At least try to use reasonable arguments, at the moment all you do is being absurd. Attacking everyone who does not share your opinion, is not going to help you persuade others, if anything you will turn others from supporting you and joining the opposite side…
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A quality of life feature that helps new players to focus their attention on their macro and/or micro so they aren’t overwhelmed on things to do when they pick up a RTS game, but with the need to still give the feature some thoughts to not over produce, is obviously the same as giving 10 free cheat units for everyone.
I honestly think you have never played AOM without autoqueue.
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The whole argument comes down to a certain fraction of the player base that has a medium rank being afraid that the skill (queueing villagers) is being made pointless by a new feature.
It’s likely less then 1% of matches that are being decided by someones ability to keep up a villager queue under stress.
Half (or more) of the player base doesn’t play ranked at all so this feature would just improve the game for them. It’s just another tool they can decide to use or not (like different difficulties, handicap and so on).
Actual pros don’t care about auto queue either because it simply doesn’t matter on their skill level. Not queueing villagers is deciding like less then 0.1% of pro matches.
In my (not very representative) thread [poll] auto-queue >50% of people want auto queue to be enabled everywhere but almost everyone would be ok with it being a lobby setting that is turned of in ranked. No one voted for completely removing auto queue from the game yet.
I later added a poll about auto queue with a disadvantage and no one voted for absolutely no auto queue again. Everyone seems to be ok with an auto queue that is a little slower then manual queueing. But that opinion could obviously change depending on what delay auto queue has. Some people would only be ok with it if it has at last 2 seconds delay (more then 10% of the villager queue time) while other would probably see it the other way round and thing everything bigger then 1 second is way to much.
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That doesn’t make sense for a quality of life feature. If autoqueue has a delay or any other disadvantages, it is gonna be more of a hinder than a helpful feature. Shift queue didn’t have a 1 sec delayed process, as in the unit reaches one flag/task and then waits there for 1 sec and then moves to the next one, because that goes against the concept of ‘Quality of Life’.
On average, making about 250 units per game, assuming 200 were made through auto queue, that equals to 400 secs of delay which is almost almost 7 mins of delay.
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If auto queue had a 1 second delay you would be 1 villager behind after training 14 villagers.
That is a lot better then many beginners are doing themselves (I can certainly confirm that from the experience of playing with my friends of very different skill levels.)
Even in medium high elo being that little behind would likely not decide most games.
I’m still in favour of having no delay but I also don’t play ranked.
Maybe the best option that makes the most people happy would be:
- No delay in single player/custom lobbies
- 1 second delay in ranked
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“It is probably less than 0.001% of locals that are stupid enough to die swimming in this acidic lake”, doesn’t mean that the lake shouldn’t be purified so people can swim in it. If raiding cav or hippikon raids on classical age dropped from noticeable presense to nonexistant presence in high level play ever since autoQ was implemented, there is clearly less strategic diversity in the game.
Lot of us played AoM back before Titans was released. Unless we somehow hopped between parallel worlds unknowningly, I am certain AutoQ didn’t exist back then.
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The main purpose of raiding is tho kill villages not to maybe make the enemy forget to queue a villager.
Raiding is often harder than defending against them so it’s probably more likely that people don’t raid because they know they can’t keep up their village queue while doing so.
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The inverse applies, so if people increase early game raids that means that AQ has improved gameplay, and that there is more strategic diversity in the game. Funny you should bring it up, considering it’s one of the bigger reasons to implement it. It will offer you more time to micro those raids making it more likely you’ll see them… not less.
The killing villagers will be much easier if enemy has to look at their town center every 24 seconds to queue 2 more villagers. And once they start losing villagers and panicking, they might forget to queue some as well.
