AOE-II DE Make AOE2 profitable for Microsoft

[Helichaos]

You are saying that if they can make money buy selling mods that others made, i e essentially making money for doing nothing but hosting servers, then why the **** would they do anything more?
You are saying if they abandon this game then it is better to give them money for it? dude you are literally insane.

At some point, they will abandon this game, including not hosting any servers, if there's no profit to be made.

If a regular income could justify server costs plus a small team to make QOL adjustments and fixes, I'd be happy with that.

 

At some point, they will abandon this game, including not hosting any servers, if there's no profit to be made.

That will happen rather sooner than later (my wild guess is within the next 2-3 years).

If a regular income could justify server costs plus a small team to make QOL adjustments and fixes, I'd be happy with that.

To be honest, I expect that in a certain time frame (maybe around or 2 years) that platforms (Voobly and in general AoE1, AoE2 and other communities) are going to host dedicated servers of openage for the people. Or within a transition period before that to reverse engineer and reimplement the parts needed of their multiplayer platform to be able to self-host that stuff e.g. for Voobly or for you to rent your own server and play AoE2DE on that platform. If you want to still pay money then for Microsoft you might send a cheque directly to Redmond.

 

[lecracheursagacite]

I do not understand how anything you have seen from MS in the past two years (or really the past 20) would make you hope for their continued involvement. They essentially hold the IP hostage with their terrible mismanagement; in an economic system that functioned anything like the fairy tale you hear from advocates for capitalism they would have been stripped of their rights to the franchise long ago.

 

[huntskiki]

The OP's premise is funny. Their theory is that MS needs a profit incentive to keep supporting the game. Usually, when companies start out, it's the opposite - they offer something of value to make a profit.

There has been an established model for games to be successful over a long period of time, you make a great ****ing game. That's the hard part, but MS pulled it off. They made a great game that has stood the test of time. Now comes the easy part, figure out a way to monetize your great game. If MS has had this game for 20 years and can't figure out how to make a profit, I don't think there is anyone in the community that can help them.

 

[lecracheursagacite]

The OP's premise is funny. Their theory is that MS needs a profit incentive to keep supporting the game. Usually, when companies start out, it's the opposite - they offer something of value to make a profit.

There has been an established model for games to be successful over a long period of time, you make a great ****ing game. That's the hard part, but MS pulled it off. They made a great game that has stood the test of time. Now comes the easy part, figure out a way to monetize your great game. If MS has had this game for 20 years and can't figure out how to make a profit, I don't think there is anyone in the community that can help them.

Yup. 20+ years of perfectly illustrating how poorly very large corporations are administered.

 

[damdres]

Don't worry Voobly still alive

 

[Biz]

we bought DE to play an ensemble stuidios game without lag. if microsoft makes some money along the way, i won't complain

aoe2 is just about funneling interest towards future AoE products, and i'm not inherently opposed to that. how they compete with themselves remains to be seen, but i can say that it'll be super easy to just not buy aoe4 DLC or aoe5 if they turn off servers for DE


the annoying part is not the lack of content. it's all the bugs / matchmaking failures that prevent us from actually playing the game

in many ways, less content is actually a good thing. 6 months ago they added some stupid fireworks to the town centers for when people click age up. 1v1 has been a joke since then because it just broadcasts a lag spike whenever someone starts advancing. and it's still not fixed. (i don't know the cause of the lag spike, but this is the type of 'support' they are adding to the game, more often adding bugs instead of fixing them)

playing on scenarios instead of random maps is a step backwards. letting people pick civs that only do 1 thing and then also get the perfect spawn position for doing that 1 thing is a step backwards. turning nomad into socotra is a step backwards. being forced to play on maps where you start with walls around your base is a step backwards. being unable to play on custom maps is a step backwards. starting in feudal age and skipping the whole map-exploration part of the game is a step backwards. being unable to play random civ games is a step backwards.

the whole 'support' direction is about dumbing down the game so that people who don't like aoe2 will maybe try it out and get funneled towards aoe4 & beyond. even if you agree with that direction, why are we the ones who should be subsidizing it?

and there is zero evidence that it's even working. i'm mediocre at RTS games and play aoe2 at a reasonably high level. this would not be happening if there was some influx of starcraft players towards aoe2. it's just the same people as always. and the starcraft players are just going to move on to 1 of the other 3 AAA starcraft clones that are due to come out within the next 5 years. it doesn't even make sense to dumb the game down for them.

