It’s simple, enable it only in lobby settings and leave it out from competitive, you said it yourself that it would be the best option, but for some obscure reason you voted “yes” in the first poll.
The reasoning is in the first post.
I think increasing the burden of entry to ranked play is a bad idea.
One of the most important factors determining how enjoyable the ranked experience is is how many people of similar skill are queueing at the same time.
Adding auto queue outside of ranked makes people get used to it and therefore struggle even more with it missing in ranked then they would if it wasn’t in the game at all.
But I think not adding it at all is also bad because the majority of players don’t play ranked and also many people that do play ranked would still like auto queue.
2 Likes
It is funny to see these kinds of posts. You argue that AutoQ doesn’t matter as 99% don’t care, and it caters to a select few, but paradoxically, it matters enough to be a major problem for the majority.
So which one is it?
Because the way I see it, you’re not the 99%. Hell, not even close. You’re a mega fan that posts on a daily basis. Most players don’t care about these tiny mechanics, you just happen to represent a small minority that DOES actively want it, no different than the other minority that does not.
The argument that AutoQ benefits the majority is a wrong one too. There is no making an RTS so casual to where you eliminate essential inputs to it’s working engine. The assumption that you can strip the steeringwheel of a car and still call it a car may be true, but the experience is undoubtedly different.
It’s like saying you are driving, when the vehicle moves and steers itself. My argument has always been simple. AutoQ is the first step forwards dismantling what IS RTS, and introducing a whole new generation of players to it (AGAIN), is asking for trouble, as you are relying on effectively new rules, changing the format and hoping this new “iteration” of RTS can live up to the niche design that was always Ages.
Sure, casual chess players may have the option to see a hint for their next moves. But, this is NEVER present in legitimate tournaments or even real matches between people. The reason is, the game IS being the person that makes those decisions. With an RTS, villager production is one of those things, it is incredibly important and managing it better than your opponent IS THE POINT.
If AutoQ were to be added, just like hints in chess, it needs to be an option for skirmishes or custom games.
I never said that.
I said 99% of players are not pro players. Well It’s probably more like 99,9%.
How many players actually play in tournaments for price money?
I was talking about those kinds of people.
I never said that 99% don’t care nor did I imply it.
I’m certainly not a pro player.
I also never said that I’m part of whatever group.
Most people are not really aware of small mechanics in games but it impacts how much they enjoy it.
For example many AoE3/AoM players probably don’t know how the snare system works but they can clearly feel their armies being a lot less mobile after they start engaging in melee combat.
Being able to put units (and not just villagers) on auto queue is something that people will not really think about but they use it when it’s there and it makes it less stressful to play the game.
This is the wrong example.
Auto queue does not remove decision making from the player. It removes having to train a reflex to keep queueing villagers.
It’s more comparable to driving an automatic car instead of a manual one. But even that is a stretch.
Most video games are not the same as they where 20-30 years ago. Peoples tastes change and generations of new people grow up.
Age of Mythology already had Auto Queue back then so why should they now make a game that is tailored to people that like things how they where before Age of Mythology came out?
Why should AoMR be more retro then the original game in that regard?
Also you need to remember that AoMR will increase the micro management you have to do since abilities are now manually triggered.
So you already need more skill to play the game compared to normal AoM anyway.
There is enough more interesting things to do in a game then pressing a few hot keys every n seconds.
1 Like
You’re right. So I say, if we add AutoQ, let us eliminate fog of war. I mean, what is the point of having to send a unit back and fowards zipping back and fowards just to look at the enemy base for a few seconds? Booooring. It is a better new-player experience to allow them to see the whole map.
I mean, what a boring advantage to have over players. Oh wow, this player can move a scout to the bottom of the map every few seconds…The fact that this can cost his opponent the game is absurd. The amount of times new players get destroyed because they haven’t scouted is high, so let’s just remove it all. No, I’m not talking about Autoscout, just remove fog of war.
What a ridiculous argument of yours. “There are more interesting things”? Perhaps in Campaign where there is a STORY, or Skirmish/Editor where you can make whole literal cities in peace. But in the actual act of 1v1, 2v2, 3v3, the game breaks down to fundamental acts of which queueing your villager is not only the most basic, it is the most important.
It acts as a direct link between you and your own economy, keeping the furnace of a train alive by each shovel of coal–by each press of a button. It acts as a break away from constant battle and micro, a reminder that brings player’s attention back to economy. It acts as an important barrier for properly handling said economy, where going out of food has dire and direct consequences, and the same applies to being stressed out and attacked by your enemy.
What you are asking for is an immunity to all of this. Not shall you be wounded by harassment, not shall you feel the consequences of sloppy micromanagement, nothing.
