AOE-II DE Is the critical thinking dead on aoezone?

[SouFire]

Other than drama post from aoe rockstars, there are no interesting topics around about the game which is hurtful for the current game status, we are about to get pay to win civilizations that literally have nothing to do with aoe2 universe, yes the romans do not belong to aoe2 timeline as they are already represented in several civilizations.

They are going to be released broken beyond poles or gurjaras because they need to increase the sells as they saw the little interest in that tiny copy and paste dlc called return of rome, lets not pretend that aoe1 is a popular game as an aoe1 de owner it barely peaks 50 players online, so this release is targeting aoe2 users and the only way they have found out to sell their content is by breaking the game balance.

So we as aoe2 players will have to buy the dlc to get romans and counterpick the romans, just like cumans vs cumans in 2019, they don't even give us options to ban broken civilizations which will cause mayhem in the ranked games and we as community allow their behavior every single time, i said and got banned on aoeforums as a joke that we could get martians at some point and now that is closer than ever.

Return of rome is an expensive copy paste from an existing game, overpriced for its content if you already bought aoe 1 DE, that offers only 3 small campaigns, awful balance and civ design, they noticed it wouldn't sell well so they changed their mind at the last minute and decided to hurt the aoe2 community to gain some money in return and justify their decisions.

Also the vietnamese community is not interested in this dlc content or aoe2 or even the aoe 1 DE, they can run for free the pirated version on basically every single device perfectly fine, unlike aoe2 de that needs modern hardware to be played without lag at big resolutions on large maps and high pop games, so lets forget entirely that community.

So what do you guys think? i know aoe2 community is now split within hera's community, viper's, t90's SOL's, memb's communities and aoe influencers in general, but what is next missisipeans? greenland? a new unit like an archer that ignores PA defenses? or villagers that don't need lumbercamps to drop the wood in order to look newer and fresh.

 

[_Andrew]

Not as long as I'm around, @SouFire

 

[IYIyTh]

Those were a lot of words.

I think the takeaway is that you don't like the new DLC civ coming to multiplayer. Which I agree with. However, it follows the same pattern of making a civ have some dumb bonuses that take a normal unit or civ bonus and simply make it stupid overpowered, to be nerfed while keeping it within the top 5 of civs in the following patch. Rinse, repeat.

To the much more interesting point:

Fracturing of the aoe2 community has been actively advocated for by certain streamers as for several years they were unable to squelch criticism like they are on owned streams and/or discords where they may admin them to their hearts content. Unfortunate incident that pains them in a negative light? Perhaps they even got caught cheating? Used a racial or offensive epithet? Made controversial decisions in a position of power to solely benefit oneself at the expense of the aoe2 community? Tried to get people involved in a pump and dump crypto scheme?

All things that might not get discussed if you can simply delete relevant criticism.

 

[LeoMontero]

i have critical thinking, but age now is in a good place, lets see how romans work, and then critize them. yes maybe they are not timeline, but they are a clasical in history.

 

[HongeyKong]

I mean, maybe not many, but there are still some Asians here......

 

[YodaIamm]

This site itself is dead which is sad because it's the only place to have some sort of a discussion around aoe2

r/aoe2 is just full of memes and noobs posting how they beat standard AI

 

[eberlazting]

new DLC is not expensive at all, 112 mxn (~6 usd) is very affordable, even here, I spend more on beer.

If you bought aoe1 DE on its release your critical thinking was already done to begin with.

 

[Rayne]

It is a bit sad tbh, since maybe it sounds a bit silly, but used to consider these forums a bit of a home since I played the game for around 10 years collectively which I’ll never get back as I’m older now so I see the value of time (still do see it as a home somewhat).

I had a lot of stuff to do near end of February and was gone most of March, and there were like literally 0 topics which was the first time I’ve ever seen that. People don’t seem to care to engage anymore or it’s done elsewhere like discord as you mentioned I think some months back. Forums in general seem to be dying maybe?

Also, I think there’s little to no reason to post game-related stuff on forums anymore because of streaming/youtube. Back then (I’m sure you remember too Soufire), there was no twitch or it was just starting. There was no real stuff on youtube about build orders, knights vs pikes, map control vs army or economy vs army, so on. Game was harder to learn back then, more of a mystery, but not now. Hera, Viper, Stark, Nicov, Fire and whoever the others are have done that stuff and road to 2k guides for example. Maybe they’re talking about the state of the game as well (barely visit aoe streams anymore)? So why’s it needed to ask that stuff on forums anymore? Can just go there and get that info from the best. Everything seems and looks far more accessible. Also one can just ask questions along those lines to a Viper or Hera stream (or maybe they have discords).

