Is this game all about tournaments/ money?

[Cocaineallday]

The title expresses my opinion regarding the current state of the game. I say yes to my own question.

I feel like AoE has turned into a bussiness. It is not a game where people play it for fun anymore. A lot of people just play this game because they feel like it is their job, just like a typical 9 to 5 job.

I feel like the amount of tournaments happening just contribute to this reality more and more.
Everyone is trying to make this game just about tournaments, advertisments and greed. Microsoft, streamers and a certain number of players.

The constant number of tournaments happening is simply cringe, as well the amount of prize pool for the first places. A lot of good players never have the opportunity to take advantage o the prizepools beucase only the top 4 or 5 get 90% of it. Is this fair?

The constant tournaments happening, also take away the importance of the tournament by it self. Everyone is just waiting for the next one and quickly forgets about the last one.

Also, I have read alot of times that this is necessary to keep the game alive and top players playing it. To the people who think like this : Whenever I read this kind of stuff I cant help but thinking that this is a slap in the face of everyone who has been playing the game for alot of time.
I would prefer that the community had a greater sense of it self. We are MUCH MORE THAN THAT. This game has been around for DECADES, and it has always been a game supported by a TRUE COMMUNITY, that did a lot of great things for this game because they just LOVE it. Not because someone pays them too. This game is alive NOT because of the money or the sponsors. Instead, it is alive because there are people that just simply like playing it.

STOP MAKING THE COMMUNITY FEEL LIKE THE ONLY IMPORTANT THING THAT THIS GAME HAS TO OFFER IS BIG / CRINGE and very often hypocritical tournaments with questionable seeds and rules that protects always the some people. This game is much more than that.

I will always prefer playing this game with real fans than watching some repetitive tournaments with the same players , doing the same strategies over and over.

It takes away the beauty and simplicity of the game in my opinion.


Thank you,

 

[SuperskinnyBLS]

This game is now all about who gets the smoothest build orders execution and then camp in town xD except for the rage forest where u always have to improvise

 

[Snippy]

You dont have to watch the tournaments if you dont want to.
If no one would watch tournaments, they would stop making them pretty quickly.

But guess what. Alot of people watch tournaments, and enjoy them!

 

[Cocaineallday]

This game is now all about who gets the smoothest build orders execution and then camp in town xD except for the rage forest where u always have to improvise

Rage forest is always fun times

 

[Cocaineallday]

You dont have to watch the tournaments if you dont want to.
If no one would watch tournaments, they would stop making them pretty quickly.

But guess what. Alot of people watch tournaments, and enjoy them!

Yep, I dont.

 

[archxeon]

I don't understand this topic. If people enjoy something, let them enjoy. How and why is it affecting you?

You could replace AOE2 with so many other games and sports. Is football all about money and tournaments? I think not.

 

[SuperskinnyBLS]

. Is football all about money and tournaments? I think not.

At the the highest level it is and that resulted in the degradadion of it, with every academy producing identical players, paying attention to stamina and height xD with current aoe2 meta the game has become a zombie factory where everyone just follows the same builder, fully walls thevwhole base early and then tries to grab relics xD

 

[Cocaineallday]

I don't understand this topic. If people enjoy something, let them enjoy. How and why is it affecting you?

You could replace AOE2 with so many other games and sports. Is football all about money and tournaments? I think not.

Current state of football is cringe too.

Alot of people dont watch it anymore .

Also, people can enjoy whatever they want to. I just posted my opinion about something.

 

[kalpit00]

STOP MAKING THE COMMUNITY FEEL LIKE THE ONLY IMPORTANT THING THAT THIS GAME HAS TO OFFER IS BIG / CRINGE and very often hypocritical tournaments with questionable seeds and rules that protects always the some people. This game is much more than that.

