Pull" Trick" discussion

[Jaeger]

Well its not skillful. Anyone who knows someone who knows how to do it and have 5 minutes can learn. Also just because a unit has a "max speed" doesnt mean its intended for any unit to go as fast as the fastest unit you have, thats just stupid and you'd have to be an idiot to believe that. It's natural for units to walk a little bit faster sometimes when they have to "catch up" to the rest of their group, which is why its there. Its a clearly broken mechanic that is just barely ever used and fortunately I doubt anyone is good enough to be able to abuse it to it's full potential.

Okay it's not skillful, but it's not broken as well. It doesn't give anyone an unfair advantage because it can be used with any unit and any civ. And for the record Kaiser did abuse it to its full potential in a stream few days ago where he pulled 5 canons from urumi by his fusiliers.

just cause something doesn't give an unfair advantage does not mean it's not bug abuse. And no kaiser did not use it anywhere near to its full potential. Imagine training one huss and having 7 speed skirms the rest of the game. Now like I said I doubt anyone currently playing is good enough to be able to do that, but the point still stands. It's unintended by the developers(undebatable), the game is not balanced with this mechanic in mind, and it's not the way the game is meant to be played. No wait nevermind I forgot that every unit is supposed to be as fast as your fastest unit on the field

I think with 1 huss it wouldn't work, the smaller group is pulled towards the larger one.

[princeofkabul]

pulltrick is as retarded as fast shooting, however i dont see how to tweak it.

[EAGLEMUT]

nothing wrong with it

So you're saying its not a bug? So developers intended all units to be able to move as fast as the fastest unit grouped with them?

It's unintended by the developers(undebatable), the game is not balanced with this mechanic in mind, and it's not the way the game is meant to be played. No wait nevermind I forgot that every unit is supposed to be as fast as your fastest unit on the field

You might have a misunderstanding of how the mechanic works, unless you didn't mean that literally. The speed of your fastest unit on the battlefield has no effect on how fast your other units are running, only thing that matters is what maximum running speed have the developers defined for a particular unit. You can pull your fastest unit on the battlefield to your slowest unit and make your fastest unit run yet faster - for example you can pull fusiliers to falconets just as you can pull falconets to fusiliers. Who gets pulled depends on the group size.

[Gendarme]

Drag box - not even once

[Snuden]

I pulled out a bit too late a few times, when I was younger.

[Gendarme]

Don't tell your kids that.

[tabben]

This game is dead af. Can't find games anymore. Instead its everybody discussing such useless shit here. Just play the game. The pull trick is good and makes sense.

On a more serious note, it does take a bit of skill and cleverness and it's not always easy to execute in the heat of the moment. There are fights where it can be rather impactful but i don't think it's very common.
I'd say the pull trick is mostly useful in age1 for breaking explorer snares and later for saving villagers from getting raided. Don't really have any problem with either of those cases.

[edeholland]

Well its not skillful. Anyone who knows someone who knows how to do it and have 5 minutes can learn. Also just because a unit has a "max speed" doesnt mean its intended for any unit to go as fast as the fastest unit you have, thats just stupid and you'd have to be an idiot to believe that. It's natural for units to walk a little bit faster sometimes when they have to "catch up" to the rest of their group, which is why its there. Its a clearly broken mechanic that is just barely ever used and fortunately I doubt anyone is good enough to be able to abuse it to it's full potential.

They don't go as fast as your fastest unit, that's why there is a max speed.

[Snuden]

I think it is awesome, regardless if it is a bug or a feature and as tabben pointed out it does take skill and is probably not easy to execute in the heat of a battle.
It is also what (additionally) separates the very good players from the good players.

The rest of us can go play 3v3 MS+ on Deccan.

[macacoalbino]

Would it be possible to patch this mechanic by lowering the max speed of units?

[edeholland]

Would it be possible to patch this mechanic by lowering the max speed of units?

Yes, just as it's possible to increase or decrease the normal speed of units. Eagle would have to confirm, but I assume we already change the max speed of those units we changed the normal speed of (like cetan bows).

