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Taking Too Long
07/03/2024 01:15About an hour and a half ago I uninstalled Age of Empires 2 after spending a bit over 80 hours on it over the past few weeks. Being such an abrupt event, I can't stop thinking about it yet.
The crux of my issue with the game is that it's designed such that unit matchups are heavily one-sided, and taking out building practically requires specialised forces. That's all fine and stuff (although the game's tutorial never bothers to explain what the design expects from you) but it does make for a . When I think back to StarCraft 2, the only time your units are truly ineffective is when they simply can't aim at the target. And that is a game with bonus damage and counter-units as well. In AoE2 you can get cleaned up by a smaller force of counter-units ambushing your attack force, or some cavalry can beeline to your siege units before you can respond at which point you might as well retreat. It's easy for attacks to fail or for you to get stuck in your base because the enemy attacks require your army to clean up. Add in an AI that will sit around rebuilding up to its quota but mines resources incessantly across the map, and you've got frequent situations where anything less than complete victory gives no long-term progress. That's not even mentioning the goddamn fly-swatting with enemy villagers spreading across the map.
The point is that I've had one too many missions turn into a three to four hour shitshow when they should be at most 45 minute romps, probably less. Now, I don't think the wider AoE2 community is going to really give a shit. The vocal part of that fanbase is the part that plays ranked, and that tends to be the tryhard crowd that calculates all life out of the game and glorifies the people who dedicate all their free time to the game. Hardly the crowd to fish for sympathy from about sucking. I doubt it's a majority, but it's who I'd expect to respond. (In fact I'm not sure where most players go in this game. Estimates I've seen suggests ranked games is a 10% or similar minority, but most of the campaign completion achievements are hanging around under 5% of the playerbase. Are most of them in unranked multiplayer then?)
But for whatever obvious truth there is to the "learn the game better" shit I'd inevitably get, it's never been convincing. It's my humble opinion that it doesn't matter what the design is or does, if it drags low-skill play into multi-hour slugfests then that's a failure.
Git gud. Learn the game better, noob. Of course you're frustrated, you suck. It's increasingly feeling like a way to rebuff the idea that things could be better. You can postpone addressing things indefinitely, because either someone gets familiar enough with the bullshit for it not to bother them or they fuck off entirely. Either way is a win. There's not a term for the kind of non-negotiable failure of design that I'm talking about, because it's obvious and yet it happens anyway. It kinda feels like we should, as there's so much shit bogging down the discussions now.
It's not in the Gamer's toolset to calm salty people down or to de-escalate. You get a (misguided) balance suggestion and the first thing that gets brought up is an accusation of low skill. No explanations for why the design is the way it is (because AoE2 has an elegance and a method to it's design). Why do people even bother to post? To stew in the hostility together?
The crux of my issue with the game is that it's designed such that unit matchups are heavily one-sided, and taking out building practically requires specialised forces. That's all fine and stuff (although the game's tutorial never bothers to explain what the design expects from you) but it does make for a . When I think back to StarCraft 2, the only time your units are truly ineffective is when they simply can't aim at the target. And that is a game with bonus damage and counter-units as well. In AoE2 you can get cleaned up by a smaller force of counter-units ambushing your attack force, or some cavalry can beeline to your siege units before you can respond at which point you might as well retreat. It's easy for attacks to fail or for you to get stuck in your base because the enemy attacks require your army to clean up. Add in an AI that will sit around rebuilding up to its quota but mines resources incessantly across the map, and you've got frequent situations where anything less than complete victory gives no long-term progress. That's not even mentioning the goddamn fly-swatting with enemy villagers spreading across the map.
The point is that I've had one too many missions turn into a three to four hour shitshow when they should be at most 45 minute romps, probably less. Now, I don't think the wider AoE2 community is going to really give a shit. The vocal part of that fanbase is the part that plays ranked, and that tends to be the tryhard crowd that calculates all life out of the game and glorifies the people who dedicate all their free time to the game. Hardly the crowd to fish for sympathy from about sucking. I doubt it's a majority, but it's who I'd expect to respond. (In fact I'm not sure where most players go in this game. Estimates I've seen suggests ranked games is a 10% or similar minority, but most of the campaign completion achievements are hanging around under 5% of the playerbase. Are most of them in unranked multiplayer then?)
But for whatever obvious truth there is to the "learn the game better" shit I'd inevitably get, it's never been convincing. It's my humble opinion that it doesn't matter what the design is or does, if it drags low-skill play into multi-hour slugfests then that's a failure.
Git gud. Learn the game better, noob. Of course you're frustrated, you suck. It's increasingly feeling like a way to rebuff the idea that things could be better. You can postpone addressing things indefinitely, because either someone gets familiar enough with the bullshit for it not to bother them or they fuck off entirely. Either way is a win. There's not a term for the kind of non-negotiable failure of design that I'm talking about, because it's obvious and yet it happens anyway. It kinda feels like we should, as there's so much shit bogging down the discussions now.
It's not in the Gamer's toolset to calm salty people down or to de-escalate. You get a (misguided) balance suggestion and the first thing that gets brought up is an accusation of low skill. No explanations for why the design is the way it is (because AoE2 has an elegance and a method to it's design). Why do people even bother to post? To stew in the hostility together?
I also sucked at SC2, but when I take missions in that completely over-cautiously they take 45 minutes and not 3:30. I don't think I have a whole lot of patience for this sort of shit anymore
