AoE2 DE players has just surpassed AoE4 players on Steam for the first time. It may be 1 hour on a Monday night, but the trend is obvious.
BuT WutTt AbOuT GaMePasSs!!!AoE2 DE players has just surpassed AoE4 players on Steam for the first time. It may be 1 hour on a Monday night, but the trend is obvious.
I think this is an extremely flawed comparison.This is not true, i will give you a comparison.
Sekiro shadows die twice was the GOTY of his year, even if you don't like the genre you can't say it was a bad game, visually impressive, gameplay and mechanics were sweet, the development of the levels and details was well worked, basically it was a well done game, i never saw some dark souls fan saying sekiro was trash, because there are no argument for such claim other than individual perception and tastes.
In other words if aoe4 would have been a good game by its own it would have the support of the aoe community just like sekiro had it for their own community cause it was such a good game that didn't need to host tournaments a week after its release to lure fans.
I don't think anyone here hates aoe4, they are just angry cause of the toxic marketing behind aoe4 trying to make it a good product despite being a bad one and during that procces hurting the community that took so long to built and establish healthy numbers, is not a surprise that after aoe4 several pro players have announced their retirement or indeterminate breaks.
they are just angry cause of the toxic marketing behind aoe4 trying to make it a good product despite being a bad one
But there would be far, far fewer reasons to do so if it actually were.There are plenty of reasons for the AoE community to dislike AoE4, even if it were a good game.
Well said.Watching AoE4 is not fun for me. And since, outside of KotD, AoE2 streams are now an absolute rarity, AoE4 is more than just competition that can coexist, it actively damages something I find entertaining.
AOE4 metrics are poor on YouTube for many AOE2 players, some are doing just as well on Twitch for now but not all.
The downward trend in the playerbase on steam is rapid, and considering that Steam players are the ones who shelled out £50 / $60 you'd expect them to be more committed to the game than those on gamepass who are just trying it out, so I bet the trend is just as bad on gamepass.
Just give it time, and continue to support those who are sticking with AOE2. After the new game shine wears off, the quality (or lack thereof) of the underlying asset becomes unavoidable.
Also missing from the Gamepass discussion is whether Microsoft Store purchasers of DE are included in the Steam DE numbers or not.
Do Microsoft platforms have publicly available stats like Steam so that we can add up the disparate sources for each game and get a real number?Not missing anymore, it's confirmed that they are not, according to Robo.
Do Microsoft platforms have publicly available stats like Steam so that we can add up the disparate sources for each game and get a real number?
According to my calculations there will be negative twelve thousand aoe4 players end of JanuaryThe peak players declined by ~6k on a week by week basis again
To the gamepass brigade,
(1) Yes Steam players dont inlude game pass but the trend is undeniable
(2) Steam players paid the full price for the game hence their judgement carries more weight as opposed to someone paying 1$ for 3 months to play a lot of other games including aoe4 as well
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To be fair many of the changes were implied becasue of them and how they cried about Inca vill rush or "OP Celts". Devs changed towers few times after the complaints from the top scene when they were getting rushed by Vivi...I don't think people realize how un-fun aoe2 can be for higher level players now.
I caught some of your streams as you played age 4 and figure out the game slowly and enjoyed that journey and notice your surprises to opponent playstyles very funny. Keep up and ty for streaming.Alot of people (competitive players iv spoken to) have been struggling for a couple years with aoe2DE being so boring and arena only on all maps and every interesting thing being nerfed or changed. I don't think people realize how un-fun aoe2 can be for higher level players now. I watched alot of people retire, play less, and more and more new players join the community who loved the game. This was always bitter sweat because the game was so un-fun compared to aoc/aok days but it was cool seeing so many new players able to macro and stay alive long enough to be more competitive, but the gameplay was sacrificed by the devs. The game was rebalanced into range dominance both by nerfing any units that stood a chance vs the optimization and speed you can get from such low cost/low mobility openings but also by the map code itself where they put every single calculable resource in the game closer to the starting tc making map control / macro / army numbers all greatly diminished, and I don't know if this is wide knowledge but in RTS controlling a space is what determines your unit paths, eco paths and civ choices. This means that your creativity is now controlled by the very devs who want 1 style. NOW!
