I understand Edie's frustration, because this old game has been kept alive through the years because of the passion of the community. Nowadays gaming is an industry that involves lots of money, and is a high incentive for pro players. And as I can see, that goes much beyond passion, specially for the new young generation of this game.
For old-average players like me, this game has been and will be just pure passion and fun. This game has given us very good friends who we even got to meet in real life, and that's what matters for us. I speak in plurar because I have a chilean group (and now a clan) made of pure old players, and that is our slogan. I believe that that is @edie 's slogan too.
Remembiring this episoded Heartt`s reaction is no surprise. Its clear he also affected his team when it comes to these things. He hasnt changed his view and perhaps he decided AoC is worth the investment. We will see about that.
The same goes for not preparing for a Final well and loosing it badly. And yet we could be a little more respectful with others opinions.
Alright, since people still don't seem to understand, here we go.
Every single succesful game today is a business.
I stopped reading after this. Really? Since when did playing AoE become a business? An arrogant post like that makes it clear what kind of person you are. Thirsty for money and defeating the purpose of gaming. You should be grateful that we have amazing sponsors who are willing to support the game and keeping the active as it ever will be. They are a major part of our community and because of them, we are seeing different styles of gaming we haven't seen in years. If you think you can make a living or a business from playing 'successful games', good luck buddy. You are blind as a bat and have no idea how the real world works.
Alright, since people still don't seem to understand, here we go.
Every single succesful game today is a business. I know it's a hard concept to understand in AoE, and it's even harder to move from having everyone play the game for fun to having a more money oriented approach at the top. AoE has been running for years on a system which is not sustainable, we depend on people who kindly decide to donate to players, streamers and tournaments, but this is a net loss for them, as they don't really get anything back aside from the gratitude of the community. In other games, companies sponsoring the game or teams is a thing, because they put in a certain amount of money and they are guaranteed to get their brand out there to the viewers. AoE has a decent amount of viewers, but there's no calendar out there when it comes to events, so if a company was to invest in a team they have no guarantee that there will actually be a next event or if one will come after that, therefore it's too risky and certainly not worth it from a business POV. This is partly because there's no real entity in charge of the game to organise things, unlike Valve for Dota or Riot Games for LoL, and there's not much we can do about that except hope Microsoft starts caring at some point. But there's other stuff we can tackle at, because just hoping for Definitive Edition or AoE4 to boost the game is too uncertain at this point.
One of AoE's main problem today is that tournaments are too long. Yes, 2 months, or even 1 month is too much if you compare it to other games where the biggest tournaments are played within a week. The reason for this is because the players are not professional (AKA don't have the game as their primary or an important income), which means, for the most part, one can not justify to leave real life stuff aside just to get some games played. This is the main reason that I got pissed off when I saw the topic with people complaining about showmatches - the top players finally had a chance to earn some decent money from displaying their skills, and if we managed to turn this into a more sustainable system, like involving the casters more, similar to what the Chinese community does where they easily gather money for a showmatch, we would finally have something going that would benefit the whole community: players, casters and viewers. The game certainly gets more than enough viewers for short/mid notice showmatches to gather up a prize pool that will justify the players' time as well as growth for the casters.
This is the point where I got criticized for by people who have no idea about the situation. First of all, me and Mario Ovalle (the spanish youtuber who offered the showmatch of aM vs Finland) are good friends, we talk often and we agreed to help eachother when it comes to doing showmatches and such, with myself acting as a middleman to communicate to top players. I believe there have been 2 or 3 showmatches in the past with his community sponsoring them. Now, the settings for this showmatch would be the BoA semifinal ones, in a BO5 or BO7 (don't remember) for 200$. For a potential 3-4 hours, in which a team would walk out with nothing, this goes against my belief that players should be rewarded for their time, and for a match that would be broadcasted to 1k-2k viewers from Mario Ovalle, as well as viewers from other casters who decided to jump in, this was not worth it. So I asked if it was possible to gather 300$, this way it would be possible to split 70/30 and still have a decent amount left. Being a 3v3, a 70 dollar split per player to the winning team is not amazing, but it's not bad either, while the losing team still gets an OK compensation for their time instead of ending empty handed after setting aside a whole afternoon for it. Sure, the idea of asking for more money is very ambitious compared to what we are used to in AoE, but no change will happen if everyone just sits tight waiting for Microsoft to do some magic for us.
