The pathing in Age of Empires II is the most unplayable garbage of any video game ever and needs to be fixed (no, really)

[arborardor]

Why do the villagers walk two extra tiles to drop off resources? Instead of walking to the corner of the town center to drop off resources for some reason in the recent patch they waste time walking to the middle. This was fine before why did they make it so much worse?

Why don't the villagers walk where you tell them to go anymore? If I click straight south of a villager, it will not walk straight south, it will decide to take an 8-tile path around some houses to the left. What is the purpose of a video game when the characters DON'T TRAVEL IN THE DIRECTION YOU CLICK THEM TO TRAVEL? Until this is fixed none of the civilization stats don't matter, It doesn't matter that one civilization is different than another, because the pathing is completely broken as to make the game unplayable. I'm not kidding Age of Empires 2 is completely broken and everyone who plays it is an idiot having to resort to the worst point and click pathing. Why did they ruin this game, and who ruined it? I've been playing it for so many years and until recently if you clicked a villager to walk SOUTH it would walk SOUTH, and if you clicked an army unit to attack to the LEFT it would actually go LEFT instead of the game's BS code shenanigans saying "Oh the user clicked left but we're really going to make the unit attack to the right instead"

I have never played ANY OTHER VIDEO GAME with pathing this bad or where the character moves in the opposite direction you want to go. So why does anyone pretend this absolute garbage is good? It's unplayable until they fix how atrociously horrible the design is. Why isn't this addressed as a number ONE priority instead of new civilization BS? PLEASE FIX THE DAMN GAME!! I'm playing any other game until this garbage is fixed

[Kampfschwein Fjonda]

Agree, villagers walking 2-3x the length of the shortest path is unacceptable.
@admins: No, you don't get replays. It's there a million times every day.

[KingKickAss]

Must be something seriously wrong with how its coded or whatever if its taking them this long. If its because they want to do a bunch of other fixes before porting over the fixes, I think they would be better off doing it separately for how severe it is.

[Mia Wallace]

Im waiting since 3 month for a fix but prob. they makeing more dlc's with even more bugs.

[BirbNotBird]

Agree, better in some aspects but then worse than in some aspects. Pathfinding patches are so inconsistent.

[James3157]

I have no idea how hard it is to fix pathfinding issues, but I would like to think that with new dlc coming out only once a year that a game not completely abandoned yet contrary to AoE: De would be able to fix at least some of the issues with pathfinding that has plenty of time to spare in fixing them as well. If not fixing all of the pathfinding issues at least fixing the most game breaking issues with pathfinding. If the villagers do not go where you command them to go by going in a different direction than where you want them to go it is because pathfinding issues.

I am honestly surprised as well that not a single mod has ever been made officially for fixing issues with pathfinding bugs especially for AoE II: DE. If such a mod even did exist on AoE II: DE it could be potentially the best mod in comparison to other mods that are more optional as opposed to being essential. When it comes to people complaining about pathfinding issues the most obvious might seem like it is AoE: DE, but even from AoE II: DE pathfinding issues are arguably just as bad as AoE: DE if not worse despite this game not being completely abandoned yet by Microsoft.

[BirbNotBird]

Originally posted by James3157:

I have no idea how hard it is to fix pathfinding issues, but I would like to think that with new dlc coming out only once a year that a game not completely abandoned yet contrary to AoE: De would be able to fix at least some of the issues with pathfinding that has plenty of time to spare in fixing them as well.

When it comes to people complaining about pathfinding issues the most obvious might seem like it is AoE: DE, but even from AoE II: DE pathfinding issues are arguably just as bad as AoE: DE.

For an average Joe like me, I will not comment much on how they should fix, but rather why I believe the pathfinding is absolutely wild everytime a new DLC introduced.

Reference: SOLID principles in coding by Uncle Bob.
https://youtu.be/zHiWqnTWsn4

To save you time, basically it's "you made A and B seperately, but never should you make C which forces you to modify A and B, nor modify A force you to modify B".

My assumption that they always add new code and it always force them to fix other parts of the dataset. It's truly make sense honestly, though I would wait to see how devs will fix them in the future.

I hope that they could adapt and fix it with SOLID, otherwise well. Even a guy with no years of coding could tell the product is bad.

About pathfinding of 1DE, I find it problematic, but for AOE1, it's just fine. It's as bad as CNC Tiberium Dawn and Red Alert1, Starcraft 1 too. Those games were made with standards of 1900s, so it's never well for today, unless you are a hardcore with those pathfinding mechanic.

[Quintem]

I've almost lost matches because of the wonky pathing recently. While I've had matches where I am losing become a loss because of pathing because I can't micro my way out of a bad situation. Especially with melee units. They refuse to do as they're told, I'm not sure when, where or why it broke but a melee unit will almost always attack closest unit not the one you told it to. Ranged units will always target a unit you tell them to, they will even walk to position and fire at that unit. Which means ranged units and melee units operate on different code or something. It's utterly broken for melee. I'm pretty sure in the the original game melee units did not disobey orders and attack the wrong units.

You know its bad when I'd rather have Starcraft 1 unit AI/Pathing for my melee units, they'll attack the right thing at least. Speaking of Starcraft, SC2 spoilt most RTS players rotten. It's unit control is too good almost. 100s of units can flow through the smallest gaps effortlessly (A Goth players dream) and will precisely attack the correct things, even if it leads to their deaths.

[Lady Alcina Dimitrescu]

Yea ;(
It's actually annoying. It is not only a problem for Villagers tho.
I mean it is a big middle finger to your economy but also to your military as well.

But military units seems to be "LESS" buggy than Villagers.

[theDarkMayhem]

Yes, DE's pathfinding is the worst. After many games, i would say military units' pathing much worse than villager's one. When you trying to focus specific unit like vill or monk, your melee unit can target other object, that's on opposite direction (especially annoying, when you want to kill low life vill, but scout determine attack a spear). At least, villagers won't change their order. How Baudrillard would say, there's no code.
It's just becomes too disrespectful to commutiny. instead of fixing core problems, devs doing mobile version and dlc's. So, i shall not pay them any cent, till they fix pathing and matchmaking.

[box]

I think they dont know how to fix it because the original vanilla game used a band aid solution and everything they try just doesnt want to work with the original design.

[Quintem]

Originally posted by box:

I think they dont know how to fix it because the original vanilla game used a band aid solution and everything they try just doesnt want to work with the original design.

Give the melee units the ranged unit's AI, see how that works or maybe they have internally and it failed.

[FloosWorld]

@OP: Out of curiosity - did you try the PUP yet? It seems like there have been some fixes applied regarding pathfinding. The new pathfinding algorithm can be tested in Single Player skirmish there.

---

Originally posted by Fjonda:

@admins: No, you don't get replays. It's there a million times every day.

Replays are actually still important as due to AoE 2's legacy spaghetti code, a thing that has been fixed on one end could break a thing on another end. It's like playing Jenga.

[Lady Alcina Dimitrescu]

Guys please. Microsoft is a smoll indie company we can't expect them to fix problems fast !!!

[Boshiken]

Guys - you still pay for this - why you complain - they already have your money
as I am just laughing about you
all I can do is laugh and help others not giving away their money
but if you are not too late - there is refund

[Boshiken]

as if it matters - that you play what you paid for - or not