AOE-II DE How Would you Rate the Currant State of AoE2 DE?

[Paint]

I see a lot of negativity on here (from a select few) and just wanted a overview of how the people feel about the currant state of the game.

The scale is from Perfect to there are better options to play the game as going any lower makes no sense.


I think the game is overall in a okay state but there are 3 big problems for me:

• TG Ranked needs to be moved to a new and drastically improved lobby.
• 1v1 Ranked needs a way bigger map pool so it is less stale.
• Some DLC civs feel like pay to win because they are to strong and I have no idea what they can do since it's impossible for me to play them witch makes it even harder to play against them.

(I added some descriptions what the numbers mean because most humans are horrible at rating things from 1-10)

 

[PlusNomad]

I cannot agree with this poll. You can think the game is perfect and still hate yourself. Every option should have a "but I hate myself" secondary option.

 

[Paint]

You can always expand on your vote in the comments.

 

[NachoAoE]

slightly below average and I hate myself

 

[The Bloodless]

Quite good I think!

 

[SouFire]

With the current administration of the aoe franchise i guess this might be the last remake/re told/ UHD game version of all, the reason is very simple, the match making forced settings+punishments measures has been proved as a big failure that prevents the users to keep playing the game, just take a look at aoe4, halo infinite, etc, this by itself is the biggest reason of why the game is not growing anymore cause the game developers are simply not listening to the community demands from the majority, a completely disconnection from the reality.

The game doesn't have a proper anticheat system despite it has a way bigger player base than halo the masterchief collection, not hiring easy anticheat for this game was a big mistake, we are just waiting for a cheater doing his magic on a big event or knights flying around the map for the devs to do something.

The game balance and civ design can't be worse than aoc 1.c balance, if it wasn't for the drafting/banning/sniping system on events we would only see hindustanis, poles, gurjaras, etc being picked during all matches, cause honestly every single civ pack introduced has broke the balance and left old civs in the dust, but not only that cause they have the narrowed mentalitty that balancing has to be around 1x1 and arabia while all the other settings and maps are beyond awful, in other words, the balance team has never worked around the community demands like adjusting civs according their usage and general stats, using arabia 1x1 winrate is like saying that vikings were a noob civ based on the michi winrates.

The game support is awful, remember the crash exploit reported several months ago, well it is still working in case you were wondering...

The game was released in 2019 i know, but they have kept selling DLC every 6 months or so, whoever is in charge believes that throwing +100k usd to the top 5 every 3 months is what the game needs to thrive, instead of fixing and improving their users experience, imo a decent TG ranked lobby or a proper filter to balance out the matches.

 

[MaSmOrRa]

this by itself is the biggest reason of why the game is not growing anymore cause the game developers are simply not listening to the community demands from the majority, a completely disconnection from the reality.

What exactly are the demands of the majority of the community?
And how do you know that's in fact the majority if we don't have access to any data on these things?

 

[Potkeny]

What exactly are the demands of the majority of the community?

It's playing arabia (and open maps) only, that's why ingame voting helped making the mappools less closed! Kappa

 

[Huehuecoyotl22]

If the recent patch/update would not have introduced new bugs/crashes again, I would have given an 8.
Lots of things have been improved since 2019-20, but still some distance to perfect.

 

[Hunyadi_]

I picked 7 but I would have picked 8 if all my mods didn't suddenly disappear last night.

In any case it should only be temporary and I do appreciate their efforts to constantly improve the game with the limited resources they have.

 

[AkeNo]

I picked 7 but I would have picked 8 if all my mods didn't suddenly disappear last night.

In any case it should only be temporary and I do appreciate their efforts to constantly improve the game with the limited resources they have.

well keep in mind the OP probably posted this around this time mods disappeared to influence the voting.

 

[kalpit00]

It's playing arabia (and open maps) only, that's why ingame voting helped making the mappools less closed! Kappa

If only they introduced Ranked Lobbies. The problem here is they are forcing every individual player irrespective of their elo and preference to play from a pool of 7-8 maps. They introduced bans and favorite maps and also in-game voting now but that's been a disaster so far

players at different elos prefer different maps. Ever since they introduced in-game voting we see the same maps rotating and all of which are closed or nomad-style. (We see the same Arena, BF, Fortress, Michi, Yucatan every rotation - the same Land nomad, mountain pass, african clearing).

And i am fairly certain that it's the lower elo playerbase who vote for these maps. Nobody at the high level wants to play ranked Arena (expect for CL xD). Nobody wants to play michi any more than 3-4 times. 1v1 BF? I don't think so. All of these maps are in the pool because a majority of low elo players vote for them, and the higher elo playerbase suffer due it.

Every map pool they will throw in one water map - like islands or archipelago, and one "gold in mid" map like golden pit or gold rush. The remaining 5 are either arabia, closed or nomad, with the occasional Four Lakes thrown in there.