I ask you, what is so diabolically awful about just having a shit economy as result of being a shit player? This is the whole point of the game; play better, and be better. You’re allowed to queue multiple villagers in a row, you know, and this comes with its own consequences–which you should face if you honestly CBA to do anything yourself.
EDIT: In my example above about fog of war, I would have also joked about automated economy, but unfortunately, reality has already become a parody of itself. Luckily this feature simply can’t effectively line up with actual gameplay properly, as players need very specific economies for their strategies.
EDIT 2: In case my point goes right people’s heads, RTS games ARE a convoluted slog of systems. Fog of war has not been added because it’s cute and quirky; it’s there to challenge the two players individually, just as villager production is. The same goes for managing your economy like farms, or having to constantly seek out new resources rather than infinitely staying in one place for your gold. Are these minial tasks really that more “interesting” than pressing V for villagers? What a folly and false, eristic argument.
They are meant to challenge your capacity to multitask and your ability to do so effectively. Economy, military, building, attacking, defending, expanding, all at the same time. It has always been the point to challenge the player’s ability to do this, and villager production represents the smallest barrier of entry limiting our ability from the start.
SURE, if your idea of playing an RTS is having your economy run itself so you can throw the world’s biggest army at your enemy like I used to when I was 8, then you can STILL do this in Custom games or Skirmishes. Just don’t pretend there is a sort of sophistication to this ease of access that HAS to be brought over to competitive or multiplayer.
There is only one real argument that is brought up for Auto Queue and that is that it’s a strategy to interrupt the enemies villager production by distracting them so much that they can’t keep those button presses.
But how much is the impact of this in reality?
Like how often are people not able to keep up the production? How often is that the deciding factor?
How often is not training villagers to have more food for military units actually the right decision anyway?
Yes there were certainly some games that were won because of this but is it actually something that happens often?
The main purpose of raids is to kill enemy units not to distract the player. Often executing the raid needs more involvement then defending it anyway.
This is a very stupid comparison.
- you can’t walk though a wall
- a scout is slow, it has to go places
- you only have a limited number of scouts that can only see a small part of the map at once
- you can kill an enemy scout
You can always press a few hotkeys to queue up villagers.
You can’t stop the enemy from doing so. You can hope that he might be distracted enough but there is not grantee and good players don’t get distracted.
But generally the argument:
“Doing X is similar to doing Y” is almost always stupid because no one out there wants to do Y.
I have never seen a threat of people demanding no fog to be default.
I know quit a lot of people that like explored map. Something that most RTS have by default like Starcraft 2.
Age of Empires and especially Age of Mythology always have been more on the casual side in the RTS field.
Age of Mythology in particular markets itself as a cool and fun game with flashy god powers and cool monsters and not as a hard to master complicated system.
If you pick up Microsoft Flight Simulator it realistically simulates planes and doesn’t give you easy and arcade controls. But no where does the advertisement of the game imply it’s easy to play or an arcade game. It’s pretty clear what you get and the game advertises tutorials and training missions instead of easy gameplay.
Age of Mythology is not a hardcore strategy game. It has the potential to be one of the most accessible RTS in many years.
Producing your own villagers is hardly “hardcore”. I don’t know who convinced you of this, but this would put almost every RTS in the world under “hardcore” because almost every RTS features gasp villager production.
And no, I don’t think the fog of war example is wrong. The mechanic isn’t a real thing in the real world, as the world is not literally filled with black smoke that cannot be seen through unless with an a structure like an Outpost or a man on a horse called a Scout. It is clearly a mechanic that is meant to represent information, which the developers want to act as a real part of the game.
That is to say; they don’t want you to know everything, and want that to mean something. In the same vein, producing your own villagers is baked in because they don’t want you, the player, to have free reign to multitask however you want. It is there to restrict your ability, much like Fog of War.
So again, I say, if we add AutoQ, then remove fog of war as well. If anything, Fog of War has a much larger impact on new players than queueing your villager ever has. In fact, most decent RTS players fail because of Fog of War, so technically getting rid of it would “solve” far more problems than mere villager production. And if you think this is an eristic argument, it is, but it is also posed to be serious; the point of these mechanics IS to limit a player.
Just as the mayor of a town does not have to be present at every birth, or command the creation of each child, the mayor does not have to literally scout the whole world himself. It is not about realism, it is not about flavour. It is a mechanic part of a system that is meant to challenge you.
I’ll ask you this; what is your “ideal” iteration of an RTS? Just how far do you want to prune actual fundamental mechanics? How do you intend players to “play” exactly, and how much input should matter? What kind of decision making or ability should result in one player winning over the other?
