Pathing: Past and Present
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- Опубліковано 11 лис 2023
- Let's take a walk down memory lane and look a bit at how DE has changed over the past 4 years. Pathing has always been a big issue and after all of the changes so far, let's compare the current state of pathing to HD edition.
I could've shown quite a few more examples of bad pathing, but I think this was enough to demonstrate its shortcomings.
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After all these years, DE has had enough patches with "improved pathfinding" that even the HD Edition has better unit movement. Oh boy.
To hopefully improve pathing, buy the latest expansion and support the devs.
I tweeted this video to the developers
@@GoldenSkeeter hahahahahha broooooo I hope your being sarcastic here
Holy crap watching the old movement was pretty insane.... Its sooooo much better
Im not even a competitive player but that instant regrouping thing can be quite infuriating. Oh sir you want us to step away from enemy castle? Lets all gather under enemy castle first to think about it!
And then you start to spam click in frustation and things get even worse.
especially bad when you're a group of archers trying to step back from a mangonel shot....
If my memory serves me right, the crossbow pathing/regrouping change was intentional, in order to nerf crossbow play. But I guess it also nerfed the knight play since the same pathing also applied to the Knights.
I think fixing the villager pathing should be a priority because it's CLEARLY not intentional. It's especially frustrating when trying to wall.
The intentional change was attack move delay (introduced with Indian DLC). Regroup is a side effect not existing until this year.
@@Pilgrim_HYR why did they intentionally add a delay to the attack move??? I hate that!
@@rameynoodles152 Because before the delay, the archers would shoot faster than they should. Thereby just removing other options, such as stop-micro or focusfiring.
Also just destroyed the balance. Knights were helpless.
Its even fundamentally worse then. Nerfing can be done by cost increasing/training time adjustment etc. Pathing/grouping/attack delay should always be what comes in mind naturally following the laws of simple physics instead of peculiar alien like slow down / fasting up/ going backwards etc.
pathing/grouping should never be altered for nerfing/boosting units.
As being only a pro watcher, i had been hearing the pathing issue for years. This is the first time I actually understand what is the big problem
Really interesting breakdown. I would be fascinated to learn what's going on under the hood to cause the issues (particularly for unit group movement) when obviously something used to work.
I remember HD trying to "improve" the original ES pathing and making it a lot worse. I think DE tried to fix HD's pathing issues and ended up making similar mistakes. A big question for me is why they didn't go back to the original ES pathing when DE was released. They could have also reverted back to it instead of recently creating their own new pathing algorithm from scratch.
@@ericfalley it may have something to do with the fact that units in DE can move in 16 directions. In HD and AoC, it was only 8.
But don't quote me on this
What a great, and very important video. I can sense your love for the game, but also your worry that the game's longevity is a risk when some aspects remain like this. The introduction was great as well, setting the scene with the changing graphics, lobbies and UI. Lots of important issues
Thank you for putting this on perspective with AOE2 HD
They changed the pathing last year or so for group pathing logic. They didn't want units going faster than their intended speed but it caused this annoying back movement
However I don't think the knights are actually moving faster than they should, just that because they faster than the THS, when you change direction they utilize all their speed to get into position.
@@quasibrodo923in many situations you could exploit to make a few units move faster than max speed. Now you cant, but it also makes it feel more slugish
Yea I never understood this concern. I thought it was a fun trick you could do but it was never abused because the effort required was just never worth it. Solving a problem that didn't cause any issues and in the process they created all these issues.
I wonder if that Shuffle happens because the units either get re-selected, or re-evaluated which order/number they are assigned to internally, to exemplify, Villagers (at least at some point) used to work by in what order the vills were selected, then at some point the vill selection and how they would would split across an entire wall at once if you distribute them, maybe the units are resetting or something funky going on in the code.
Also, the Knight Shuffle there, looked kind of like how in HD, the knghts would work as grouped with the Two-handed swordsmen, it didn't look like they were doing the instant rotation they would do when selected alone, it was the front row stays the front row in that configuration, so the DE one seems to just use the "as if the units were always selected as multi unit groups" there is no solo group behavior in DE(?) maybe it was cut to streamline the code and the pathing in general, but some things certainly were left as a detriment to the overall experience, like you said, the knights speeding up etc.