 

[lecracheursagacite]

we bought DE to play an ensemble stuidios game without lag. if microsoft makes some money along the way, i won't complain

aoe2 is just about funneling interest towards future AoE products, and i'm not inherently opposed to that. how they compete with themselves remains to be seen, but i can say that it'll be super easy to just not buy aoe4 DLC or aoe5 if they turn off servers for DE


the annoying part is not the lack of content. it's all the bugs / matchmaking failures that prevent us from actually playing the game

in many ways, less content is actually a good thing. 6 months ago they added some stupid fireworks to the town centers for when people click age up. 1v1 has been a joke since then because it just broadcasts a lag spike whenever someone starts advancing. and it's still not fixed. (i don't know the cause of the lag spike, but this is the type of 'support' they are adding to the game, more often adding bugs instead of fixing them)

playing on scenarios instead of random maps is a step backwards. letting people pick civs that only do 1 thing and then also get the perfect spawn position for doing that 1 thing is a step backwards. turning nomad into socotra is a step backwards. being forced to play on maps where you start with walls around your base is a step backwards. being unable to play on custom maps is a step backwards. starting in feudal age and skipping the whole map-exploration part of the game is a step backwards. being unable to play random civ games is a step backwards.

the whole 'support' direction is about dumbing down the game so that people who don't like aoe2 will maybe try it out and get funneled towards aoe4 & beyond. even if you agree with that direction, why are we the ones who should be subsidizing it?

and there is zero evidence that it's even working. i'm mediocre at RTS games and play aoe2 at a reasonably high level. this would not be happening if there was some influx of starcraft players towards aoe2. it's just the same people as always. and the starcraft players are just going to move on to 1 of the other 3 AAA starcraft clones that are due to come out within the next 5 years. it doesn't even make sense to dumb the game down for them.

My favorite thing about this is the casual implicit dissing of SC2.

 

[RobChang]

Things we can include

1. microtransactions for skins -units, buildings
2. Create MOBA mode and induct CBA as official moba format
3. Live tournaments like TI
4. UI mods, Data mods etc can be free + paid
5. Single player campaigns
6. New player training and build order campaigns that attracts new players
7. make it free to play with 4 to 6 civs so players can buy the entire game after trying it.

the biggest hinderance for all of this is the spaghetti code that makes the game unplayable every time you change a number. MS never bothered recoding the game,cause for them aoe2 de was always a temporary project to fill the gap until aoe4. now they are surprised by its success and could add more things, or just appreciate the fortune they made from minimal efforts and calculate it as a promotion reason for the people in charge behind, and let it die before it becomes a fail for anyone.

 

[Elvaenor]

The majority of players bought HD and DE with expansions. Thats like 60$! And look at the product. Its not worth 60$.
So no I will not by the next DLC. There are better made games for 10$ with updated versions coming out for FREE. What kind of an argument is this. Microsoft should get their **** together to make sure that people will keep playing their game and trust them to make good games in the future.

Why is it not worth €60? I have close to 1000 hours played on the HD edition, and I'm closing in on 500 hours played on the DE. I paid €60 for RDR2 and only spend 50 or so hours on that game. So if you look at the enjoyment you get out of it, I'd gladly pay even a subscription fee of €10/month to play the game or pay €100 for the game itself. It may have its issues, but you get a hobby for the absolute bottom price that you culd ask for for hundreds/thousands of hours.
Besides this, the DLC is worth the money anyway since it's just extra content you pay for. If you think it's too expensive you shouldn't have bought it. The DE itself is only €20 or €15 if you own the HD edition, that's an absolute steal for the amount of content you get for it, even if you already had the base game.