And please don’t answer “AoM with AutoQ” because there is a lot more to an RTS and these systems than simply AutoQ. Yet, I somehow feel that many of you envision the ideal RTS to resemble an Autobattler much more than an actual RTS.
1 Like
Is the merit of a player judged on how well they micro their units or economy? To add features like AutoQ or remove Fog of War would indeed put the emphasis more on unit control over basic base micro. When you say “there are more interesting things to do in the game” than villager production, am I to assume you mean microing units in combat?
Because I am of the opinion that both are important, and an RTS where you mostly only micro your fighting army is a boring one. As much as I like WC3, I love the Age series because there is more of an emphasis on economy, and I enjoy that balance forcing players to stretch themselves thin in managing everything.
The addition of AutoQ, auto economy, autoscouting, autoseeding, are only slowly creeping the Ages series into a game about only combat. I would hate to see these games become that.
2 Likes
I was referring to you calling RTS a “convoluted slog”.
Actually how many RTS have villagers in the sense of Age of Empires.
Like units that you have to train a lot of constantly for most of the match that do all of the resource collection.
Warcraft 3 technically has them but you start with the number of villagers that are needed for one Gold mine. You need a few more for construction and Wood collection but the main resource is Gold and you need to build a new “Town Centre” for every new Gold Mine anyway.
In Starcraft 2 you need to train more villagers in each base but it’s also not that much. The number of expansions you have is more important then the number of villagers.
Games like Supreme Commander, Company of Heroes, Dawn of War or Command and Conquer don’t have villagers.
They have resource collection units/buildings or construction units but nothing that works in a way like in AoE.
Some of those games also have autoqueue btw. especially Supreme Commander is basically build around it.
It is very wrong.
It is a totally different thing.
You can train a villager by pressing a few buttons. At any time. within less then a second. Very easily.
And it’s also always the same thing. It’s doesn’t involve decision making, risk calculation or anything.
Scouting requires units that can do the scouting.
It requires time for the scout to get somewhere.
It requires the decision where to scout.
It can be prevented by the enemy using walls, towers and units.
It is involves the risk of losing the scout.
It requires the right timing to scout the build order of the enemy.
Autoqueue is none of those things.
It is a whole different magnitude of a change.
Partial information is a core component of many types of games. The whole popularity of card games is fundamentally based on the idea that you don’t know what the enemy has in their hands.
Producing villagers is only one tiny part of managing an economy.
It is the least interesting part since it is doing the same action again every n seconds without any second thought in every single match on every single map against every single opponent.
Setting up your economy involves a lot of decisions. How many villagers on what resource, where to place the drop of buildings, which mines to use in which order, how to secure the villagers, which economic technologies to research in what order and so on.
I personally think auto economy is a strange feature to add.
It doesn’t really impact ranked matches since it’s likely not hard to be better then the automatic economy but it feel weird.
I like auto scout in other games as a late game feature if you want to find out where the enemy is hiding or something like that, but the way it’s done in AoE2 where it is only available on your first Scout is really strange.
It also makes you worse for using it.
This one goes against your argument that AoE is turning into a fighting only game though because auto scout is there so you can focus on the economy.
Auto seeding is something I really like in AoE2DE, it was annoying to always keep that farm queue filled. And it didn’t require skill to reseed manually because the game gave you a loud warning when a farm got empty.
The game doesn’t have a warning sound when the TC is idle.
You would likely be against a TC idle warning, would you?
I would personally think that would be so much worse then autoqueue, lol.
Other question what do you think of auto queue in any context that is not training villagers?
2 Likes
I’m against it for military as well if that is what you’re asking. Although autoqueuing military is less of a nobrainer than Villagers, as it can easily become a mistake rather than be benefitial.
The reason I’m still against it is because I don’t think we should be able to “lock” the game into a state of combat that runs itself. One example of this is how in AoE4, you can train villagers and units despite being pop capped. The reason I’m against this is for a few reasons. It lessens the impact of making a mistake, making the difference between the better player less obvious. But, more importantly, because it results in situations where during the late game, when both players are pop-capped, they can still queue 10s, 20s of units that will immediately spawn upon their armies dying–resulting in a smoother continuation of the battle.
Why do I think this is bad? It makes the games more of an automated slog. It means making a mistake has less consequences and it ultimately means the games are artificially dragged out. If I lose my army like an idiot, the opponent should be able to punish me while I train a new one. With this “QoL” feature, I will have some back up army immediately, making it harder for them to punish me.