Also with the wonky villager building, it does seem like the villagers have a preferred side of building foundations they want to hit, like south east seems their number 1 priority, then south west, then north west then north east, not sure if that's correct, but that's what it looked like from visual observation of your clips.
DE crossbows: "every day I'm shuffling" 🎶
111111 "every day Im eating mangonel baaadaaaboooom!!"
So here is a possible issue. With the villager pathing it would seem like they are not only taking the tiles where the building (obstacle) is placed at into account, but also the tiles that that obstacle is shadowing if it would be fully build. For example the barracks are 3x3, but the back tiles of the barracks that are "in the shadow" of the building would make that building a 4x4. I don't know if I explained this clear enough.. it is kinda hard to describe
Worth noting that pathing on launch of DE was utterly abysmal. I remember tasking my villager to walk around 4 tiles on rivers and it decided it would rather walk around the entire map instead. The DE pathing is supposed to use up less CPU. That said - yeah. They still haven't quite gotten it as good as it was in HD. At least with millitary. I'd be interested in seeing what resource collection rates are at the moment in both versions (basically how much bumping and getting stuck is there).
It's really weird. You look at collection rates in HD and DE and vills and trade carts at least on the smallest levels, have better pathfinding now. But at a macro level, moving a group of units, HD seems to usually overall do the more intuitive thing. DE has made some progress in some areas, but it's like DE better executes a worse pathfinding plan, whereas HD more often had a better pathfinding plan, just didn't execute super well, if that makes any sense.
AOE2 Devs pathing their way back home: ⬆↘➡⬇↙⬅↖➡↗↘⬇
THE video that AOE community needed! thanks for detailed explanation for -500 elo players :)
I don't remember such pathing bugs back in the days when I played AOE2 / AOE2: The Conquerors. I'm kinda 99.9% sure pathing was better back then before HD and stuff.
Funny thing:
Especially with the "splitting knights from 2hs" clip, you can see that in HD (and in the og version in general) when units need to get into formation, they speed up to catch up.
If I am not mistaken, people were actually complaining about units speeding up to get into formation in DE (at the time people were complaining about how strong archer micro was, and this was one of the reasons, as it made Archer formations move very slightly faster than intended) and that's why this was changed so that instead of units speeding up, the others slow down or stop and wait to get into formation or straight up path back to get into formation first before moving to the destination they're supposed to go to.
I could be misremembering, it's possible of course, but you can definitely see that the knights slow down as they split from the 2hs and don't speed up when moving into formation.
I don't know how in the world pathing in DE is somehow worse with every patch. Lately I've been having some absolutely unforgivable stuff like villagers going all the way around a woodline to chop a tree on the wrong side of it from where my LC is. Even in this video you see some catastrophically bad pathing where the units, despite having a CLEAR PATH FORWARD, take a really weird route.
The crossbow shuffle thing is absolutely brutal for lower elo players trying to dodge mangonel shots. I've lost hundreds if not thousands of crossbows to mangonels because they straight up walk into mangonel shots.
Thank god someone made this video, I myself a 600 elo player was about to do the research and try to post something about this becasue OBVIOUSLY the game pathing is broke, and gets more broken with every path... Thank god someone with the knowhow and knowledge did it!
You nailed it with this vid Survi! Thanks
Thanks for the vid Survi. Hopefully it raises awareness about a problem that’s been harming player experience so much.
Bro the old sounds are so nostalgic, almost brought a tear to my eyes
This video is so validating. I was just feeling that the pathing was bad
THANK YOU for making this video, its so clear to see. and here i thought i was losing my mind
i got so annoyed watching the examples omfg great video
11
Imaging experiencing this when you play rank 11
Great video Surv!
Thank you so much Sir for your great channel!!!
It's weird how isolated testing looks like in the latter examples, because from my experience the results are much worse in the context of a game when so much is going on. Maybe the pathing I get isn't consistently bad, but the times it does get bad then it's absolutely horrendous and it happens just often enough to note that there is some sparse consistency in pathing causing a catastrophe.
Definitely pathing feels even worse when there are a lot of things going on. I just scratched the surface with my examples.
