Archer micro is a huge part of the competitive AoE2 scene. AoE4 had auto tracking arrows and I think folks didn't like it as much as it lowered the skill ceiling
I understand what was said. I'm saying that sucks. I don't really care about the tiny minority of people who care about the skill ceiling within a super low level micro.
RTS entices people into a strategy game. But the games are so similar that everyone but the top 1% of players will do better by simply following a predefined strategy and executing it as tightly as they possible can. And that sucks. Nudging guys a few inches to the side is the opposite of what makes the game fun for most people.
I'd like to see RTS games that randomize game parameters each time, requiring you to actually strategize.
> I don't really care about the tiny minority of people who care about the skill ceiling within a super low level micro.
I'd argue that most people that kept playing aoe2 online and kept it "alive" all care about that.
> I'd like to see RTS games that randomize game parameters each time, requiring you to actually strategize.
aoe2 already has randomised maps, I think that's why you actually get less strategy (in a sense).
In games with fixed maps, you see much more interesting one-off strategies (people like to call it cheese[0]) because you can plan everything down to the second. You'd plan & practice strategies on specific maps in specific matchups against the "standard" build orders.
AoE2 has these types of strategies too, but since the maps are always slightly different, you can't plan your building placement etc ahead of time.
There's also MegaRandom [1] which takes the randomisation to the next level. But I'd argue micro matters significantly more in that map, since you can end up in "unfair" situations where you need to outplay with micro to stand a chance.
> Nudging guys a few inches to the side is the opposite of what makes the game fun for most people.
That's how these games stay popular for 20 years. It's like complaining about strafe jumping in quake, it's what kept the game alive all this time.
> aoe2 already has randomised maps, I think that's why you actually get less strategy (in a sense).
I'm more of a fan of the in-game, on the spot strategizing that randomized maps force you to do, than the out-of-game meta-strategizing of fixed maps, where you do comparatively limited in-game strategizing.
> I'd argue that most people that kept playing aoe2 online and kept it "alive" all care about that.
I didn't say they didn't?
> aoe2 already has randomised maps, I think that's why you actually get less strategy (in a sense). In games with fixed maps, you see much more interesting one-off strategies (people like to call it cheese[0]) because you can plan everything down to the second. You'd plan & practice strategies on specific maps in specific matchups against the "standard" build orders. AoE2 has these types of strategies too, but since the maps are always slightly different, you can't plan your building placement etc ahead of time. There's also MegaRandom [1] which takes the randomisation to the next level. But I'd argue micro matters significantly more in that map, since you can end up in "unfair" situations where you need to outplay with micro to stand a chance.
The random maps are random within a very narrow set of parameters. They don't change the strategy. Practicing standard build orders is what 99% of players will need to do. I agree, at the very top level there is a level of strategy again. But in that grind to the top, the way you do better is by simply narrowing the time to get your first rush online. There's very little chance to actually change your gameplan.
> That's how these games stay popular for 20 years. It's like complaining about strafe jumping in quake, it's what kept the game alive all this time.
These games have not stayed popular. RTS has not done very well as a genre. You've got Starcraft and AoE2. And that's kind of it. AoM, AoE3, the shittier spinoffs, and AoE4 haven't made particularly big splashes. Nor have other franchises.
The thing is, these games are really fun to play casually, or in single player. But playing competitively where people are going to do stuff that works is so different and not compatible with what people liked when they were introduced to the series.
Consider a comparison to fighting games, where it's also a hard requirement to be obsessively deep with the game to make any progress. Fighting games have still seen a ton of success with many popular new titles.
edit: I was super deep on the AoM scene and mildly deep on the AoE2 scene; dropping off well past the title's prime but sometime before AoE2:DE
edit edit: I can also recall that the majority of online players back in the day would like the setting but seem to lose interest in playing normal maps and eventually settle on silly scenarios. It's not surprising that MOBA games have really taken off as that's what a lot of these scenarios were in some form; but worse.
If you get as chance give AOE2:DE a shot, I feel like it's what you are describing. It's impressive how many randomized game parameters it has... they even included a randomize button.
Additional you can add mods such as 'Random Costs' where units and buildings have random costs so standard build orders are impossible. Because the game is still being updated, people are making new maps and mods, there are often new strategies being discovered frequently.
