Current Situation on Aoe4 and Aoe2

[Philippe le Bon]

Genesis hit 68 187 Peak Viewers and had 45 627 Average Viewers for it's 19 hours airtime. (T90's views from Facebook don't seem to be counted as only twitch and youtube mentioned as platforms)

If I remember well Hidden Cup IV had +100k viewers cumulated at one moment, so AoE2 still reigns king if we're doing a numbers battle

 

[Tempires]

If I remember well Hidden Cup IV had +100k viewers cumulated at one moment, so AoE2 still reigns king if we're doing a numbers battle

Redbull wololoo 5 is most viewed event with almost 78k concurrent viewers. Hidden Cup 4 was some what behind that but hidden cup had front page while Redbull or Genesis(not 100% sure about genesis, no one has mentioned it) didn't have. French streamer Zerator was streaming his own FFA aoe4 event at same time as Genesis final day with about 72k viewer peak. Aoe4 had therefore peak of 125k concurrent viewers (on twitch) on 14th november.

escharts.com is source for RBW5,HC4 and genesis numbers. Twitch tracker for Zerator's event as it's not yet on escharts. Game peak is also from twich tracker

 

[Philippe le Bon]

Redbull wololoo 5 is most viewed with almost 78k concurrent viewers. Hidden Cup 4 was some what behind that but hidden cup had front page while Redbull or Genesis(not 100% sure about genesis) didn't. French streamer Zerator was streaming his own FFA aoe4 event at same time as Genesis final day with about 72k viewer peak. Aoe4 had therefore peak of 125k viewers on 14th november.

Haha so fun that even here you non-french guys know Zerator. Yeah he's pretty popular. 11
I'm pretty sure HC4 crushed the 100k bar in terms of viewers, but yeah I have no screenshot proof so w/e.

125k is not an impossible target to beat though. I bet KOTD IV Grand Final will have around half of that.

 

[LeoMontero]

since it's a kind of an underwhelming product compared to aoe1/aoe2/aoe3 (and especially SC2), idk how long people will actually play multiplayer for. but in terms of design of just 1v1 PvP, there's more balance between offense/defense/eco in aoe4 than in aoe2's land maps. and there's no score, so there's more strategy instead of just camping behind walls until imperial because you see that you have a score lead and can't lose

i'd rather play 2 because the UI is better, but the maps they put on 2DE ladder are just about playing farmville so i have no reason to actually play it. the food runs out so you have to spend half your eco on farms. and then the farms run out so you have to spend a bunch of res on farms again. and because of this everyone's eco is the same. after being forced to get all the farms and all the upgrades (except stone mining), there's no resources left for any strategy. 0 spare resources in feudal. 0 spare resources in castle. all offense is impotent because of this. and then a sudden shift to infinite spare resources in imperial. it's just completely abysmal map selection by whoever manages the ladder

for overall satisfaction of playing, one of the important things is whether a game is getting better or getting worse. aoe4 is so flawed, that it has a high chance of improving with patches

meanwhile aoe2 is just getting worse and worse and shows no signs of changing. first they let people block random civ. then they let people pick positions. and the balance changes often make the game worse because they're blind to anything that isn't 1v1 ara. and the matchmaking is not good enough outside of 1v1.

are you watching kotd?? where are they camping to get imperial?? what are you talking about??
how is that someone talk **** about farming??? is basic in game. is the game like that.
what is wrong wih pick position??
cant belive what i read

 

[Biz]

are you watching kotd?? where are they camping to get imperial?? what are you talking about??
how is that someone talk **** about farming??? is basic in game. is the game like that.
what is wrong wih pick position??
cant belive what i read

if you play against good players, you only get to make army with your spare resources. on farmville aoe2 maps, we have no spare resources until it's time to start looking at imperial age. the xbow players can make some cheap **** because that unit and its upgrades are undercosted, but nobody can afford a real army. after all the booming, then you start having spare res, but that's so late in the game. by that point, the free information from revealed score will have ruined most games

and usually the other 6 maps have even fewer options for pre-imperial play than arabia does. it doesn't matter if it's AoK arabia or DE arabia or kotd arabia. we have no food in all of them

