Why exploits like Pull Trick are bad for the game

oh right , less players

as previously stated this is not a bug and indeed intended behaviour that ppl now use to the best of their ability at higher levels.
it will not be removed - end of story

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at least show on IU that the units is walking faster and why not make an art of war mission about this ? =D. Also i didnt know u were the master developer that choose decision about age 3
mechanics? really? we call this thing like that?

this is confusing the formation catchup system of which the speed up portion works passively and lasts less then a second with manually and repeatedly triggering it for extended periods of times, or pull trick. the speed up portion of the formation catchup system was never meant to be actively used this way, hence its an exploit of a flaw in this system.

the idea that it is an integral part of the game is also absurd, considering most of the player base and the developers who made the game played it just fine without actively exploiting this system to give their units massive speed boosts for extended periods of time. just like with alt-d and other formation exploits, it is never explained ingame and requires players to actively and knowingly trigger it.

stuff like this reinforces how harmful it is to the game and rts in general when a player can manipulate the speed of their units far beyond what is intended. the exploit in first example resulted in player 2 losing their treasure which should never have been contestable if player 1 explorer moved at their intended speed. it also means attempting to punish the steal is pointless because the explorer can just zoom straight out of snare. it destroys proper age 1 gameplay and scouting around treasures before taking them, as this exploit nullifies the importance of distancing and predicting enemy movements.

the cannon part in particular is just makes you laugh, those falconets where faster than hussars. while player 2 should have rightfully surrounded the cannons and killed them, by exploiting the mechanic player 1 nullifies the importance of positioning and the taj wonder and avoids getting punished for mismanaging their artillery by making them move far faster than they should be able to.

imagine playing starcraft and having your mothership move faster than corrupters or Vikings, or if your mangonels outran knights. in no other rts can you just blatantly break the move speed of units like this by exploiting formations, and for good reason.

this system being exploited doesn’t bode well for the competitive future of this game.

actual in-game mechanics that don’t exploit flaws in the game are things like herding, spreading snare and cover moding focused units, or quick walling and boar luring in aoe2, or immortal/prism hopping in starcraft. all of these use in game mechanics the way they where designed and intended to be used to their maximum potential. things like making your units shoot faster, move faster, stack on top of each other and rescue themselves through the formation system where never intended and breaks the games balance.

the exploit in first example resulted in player 2 losing their treasure which should never have been contestable if player 1 explorer moved at their intended speed.

How is it exploit when you literally see the animation ? I mean, there’s an animation that was coded ONLY for this. It’s literally mean to be in the game.

Or maybe you do think the game created that itself when people find strats ?

  • let’s be honest, nobody before you ever questionned it. And it’s not used at all exept at very good lvl so 99,99% of the playerbase won’t ever face it.
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Give-up, your point of view is in minority. Hight level players like this mech and low level players can’t exploid it.

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While I think it is a good mechanic, I hope that they eventually make an art of war tutorial for it and other micro mechanics so more people use them.

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there may be a language barrier here. the formation catchup system normally never speeds up units for longer than a fraction of a second, and isn’t meant to be triggered manually and repeatedly. that’s what the exploit is.

not sure why you believe that the knowledge of this exploit being exclusive to certain players makes it anymore ok to manipulate unit stats. it is still harmful to the game and can give massive unfair advantages to the player exploiting it. being the optimal way to play also doesn’t mean it is either liked or should be accepted, you were playing at a disadvantage if you weren’t using alt-d and that was also a harmful exploit to the game by reducing the consequence of losing your explorer, just like pull trick reduces the consequence of mispositioning and distance.

Who said that ? I mean, there’s not a page of rules saying you can pull trick once a game. + it’s pretty rare, on the short clip ahead it was so special it’s in a 9000IQ compilation.

Funny fact : I learned in 2016-017 while I was just a captain that attack-move existed, before that I was 100% microing manually. I was wondering how some players were entering a fight so effisciently.

Well, since that I attack move, I don’t post on the forum for them to remove attack move cause it’s an exploit in the game because people are supposed to micro with their mouse. :confused:

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except attack move is intended functionality, with a rebindable hotkey dedicated to it. it is right there in the hotkey menu since legacy. giving units extra move speed through formations never was. units are intended to move at their given move speed, the formation catchup system is something that works in the background and exploiting it to give your units an advantage due to it breaks balance, as shown in that clip. falconets are not meant to outrun sepoys, mahouts and hussars, they are balanced around moving at 4 move speed. explorers are not meant cross the map so quickly, it negatively effects age 1 gameplay.

Well, most of the people desagree with you. I do too.

And as said, there’s 99% of chance you never faced it in the actual game. Why asking to remove a mechanic used by tops players only ?

As Amphiprion said

Give-up, your point of view is in minority. Hight level players like this mech and low level players can’t exploid it.

now your argument seems to rest on an unproven statement of popularity and peer pressure? exactly what proof do you have of that, and why is that argument compelling?

and as previously stated, just because knowledge of an exploit is exclusive to certain players doesn’t make it any more legitimate.

