Permanent creation of units

[BeTe]

4 hours ago, BreakfastBurrito_007 said:

I think the best balance is to have rudimentary automation features. Leaving those automated features un-optimized allows a player to manually outperform it if they decide to allocate their apm and attention to the task. 
 

A good example is auto-scout from aoe2. It has known behavior, like trending toward the bottom right corner of the map. One could think of many ways to optimize the path taken by autoscout like using map script knowledge to scout likely other high value locations, automatically avoiding danger ect. Some modders of 0ad would call these changes “quality of life” improvements, but the result is the destruction of gameplay.

i am not sure I undertand 2nd paragraph.

Regarding 1st one: I don't think there's "best" balance. It really depends on what type of game you want. 

I think you can automate a lot things and still have good game. For example , (extreme) example: you have FreeCiv/Cilization or Heroes of Might and Magic 3 games - you don't have micro and APM requirement at all there, but it's still good game. It's extreme example, but you get point. 

Thing is, if you remove mechanical requirements, you need to add complexity elsewhere. HoMM has many resources, upgrades, location and possible decisions. FreeCiv has many tech paths, city improvements, units, etc. Mechanics doesn't help there. You need to read and learn a lot there. 

For 0AD, I really think we need to constantly look at AOE 2 but keep 0AD unique and not just bad copy of that game. But those fundamentals need to be taken into consideration. 

Also overall 0AD players skills are lower then AOE 2 - so it's good to keep that on mind and make sure it's not too APM demanding. With time, as players' skills progress, you will need to switch more towards mechanical demanding game to make sure top players are not bored. 

Edited March 19 by BeTe

[ffm2]

26 minutes ago, BeTe said:

Also overall 0AD players skills are lower then AOE 2 - so it's good to keep that on mind and make sure it's not too APM demanding. With time, as players' skills progress, you will need to switch more towards mechanical demanding game to make sure top players are not bored.

I don't know about this part. I haven't played AOE2 in so long that I can't say anything about it. AFAIK borg and Valihrant were also good AOE2 players. I don't think one should change the complexity based on the current skill of the lobby users.

I think it would be interesting to see statistics of nr. of players over the time. How a releases draws in players, how it may go down over time. Maybe with elo ranges.

For myself I can say that I don't have as much of a competitive drive as before "enhancement mods" were around.

[seregadushka]

11 hours ago, Deicide4u said:

The result is tolerance of macro mistakes. 

If this feature gets in, all I have to do in the first 10 minutes of the game is set my CC and Barracks to produce certain batches of units, set Auto-train to ON and never touch those buildings again until I get to the City phase to unlock champions.

I don't know about you, but this simply awards laziness and kills the fun of actually managing your production.

This makes you look like a cheater, If your  have only question is to setup three barracks. Enabling auto-queue doesn't eliminate the resource supply.

If you came to my topic to stretch it to 5 pages, so that even the developers refuse to read it, then you are a troll. Choose for yourself.

Poking the barracks every 30 seconds is not a game, it's the job of an elevator operator. I want to manage the war, not the queue in the cafeteria.

Edited March 20 by seregadushka

[Deicide4u]

4 hours ago, seregadushka said:

If you came to my topic to stretch it to 5 pages, so that even the developers refuse to read it, then you are a troll. Choose for yourself.

I'm actually one of the first who understood what you're trying to introduce to the game. That's why I've reacted the way I did.

I'm sure the developers understood, as well. Your incoherent, strawman analogies and personal insults have prolonged the discussion and pushed it on to a different path. 

It's good that you're acknowledging this. There's nothing more to add, honestly. 

[BreakfastBurrito_007]

Well my point wasn’t to copy design decisions that aoe2 makes, but to highlight how automated features should  be left unoptimized for better gameplay results. Aoe2 is just a good example of this.

I agree that in general aoe2 has a much higher skill level than 0ad at the top level, but that doesn’t at all mean that we need “easier” mechanics, there should be no skill ceiling. Just because high apm can help players win the game, doesn’t mean apm is “demanded” by the game. A good game is one where a bad player can learn a lot of a certain mechanic, win more as a result, and still have a lot left to improve in that same mechanic.

[Thalatta]

These rants were hilarious to read.

I never used auto-queue in other games, but once I started using in 0 AD, I liked it, and now I get annoyed when I have to set it up again because I run out of resources for a few seconds, so I get where the proposal comes from. But this attitude of “this is the only right way, look at this picture and implement it” is going to go nowhere. I disagree that these automation things are letting “the game play for you”, it would be a poor game if clicking on portraits is such a big part of it, I think better if it concentrates its complexity in other aspects, but maybe since tactics is not a big thing yet that’s how players find the fun. I think AoE2’s auto-scout resembles more letting the game play for you. I guess I used it back then, but I haven’t missed it in 0 AD.

So, it’s all a matter of balance, it’s not about what’s better or worse, just different kinds of games are being proposed, and as someone said, “if you remove mechanical requirements, you need to add complexity elsewhere”. Many arguments are being made on the basis of competitive clickiness, but it’s wrong to think that’s the only right way to play a game, and even an online game could be challenging and fun with less clickiness and more thinking. It’s just a choice, but I think many more people prefer the latter, the impression here of course will be the opposite because of a biased selection: online-players are actually a minority, they just seem overrepresented online for obvious reasons.

[guerringuerrin]

29 minutes ago, Thalatta said:

These rants were hilarious to read.

I never used auto-queue in other games, but once I started using in 0 AD, I liked it, and now I get annoyed when I have to set it up again because I run out of resources for a few seconds, so I get where the proposal comes from. But this attitude of “this is the only right way, look at this picture and implement it” is going to go nowhere. I disagree that these automation things are letting “the game play for you”, it would be a poor game if clicking on portraits is such a big part of it, I think better if it concentrates its complexity in other aspects, but maybe since tactics is not a big thing yet that’s how players find the fun. I think AoE2’s auto-scout resembles more letting the game play for you. I guess I used it back then, but I haven’t missed it in 0 AD.

So, it’s all a matter of balance, it’s not about what’s better or worse, just different kinds of games are being proposed, and as someone said, “if you remove mechanical requirements, you need to add complexity elsewhere”. Many arguments are being made on the basis of competitive clickiness, but it’s wrong to think that’s the only right way to play a game, and even an online game could be challenging and fun with less clickiness and more thinking. It’s just a choice, but I think many more people prefer the latter, the impression here of course will be the opposite because of a biased selection: online-players are actually a minority, they just seem overrepresented online for obvious reasons.

I’m not sure whether you’re aware of what kind of automation is actually being discussed.

I agree that you can’t really say one thing is better than another, or that one approach is “how it should be” and the other isn’t. In the end, it comes down to consensus about what a community wants or accepts as valid and what it doesn’t. The case of AoE2 is quite illustrative: a feature like 0 A.D.’s vanilla auto-queue is considered cheating in the multiplayer scene. Is that right or wrong? That’s not really the point. The real question is whether there is a broad consensus around one gameplay mechanic or another.

The issue is that, when playing against a human opponent, the sense of fair play matters. Whether certain features are accepted or not is part of an ongoing discussion and a necessary consensus in any community.

This debate has been going on for years and has been approached in different ways. Some have led to a good, inclusive understanding despite disagreements. In other cases, things like this happen, where someone shows up out of nowhere and starts treating everyone like id**ts, and nothing productive can come out of that.