It doesn’t make sense that they should give such huge LoS. WDYT?
From immersion PoV it feels weird to me, it’s just a pit with spikes… the closest existing equivalent we have is the Spider Lair GP and the dryad, both of which are creatures, so it makes sense that it gives some LoS. Like walls don’t give any LoS. From gameplay perspective this just encourages players to build traps more like obelisks not fort their actual offensive/defensive utility.
Being able to get VIsion with smoke traps is one of its only current uses. Please dont take that away. For spike traps 100 wood should buy me some LoS, its a heavy wood sink for it
It also makes complete senses from a gameplay standpoint of being able to actually see what units are near the traps so you can play around that. Them being completely blind like walls would make them even harder to use.
If LoS becomes the primary use case of traps it just indicates either a design flaw or that they have not yet been figured out, but either way that’s not a strong argument in favour of it imo.
see what units are near the traps so you can play around that.
I don’t understand what exactly you mean? LoS doesn’t matter if the trap is auto-cast, which from what I see thus far most of them are. If you can really spare the APM for that sort of min-maxing sure, but even halving the LoS would allow you to do that. Currently it’s what, around 2.5 times its activation radius. 1.5 would be plenty to see the enemy units and deciding if you want to manually cast it.
It is part of the trap function, as you mention all other types of traps also have LoS. Taking it out due to some weird reasoning of flavor isnt really an argument imo. And yea they are expensive and limited in use so it snot like you can pop them around the whole map as if they were obelisk.
It matters if the trap targets a group of villagers vs one unit wandering about, so you can see. It also would remove the use of removing the autocast if a player wanted to control their activation. Or just to see whats moving around. Otherwise you would have to cover a gold mine full of traps if they are mining the side you didnt place it on, since it wouldnt show the villagers.
Just removing LoS for lack of immersion takes away from different dynamics you can do with them, gameplay should come first, otherwise all sort of things could be changed. Why does a soldier punch a tower until it falls? Why do soldiers survive being stbbed by traps or arrows or burned alived by a myth unit” Why did my unit survived being hit by a meteor / insert god power here, it should 1 shot it.
Also, how does 2.5 break your immersion but 1.5 doesnt? Are traps overperforming to nerf them?
I’m not advocating for completely removing the LoS. I think something like spider lair would be more appropriate. Especially if the traps benefit from LoS upgrades (do they? they are buildings I think). The hamadryad gives more, but it is much, much more expensive than the traps.
It’s not that they’re overperforming (honestly I don’t think it matters for this discussion, if towers were underperforming would you just give them more LoS?), but that players are encouraged to use it more for the LoS than actually trapping the opponent. When I first saw the LoS of traps it just felt (and still does) super weird from game design perspective, that’s why I’m sharing. To me a trap should be well for trapping, surprising, debilitating your opponent. If players use traps for scouting/keeping tabs on the enemy instead of, oh idk, their mini cloaking oracle, it just feels off and that something is off design-wise.
I also honestly think that they might not be that bad and that we’re still figuring them out. In the tournament we just had there was a game where one of the players got 2 extra vill kills because of the smoke trap, that was super cool, that sort of play I think should be encouraged.
I somewhat agree. It is illogical for traps to have a huge LoS and also illogical from them to benefit from the LoS upgrades.
I think traps should be buffed, made cheaper (like 50%) and have their build limit massively increased and then also have their LoS reduced. Because cheaper traps could be abused to gain vision. Paying 50 Wood to get vision on when the next enemy attack happens could be a valid trade off and it could be easy to position the trap in a way where it is not revealed to the enemy when their army moves by.
The spikes trap takes an eternity to activate, if the opponent is fast enough he can just move his army away and avoid it completely.
Also, the trap builder get selected in “the select all army hotkey”, similar to quetzalcoatl priests who do bloodletting.
Also, it’s really frustrating that only 2 different soldiers can build trap, the Aztec army have not extraordinary readability, so every time you have to waste time looking for those 2 specific units which are able to build traps..
Coyote warriors are decently fast, they should be able to make traps!
If they are underperfoing you wouldnt go about taking their LoS away.
Well its aprt of their function, you dont place traps in random spots in the map, you make them in key locations to trap players, them being useful to monitor that zone that is trapped is part of their use, like any other trap in the game, like Leto.
There for sure will be highlights of their uses and for sure could be theres some very good way to use them peoole havent figured out. But right now for most people 100 wood in classic age for very little damage is very costly. Some traps arent that huge of an investment but you also want spamming 6 of them early on and the loss of los of enemy units seems lackluster imo.
There is a cap on them, you cant make them like obelisk. About the los, they are Buildings, why would they not get benefits from Building techs?
