When I read about the remaster of aoe DE I was never expecting something good cause of the aoe 2 HD experience, however after the release the game surprised me, there was no lag, the game was good looking and felt good when talking about playability and smoothness, obviously the game had critical issues that were never fixed during development, for example how can they change the pop room to 200 but not change the map scripts when assigning the resource distribution, every single map was running out of resources at min 23, cause they never adapted the map generation to the simply pop addition, the balance was untouched for a year, that was always the weak spot of aoe 1, it lacks of the competitiveness essence of age of kings, their big mistake was releasing that game without first solving its original issues, now the game is dead, despite they tried to fix it a year after its release, the player base doesn’t always stands the deception so well..
When I read about the aoe 2 remaster, after the experience of the aoe 1 DE, i was actually confident that the game would be good cause of my technical experience, basically it was only changing the graphical assets and the data(using UP) so the gameplay would be way superior than the HD or even voobly.
But when the game came out with new civs more bugs were re-introduced and the balance went chaotic for months, but the experience was still better than the voobly or hd version, the game had potential or at least I thought it would, despite the civs didn’t feel like part of the original game cause of certain bonus and unit abilities, but by that time I was being really optimist so I didn’t put too much attention to the poor balance design and performance issues, I was like most of you happy with the graphics and the absence of lag.
After few months the poor balance design started to ruin the fun of the matches, also the devs implemented a MM that was matching people with 1k difference cause of a bad algorithm it was counting all the ranks and not the average of the whole team, the ugly maps and basically playing forced maps was being and still a pain in the ass, the feeling has grew strong about that, after 21 years now, you can’t sit and play the map that you want in your level and limited time cause the devs after all the complains are not listening to the real demands of the active multiplayer community, literally thousands of players are being forced to play like that cause of the dev team.
That same dev team have changed our game so much, balance patch after balance patch without fixing real broken things, Indians with its imperial camel remained broken for 6 long years, they basically spent 8-12 months reducing the strength of their latest civs and balance changes from release, but during that time they added too much things that now comparing to the AoC 1.0c patch, the game and the civs are not the same anymore, a civ like Koreans was developed to be slow at the start but quite powerful in late age, but the low level community pushed Korean, Saracens, Teutons and turks beyond their original design, now they are stronger at the start and above all the other civs in late imperial, if you are reading this you will notice how some basic rule from any other rts game was violated there.
Now we have got 2 new civs that no one asked for and more functions from other games, I remember we were making fun a guy suggesting nonstop to give teutonic knights the ability to build towers, that was good as a meme, but the devs delivered the sergeant a son of a huskarl and etk that builds towers(donjons) and on top of that they get 50 free units instantly, when did we see such mechanics in our beloved game?
Anyway we don’t have civ identity anymore, repeated bonuses, broken civs and bonus that do not belong to the game, the worst part is that they will keep changing our game and adding more features from other games cause we are fool enough to pay for it and accept it cause we love the game so blindly that we don’t see the damage they have done.
I could complain about performance issues or point out big faulty patches like the x256 cheat patch or the one when villagers where walking in walls or resources or the latest patch were you could delete walls and even buildings, but no this is about the core changes they have done to our game that severely hurts the civ identity and balance.
Let’s talk about skirms, imperial skirmisher was maybe a good idea, but giving the UT to Aztecs that gives more attack and range, something like the existent Briton ut? Sounds like too much bonuses on the same unit right? well what about another one to the Lithuanian skirms that also gives them +2 pierce armor and the best is that those bonus can stack on multiplayer, so you can have an imperial skirmisher with 5+6 PA and more attack and now one that shoots twice the spear “great” -said no one-.
Now let’s see the light cav, another basic unit, turks had free upgrades cause they were missing the other trash units, instead of giving the civ eskirm or genitor they gave them extra PA on a free research unit, amazing, seems like only good players know how powerful are hussars in 1x1 in late games, but it doesn’t end there, cause indians and tatars also get more PA on this unit, I quite can’t remember a single repeated tech/bonus on an unit in AoC.
Bulgarians, they are amazing at breaking the old civ and unit design, look they get free militia upgrades and also +5 melee armor, the zombie unit that no matter how much I play them i just don’t feel it belongs to aoe 2, the infamous konik(2 units in one), the half tower castle the krepost, cavaliers that almost beats paladin but it doesn’t stop there the civ just received cheap siege upgrades, this civ has been over buffed but simply no one would miss them if they would be removed.
Tatars another civ that was over buffed because they messed the cav archer, now we have to deal with a civ with free thumb ring, Parthian tactics and an UT that gives the unit more strength and an UU that generates gold when fighting and also is really cheap for what it can do in combats, but that is not enough, they also get free sheeps on top of a lasting more food on herdables, yeah.
Cumans with their 2 town centers and rams on feudal age, this mechanic despite being nerfed broke the concept, limits, both perks and cons of staying at feudal age and the worse is that we accepted it and now we have Burgundians with economy upgrades one age before and cavaliers on castle age with cheap upgrades, at this rate the next civ will have trebuchets or bbc’s in castle age half the cost to be interesting.
I can go on but I think I made my point here, we have been allowing FE to change our game and keep adding game changing mechanics, farms producing gold and relics producing food, they started reaching the boundaries with the feitora, then the keshik and now generic units, extra attack on generic units, extra armor here and there, everything right now seems so wrong, but I am afraid it won’t stop here.
