A25 Feedbacks from testing

[Lion.Kanzen]

12 minutes ago, Yekaterina said:

We should win a match by using our pure skills and strategy, not relying on some AI program to help as micromanage. That would take the fun out of 0AD and we might as well let AIs fight each other. So

/ban autotrain

 

I would like the AI to interact with the new Flare feature.

 

Send scouts then troops to the zone.

[maroder]

1 hour ago, Yekaterina said:

We should win a match by using our pure skills and strategy, not relying on some AI program to help as micromanage. That would take the fun out of 0AD and we might as well let AIs fight each other. So

/ban autotrain

Totally agree, I would like to see a match based on pure skill! Micro every unit

/ban pathfinding

[Yekaterina]

Maybe not completely ban pathfinding, because you need it to move the unit. But maybe limit it to straight lines and dodging only. 

I know you are joking, but I think it is a good idea!

[maroder]

that would also solve lot of performance problems

[wraitii]

I've always wanted to make a 'football' / soccer mod where you control units individually. But it'd take a lot of time.

[maroder]

2 hours ago, chrstgtr said:

I really don't get the casual vs. MP divide on matters that involve skill like this. Casual players can still play their game as they always have. They just won't be as "good" as they could be, which they purport to not even care about. It's almost like proposals like this seek seek to eliminate any aspects of the game where skill does exist. Meanwhile, changes like this will diminish any "competitive" gameplay that does exist. If casual players don't care about doing micro for efficiency they can easily pick game play settings (such as high starting res) that eliminate the need to be efficient. 

Even if you play causally against other people or the AI, you still want to win. And the way to do that is the produce as many units as you can (Even with high starting resources). So causal player can still get annoyed by the repetitive action of microing the unit training. Therefore, autotraining will help those players and as it is implemented atm, it still benefits manually queuing for the micro enthusiasts.

And about the diminishing of the competitive gameplay: So you are saying when autotraining is enabled in a match you would play on the same level as someone who plays the game for the first time? I doubt it.

Experience, strategic thinking and the ability to execute a plan still matter. So why would this diminish the competitiveness when such a feature is there and it isn't even as good as you microing?

[Lion.Kanzen]

Let's leave it optional in the multiplayer.

Then normal in SP .

 

It makes me play differently, and I can focus on managing my army.

[chrstgtr]

 

10 hours ago, maroder said:

you still want to win

In SP, you can set the difficulty lower. After all, making the game easier to play is setting the difficulty lower even if your AI opponent is still listed as "hard." 

10 hours ago, maroder said:

And about the diminishing of the competitive gameplay: So you are saying when autotraining is enabled in a match you would play on the same level as someone who plays the game for the first time? I doubt it.

You are very explicitly taking away skill aspects from the game. That is per se diminishing the amount of skill required to play well.

 

Again, at most, it is 2 clicks every ~10 seconds. This isn't clicking as many times as you can for as long as you can. If you don't want to click, you can just not train units 'all the time' then you can just not train units for awhile. Or you could train larger batches. Or, apparently now, use a very good but not perfectly efficient auto-queue feature. Making the auto-queue perfectly efficient (which was the request that this discussion directly flowed from) is clearly just a way to make the game easier to play by eliminating a large portion of what playing is. 

It's simply a way to make the game easier to play, which is apparently favored by some people who play SP. SP can simply make the game easier by adjusting difficulty. MP players cannot simply tell their opponents to play worse. 

 

[Lion.Kanzen]

12 hours ago, wraitii said:

I've always wanted to make a 'football' / soccer mod where you control units individually. But it'd take a lot of time.

Wolololo Football?

 

 

 

[maroder]

@chrstgtr I think I get what you're saying and the concerns about taking away the difficulty.

But do all multiplayer agree with you? As @Player of 0AD mentioned, @nani's widely used autociv mod also implements autotrain and made it efficient. AFAIK those two are regular multiplayer (correct me if i'm wrong) and autociv is used by many people, so some of which surly also used autotrain in MP games.

So my question is (because I don't play MP that often): Did that had a negative impact on the skill level that is/ was required? Where there any negative consequences for the competitiveness?

Because all I heard about autociv until now, is that it is one of the favorite mods that really enhance the game experience.

 

[alre]

On 10/06/2021 at 8:27 AM, wraitii said:

The "slightly worse than normal" is intended because for competitive RTS play, APM is usually viewed as a skill & it's desirable to have some things that are APM-dependent.

IMO, being able to click buttons faster should give you a small edge, but not enough of an edge that you can just walk over people that have better game sense. I think we want slightly less APM-intensiveness than Age 2, but 0 would mean making 0 A.D. a turn based strategy game.

---

That being said, the queue thing might have to go, because it's resulting in somewhat unexpected/buggy behaviour. We'll see what we do. 

Sorry but I couldn't agree less, built in advantage to high APM is not fun. Not in single player, not in MP. Micromanaging is fun when you do something that upstages unitAI, or whatever basic AI the game has, to help players do basic things (yes, pathfinder is one of those). It's fun to have your cav circle around melee and kill archers and women, it's not fun to click two buttons repetitively.

Also, you are exaggerating the utility of autotrain. It can be a thorn as well as a bliss, you have to manage it too.

Autotrain is only op when combined to corrals, and even then it's not really overwhelmingly op. And that's a problem of how corral works anyway, in my opinion. Are we still going to change them some day?

[Player of 0AD]

1 hour ago, maroder said:

So my question is (because I don't play MP that often): Did that had a negative impact on the skill level that is/ was required? Where there any negative consequences for the competitiveness?

No.

