Honestly, its not a massive change. Laming can still occur it just won’t be as detrimental, people will still lose villagers to boar, and care will still need to be taken to make sure the boar dies in the correct spot. It’s still all there from a viewer perspective.
Housing on ther other hand is a bit more complex. the button already flashes when you would be housed, so theres already an indicator. It could just be an audio accessability addition. Still requires players to respond to it even if its ahead of time.
Is the following issue fixed? If not, why do you have to wait for an invisible green light before you can kill certain animals? This is inconsistent, too, so let’s get it fixed, as well. Let’s not have animals that only die when they want to. I can’t test until later in week:
It’s already a very low risk with or without the.TC crutch..Oh well. If the game needs to hold our hand with everything even more, then so be it.
I think the next QoL update should be the.whole screen flashes and a big button appears in the middle of screen when we can afford aging up. Would save me some work from having to click the TC to check things and access the Age Up button. And it would level the playing field more. Maybe even include a resource/build requirement countdown overlay so newcomers aren’t inconvenienced by having to click the TC
Perhaps we should rethink where is the fine line separating QOL improvements or gameplay changes vs dumbing down of the game (or changing the “spirit of the game”/ “game philosophy” ) ?
For example, DE introduced some QOL that were not in HD or AOC (the original disc version) such as the drop resources button, hybrid queue order (queue build / move / gather together), mixed upgrade/ unit queue etc. Do all such QOL also “dumb down the game” or change the “spirit of the game”) ?
How about DE gameplay changes like introduction of chickens (or gold-carrying animals (foxes) in the PUP ?
How about the Introduction of new gameplay mechanics which were not present previously
heroes
1 age earlier upgrades
damage-blocking
armour-ignoring damage
multiple phase unit (mounted/ unmounted, with or without shield etc)
units that can be powered up (Aztec Jaguar warriors, Tiger Cavalry
regional units (Lou Chuan, Fire Lancer, Rocket Cart, Traction Trebuchet
A possible way to distinguish changes that are “acceptable” vs “heretic” is that changes that affect only the player oneself is accepted, which those that also changes the experience of other players should not go through. i.e drop resources button would be fine, but “animals killed by military units and buildings do not spoil” would be “heretic”. In the same way, almost all the above “gameplay changes” should all be rejected. However, several of these “gameplay changes” have a sizable number of players who support having them.
I would also like to propose another QOL that developers can look into, a new 2025 HUD (heads-up-display) re-design (or allow HUD to be modded to a greater extend).
Have a few new buttons on the HUD that function somewhat like the “find/select idle villager” button, for select all (or each type of production building) town centres, barracks, archery range, stables, docks etc, Arguably, it would not be useful enough for players who have a secret building behind enemies lines to produce buildings, but it would be very helpful for new players (or low ELO players) to better manage the game. I would say it is not a “new” QOL, as players can currently assign key-bindings for such functionality, but having it as an icon on HUD would make it more convenient for this segment of players.
Modern methods of input, like holding a button (like middle mouse button, or ctrl etc) to access a 8 sided wheel for key bindings. There key bindings would not be restricted to select/ cycle to type of commands, but also preset chat messages like (“advance”, “flank”, “retreat”, “lol” etc). There could be multiple sets of wheels (that can be augmented by other keys i.e F1-F4). This idea comes from how Monster Hunter World maps some of the gamepad (console) functionality to mouse-keyboard setup.
Visual indicator of powered up level on unit or portrait box (either with colour of frame, a roman number, or star etc)
This kind of QOLs would be helpful for newer players, or those who do not have high APM to play better, while not seriously impacting current players who are used to the current style of UX.
No idea. I don’t think that’s relevant, but if you like, replace “animals” with “wild animals” in what I previously said.
