A24 feedback.

[Asger]

Hey everyone, I have been asking around in some matches about things that should be changed or that are unbalanced.

 

Here is a short list about what I have so far:

 

Hotkeys dont work (Hotkeys to build easier)
Outpost useless because units placed inside are killed to easy (It seems more realistic but some players dont like it)
Most of the time towers shoot further then their range bubble
Resource gathering slower because of units movement (not sure if this is a problem or that we just have to deal with it)
Auto formation is a bad thing until pathfinding is better (multiple complaints about this one
Slinger being same speed as javileneers is a bad thing (most of the players say so)
Archers are op (most players say so)
Archers shot sound is very low compared to the rest. (I have the same problem)
Indian war elephant is way to powerfull, one can take down a CC (Not sure if it is a problem, they are considered siege)
Elephants are op (player told me)

 

Please feel free to comment more feedback, we want to fix as many problems as we can.

[Silier]

13 minutes ago, Asger said:

Slinger being same speed as javileneers is a bad thing (most of the players say so)

why? no real argument given. 

14 minutes ago, Asger said:

Hotkeys dont work (Hotkeys to build easier)

don't work or missing feature? 

15 minutes ago, Asger said:

Most of the time towers shoot further then their range bubble

nothing new

16 minutes ago, Asger said:

Auto formation is a bad thing until pathfinding is better (multiple complaints about this one

 just disable it, there is clear tooltip how to do it

17 minutes ago, Asger said:

Indian war elephant is way to powerfull, one can take down a CC

one ram or any siege can also take down CC, bad argument 

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

28 minutes ago, Asger said:

Outpost useless because units placed inside are killed to easy (It seems more realistic but some players dont like it)

I agree with this one. A bad change. Maybe give back outpost vision and just make outpost cost 1 pop. 

[Asger]

3 hours ago, Angen said:

why? no real argument given. 

Because Basicly a slinger should take more time shooting then  javileneers. Slingers need more time to use their sling then a javileneer who basicly only needs grab a spear and throw. Correct me if i am wrong

 

3 hours ago, Angen said:

don't work or missing feature? 

It seems to be missing, For example to build a house there was a hotkey, but now it doesn't show up in the tooltip anymoren and doesn't work.

 

3 hours ago, Angen said:

one ram or any siege can also take down CC, bad argument 

That is very true. so thats no longer a problem.

 

3 hours ago, Angen said:

 just disable it, there is clear tooltip how to do it

Thnx I didnt know that yet, so are some other players.

Edited February 22, 2021 by Asger

[Silier]

2 minutes ago, Asger said:

t seems to be missing, For example to build a house there was a hotkey, but now it doesn't show up in the tooltip anymoren and doesn't work.

@wraitii

[wraitii]

1 minute ago, Asger said:

Because realisticly A slinger should take more time shooting then  javileneers. Slingers need more time to use their sling then a javileneer who basicly only needs grab a spear and throw. Correct me if i am wrong

In "real life", slingers would have large ammo capacity, longer ranges, and much deadlier ammo against un-armoured troops, but I think they'd be far less efficient against shields. Pilum and javelins are few, short-ranged, but you don't stop one.

Quote

Thnx I didnt know that yet, so are some other players.

Yeah that's my bad, UI isn't great there. I think players will find out via osmosis.

---

Overall I think archers & can archers remain definitely a bit OP. Elephants are strong if left unchecked, particularly since unlike rams they can't be killed by women, so you need real units.

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No idea about the house hotkey.

[maroder]

I think the building hotkeys were property of @naniautociv mod.

[Nescio]

3 hours ago, Asger said:

Here is a short list about what I have so far:

Thank you for the feedback. Getting the balance right is tricky and we certainly do not claim everything is perfect; 0 A.D. is very much a work in progress. Nevertheless, players such as @badosu, @borg-, @Feldfeld, and @ValihrAnt participated during the development and gave feedback, therefore we hope A24 is overall better than any previous release.

As for war elephants, their crush damage has actually been reduced, from 150 to 120. As for slingers, they had a reload time of 1 s in A23, in A24 it's increased to 1.25 s. As for archers, their range has been reduced from 72+4+4 to 60. Moreover, ranged troops promote more slowly and advanced, elite, and champion ranged troops are easier to kill.

That said, there will be further changes in the next release (A25) and more feedback is certainly welcome!

[Stan`]

PPA is outdated. See it's missing the Alpha name.

[faction02]

Woodcutting behavior is sometimes "weird".

IT seems that when a tree is depleted, the units are searching for the next nearest tree to the spot where the last tree was rather than the most efficient one (the nearest tree to the dropsite). 

As a result, units are sometimes drawn far away from the forest by a couple of isolated trees.

 

[Genava55]

10 minutes ago, faction02 said:

Woodcutting behavior is sometimes "weird".

IT seems that when a tree is depleted, the units are searching for the next nearest tree to the spot where the last tree was rather than the most efficient one (the nearest tree to the dropsite). 

As a result, units are sometimes drawn far away from the forest by a couple of isolated trees.

 

I noticed the same.

Animal slaugthering is impacted too I think, it doesn't look for the next animal if a bit too far from the last one.

Edited February 22, 2021 by Genava55

[wraitii]

1 hour ago, faction02 said:

IT seems that when a tree is depleted, the units are searching for the next nearest tree to the spot where the last tree was rather than the most efficient one (the nearest tree to the dropsite). 

Yeah that's exactly what happens actually. I think there was already behaviour to do that in A23, but maybe it didn't work quite the same.

My recommended "fix" is to simply make more dropsites, because efficiency goes down very rapidly with walking distance anyways.

This is something I'd like to fix for A25, but it's not that trivial

[faction02]

57 minutes ago, Genava55 said:

I noticed the same.