 

[Zbyszek]

The OP's premise is funny. Their theory is that MS needs a profit incentive to keep supporting the game. Usually, when companies start out, it's the opposite - they offer something of value to make a profit.

There has been an established model for games to be successful over a long period of time, you make a great ****ing game. That's the hard part, but MS pulled it off. They made a great game that has stood the test of time. Now comes the easy part, figure out a way to monetize your great game. If MS has had this game for 20 years and can't figure out how to make a profit, I don't think there is anyone in the community that can help them.

I guess the figured it out. Make all their new versions **** so they can sell yet another one.

 

[Zbyszek]

Why is it not worth €60? I have close to 1000 hours played on the HD edition, and I'm closing in on 500 hours played on the DE. I paid €60 for RDR2 and only spend 50 or so hours on that game. So if you look at the enjoyment you get out of it, I'd gladly pay even a subscription fee of €10/month to play the game or pay €100 for the game itself. It may have its issues, but you get a hobby for the absolute bottom price that you culd ask for for hundreds/thousands of hours.
Besides this, the DLC is worth the money anyway since it's just extra content you pay for. If you think it's too expensive you shouldn't have bought it. The DE itself is only €20 or €15 if you own the HD edition, that's an absolute steal for the amount of content you get for it, even if you already had the base game.

The problem is that FE/Worlds Edge has been working on this game for 10 years and its still in a state where you should have prolonged the open Beta to the end of this year.
And lack of funding cant be the issue.
I think voobly is overall still the superior platform to play teamgame since the DE TG ladder has been broken since its started existing. The games are laggy af and in the lobby browser you only find noobs. TLDR voobly is the only place where I can find Teamgames with random civs, on a map that i want to play, and players of my level.

 

[fleece316]

the biggest hinderance for all of this is the spaghetti code that makes the game unplayable every time you change a number. MS never bothered recoding the game,cause for them aoe2 de was always a temporary project to fill the gap until aoe4. now they are surprised by its success and could add more things, or just appreciate the fortune they made from minimal efforts and calculate it as a promotion reason for the people in charge behind, and let it die before it becomes a fail for anyone.

I will buy this game again for $40 if they completely use a new engine and get rid of lag for 500 pop games. 4000 units in a game in 2021 shouldn't be laggy. I'd pay that much just to get rid of lag. Oh yes, $10 more to get rid of arabia.

 

[TwilliverOngenbone]

I will buy this game again for $40 if they completely use a new engine and get rid of lag for 500 pop games. 4000 units in a game in 2021 shouldn't be laggy. I'd pay that much just to get rid of lag. Oh yes, $10 more to get rid of arabia.

This would be the way to make the game profitable in the long run: Pay 1$ per extra map ban per month.

 

[palm]

DLC is the way

I don't see AoE2 getting into subscriptions, in-game purchases, or advertising

RTS has typically been a tough to monetize genre, evidenced by the very small number of big RTS games, compared to other genres. Activision Blizzard moving away from the StarCraft series in favor of titles like Overwatch and Candy Crush is all the evidence you need. It still has its niche and will remain, but when game balance is an extremely important factor, you are limited from traditional ways to monetize, such as cosmetic purchases and the like.

Overall new DLCs and tournaments seems like the best way MS can approach it, continuing to bring new eyes to the game and thus grow the playerbase. You can see this in the Devs approach, with business decisions such as removing DM queue in favor of an EW queue. They want to make the game as accessible to newcomers as possible, to drive player growth and new sales

 

[fleece316]

View attachment 192562

DLC is the way

I don't see AoE2 getting into subscriptions, in-game purchases, or advertising

RTS has typically been a tough to monetize genre, evidenced by the very small number of big RTS games, compared to other genres. Activision Blizzard moving away from the StarCraft series in favor of titles like Overwatch and Candy Crush is all the evidence you need. It still has its niche and will remain, but when game balance is an extremely important factor, you are limited from traditional ways to monetize, such as cosmetic purchases and the like.