Sounds like someone is struggling to understand how the world works. Every "community" becomes commercialized and business minded because we live in a capitalist economy. Money rules everything, especially sports and e-sports. Even the sponsor which puts in so much money into tournaments do it for a monetary gain - be it more exposure for their brands (Redbull), or the overall longevity and sale of their products (Microsoft). It's all part of a business model, and players and casters and hosts/organizers/admins all get paid to use their corresponding skills and capitalize on it - monetarily again. It's true, some players and casters do this for the love of the game - they genuinely work hard to improve their AoE skills or "casting" skills because they have certain nostalgia or something which attracts them to age of empires. But, at the end of the day, money still talks. Hera dipped his shoes in LoL in hopes to capitalize there (LoL is loads of money if you are a Gamer by profession), all the players migrating to Aoe4 from SC2 and aoe2 (ML, Beasty, DeMu, even Kasva, Viper) did it originally because it was a new game, but being gamers by profession, they stuck to it because of the opportunity to make money. "If you are good at something and someone is paying you to do it something, you will do it 11"

Also, I have read alot of times that this is necessary to keep the game alive and top players playing it. To the people who think like this : Whenever I read this kind of stuff I cant help but thinking that this is a slap in the face of everyone who has been playing the game for alot of time.
I would prefer that the community had a greater sense of it self. We are MUCH MORE THAN THAT. This game has been around for DECADES, and it has always been a game supported by a TRUE COMMUNITY, that did a lot of great things for this game because they just LOVE it. Not because someone pays them too. This game is alive NOT because of the money or the sponsors. Instead, it is alive because there are people that just simply like playing it.

This sounds like you are someone who invested so much time into the community but feel betrayed because the community isn't the same as it is. Well, too bad, times change. The world will still keep spinning the next day, even if you decide to have the same mentality. It's true in old days, people used to play age of empires without even getting paid, barely any prizepool in tournaments. You think new people will then decide to play aoe? No, if you aren't paid, you won't commit the time. Simple as that. As for the argument that only top 15 get paid 90% of prizepool, I don't think you can argue at all - considering Gaming in general does not require any degree or educational commitment. Think of it this way, people who study, get a Bachelors/Masters, invest 4+ years of their lives acquiring skills that can help them land a job in their field, and even then they have to work hard, perform better to climb into better positions, only then they get paid $100k annual salary. Same with doctors, lawyers, Engineers, and all major professions in the world - Key is Education. Meanwhile for gaming, all you really need is Internet, a good PC, and a few months. Just compare the two. There's no degree for gaming, no university with a major in gaming - its a simple pleasure activity. You expect to be paid enough money for that? Nobody in the world will pay you.

Sorry to say this buddy, but the truth is always bitter.

 

[SouFire]

That is a legit concern, the devs were so proud about the game growing at the first months of global pandemic but after that there was stagnation and from that point the numbers kept going down rather than growing, big cash events aren't really helping to turn that behavior, we survived aoe4 and fb, but the numbers are back to 2016 on twitch so other big sponsors would just look to another games.

The devs and the team in charge of the franchise have massively focused in tournaments instead of improving the game for the average joe playing, they have sold DLC's every 6 months or so and we lack of the most basic support but hey don't complain cause microsoft is hosting a 100k event and yet more to come, the viewership on twitch is falling faster than my elo, so the hype is dying despite the multiple big events.

We have the biggest 2k elo player base than ever, but as you mentioned the disparity among the earnings is highly demotivating, take the gold league as a good example, you became 2.3k or 2.4k after 2 years of heavy training, you managed to get into the gold league just to get destroyed by old top players from a decade ago and after 2 months of exhausting practice you managed to get 100 usd and lets not talk about the silver league, while t90 is doing his best to promote players outside the top 16, the money isn't just enough to justify such a huge investment of time, while all those players are just watching event after event hera, lierey, viper or mr yo getting +30k usd to their pockets and it is not like they are going to stop playing anytime soon while the aspiring top players are slightly behind waiting for their turn, certainly there is money at the top but even if the popular opinion says that competition is getting higher we have the same names most of the times with little to no changes and those exceptions haven't even be close to compete with the top 5-8, so the tournaments aim for the same 5-6 players and the 5 big casters and their audiences respectively.

In conclusion taking the events and twitch numbers we can easily say that the big events aren't increasing the live numbers of the game on twitch or making the active player base bigger, the devs should focus their efforts to something else.

 

[LowEloNobody]

REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

 

[huggieg]

Gr8 b8 m8, I r8 8/8

 

[archxeon]

Current state of football is cringe too.

Alot of people dont watch it anymore .

Also, people can enjoy whatever they want to. I just posted my opinion about something.