Animal slaugthering is impacted too I think, it doesn't look for the next animal if a bit too far from the last one.

I think I remember some cases in which it happened with hunts too in a24. In a23, there was often the issue of the starting chicken. Sometimes the cavalry unit wouldn't go from one to the other group of chicken. It happened frequently when the initial group of chicken was too close from the farmstead used for berries.

 The a23 issue could be easily tricked by merging the two groups of chicken or spreading them all around the cc maybe.

10 minutes ago, wraitii said:

My recommended "fix" is to simply make more dropsites, because efficiency goes down very rapidly with walking distance anyways.

Initially spreading properly units around the dropsite to collect wood become also important since the issue tend to "cumulate" over time.

Although I didn't check what happen with the rally point? If units go to the rally point then search for the nearest tree it could reduce the issue relative to the case of keeping the same group of units on a woodline. 

17 minutes ago, wraitii said:

This is something I'd like to fix for A25, but it's not that trivial

I agree, thanks for the great work!

[wraitii]

1 hour ago, faction02 said:

Although I didn't check what happen with the rally point? If units go to the rally point then search for the nearest tree it could reduce the issue relative to the case of keeping the same group of units on a woodline. 

They do search for resources near the rally point (that hasn't changed).

Really it's only annoying for trees on scarce maps, because units kinda move semi-randomly, but I wouldn't say it was great in a23 either - IMO 0 A.D. has annoyingly small forests on most maps.

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

19 minutes ago, wraitii said:

IMO 0 A.D. has annoyingly small forests on most maps.

I would really like to change this for A25. EA should really adopt DE's forest groves. You don't even have to adopt DE's grove auras and traversability in case you're too scared of changing gameplay. 

Edited February 22, 2021 by wowgetoffyourcellphone

[Silier]

2 hours ago, seeh said:

Repository gives me: Setting up 0ad (0.0.24~r24155-0ubuntu1~20.04~wfg0)

do you see that r24155? release is at r24937. That's almost 800 commits behind. 

[Silier]

@seeh you have this one https://launchpad.net/~wfg/+archive/ubuntu/0ad.dev

release will be here https://launchpad.net/~wfg/+archive/ubuntu/0ad

[Silier]

it's not our, we don't maintain what is in Ubuntu repository. 

and it does not work because what you get from Ubuntu is from development version old 800 commits, not release version, which you can get by compiling source from our release repository

[sarcoma]

When you rotate buildings with [ ], i guess the new snapping resets the rotation.

Specs can't see player stats (f/w/s/m/p) in observer mode.

If you sort the list of participants in lobby by some criteria, it resets to default after rejoining or leaving a game.

I don't know if a mod prevented those behaviors in a23.

[Silier]

specs could never see stats as observer until changing perspective

[dpikt]

I'm experiencing a weird bug with camera panning on a24. Putting the cursor at the top and left sides of the screen pans the camera, but if I put the cursor too "far" on the right and bottom sides then panning stops. There's a certain zone at the edge of the screen where it works, but in general panning in those directions is broken. Has anyone else experienced this?

 

(Let me know if there's a better place to put bugs like this.)

Edit: tested on a different laptop and it's working, so maybe just need to tweak something on the machine

Edited February 23, 2021 by dpikt

[Stan`]

Does the laptop where it lags have screen scaling ? Eg a 125*% zoom on windows. If so you need to disable scaling foe 0 A.D. by editing properties or disable it entirey

[Player of 0AD]

Of course it's good that one can configure hotkeys now, but this will look very confusing and hard to understand to newbies. In A23 we had descriptions for all the hotkeys, that has gone. Plus, the new surface is not translated.

My suggestion: Bring the description back and implement the autociv-mod, which delivers one additional surface for changing hotkeys.

That the mods autociv and fgod don't work anymore is an unpleasant regression. All mods which are feature mods without changing the game too much could be implemented.

[Silier]

description is in manual, it was not removed

mods will work when authors update them that's why they are called mods, they are not integrated into the game so there is no regression

[ValihrAnt]

Some issues and stuff:

1) Spectators are able to rejoin a game even if late observer joins are disabled. Basically, an observer who was kicked from a match can rejoin despite him theoretically not being allowed to by the setting. I didn't test if an observer who simply left a match is able to rejoin despite late joins being disabled.

2) On normal buildings you can set the garrison point to inside of the building, so the trained units are instantly garrisoned. This is not possible on warships, which means that Persian and Athenian ships which train units must find a shoreline for the units to spawn and then manually garrison them.

3) I'm not currently a big fan of the outpost changes. The garrisoned unit being vulnerable feels weird and with how little vision bonus the outpost provides it's better to just patrol the unit. If this is kept the vision bonus should be increased from 20 to atleast 40+, though I'd rather go back to how the outposts used to work and maybe make them a slight bit weaker hp wise.

4) Unit rotation times have an unintended consequence that reduces incentive for early aggression. So, while food gather rates remain about the same wood gather rate is considerably slowed down, which leads to players creating far fewer farms and also requiring fewer units gathering extra berries. That makes it much more difficult to find value in an early rush as the woodline will be more reinforced and the smaller food economy is easier to protect with the Civic center or house garrisoning. (Not sure what's the best way to go about this one)

Also some things I think are important to become part of the base game in A25.

1) Building creation and selection hotkeys. The groundwork has already been done with the hotkey editor and these are probably the most important hotkeys for any RTS game to have.

2) Specific unit training hotkeys. Currently which unit you train with the hotkeys is tied to their order in the selected buildings. It'd be great if we were able to set a specific hotkey to each unit. So a citizen skirmisher will always be trained with the same hotkey no matter whether he is first in the selection or last.

That's about all that came to my head at this moment.