 

[kalpit00]

My suggestion would be to introduce Ranked Lobbies and in-game messaging. Like Hera said in the interview with Mr Nelson. Take all the good from voobly and combine it with the modernized version of DE.

1) Ranked 1v1 Lobbies
2) In-game friend options + messaging

Just these 2 in itself will give that community vibe and grow aoe. We don't make friends in DE anymore. In voobly as a beginner I could add any new player and become friends, play matches in the future, maybe join a new team, etc. In DE, I have to reach 1600+ elo, spend 1-2 years in the community to meet familiar names from twitch-chat/forums or streamers on the ladders, and then find them through a third-party app (twitch, discord) to become friends. So much work, compared to voobly which was done in an instant, even before you played a game 11

3) Take away unnecessary features like Battle Royale and Quick Match

The Devs think these two features are for the "newer, not-so-hardcore" community. Well guess what, barely anyone plays them. Reconsider this, nobody asked for this, the game in itself is charm enough to attract new players, this is only a waste of storage space which can be used for other features like In-game messaging (We see this all the time in Gaming, Devs introduce a feature, if its unsuccessful they take it down and use that space for another feature, think RuneScape for eg)

4) Give in-game Contact Support.

Allow players to contact moderators or just tech people within the game, with them responding to us (maybe a virtual assistant is fine if they can afford one). This can be helpful to report certain players (potential smurfs, cheaters).

5) Please Please Introduce hybrid - tournament maps from HC, NAC, TTL.

A way they can introduce this is if they have different lobbies like in Voobly, just for maps. So you could have a RM-Nomad lobby where people can host a bunch of different nomad maps. RM-Hybrid lobby, RM-Closed lobby for all them low elo legends

A large part of community resides at the 15-17xx elo level who are trying to improve, and they would love to play tournament maps. As a former arabia only player, I have been banning it to play Megarandom of all maps (No I dont want to play 1v1 arena or 1v1 BF, nomad sometimes yea, four lakes maybe once in a month, but there are soo many other maps we want to play).

Behold my most controversial opinion, ditch matchmaking, and give us ranked lobbies only. This will force everyone to go and join a lobby and then choose if they want to play someone or not. Yes this might increase the number of smurfs, but we can introduce a ban system for them. And not only that, voobly used to show everyone's win streaks. So if someone at the <1200 elo mark is going 10-0, he's most likely a smurf. No new player is gonna be able to win that many games unless they come from a different RTS game (in which case if they get banned bc they are too good KEK, they can contact support)

 

[SouFire]

What exactly are the demands of the majority of the community?
And how do you know that's in fact the majority if we don't have access to any data on these things?

First lets filter the word majority and not by referring to all users, lets focus on MP communities and competitive users, for aoe2 the majority are the most active number of users playing and keeping alive the multiplayer which according to steamdb aoe2 has around 20k users each day, but around +60k players playing ranked games on the tg ladder each month, those 60k users are the majority, not even the 1x1 ranked ladder has those numbers.

You are right, we don't have access to the tools to know exactly what are those demands, but we can use algorithms or complains on their forums related to MP complains and i can tell you that in halo infinite and aoe4 there were plenty of complains daily about people forced to play things they didn't want to play and being punished for leaving, contrary to aoe2 those games lost those players forever cause those games were relatively new, as for aoe2 those complains have never stopped, there has been at least one complain each week since the punishment patch, lots of topics of people getting >1k elo disparity matches or even worse, those are active demmands that affects players within those 60k active users, also you could add to those demmands the lack of map control or measures to avoid known cheaters.

Everything about the TG ladder has been fully ignored since release, the absence of top players using the ladder for 3 years, if it wasn't for the nation cup happening finally they wouldn't even bother playing using the match making, that was the first red flag and all those who now work at FE or microsoft are fully aware of the unpleasant experience of the team game match making system, but why is this problem still there despite all the signals, simply cause the orders come directly from the head of the aoe franchise and probably from the xbox gaming big boss as other games from the company share the same punishment system with forced settings, i am afraid that aoe2 will share aoe4 or halo infinite fates, as the numbers wont grow and they might abandon those gaming projects like they have done in the past.

 

[HongeyKong]

7
8 if they remove map bans / fav
9 if they introduce mutual random position in TGs

 

[SuperskinnyBLS]

10/10 if they remove snow from the game

 

[RobChang]

As a game theoretician, my biggest gripe is the approach towards balance and design. Just putting out endless numbers of new civs, for the sake of implementing new stuff. It is all about subverting the identity of the game for the sake of a one-time laughing at the quirkiness of a new civ. So we got a civ has the gimmick of no towers and a feudal UU, wow so creative, not seen at all. A civ that just copies an old civ's architype but on steoroids, so it gets some attention at least. And then we see stuff like Portuguese getting buffed out of the blue to the new top civ of the game being very good on every setting suddenly, with bonuses that dont make sense for them at all and are just for buffing when no buff was needed.