Whether a mechanic is annoying or not only matters if it is part of the game or not. Obviously shitty pathfinding is annoying, and in most cases, probably is not intended to be part of a game. These are QoL things we can fix and work on. However, having to build a mining outpost to get ores? Would you call this annoying or is it a mechanic? AoE3 players have a whole world of colourful opinions on that. Obviously, I think it is a mechanic. I think scouting, villager production are also mechanics and shouldn’t be automated. That automating them is NOT QoL, but instead, morphing the game into something else.
Also. When asked about villager production, you curiously mention that Starcraft 2, Warcraft 3 do feature them as part of their systems. That they carry that similarity to Age games.
And that these were the ones that did not feature villager production to the same level. So I ask you, is this what you want? Do you want AoM to be more like Company of Heroes than SC2? To be more like Supreme Commander than Warcraft 3?
Because I’m of the opposite opinion. Age games are clearly more Blizzard-like their villager production designs, and I vastly prefer that over these other RTS games that barely resemble Age games at all. You’ll notice that an economy matters much more in Age games and Blizzard RTS than they do in the games you mentioned above.
Finally, I’ll pose the question that I asked before again; what is your ideal RTS?
2 Likes
I hate that too but I don’t think making the training more annoying is a solution for the problem.
You can easily queue up more units than you have pop in AoE2 too and it’s easy to shift queue a lot of trash units.
I think the better way to prevent that from happening is to limit late game economy.
Make the fast ways of collection resources run out and limit the amount of villagers each player can have.
Less villagers means more pop for military unit and also less resources to keep buying new ones which leads to more strategic use of those units.
It is usually the best strategy in AoE2 to have 120+ villagers and only use the raining 80 pop for trash units and the occasional gold unit in late game fights.
A lower villager limit and higher population limit would make that phase of the game more interesting.
Also AoE2 has nothing to fight over when the resources are gone so it’s extra sluggish.
As someone who plays AoE3DE more then any other AoE game I do think that drop off mechanics are good for the most part but it also makes sense that AoE3 doesn’t have them.
At last it made sense when AoE3 was a colonial game.
AoE3 makes your base look a lot less complex like an AoE1/2/4 base and that fits into the colonial setting.
Also exploiting natural resources like hunt are way more important in AoE3 compared to any other AoE game.
I described why they are bad comparisons because how different the economy is compared to AoE.
Starcraft 2 added a new busy work thing to each of the civs economy though to make people go back constantly. Each race has their own thingy you have to do all the time.
But I think they changed that in later patches. Haven’t really played SC2 much after the 2nd expansion came out.
No.
Sorry forgot the answer this question.
Sort answer:
I made a thread about it My RTS concept
But my ideas have changed over the years. So a lot of stuff from earlier posts doesn’t really reflect my current views.
I want to reorganize my ideas and put them into some kind of Wiki I think.
Some of my opinions have changed since my last post and many ideas where originally written down before AoE4 got released.
But about economy:
Villagers should be mostly like in AoE and yes there should be autoqueue for villagers and everything else including technologies.
I think there should be a 5th resource called Iron to make things more interesting.
There should be a fertility system for the ground so there is more strategy in placing farms.
All resources have infinite ways of producing them but at a slow speed resulting in lower resource production in the late game.
Resource storage is limited so you need to build storage buildings.
There should also be a limit for villagers (fishing ships and traders included).
But ever limit, including population and housing, should be a soft cap.
So over all the economy should be a little more complex then AoE/AoM with more things to decide and less repetitive things to just having to do constantly.
Edit:
I added a new poll for Auto-queue with a disadvantage.
Maybe that’s also a good compromise for most people.
3 Likes
That’s how I suggested it in aoe4 and everyone chooses if they want the automatic queue, what your rival does should not harm you, automatic queue does not guarantee winning games
Auto queue for villagers is available by default but auto queue for military units is a lobby setting?
Interesting choice.
Haven’t tried ranked though.
4 Likes
I think AQ should be enabled in all modes. It’s time for RTS games to evolve. I’ve been playing RTS games my whole life. The best thing you can do is making the transition to ranked play easier. I get the “But it lowers the skill”.
If AQ is enabled by deafult in all modes it’ll let the players focus more on the strategy side of the game instead of learning “skills” that (beign honest) are a thing of the past.
If you want more players in this game you need to make it easier for them. If not this game will die like all the RTS games of the past decade.
2 Likes
I don’t play ranked anymore, just comp stomps, so I am happy to have the ability to auto-queue villagers and military like I have since The Titans Expansion came out.
I understand why they chose the middle ground of having auto-queue villagers always being allowed but not military because some don’t want auto-queue at all and others don’t want something totally removed.
1 Like
Agree, good choice made by them considering both sides!
1 Like
