the so-called "rating inflation" on HD is actually more intuitive (and more similar to zone) because there is actually a significant rating difference between experienced-but-not-so-skilled players (zone 1800, voobly 1500) and beginners (zone 1600, voobly 1600)
if you actually go look at how the game was played the 2nd tier players in zone days would get absolutely wrecked by the 2nd tier players on voobly, even if the "ratings" are similar
as for performance, the aoe2:hd developers basically have no quality control
some patches it's fine. some patches it's awful.
and for some people, all versions are awful
they really screwed up the basics of getting a game from 1999 to run well, especially for lower-end systems
but the CD version isn't perfect. it runs much smoother on my 10 year old win XP machine than it does on my overclocked 4790k + gtx 980ti, so i wouldn't say it always performs better than the steam version
if you actually go look at how the game was played the 2nd tier players in zone days would get absolutely wrecked by the 2nd tier players on voobly, even if the "ratings" are similar
as for performance, the aoe2:hd developers basically have no quality control
some patches it's fine. some patches it's awful.
and for some people, all versions are awful
they really screwed up the basics of getting a game from 1999 to run well, especially for lower-end systems
but the CD version isn't perfect. it runs much smoother on my 10 year old win XP machine than it does on my overclocked 4790k + gtx 980ti, so i wouldn't say it always performs better than the steam version