Overall new DLCs and tournaments seems like the best way MS can approach it, continuing to bring new eyes to the game and thus grow the playerbase. You can see this in the Devs approach, with business decisions such as removing DM queue in favor of an EW queue. They want to make the game as accessible to newcomers as possible, to drive player growth and new sales

DLCs need a lot of coding and at some point , too many new cvis will break the game itself. Of all the suggestions, cosmetic skins are the easiest one to do.

 

[lecracheursagacite]

View attachment 192562

DLC is the way

I don't see AoE2 getting into subscriptions, in-game purchases, or advertising

RTS has typically been a tough to monetize genre, evidenced by the very small number of big RTS games, compared to other genres. Activision Blizzard moving away from the StarCraft series in favor of titles like Overwatch and Candy Crush is all the evidence you need. It still has its niche and will remain, but when game balance is an extremely important factor, you are limited from traditional ways to monetize, such as cosmetic purchases and the like.

Overall new DLCs and tournaments seems like the best way MS can approach it, continuing to bring new eyes to the game and thus grow the playerbase. You can see this in the Devs approach, with business decisions such as removing DM queue in favor of an EW queue. They want to make the game as accessible to newcomers as possible, to drive player growth and new sales

Man that graph is sad.

 

[nhoobish]

Tbh I've never really understood that people pay for a game, and expect their $20-$30 to also cover eternal online servers and regular patches.

Because not so long ago, people bought CDs or DVDs or other data storage mediums. People bought physical copies of the games that had to be durable, they had to be finished, polished, bugfree. The game you would install to your computer had to work as intended. The sentence you constructed means you probably have never bought any physical copy of a game, thus cannot understand what previous generations or people that have been gamers for a longer time feel.
Unless, of course you have played SaaS (mainly MMORPGs) by majority in the past.

Since digital copies and licences came along it has gradually shifted the focus of developers to acquire professional testers and instead have preview patches, the same way there is open Alpha or open Beta. Some games even start selling their game during Beta-testing. Selling early-access has been going on for years. The model is shifting constantly and for the people who have been accustomed to buying full working games as a whole at once its simply terrifying and just sad.

 

[wattle]

Haven't read all comments, but I would assume chances are high a big company will abandon a game even if it is profitable, if it is not profitable enough / too small. It might just not be important enough at some point to care about.

 

[palm]

DLCs need a lot of coding and at some point , too many new cvis will break the game itself. Of all the suggestions, cosmetic skins are the easiest one to do.

The problem with cosmetics in RTS is balance. If there are skins that make units less identifiable in any way, that becomes an advantage you can pay for, which is terrible for a game. Simply having a variety of unit reskins is entirely unfeasible, as being able to immediately identify units based off appearance is highly important

If you have purchasable cosmetics that only you can see, that's pretty dumb and I'm not certain people would purchase. There's no serious competitive RTS that features in-game purchases for cosmetics.

I've seen it stated in past interviews the game engine could support 48 civs, so the devs have potentially years of content before hitting that. Let's be completely honest, AoE2 is never turning to in-game purchases

 

[Dagan]

The problem with cosmetics in RTS is balance. If there are skins that make units less identifiable in any way, that becomes an advantage you can pay for, which is terrible for a game. Simply having a variety of unit reskins is entirely unfeasible, as being able to immediately identify units based off appearance is highly important

If you have purchasable cosmetics that only you can see, that's pretty dumb and I'm not certain people would purchase. There's no serious competitive RTS that features in-game purchases for cosmetics.

I've seen it stated in past interviews the game engine could support 48 civs, so the devs have potentially years of content before hitting that. Let's be completely honest, AoE2 is never turning to in-game purchases

StarCraft II has a lot of skins for both units and building that don't alter the appearance entirely and everything is easily identifiable so the concept itself is never a problem for gameplay. The design is a different story but it is very possible to make skins that don't disturb the gameplay.
Imo Microsoft are thinking about that and they introduced some skins for test in the past months via events for several units: champions, hand cannoneers, Gbeto, and king.