They just completely rebuilt the short-distance pathing algorithm from the ground up for release like...3 days ago? The update that just came out. So that's probably why. Didn't even see Survivalist mention this, although I haven't seen the whole video I've seen a large portion.
They completely rebuilt the short-distance pathing algorithm from the ground up for the release like...3 days ago? The update that just came out. I haven't watched every minute of the video but I didn't see you take this into account, was it mentioned/used in your video takes?
This is mostly showcasing the player's units in an unobstructed field. When there are buildings, resources, and other players' units, it can become horrendous.
It is not uncommon when trying to disengage more than a dozen knights from pikes for some of the knights to run behind the pikes you want them to escape from.
I play DE for 2+ years and never played HD. I can say that villager pathing is MUCH worse now (im comparing DE with DE).
Excellent video
Great video! ❤
Amazing breakdown. I hope pathing gets 'actually fixed' soon. It is basically the only thing holding the game back right now.
It seems that HD was better partially because units didn't prioritize formation that much, moving and attacking in whatever formation they happen to be and eventually reaching the selected formation. Instead on DE units will prioritize achieving the formation first and then moving. Perhaps an alternative solution could be to add a new 'scattered' formation in which every unit prioritizes the shortest route to its destination as long as they keep themselves X distance from the center of the selected group?
I would this. You should just be able to hold alt or something then ur clicks act like you are issuing the command to each unit individually rather than as a group. No formations or anything. Like in aoe1 or StarCraft.
The same as it was very cool to see this detailed explanation, it would be as cool as having a dev explaining why that happens and why is hard to fix.
I am not asking for a fix, just for an explanation
Good timing 😊
The momentum...
The problem is : If you want old good pathing you have to accept units going above their max speed for short period of time like old xbow micro did (and it was overpowered)
It was honestly fine. Just need to use the current melee unit engaging and it would be perfect.
I don't believe that. There _must_ be ways to group up / split up / navigate obstacles that neither exceed anyone's max speed nor cause completely unnessecary slowdowns, like the shuffle or walking in the wrong direction.The devs must either not be clever enough to figure it out, or they don't prioritize it as much as they perhaps should.
Maybe there's an argument that any accurate solution is too computation heavy, but i really doubt that. A lot of long calculations have clever shortcuts or approximations, and i'd be surprised if this is any different. It's just a matter of figuring them out or finding an explanation of them.
You just have to look at the fact that other games like starcraft's pathing is really good to see that there is a solution to this problem@@volbla
Yeah as a relative newcommer to aoe2 the search function is aweful 11, and the replay system isnt very intuitive.
As a new aoe2 player coming from sc2, I supposed the wonky pathing was due to the game being so old, it's mind-blowing to see that the older version actually had better pathing.
Most tilt for me is when my units (especially villis) keep bumping into building and can't find their way out of my base to their new position. Seems like they really want to explore what's in the corner before they leave my gate, but explore not once, explore multiple times. It's actually a loop if I don't give a new command, that's more near and propably in sight for these dummies.
What a great video and examples! I will use this to make this point on their forum. Everyone who hates pathing please come and comment on it.
10000% agree. Things changed for the worse with pathing and microing
Insightful.
I approve of this video
The more I see the more I'm convinced I'm not crazy. I knew there were issues with DE some areas it was better, but generally it seems worse now with the recent patch. Especially these regrouping issues and archer micro. It hurts even more when they nerfed archers already with crossbow cost and such.
EDIT: I had also noticed the build path distance calculation was also taking longer routes but when you show it in a test environment and they walk what seems to be also twice as many tiles to do a task, it's like okay this is beyond just old game quirkiness, something has gone very wrong. As you say HD version has some odd pathing at times too but, DE's seems have gotten worse?
As for the CD version, don't know if anyone can easily get a copy to run but I don't remember it being too awful as a 9-11 year old. Thats 20+ years ago.
You are NOT crazy by a long shot. What's happening is that there's people on the forum, known as "dev white knights." They will gaslight you and make you think that you are being a whinny biotch when you are complaining about legitimate issue with this game.
