Yes, let’s compare games design decisions r.e. raw APM and the decision-making space vs. a c-suite focus on exploitative DLC. These are definitely similar things.
Yes, it seems that they removed AoM’s AQ and added village autotasking AI…
Yes, I agree, as long as they simplify the macro, but make the rest more complex, everything is fine…You have to give accessibility options to the players, not alienate them because they don’t have them…
Of course…I agree…
In short, any RTS not made by Blizzard cannot be E-Sport contender xd…
Yes, I curse the MOBAS and partly SC2 that made everything a competitive issue… there are RTS that can be competitive (SC, AoE 2, SC2) and others that cannot (WC3, AoM and AoE 3) and that’s not why it makes them bad per se…the bad thing is destroying mythical RTS sagas, for wanting to copy LoL and SC2 (I see you CNC4 and DoW 3)…
Yes, I play handicap games to play faster games and yet I fight 4 players against me alone…
Yes, the fatalists always appear and they always end up making mistakes… neither AoE 4 nor AoM are going to fail nor are they going to surpass AoE 2, they will have their communities and dlcs and they will do well…
Now that economy can be set on automatic, casuals should be happy. No more managing villagers so you can focus on more “fun” stuff like which military to make and fighting with them. You can even automatically place farms now.
More advanced players can still micro economy for benefits and autoqueuing military doesn’t exist, so they’re happier.
AutoQ in the game would just make slower players have as good economy of an economy as faster players. If I remember right, Vanilla AoM without autoQ was most popular form of AoM and about half the playerbase remained in Vanilla even after Titans was released, so obviously new features weren’t greatly received. It is hard to conclude whetever it was AutoQ, Atlanteans, autoshooting Docks or the Titans that turned people off, but probably autoQ since it was in every game and others in less than half.
Lot of us wanted penalty to autoQ but subpar automatic economy is even better. As long as autoQ doesn’t exist in game, the developers exceeded themselves by satisfying everyone.
Am I the only one who thinks that someone using auto-queue for villagers does not provide any unfairness? Instead, the player gets less control over their base and resources, and it is actually a disadvantage if you want to play competitively.
A player who has control and does not use auto-queue for villagers will always have better control over their economy, units, and when to build what, in my opinion.
Therefore, I do not believe this will hurt the game at all if it is included.
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It isn’t about disadvantage, it is about the fact that you will keep queueing villagers (or even worse: military) when you are distracted. This makes strategies such as raiding or building offensive towers, half as effective. Lot of people like chaotic games and playstyle, and there should be space for that in the game. What AoE2 does to promote chaos, is reliant on TC idle time. Lack of AutoQ provides lot of viability to units and strategies that aren’t used othewise.
Would you like to see every (Supremacy) game play out the same and every player have same playstyle? If not, then you would remove autoQ. Would you like game to have maximum 100 hours of playtime before it is completely solved? If not, then you would remove autoQ.
Now if you don’t put much thought into getting better or beating your opponent: AKA you already go in to games with “defeated” meantality, then maybe autoQ is great for you. You are not trying to outplay your opponent and are just hoping “they suck more”. But this should mean you’re playing the game maximum 3 hours of the week to “relax”. It would be bad design choice to make an RTS game just for those players.
Probably the players who will use a feature like this are either new to this game or to RTS all together, and this means that they won’t be able to control to turn it on/off when needed when they need to prioritize other things with their resources.
This is what differs to a player that knows the game well enough and that has full control over his base, resources and priorities. Those will win the majority of the games. And let’s not talk about how the more experienced player will be able to outperform the new player with tactics on the battlefield.
Will there be situations where having an automated queue for villagers an advantage? Sure, but those situations are few and will not ultimately decide who wins in the end, in my opinion. But this is just my thoughts on this, and I might end up being wrong, but right now this is how I feel about this whole subject.
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Let me use an example to show why your reasoning is flawed:
- If they removed villager training from the game completely and forced us to play only with starting villagers, then better player would still win, right? But the game wouldn’t be better. So you need to come up with better argument why autoQ is good.
So Winning isn’t important, because there are other game people can choose to play. AoMR needs to be good and autoQ makes it worse even if better player wins. We are not here looking to compete in Tetris (where better player wins as well) but an RTS with actual strategies. Do you not fantasise about flanking enemy economy with 3 early minotaurs and leading them having idle TC for 2 minutes, and this idle time leading you into winning the game? If AutoQ exists, your 3 minotaur strategy is just trolling and will never be a good play. You outplayed the opponent, but autoQ made your amazing new strategy bad.
Auto-queue was in the Titans expansion so it should be in Retold. If they decided to remove it I will be very 
especially when they have decided to add a villager AI resource management system.
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If you are using your army to keep villagers idle or block resources then it is just as effective. If the person getting harassed is too busy with the flank attack then they will mismanage their eco. The one and only difference is whether or not they remembered to press the build villager button. It’s negligible beyond a certain elo to begin with, building villagers gets forgotten about at very low skill levels without harass anyways.