 

[Helichaos]

Because not so long ago, people bought CDs or DVDs or other data storage mediums. People bought physical copies of the games that had to be durable, they had to be finished, polished, bugfree. The game you would install to your computer had to work as intended. The sentence you constructed means you probably have never bought any physical copy of a game, thus cannot understand what previous generations or people that have been gamers for a longer time feel.

No Ive bought physical copies of many games. It's just that when I used to buy a game, what was on the CD was everything I would receive.

Nowadays, that's no longer viable, companies make and sell a game, but need to provide support, servers and regular updates to the game (the whole, release an unfinished game and then patch is a whole other can of worms and I agree that games should be playable as intended upon release).

Maybe I'm just a cynic, but for me it makes complete sense that they need income to justify this.

 

[nhoobish]

Nowadays, that's no longer viable, companies make and sell a game, but need to provide support, servers and regular updates to the game...

Support was provided back then too - some games had guidebooks dozens of pages long, dedicated forums already existed back then for games of bigger companies, some games even had a support service via phone calling.

Servers were set up beforehand or by release date for MP, if games had that and community hosted servers were generally allowed and even encouraged, as it made possible for playing with best possible ping.

Regular updates to the game are not needed, if you fully complete/finish the game before you start selling it. Way back then games were made fully finished and a sequel or an expansion was only made, if there was literal raging demand for it due to the initial success. Critical patches to the game were available for free through game websites.

If updates are done just for the sole purpose of having updates/making money, then you end up with Frankenstein games where all the new stuff is overpowered and about 25% or more of the old stuff is dead content, underpowered, lackluster and has aged badly with no intention of overhauling it.

If you a play a game only when a new update is released, then that game is already exhausted for you. You have fully played its content (story-type game), grown out of it, or it turned out it was not really that great and the hype got you to play it in the first place and the update hype is bringing you back for it. A good game, a game that you really like, it does not need updates, you play it because you want to, it enthralls you and you enjoy it (note: talking about games with high replayability).

 

[lecracheursagacite]

A good game, a game that you really like, it does not need updates, you play it because you want to, it enthralls you and you enjoy it (note: talking about games with high replayability).

Yeah this is why Cysion's comments regarding Lords of the West (implying they were adding two more civs in part because people "ran out of things to do") were so problematic. Show either lacking appreciation for the game they are working with, callous disregard for the playerbase, or both. That is why I found it so disappointing anyone at all spent money on that DLC; they essentially said they were okay with that behavior and the terrible performance we have seen thus far from the developers and their management staff at Microsoft.

 

[Helichaos]

Support was provided back then too - some games had guidebooks dozens of pages long, dedicated forums already existed back then for games of bigger companies, some games even had a support service via phone calling.

Servers were set up beforehand or by release date for MP, if games had that and community hosted servers were generally allowed and even encouraged, as it made possible for playing with best possible ping.

Regular updates to the game are not needed, if you fully complete/finish the game before you start selling it. Way back then games were made fully finished and a sequel or an expansion was only made, if there was literal raging demand for it due to the initial success. Critical patches to the game were available for free through game websites.

If updates are done just for the sole purpose of having updates/making money, then you end up with Frankenstein games where all the new stuff is overpowered and about 25% or more of the old stuff is dead content, underpowered, lackluster and has aged badly with no intention of overhauling it.

If you a play a game only when a new update is released, then that game is already exhausted for you. You have fully played its content (story-type game), grown out of it, or it turned out it was not really that great and the hype got you to play it in the first place and the update hype is bringing you back for it. A good game, a game that you really like, it does not need updates, you play it because you want to, it enthralls you and you enjoy it (note: talking about games with high replayability).

Interesting points, I was only ever playing single player games back in the day so didn't realise that companies would provide so much support.

In that case, the current state of affairs is a massive downgrade I guess I'm just used to how it is now.