Is this game all about tournaments/ money?

[Funito]

Not really, but personally I love Titans League Format, i wish the big money were there giving many years of competition instead of tourneys for 6-10 players with no open streaming for filling pockets of players that don't even have tourneys as their main money source. But it's a personal wish and i don't know how the money route works.

 

[Dovahkiin4e201]

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.

Viewer numbers for major tournaments are still way higher than pre-pandemic. RBW:L had a peak viewership over 70,000. No AOE2 tournament even got over 10,000 peak viewers until one of the NAC's in 2018 or 2019. Why do you think viewer numbers are back to 2016 levels? Do you have any evidence of 2016 twitch views of aoe2 that high?

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.

This is somewhat of a fair point, it would be better if more players could have hopes of getting prize money. Hopefully Nations Cup can be good for this, as the format allows players outside of the usual top 20 a chance at winning some prize money.

 

[malamadre]

Only like 20 people making a living of aoe2. stupid ass opinion

 

[IvIaximus]

I would say we come from older generation and are used to different enviroment, which will unfortunately never come back. There will be no forum where most of the topics focused on recorded games and discussing skills/strategies/beefs etc. There will be no feeling of familiarity where you feel like you know entire scene. There will be no team games where random 1700+ players could play with absolute top players and feel like they are part of real game. And there will never be hype similar to one we experienced when Nations cup or Brain champion cup or Arbalet cup were announced. Every single person was full of expectations, all players preparing, etc. The game has changed too much and with that also "community".

 

[NachoAoE]

I would say we come from older generation and are used to different enviroment, which will unfortunately never come back. There will be no forum where most of the topics focused on recorded games and discussing skills/strategies/beefs etc. There will be no feeling of familiarity where you feel like you know entire scene. There will be no team games where random 1700+ players could play with absolute top players and feel like they are part of real game. And there will never be hype similar to one we experienced when Nations cup or Brain champion cup or Arbalet cup were announced. Every single person was full of expectations, all players preparing, etc. The game has changed too much and with that also "community".

As a player since ~2008, this hit kinda hard in the nostalgia button.
As a streamer I also like that there are more tournaments and viewers.
I think both have their up and downsides but one thing as you point out is certain: Time waits for no person and it never goes back. Enjoy every moment as much as you can.

 

[Hearttt]

dunno man, you seem to like the word cringe too much for such a cringe take

 

[Rayne]

I would say we come from older generation and are used to different enviroment, which will unfortunately never come back. There will be no forum where most of the topics focused on recorded games and discussing skills/strategies/beefs etc. There will be no feeling of familiarity where you feel like you know entire scene. There will be no team games where random 1700+ players could play with absolute top players and feel like they are part of real game. And there will never be hype similar to one we experienced when Nations cup or Brain champion cup or Arbalet cup were announced. Every single person was full of expectations, all players preparing, etc. The game has changed too much and with that also "community".

I do miss these days a lot. The forums way back in 2006 or even 10 years ago had far more reason to visit many times a day.

If it wasn’t some players posting no loss packs to 1700 to evoke reactions like “Omg who did guy? Won one game on the account? This the new Daut?” which still make me smile, then it was some topics talking about ancient players/clans around 2000. If not that, it was how Ruso was on forums talking about smoking weed or how when he didn’t have any, he smoked a cactus and said it is inadvisable. Or it’d be Dreams trolling the forums every now and then with like “You must be 2k+ to talk about 2k games”, or some secret kkab training game leaked. And actually even more on Dreams, how he opened that picture topic in 2010 for what felt like to literally flex his muscles. I still can’t unsee him showing his back Gerry style and flexing his biceps with those black boxer shorts/briefs. Then the topic later became Edie’s instagram. Great times, love them, miss them.

 

[plfan]

Let's all do everything for free and for greater good. Why do doctors take the money for doing their jobs? Shouldn't healing people be more important than money? What's going on with people? Where have the ideas gone?