And it also affects raiding units viablity later in the game, since they’re reliant on main army distracting enemy on one side, and raid group attacking from elsewhere. This is much more effective is enemy camera is first on town center, then they have to look at main army, than if their camera is at start at main army
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Noticeable presence in the past didn’t mean 100% presence, it just ment that raiding civs like Poseidon and Odin could raid. Current meta is just running 1 strong army on the map and raiding strategies are completely dead. There is less strategic diversity because the meta is dominated by defensive booming civs (Ra, Gaia, Hades, Thor) that are all about multiple TCs and heroic age while offensive civs (Odin, Poseidon, Kronos) that have their power spike classical age can’t do anything
Booming defensive strategies always existed in AoE franchise such as Cumans or English in AoE2 or Delhi Sultanate or Chinese in AoE4, but they were always reliant on defensive maps and . In AoM the map doesn’t matter and they are just better pick ever since AutoQ was added.
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There are no players that are still playing AoE 2 that also started playing when the game was released, and it is the most popular game of the series, while you are here claiming to have played from the start, and that there are a lot of players now, which itself is a lie as AoM gaming population isn’t that high to begin with, that played the game in 2002 and then, from 2003, when the Titans expansion was released and had auto queue, waited and waited for someone to remove that function, as it was disliked by that much, but for some reason, are still playing AoM?
It’s 14 seconds not 24.
It’s never 24 seconds, even in AoE2 because AoE2 is not played in “normal” speed.
Queueing villagers is really not hard. It is something that most people can still do while defending or attacking. Also you can queue up more then 1 so you can get a little breathing room.
Also there is a global queue that shows you if you are currently training one.
Therefor it will decide an extremely small number of matches in mid to higher ELOs if someone forgot to queue a villager or not.
Or if someone got distracted by queueing a villager.
You want to remove a feature that helps most people in lower to mid ELOs to enjoy the game more so your “skill” at queueing villagers can make you win like 1 in 1000 games if you are lucky?
I’m assuming you are not playing in low ELOs.
In lower ELOs the impact of auto queue is bigger but I would argue that that’s a good thing.
Matchmaking always has the issue that it needs to find players with similar skill levels, which is especially hard for team games since the number of players you need is much higher while the available number of players is not.
So by levelling the playing field a little and making people in lower ELOs perform better it will be more likely that your enemy or ally is closer to you in skill then without auto queue.
Playing with an ally that forgets to queue villagers is not fun.
What is fundamentally different about auto queue compared to other quality of life features like:
- global queue
- auto reseeding farms
- idle villager indicator
Those all help reducing the effort to keep up an economy.
Reseeding farms is also something that you can’t really keep track of since it doesn’t happen in nice 14/20/24 seconds intervals like villager training.
Global queue makes it a lot easier to keep up villager production too since you can always see if you have any queued up without having to click on your TC.
Idle villager indicators like the exclamation mark AoE2DE recently added make it also much easier to keep your economy efficient.
All those things are not controversial. Almost everyone loves those features. Yes there are a few people that say that auto reseeding farms are bad but that’s a very small minority.
Why is auto queue different? Why do so many people hate it.
I’m not talking about auto features like auto scout or auto economy that automate decision making and are also usually worse then manually doing those things anyway.
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Main thing I think about is resources made available by not having multiple in queue. That is a decent advantage for auto-queue, but it’s fairly limited since potential resources remain the same.
If auto-queue extended to all units I imagine it would prioritize the cheapest units first when there is a shortage of units, placing villagers above all else. If you kept more expensive units in an auto-queue state it may cause unit production to be more staggered. When a player queues two units at a time it allows the economy to flex more. Having a bank allows you to divert resources from one play to another, granting agility at the cost of efficiency.
If auto-queue existed only for villagers then it only frees up 50-100 food. Not as big a deal, mostly a micro reduction.
Just some food for thought on the subject. It’s a multi faceted issue, and what I described is why I would avoid the feature even though I support its implementation.
I’m always surprised to see this argument. Queuing villagers is a skill but honestly it’s kinda a dumb skill that’s a relic of 20+ year old game design. Loosing a game because you can’t reliably hit Q every 20 seconds or whatever it is in this game is not fun and it’s not interesting.