in SC2/aoe4, we aren't bankrupt all the time. if you want to battle, you can just do that without getting blind-countered by xbows + TCs, and there's no revealed score to tell the leader that they can avoid all risks

aoe2 works better for teamgames, but all the position picking and smurfing and bad matchmaking ruined those. 2DE teamgames are like playing with all techs every match. front gets access to super arbs 100% of the time. back gets access to super cavalry 100% of the time

you new players don't understand how shallow position-pick is compared to the real aoe2. the guaranteed spawn locations power creep it too much. there's no strategy anymore. you don't have to figure out what to make if your civ is missing some upgrades because you always have max upgrades. you don't have to figure out what unit to make in each age because you just make the same unit in every age. you don't have to trade and make castles and tech into your power units because your feudal buildings make the only unit you need. you don't even have to explore to see where people spawn or what army they're going to make because it's all scripted. the game is a hollow shell of what it used to be

aoe4 is a mess, but at least it's not a butchered version of a classic game

 

[Murador]

I'm really surprised at the critique of AoE IV by the OP - there is a lot to criticize but he is criticizing a lot of the selling points of AoE IV:

I strongly disagree with Age IV being slower at the start - there is a lot of action in the early game compared to AoE II - French English start producing longbow/knights before 4mins (4*1,7 < 7min mark) - on hybrid maps there are always spear tower fights around the docks in the early game - Mongols often Trush/Scoutrush/spearrush+horseman rush around 3min. Dehli rushes sacred sites with a few spears around the 4min mark. The game overall is clearly faster and more aggressive at the start.

I also really enjoyed watching Genesis and I think most people actually did - it was fresh something new and we saw the meta evolve. We saw like 10 different openings just for Mongols in the course of the tournament with completely different unit comps. I think comp diversity (and civ diversity) is clearly the biggest advantage of AoE IV over AoE II. But that's personal preference after all - I also find Kotd the least interesting S-Tier tournament to watch as I'm more interested in the strategy aspect of the game over the execution. I like diverse map pools the most.

People complaining about not being able to recognize buildings atm: That is normal - the game is pretty new ofc after playing AoE II for 20years you are better at recognizing stuff there - and without going to market hotkeys, etc I would also be there always searching for stuff in AoE II constantly.

Now we come to the big problems of AoE IV: hotkey customization, bad observing overlay, lack of global queue, hitboxes(sheeeeps), no waypoints shown, no mod support, water gameplay etc.

If they fix that fast I'm fairly certain AoE IV will long-term surpass AoE II and those streamers need to position themselves for both cases - the game overtaking or failing - they are professionals after all. Pretty sure OP won't finance their living if AoE IV takes over and AoE II price pools and viewership goes down the drain.

PS: what did my message get flagged for? For Liking AoE IV?

 

[kw1k000000]

you new players don't understand how shallow position-pick is compared to the real aoe2. the guaranteed spawn locations power creep it too much. there's no strategy anymore.

After non existence of ranked lobbies this is the biggest issue introduced by DE. Position and civ picking every game has made DE team games too boring.

Noone has to think what to do in case of Aztec/Maya pocket, Spanish flank.

 

[LeoMontero]

if you play against good players, you only get to make army with your spare resources. on farmville aoe2 maps, we have no spare resources until it's time to start looking at imperial age. the xbow players can make some cheap **** because that unit and its upgrades are undercosted, but nobody can afford a real army. after all the booming, then you start having spare res, but that's so late in the game. by that point, the free information from revealed score will have ruined most games

and usually the other 6 maps have even fewer options for pre-imperial play than arabia does. it doesn't matter if it's AoK arabia or DE arabia or kotd arabia. we have no food in all of them

in SC2/aoe4, we aren't bankrupt all the time. if you want to battle, you can just do that without getting blind-countered by xbows + TCs, and there's no revealed score to tell the leader that they can avoid all risks

aoe2 works better for teamgames, but all the position picking and smurfing and bad matchmaking ruined those. 2DE teamgames are like playing with all techs every match. front gets access to super arbs 100% of the time. back gets access to super cavalry 100% of the time

