Teamgame queue might not survive this summer.

[teutonic_tanks]

nobody forces you to play anything. play on voobly if you dislike the system on DE

this is literally the best thing that could happen

DE TG matchmaking shows, that a matchmaking system without a penalty system doesnt work.

 

[Eru_iluvatar]

this is literally the best thing that could happen

DE TG matchmaking shows, that a matchmaking system without a penalty system doesnt work.

i was hoping this would happen but apparently a lot of these people stick to DE and continue to ruin the experience for others.

 

[AlBundy95]

I'm player who usually go full random civ/position (not too often picking my civ) on my fav maps: MR and Arena.

I would never punish alt+f4's before fixing parts of the MM.

Firstly, we could have few more bans in TG MM. We have many similar maps: Ara/some other open map or arena/bf/hideout or nomad/african clearing, etc. 1 ban in 3v3/4v4 is not enough to block group of maps we don't like.

Also, getting 10-20% matches on ur favourite map is also problem. I. e. yesterday with arena selected as fav map I got 2x nomad games, 2x lombardia games and only once arena. This is common problem, and I can see people going alt+f4 if they get nomad more often than arena, or MR more often than arabia, where they cannot always execute their perfect BOs.

And my biggest point - 50% of players opened to random civs should be enough to enforce full random civs. You have 4 guys who are open to go random civs, and you still have to face stacked opposition. This is my biggest issue towards TG MM.

So, when we receive more map bans (even 2-3), when we get our maps more often and when we finally can go for funny random game then we can think about punishing peoples who are making game harder. For now any kind of punishment would be more damaging to TG MM, then alt+f4 is doing right now.

 

[lecracheursagacite]

Yeah, this is what I'm most angry about. Everyone keeps saying AoE2 is a great community, but all I see is selfish people who run behind money. The pros and big casters keep on supporting MS and Devs by not being vocal about any of the problems, by shilling AoE4 and new DLCs even thou they aren't good. So far we haven't got any actual footage of gameplay of AoE4 as far as I know, but every streamer is praising it. There are a couple of exceptions like MBL but they seems powerless in the community.

And, let's not even start about the aoe2 subreddit. Criticize devs or ms - downvote. Every thread is filled with people who proudly proclaim to be a queue dodger. 6/10 threads are unintentional memes, 2/10 are I finally achieved xxxx elo. All they want is more campaigns, more civs, more stuff. If DE dies, this subreddit will be one of the main reasons.

Yup.

I dont know about T90 man, it feels like he "complains" only when it suits him. And, he was all praise for AoE4 during the reveal with zak.

Unless something has changed there are no teeth to those complaints. They are just passive-aggressive mockery or idle memeing.

 

[z3us]

There are no teeth to his complaints, at least the ones I've seen. Just idle passive-aggressive mocking or lazy memeing.

Yeah, I more or less stopped watching his streams. My Twitch bookmark used to be his stream. He is still a great content creator, but I feel he has fallen so much in terms of commentary and gotten a bit toxic. Can't believe his LEL casting is still a thing. So much cringe and same repeated commentary.

 

[c3mbre]

Rating system is working perfect 11

 

[fluppets]

Aoezone is either unknown or ignored by MS executives, as far as they can tell community feedback is positive and sales-targets are being met.

So if we want to make any impact I think we should post these (and other) concerns on other platforms; namely the official age of empires forums and probably twitter.

 

[Tarsiz]

Aoezone is either unknown or being ignored by devs and executives.

Rightfully so.

 

[Zbyszek]

Rightfully so.

What should they pay attention to in your opinion?

 

[lecracheursagacite]

Yeah, I more or less stopped watching his streams. My Twitch bookmark used to be his stream. He is still a great content creator, but I feel he has fallen so much in terms of commentary and gotten a bit toxic. Can't believe his LEL casting is still a thing. So much cringe and same repeated commentary.

Yeah I wanted to love LEL but it just never really landed. I watched/skimmed through maybe the first 15 episdoes before I lost interest. Part of it was the odd fixation on games with players too low ELO to be interesting (700-750 vs. 850-950) and part was how frequently comments I heard made "this isn't meant to be mean it's meant to help players learn" seem empty.

Aoezone is either unknown or being ignored by devs and executives.

a real knee-slapper that

Rightfully so.

Because they melt if their eyes gaze upon something even slightly critical?

 

[harooooo]

the ladder is dying because children try to force their views on others by ALT-F4ing too many maps. The system itself is a great improvment over the lobby system.

You don't think blame should be put on devs for allowing people to ALT-F4 without any punishment in the first place? Or not even providing an alternative to fix the problem...

And that has been happening for almost 2 years now, ever since the game came out.

 

[Eru_iluvatar]

You don't think blame should be put on devs for allowing people to ALT-F4 without any punishment in the first place? For almost 2 years now!

i blame both

 

[Elvaenor]

even slightly critical?

Calling AoEzone "slightly critical" might just be the biggest understatement of the year! 11

 

[Dkastro]

The 'ban as many maps as you like' fix sadly cannot work for DE, since it would break the MM because it only searches based on rating and not on map preference. They would need to change the whole thing to implement something like that.

I think its time to change the broken system?