[BreakfastBurrito_007]

Personally I have never seen a player use autotrain to any winnable effect. I feel that if it were to be the ideal unit production method that it would be very bad and boring. 

It can be like AoE2 Auto-scout. Lazy players or players who are going afk for beer or coffee or both can use auto-train and accept the losses in exchange for comfort and concentration elsewhere. Sometimes it may be a good way to top-off the population during a battle, but it should not be comparable in results to a player putting focus and effort into eco.

I would be in favor of making it slightly inefficient. The one I saw seems quite inefficient, but I have not seen many players use this.

I think it is important to note that @chrstgtr's point about APM works the other way too: unit training and timing is APM that serves a purpose to the game, and it is skill based. Much of the frustration in the game comes from Actions that have a probability of being translated into the game, like moving an ele past a house. We need to reduce necessary APM in the right areas: like how many clicks it should take to get an ele past the godforsaken house, or how many clicks you need to make to keep all of your units from bleeding to an enemy tower, or how many times you must click "unpack" or "pack" on catapults.

 

Edited June 11, 2021 by BreakfastBurrito_007

[Yekaterina]

Let's leave autotrain as a single, independent mod instead of an official feature in the public mod. 

[Yekaterina]

@Player of 0ADi meant let autotrain be a mod, instead of a default feature.  

[Nobbi]

On Wildlake biome Nubia and Eurasia Steppe is not working and for Agaen-Anatolien some errors appear about the iberean champ missing.

Nubia (I think the same for Eurasian Steppe):

ERROR: JavaScript error: maps/random/wild_lake.js line 286 farmEntities[currentBiome()] is undefined @maps/random/wild_lake.js:286:95

ERROR: CMapGeneratorWorker::Run: Failed to load RMS 'maps/random/wild_lake.js'

 

Agaen-Anatolien:

ERROR: CCacheLoader failed to find archived or source file for: "simulation/templates/units/iber/champion_infantry.xml"

ERROR: Failed to load entity template 'units/iber/champion_infantry'

 

[Yekaterina]

34 minutes ago, Nobbi said:

Agaen-Anatolien:

ERROR: CCacheLoader failed to find archived or source file for: "simulation/templates/units/iber/champion_infantry.xml"

ERROR: Failed to load entity template 'units/iber/champion_infantr

The iberian template file is missing or the directory is wrong. I think the map is trying to put an Iberian champion infantry somewhere on the map but the directory it is referring to is wrong. The location of champion templates have moved in A25. 

 

[ValihrAnt]

In regards to the autotrain thing, I really don't see a problem with it having the same efficient implementation as autociv. Batch training means that it won't be as efficient as queing units manually. If the game didn't have batch training then it'd be advantageous over manual training.

I suppose it will lower the skill floor but it certainly won't lower the skill ceiling.

Edited June 11, 2021 by ValihrAnt
Can't spell

[wraitii]

26 minutes ago, ValihrAnt said:

In regards to the autotrain thing, I really don't see a problem with it having the same efficient implementation as autociv. Batch training means that it won't be as efficient as queing units manually. If the game didn't have batch training then it'd be advantageous over manual training.

FYI the current autoqueue will re-use batch training if it's been setup.

[alre]

same does autociv, at now

[ValihrAnt]

Just now, wraitii said:

26 minutes ago, ValihrAnt said:

In regards to the autotrain thing, I really don't see a problem with it having the same efficient implementation as autociv. Batch training means that it won't be as efficient as queing units manually. If the game didn't have batch training then it'd be advantageous over manual training.

FYI the current autoqueue will re-use batch training if it's been setup.

Yeah and it doesn't have the situational awareness to adjust the batch size appropriately depending on any outside factors.

[Stan`]

2 hours ago, Nobbi said:

On Wildlake biome Nubia and Eurasia Steppe is not working and for Agaen-Anatolien some errors appear about the iberean champ missing.

Nubia (I think the same for Eurasian Steppe):

ERROR: JavaScript error: maps/random/wild_lake.js line 286 farmEntities[currentBiome()] is undefined @maps/random/wild_lake.js:286:95

ERROR: CMapGeneratorWorker::Run: Failed to load RMS 'maps/random/wild_lake.js'

 

Agaen-Anatolien:

ERROR: CCacheLoader failed to find archived or source file for: "simulation/templates/units/iber/champion_infantry.xml"

ERROR: Failed to load entity template 'units/iber/champion_infantry'

 

Fixed in https://code.wildfiregames.com/rP25773 thanks.

[ValihrAnt]

Played a game on 25760 and my sword cavalry had issues hitting cavalry archers that were retreating. They'd get in range, start attacking and then stop as the enemy had ran outside of their attack range(?).

2021-06-11_0001.zip

[wraitii]

33 minutes ago, ValihrAnt said:

Played a game on 25760 and my sword cavalry had issues hitting cavalry archers that were retreating. They'd get in range, start attacking and then stop as the enemy had ran outside of their attack range(?).

You mean the melee Cav thta's attacking the retreating camels? It seems to me they're actually hitting, it's only the animation that's cut short.

[ValihrAnt]

Just now, wraitii said:

32 minutes ago, ValihrAnt said:

Played a game on 25760 and my sword cavalry had issues hitting cavalry archers that were retreating. They'd get in range, start attacking and then stop as the enemy had ran outside of their attack range(?).

You mean the melee Cav thta's attacking the retreating camels? It seems to me they're actually hitting, it's only the animation that's cut short.

Yep. I didn't go to replays to check if they actually hit as we were right about to start the next game but the lack of sound and the cut short anim put me off there. Would be nice if just atleast the sound played as then you'd have confirmation that something did happen with the attack despite the animation being cut in half.