you new players don't understand how shallow position-pick is compared to the real aoe2. the guaranteed spawn locations power creep it too much. there's no strategy anymore. you don't have to figure out what to make if your civ is missing some upgrades because you always have max upgrades. you don't have to figure out what unit to make in each age because you just make the same unit in every age. you don't have to trade and make castles and tech into your power units because your feudal buildings make the only unit you need. you don't even have to explore to see where people spawn or what army they're going to make because it's all scripted. the game is a hollow shell of what it used to be

aoe4 is a mess, but at least it's not a butchered version of a classic game

thats the good thing of aoe2, the administration of resources. the good spending, the perfect investment.
i see you hate archers, me too, but they are not OP, you can kill them easily. maybe you must learn new techniques.
TG are the best for me in this game, in fact i think this game must be TG based. not like actually is, that 90% of s-tier tounament are 1-1. position picking is an unpgrade, you play where you want, its not an upset by any mean.
we see this game totally diferent. why you play?? just to have something to critique??

 

[Lokalo]

adsda

I strongly disagree with Age IV being slower at the start - there is a lot of action in the early game compared to AoE II - French English start producing longbow/knights before 4mins (4*1,7 < 7min mark) - on hybrid maps there are always spear tower fights around the docks in the early game - Mongols often Trush/Scoutrush/spearrush+horseman rush around 3min. Dehli rushes sacred sites with a few spears around the 4min mark. The game overall is clearly faster and more aggressive at the start.

Well I don't know, quallifiers been like that, were aggressive games. Semi finals/finals were quite campy games with like 1 fight finishing games, which felt way slower than aoe2. I think that aoe2 timer also makes people think game takes way longer til fighting starts than it actually does, that 1.7x time tricks our minds a bit and some's people a lot.

I mean watching Genesis(watched almost all), at first seemed action starts earlier than aoe2, but they can't kill enemy even if winning by a lot for way too long. Later in the tournament people started playing way safer and doing all those "scorps" can't remember how they are named in aoe4, springalds or some stuff, which seems to be quite OP. So honestly after watching Genesis I still can't say which game is faster, would say often aoe4 first attempts of fighting/raiding starts faster, but proper fighting is way slower and is way harder to finish game.

 

[Lokalo]

thats the good thing of aoe2, the administration of resources. the good spending, the perfect investment.
i see you hate archers, me too, but they are not OP, you can kill them easily. maybe you must learn new techniques.
TG are the best for me in this game, in fact i think this game must be TG based. not like actually is, that 90% of s-tier tounament are 1-1. position picking is an unpgrade, you play where you want, its not an upset by any mean.
we see this game totally diferent. why you play?? just to have something to critique??

I agree, when I play with knights, I often hate xbow, when I play with xbow I hate knights. I think that means they are more or less balanced. Also against xbow(unless those dam british ones) mangonels can do big things. Like having 2 mangos + bunch of knights surounding xbow is a knightmare for xbow player. While pikemen often feels way weaker counter due slow speed. And many players in tournament including Mr Yo playing mostly with cavs.But if people sending 3-4 knights against 20xbow and keeps losing knights sure they hate xbow. I honestly often find knights way easier to play with, at least one mangonel can't make you lose half of army in 1sec.

 

[JUDAS]

Last night the difference between the number of players for AoE4 and AoE2 in steam was only 1k (12k vs 11k), that is really awful for a game that was released not even a month ago. Something is really wrong if it is not able to keep interested its player base.

 

[Murador]

adsda


Well I don't know, quallifiers been like that, were aggressive games. Semi finals/finals were quite campy games with like 1 fight finishing games, which felt way slower than aoe2. I think that aoe2 timer also makes people think game takes way longer til fighting starts than it actually does, that 1.7x time tricks our minds a bit and some's people a lot.

I mean watching Genesis(watched almost all), at first seemed action starts earlier than aoe2, but they can't kill enemy even if winning by a lot for way too long. Later in the tournament people started playing way safer and doing all those "scorps" can't remember how they are named in aoe4, springalds or some stuff, which seems to be quite OP. So honestly after watching Genesis I still can't say which game is faster, would say often aoe4 first attempts of fighting/raiding starts faster, but proper fighting is way slower and is way harder to finish game.