I find the “TC crutch” (as you call it) actually unexpectedly risky. The risk of accidentally killing the boar with the TC and losing the food seems much higher than the risk of losing a villager if you kill the boar without garrisoning in the TC. I admit that I don’t have data on this. But given that even pros sometimes mess up shooting the boar with their TC, I’m surprised that they take that risk.
It was an example of similarly inconsistent behavior. A villager can kill herdables, but a scout (military) can’t? If you want consistency in one, you should want consistency in the other, imo
I find it iincredibly easy to avoid killing boar with TC, so can’t relate. And once they remove food spoilage from TC shots, it will just be even easier for me and everyone because spoilage won’t even be a thing
I understand that. I don’t think the presence of one inconsistency works as justification for another inconsistency.
I actually don’t garrison my TC to shoot boars – I’m basing my claim about the relative risks on the following: I almost never lose a villager to a boar, but I have seen pros accidentally kill boars with TC arrows several times despite hardly ever watching pro games. I’ll admit I haven’t collected any data, but anecdotally this doesn’t seem to line up with the garrisoning method being less risky than the no garrisoning method.
Anyway, I’m pretty sure neither of us will persuade the other either way, so I think that’s me done with this discussion.
I don’t know if this has been addressed in here or any other thread, but: How is a TC meant to tell the difference between a garrisoned military unit or villager shooting the final arrow to kill a huntable/herdable animal? In such a scenario, it’d be just pure luck that the meat doesn’t spoil if it were restricted to just garrisoned villagers being able to kill animals for food.
I wish the town-center couldn’t shoot boars but I’m definitely biased since I cant do the boar TC kill. It just seems more natural to shoot the boar with villagers since that is how it is taught in game.
However if the TC can shoot boars why cant the villagers gather the meat after killing it from inside of the town-centre? Though i think this warrants an exception (like scouts not being able to kill deers and chickens)
The house warning is just a small quiet sound queue and I don’t think it is quite on the level of automating everything. You still have to place the houses, imagine if there was no audio queue when you reached maximum population and then they added one. Doesn’t really reduce player control.
The laming nerf is fine since militia have been getting buffs anyway
I just wanna throw in my opinion in favor of the changes. TCs and military spoiling food makes the game objectively more complicated, and it is already too complicated, and it doesn’t meaningfully add strategy to the game. Killing hunt with militia won’t be seriously affected, because the animals will still decay, and if you have militia, it’s unlikely the enemy will be able to take the food before it decays.
As for the pre-house warning, this is no different from having the warning when fully housed. It doesn’t take away any strategy or skill, it just makes the UI more helpful, allowing players to focus more on strategy than on repetitive multitasking.
Yes and no. The jurchen bonus activates when one of their villagers start gathering from the animal, not when the animal is killed. So if the tc kills the animal it will decay, but if the tc kills the animal then a villager gathers even one food from it, it will stop decaying. So it depends on whether you gather the food right after killing the boar with the TC or not.
Now after reading the posts in the thread, here’s my take, this change is awesome imo. I’m like 1200 elo so like top 30% and I hate this mechanic so much. I don’t play the game to shoot a boar with precise timing after my tc weakens it, a feature that the original devs didn’t even intend to be present in the game. If people want the fear factor of boars to go up, increase the boars attack by 1 or 2, making it scarier to lure.
There’s the argument that this will put the game on auto pilot but this merely begs the question, it assumes that weakening a boar with tc and then finishing it with vils is at the essence of aoe2 strategy when in actuality this was never true.
Here is what is actually the essence of aoe2:
Resource management
Building up your eco from the ground up(this is why random map is the most popular gamemode and why ranked empire wars was a flop)
Army management
Eco management(keeping villagers working, why we have the idle vil hot key)
There are others but these are the main ones that I can think of.
As long as these things aren’t put on auto pilot, we have a lot of wiggle room for what can be made easier. Also for all those who’ve forgotten or haven’t heard it yet, the 5 pop space left sound can be disabled in settings. I don’t play with audio generally so this doesn’t impact me though.