You argument is mostly “it give an advantage for peaple using this mech”, which is true but you can said the same for kitting, or good build order, or good deck, or better map awarness.

What next? “some units can reload when they walk, which give a big advantage for peaple nowing that mech, in result some balance issu and this exploit nullifies the importance of distancing”
or “when you hit a tresure gardian from a certain distance and from a certain angle, his hp wont be reset and your unit wont take the aggro, in result you can deal a lot of free damage”.

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U just made me remember a guy from the re patch who would only play otto on great plains and would get mad at me for kiting his jans with my skirms

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again, there’s a difference between exploits and intended functionality. just like I replied earlier in regards to attack move, its an intended part of the game to kite units and treasure guardians. skirmishers used to have 5 move speed and had that speed nerfed to better balance around kiting, similair to treasure guardians who had massive move speed buffs after the game launched to make kiting them harder. now can you see where modifying a units move speed through exploiting formations, such as skirms and explorers, can cause balance issues?

making units rescue themselves, making them shoot faster, and making them move faster by exploiting flaws in the formation system break the game in unintended ways, such as falconets outrunning hussars. the formation system wasn’t intended to be exploited like this, and manipulating units stats through them gives an advantage that is unfair, harms the game, and nullifies proper gameplay.

Pull trick is intended. Are you a dev yourself to know what they wanted exactly? Pull trick is know since many years and nobody never complain about it, then aoe3DE removed some “glitch” (alt+d and gateling shot) but not the pull trick, conclusion dev are ok with pull trick, end of the story.

And i am pretty sure the way we kite thoses guardians was not intended in 2006.

You should put the same amount of effort to complain about all of bugs on this game which impact A WAY more than pull trick, at any level.

I am done with this thread.

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it is not intended to modify the move speed of units through formations, just like it wasn’t with other formation exploits. and just like those exploits, it was in the game for years. this doesn’t make it any less of an exploit. units are given a certain move speed for a reason, if falconets where meant to outrun hussars they would be given a higher move speed.

kiting units and treasure guardians has been in this game since its launch, there have been guides and balance patches based on it from the very beginning.

cav box and infantry box were still in the game when de launched, and it was also removed post launch. it wasn’t intended for formations to allow units to stack on top of each other any more than it was intended to give units extra move speed, thus it was fixed.

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You can learn how to do the pull trick here: Micro trick #2: the pull trick - YouTube

I have questioned before why formations where all this buggy. The reason why we could wake our dead hero without paying ramson was due to formations. The reason why we can break normal game balance is because of formations. like giving our units advantage at extra speed. And to this lets add that current canon system in DE is unplayable to some extent due to formation itself.

At one point even trying to formate your units near objects would get them stuck but if you manually walked one by one, then they would get stuck less often. [ They’re currently working on fixing units being stuck ]

For those who defend the pull trick. Go show us in which other AOE series [ Which also have formations ] you may repeatly abuse speeding your units. Go play AOE1 and AOE2 which also have formations. In there you have to manually micro units to trap others due to speed not been modified to units through formation. Also in AOE2 if you trying have your units that are behind catch those in front you’d have to stop the ones in front as they couldn’t increase their speed to maintain such formation.

Been here since 1998 playing AOE games We can’t really say game was designed this way, Due to game being Entirely buggy when it released back in 2005 to this let’s add that devs didn’t really love the game enough and with new team of dev they’re trying to fix game but they’re being slow. Recently we’ve gotten the ability to now see range on all units which before we couldn’t This is more friendly user. And helps new players. Now with canons you have the meter to know when to shoot. [ We can also bring the topic that there was a mod that allowed you to modify your game files to have advantage ] Is this balance though? because to my knowledge you can’t modify your files in most competitive games now a day and RTS is pure competitiveness

I’ve played all AOE series and never been able to increase units speed at a long period of time by abusing a bug. In AOE2 It would be great to speed my knights to catch mangonels or to speed my mangonels so they can outrun danger @.@ that’s because units have a designed speed so their counter can also work or what’s the point of using a cav which can barely reach its target

In the beta I even suggested Formation to be removed as it doesn’t add much positive to AOE3 and one of the reason was how people used it. AOE3 itself is lot closer to Starcraft 2 than other RTS due to how fast paced it is to manage economy and fight. And in stacraft 2 there is no formation. Which allows you to have more freedom when taking fights. In aoe3 due to how formation works sometimes you’re forced to take a fight.

I do think these kind of mechanics should be looked into and modify whatever is necessary. RTS are already hard and making it harder for new players do definitely makes them feel unwelcomed.

If we see how Stacraft 2 adapted from how it started and how it currently is. It adapted from been extremely micro intensive to be more friendly toward players [ I mention SC2 due to being the only RTS in recent times that has had a huge support from the devs than any other RTS when it comes to balance ]

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Really good point of view, but I think the matches on AoE3 are not decided by abusing pull trick, I’m a old player and never got frustrated by someone abusing this, I just don’t see the point of removing it from the game, though I would be fine either way.