I truly believe that with the current audience the game has, it's more than possible to reward the players for their time, even more so if the casters manage to work together at some point. Instead of having Memb's BoA, Nili's Hippo tournament or T90's showmatches, all these communities could be mixed up and used to make something greater. Tournaments are certainly important for the growth of the game, but if we want to speed up the progress of these, then there needs to be a change that allows players to play more than one round per week.
AoE has truly an insane amount of retired or semi active top players today. Most people will play a game for two reasons nowadays: fun or money. You see, when you actually have established yourself as a player or streamer and earn enough from it, you can justify pushing through the lack of fun in the game because you are actually getting something in return regardless. This is what people do in other games, I can asure you everyone gets bored of playing the same game after a couple months, but professionals in other games that have gaming as their job just keep doing it because it justifies itself through money. The active top scene on AoE today is not big enough to have players constantly feeding eachother of games. In fact, over half the day is probably just a dead time where it's almost impossible to find a high level game. I see often people that are tired of seeing Viper at the top, yet how do we expect his potential competition, such as Lierey or Riut, to spend the time necessary on the game to catch up when at the first sight of improvement money earning wise we are out here complaining? There needs to be something that makes it atleast a little bit reasonable to put in the time required to achieve such a high level, because today, if money from AoE is what you want, the worst thing you could do would be to actually try to play the game at the top level. It's much easier to just be a caster, as well as more profitable.
My little attempt to organise something to change this was unfortunately delayed and then BoA came in. Hopefully it can be resumed and executed soon. The reason that I say this is because I can asure you that I'm not just here typing bullshit, I'm actually actively trying to do as much as I can being just a player.
Dear Edie and others, you can keep trying to ridiculize me and my clan for our losses, go sing more songs or write more topics about us if you wish. Truth is, we have gone from being noone on this game to competing at the top in less than 18 months. We have had plenty of losses in the past and will most likely have more in the future, yet these are the reason that we've managed to improve so much. So no, we are not embarrassed or ashamed of our defeats like you seem to think we should be, it's part of the progress and it's something you have to embrace if you want to improve at something. It's certainly easier to be behind a computer criticizing and insulting others than to be the one exposing yourselves. No, we haven't gotten to where we are for money, yet there's the potential for this game to become a business, which is what it needs to achieve real growth, atleast as much as a 20 year old game can have. If you think otherwise, then that's fine, let us dream of it.
I could write another 20 paragraphs about this, but I think the ones who are capable of understanding will already have done so by now. Either way, this is my last post regarding this. I certainly made the stupid mistake of exposing my ideas on AoEzone knowing that the Internet is full of idiots and trolls.
Totally different circumstances; Jordan had a family to feed. You can say that $200 is not enough when you are a legend and have beaten Viper in a BO21 (as Jordan did). Otherwise you can't, it's simple.
I guess Heart should inspire himself by Viper, and should try to do the things just as Viper did. Viper wasn't try harding to become n. 1 for money, he did it for various reasons and now he as a superstar of aoc makes very much money. If Heart thinks he can be just as good, he can earn money in the end.
I stopped reading after this. Really? Since when did playing AoE become a business? An arrogant post like that makes it clear what kind of person you are. Thirsty for money and defeating the purpose of gaming. You should be grateful that we have amazing sponsors who are willing to support the game and keeping the active as it ever will be. They are a major part of our community and because of them, we are seeing different styles of gaming we haven't seen in years. If you think you can make a living or a business from playing 'successful games', good luck buddy. You are blind as a bat and have no idea how the real world works.
I guess Heart should inspire himself by Viper, and should try to do the things just as Viper did. Viper wasn't try harding to become n. 1 for money, he did it for various reasons and now he as a superstar of aoc makes very much money. If Heart thinks he can be just as good, he can earn money in the end.
Alright, since people still don't seem to understand, here we go.