[Guigs]

I don't get why you complain about this trick tbh gibson, I think it was intended by the developpers anyway otherwise units wouldn't have a max speed.
Anyway pull trick is totally a part of microing your units, and it's as legit as counter snaring opponent hero to get away. But perhaps you would think differently if you try it instead of dragboxing your units 24h.
I can't think of all the situation pull trick avoid me losing free units or vills, and it's a legit counter to annoying lag.
Btw i think you shouldn't complain about that when you're casting on ESOCTV

[Interjection]

Pull trick makes the game more fun to watch

[Gendarme]

It is not necessarily intended because units have max speed. Max speed is necessary to have formations.

[flontier]

Anyone has ever tried pull trick with india inspiration effect ? idk if it breaks this max speed, if it's the case there is maybe some funny moves to test with urumi .

[Kaiserklein]

@gibson maybe you think pull trick is THAT broken cause you didn't quite understand how it works.

just cause something doesn't give an unfair advantage does not mean it's not bug abuse.

Well first, it can't be bug abuse since it's simply not a bug. There's literally a value in the proto file specifying the max speed at which your units can go. Some units don't have a max speed (for example livestock or warchief pets) so you won't ever be able to pull them. Most units, however, have a max speed set at 50% higher than their regular speed, so for example skirms are supposed to be able to run at up to 6 speed. I mean, they even have a special "running" animation when you pull them lol. Dunno how you can call that a bug when it's written in the files.

It's natural for units to walk a little bit faster sometimes when they have to "catch up" to the rest of their group, which is why its there.

Yes. Which shows it's not a bug.

And no kaiser did not use it anywhere near to its full potential.

That's true, cause it's a trick that takes apm and accuracy, so using it to its full potential would require godly mechanics. That's the case with any kind of micro mechanics though; for example, if people could split their skirm fire perfectly while kiting perfectly, I swear no one would ever try to make musks against a fortress composition.

Imagine training one huss and having 7 speed skirms the rest of the game.

With one huss, you're going to be able to pull one skirm at best.

Now like I said I doubt anyone currently playing is good enough to be able to do that, but the point still stands.

Well again, someone with a perfect micro would show us that a lot of mechanics are super strong. We would probably need to nerf vils for example, because with perfect micro, someone popping vils in his base to fight would never lose any, and would do tons of damage.

It's unintended by the developers(undebatable)

The fact that most units can run at 50% faster than their normal speed was definitely intended by the devs. It's not even a question since it's written in the files.
Now, did they expect players to abuse it to that extent? Probably not. Does that matter? Not really, there's most likely a ton of stuff they didn't expect to be abused (for example creeping around treasures). Plus they obviously had no clue about balance and mechanics, so I wouldn't value the devs' opinion too much.

the game is not balanced with this mechanic in mind

Its a clearly broken mechanic

Where do these statements come from?
Anyway, if it's proved to be not balanced, then we should consider nerfing it. We can reduce the max speed attainable by units. It doesn't mean the mechanic itself is bad, maybe just need to tweak the numbers.

and it's not the way the game is meant to be played.

I also don't know where this comes from. Units are meant to run towards each other when you dragbox them together. Just like, for example, pikes are intended to always go in front of skirms when dragboxed together, and they'll run to do that formation if they have to.

No wait nevermind I forgot that every unit is supposed to be as fast as your fastest unit on the field

Also just because a unit has a "max speed" doesnt mean its intended for any unit to go as fast as the fastest unit you have, thats just stupid and you'd have to be an idiot to believe that

Well again, this is just not how it works. The speed of your fastest unit doesn't even matter for pulling. And you need more units to pull a group of other units, so for example you can pull 20 skirms with 25 huss.

Well its not skillful. Anyone who knows someone who knows how to do it and have 5 minutes can learn

It's really not easy to do, and anyone claiming that probably didn't actually try to do it himself, and just thinks "eh you only need to dragbox your stuff" which is wrong.


Anyway, regardless of all that, I do agree that the pull trick is very strong, and even game changing sometimes.