 

[IvIaximus]

I do miss these days a lot. The forums way back in 2006 or even 10 years ago had far more reason to visit many times a day.

If it wasn’t some players posting no loss packs to 1700 to evoke reactions like “Omg who did guy? Won one game on the account? This the new Daut?” which still make me smile, then it was some topics talking about ancient players/clans around 2000. If not that, it was how Ruso was on forums talking about smoking weed or how when he didn’t have any, he smoked a cactus and said it is inadvisable. Or it’d be Dreams trolling the forums every now and then with like “You must be 2k+ to talk about 2k games”, or some secret kkab training game leaked. And actually even more on Dreams, how he opened that picture topic in 2010 for what felt like to literally flex his muscles. I still can’t unsee him showing his back Gerry style and flexing his biceps with those black boxer shorts/briefs. Then the topic later became Edie’s instagram. Great times, love them, miss them.

I always loved "Road to xxx pack". As u say, it usually had some smurf and we spent entire days guessing who it was. Needless to say, community was much smaller so easier to identify.
Pity Dreams is not around. I loved the guy. His raging streams, mod abusing, workout advices, guy was pure meme material in good sense.

 

[Zbyszek]

Dont judge the community by its devs. Sure they are milking the game with ridiciculous DLCs and power creep while disregarding lobby browser for casual players. But thats not everyone. There are still quite a few people and content creators who know that they dont have to creep into the devs backside as to have fun and be successful.

About the tournaments...
None of the big winners started playing when that was in any way responsible. When you are the best you should win. This isnt charity.

 

[Rayne]

I always loved "Road to xxx pack". As u say, it usually had some smurf and we spent entire days guessing who it was. Needless to say, community was much smaller so easier to identify.
Pity Dreams is not around. I loved the guy. His raging streams, mod abusing, workout advices, guy was pure meme material in good sense.

I liked Dreams as well. I know he had his issues so I can see why people either liked him or didn’t, but Dreams was one of the first tops that actually talked to me a bit after games when we regularly played each other. Game talk I mean, and he didn’t have to do that. It was very nice of him since I slowly saw the differences between 23+ and me when I was just a mediocre 2k then. Grateful for that stuff tbh.

 

[NextLever]

So the complaint is that the game is too much about the money but also that not enough players earn money playing it? Literally 99.99% of the player base doesn't make money off it. If you stay off like a couple of twitch channels, you wouldn't even know tournaments are happening and it would change nothing for you. There are more casual players than ever so even that complaint isn't valid.

 

[shn_09]

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,

The community that you're talking about that has continued to play for decades is small. Most of the players from those times have moved to other games or quit gaming. There are several games which a lot of new generation gamers don't even know about. And those games have become dead outside their small community because of the lack of such tournaments. When you don't have "enough" players, you can't play online. To have a sizeable number of active players, there needs to be competition. There have been several points in the past where it looked like the game is dead with almost negligible active players and just a small set of players continued playing on free platforms. At such points, it was tournaments that brought the community back. World clan league 7(2011) aoczone community funded, Forgotten empires expansion developed by some members of the community who wanted to add more civilizations etc.
Tournaments don't make the game more complex. None of the core mechanics of the game are adjusted for the sake of tournaments which make it harder or uninteresting for the recreational players.
I don't know whom or what organization you're targeting while using terms like "some" people, "hypocritical tournaments" but most tournaments are professional, unbiased and have the same rules applicable to everyone. Some LAN events had issues due to external political climate if that's what you are referring to but that's not the fault of the organization hosting the event. Regarding the comment about 90% of prizepool going to top 4, that never happened unless the event itself was between 4 or 5 players. These days even the players who get eliminated in the last stage of qualifiers get some prize money.
You're playing the game recreationally while also doing a full-time job and enjoying it. But because of streaming platforms and tournaments, many players are able to make a living by playing the game they enjoy, which is a very good thing for the game's future.
I know that some people have the opinion that corporate money flowing into something will take the joy out of it. But not in AOE 2. In spite of being competitors to each others, most high level players are respectful and friendly with each other and the content they create helps newer players to get glued on to the game sooner.
I remember buying the game in 2001 and it took me almost a year to finish William wallace campaign and another year to win against CD version hard AI. Whereas now with all the build order youtube videos, streamers, coaching, the kids these days get really good really fast. And that's just fantastic news.