But to me, the best part of the game is playing with a group that are all a similar skill level. Fortunately the game has a match making system letting my mates and I get paired up with others.
The randomize button was added in UserPatch, which was the de-facto version people played (on Voobly) until DE2 came around, it just took that over from there.
Nah, micro can definitely be exciting for even more casual players. They'll be worse at it, obviously, just like casual FPS players are worse at headshots, but it's not like they can't do those things at all.
The data we have suggests that people with your opinion -- "people want RTSes just about the strategy, not about control" -- are dead wrong. The most enduringly popular RTSes are mechanically demanding games: StarCraft 2, Age of Empires 2, StarCraft 1.
If you remove the control aspects of an RTS, you get something that's closer to turn-based strategy. Nothing wrong with turn-based, but that's just not what most people come to RTS for.
> The data we have suggests that people with your opinion -- "people want RTSes just about the strategy, not about control" -- are dead wrong. The most enduringly popular RTSes are mechanically demanding games: StarCraft 2, Age of Empires 2, StarCraft 1.
I think this data suggests the opposite. These titles are all more than a decade old. They have endured, but the genre has died. People often find it really compelling to get into these games and do the singleplayer stuff. The multiplayer experience didn't live up to that. Limited strategic choices and a demanding micro are not what most people liked when they first entered the genre.
There are some indie titles that seem to understand this.
> I think this data suggests the opposite. These titles are all more than a decade old. They have endured, but the genre has died.
What you're missing is that there have been many titles that have reduced the mechanical demands in pursuit of "greater accessibility", and have been even less popular. That's been most RTSes over the last 15 years, really. They're always talking about how they wanna get rid of the clickiness or base building or what have you. "We're not gonna be APM heavy like Starcraft!" they crow, as they quickly fall into obscurity while Starcraft remains.
It's not wrong to want the genre to be more accessible or fun, or less frustrating, but getting rid of technical and tactical options by reducing control of your units is generally a bad way to go about that.
> People often find it really compelling to get into these games and do the singleplayer stuff. The multiplayer experience didn't live up to that. Limited strategic choices and a demanding micro are not what most people liked when they first entered the genre.
Nah, what points the way forward is SC2's co-op mode. That was extremely popular among more casual players -- being more popular than ranked ladder at least for a time -- despite getting only limited support as a new feature in LotV.
And the way SC2 co-op worked is that it had the same mechanical inputs of course, but it actually had less strategy, not more; similar to campaign AI's, the AI in co-op mode is largely scripted and predictable, no scouting and very little reacting required. People loved it!
> What you're missing is that there have been many titles that have reduced the mechanical demands in pursuit of "greater accessibility", and have been even less popular. That's been most RTSes over the last 15 years, really. They're always talking about how they wanna get rid of the clickiness or base building or what have you.
I'm not convinced this is accurate. I'm of the opinion that by the time AoE 3 came out the fire was gone from the genre because people did not like playing the multiplayer.
Excessive micro sucks, but that's not really the main thesis of my argument. It's more so that the traditional "Random Map Battle" mode is really devoid of strategy for the majority of players because you have so few real choices to make. You don't get to do much strategy. You probably have a build order for several minutes. And then want to rush. That's almost always the optimal move until you're very, very talented. I can't think of any competitive multiplayer focused RTS games that tried to address that successfully.
> Nah, what points the way forward is SC2's co-op mode. That was extremely popular among more casual players -- being more popular than ranked ladder at least for a time -- despite getting only limited support as a new feature in LotV.
> And the way SC2 co-op worked is that it had the same mechanical inputs of course, but it actually had less strategy, not more; similar to campaign AI's, the AI in co-op mode is largely scripted and predictable, no scouting and very little reacting required. People loved it!
I'm amused because I feel that was MY point. Single player (and naturally also co-op) content against scripted scenarios was the best part of RTS games. It's where the genre was born. You get to ask yourself "What am I going to do" and come up with a plan. My point is that you DON'T get to do that with Random Map Battle RTS games in competitive multiplayer. Instead you largely just get punished for not doing the meta plan; or worse, get punished because your execution of the meta plan is worse.
Well, it is. They've been a lot less successful. "The fire was gone from the genre" isn't how things work. SC2 co-op is a good example of this -- if something is good and polished, people will play it, have fun, spread it around, etc.
