need to get decent at it than other generes. And theres little to change about it. You control way more variables than Just your champion in mobas or your like character in FPS. Theres more interactions and mechanics you need to understand before becoming efficient at the game.
Theres worse cases. RPGs is quite the grind where most of the good parts of the game are locked at max level and its quite the grind to get there. But thats the whole game design. Aging up faster or all matches being dead match like is not gonna remove that gap of kbowledge New players need to get by
Yes, the gap is big, but you cant simply compare to another game that is completely different by all account. Theres no multiple unit control is CS, no resource management to a big degree (i mean sure you have ammo thou its highly different).
Theres less weapons variety than units in an RTS let alone counter concepts, god powers, age ups, Buildings. And that stacks up the more players are in a match since there more and more variables. Its never gonna be the same easy accesos as other games.
Thats your take on it. And at least what i can say looking at discords and reddit and other foums is that its wrong. Theres people from all levels that like different stykes of gameplay. Theres is gonna be a bigger group always to either but you are coming talking about this silent group where they all like x and dislike Y with nothing to go by than Just your personal experience or beliefs.
There are vocal groups that enjoy rushing with hoplites and taking down bases as zeus and complain that thats no longer a viable strategy for example.
There were people that missed the mass sphinx strategy with Ra and wanted the aoe favor nerf reverted.
Theres people that Want automatons to feel viable and to be useful in classic age fights
Theres players that Want the cyclops Rush to be a thing again and for ares to be viable.
And theres players for all the opposite as well.
This is a very weird take to me. Its like saying “In CS if i wanna win more matches i got to actually use weapons and not just run around with a the knife thats so Cool to me, specially with that skin that i got for it. I dont Want to play this anymore”
This talks of “A LOT” of sacrifice with nothing else to back it up is more flavor wording than anything.
Are all weapons in a FPS equally good? Do i see all weapons in all matches? Are some more common than others? You are placing aom like this issues are magnified and those same issues are none existant in other games.
I get you like late game and seeing mythic age but it seems more of an opinión fulled by that preference rather than anything else to get by.
If you wanted to make the game easier to acess and learn you are doing the opposite.
It would be easier to New players if most games reached classic age from a learning stand point. There would be less to learn as to unit variety, comps and the micro and macro is much simpler with less units. Also, faster games would mean more games to play and learn from. Mythic age is quite complex since at that point theres usually enough eco to fight on multiple sides, side build, set up trade, wall up and gather terrain. Theres many more unit comps and upgrades available. Theres 3 minor gods present per player, all with unique units and god powers to account for. If you are gonna make the argument of overwhelming New players mythic age is the worse for it.
Now, that doesnt mean that we should si something to make it so games always end in classic age and dont go past that. Its Just to illustrate how to me what you are saying is conflicting, on one hand catering to casuales and the big hurdles of getting into an RTS, on the other they you would like games to be played and the placing they should have.
Dunno whats this a lot métric going by. Its def not the most popular mod. Either way, someone proposed that lobbys should be able to adjust a lot mroe things like other aoe games can. Maybe they could make and option for starting resources and allow players to modify it to their personal taste.
Another one would be to simply make custom maps. Take the originals, add a couple extra Hunt spots and gold mine and put them as package and play on it on lobbies like other custom games go.
Yes, for example, defeating whole enemy army with only turmas. Clicking on the vill button has nothing to do with it.
I don’t understand what you mean
Every time I see Kronos, I pray to all the gods for him to rush. Because I want varied gameplay.
And the most important thing about this game is that you can pick a character to your liking. If you enjoy playing T4, pick Gaia. She has all the tools for this kind of game.
I strongly disagree with this, especially in a fast game like AoM.
I hate the default settings though. By default your first TC doesn’t auto queue villagers but all additional ones do. This massively confuses new players as they might not understand that autoqueue exist, start manually queueing villagers but then are even more confused that they constantly have idle villagers after building a 2nd TC. They might even stop building additional TCs because they get overwhelmed by having to manage new villagers that they didn’t want to.
I wish the AoE games had auto queue too. Its the same as farm queue. Yes I can manually reseed farms but it is just annoying. One of the reasons why I like playing the Ottomans in AoE3.