Look up gaslighting if you don't know what it is. It's a pretty sick psychological tactic people use, especially in the world of dating but can be used anywhere too.
Watching that vill pathing hurted too much
I feel like there was a change in the interaction of unit collision in the last patch. Siege for example is so hard to controle when it gets slightly crowded. It would be cool to see the difference to the past in this regard too.
Looking at the knights splitting away from the THS, this really showcases the inferiority of the group-then-go paradigm of DE compared to the go-then-group paradigm of HD. the moment the knights are tasked, they seem to want to regroup from a 4x2 arrangement to a 2x4 arrangement but the THS are in the way and chaos ensues. aoe2 isn't total war. very rarely do I need my units in an exact formation, just just need them to get to the waypoint asap. If they do it in perfect formation that's great, but if it's a 90% correct formation, so long as it's done fast, that's acceptable. Admittedly group-then-go is probably historically accurate, but unless they get unit pathing down absolutely 100% chef's-kiss perfect, I think go-then-group is the best way to go.
It would also be interesting to take a look at CD edition's performance, with the highly acclaimed Userpatch 1.5. I could help you set that up :D
Is it better than HD edition? It'd be interesting to see the "best" pathing compared to the current one.
@@SurvivalistAoE Yes back then it was considered much better than HD, which is why the pro scene preferred to play over there. It also had reduced network / input lag. I might set it up in the next few days and record some clips and show on discord, to see how it is.
Yeah, I was wondering about this as well. HD "tried" to improve the pathing over the CD edition, while Userpatch largely kept the original ES pathing, only fixing things here and there that caused a lot of lag. I played Userpatch during the 2010s instead of HD, and I heard a lot of people complaining about the pathing getting worse in HD, very similar to what we're experiencing with DE.
@@ericfalleyYeah, UP specifically never altered the pathfinding of the original game. It only made updates that improved the performance without changing the end result of the pathfinding algorithms. HD pathfinding changed many times and was consistently worse. But some thing, like the unit regrouping behavior, are probably the same as they were in the original game.
very good vid
I hate that units go the wrong direction when I tell them to move
I was playing the Dracula campaign and the Magyars or Hungarians (can't remember exactly which, it was light green) were not really attacking my village with any units but they would shot the knights through watchtowers. There was a safe path and a dangerous narrow passage next to the Magyars both towards the enemy. The Ai sent all my units to get shot through the narrow passage. And all that reshuffling was pointless because even now, the Ai still sends the units with lower HP in the front when you group them. Which means the units die quickly
Pathing issues are eroding away at player interest in the game and need to be fixed quickly. Intentionally breaking pathing as a balance adjustment was an absolutely terrible idea. To start off, pathing needs to be reverted to the way it was when crossbows were OP. In conjunction with this, a movement delay should be added to units which triggers after firing, and the delay amount should be handled on a unit by unit basis. This post attack movement delay could even completely replace the old attack delay system that never really worked correctly to begin with, allowing the game to feel extra responsive while still giving dials to adjust hit and run balance.
How do you feel about the pathing changes introduced in latest patch? They seem to address some of the main issues you point out in this video
They've fixed some things, but made other things worse. I'd say pathing is overall better at least.
Empire Earth, released in 2001, featured excellent pathfinding methods. Additionally, it introduced a unique mechanism for moving armies, without formation through drag-clicking, unlike the standard method of just clicking.
Maybe we need a stance "no formation" so they just run as fast as possible to the desired location, like villagers (except the bumping into eachother).
I worry that if we did this it would be the ideal way for units to move and would make the game a lot uglier-looking.
@@nefftron1don't worry, everything is going to be OK
Like aoe 1 ? 11
@@nefftron1 11111 I'd take a useful and helpful girlfriend over a dumb blonde that is hazardous to my life any day 11. Love the sarcasm btw
14:46 ; Did I just see you clicking behind the mangonel and the xbows walking in the exact opposite direction? Bloody hell...
Units in HD look so much cooler ngl.
Yeah this is just insane
4 years already? Time passes quick
4:30 Map Selection, yes, I would rather take longer queue times for exactly the map pool I select, than play a map pool I don't enjoy.
That said, because of this system I was forced to learn some other maps and now I have even more fun. Granted, I was also frustrated a lot for a while and sometimes still am when I get a map I don't know well.