Just a random thought from above, I think the only thing missing from aoe-related info in terms of improving, if it hasn’t been done, is a talk about gaming psychology which all good players know but maybe they wouldn’t categorize some things that way. One of the last remaining things from a top about how players improve honestly. Or how important stamina and mental agility are (not just micro or “macro speed”, speed of mind = flow of thoughts, ideas, and general observations conforming to actions quickly with minimal delay) which I don’t think has ever really been mentioned anywhere. In-depth that is. It’s much different than chess where it has been discussed more deeply.

As for new dlc stuff, suppose they’re waiting for their fav streamer to talk about it? I figure some are at least. Or it’s done on discord.

 

[SouFire]

I mean the romans in aoe2 feels so wrong the more you think about it, basically the dark age is the next age after the roman empire collapsed and 3 civilizations do represent what was left from them, my concern is that all aoe1 civs are terrible imbalanced and so the romans will be for like 5 months or more and if the community doesn't complain, it opens the door to keep adding civilization that do not belong to the game, that is why it surprises me the little attention that it is having on the hard core community that not so long ago refused to even try wololokingdoms in voobly.

I was reading some aoe2 icons on twitter and so far they are not giving honest thoughts and sometimes it seems they are promoting the content like if they were told to do so, just like a year ago with the toxic aoe4 marketing, so good luck opening a discussion on their fully controlled environments.

I was expecting more negative reactions cause simply this dlc feels so wrong, but all of sudden there are lots of users willing to play aoe1 in aoe2de and like i said that game has always been dead, i bought it cause of nostalgia and to support aoe2de back then but that game is a huge downgrade if you pretend to play it competitively so it doesn't matter if it has gates and formations, the balance and crazy bonuses makes that game unplayable, if in vietnam is popular is mainly cause of the easy access and how short the games are, just like a free fire but retro.

I do not know what to think about the future of the aoe2 community, we have lost social tools ever since aoe2de and control on what we can play and who to play no matter if its a known cheater, it seems like only the guys that make their livings on the game are the real winners while the rest of the users have to obey and accept whatever they want us to do.

 

[robo]

This is peak irony

 

[Targus]

This is peak irony

Robo always here with a useless comment trashing the OP.

 

[GmanStreams]

 

[IvIaximus]

We are from different times, when this game was about love to play. Rayne made good points already. It is impossible to get where we were back then. AoE2 has been "hijacked" by people who made living off the game. Hence they will welcome all kind of content, good or bad. Anything to create fake hype and earn attention of young people.

As for Romans themselves, they are so out of place it is ridiculous. There are some people who argue that since we have huns and goths, Romans are fine as well. Well Huns were added in Conquerors expension which obviously went overboard with new civs such as "Spanish" or "Korea" so that is bad argument. Goths on the other hand peaked at the beginning of middle ages, fourth to fifth century with their kingdoms lasting few centuries later and crieman goths living well into medieval ages. Teutons is just cheese name for germanic people, akin to Franks. Teut (tout) is old germanic word which meant "all of us", "ours". It was basically "etnonym" in opposition to non-germanic people.
Historicity aside (it is game duh) AoE2 was very clearly designed as game revolving around middle ages which (more or less) has began with fall of (western) Roman Empire. Eastern Roman Empire continued all the way until 1453 and its people called and considered themselves true and only Romans out there. So AoE2 already had "Romans", they are just labeled Byznatines due to contemporary practice of calling it Byzantine empire, despite the fact, that it was Roman empire. Inhabitants of this political entity labeled themselves Rhomaioi, not Byzantines.
The DLC "Romans" are clearly meant to represent Roman empire from antiquity, whose existence began before Christ or before current era. It peaked at the beginning of 2nd century AD and quickly detteriorated from then. "Roman empire" of DLC as well as its predecessor Roman republic fits right into AoE1 timeline, since it was game that focused on antiquity.
The fact that AoE DE now contain Byzantines, Italians (which were unified in 19th! century) as well as Romans from antiquity is clear sign that "developers" are out of their minds. And let's not start talking about their OP civ bonuses or fact, that almost all of them are just copypaste of already existing bonuses of other civilizations. Summa summarun, AoE2 has been butchered for sole purpose of milking money of old beloved game. Sad to watch to happen, honestly...

 

[_Andrew]

We are from different times, when this game was about love to play. Rayne made good points already. It is impossible to get where we were back then. AoE2 has been "hijacked" by people who made living off the game. Hence they will welcome all kind of content, good or bad. Anything to create fake hype and earn attention of young people.

I see it more as an inevitability of an aging community. Regardless of how much anyone loves this game, as time goes on and a large portion of the community transitions from their 20s to their 30s suddenly it's a lot more important to be compensated financially for your time. A lot of people have now moved away from their parents, or they have kids/wives who depend on them for financial support. If they're devoting a ton of hours every week to AoE - they need to turn that into $ somehow.