 

[Progeusz]

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.

That's a lot of projecting.

 

[StupidPieceOfSheep]

i wouldnt be back playing since 2018 if i didnt stumble across kotd on youtube and got hooked on competive scene

and i bet its the case for many others, so my point is, money is good

 

[TheShaunPlays]

Username checks out

 

[Lokalo]

i wouldnt be back playing since 2018 if i didnt stumble across kotd on youtube and got hooked on competive scene

and i bet its the case for many others, so my point is, money is good

Yeah, HC3 was how I got to know this game is alive and I came back and I heard many similar stories.

However I would agree with the thoughts, that big prize pools not neccessary bring new people or ne viewers, like 100k tournament doesn't mean there will be more viewers than 50k by itself, although I don't see any issues in tournaments and huge prize pools. However I agree with the opinion that some of that money should be taken and invested in proper client, where you at least could see and message your friends/could add them. I keep saying that not having official web for proper stats is a disaster, but to not being able to add/find friends in game where 100k prize pools happening every 2-3 months is even worse. Whenever I want to play with a friend I need to look for discord and then people can't find your game or has issue joining your game, but again, you can't even msg them in the game and half time you try to invite, request for the game is sent, but it shows player as offline. Queue system is really nice and that you can choose even few modes at same time(sadly lacking DM) and really helps to get a fast game, but otherwise this client has zero communication possibilities which sucks, especially for community which was kind of built on it.

 

[otw_Da]

This is a 14y/o's worldview amigo

What is wrong if someone is 14 years old and sharing his worldview?


Overall a nice topic gaming isn't that was it was 20 years ago and these times won't come back. Its always something special when new passions develop but our system never ignores business opportunities- but read some of this posts here with clear mind and remember them - because the same people that perceive your post slightly negatively are the same that go full madness when there is 3 days no food and nobody cares about the economie anymore.
There are the days of prosperity and fortune. Then follow the days of decadence then decay. Nothing stays the same.
If you struggle with something and there is a day were you notice things that you loved have change. So it doesn't feel like back then - its time try to change it or turn your back and move on.
Gaming overall is not able to fill my hearth with love anymore like it did back then but I found that there are alot of empty poor souls in the dark that could need a friend and some light/smile/happiness in there lives.

 

[KoTR_Darkflame]

What is wrong if someone is 14 years old and sharing his worldview?


Overall a nice topic gaming isn't that was it was 20 years ago and these times won't come back. Its always something special when new passions develop but our system never ignores business opportunities- but read some of this posts here with clear mind and remember them - because the same people that perceive your post slightly negatively are the same that go full madness when there is 3 days no food and nobody cares about the economie anymore.
There are the days of prosperity and fortune. Then follow the days of decadence then decay. Nothing stays the same.
If you struggle with something and there is a day were you notice things that you loved have change. So it doesn't feel like back then - its time try to change it or turn your back and move on.
Gaming overall is not able to fill my hearth with love anymore like it did back then but I found that there are alot of empty poor souls in the dark that could need a friend and some light/smile/happiness in there lives.

Meh who gives a crap about capitalism.

For me the game is fun so I play, the tournaments are fun to watch so I watch. The nations cup is volunteer run so I crowdfund. It's nice to have a little prize to play for.

If there is no more money put into the game, I will still play, and so will the majority of the player base because they aren't getting paid either. The top 10 will earn more because they are the top 10.

It's not a complex issue and no need to eulogise or proselytise over the merits of capitalism.

The community is good, we have characterful personalities and the top players are good peoples. For me, this game is a small island of good.