I know top players and public icons can’t risk their reputation talking bad about FE team or Microsoft, cause of the sponsor or fear to get black listed, there is too much at stake for them to talk honestly, so what do you guys think? Do you like the path the game is going? Do you back up their decision to force us to play things we don’t want? Do you guys want more civs with repeated techs/bonuses and functions violating the rules that we always knew?
Or I am too old to accept that things naturally changes?
When I read about the aoe 2 remaster, after the experience of the aoe 1 DE, i was actually confident that the game would be good cause of my technical experience, basically it was only changing the graphical assets and the data(using UP) so the gameplay would be way superior than the HD or even voobly.
But when the game came out with new civs more bugs were re-introduced and the balance went chaotic for months, but the experience was still better than the voobly or hd version, the game had potential or at least I thought it would, despite the civs didn’t feel like part of the original game cause of certain bonus and unit abilities, but by that time I was being really optimist so I didn’t put too much attention to the poor balance design and performance issues, I was like most of you happy with the graphics and the absence of lag.
After few months the poor balance design started to ruin the fun of the matches, also the devs implemented a MM that was matching people with 1k difference cause of a bad algorithm it was counting all the ranks and not the average of the whole team, the ugly maps and basically playing forced maps was being and still a pain in the ass, the feeling has grew strong about that, after 21 years now, you can’t sit and play the map that you want in your level and limited time cause the devs after all the complains are not listening to the real demands of the active multiplayer community, literally thousands of players are being forced to play like that cause of the dev team.
That same dev team have changed our game so much, balance patch after balance patch without fixing real broken things, Indians with its imperial camel remained broken for 6 long years, they basically spent 8-12 months reducing the strength of their latest civs and balance changes from release, but during that time they added too much things that now comparing to the AoC 1.0c patch, the game and the civs are not the same anymore, a civ like Koreans was developed to be slow at the start but quite powerful in late age, but the low level community pushed Korean, Saracens, Teutons and turks beyond their original design, now they are stronger at the start and above all the other civs in late imperial, if you are reading this you will notice how some basic rule from any other rts game was violated there.
Now we have got 2 new civs that no one asked for and more functions from other games, I remember we were making fun a guy suggesting nonstop to give teutonic knights the ability to build towers, that was good as a meme, but the devs delivered the sergeant a son of a huskarl and etk that builds towers(donjons) and on top of that they get 50 free units instantly, when did we see such mechanics in our beloved game?
Anyway we don’t have civ identity anymore, repeated bonuses, broken civs and bonus that do not belong to the game, the worst part is that they will keep changing our game and adding more features from other games cause we are fool enough to pay for it and accept it cause we love the game so blindly that we don’t see the damage they have done.
I could complain about performance issues or point out big faulty patches like the x256 cheat patch or the one when villagers where walking in walls or resources or the latest patch were you could delete walls and even buildings, but no this is about the core changes they have done to our game that severely hurts the civ identity and balance.
Let’s talk about skirms, imperial skirmisher was maybe a good idea, but giving the UT to Aztecs that gives more attack and range, something like the existent Briton ut? Sounds like too much bonuses on the same unit right? well what about another one to the Lithuanian skirms that also gives them +2 pierce armor and the best is that those bonus can stack on multiplayer, so you can have an imperial skirmisher with 5+6 PA and more attack and now one that shoots twice the spear “great” -said no one-.
Now let’s see the light cav, another basic unit, turks had free upgrades cause they were missing the other trash units, instead of giving the civ eskirm or genitor they gave them extra PA on a free research unit, amazing, seems like only good players know how powerful are hussars in 1x1 in late games, but it doesn’t end there, cause indians and tatars also get more PA on this unit, I quite can’t remember a single repeated tech/bonus on an unit in AoC.
Bulgarians, they are amazing at breaking the old civ and unit design, look they get free militia upgrades and also +5 melee armor, the zombie unit that no matter how much I play them i just don’t feel it belongs to aoe 2, the infamous konik(2 units in one), the half tower castle the krepost, cavaliers that almost beats paladin but it doesn’t stop there the civ just received cheap siege upgrades, this civ has been over buffed but simply no one would miss them if they would be removed.
Tatars another civ that was over buffed because they messed the cav archer, now we have to deal with a civ with free thumb ring, Parthian tactics and an UT that gives the unit more strength and an UU that generates gold when fighting and also is really cheap for what it can do in combats, but that is not enough, they also get free sheeps on top of a lasting more food on herdables, yeah.
Cumans with their 2 town centers and rams on feudal age, this mechanic despite being nerfed broke the concept, limits, both perks and cons of staying at feudal age and the worse is that we accepted it and now we have Burgundians with economy upgrades one age before and cavaliers on castle age with cheap upgrades, at this rate the next civ will have trebuchets or bbc’s in castle age half the cost to be interesting.
I can go on but I think I made my point here, we have been allowing FE to change our game and keep adding game changing mechanics, farms producing gold and relics producing food, they started reaching the boundaries with the feitora, then the keshik and now generic units, extra attack on generic units, extra armor here and there, everything right now seems so wrong, but I am afraid it won’t stop here.
I know top players and public icons can’t risk their reputation talking bad about FE team or Microsoft, cause of the sponsor or fear to get black listed, there is too much at stake for them to talk honestly, so what do you guys think? Do you like the path the game is going? Do you back up their decision to force us to play things we don’t want? Do you guys want more civs with repeated techs/bonuses and functions violating the rules that we always knew?
Or I am too old to accept that things naturally changes?