Obviously there are exceptions... we still have some players who are quite young but I'm talking as a total share of the player and community population. Everything I said about players can be applied to streamers too. I don't begrudge anyone for wanting to be compensated for their hard work. It's just a fact of life, as much as we'd all like to go back in time to the moments where we didn't have to worry about $ at all and simply played all day long because we love the game, it's just not possible for many people anymore.

 

[otw_Da]

Stopped playin = stopped caring
Mass will swollow everything for enjoyment
Miss these intense 4on4 nomad or mega random games.

 

[Lokalo]

I see it more as an inevitability of an aging community. Regardless of how much anyone loves this game, as time goes on and a large portion of the community transitions from their 20s to their 30s suddenly it's a lot more important to be compensated financially for your time. A lot of people have now moved away from their parents, or they have kids/wives who depend on them for financial support. If they're devoting a ton of hours every week to AoE - they need to turn that into $ somehow.

Obviously there are exceptions... we still have some players who are quite young but I'm talking as a total share of the player and community population. Everything I said about players can be applied to streamers too. I don't begrudge anyone for wanting to be compensated for their hard work. It's just a fact of life, as much as we'd all like to go back in time to the moments where we didn't have to worry about $ at all and simply played all day long because we love the game, it's just not possible for many people anymore.

Well it's interesting take, although I completely disagree with this. I mean sure people want to get money for what they do and there are many small streamers and so on, but most people that play aoe2 are like 30+ and earn 0 from playing it, in fact many donate to some streamers/tournaments. There are probably like 100 people max who do live just from aoe2 and 99.5% earns nothing. Most people already realised they won't be able to make any money out of it, nor has big plans about it, so how it's not playing the game just because they like the game? I mean if you are talking about like top20 players, then sure, it might be different, but then we are talking about very small minority only.

As for Romans, well for me it doesn't matter that much the real history timeline and stuff, so I won't speak about it, all I want civ not be super OP or at least be nerfed fast, not in 5 months, so there I can somewhat agree. But I don't mind those DLCs as overall, I get it that they need to earn money.

But speaking about aoezone, sadly it's obvious forum is way less actively, people barely open any new topics for last months. I don't know if it's reddit or like multiple reasons. I myself look reddit only when there are some news about upcoming patch, but if I need to look for it there and that info is not here, that's automatic that people will stick to where they can find news faster.

 

[Potkeny]

people barely open any new topics for last months

Maybe the dozens of discord servers are enough for most people to discuss aoe2? No need to open a discussion-thread about latest X tournament match if you can talk about it close to real time with your aoe2 friends, same for all the balance discussions..

I rarely see decent threads on reddit either, so its not like that platform is much (if at all) better..

 

[BruZi]

Romans is so out of place, I totally agree. It goes against the very timeline where aoe2 is supposed to begin (the european dark age). I'll find it annoying to watch Romans be played in tournaments.

 

[_PaternaAoE_]

The fact that people are against this DLC shows that critical thinking has not died down yet. Yes, aoe has become more corporate, which I think ins't the end of the world. In fact, I think it's nice to have new content in the game but I also agree that Romans feel out of place in the aoe2 universe, I would be more happy to see civs like Armenians, Afghans or Georgians being introduced to the game rather than a civ that is stretching the boundaries of the aoe time period.

Better to accept the fact that the civ roster is going to be steadily increasing in numbers than to cry about every upcoming new DLC because its futile.

 

[heheloveer]

It might be controversial but I'm saying this: AoE2 (or maybe the whole AoE franchise) never had anything to do with historical accuracy. Romans don't fit into the medieval timeline and we already have Byz, sure, so what about Goths with gunpowder? Yeah sure they were meant to also represent the Christian kingdoms on Iberia since they were descends of Visigoths, so why add Spanish in AoC? How do you justify the addition of Huns, a people that only existed for like 100 years and went out even before Western Romans? How do you justify adding meso civs who were laughably easy to conquer in real history (no offense to any indigenous Americans out there) but somehow super strong in game with all the blacksmith techs they weren't supposed to have? Why is the name of the Japanese unique tech a Japanese reading of the English word "catapult"? Why does every AoE game freaking love repeating crossbows so much when they were never actually relevant in ancient Chinese warfare? Why does the Genghis Khan campaign come from an alternate universe where Genghis Khan lived to his eighties and the Mongols reached Atlantic? And why do universal units look freaking exactly the same while they are supposed to come from every corner of the world? Just AoE2 things we all know and love, I guess.