You're mistaking tournaments and leagues as the entirety of football. Just like you're mistaking aoe2 competitive scene as the entirety of aoe2.
Unless I am the one mistaken, and that when you say community you mean the competitive community.

 

[archxeon]

At the the highest level it is and that resulted in the degradadion of it, with every academy producing identical players, paying attention to stamina and height xD with current aoe2 meta the game has become a zombie factory where everyone just follows the same builder, fully walls thevwhole base early and then tries to grab relics xD

I don't know for me when some one says community it means the entirety of people that are involved in it. For football, that starts with amateurs and kids starting from 5 years old to 50-60 years old that are just playing for fun AND the professional players, casters, viewers, journalists etc.

 

[OGN]

In my opinion the only real problem in the AoE e-sport scene today is the lack of tournaments for semi-pro players.

I've been trying to do this on a small scale with the European Rumble and the World Rumble in 2021/2022.

If I can find the funds for 2023, I will personally commit to offer as many events as possible with this model.

I would like to highlight the work of T90 with his bronze and gold league.

We must continue to offer them, the game needs it and the scene too.

 

[Cocaineallday]

Sounds like someone is struggling to understand how the world works. Every "community" becomes commercialized and business minded because we live in a capitalist economy. Money rules everything, especially sports and e-sports. Even the sponsor which puts in so much money into tournaments do it for a monetary gain - be it more exposure for their brands (Redbull), or the overall longevity and sale of their products (Microsoft). It's all part of a business model, and players and casters and hosts/organizers/admins all get paid to use their corresponding skills and capitalize on it - monetarily again. It's true, some players and casters do this for the love of the game - they genuinely work hard to improve their AoE skills or "casting" skills because they have certain nostalgia or something which attracts them to age of empires. But, at the end of the day, money still talks. Hera dipped his shoes in LoL in hopes to capitalize there (LoL is loads of money if you are a Gamer by profession), all the players migrating to Aoe4 from SC2 and aoe2 (ML, Beasty, DeMu, even Kasva, Viper) did it originally because it was a new game, but being gamers by profession, they stuck to it because of the opportunity to make money. "If you are good at something and someone is paying you to do it something, you will do it 11"




This sounds like you are someone who invested so much time into the community but feel betrayed because the community isn't the same as it is. Well, too bad, times change. The world will still keep spinning the next day, even if you decide to have the same mentality. It's true in old days, people used to play age of empires without even getting paid, barely any prizepool in tournaments. You think new people will then decide to play aoe? No, if you aren't paid, you won't commit the time. Simple as that. As for the argument that only top 15 get paid 90% of prizepool, I don't think you can argue at all - considering Gaming in general does not require any degree or educational commitment. Think of it this way, people who study, get a Bachelors/Masters, invest 4+ years of their lives acquiring skills that can help them land a job in their field, and even then they have to work hard, perform better to climb into better positions, only then they get paid $100k annual salary. Same with doctors, lawyers, Engineers, and all major professions in the world - Key is Education. Meanwhile for gaming, all you really need is Internet, a good PC, and a few months. Just compare the two. There's no degree for gaming, no university with a major in gaming - its a simple pleasure activity. You expect to be paid enough money for that? Nobody in the world will pay you.

Sorry to say this buddy, but the truth is always bitter.

So, your answer to the question that I made is yes?

 

[wattle]

The game is surely not all about money.
I like to watch some tourneys. I loved to see the crowd at Heidelberg Castle.
But I love to play campaigns as well when I find time. I watch the Vipers campaign playthroughs, or T-West custom campaigns. I like to watch SotL every now and than, when I have no time to start the game and I read several people apparently watch only SotL without playing. I like to follow the AI scripting community and get excited about new AI micro due to direct unit control that scripters introduce. I love to see different maps and am greatfull to the rms-community. Yes tourneys inspire them to work on new scripts aswell. Would be sad to have to play only a few official maps. I like to see a nations cup now after many years which might encourage many players to play, even if it is just for the pride or nation-community-feeling. Apparently T90 has a good following for not pro games aswell.

Surely more could be said, but all in all the game is absolutely not all about money or tourneys, but having high prize money doesn't hurt the wider community.
Do I think tournaments for the not absolute best is a good thing and like to see them, ofc.
(Edit: By that I also mean, I prefer a wider prize distribution or cap for first prize.)
Am I constrained as someone who likes many other aspects of the game, apart from high prize money matches, no ofc not.

