This will never happen, so I did not consider that at all. But yea nice try!
You have to be logical and realistic when you try to balance sieges.
Why friendly fire is a toxic effect? Explain to me!
I remember in AOE2, sieges offer risk and reward, only depends on how it is used.
Not true at all!
Many pros already stated that siege is the main problem and many players are not enjoy it.
One example is The Viper. https://www.facebook.com/TheViper/videos/aoe4-session/701753907523181/
Look 2:48:00 hrs/min/sec.
“When siege is involved, the dynamic action is gone” - The Viper
AOE2 sieges were far more balanced compared to AOE4. Oh boi, it was 4x cheaper, but people did not spam it because it included risk and reward depending on the usage. Therefore, building an army was a crucial point, instead of a mass siege.
The point of the extreme hypothetical isn’t to say they should give mangos 1HP, but that there is a point where you can nerf siege’s stats that would make it unspammable, without implementing friendly fire. Maybe it’s mangos do 25% less damage than now, or something like that. But the point is that such a point is present, and finding it would be much better than friendly fire. And I already explained how friendly fire is toxic because it punishes a player for using their own units.
I watched the section from 2:48 to 2:53. If I missed something, please let me know what other sections I should watch. In it, Viper complains that siege makes the game campy and not dynamic, and that it still seems too strong. Sure. I will note that Viper is only one pro, and other pros might have different opinions. But I don’t have any clips of them stating their opinions on siege right now, so for the sake of the arugement we can say that siege still needs a nerf.
But nowhere - absolutely nowhere - does Viper say he wants friendly fire. So my argument above still applies - nerfing siege stats would be a more healthy way of making siege unspammable than adding friendly fire. Do you have any clips of pros saying they want friendly fire specifically? I would be very interested in hearing their reasoning
That is not a proper explanation of the “Friendly fire is Toxic” statement of yours.
It is a mechanic/feature.
He said AOE4 lacks core AOE2 features. And the core AOE2 feature for the siege was “friendly fire”. And more such as real-time projectile speed and accuracy etc.
If you watch The Viper’s 1st gameplay stream of AOE4, you would notice him saying sieges are overpowered, they don’t deal any friendly fire damage, just spam siege etc xD
Alright, sure.
It is frustrating when your clump of MAA get oneshot by enemy mangonels. I think we would both agree on that point. It is even more frustating if if is your own mangonels oneshotting your own units. You feel as if you’re punished for using your own units. That is toxic. Players should feel rewarded for using their own units, and only punished by enemy units. I played Starcraft 2 for almost ten years at Diamond 1. I played Terran then. I used Widow Mines, because they are strong units. But man oh man was it frustrating as hell when my widow mines hit the wrong zergling and blew up my own marines and medivacs while not killing much of the enemy army. So much so that I didn’t want to play another game afterwards, especially if that caused me to lose. That’s the toxicity that introducing friendly fire would do.
(Incidentally I want to note that in Sc2, widow mines, siege tanks, and high templar psi storm all do area of effect friendly fire. They are also still built in very large numbers, very similar to how mangonels are built in AOE4)
In the section between 2:48:00 and 2:53:00, I do not hear him say that AOE4 lacks core AOE2 features. The closest thing I hear is that AOE4 is not as competitive as AOE2 or SC2, at 2:29:35. And this seems much more related to the bad UI, map gen, hotkeys, unit selection and control, rather than siege. Again, I do not hear him specifically argue for siege friendly fire here.
I mean this was back when springalds were overpowered and siege still zoomed really quickly. Obviously siege was much more spammable then. It has no relevance to our discussion now.
And I hear no response to my arguement that “Nerfing siege stats is better/healthier than friendly fire”. Are you conceding that point?
When friendly fire is in effect, you start luring enemy units with a few units of yours into the mangonel range. That allows you to take a good shot at more enemy units and lose a few of your units. Or sometimes, the enemy would notice and retreat, but you would manually aim with your mangonel and take a shot to kill enemy units without any loss. It is not toxic, you just don’t send an equal amount of units or equal resource units at once. It makes the sieges not spammable and offers more risk and reward at the same time.
When he says AOE, it basically means AOE 1 and 2, as these games share core features and mechanics. AOE3 he does not play as it was a failure. So when he says AOE features etc, It refers to AOE2 mostly, as he mains AOE2 as competitive play.
Well indeed nerfing siege HP, DMG, etc is needed, but without such core AOE features and mechanics, it does not balance out well and will remain spammable as it is effective in most cases and offers a big reward, tiny risk (being the cost).
This is something that only high-level competitive players can pull off. I’m around 1400 elo, so I probably do have the APM to do something like that. It would probably make gameplay more dynamic for me. But casual players do not have the APM/micro to pull something like that off - many of them don’t even target enemy siege with springalds right now. So at the more casual levels you’re just going to result in the toxic gameplay pattern I stated. And as I said, making the game better for competitive players while making it worse for casuals hurts the game in the long run. if you want to make the game better for comeptitive players, give us better unit selection and control and a better UI and customizable hotkeys, not friendly fire
Alright, so around 2:48:40 he says “I still think [the game] is lacking so many features that can make the game properly competitive”. He goes on to complain the game is lacking features involving unit selection, pathing, micro. He does not mention siege until 2:49:10, and even then, it is just to say that it makes the game campy and not dynamic. Viper has identified a problem, but he is not proposing a solution here (besides some unspecified nerf to siege). You cannot say from this statement that Viper thinks siege should have friendly fire. And even if he does, that does not make it the better solution. See below
Again, my extreme hypothetical of mangos having 1 HP and damage proves that there is some point that you can nerf siege stats to to make it not spammable. Finding that point is the better solution. If siege is too high reward low risk right now, then increase the risk (lower the HP/mobility) or lower the reward (decrease damage) as necessary, without friendly fire
Many former AOE players were so disappointed due to the reasons I have tried to explain to you. It needs that medieval logical and physical feeling to become an AOE game. And that is why players like me from previous AOE1 and 2 are very disappointed because such core features and Mechanics are missing.
