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What features in 0AD are underappeciated, misunderstood or otherwise just not being used enough?


mysticjim
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Hello all. Just trying to gauge some opinions for a future bit of Social Media/PR comms. Very interested in what features in the game that players perhaps aren't using enough or that there is a general lack of understanding of how they work? The idea is that I'll produce a list to be published highlighting a few of these with links to the documentation of how they work and hopefully get people to experiment a little more with them.

Some maybe just be down to users simply forgetting about them - for example, I've not been in a team game when anyone has used the map flares. 

Some might be down to not reading the documentation available (guilty I'm afraid!) - the obvious example here is the shifting of the queuing of units.

We're not limited to just stuff that was added in A25, but anything historic that you feel players generally have struggled to grasp or simply ignored. Very interested to hear your thoughts :) 

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Flares are used all the time in tgs, only allies can see them.

I think freagerach made a tutorial for the send to head of queue feature but i don't think it's widely used.

Attack-move and manual formations are probably used only by the most experienced.

Edited by sarcoma
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Thanks all. 

 

  On 25/10/2021 at 5:37 AM, sarcoma said:

Flares are used all the time in tgs, only allies can see them.

I think freagerach made a tutorial for the send to head of queue feature but i don't think it's widely used.

Attack-move and manual formations are probably used only by the most experienced.

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This is interesting. There is no mention of flares, send to the head of the queue features or practical guidance on formations in the manual on the WFG site, the Wiki gameplay and I can't find anything in the Hotkey section linked to queuing beyond what was present in previous releases. For clarity here are the places I've been looking;

https://play0ad.com/category/game-manual/#post-1982 - manual WFG Website

https://trac.wildfiregames.com/wiki/0adManual - 0AD Gameplay manual

https://trac.wildfiregames.com/wiki/HotKeys - Hotkeys section of the manual

I don't think Freagerach has done a vid (I can't find it if he did) - but found this existing thread. 

So it has the requirement for the player to manually set a hotkey in order to use it and to know what the undocumented function is called, without anything to tell them what it does beforehand?

This could be a bit trickier than I thought if the actual features aren't officially referenced. Ideally I want to be linking to something the player might have accidentally missed or was otherwise unaware of, not something that doesn't exist according to the documentation and have to link to ad-hoc forum threads or 3rd party videos. 

@Stan` - appreciate the answer may be there isn't anyone doing this at present, or it's low down a list of priorities (understandable given the nature of the project), but does officially documenting added features come under anyone's current remit? I can appreciate how it's not practical or possible to hand hold players through every single bit of functionality within the game, but a keen, new player who is willing to do the research would probably expect to find some reference to all of the above in the official docs. Out of interest, if the Gameplay manual is more up to date than the most visible manual on the WFG website, it's an unfortunate barrier for newer players to discover things.

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(@Langbart did a video in that thread. :) )

I think your best shot is at https://trac.wildfiregames.com/wiki/Alpha25 / https://trac.wildfiregames.com/wiki/Alpha26. E.g. for the next version there is the possibility to also push items in the production queue to the front. And skimming the hotkey page, I guess.

But yes, one has to dig a little (which is too much, I know).

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  On 25/10/2021 at 3:27 PM, Freagarach said:

(@Langbart did a video in that thread. :) )

I think your best shot is at https://trac.wildfiregames.com/wiki/Alpha25 / https://trac.wildfiregames.com/wiki/Alpha26. E.g. for the next version there is the possibility to also push items in the production queue to the front. And skimming the hotkey page, I guess.

But yes, one has to dig a little (which is too much, I know).

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Thanks @Freagarach - yeah, I can see there is a bit of digging required, but appreciate nothing is ever deliberately missed in 0AD documentation, it's usually just an unfortunate victim of circumstance. I'll try and find a way to direct people to the best source of info. 

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  • 2 weeks later...
  On 09/11/2021 at 11:07 PM, Radiotraining said:

Tom0ad used to make such videos! They were quite interesting! :)

But maybe there are still mechanics that are worth to be explored and I agree that could be interesting a short format, maybe could catch some new viewers ;)

 

Looking forward for the video on DE by the way! :D

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something shorter and more visual.

There are mechanics that I forget, at some point they changed them.

The videos with unit Tips are good they are like when you play a Sport game.

Edited by Lion.Kanzen
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  On 25/10/2021 at 1:37 AM, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

We should take a cue from some other games and have a few different types of flares. I think they'd be more useful then.

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I've seen a game has 3 types of flares, map drawings (impractical for the theme and pacing I think), pings (a typical flare) and ping with label.

Ping with label is incredibly helpful, I think could be a worthy idea.

Ping with label is written by the player, but I could see a quick ping opening a circular picker for standard pings as potentially a good/better alternative.

Edited by badosu
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