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AQ is very bad. It has to be removed in the remaster
Let’s just agree to disagree about this. I still believe it’s going to be fine.
I’m not a big fan of autoqueue. I played AoM back in CD version and I think they included AQ with titans expansion
I was ~1700 elo before titans and jumped to 2k+ when AQ was implemented. I wasnt very good, but I could micro units well
It’s way too op, but kinda hard to explain why it’s op, but think like this: without AQ, normal players either forget to queue units or spend hundreds of resources in advance on units to focus somewhere else. Pros are used to cycle between each building and train one of whatever they need every 10-20 seconds.
With AQ, we can just forget about it and not spend hundreds of resources in advance, getting upgrades earlier, leveling up, etc. The good thing is that anyone can be a pro and the bad thing is that anyone can be a pro
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Why is it bad? If you’re not paying attention, you’ll be wasting resources and training the wrong units. Also, if you don’t like it, then don’t use it.
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People who don’t like Auto queue just don’t use it.
I like it very much, it can let me just concentrate on frontline battle.
Why does the game need to remove the original stuff to satisfy people.
Its unique function in AOMT. Who hate it ,can go AOE2, AOE4.
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@firstaim7016
There wasn’t autoqueue in AoM vanilla, after then online players have dropped off dramatically, paradoxically since the advent of autoqueue.
I wonder why those people did not choose to return to vanilla to show off their 10000 click per second skill, but ended up disappearing instead.
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So I said AOMT.
It was a great improvement from AOM to AOMT.
People dislike auto queue can go back AOM.
AOMR is based on AOMT.
So after auto queue, what function should be removed next time?
How about infinity farm food. Let’s remove it too to make people more click.
Then remove shift function, people need to click one by one “show their skill”.
Next remove gathering point from building.
The game finally return to 1990s like Warcraft 2.
All people happy.
This is Warcraft 2 gameplay, people who want to enjoy infinity meaningless click should play this.
No gathering point, no Shift function, No hot key, etc. People can have APM good show to their audience.
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That is a hard one. With niche RTS games, splitting the playerbase is absolutely a dangerous move in that sense. If anything, it is a rarity that players manage to maintain a community over older games, but it isn’t random either. It usually comes down to leaps of design.
For instance, AoE3 is wildly different to AoE2, so it is understandable that someone who can’t get into all the new AoE3 mechanics would just stick with AoE2 instead. But, what if they hadn’t released AoE3, but instead AoE2.1? AoE2.2? AoE2.3? At what point will they want to seek a reversal of all the problems that was introduced (as well as all the improvements)?
Personally I still hold the opinion that there were some better things about the original AoE2 over the Definitive Edition, despite how successful it was. I dislike automatic seeding, and think that DE has actually regressed in some ways like Pathfinding. I also find the live constant shift in balancing less interesting, as I played AoE2 for the sake of improving mechanics and strategies rather than the metaslaving of constantly only playing new, stronger “balanced” mechanics.
It is in that way that games like SC1BW are still charming, as minimal changes means players can keep iterating strategies in an effort to overcome weaknesses of their faction and the strength of others. And while this may not sound as interesting in of itself, there is another perk; that no one is live tweaking balance at any and every outcry of players online who don’t like the game to begin with, or who want to change it to something entirely differently.
Because that is the issue ultimately. Players aren’t developers. They WILL vote against their own interests again and again, because they don’t understand nor care for the underlying design of it all. They will ask for more, and more, and more, until it all gets boring and meaningless, at which point they turn around and call the game boring.
Anyway. Will a player leave because they changed the stats of 1 unit? Because they changed the pathfinding? Because of autoseeding? Because they added autoscouting? Autoqueue? Eventually the salimi slicing will reveal its damage, and eventually the original game will seem very different to the live one.
As for the question of why players don’t simply go back to the original? Well, maybe they will, but the realistic answer is that the biggest portion of playerbases are never hardcore fans or supporters. They will stick with whatever is the latest slop, until they themselves get bored. When you migrate that population from AoM to AoMDE then make AoMDE dogwater, you’ve killed AoM whether you intended to or not.
I’m talking about the hardcore players because casuals would not find autoqueue a feature that kills their advantage. However those people (if thr number is correct not made up) did not migrate to or stay in vanilla either.
I’ve seen quite a few opposite examples even in thr AOE series.
There were people who stuck to the original version of AOE1 ROR. Did not migrate to AOE2 (unlike 3 vs 2, 2 is a direct improvement on 1’s gameplay). Did not migrate to AOE1DE or Return of Rome. And they eventually turned the original AOE1 into an esports.
In China, due to the fact that most people played pirate versions back in the days, The Conquerors’ patches did not spread and most people continued playing 1.0a. And it lasted for quite a while.
If vanilla AOM is so competitive-friendly, and has great enough esports potential, and autoqueue killed it, then it should still remain as a competitive game. Especially the hardcores would stick to it. But neither happened, so at least one of the premises is wrong.
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Auto queue is balanced by needing resources and population space in order to train units so imo not really a “game breaking” feature. Same with some of AoE 2’s automation features that were added in DE such as auto farm
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