Let’s address the skill issue because skill is very important in strategy games. Skill tests make it so better players reliably beat worse players. There is a decent amount of randomness in games and so if you don’t have enough skill challenges this might not happen - think random bonus stars at the end of mario party - it’s infuriating when randomness overtakes skill.
But queuing villagers is not the only way to create skill challenges - managing your army, capturing valuable resources, raiding etc. All of these feel central to an RTS, feel rewarding to do, and require skill and practice. If a better player can’t reliably win using those skills and you need to add the additional challenge of occasionally mashing the q button it feels like a failure of game design IMHO.
It’s been said a lot above that queueing villagers is a barrier to entry for new players and while I think that’s right I think it doesn’t quite get at the issue. RTS games are supposed to be hard - new players are going to loose a lot of games before they win. But as long as learning the skills of the game is fun or interesting or fun to think about it’s fine. Strategy, micro, macro - these all take a long time to learn. So does villager queueing but it’s not nearly as rewarding learning those other skills. Learning how to to it reliably took a long time and I don’t feel better for it.
TL;DR : It’s not that villager queuing isn’t a skill, it’s that it’s not fun or interesting. Autocuing doesn’t make the game easier it changes the skills that you need to develop to be good at the game.
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That is probably the best statement in the whole discussion I have read so far…
What does is say about the game, if auto-queue has to be avoided to make the better player have a significant advantage… You could also say it would make it age of spastic clicking.
RTS = real time spasms
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And now the game has become more micro-demanding with active unit abilities.
And some people think it would lose its strategical depth if they don’t have to go back and click one button every 10 seconds…
Anyway they made the most interesting choice: villager autoqueueing (the “most hated”) is default, while military unit autoqueueing (the “more balanced”) is toggleable 
Seems to me an overall direction to reduce economic micro requirements.
Eager to see the reaction.
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The 3 questions we should ask ourselves are about manual producing vills:
Is it strategic yes or no?
Is it fun yes or no?
Will the game stop having a great skill ceiling by including villager AQ?
If it is “no” in the 3 questions, it can be perfectly automated for better accessibility.
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Well, they can include Auto queue with penalty.
For example, a villager that costs 50 gold will be generated for 70 gold when the Auto Queue is set ON.
Then there is no auto queuing. If there is a penalty then you have to eventually develop the skills to not use it or you’ll never be good at the game. Why? Why is this fun when there are so many other things you can do with your +200 APM (mine is a lot less). There is no amount of APM where queueing another villager is the optimal use of your time in this game, or frankly your life. I don’t think the game needs to be designed and balanced around queueing villagers being an important skill.
Having to queue a villager is like juggling while playing chess. Sure it’s hard but that doesn’t make it better chess. I’m not impressed by a pro for him cuing a villager - oh great they trained their autonomic nervous system to hit the Q key without thinking, that sure must have taken them a while! I want the game to live on great battles and engagements and destruction and drama - not did the villager line go up and to the right.
When I lose because I stop producing villagers It feels like crap because you didn’t do this one boring thing. But guess what? When I win because the other person stopped producing villagers it still feels like crap because I beat someone who wasn’t playing with a full deck. I don’t feel like I earned the win.
I hope I’m not coming off too strident here I’m being a little tongue in cheek - I just don’t get it. We all love this game and franchise and I have a deep respect for it’s long history. But I feel like there are a lot better ways to make this game hard and we don’t need to hang on to this throwback mechanic.
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Let me give a balance example. People often cite raiding as why queuing villagers is an important skill because if you’re fighting a lot maybe you save your villagers but you forget to queue on and so in effect the raid and aggressive play is more damaging. But you could just lower villager hitpoints or improve raiding units by a small amount and so if you careless it’s easier for you to lose one. That’s seems like more fun to me.