Yes auto queue makes the game easier but that’s ok, RTS as a genre would die out if it would only rely on old fans because they will eventually die, become to busy to play video games or just find another hobby.
So does the economy, any other technology or training units.
I do like the idea of delaying Age Ups though because I don’t like how it’s often a viable strategy to skip ages in the game, that essentially means skipping a part of the game.
I also generally think the 4 (+1 for AoE3 and AoMR) Age set up in the franchise is generally flawed. It is similar to the 3 Tier design of many other games but with an additional 0 Tier in the beginning.
But Age 3 and Age 4 are often too similar too. Kinda turning it into 2 Tiers.
I don’t think that would make it any easier. Maybe even harder.
A lot of new players are overwhelmed when they have a lot of resources stockpiled. If you have little resources you have to wait for resources to accumulate which gives you time to think.
AoE2 is the slowest game in the series when it comes to resource collection (yes AoE1 is also faster) which is probably one of the reasons why it’s popular with casual players.
This is a funny metaphor. Though that would be something that most people probably should do, but that is a very different topic.
I agree with this one but I disagree with all the others. I hate the concept of the Hero Fleet technology that is just not fun. But I do think that the Hero Ships should be very different between Pantheons.
The other suggestions are about making Norse stronger or making all Pantheons like Norse so you can play the other pantheons. Those suggestions are clearly only aimed at your personal preferences and have nothing to do with how other people want to play the game.
Yea but it isn’t like they only reach level 6 only 10 percent of the game.
That is true. But right now going mythic is a huge risk. It is not that you are not going to have it. You are losing if you have it. Plus a great deal of content is locked behind mythic. And it is not only mythic, Lots of pro games are decided in late classical/ early Heroic.
I never said this is small change. Infact if we want to make this we might aswell remake the game. That’s how fundamental this is. I just want to see what is the counter argument to this.
I don’t agree. You can make an RTS that is dumb and super easy to understand. Now will it have players? that’s hard to answer.
The game design in those is the “journey” to reach to max level. Also you get accses to quite bit of content and abbilities mid game , just some of them get locked. If you watch AoM trailer all you see is big armies clashing into each other. They never show you villager attacking each other while trying to get a dock up on anatolia.
People who are on reddit/discord don’t count as casuals. only a small porion of them do.
They are few
In CS you can actually get pretty decent if you use only knife. I know you used this as an example. But whoever likes to play with knives should go and play mordhau instead of CS.
YOu can buy P90 in cs whenever you want. Will you win every game? no. But in AoM if you want to be even slightly good you need to give up a good portion of the game.
I hate late game. I rarely reach mythic. I can’t remember the last time I cast fumbulwinter. Playing mythic is super difficult. On top of that I play norse. Mythic really isn’t an option for me. Besides that early game aggression makes the game super easy.
That is true but it is also less fun.
Players will accept a difficult game if it is fun. And they will learn it. AoM is very fun for casuals and I want the devs to take advantage of this.
Well we are talking about design aspects of this. I don’t care about lobbies. Yea having more options for lobbies are good.
At least you are taking action.
I meant that since AoM caps at 100 vills game gets less snowbally.
Me too But I don’t like that after he fails the game ends. I wasn’t here to kill 6 turmas and 2 polymethians and leave.
That is true and that is the best thing about AoM. Unlike other RTS there is a lot of freedom regarding god choices and playstyles. BUT since I am a very aggressive player There is no way that a gaia player with 3 TCs can stand against me. The more aggressive player is able to dictate the pace of the game very early on in the game.
If I rush with loki and he wants to reach mythic, He will lose. He has to give up reaching mythic and train units. Only then does he stand a chance.
Yea AQ should be on by default. No one will have it disabled. A lot of default settings in AoM need to change.
There is a line here. I also dislike farms being reseeded. I also don’t like to manually task my villagers to gather the next deer after one of the deers is done. We have developed a sense for it. I love auto farm placement when pressing shift. But if it wasn’t in the game I woudn’t have minded it.