@@jozefwoo8079 I don't inherently am against learning new maps, or going out of my comfort zone, but from a System that was open and selective in what settings you could play to earn your Elo points (some would play 8 ppl FFA Diplo games) to something very selective, and the map voting system is public and not hidden.
10:35 One thing to note is that I think that was designed for all units to arrive at the same time.
l play DE only, because it had some updates which l wish HD had. Otherwise l'd play HD. And some (not all) new civs l wanted to play. And perhaps multiplayer community, and Agecapture.
I didn't grow up with Age and have no nostalgia for the old graphics and sound, but I kinda wish they'd have a menu option for the old graphics, like how Halo does it
The map pool and the pathing... I DON'T want to play the maps I don't want to play. Is it that hard to understand? I don't mind waiting 20 minutes to play the map I want, I just want to play that map, not michi, black (unfair generation) forest or one of the thirty kinds os arabia, or even arena. Instead of bans, just let me pick which maps I want to play from the entire pool.
The shuffle thing really makes no sense, they should change it as soon as possible but it has been so for so long
That's Aoe 2 dev's logic for ya
At this point I think attack move delay should definitely be reverted. It's suprising that DE melee pathing is better than HD.
Just watching this (not playing myself) vill pathing seemed to be about which point of the house you are clicking. If you click right side of the construction, vil is calculating the the path from that point as if it will construct from right side
1), the "go backwards before advancing" thing makes it seem like it'd actually be faster to tell your units to go backwards until they group up, then go forwards.
2) Would using the "stop moving" command help ranged units shoot faster while kiting? I recall that Brood War ran through the unit commands with different speeds, so Attack Move was slower than Patrol or Hold position to register.
Stop works like focus fire in this regard so your units will shuffle.
@@SurvivalistAoE Even with Stand Ground?
Doesn't change anything (though I didn't test)@@Appletank8
@@SurvivalistAoE darn
at least we dont get that much lag
Have you ever tried stop heavy calvary? look at their huge armor, it has to be so hard :D
Is attack move or patrol better? Or is it situational?
They are both almost the same. I have a video on attack move that goes into the details.
ua-cam.com/video/ct790w_Uu0Q/v-deo.html&ab_channel=Survivalist
Lobbies and chat work well it seems? Was that added later? Or did I misunderstand something?
He mainly meant, that you can't add or see any friends when are online or chat with them appart when you already in lobby
@@Lokalo1 So you could before?
@se6369 in voobly yes, could see your friends online and chat, it was possible even at zone back on release at like 1999 or something
I've noticed that pathfinding is terrible in the latest update. The attack move order is almost useless.
Did you check the old pathing on standard HD or userpatch?
Standard HD for this. I reinstalled the game just for these clips. I'm guessing pathing was better in userpatch. Might be worth revisiting.
@@SurvivalistAoE yeah, userpatch felt really smooth. I think they should hire the userpatch dev
Ranged units that are slower shouldn't be able to kite faster melee units. Dumb mechanic.
so... back in HD the archer line was even more OP?
omg that archer shuffeling makes me wanna vomit. from just watching things like NAC I never got how horrible it really got
You didn't discuss stop (G key) and move. For me it's terrible, it leads to xbows never moving at all and just shuffling on place. Some report that for them it works better than attack move.
I always held the Aoe2 group pathing as the gold standard (for an rts of this scale and with individually controllable units which can block each other). It is sad to see it fall apart one DE patch at a time
As a programmer, i'm curious what systems are coupled with pathing that it can break in so many ways? If on purpose, why even tamper with it? Roll that shit back. We gained nothing from it.
Is it just badly tested performance optimisation?