Ye, it also depends a lot on the players left - Viper and Mista are both defensive reactive players - if you give Viper the opportunity he also booms into imp with few units mass castles everything so :D. And Mista also is a very defensive player he hunts every game and seems to love his FC builds into pressures in castle age (a bit like arena). But overall there was a healthy mix of games even in the finals:

- game 1: some longbow vs horseman action hitting A LOT earlier (<6min~) than straight archer in AoE II
- game 2: dark agetower rush on game 2 by viper at 3:30
- game 3: 2 TC vs mongol push
- game 4: water
- game 5: mista opening spearman denying vipers dock before 4min
- game 6: boom map

Of course it depends a lot on the map and MU aswell - but there early aggressive strong timings viable which just don't exist in AoE II

 

[Biz]

thats the good thing of aoe2, the administration of resources. the good spending, the perfect investment.
i see you hate archers, me too, but they are not OP, you can kill them easily. maybe you must learn new techniques.
TG are the best for me in this game, in fact i think this game must be TG based. not like actually is, that 90% of s-tier tounament are 1-1. position picking is an unpgrade, you play where you want, its not an upset by any mean.
we see this game totally diferent. why you play?? just to have something to critique??

what perfect investment?

every army has the same economy upgrades and booming

make xbows? get wood ups + collar + wheel + gold mining + TCs + farms
make knights? get wood ups + collar + wheel + gold mining + TCs + farms
make infantry? get wood ups + collar + wheel + TCs + farms + prepare your resignation message

it's not strategy. it's just spam

there's a very low chance that the game is still close after 25 minutes of that. we aren't good enough at the game to play consistently and almost nobody cares enough about ladder rank enough to try

aoe2 has maps where there are other options, but ladder lets people ban all of those because 4-6 of the 7 maps are just farmville

if you want to spend 25 minutes farming before anyone can afford non-xbow armies, that's fine. there are lots of ways to play and that's one of them. but there's no queue for people who want to play something closer to the classic game instead of just farmville maps

ever since zone days, we played way more teamgames than 1v1 because those games weren't just about who made more vils & farms, but DE ignored too many issues with TG matchmaking

it's not completely trash because position-picking only ruins some of the maps instead of all of the maps. but when you combine that with garbage like arena/BF/socotra being in the pool and low chance of teams being fair and random idiots deleting their TC or going afk instead of playing, it all adds up

 

[LeoMontero]

what perfect investment?

every army has the same economy upgrades and booming

make xbows? get wood ups + collar + wheel + gold mining + TCs + farms
make knights? get wood ups + collar + wheel + gold mining + TCs + farms
make infantry? get wood ups + collar + wheel + TCs + farms + prepare your resignation message

it's not strategy. it's just spam

there's a very low chance that the game is still close after 25 minutes of that. we aren't good enough at the game to play consistently and almost nobody cares enough about ladder rank enough to try

aoe2 has maps where there are other options, but ladder lets people ban all of those because 4-6 of the 7 maps are just farmville

if you want to spend 25 minutes farming before anyone can afford non-xbow armies, that's fine. there are lots of ways to play and that's one of them. but there's no queue for people who want to play something closer to the classic game instead of just farmville maps

ever since zone days, we played way more teamgames than 1v1 because those games weren't just about who made more vils & farms, but DE ignored too many issues with TG matchmaking

it's not completely trash because position-picking only ruins some of the maps instead of all of the maps. but when you combine that with garbage like arena/BF/socotra being in the pool and low chance of teams being fair and random idiots deleting their TC or going afk instead of playing, it all adds up

you are talking nonsense.
i stop arguing with you, just look that the first person that reacted laugh at you. me too.

 

[MembTV]

This biz is definitely a fun guy, love his posts, hoping to see more from him.

