Like the title says. It’s one, if not the, reason why AoM isn’t as popular as AoE2 as an e-sport. It lowers the skill ceiling too much and it’s not worth being “purist” in this one instance.
Really dont know how I feel about AQ. I get the point of competitive scenario, but AoM Retold will have much more micro needed than rest of AoE. We have units with “specials” that will not be automatic anymore and probably god powers with cooldowns. Maybe at least this could be an option for non-ranked matches.
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It doesn’t matter how much micro it has, the macro shouldn’t suffer. Both are absolutely essential for a successful RTS, outsourcing almost the entire macro to a single button is unbelievably tone-deaf and it seems like the devs themselves don’t play the genre. It’s not a good look as the cool kids say nowadays.
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AQ is just QoL feature, macro still requires lot of attention and allocation, automatic requeue does not make it do and be done. You still have to pay attention to not get resource locked. All it does is reduce amount of clicks needed to maintain production.
Removing it will just turn this whole forum to another battlefield between these who support it and purist who hate any change… Just keep it, noone is hurt by it existance and noone forces you to use it
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I would include it up to a certain elo (then it would not be available) or put a penalty on it in ranked games so that high level players do not use it.
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Just leave it alone. Keep both sides happy.
Or just disable it during official pro tournament matches?
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Yeah, best option is for it to be disabled in tournament &ranked ruleset, allowed everywhere else
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Include an option for custom lobbies to either enable or disable it and have it disabled by default for ranked.
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I’m ok with it just being disabled in ranked. Even though it’s a crutch for beginners that teaches them bad habits in the campaign or skirmishes against the AI, the real damage it does is in competitive multiplayer.
I don’t think remebering to click a button is really a skill that should be a core part of a real time strategy game.
I don’t recall any fuss when they let you queue technologies in AOE2 din’t that reduce the skill ceilng since you no longer have to remember to go back to the blacksmith to research another upgrade?
An auto queue button doesn’t remove the economic managment. If you set it on and then ignore it you just have a bunch of idle villagers, you can set a rally point on some resources but then you’re going to have too many villagers on one thing and then they will be idle once it is depleted.
Its a similar order to attack-move which is also a limited form of automation and equally requires foresight to determine when it is appropriate to use and when it is not.
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It’s not just remembering to click a button, it’s also timing and remembering to do it while also micro-ing at the same time. It’s a very important skill and feature in an RTS. You can check out some YouTube videos where pros talk about why AoM didn’t become such a widespread e-sport as AoE and the main reason they give is that the auto-queue lowers the skill ceiling too much. This is coupled with how myth units auto-use their abilities as well (which is thankfully removed in the remaster) and so the only skill left, outside of army composition, is telling your units who to attack, which is not enough in the long run.
Queuing technologies is a different beast because that reserves your resources, you are essentially paying an upfront cost to outsource macro when you have the resource to do so. Auto-queue doesn’t take up any resources and you can’t be better at auto-queuing than your opponent. Making a competitive game less skill-based in paradoxical.
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E-Sports is only a very tiny part of AoE/AoM.
Only a small part of the players directly or indirectly engage with it.
Making the game harder to play and less convenient for the majority is not a good thing.
Even Starcraft 2 had auto abilities and automation for eco stuff in the campaign.
If you get enjoyment from queueing up villagers your life must be very sad.
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This is the worst suggestion. Autoqueue is what makes AoT more of a strategy game than other Age of games. Almost everyone that sticked with the game for years embraces the feature.
Anyways, I’m sure it will retain autoqueue as the top players that are beta testing it are AoT experts and they know all this.
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But that is what keeps the game alive for the majority of players even if they don’t play PvP themselves. AoE2 wouldn’t have ever survived almost 25 years at this point without it having a lively competitive scene.
I’m actually curious about why people think AoM didn’t get as big/popular/enduring as AoE2 if not for the very low skill ceiling and lack of competitive activity due to it.
Now with manual abilities the skill ceiling is a lot higher anyway, removing autoqueue on top of that would make the game a lot harder to play for many people.
A game will die if it can’t attract new players.
RTS as a genre is being held back by how hard it is to get into and how much skill matters.
It’s a lot easier to get into games like Dark Souls that are considered hard by most players.
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Agreed. By having this AoMR become a viable E-sports game would be a good thing. It is always a good thing. I think its benefits outweigh the “costs”.
That being said, I think AoMR should try to find a good balance between competitive and casual play. It was stated by Yuen that they will try to bring this game to the E-sports scene which is awesome. At the same time, they will also up the population limit and have the godpowers on cooldowns. My guess is that the change in cooldowns is to make the casual fans happier.
A combination of making this game E-sports worthy and DLC cultures will make the game last. Those are just the big two. Then we also have modders that can create “what ifs” missions and what not will further prolong the game.
Hopefully the game makes it big on Twitch as well…
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Years ago: manually reseeding farms is an essential skill. Making it automated lowers the skill ceiling.
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Yeah pretty much this. Although I think the last sentence might be a big harsh but on the other hand my wording is sometimes a bit harsh too so I won’t criticise^^
I made the same suggestion in multiple threads about Autoqueue in AoE2/3/4:
Add a 1-2 second delay to autoqueue.
This way you are punished for relying on autoqueue and rewarded for manually queueing.
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Except this is hideously overblown in the discourse in general. For the vast, vaaaaaaaaaaaaast majority of players (including ranked), you don’t need 400 APM or however much the claimed number is this week. If you are a pro and it’s literally your job, sure, maybe, but not for the average gamer. You don’t attract more players in ranked play/in general by making the game less skill-based at higher levels, you explain to people they don’t need to be RTS gods to have fun in ranked. Besides, the PvP crowd is very small either way, so you are shooting yourself in the foot by making the game easier in order to attract an audience that doesn’t exist. Many such cases (cough Age of Sigmar: Realms of Ruin cough). Make singleplayer content for attracting a casual crowd and leave the skill ceiling for multiplayer high where it’s supposed to be.
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