Every single succesful game today is a business. I know it's a hard concept to understand in AoE, and it's even harder to move from having everyone play the game for fun to having a more money oriented approach at the top. AoE has been running for years on a system which is not sustainable, we depend on people who kindly decide to donate to players, streamers and tournaments, but this is a net loss for them, as they don't really get anything back aside from the gratitude of the community. In other games, companies sponsoring the game or teams is a thing, because they put in a certain amount of money and they are guaranteed to get their brand out there to the viewers. AoE has a decent amount of viewers, but there's no calendar out there when it comes to events, so if a company was to invest in a team they have no guarantee that there will actually be a next event or if one will come after that, therefore it's too risky and certainly not worth it from a business POV. This is partly because there's no real entity in charge of the game to organise things, unlike Valve for Dota or Riot Games for LoL, and there's not much we can do about that except hope Microsoft starts caring at some point. But there's other stuff we can tackle at, because just hoping for Definitive Edition or AoE4 to boost the game is too uncertain at this point.
One of AoE's main problem today is that tournaments are too long. Yes, 2 months, or even 1 month is too much if you compare it to other games where the biggest tournaments are played within a week. The reason for this is because the players are not professional (AKA don't have the game as their primary or an important income), which means, for the most part, one can not justify to leave real life stuff aside just to get some games played. This is the main reason that I got pissed off when I saw the topic with people complaining about showmatches - the top players finally had a chance to earn some decent money from displaying their skills, and if we managed to turn this into a more sustainable system, like involving the casters more, similar to what the Chinese community does where they easily gather money for a showmatch, we would finally have something going that would benefit the whole community: players, casters and viewers. The game certainly gets more than enough viewers for short/mid notice showmatches to gather up a prize pool that will justify the players' time as well as growth for the casters.
This is the point where I got criticized for by people who have no idea about the situation. First of all, me and Mario Ovalle (the spanish youtuber who offered the showmatch of aM vs Finland) are good friends, we talk often and we agreed to help eachother when it comes to doing showmatches and such, with myself acting as a middleman to communicate to top players. I believe there have been 2 or 3 showmatches in the past with his community sponsoring them. Now, the settings for this showmatch would be the BoA semifinal ones, in a BO5 or BO7 (don't remember) for 200$. For a potential 3-4 hours, in which a team would walk out with nothing, this goes against my belief that players should be rewarded for their time, and for a match that would be broadcasted to 1k-2k viewers from Mario Ovalle, as well as viewers from other casters who decided to jump in, this was not worth it. So I asked if it was possible to gather 300$, this way it would be possible to split 70/30 and still have a decent amount left. Being a 3v3, a 70 dollar split per player to the winning team is not amazing, but it's not bad either, while the losing team still gets an OK compensation for their time instead of ending empty handed after setting aside a whole afternoon for it. Sure, the idea of asking for more money is very ambitious compared to what we are used to in AoE, but no change will happen if everyone just sits tight waiting for Microsoft to do some magic for us.
I truly believe that with the current audience the game has, it's more than possible to reward the players for their time, even more so if the casters manage to work together at some point. Instead of having Memb's BoA, Nili's Hippo tournament or T90's showmatches, all these communities could be mixed up and used to make something greater. Tournaments are certainly important for the growth of the game, but if we want to speed up the progress of these, then there needs to be a change that allows players to play more than one round per week.
AoE has truly an insane amount of retired or semi active top players today. Most people will play a game for two reasons nowadays: fun or money. You see, when you actually have established yourself as a player or streamer and earn enough from it, you can justify pushing through the lack of fun in the game because you are actually getting something in return regardless. This is what people do in other games, I can asure you everyone gets bored of playing the same game after a couple months, but professionals in other games that have gaming as their job just keep doing it because it justifies itself through money. The active top scene on AoE today is not big enough to have players constantly feeding eachother of games. In fact, over half the day is probably just a dead time where it's almost impossible to find a high level game. I see often people that are tired of seeing Viper at the top, yet how do we expect his potential competition, such as Lierey or Riut, to spend the time necessary on the game to catch up when at the first sight of improvement money earning wise we are out here complaining? There needs to be something that makes it atleast a little bit reasonable to put in the time required to achieve such a high level, because today, if money from AoE is what you want, the worst thing you could do would be to actually try to play the game at the top level. It's much easier to just be a caster, as well as more profitable.
My little attempt to organise something to change this was unfortunately delayed and then BoA came in. Hopefully it can be resumed and executed soon. The reason that I say this is because I can asure you that I'm not just here typing bullshit, I'm actually actively trying to do as much as I can being just a player.
