I want to expand on the point I raised before.
I think the reason why some genres are more esports-friendly while some declined (eg RTS) is not 100% a difficulty thing, but whether the decisive factor is visible enough.
Why moba and fps always attract a lot of viewers who do not necessarily know well enough about the games? Because the decisive part is a series of good moves such as triple kill or perfect dodges. Even those who never watch games would understand why these are exciting.
Of course there are more “hardcore” factor like builds, choices of weapons, teammaking, etc. But those are for more hardcore audience. Average audience can still enjoy the match without knowing much about them. It’s like why soccer is popular. There are millions of audience who just like watching goals, and that’s already a huge one.
Now it’s not that RTS does not have such part. Good micro in battles and good strategical placement are visible and easy to understand. I believe most clips are about these.
But the real decisive underlying factor is the tedious, intensive switch between screens and production buildings and quickly pressing hotkeys. That’s where true advantages are built up, but these are very invisible and not fun to watch. And it takes very long before any true engagement starts. In fps or moba actions can happen at a very early stage, while RTS at the same stage would still be microing villagers and scouting.
TLDR: if the goal is to create good esports, then audience is the major concern and the emphasis should be on the most visible part.
There is no competition between casual and hardcore players anyways, so there is no “advantage”. People just prefer competitive RTS without autoQ because it makes speed and strategy more essential.
There will be automatic economy and even automotic farm placement in AoMR already. There is no reason for autoQ on top of that. You can concentrate on military all you want.
Is it even an issue if you just choose not to use it yourself? How is it even an advantage over other players? Are there only upsides to this? Because so far it’s just been about it either being a huge deal or only as impactful as training wheels.
It’s a discussion about a hypothetical, and it would be about removing a feature already in the game. Not adding it.
it is important that enemy doesn’t have access to it either because if my strategy is good, their military/economy production will suffer. Same as mine would. So having no autoQ brings extra benefit to any good decisions.
Right, but how exactly is that happening? Distracting your opponent so they stop pressing the button is part of the strategy? Aren’t those attacks done because of the actual damage you inflict and where they are forced to move their villagers from? How impactful is it on someone’s ability to press 2 buttons (TC hotkey + build vil hotkey)? I ask because the way you’re framing it is that your microd aggression, which didn’t interrupt your attention, has less impact because of autoqueue alone. An action every 20 seconds is a reduction of 3 apm. For me that takes my average 180apm to 177apm, 1.7% reduction…
I just haven’t had an issue with remembering to queue a vil in a long time. If I was forgetting to queue a vil then I’m definitely forgetting MUCH more impactful things that are not automated, like army micro or resource allocation. Though, villager placement is an automation option that I don’t imagine this crowd would want either, it’s something that makes more sense to me because we’re talking about 20~ apm reduction as opposed to the 3~ apm reduction that autoqueue represents.
Time has value as well. When you make decisions in RTS, you do not only count how much time it consumes from you, but also opponent.
RTS already come with way for you to reduce clicks: Queue more units at once. But resources in the queue will be off the map and might set you behind your opponent. You can easily see how this adds more skill expression and decisionmaking to the game. How many hoplites will you queue at once? 1? 5? 10? Will you add more barracks instead?
AutoQ didn’t exist in AoM vanilla, which is what made the game series popular, so there was no reason to add it. People are still complaining about it 20 years after, and it has barely won half the hearts.
Anyways AOMR will already have automatic economy, so autoQ isn’t necessary. If you can’t even be arsed to queue military, why are you playing an RTS?
What is the relations for “click one button to train unit”?
Build more barrack? first this requires more resource, second, auto queue also need to build more than one barrack.
When all games are trying to improve the function, you guys are asking the game to go back 1990s, why don’t you go back playing Warcraft2? The game doesn’t have any auto.
This is such a bad logical argument that several people in this thread rely on, and it is backed by only one evidence, with no real data provided.
Even if it is the case I can also say free myth units, titans, the Atleantean civ, the color scheme of the UI, the opening BGM, or anything added in the Titians is why AOM was popular and the Titian was not (assuming it is the case).
A good player manages to maintain villager production regardless (unless they run out of food or get housed, in which case autoQ wouldn’t help), so while distracting an opponent is an advantage, it won’t necessarily stop villager production (more likely to just leave the economy unbalanced as the villagers automatically go to chop wood or whatever resource they’re queued to go to - the impact is more likely to be floating resources in an unbalanced economy than missing out on villager production). And frankly, you’re as likely to distract yourself as you are to distract your opponent. There’s a meme where you attack your opponent, kill several vils, then look back at your base and realize you haven’t been queuing vils for the last several minutes.
Is that the case now in AoM? I doubt it (especially for Norse, who have a more complicated early game economy that doesn’t always go well with auto-queue). And also, is it the case now in AoE2? In AoE2, the early-game builds are often somewhat similar, even without auto-queue. Queuing constant villager production is just so much of a given that adding auto-queue would have minimal impact on the early game. It would make it easier, but the strategy doesn’t change at all.
As I understand it, most players tend to be more casual: they play the campaigns and never enter ranked matches at all. Such players won’t care about any (supposed) balance impacts of auto-queue - if they don’t like it, they simply won’t use it. And either way, their opponent is an AI that is theoretically capable of much faster apm than any human player (and practically has an auto-queue even if it isn’t available to players)
@JasuniSmith
The norse economy goes very well with autoqueue, actually.
Clicking dwarf and then AQ in classical age is not that bad and provides good utility, I guarantee you!
Thor was my favorite to play and the Norse economy is the worst one to use autoqueue with because of the difference between Gatherers and Dwarves when it comes to their cost and train time so I used autoqueue way less whenever playing as any of the Norse Gods.
