I have seen streamers using the mangonel range mod and I believe it to be such a huge advantage, that it doesn’t seem fair for some players to have it and others to not. I love that part of the game is knowing where the range of siege is. It seems crazy that mod’s are not regulated for ranked games.
In my opinion it looks horrible and lowers the skill level to the game. I hope that the answer isn’t to add it to the game officially (like building range) as this means that if players don’t adopt, they are at a great disadvantage. Putting in building range feels like the start of a slippery slope, where my beautiful AOE2 battlefield becomes full of circles and extra information that isn’t the aoe2 I love.
I love this game but Mangonel range mod FeelsBadMan
10 Likes
It looks ugly as hell too. Belongs on the garbage bin like the Age of Mandala and Age of Cubes mods. Who likes to uglify his game to a point it looks like a MS Paint presentation. I’m already torn between using Small Trees mod or not but this is on another level.
8 Likes
I think it should be part of the main game. Big improvement for the game.
At least as version that doesnt look ugly. This is what went wrong with the Age of Mandela mod. The mod is still better then the ingame feature. I also have no idea if the devs already fixed the issue of inaccurate ranges? I dont use the ingame tool, bu the Age of Mandela mod for that reason.
I must admit that i dont use the mangonel mod. The same is true for some unit range indicator mod (if exists). I do think such addition would be a good addition for the game as well.
3 Likes
Eh. Maybe not banned in ranked, should the grid be banned as well? It’s easy to see the range with grid as it is - why some needs extra stuff for it is beyond me.
Age of Cubes is dumb, but funny tho.
3 Likes
If we ban that then Civ picking too, increases your win-condition without any counterplay and the only counter is to use it yourself - like these mods…
If you ban civ picking in ranked we can also ban this mod
2 Likes
I believe that extra visual aids should be banned from ranked and tournament games, excepts the ones included in the game options. I think that the building range rings shouldn’t be there as it is. Developers could at least remove the ability to check the range of the enemy buildings. I wish the size of the trees could also be integrated in the game with options (normal, medium, small) without needing a mod. That would be a nice, simple improvement to include in the next DLC.
2 Likes
Range mods have never requested by high level players and only few mid level players, but they had to use them to stay competitive.
Now the building arrow mod is even integrated in the main game.
24.
This is simply not true, the age of mandala doesn’t show the accurate range depending on upgrades and also doesn’t take into account elevation like the non-mod feature does
I gotta fever… and the only prescription is more HUD overlays!
Just kidding 
I’m also not a fan of such mods being possible in ranked games, let alone being embedded in the game
So they already have improved the inbuilt feature? Good to know.
1 Like
I don’t think banning client side mods will help with stuff.
Usually this leads to “cheater” clients and a cheating-centered community.
Personally I don’t mind folks using client-side mods as to be honest, client-side mods have been around so long, that though they’re adding additional info… that’s merely a sign the mod community is active. I’d focus more on fixing bugs than attempting to patch out these mods.
For competitions they could be banned but that’s about it; there’s really no way to start banning these without implementing some type of anti-cheat… which sounds annoying in a modding-community centric game like AoE2.
Which info is added by the mod?
Afaik the range is already visible as number. So the range itself isn’t additional information. The mangonel mod shows info that is already in the game differently. Instead of a number is it made visual. So there is no new info added to the game.
2 Likes
Correct.
It’s not adding any new info, but it’s making current info more readily available to users.
I don’t have a problem with that.
That said my favorite game mode is 256x vs multiple AI so… I could understand some folks getting salty. But I have been playing the game for over 10 years and in my experience it wasn’t competitive Voobly that saved it, it was all the weird but fun custom maps and mods on HeavenGames that kept the main community alive and was one of the reasons MSFT came back.
I welcome weird mods like Age of Cubes and the mangonel range mod and the tower range mod. I would never use them cause they clutter my screen and I only play AoE for fun.
In competitions I say remove them cause it’s clutter and competitions are easy to police. Trying to police random matches for graphical mods is a waste of moderator time though, imo folks who alt4 or kill with task manager are a much greater threat to the community of ranked play than folks who don’t know the intuitive range of a mangonel and want some type of weird overlay. /Shrug.
Great post, great points.
Thank you.
1 Like
Agree with initial post. Stuff like this is a bit too much. It doesn’t add new info per se, but it makes it accessible in a way it wasn’t designed to be, so semantics aside, it does give an unfair advantage.
1 Like