Dear Edie and others, you can keep trying to ridiculize me and my clan for our losses, go sing more songs or write more topics about us if you wish. Truth is, we have gone from being noone on this game to competing at the top in less than 18 months. We have had plenty of losses in the past and will most likely have more in the future, yet these are the reason that we've managed to improve so much. So no, we are not embarrassed or ashamed of our defeats like you seem to think we should be, it's part of the progress and it's something you have to embrace if you want to improve at something. It's certainly easier to be behind a computer criticizing and insulting others than to be the one exposing yourselves. No, we haven't gotten to where we are for money, yet there's the potential for this game to become a business, which is what it needs to achieve real growth, atleast as much as a 20 year old game can have. If you think otherwise, then that's fine, let us dream of it.
I could write another 20 paragraphs about this, but I think the ones who are capable of understanding will already have done so by now. Either way, this is my last post regarding this. I certainly made the stupid mistake of exposing my ideas on AoEzone knowing that the Internet is full of idiots and trolls.
You know @Rorarimbo that Jordan quit Aoe also because of lack of money involved in the game and even Viper said that Marko would come back only if there was a "1kk $ tournament".
Jordan also told in the interview with Kitty that he invested time ( time is money ) and it probably wasn't worth it. Now I can't see a single person bashing him for that x D
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0MhUAwXVBE
Here is a link.
How can you catch up to people who can put more hours in and already put way more hours in
You want to see brands start to invest in AoC, and you think an important reason for this is the lack of a calendar
that it's unfair for casters to profit off the content of expert players without giving much back. I think there are some really big problems with this kind of thinking. It supposes that all/most of the income these casters receive are from their expert content
@Slaiter , I dont think I disagree with smth what you are saying. I will only say that result suggest preparation was not good or not enough. As I said he is consistent with his views and pretty confident, too. My be a little overconfident even. It has become pretty common in this forum we put the others in the opposite side of the ring and next thing you know we have a fight over a thing we mostly agree
Viper isn't a "superstar of AoC" just because he is the #1 at it though. He has worked hard on his stream and streaming ability which has grown him into the success he is. Times have changed (which is pretty much my comment above) and if the newbies try to follow old paths during different times they are going to be bitterly disappointed.
Twitch is new TV - You need to be entertaining to succeed in our game. The real money in this game is in streaming, building a following, getting subs for that sustained income. You don't just get there by being good, you need to make people want to watch you.
T90 is currently the biggest AoC stream going. He rarely plays himself, he is entertaining, informative and a personality.
You would be better off following in his steps of the last two years then following in the steps of Viper in the past 6 years because you just can't follow Vipers steps of the last year unless you are already the best in the world...
Indeed, he can do that; I totally agree with that. What I wrote is not a complaint; it is an explanation why people ridicule him while they wouldn't ridicule Jordan or Viper if they were in the same situation. How people react on what you say not only depends on the content of your message, it also depends on who you are.You can even turn down 10000 $ if you want to. It's someone's own will and decision to make and your complaint means nothing.
The purpose of the game at elite level is usually both have fun and make some money. AoE is not a business, but if in order to get better you have to play an unhealthy amount of hours a day (like pretty much every top player) you'll obviously expect a better reward for the time invested. Do you really think that every top player only plays for the fun and love for the game? That's a very low %.. i'm sorry for dissapointing you.
I don't know whether I would accept that showmatch for 200usd or not (which is not 200 for me but for the team, and only if I win), but even if I did, I would not be so hard on heart about it. It's his decision.
offtopic: I feel that it's kind of silly how the other thread has been locked because "It made no sense and no one agreed with each other" then we have this neverending discussion in a 2v2 tournament finals thread that happened a year ago. So logic.
I don't think that's how probability works lul.
Besides 1 dollar = 3,5 Peru Sol, so that's not too shabby for heart I'd say.
where are these f*cking trolls coming from and attacking the very people that are keeping the aoe scene active. and what i am seeing from these posts against heart from these trolls "only play for the fun and love for the game" is jealously that heart who got to the top of the game so quickly and people like edie dracont influenza these can't take it anymore that we have played this game for 5-6 years and a newbie comes along and reaches the top but we play for the love of the game... this is getting so toxic. please can we close the thread