 

[lecracheursagacite]

Calling AoEzone "slightly critical" might just be the biggest understatement of the year! 11

It's not unfairly critical, that is for sure.

 

[Kurti26]

Have you guys considered that:
1. We have summer, the weather here in Germany is 34° for example
2. Covid numbers are low, which means people can actually leave the house again and spent time with others
3. Exams are getting really close

Don't be so dramatic all the time...

 

[Zbyszek]

Have you guys considered that:
1. We have summer, the weather here in Germany is 34° for example
2. Covid numbers are low, which means people can actually leave the house again and spent time with others
3. Exams are getting really close

Don't be so dramatic all the time...

The problem is not the number of players. voobly survived with 500-1000 players. The problem is that even with much bigger playerbase on DE the queue times are reaching 6-8 minutes and the majority of them get dodged.
DE just doesnt have a good way to get people into games.

 

[Ovenka]

Still better than waiting for 2 hours for TG on Voobly if it wasn´t BF or Arabia.

 

[Zbyszek]

for the 80% of players that play arabia, BF or nomad its better tho. And you get more ballanced games, less ragequits, better versions of the maps, better performance and random civ/pos.
Also if you want to play a MR TG on DE you gotta go through a lot of alt f4 cycles, play a lot of other maps that you dont like and if you have 3 people to queue with you might as well set up a lobby on voobly.
And megarandom is probably the most popular of the unpopular maps. Good luck with salt marshes and Socotra.

 

[IYIyTh]

What should they pay attention to in your opinion?

Tarsiz is an awkwardly unapologetic DE defender. He believes DE is a flawless product and any criticism should be discarded on sight, belittled, and joked about.

Maybe next year for the third DE anniversary they'll roll out some of the changes/fixes Tarsiz thought would be implemented by the first.

Either way, I'm sure we'll hear Tarsiz' praises.

 

[Tarsiz]

Tarsiz is an awkwardly unapologetic Microsoft defender. He believes DE is a flawless product and any criticism should be discarded on sight, belittled, and joked about.

I liked your pre-edit formulation better, "ardent" had a better ring than "awkwardly unapologetic". But I'll take it.

I believe DE is overall a great iteration of the game and to this day the best current way to enjoy Age of Empires, be it single player or multiplayer (scenario editor, not sure, I'm not really into that but I've heard it's sadly very buggy). Does that make it flawless? Absolutely not. Do I think devs/Microsoft deserve criticism? Absolutely. On the very subject of team games for instance I find it jaw dropping that it took them a year to replace an obviously idiotic elo system with another absolutely flawed system, when the only effort they had to do was to copy over the existing system on Voobly that had worked for so many years.

What I find particularly ridiculous however is how much of the criticism here comes from people who don't even play the game (like le cracheur, seriously that guy is everywhere but I'm not sure he has played a single game?), or from people who have their very own and polarizing view on what the game should be like and are incapable of considering other points of view.

I think AoEZone used to be the most legitimate place for actual criticism of the game from the competitive multiplayer crowd, but the truth is a glance at the threads here make it sound almost as outrageous as the ones on the official forums.

It's both amusing, and a bit sad what this place has become.

PS: On Voobly, Incas still get affected by Feudal Age blacksmith upgrades, walls haven't been nerfed and towers still have 1080 HP in Feudal. Sounds like a perfect place for you to play.

 

[Jarvin]

I think AoEZone used to be the most legitimate place for actual criticism of the game from the competitive multiplayer crowd

Even with its tendency to showcase the more extreme opinions AoEzone still remains just that. It's absolutely fair to criticise the culture present on this forum, but let's not pretend like extremely uninformed(more so than here) AoEforums, or largely uninformed and super one-sided community Discords of all sorts are a better mean of having well-informed discussions.

 

[IYIyTh]

Nothing has changed about AOEzone, it just happens that a lot of people who have played the game for two decades can see that this really isn't the same game they grew up playing. Not because of balance changes mind you, but because the game itself is so buggy -- and because people like yourself are happy to excuse away persistent issues -- that they simply go unresolved.

I'm sure your opinion of AOEzone would probably ebb and flow based on how much undeserved praise DE is or isn't receiving. Not sure that's a great barometer. This place is a forum, and you're going to get many viewpoints. Probably a lot more here from people who play the game than the echo chamber you might prefer for the mindless support DE receives, say like your favorite streamers Discord or AOE2 subreddit.

I liked the awkward dig at Voobly -- but I'm pretty sure they got rid of Inca Trush before DE. Yet no praise from Tarsiz. Perhaps if they were a larger company that continually churned sub-par Q/A on game patches they might have earned your unbiased praise in hopes of some eventual recognition for your continued defense of the almighty corporation beyond reproach.

Be careful what you wish for, though, Voobly/OpenAge is probably the future long term.

 

[fluppets]

I think you're being a bit too over-critical, yes there are outliers of ridiculous opinions (Im doing my part!), but with just two ignores I find discussions here much more interesting, educated and unbiased than can be found on reddit or aoe forums.

Other than that I feel the word 'devs' is often wrongfully used to name the culprits of what goes awry for (competitive) aoe.

 

[lecracheursagacite]

(like le cracheur, seriously that guy is everywhere but I'm not sure he has played a single game?),

Just like I'm not sure you aren't being paid by Microsoft to attack people who criticise them.