Offical Response to Auto-Scouting

Plus2JoeMicrosoft Age of Empires Dev Team2h

Thanks to everyone for the discussion about the auto scout feature. We want you to know the development team is watching this conversation with interest, and we understand the concerns that some have expressed in this thread.

We’re very excited to share this widely requested feature with the community, and we also acknowledge that it will have an impact on gameplay. We expect that impact to be positive: Our hope is that new players will feel more confident joining their friends in multiplayer matches, and more seasoned players will find it a nice quality-of-life improvement they can use to keep exploring when they want to focus elsewhere (though it’ll still be far less efficient than a manually commanded scout by a skilled player).
However, as with any change we make, we’ll continue to listen to feedback from the Age of Empires community and make tweaks based both on what you tell us and how we see the feature being used in game.

Our plan is to release auto scout for all game modes in the next update, and our request is that you try it out and give us your feedback once it’s released. We’re open to all feedback on this and other aspects of the game as we continue to work on improving the Age II DE experience for everyone!

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My personal reply:

I won’t lie I am slightly confused, when has this been a widely requested feature from the community? Elo being shown beside names has been a widely requested feature. A fully operational leaderboard has been a widely requested feature. Melee units working properly and not glitching out. Is a WIDELY requested feature. Proper Ranked queuing for team games and player balancing for random queue. Widely requested feature.

This as seen by the instant outrage and reaction has never been a widely requested feature. If it had been so widely requested so many people would not have been blindsided by the announcement.

Speaking for myself I can honestly say that once this patch comes out you will have lost one player. And every person thereafter to whom I recommend the game will be advised to stay away from DE. Just as I did with HD.

I however am one person and in the grand scene of things insignificant.

The project manager has the sole power to decide the direction of this game. Streamlining it in a desperate attempt to retain new players is not a game I wish to be a part of.

So as a person who is active in the community, and online with nearly 500 hours played in DE alone. Come next week with the implementation of this new feature, voobly will have regained another player.

Of course my subsequent reviews will be changed to accommodate this change.