TLDR: People really shouldn't be expecting historical accuracy from AoE2. The game have had terrible historical accuracy since 1999 and I never saw people clamoring "delete Huns".

 

[Jarvin]

ITT: people somehow managing to pretend that a videogame that features the Cumans fighting against Incas was intended to be a historically accurate depiction of European medieval ages

Yall are so weird, so starved for reasons to get upset about something, so you can write your 10 paragraph long livid rants about how much you are upset about that thing, it's wild.

Here's a small PSA for you:

AoE2 is a videogame that draws some elements from history for the purpose of adding flavor. History is a complementary element to the game, not a goal in itself.
Since AoE is a videogame, it abstracts the things it draws from history for the purpose of making sure the gameplay quality of the game stays high.
That's why you have things like China and Goths(who in 500 AD were so far apart economically & technologically & societally they might as well have come from a different planet) starting in the same "dark age". That's why you have things like Mayans having access to scorpions.

But I've no idea why I'm saying all of this, the fact that yall apparently somehow managed to internalize Goths having access to huskarls(lmao) as some "core untouchable vanilla AoE2 experience that respects history" and are now getting upset over this is a pretty clear indicator of that, well, you are only looking for reasons to get angi so you can show everyone how angi you are

Much love in any case <3

 

[SouFire]

This is not an historically game, this an RTS based on the medieval age and the unit distribution is mainly generic and for balance purposes so all you are saying is basically that you don't understand the game.

You can argue about mayans, incas or whatever but they were still a civilization during some times in the medieval ages, while romans were before the medieval ages and bizantines or italians pretty much cover them, the addition of romans is one step to add another ancient civilization or a future civilization like united states just like in aoe3.

The romans are not only joining some centuries late in the game but they are introducing an age of mythology or aoe3 mechanic (great another gimmick mechanic) "units close the centuria will run and attack faster" such bonus will be added broken as usual but not only that it will stack with another bonuses breaking the game, just like cuman cavalry dodging ballitics cause of that extra 10% speed.

In other words the romans UU will have Hero properties that can multiply and be distributed in several army groups meaning it will be much more powerful that their original versions on those games, if at this point you are still defending newer dlc content like that you might also enjoy ertug's dlc to enjoy even further the game.

 

[Instinctz]

This New DLC is a slap in the face of almost everyone period
For the Age 1 fans who wanted aoe1 DE fixed, they now have to buy AoE2 DE and RoR.
For the Age 2 fans who prefer single Player content they got an AoE1 game with almost nothing AoE2 (Except 1 civ with no campaign).
For the Age 2 Hardcore fans they got a new civ that isn't going to be balanced or playable in multiplayer for a while.
Not to mention the fact that they bait and switched with the advertising (Romans not advertised as SP/Unranked only until after purchases were made).
And then yes, Romans just doesn't belong in the Age 2 Timeline, and the fact that it's yet another European civ.

Lots of Red Flags with this DLC and I don't know if i can see myself buying another DLC after the way this one has gone.

 

[IvIaximus]

ITT: people somehow managing to pretend that a videogame that features the Cumans fighting against Incas was intended to be a historically accurate depiction of European medieval ages

I am tired lately so I genuinely might have missed something. Please point me to post which claims that AoE2 is "historically accurate depicition" of european medieval ages. Otherwise you are refuting your own fabulation.

"Age of Empires® II: The Age of Kings is a game of combat and empire- building that spans the time from the fall of Rome through the Middle Ages." Literally first sentence in first chapter of game manual.
So yeah, having "Romans" civilization in game which begins after "fall of Rome" is ridiculous just like your low quality "angi" post.

 

[heheloveer]

I am tired lately so I genuinely might have missed something. Please point me to post which claims that AoE2 is "historically accurate depicition" of european medieval ages. Otherwise you are refuting your own fabulation.

"Age of Empires® II: The Age of Kings is a game of combat and empire- building that spans the time from the fall of Rome through the Middle Ages." Literally first sentence in first chapter of game manual.
So yeah, having "Romans" civilization in game which begins after "fall of Rome" is ridiculous just like your low quality "angi" post.

Then they added Huns, apparently the most beloved civ for a long time, to the game. My historical immersion has been ruined and I demand a refund.

Seriously though, adding Romans is indeed ridiculous but this game has always been ridiculous history-wise. There must have been a time where the devs of AoK thought the game’s main historical period should be around the fall of Rome and the Early Middle Ages, hence “Goths” “Franks” “Britons” “Teutons”. However nowadays we all thought the game’s mainly about High Middle Ages, and Jeanne d’Arc being a “Frank” is probably the funniest thing ever. Bash the OP new civ and money grabbing DLC however you want but the game has had confusing civ choices from the very beginning. People on this forum never seemed to mind that until now, which is strange to me.