We have aoe4! This game has multiple civs that all play out with completely different economy structures, map control necessities and unit compositions with no mirror, thus adding to the feel of variety and IMO will make it harder for devs to nerf units across the board that will affect gameplay of all civs this way when a mistake is made and a unit underbalanced, the civ will suffer so bad they will see their mistake much clearer. It has hints of Starcraft with different races and players literally maining 1 civ rather than learning them all because they are so so different. The game mechanics are different but feel like a good marriage between sc2 macro (eco sites have more resources in them, sheep/wood/fish/gold/stone) and aoe2 where there are more economy types and randomly generated creating unique problems of what space to controll where in sc2 the resources were just sitting in the back the whole time. I think it makes it easier for a wider audience to understand what their balance needs are and implement them without having to move villagers here and there every couple minutes (less slowing down of the game progression with vill movements and more focus time for army. The military movement is pretty interesting aswell. There are alot of different types of counters or just similar stated units that can fight thus giving more variety in battles aswell (not always Xbow vs scirms or Kts vs pikes) The game is expediated in 100 different ways. Eco upgrades and teching through the ages are done outside of the tc (no more slowing your economy progress to complete a necessary in game upgrade/actions. Blacksmith / eco upgrades affect more units. In aoe4 the game can have action and fighting at minute 1-2, feudal by 3-4 and rams by min 6. where aoe2 is no fighting until 8 mins, feudal at 10 and no rams until 16+ minutes.
** Cool things aoe4 has that aoe2 doesn't. **
Monks that can run and convert in a huge AOE affect like a mangonel. (the panic you feel when 50 pala are being converted is palpable.
Scouts get the sheep to follow them, can attack wolves/deer/boar they can also BRING THE DEER BACK TO THE TC BY CARRYING IT!
units of a sort dont always cost the same type of eco. RUS CA cost food/wood MONGOL CA cost food/gold (this creates interesting differences in the space a civ needs to control in order to have the correct eco balance to field a similar type of army.
multiplayer parties dont break after every game.
the Siege game has gone from 4 weapons to like 15 (anti mele siege, anti ranged siege, anti siege siege, anti building siege, unique siege ect ect...)
Stone walls : CANT BE ATTACKED (arena boys eat your hearts out)
The graphics are not my cup of tea ill give you that, but when sipping tea in paradise its alot easier.
Iv seen alot of aoe4 hate and I know I was in that camp before giving it a real chance, if you arn't having as much fun on aoe2 and you really want a good RTS game, come play!i
Literally none of this will matter if no one is playing the game. If AoE4 drops below 10k concurrent players it's basically all over. Pros can love the game all they want, but the player base just simply won't exist.We have aoe4!
Hoang basically married celts for 10 years so he could win with them and then got nerfed asoon as he could kill xbow meta consistently (only the last couple years). This is exactly my point lol, do you know how annoying it is to have huns nerfed out of the gam... oh wait were talking about hoang nmnm 11111111111111111111111To be fair many of the changes were implied becasue of them and how they cried about Inca vill rush or "OP Celts". Devs changed towers few times after the complaints from the top scene when they were getting rushed by Vivi...
So that is, where I kind of disagree with people. I think to release a new game by a different studio in a franchise that contains at least one masterpiece game (AoE2) and have that new game settling down around the amount of players that the masterpiece game has isn't necessarily a bad thing. It doesn't say that this new game is as good as the masterpiece game, but it says, that it has around the same sized player base. There is no other game in the franchise with that big player base - AoE4 is now the second game with these huge numbers. So that is for sure a success.now they are at a similar level to AoE2, month and a half later.