This sounds Cool, would give the unit some use
I don’t really see them as buildings honestly, and I said that the cap needs to be increased. Why can you only have 6 traps if you can have 30 towers? That makes no sense.
So as I said buff the traps first and then reduce their LoS. They should be traps and not outposts.
Fair i guess, thou what other thing would you consider it? Its something you build with a unit that doesnt move. If you made it a unit then i guess it would get armory upgrades an other sort of deals.
Prob so you cant just spam them all around a zone later in the game.
The smoke trap itself has a very hard time doing its function. If it removes LoS from a couple of units but there are more behind them then its useless since those would just provide the LoS for the others. The slow is nice thou.
All traps / underground troops / mines / hidden buildings in any rts i have seen give LoS, its interesting to me to get to know why it would be illogical for them to do so.
I think they are neither unit nor building. They are just an entity. You wouldn’t call a tree am building either, would you?
Yeah but you can spam Towers isn’t that pretty comparable? Having to destroy 30 Towers is pretty annoying too isn’t it?
yeah I think the more logical thing would be to reduce range too. This way it could weaken enemy archers a lot.
Yeah but they usually have small LoS sometimes just the tile above them.
I think traps should have a small but not super small LoS. You should be able to see units before they step on the trap but it shouldn’t light up an entire path to your base or something like that.
They currently have an above average LoS when it comes to buildings. It shouldn’t be higher then like a house or something.
Well since its a game you would need to have a tag attached to them, since thats how games work. Trees are neutral resources, you dont control them nor build them and traps dont let you gather resources.
No, since traps dont cost pop. Just like towers and fortress they are an “extra” of sorts.
Yes, and you see that exactly happen in the late game, when you are full pop, you spam towers and fortress. Now aztecs would do that and traps. i should clarify im not defending the cap, im saying thats prob the reason why, either way going from lets say 6 to 10 or w/e number wouldnt really cause issues imo, and traps do need some love.
Not really, specially in aom. Leto eggs reveal a good zone, ofc traps give more.
Pretty sure it is very trivial to have them not be affected by building upgrades. Farms for example don’t get increased LoS from the building upgrades. They ironically get the building HP upgrades though.
yeah but would that be that much of an issue? Aztec Towers aren’t good anyway.
Leto eggs have 6 LoS and don’t benefit from upgrades. Why do Traps have 15 LoS and get more from upgrades?
Farms are not out in the open, its apples to oranges in all this examples. Traps dont move around like archers. Farms also get all the building cost redution techs, faster build time, etc etc Farms also provide a key distinction from traps…. They give resources.
Dunno if their towers are bad, the heroic age upgrade feels good. Like i said, im not vosting against the idea, you asked a reason and i gave you one the devs could have gone.
I literally next to sentence you quote say im not againts it and that increasing the limit wont cause issues imo, i agreed with you before you typed that.
Leto eggs are a god power, that you cant interact with at all, as in you cant detonate, build, repair (they dont have HP at all). They wont benefit from masons or arquittechs as well. The thing they share is being a trap and both provide LoS.
But i guess i call it, seems theres not game logic to debate about it and more immersion / prefeence, which is fine, to each their own.
I think it would be logical that a trap doesn’t provide much vision. I think the Leto eggs fill a similar role so it makes sense for the traps to have a similar LoS. Doesn’t have to exactly the same but having more then twice as much plus being upgradable seems kinda odd.
But as I said earlier only an LoS decrease in the context of an overall buff to the traps.
The trap’s radius is twice the size of the house, but its vision is the same. They can’t have less vision because then they wouldn’t see the soldiers destroying them (in three hits, by the way). I’ve never fallen into a single trap because the being visible even before anyone steps on them.
The LoS is bigger then a house atm.
But yeah the detection range is pretty big. So it makes it easy to avoid them if you are careful. So their efficiency kinda goes down over time when people start getting used to them. Reducing the detection range might also be something worth considering.
Generally stealth is not really that stealthy at all. It’s too easy to see stealth units.
Currently they are pretty effective vs. AI because AI just ignores them but of course they could easily change AI to never ever run into them. Not sure how that should be handled but that’s a whole different topic.
i agree with that but the increasing their built limit MASSIVELY might be problematic but a slight increase and a massive cost redcution i agree would be fair and useful.
someone sad to make traps builtable by all infantry but i think its on purpose the “weakest” infantry units can built traps so you still have a reason to built some later on. (beside the fact of some specific useful countering for the spearman)
i agree faster acitivation would be fair und useful. smoke traps could need something (but i think spike traps are already a cool feature and eough the smoke traps feel like more a detection thing to know where your opponent is (maybe increase the amount of smoke traps more than the amount of spike traps but make spike traps more useful with quicker activation and lower costs?)