But this does show in which direction you want to push the game. Do you want your players to take actions regarding “restask villager after it deposits” or “micro the army”. Anyways my issue with AQ isn’t that big. since I know it is impossible to change now.Although if they add military AQ I might leave the game. I like to click a lot.
I was thinking about Decreasing the cost of Age ups very cheap but make them take longer.
This is set in order to make the player be “emotionally connected with the game”. They did this so that player is bound to his base mentally cause he spent 5 minutes in it. I don’t mind tier 0 if it isn’t too long. But gate keeping such a huge amount of content isn’t right.
Being slow is different than available resources. In AoE2 I think there are good resources available under your TC. I don’t know though I didn’t play AoE 2 much. And I think there are other reasons why AoE 2 is popular.
So to recap. I do think that AQ is making the game less fun. But I also think that maybe villager system in AoM also needs some tweaks
AoMR has auto economy as an option, even on PC, which I think is a good addition. It makes learning the game easier but since it’s far from perfect you want to learn how to manage the economy yourself eventually.
But they did add it.
But you can still do it. Military autoqueue doesn’t give you a big advantage like villager autoqueue does. It even has downsides. Kind of a noob trap.
That wouldn’t work because TCs also have to train villagers.
What I thought about is a cool down. Once you age up you are not allowed to age up again for like 5 minutes. That would work but many players would hate it.
Age of Empires/Mythology has random maps, which is different from 90% of other RTS out there. So you have to scout at the beginning to find out where everything is.
Other RTS might have you scout the enemy spawn location or what build order they are going for but you don’t need to find out where the resources are at.
You mean natural resources around the TC and not the starting resources that are already in your stockpile?
There are other reasons but this likely is one of the bigger ones.
You might enjoy clicking but most other people don’t, especially people that are just picking up the game.
You have to learn to see things from different perspectives and don’t assume that what every you like must be what everyone else also likes.
Thats doesnt happen in aom, you get past archaic in almost all games. Mythic would be the Last 1-2 items or 5 levels.
Your ultimate ability is not the end of how your champion scales.
Its very match up dependant. Some civs get to mythic regularly.
Fair enough, it would be quite the rework, on thst we agree.
You could but until thwt one exists it remain true. Theres far more knowledge required to win your first game in and RTS than in an fps.
Some people make the journey argument but. All the competitive content is on the end game once you reach max level, be it pvp or pve.
Depends on what you define as casual. Theres plenty of people on reddit that Just play vs AI with other players as allies or single player even.
If you are talking ranked based. Most of reddit are not high level.
Now ofc most players dont engage in any forum, but that also raises the question as to how are you getting this secret info of what the silent majority wants? Saying most players want x or y and have nothing to back it up for than feeling or talks with friends is not much to go by as to say its the majority.
The opposite would be what you are saying. Again, have you counted it? Norse is very popular in low Elo, not as much as greek but people still like the early playstyle from the matches you see.
Im aware, same as aom. You can get very high playing different off meta strats. And i can name examples of many players that do. Heck a friend of mine in my clan reached 1700s on controller.
This take that x or Y will not work and you have to sacrifice it in order to be able to climb is simply false. That will matter on a very top and small % most players than complain dont see let alone play at.
Thats false from what i see. Would be good to play some games together and see how this comes to be in your pov. Specially on team games.
Interesting, i was getting the idea you did since you advocated that games needed to reach that Kate stage of the game more often.
Unfun to you maybe, very fun to another, thou i agree it would not be good to implement it.
Yea aom is very casual. Most players dont even play ranked and imo devs cater to them a lot. The New game aditions like arena gauntlet and Ai changes are all for casual. Sure they need improvement but are still good aditions imo.
I think casuals mind balance more than they should. Its really not thst important to the. A unit is not viable or not viable vs AI because it got a 5% boost or nerf. The impact 99% of balance changes (numbers tunning) have on people that are still below 1400-1200 is far from the reason they are not winning.
Aoe has the options to customize a lot more which would make your scenario testable. Btw good to know the mod is as popular, i was wrong then.
This would break certain match ups, would need to rework several things around it. Basically nerfs eco gods and punishes civs that struggle on classic age and rely on heroic age to compete.
