and mods like those, shouldn’t be allowed in ranked
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I respect your opinion but nowadays people love mods.
People use 256x tech small trees and many more. Doesn’t matter how unrealistic it is a Skirmisher throwing javelin from Byzantium to Iberia but it’s fun.
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Well if you allow people to literally cheat and make stuff in game easier for them, of course they are gonna “love it”.
the fault is on the devs
I’m not so worried about the field of view. The developers are veterans of the genre, and I have enjoyed almost every other game they have made greatly, so I have a hard time believing they would f*** something this essential up.
Regarding the empty areas around the buildings however, this worries me. Aoe where you cant wall with buildings would be a very different game. However, this is probably also one of the features that slows down a game like AOE 2 so much, so maybe the change will bring about more dynamic and potentially interesting gameplay.
Regardless, it is hard to really know before we see actual gameplay that isn’t just for show. Really hoping they will do some showcase matches between pro players in the coming month.
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In multiplayer if everyone uses it it’s fair not cheating.
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What makes you think everyone uses it?
I think competitive games should avoid features that obfuscate the consequences of player actions. When you do an action, you should be able to know what the result is. A big issue with line of sight blocking/unclear building placement, is that players end up with a whole bunch of actions that does not have the results they expected.
I dont want to play/see pro players play games that are decided by one player not walling properly, because a tree blocked a hole in the wall, or because a 1x1 square was left open between two buildings. These games are so incredibly anticlimactic.
If developers dont solve this, then I am very happy that modders are enabled to do so.
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That are what trees are suppose to do, they are big barriers between the players and you, something that obfuscate vision
why do people want it so easy now a days?
I am sorry, but if you require to use a cheat that modifies how the game looks and works, then you are NOT a real Pro gamer, that’s it.
This might just be me, but when I look for competitive games, I want the difficulty to come from my opponent, not the game working against me. This is the same reason why players want good pathing on units – it is a lot harder with bad pathing, but it is a really bad kind of hard. If we want the game to just be hard, we might as well make the right and left mouse button swap functions every 2-3 seconds. That would make the game really hard, but I would argue, not any better.
The issue with trees & buildings blocking line of sight in aoe 2, is that it happens to everyone sometimes, but it is random when/who and depends on map layout etc. This means that effectively, it is just something that randomly lets one player get an upper hand.
If a player makes the decision, takes the time, spends the resources to wall their base, and the opponent does not intervene, I dont want that player to have a hole in their wall because the game’s visuals aren’t able to convey the right information to the player.
*edit - also if the mods are allowed by developers, it is per definition not cheating
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The game is not “working against you”, it’s an enviromental obstacle and you must adapt and learn how to work around it, that is how RTS games work
I have no idea why the devs haven’t removed those cheat mods like “simple terrain” or the cube mod…
Well, clearly the developers do not agree that the visual obstacle aspect is an important part of the games design, since they let players remove it.
My guess is that developers leave the trees big, because that is how the game has always looked, and it looks prettier for casual players, but they acknowledge that it adds nothing positive to the competitive experience, so they allow players to make them smaller/do other things to circumvent the issue.
Of course, we can’t know this for sure, but personally I certainly think the game is better for having clearer visuals.
“because that is how the game has always looked”
wrong
“and it looks prettier for casual players”
I’d like for you to prove me that, because I refuse to believe casual people think those small scaled trees look better than the more detailed and fleshed regularo nes.
Sorry, I might not have been clear. What I meant was that the reason that the developers leave the trees large as default is because that is how they used to look, and it looks better - which is nice for casual players. But, the developers allow players to use mods to change the size of them - even in competitive games - because they acknowledge that this leads to a better competitive game experience.
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If the scale of the building is changed the flashing does not have to be changed with it. But also don’t forget that AOE4 is intentionally being taken in a different direction. 
I personally think the edging around the buildings is a good/interesting direction, will hold further judgement until I get to test them out myself.
Some important things to note:
All ‘cities’ build so far are infact VERY spread out and spacious, if your good at ‘seeing’ the grid and its perspective, its quite obvious that there are many empty grid squares between buildings etc, the spreadoutness I think was done to help show off the decorative stuff that gets automatically generated in that deadspace. A lot of people are making the right point, this is not what a regular packed skirmish base is likely to look like, and it may be that the spacing around buildings is actually perfectly fine and you still get a satisfying density when buildings are actually placed next to each other.
Something I would like to see is some buildings ‘connecting’ when aligned and adjacent, this would be most/only applicable to houses… so within your base you can make literal “house-walls”, but only in a linear row etc, and maybe it only connects the first 3 or whatever. it also has a very visually satisfying look when games do this, there are plenty of examples, most recently I noticed it in Frostpunk. It could help to create more block-like structures within the city to make choke-points of some description. Even without this mind you, never underestimate the effect of many buildings together (but walkable between) effect on melee pathing, and can give archers etc an advantage, even having to walk around a small house can be huge in some battles.
Also I don’t believe the scaling has much issue with this either, as each building as a footprint, a collision box (which appears smaller than the footprint) and a 3D model, which is separate from the collision box, the latter of course can be scaled easily enough to satisfy any visual style you need without the need to change the other two gameplay related parts. Also, just because you scale z, doesn’t necessarily mean you HAVE to scale x,y, you’d be surprised how much height you can get without noticable model stretching, and bad cases can always be remodelled.
I took the liberty of doing a grid analysis on your chosen screenshot.
Important things to note,
Barracks + ranges … (perhaps all military buildings) seem to have more space around them than other buildings.
Towncentre has no space around it.
Farms are 2x2 tiles large, smaller than what they are in aoe2 (3x3) Which will also make them easier to put around a towncentre (4x4) or mill(2x2) without doing windmilling patterns, see SOTL farm placement videos.
The monument is HUGE, 5x5 tiles is much bigger than anything seen in other games. Even forts in age3 are close to to 4x4 in its unique grid system (The grids are actually very small in age3, but lets not get distracted)
Houses are 2x2 and very little to no space around them.
At the zoom of that screenshot, the horizontal number of squares is estimated at ~15, maybe even 16 or 17. Hard to calculate perfectly. Personally I don’t think this is the most zoomed out you can be during play, and its a “medium” shot, - Note many pros actually play a little zoomed in to increase accuracy.
Interestingly, despite being huge, the height of the 5x5 monument really doesn’t obstruct the tiles behind it very much, thats pretty impressive from a visual clarity perspective. (only the military wing is obstructing maybe 3 squares).
Something really weird is that units are not affected by the fog (look at the top right corner, there is a horseman, a sheep, and some villagers mining)… this is obviously done to make them stick out, or it might be a small visual bug which happened to be in this screenshot? The horse man is the same height as the house, which is actually in keeping with house heights in age1 and age2(although perhaps not in castle age) and AoM.
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How did you get in the “community” council? It doesnt seem much of a community council when they pick the people on it and as the actual wider community people have no chance on giving input really.
that’s interesting. so what’s the bottom line assuming that’s all correct? What do we want from the devs to change here?
If for example you scrap the spaces around the buildings with all of their landscaping/artistry, can’t you just increase the size of the buildings to fully match their current footprint?
The scale will improve but then again your field of vision will be the same.
If on the other hand you scrap the spaces, can’t you just reduce the size of the footprint to fully match the current building size?
You may get more screen space but then again the scale will look the same.
What do I miss here? It feels like two separate issues .
By being a very active community member. Everyone I know has put in their years around here. Others were nominated by others.
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I think the missed the mark here. Walling with buildings is for some reason seen has unrealistic, but it is not. AoE2 is just a gem in so many ways.
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