[princeofkabul]

Well it ain't hard to do either, just a matter synchronizing it to your gameplay.
I'm having difficulties dragboxing my army comp because I got used to play with multiple groups and sometimes it would be more productive to dragbox than 3-4 group control.

[Kaiserklein]

Anyone has ever tried pull trick with india inspiration effect ? idk if it breaks this max speed, if it's the case there is maybe some funny moves to test with urumi .

The max speed also gets boosted by any speed boost, so that it stays proportional. For example skirms with +10% speed from the arsenal would get a speed of 4.4 (instead of 4) and a max speed of 6.6 (instead of 6), so the max speed is still an extra 50%.

Well it ain't hard to do either, just a matter synchronizing it to your gameplay.
I'm having difficulties dragboxing my army comp because I got used to play with multiple groups and sometimes it would be more productive to dragbox than 3-4 group control.

Well it's easy to do a basic pull trick by just dragboxing your stuff together. But if you really want your units to run as fast as possible, in the correct direction, without slowing down too much the "pulling" group of units too much, it's harder. And if you wanna keep your units running (longer than the 5-10 sec of sprint you get by doing a basic pull trick), it's way harder.
But yes, I agree that overall it's not super hard to do. To be fair though, nothing is super hard to do in aoe3, micro wise. What's hard is to sync everything together and to be really fast and accurate. For example I use both control groups and dragbox to pull trick, and imo it does take skill to sync these together properly.

[deleted_user0]

The ability is stupid as hell and I have no idea what the devs were thinking. Or well, I know that they weren't thinking some people would play this game competively.

[edeholland]

The ability is stupid as hell and I have no idea what the devs were thinking. Or well, I know that they weren't thinking some people would play this game competively.

It's meant for making formations, and necessary for that. Would be afwul if you put a limited range on it and your units walk in a static formation like in AoE1.

[gibson]

Yea it makes sense that the ability is there,and it's clearly there so that units can catch to other units,not so that you can drag vils across half the map at 6.5 speed

[Hazza54321]

The thing that annoys me is casters getting a hard one whenever someone pulls off this fairly easy trick
Also in terms of kiting it can get alot more value

[Kaiserklein]

Well it's just that the formations system wouldn't work properly if you remove that mechanic. Units wouldn't be able to "catch up" and group together. It would just look super autistic, similar to what happens when you select like 15 vils from a gold mine and move them elsewhere, and they just keep the shape they had around the goldmine while walking, cause they just don't group lol.
So it is necessary for the game. Then yeah the first purpose wasn't to pull units to make them faster, but how do we avoid that, since it's just about abusing a mechanic like any other?

The thing that annoys me is casters getting a hard one whenever someone pulls off this fairly easy trick
Also in terms of kiting it can get alot more value

Well I remember that recently you were positively surprised that I went in stealth mode with my forest prowlers. That's even easier to do than pull tricking, yet almost no one does it. Which is why people enjoy watching it, it's just refreshing.

[edeholland]

Yea it makes sense that the ability is there,and it's clearly there so that units can catch to other units,not so that you can drag vils across half the map at 6.5 speed

So what would your suggestion be?

[Hazza54321]

Well it's just that the formations system wouldn't work properly if you remove that mechanic. Units wouldn't be able to "catch up" and group together. It would just look super autistic, similar to what happens when you select like 15 vils from a gold mine and move them elsewhere, and they just keep the shape they had around the goldmine while walking, cause they just don't group lol.
So it is necessary for the game. Then yeah the first purpose wasn't to pull units to make them faster, but how do we avoid that, since it's just about abusing a mechanic like any other?

The thing that annoys me is casters getting a hard one whenever someone pulls off this fairly easy trick
Also in terms of kiting it can get alot more value

Well I remember that recently you were positively surprised that I went in stealth mode with my forest prowlers. That's even easier to do than pull tricking, yet almost no one does it. Which is why people enjoy watching it, it's just refreshing.

I guess it stopped being refreshing when rdm cpts are doing it idk, stealth mode also is intended