In contrast, you could look at the CoH series, which is one of the many games that went for being less APM heavy (albeit there's still a fair amount of micro involved). CoH2 is decently popular, sure, but much less so than AoE2 or SC2. The CoH/DoW branch is one subgenre of RTS that's less demanding, but you could look at the C&C and TA-like branches the same way. And yeah, they're moderately popular, but less so than the more demanding games. Why?
> It's more so that the traditional "Random Map Battle" mode is really devoid of strategy for the majority of players because you have so few real choices to make. You don't get to do much strategy. You probably have a build order for several minutes. And then want to rush. That's almost always the optimal move until you're very, very talented. I can't think of any competitive multiplayer focused RTS games that tried to address that successfully.
This is just an argument from ignorance. The truth is that even APM-heavy games like AoE2 or Starcraft have plenty of strategy. Well, maybe not the really cheesy games where someone immediately goes all-in, but the ones that go beyond a few minutes, yes.
Like, these words
> You probably have a build order for several minutes. And then want to rush.
don't even make any sense. In the case of Starcraft, if the game is several minutes in, attacking is no longer a "rush". It's just...an attack. Which you'd expect people to do in an RTS. And even early attacks aren't necessarily rushes.
The words you've put in here is like stumbling into a discussion about Counterstrike and claiming that the game is nothing but people using the AWP forever and ever, or that you can win every game of PUBG or Fortnite by doing nothing but hiding. You're simply wrong, and advertising that you don't really know what you're talking about.
> I'm amused because I feel that was MY point. Single player (and naturally also co-op) content against scripted scenarios was the best part of RTS games. It's where the genre was born.
If that's what you like most, that's fine, but it's true that these involve less strategy, rather than more. You don't have to outsmart someone, you don't have to scout them out and react, all the while they're scouting you out and reacting to you. The computer's on rails and there's usually a dozen different ways to exploit how dumb the AI is. That can be good fun, just like any other single player game, but it's not very strategic at all, because your opponent isn't actually strategizing against you.
> My point is that you DON'T get to do that with Random Map Battle RTS games in competitive multiplayer. Instead you largely just get punished for not doing the meta plan; or worse, get punished because your execution of the meta plan is worse.
People get 'punished' if they have poor strategies or poor execution of strategies, which is as it should be, yes. There's nothing special about being "on meta", what's meta is usually just what people have found to be effective -- at lower levels, the professional meta tends to be markedly less dominant, with all kinds of other strategies being effective that wouldn't be at higher levels. I'm considerably higher ranked than average, but I still lose to plenty of stuff that would never work at a pro level.
It doesn't lower the skill ceiling, it moves the emphasis on which skills contribute to winning.
It's relatively easy to spot when a game has a problem with low skill ceiling: the very best players have difficulty distinguishing themselves from other top players. So if the top player plays the 100th best player, in a game with low skill ceiling the top player might have a 55% chance of winning or so.
This is very much not the case in AoE4. And if AoE2 would add auto tracking arrows tomorrow, you wouldn't see the skill ceiling drop appreciably. You'd see players with strong micro but weaker macro and strategy fall in the rankings, and slower players with better macro and strategy rise.
Yes. Most people back in 2001 were not using fibre. Dial-up, DSL, etc are all much higher latency. In Dial-up you are easily talking at least 100ms slower, if not a lot more.
You bet. Mangonel micro, archer kiting, cavalry bluff charges, deer pushing etc are all things you regularly see today that wouldn't have been feasible in the old versions. (in online play)
Yes: dialup modem latency was on the order of 100-250ms, DSL 10-70ms, and cable modems 5-40ms.
Sitting on my couch using Wi-Fi over cable, I have 18ms to Google.com – call it a full order of magnitude better than a disk up user despite Wi-Fi adding 7ms.
Last mile latency has been reduced a lot as people moved to broadband, but also on longer distance routing where there are more paths from A to B than twenty years ago, and some of them are physically shorter. Higher bandwidth interconnects also mean less time in transit; it's not a lot, but it is some.
Also, some early broadband networks backhauled too much traffic to central locations. I recall commonly seeing traceroutes from my home in orange county, ca going to kansas, and then coming back to servers in los angeles. I still see some traffic that leaves my metro area only to come back, but it's less frequent, and it's usually only going one or two states instead of halfway across the country.
For example, being able to micro manage archers to dodge other archers, and time their shots is something that wasn't possible previously.