I guess only the moonwalking ai villager, deciding to gather wood half way across the map, underneath my castle, really knows the sad, spaghetti coded truth...
lots of sounds got a downgrade imo I use the mod for the old sounds idk I just like the old siege especially
Made me even angrier than before ^^. Send this shit to the devs
Voobly wololo pathing was pretty decent if im not mistaken
The front line changing to the back line makes cav archer play so bad, you can’t take any risks because if you get caught they take legitimately 5 seconds to regroup and switch sides and allow enemy knights to just jump all over you. Actually painful
it looks like villagers always tries to go to designated place by taking the right(as a direction) way. like autoscout
19:24, completely ruins quickwalling. It is by far the most annoying one to me. It wasnt like this for like a year but they changed it at some point. These pathing of issues literally made me quit 1x1 since it is just too annoying to play seriously and loose games because of these kind of issues. Losing by a hole in the wall or something is annoying but at least its your own fault. Losing because you send a vill to make a wall but he goes for a stroll first is just too annoying to deal with for me.
AOE: ADHD Edition
What a mess. Shame on the devs.
but devs said pathing is fixed in last patch D:
11
The fact that you can no longer "close click" your army to move without reformation has ruined army control. Infuriating!
I wish I could see the pathing from CD version, u can use it downloading from any youtube link, portable version has the 1.0/1.0c version, even AoFE version is to me a better good looking way to play aoe
04:57 😂
I believe they have fixed these (6:13) formation related pathing issues in December PUP, as I tested in a scenario editor.
Can Microsoft make a video why pathing is so bad and why it is so hard to fix? It's been like 5 years and it is still so horrendously bad
even aoe3 de pathing is soo bad, especially hussars, it feels so bad now
I wish to god the devs would watch this video and hire some fucking help.
The question is : what's the dev fu****g doing?
Thanks for showing this. Makes me not wanna play aoe anymore. Its shit.
Don't worry, we'll all move back to Voobly at some point 11
Microsoft will eventually shut down the servers and then perhaps we will have userpatch pathing again :p
Rather than unlimited bans, use unlimited stars and no bans on all maps with all maps being placed into the queue all at once- maps will be selected out of maps with the most stars between players, if 0 starred maps that becomes the queue, 1, then 2 etc - if a map has 2 stars and the rest all have 1 then that's the map you'll get.
I personally prefer DE, it feels a lot smoother for me tbh, for example the knights circling back to allow the infantry to catch up feels nice for me, and i just try to keep that in mind while playing, integrating into my own gameplay. FYI, I never got to seriously play HD and other previous versions of aoe2, I got to only really play DE so… maybe a personal preference.
Early DE had better pathing than the current iteration though.
villager pathing is the worstttttttttttttt in this game
it's pretty scummy how they keep making new expansions but won't fix major issues like pathing or how difficult it is to add friends talk/play with them. Or how you're forced to play maps you don't like because you can literally only ban one map in 4v4
No it is not. Some devs have already tried to explain some of the difficulties of working with legacy issues in a updated, but nonetheless old code base. Regarding bans it is also something that has a logic explanation: if single players joining a 4 vs 4 had more than one ban there could be scenarios in which all possible players in a pool for match may have banned all possible options. Map pool is 9 maps, 1 ban per player: worst case scenario, each player bans a different map but at least there is one map from the pool available to play.
Everything is about trade-offs, and there won't be a way to make everyone happy. Pathing is definitely one of the most trickiest to try to fix but unfortunately given the tech and the tools they work with; it is possible they won't find a better solution ever.
@@hackman2k In a lobby there were no forced map, with MM the the system is automated which is an improvement in itself. Somehow that wasn't enough, they want to speed it up at the cost of agency. If a player has no interest in playing a map they shouldn't be forced to. Because of this some players stay on HD or voobly or have to resort to mapdodging. They care so much about queue times yet have no issue coming up with extra queues like Empire Wars, Quick Play and Battleroyale. They have pushed a narrow view onto a community with varied interests. " there won't be a way to make everyone happy.", compared to a lobby opt-in is better for everyone.
I ban Arabia and Arena to avoid meta sniffers like you
The worst part is that the pathing felt pretty good about two years ago? I don't remember exactly when it happened, but they pushed an update which radically degraded the formation behavior and never fixed it.
At least trade carts run more smoothly now.
@@hackman2k Voobly was much better in these ways, you could choose what map, see which ones were available, easily add and chat with people. They can just start a new pathing code I mean they've been trying to fix it for ages and it only gets worse. These excuses are just bad, they are greedy and you're in denial, new expansion is easy money that's why they don't stop coming