 

[TheShaunPlays]

More people play for fun now than 10 years ago. The people at the top making money now built this community for no money for a very long time.

How is tournament play impacting you in a negative way?

If you think the game is only about money and tournaments I'd suggest that's a you problem. Other aspects of the game are massive and only getting bigger as tournaments drive new players to the game.

 

[XDDXOXO]

I'd say 99% play this game casually so no?

 

[eC_Gurke]

Im confused. I simply play this game cause its a lot of fun.

 

[DracKeN]

I do agree about the overflow of the tournaments - sometimes. 1 particular S-tier in 2022 kinda felt like it's there just as a qualifier for RBW. Grand Meele timing felt also very rushed and it had a major impact on why the tournament wasn't viewed as positively as it could. Now we have TTL which will be until mid February, right after will be NAC with qualifiers (I believe there's even 1 week overlap?) and then Main Event. And at the same, there's suddenly NC which can easily grow to 30k prize pool. The fact that there are possibly 3 Stiers running at 1 month is not optimal (I assume that Nili and T90 communicated about their schedule though). And from the wide-spread rumours, there are at least another 5-6 S-tiers already planned for 2023 just not yet announced (and that's without RBW events, GL events). It would be much better for both players and viewers if streamers and organizers would work more together, host events together. It would decrease the amount of S-tiers, but at the same time make them more valuable. I had hopes of that happening with next NC which was always the biggest aoe event covered by everyone, but that's sadly not the case.
Edit: Btw I just got an amazing idea. What about tournament calendar?

 

[Tendo]

This is actually funny.
Remember ~9 months ago, so many people were like "why we have no big Tournaments anymore", "AoE2 is dead", "why so much money for AoE4 instead", "prizepool going heavily down", "no tournaments announced" yara yara.
At that time A-Tier Tournaments with smaller Prizepools had time to shine, but many treated them with disrespect because prizemoney was too low for them to even bother watching it.

And now? Actually critisizing that there ARE many Tournaments with big Prizepools and many more incoming.
Where was this "the game is more then that" when less and smaller Tournaments were happening?

 

[MaSmOrRa]

AoE is a profession/business for like 0,001% of the player base.

Everyone else plays/watches it for fun and nothing else...

 

[GmanStreams]

The title expresses my opinion regarding the current state of the game. I say yes to my own question.

I feel like AoE has turned into a bussiness. It is not a game where people play it for fun anymore. A lot of people just play this game because they feel like it is their job, just like a typical 9 to 5 job.

I feel like the amount of tournaments happening just contribute to this reality more and more.
Everyone is trying to make this game just about tournaments, advertisments and greed. Microsoft, streamers and a certain number of players.

The constant number of tournaments happening is simply cringe, as well the amount of prize pool for the first places. A lot of good players never have the opportunity to take advantage o the prizepools beucase only the top 4 or 5 get 90% of it. Is this fair?

The constant tournaments happening, also take away the importance of the tournament by it self. Everyone is just waiting for the next one and quickly forgets about the last one.

Also, I have read alot of times that this is necessary to keep the game alive and top players playing it. To the people who think like this : Whenever I read this kind of stuff I cant help but thinking that this is a slap in the face of everyone who has been playing the game for alot of time.
I would prefer that the community had a greater sense of it self. We are MUCH MORE THAN THAT. This game has been around for DECADES, and it has always been a game supported by a TRUE COMMUNITY, that did a lot of great things for this game because they just LOVE it. Not because someone pays them too. This game is alive NOT because of the money or the sponsors. Instead, it is alive because there are people that just simply like playing it.

STOP MAKING THE COMMUNITY FEEL LIKE THE ONLY IMPORTANT THING THAT THIS GAME HAS TO OFFER IS BIG / CRINGE and very often hypocritical tournaments with questionable seeds and rules that protects always the some people. This game is much more than that.

I will always prefer playing this game with real fans than watching some repetitive tournaments with the same players , doing the same strategies over and over.

It takes away the beauty and simplicity of the game in my opinion.


Thank you,

This is a 14y/o's worldview amigo

 

[SuperskinnyBLS]

Btw I just got an amazing idea. What about tournament calendar?

Bro, why u hating bro