Ideas ?

[borg-]

7 hours ago, (-_-) said:

Yes, it would. But, that might come with unintended consequences.

Would not it be better to increase the size of the damage box?

[Guest]

Better than splash damage I suppose.

[Feldfeld]

On 2/16/2019 at 3:59 PM, LANDLORD said:

Agreed on dancing, that's a pretty bad bug in this game. No other high level RTS has something like that with the pathing and it's bad when it's very abused.  I don't blame high level players from doing it because everyone else kind of does it, but it's still very frustrating seeing it. 

Dancing is actually a thing in AoE2 and has been done quite a bit in its latest NAC2 tournament, it's just that there it needs very low latency (like in LAN) in order to be done (and is less effective in general)

Edited February 18, 2019 by Feldfeld

[sarcoma]

@fatherbushido: The problem is experienced players use dance cheat to kill less experienced players.
A noob will suicide an entire army against a dancing cav while the range units behind cav kills the army k/d -> infinity.
The usual way to fight that is to approach owns army to enemy dancer, under fire, because only accuracy when very close can harm dancer, but you are already losing a lot in doing so and the cav/army can retreat and dance again.

It is a cheat because many abuse it to wipe enemies or win a fight with way less soldiers.

The original problem of post was broader, people retreat hero or a small portion of front army to lure enemy army to chase them while the majority of army is shooting the unattended/noob army. That's why change of target is suggested.

And the promotion animation is a problem when it happens to a front unit absorbing all missiles while your units die. This is ofc not under your control and it happens both sides but you can be so unlucky that most your army dies to it before you are benefited from it.

[fatherbushido]

@sarcoma Thanks for you reply! I know those things (knowing that part of the code and playing that game). I quote you because you was the only one to have pointed the 3 elements (sorry if I repeat):

- A: requires no skill

- B: makes dancing unit immortal

- C: enemy army focuses on it

And the remaining questions is what is the problematic part (A, B or C?) or which combination of them?

To be more precise, for example, is B alone problematic?

(I have my personal answers, but I'd like that people complaining about that can (have the tools to) properly define their problem.)

(Some months ago I had already looked at that: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3j-WQc0AWA (ignore that the soldiers don't react to the cav).)

(promotion cheering animation is another issue and only a matter of taste finally.)

Edited February 19, 2019 by fatherbushido

[av93]

With dancing we're not talking about, legit hit and run strategies, right?

[Grugnas]

4 hours ago, fatherbushido said:

- B: makes dancing unit longer to kill

- C: enemy army focuses on it because the dancing unit is the most near enemy unit

 

Edited February 19, 2019 by Grugnas

[sarcoma]

Yes, the combination of B and C: whole army attacks closest enemy that dodges arrows by quickly changing direction

[Grugnas]

the dancing strategy is effective because the units, once they killed the primary target, they focus the most near enemy.

A player can hold shift and click on the units he'd like to attack next (you know, attack queue). Did anyone else ever used this "counter strategy?

But it feels like it is easier to dance than to counter dance.

Perhaps having the unit's next target as the enemy near to the previously targeted unit and not the most near enemy would partially solve the issue as it would require an equal amount of attention to the fight from both sides.

[Grugnas]

empty

Edited February 20, 2019 by Grugnas

[LordGood]

what happened to spread? Small amount of linear splash and spread make ranged units a lot less focus fire and a lot more area denial, making this dancing thing silly. all units had some degree of spread at one point or another, even if the unit hitboxes are a bit small

[Guest]

Enforcing a minimum distance for patrolling is easy enough. I guess that would solve part of the issue. The other kind of dance at least require attention and skill and is not as effective.

[odalman]

Simulation-side short-distance patrolling enables automation of dancing right now. But so would UI-side patrolling, which would not be too difficult to implement, but may require low network latency to work. Of course, automated dancing countermeasures could also be implemented UI-side. But a more appealing fix would be realistic unit movement (acceleration, kinetic energy) in the simulation. I recall someone mentioned testing this, but gave up because it made formations difficult.

[Emperior]

7 hours ago, Grugnas said:

the dancing strategy is effective because the units, once they killed the primary target, they focus the most near enemy.

A player can hold shift and click on the units he'd like to attack next (you know, attack queue). Did anyone else ever used this "counter strategy?

But it feels like it is easier to dance than to counter dance.

Perhaps having the unit's next target as the enemy near to the previously targeted unit and not the most near enemy would partially solve the issue as it would require an equal amount of attention to the fight from both sides.

Yes, i did that counter a lot of times. Issue is: person who does dancing has less work, so once noticed he swap units and issue is back. You may kill some of them, new will come "shift quene will end with that", so we come back to the same issue as before. We lose more soldiers than our dancing enemy, which equals to upgrading his units to rank 3 and having  more units than we do.

 

Dancing doesnt require a lot of work. You can shift quene moves as well.

[Hannibal_Barca]

Since pikes do very little damage but are quite durable it is quite effective to perform evasive manoeuvres with them, even if they get hit they last for a considerable amount of time.

[Guest]

One might also consider giving players less control over individual units. Aka adding battalions.

Edited February 20, 2019 by Guest

[faction02]

"We are all dancing." - A nub (Lobby)

That nub might be right in some ways but I see one important difference between "micro" and "dancing". For me:

Micro consists in moving a unit for a particular purpose.

Dancing consists in moving a units to influence an audience (other units).

These definitions  emphasize one important difference, the purpose of the unit move. (All) dance is micro but not all micro is dance and I would consider dance as rather bad while micro isn't necessarily.

From this perspective, trying to save a cav from death with micro is fine. It requieres some efforts to do so, and the advantage earnt is small. Doing the same thing with the only purpose of distracting a whole army is wrong because with only one unit, you might gain too much advantage over too many units. The difference can be sometimes relatively thin and apparent only to the player performing it.  The issue might be seen as being in the relationship between the dancing unit and the audience.

A simple way to allow a cav to run away safe but prevent from exploiting units predefined behaviour would be to implement a counter move to dance moves. To protect the strategy dimension of the game, there should always be some ways to counter efficiently all micro moves, dance or not. But this is not the case when some micro actions requieres too many actions to be countered efficiently.

One could try to remove micro (aka adding battalions if I understand well) but it is also possible to just search for ways to counter the influence of the dancing units on the audience. If the "public" units could be ordered to ignore the dancer or attack a particular group of units, then all might be fine. I have also read ideas about doing this in a more systematic way, by changing units predefined behaviour as for example by implementing some spread fires. Micro would remain there while dancing would be countered (I could save my cav from multiple fires while the enemy could target my army easily). Luring is another form of dancing but I don't see it as too problematic since it can be countered more easily.

I do not claim that I believe it is the best way to go, but it seems a small departure from the existing gameplay but simply cutting that relationship might allow to save some micro for those who enjoy it...

[nani]

Enjoying dance micro is the.equivalent to adding milk before the cereals.

[faction02]

No micro ???!? What would you do when the game is lagging??? Managing each units individually keeps me busy and make the fun!

A game without micro at all would be like eating paste with no sauce !