Remove scores from ranked matches

Just that, you can actually have info just reading the score, specially pros… and the boring part its that you can prepare for some situations. It is an exploid and considering devs got rid of the foundation “scan” in the last patch it could be a good moment to get rid of this one.

It would make tournament way more intresting in my opinion.

I wouldn’t mind it in cassual or quick matches, but I think it has no place in ranked.

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I think i have seen this thread a few times now.

Yes, I agree… In fact I made a thread about it a time ago…

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Yeah, some discussion about it here, too:

As I said there, I think it should be an option at least.

For ranked games, yeah, have it a toggleable lobby option, perhaps? For official AoE tournaments, might be cool to have them off completely, if they don’t do that already. What do you think?

Repeating what I said in the other thread, some players attack just because they see they see they are nicely ahead in score. Others quit a game just because they have the lower score for too long or by too much, or because they get alerted that the enemy aged up to the next age before them.

I think decisions to attack, and other decisions in the game (when to build stuff, when to age up, etc.) should be based more on the intel you’ve manually (and more painstakingly) gathered and/or how strong you think your might is, rather than by simply seeing in the lower-right of map that you are in Castle Age (III) and your enemy is in Feudal Age (II) still, and you have 300 more points than them… or whatever be the case.

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No. Can we please stop changing a 20 year old game that is like a perfect clockwork?

And the scan foundation it was just a part of the game that they removed, a bug? questionable at least, people didnt want to get scouted like that? oh my forward has been spoted! The truth is it took skill from the game.

Your “the boring part its that you can prepare for some situations” argument sounds pretty vague to me, you should elaborate more when proposing this big change, you wont convince an old dog like that.

What about removing age up times notifications next???

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It would be awesome, good idea

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The UserPatch has an option to remove the score from games. No one ever really used it. I played a couple of game with it, and it doesn’t really change much.

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I could settle with scores being automatically hidden - with no option of turning them on - in Ranked games.
While still maintaining the option of setting them on/off during game creation in lobby for unranked games.

My thoughts are given here:

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The very purpose of any score is to provide both you and the opponent with some intelligence about how the game is going. That is, revealing information isn’t a side effect – it is the purpose.

The score helps a losing player know when to resign or when to alter their approach. It also helps the winning player know when to go very aggressive to close out the game. Without a score, games with inevitable conclusions would go longer than necessary. Likewise, very close matches might have less confident players resign prematurely if they couldn’t see the score.

The score is a critical feature and should be retained.

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I could argument the same for the opposite side. Score not always reflect the real position of a player in the match. The decision of a player to stay in match looking for a comeback or go agressive to finish the game should come from his confident, his knowledge about the enemy situation (scouting) and his position in the match, not for a score.

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Well it’s pretty easy to ignore the score or disable it if you don’t like using it.

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Yes, it causes the players to resign indeed, but it doesn’t help them to know when to resign.On the contrary, it can often lead to premature surrenders or free wins.

I think it is also needless to mention the countless historical examples where battles or wars were won by the underdog in numbers.

Scores can take away a huge part of scouting and reduce the critical thinking required by the player to assess the situation by himself.

Unless you play on top level, scores very often just preconceive the outcome. They end up self fulfilling prophecies as players are either giving them more credit than what they’re worth, thus surrendering prematurely -which they wouldn’t if both sides were unaware of those scores- or looking at them every minute to chart their every next move.

Thus players do not make use of their own information, critical thinking or experience or intelligence to chart a strategy to beat their opponent but are simply looking to please their numbers and do as the numbers tell them to do.

To me at least and to my understanding of the concept of AoE, which I’ve always seen it as a simulation of the essence of war, a strategic interaction and eventual clash of two or more sides for control and resources - this role of the scores doesn’t feel natural.

Scores shouldn’t be an absolute measurement of the winning side either. It is just the machine, calculating some weighted parameters which players wouldn’t be able to do so in real time. The aspect of war entails much more than that.
Plan, confidence, map control, bluffs, tricks, creativity, judgement, decision making etc.

More on that I’ve mentioned in the linked discussion above where imo chess is a really good example.

I can understand however that many people would prefer something easier than that. And it is definitely easier to look at a score and take decisions based on it. So for unrated games there should be an option to show scores, that I can agree with.

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That’s not a good argument. Disabling scores is not something that can or should be happening unilaterally as that would immediately put you in a disadvantageous position.

There should an option upon which people will have agreed beforehand (or be automatic for ranked games), that disables scores for all players in game without the option to turn it back on in the middle of it.

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at the very least, the score calculation formula should change to remove some of the larger information leaks

it should count “resources spent on technology being currently researched” at the same rate as “resources stockpiled”

that way you aren’t handicapped if you don’t have screencapture running in the background performing OCR on the score to notify you when opponents click up

The post before mine pointed out that the score doesn’t always reflect a player’s real position, so ignoring it should be a good idea if you think the it will make you take bad decisions.

But really at the end of the day I think you greatly overestimate what the score can tell you. Especially for most the player base, as the game already give us enough to do that we shouldn’t be worried about how effective it is to focus on the score and try and play guesses base of that.

What’s that?

I have to encounter many stupid ideas in this forum. What is next? Removing your opponent’s name and civ?

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In the case of drushing it is a big deal. You can deduce with a great margin of success if your enemy it is about of drushing because of the score, and a successfully surprise drush impacts strongly in a match

Hmm I like knowing the score… especially when the opponent is Persians :wink: :wink: :wink:

Your scout is crying on the corner of the map