 

[Murador]

it's not completely trash because position-picking only ruins some of the maps instead of all of the maps. but when you combine that with garbage like arena/BF/socotra being in the pool and low chance of teams being fair and random idiots deleting their TC or going afk instead of playing, it all adds up

I want to see you go for a 25min boom on Sokotra. And I delete my TC every 4th game in TGs nothing wrong with douching 11 (clearly the best game in kotd so far was the douche from vivi 11). Also the fun thing about Bf is that the flanks play sokotra and the pockets play a full boom (at least most of the time as long as no opponents flank ist open :D) - just go flank if you dont want to boom and go for smth like lithu vil rush, MAA towers(the feared memb rush).

But we can agree that nomad is the best map. Actually half of my games are random match around 2.5k MRR - you just need to get higher elo to play random civ. I also don't know what people are so obsessed about tg rating not being the same as 1v1 rating - for me it doesn't matter if the number is inflated you can still compute the percent of players you are in. People are so obsessed by their rating like everybody is playing meta - idk why I'm more into testing the dumbest strategies as a team.

But ye the best teammappool would be smth like: Nomad, bf, sokotra, chaospit, water nomad, team islands and budapest.

 

[Baron Icey Harkonnen]

I encounter this problem frequently.
How can you make a game fair if the players skill/ level of involvement is not the same>

Handicaps? It works I guess

The real problem is Player A wants to play more/ be more attentive then Player B
Player B doesn't want to train for 2 weeks
Player B has 3 kids and 3 hours to play a week.

 

[lecracheursagacite]

I encounter this problem frequently.
How can you make a game fair if the players skill/ level of involvement is not the same>

Handicaps? It works I guess

The real problem is Player A wants to play more/ be more attentive then Player B
Player B doesn't want to train for 2 weeks
Player B has 3 kids and 3 hours to play a week.

That's why you (ideally) match Player A against other Player A's and Player B against other Player B's?

 

[SouFire]

Ok here are the stats for the 1st month of existence of aoe4, despite all the positive vibes, promotion and all the invasive marketing they tried:

With also an owner estimation around 1.2 M according to steamdb.info, i can't fully see the potential we were told and it seems not only the "haters" think about the same as their own player base is going down quickly, i will update this within 2 months

 

[SuperskinnyBLS]

Ok here are the stats for the 1st month of existence of aoe4, despite all the positive vibes, promotion and all the invasive marketing they tried:View attachment 196704
With also an owner estimation around 1.2 M according to steamdb.info, i can't fully see the potential we were told and it seems not only the "haters" think about the same as their own player base is going down quickly, i will update this within 2 months

Some people may regret "going full time aoe 4" :-D sooner than expected

 

[USC_kiky]

Hmmm why is the number of the last 30 days lower than that of Nov 2021? Aren’t we at the end of Nov?

 

[MaSmOrRa]

Ok here are the stats for the 1st month of existence of aoe4, despite all the positive vibes, promotion and all the invasive marketing they tried:View attachment 196704
With also an owner estimation around 1.2 M according to steamdb.info, i can't fully see the potential we were told and it seems not only the "haters" think about the same as their own player base is going down quickly, i will update this within 2 months

Its too early to tell either way, in my opinon...

DE2 had a similar sharp drop after the first month.

 

[kw1k000000]

Some people may regret "going full time aoe 4" :-D sooner than expected

I don't think they will. MS will keep on artificially boosting the scene with prize money and also 1$ game pass helps too. They will get at least similar viewer numbers which they were getting while doing aoe2.

 

[lecracheursagacite]

all the positive vibes, promotion and all the invasive marketing they tried

I think you are actually wrong about this part since it sounds like you are suggesting there was a very concerted heavy marketing effort and it really doesn't feel that way. How many comments did we see before it was released about the weak and infrequent promotional videos? There was some effort of course but I would say it was pretty tepid and is probably contributing to the weak numbers you point out. It is like when you don't display confidence about a mediocre product people are quicker to realise that it is a mediocre product

 

[Fall]

Its too early to tell either way, in my opinon...

DE2 had a similar sharp drop after the first month.

View attachment 196705

Unless I'm reading this wrong, you've got -19.5% for AOE2:DE after one month and -33.9% for AOE4 after one month. That's not similar, that's a significant difference.

Yes we would expect drop-off after release, but AOE4's player count is decaying at a more rapid rate.