I think you are not from previous AOE titles so you won’t care/know what I trying to say.
It is like what happened to BF2042, they lost the identity of BF and that is why the game died.
The same is happening here, losing its identity and disappointing AOE fans.
It’s true that AOE4 is my first Age of Empires game. I come from Blizzard RTS, and have played mainly Starcraft 2, and a bit Starcraft Brood War and Warcraft 3. I am invested in this game because Blizzard has put SC2 on maintenance mode, and I don’t see them changing that in the near future, making this game the last best hope for RTS right now. But let me give you an example that shows that you don’t necessarily want all mechanics from your older games to carry over into new ones.
SC1 is notorious for having terrible unit pathing, with dragoons and goliaths being the most memeable. However, since the game’s release this terrible pathing has become a beloved part of the game, and crucial to its gameplay and balance. So much so that when Blizzard released SC1: Remastered a few years ago. they had to guarantee that the Remaster would just be updated graphics, and no changes to pathing behavior or any other gameplay mechanic would be present. And yet, Starcraft 2 has amazing unit pathing - better, as Viper notes, than AOE4 does. It was the correct decision to ensure this mechanic doesn’t carry over from SC1 to SC2, because it is a mechanic that makes you feel like you’re fighting the game instead of your opponent. I believe friendly fire is similar.
And of course I agree that many features from previous AOE titles should carry over into AOE4 - things like global build queue, a map editor, and, gameplay wise, the ability to actually dodge mango shots. I think those are at least as crucial to the AOE identity as friendly fire is, and I think a lot of AOE people would like AOE4 more if those features were present
You guys make some good points and i can see why some players may not like the friendly fire. I guess you’re right in saying that microing siege as a result of friendly fire being introduced would be harder for casual players and maybe that was the considerations of the devs. But i don’t know if that will or how much it will deter casual players. If it does they can still enjoy everything else is the game has to offer.
Not sure if this was a problem with aoe2 but in saying that there was a lot more symmetry with civz.
But i feel like having friendly fire will create more dynamic battles. I find it a little frustrating seeing your whole army get wiped out and you’re just forced to produce siege to counter it. Maybe instead of friendly fire maybe make mango projectiles less accurate or slower to hit the ground so you can at least dodge it
Will happily sit on camp of no friendly fire. They are the bane of AoE2 casual players. Watching a knight or two run by and your siege onager blows up half your arbalest was a great and exciting feeling of “never-building-siege-again”.
SC2 friendly fire unit like siege tank were designed with friendly fire as a weakness to be exploited. Most of SC2 units are range so friendly fire don’t usual occur but when zealots and zerglings are involved, they are meant to force friendly fire on you as a mean to counter siege tank.
Honestly a simple population cost increase would really hamper the post imp strength of mass siege.
Thanks for giving me the time of the stream so I could listen to his side of the problem. I see now that he has some very good points about siege changing the whole battle once they get involved, I also felt it every time.
The comparison with SC was also very insightful as I played SC2 before and intuitively it does feel even for me that you had the right control of everything. The game does have lots of things its missing as I have previously stated, it’s why I said the lack of features makes it a bit hard for me to accept such control mechanic. Because from my perspective, we have to evaluate it from the ground towards the top working on firstly improving things like maps, UI, fixing the bugs, hotkeys and all and then focus on repairing the unit’s accuracy, upgrades, functions and buffs vs nerfs. Because these things are influenced by the bugs, their way of acting on the battlefield is influenced by the hotkeys and how they shoot and effectiveness is managed by the map with its elevations, shrouds and all.
Now that I’ve understood what you meant about playing against the game, I’m glad we could both agree on something that was obvious from its release: Lack of balance, as it narrows down to that.
This would be more realistic and so would be siege friendly fire, but the game can’t support this. And I’ll tell you why out of what I’ve seen: there is a specific design of the game that it is wanted to be kept to surface. That means certain features are not part of what it was intended on purpose for that obvious reason. Would it be bad if we want them in the game through discussion? No. But I’m not sure if devs could compromise the original idea that they have to go for from the company for the idea we the players have. That is because changing certain features affects the marketing and what they initially wanted to promote in terms of RTS.
Therefore if siege friendly fire or accuracy of arrows is against that design it is a low chance it can get implemented unless there are more things changing at other levels. They said it themselves that it’s not as micro intensive because they want you to feel more like a general. What does a general do? Make strategies, units do the rest. In a battlefield in reality you can’t tell your men to avoid arrows or rocks in a moshpit, you can only tell them to go forward and attack or retreat or form formation. Now this just said explains the current features we have.
Sure for more competitiveness, I agree for such mechanics to be implemented but then it will go against what was intended. I am keeping my position as a negative and let whoever gets to evaluate these discussions if competitiveness is what the game wants to promote or not. I’ll be here to see it happen either way.
perhaps it helps if I add that for me, by the time siege enters the game, my brain goes into relaxation mode. Never has an AOE game been relaxing to me in imperial, but in AOE4 there are so many easy click mechanics (farms-unit production across multiple buildings equally divided etc. ) that it’s just right-click with knights or siege.
I’ve played my fair share of treaty and DM so I’m used to 200 pop non-stop mayhem but AOE4 feels too easy in imperial.
Siege should be exciting to play but also should have some drawbacks. Anti-troops siege should be high risk high reward unit. You should use it with serious responsibility on the battlefield. If you can’t control your siege then just don’t make them and focus on making counter troops to the opponent’s army, not just brainless spam mangonels.