Portuguese biggest problem is now even more the issue of just being a random bag of civ parts thrown together, without forming a unique and immersive identity. They got a general bonus to all techs and all units and all ships etc, but that is no identity that separates them from Spanish or Italians. But instead of fixing bad design like Feitoria, we get a shoehorning of the best tb in the game for no reason, pretending Portuguese ever were a research civ on bar with Chinese and better than the Islamic Golden Age.... They should be a exploration civ...

Sorry for that most recent gripe.

But also looking at Khmer, the same happened. To somehow fix the design of an elephant focussed civ, they just put in the best farming bonus out there and transformes the elephant civ into a generic European like Knight and Hussar spam civ, as if they were Slavs.

But good news, this then means the elephant focus design space is open again and can make a new half-arsed attempt for that architype and sell it to players. Spoiler: Bengalis also suffer from same problems as old Khmer. But hey, Kachink.

Of course, the game itself makes fun given the columns of the base game, but if you subvert a temple's columns often enough, even the oldest one will collapse.

 

[Jarvin]

10/10 if they remove snow from the game

And these dumb, unnecessary bushes!
Snow is the worst though, can agree.

 

[IncredulousFox]

If you're actually in a match playing a game its 9/10--some balancing/pathfinding can be improved. Shwarma riders are pretty dumb.

Outside the game 6/10--game UI needs a rework. Team game matchmaking obviously has its problems. Lobby games not being ranked, very hard to balance. Zero ingame social features; having to rely purely on steam/discord to build community or find friends, people to play with is just bad design. There's not even ingame global chat.

 

[Black Adder]

In any case it should only be temporary and I do appreciate their efforts to constantly improve the game with the limited resources they have.

This is just a general comment on this perception, not like specifically against you, but what limited resources? Thanks to practically mostly AoEII they have made a whole new gaming studio, a completely new game, Forgotten Empires have gone from a group of like 5 modders to a company with 70 employees, only because of the franchise - what limited resources are you talking about? There is evidently no limit, they are shoveling millions (also shown in the exorbitant marketing expenditures on the tournaments), just what they decide to spend back on the game is the question - and that is fully in their hands, as is therefore the result. It is a purposeful, intended decision how much they spend and how much they do with the game, game/franchise that has made them/is making them massive profits, it is not something to be used as excuse that they choose not to, fully intentionally. (Then there's the other part, if they're capable, but that kind of goes with the previous as well, you need good pay for good people.)

When will people finally accept this is no "community funded effort" as many are still trapped in thinking, this is a seriously profitable business for the developers and also quite a few in the community, for quite a few years already. There are millions flying around just amongst streamers and players, for everyone to see, so how is anyone still not recognising the reality?

 

[Tempires]

This is just a general comment on this perception, not like specifically against you, but what limited resources? Thanks to practically mostly AoEII they have made a whole new gaming studio, a completely new game, Forgotten Empires have gone from a group of like 5 modders to a company with 70 employees, only because of the franchise - what limited resources are you talking about? There is evidently no limit, they are shoveling millions (also shown in the exorbitant marketing expenditures on the tournaments), just what they decide to spend back on the game is the question - and that is fully in their hands, as is therefore the result. It is a purposeful, intended decision how much they spend and how much they do with the game, game/franchise that has made them/is making them massive profits, it is not something to be used as excuse that they choose not to, fully intentionally.

When will people finally accept this is no "community funded effort" as many are still trapped in thinking, this is a seriously profitable business for the developers and also quite a few in the community, for quite a few years already. There are millions flying around just amongst streamers and players, for everyone to see, so how is anyone still not recognising the reality?

Keywords Studios(also bought all other AoE developer studios) also acquired Forgotten Empires for $32.5 millions(16 million in cash directly) last year. Surely FE is profitable but that doesn't mean too much when MS is one who gives resources and contracts. you can have exorbitant marketing expenditures but still be limited resources (not saying that there is limited resources, limited priorities of MS is probably better word). If MS cuts tournament funding and other marketing costs they they are not going to pay FE to develop game (like QoL, bug fixes new features) with more resources, more resources will come only if there is new project like DLC or console port that also is expected to bring more gains. Marketing costs are often bigger than developing resources because that is what brings money

 

[Potkeny]

what limited resources?

Don't forget that afaik all aoe2:de multiplayer services are maintained/developed by Relic ("aoe4 devs"), and I'm quite sure those resources are strictly limited to what MS put into the contract with them.

 

[otw_Da]

10/10 if they remove snow from the game

there is a no snow mod - i love snow and cant remember when i got snow the last time. i miss the diversity biomes/ground textures and trees of HD

 

[Influenza]

if snow is too bright for you your screen brightness is just way too high LUL

 

[Paint]

So about 85% are happy or very happy with the game. Personally I think we got some of the best game support around and could not imagine any other company taking better care of there game, but as a "command & conquer" and "Magic the gathering" player I am used to EA and Wizards so my standards might be low.