Thoughts on DE and Voobly after NAC3

[yodan]

So......
You find it unreasonable for a profit-making company closing down certain service which yield low interest?
Or find it ridiculous for a big-ass company to have more complicated staff hierarchy than a group of volunteers?

If you go back and check you'll see I was responding to you implying that voobly and MS need to be held to same standard in terms of "Easier said than done" "Everyone makes mistakes" "Lack of motivation," and I was laughing because that's ridiculous.

 

[HongeyKong]

I think everybody knows that a company works for money, but the people were complaining about the state of the game that was released, and remember they paid for that, that makes a big difference, if you are happy paying for a software full of bugs, be my guest, some people dont.

I really doubt that as I scrolled through various posts. 11
And would you mind telling me when I said Im completely satisfied with DE? Pointing out Vooblys issues doesnt mean I fanboy everything MS did. As I mentioned : stop labelling / splitting into teams.

If you go back and check you'll see I was responding to you implying that voobly and MS need to be held to same standard in terms of "Easier said than done" "Everyone makes mistakes" "Lack of motivation," and I was laughing because that's ridiculous.

If you dont mind, go back and reread my comment. I was exactly replying in this regard.
Even volunteers lose motivation in their be-loved projects due to excessive burden, why on earth would a profit-making company revive a project IF it leads to losses? Dont forget Zone had also provided 10 years of somewhat free service. And more **** happens in big companies due to complexity of hierarchy, this is also said by someone else in this post.
If you have any other thoughts on my other points, let me know. Also feel free to ask for references in regards to the past dramas incidents if you need.

 

[chris_voobly]

Heres my constructive advice to keep Voobly alive and relevant:
Bring back Taff Spend more time on making Voobly transparent and feature-rich, instead of labelling people who leave Voobly as insatiable Voobly-basher or MS-ass-licking-sheeps. In this regard, Elusive is doing well.

No comment. *PLONK*

 

[robo]

Maybe you have some comments about the $3,500 that was given into your possession 3 years ago from the now-defunct Voobly Community Team that was to be spent on Tournaments/Events?

There have been VO tournaments/vents since then, but as far as I know, most of them have been sponsored by the streamers promoting/working for VooblyOfficial themselves, and not from Voobly's available funds. The most active members of the team did not even know that they had $3,500+ to spend on events when asked.

This was clearly money that was not to be spent on server costs/go into Elusive's pocket etc as it was money donated via the community channels (Twitch/YouTube/direct donations) for the express purpose of running & sponsoring events.

 

[_antena3]

Maybe you have some comments about the $3,500 that was given into your possession 3 years ago from the now-defunct Voobly Community Team that was to be spent on Tournaments/Events?

There have been VO tournaments/vents since then, but as far as I know, most of them have been sponsored by the streamers promoting/working for VooblyOfficial themselves, and not from Voobly's available funds. The most active members of the team did not even know that they had $3,500+ to spend on events when asked.

This was clearly money that was not to be spent on server costs/go into Elusive's pocket etc as it was money donated via the community channels (Twitch/YouTube/direct donations) for the express purpose of running & sponsoring events.

It's amazing the things you get to read.
How easy it is for them to hit Voobly today.
With the insane numbers that the AOE has moved in the last 3/4 years, criticize Voobly for what they did with 3 thousand dollars?
How much money did Viper earn playing AOE in recent years, with donations to his channel, tournaments, subscriptions? Where did Viper, Tatoh, Nilpferd play AOE? Wouldn't it be wise to think that Voobly as Host of the tournaments would take a part? But if they were not even able to buy some premium accounts to serve as a model and promote support for Voobly in new people who were approaching the platform.
Voobly's problem was not to kick them when he could, when he demanded nonsense like placing the platform wolf in the broadcasts, and not even that was able.

But it is a good time for Voobly to understand that the people who actively play in this place do not do so because these professional gentlemen play, right now none is playing in Voobly, and yet we continue to fill the Medieval rooms as a semester ago behind.
It would be a good time, if it were my company, to think about serious contractual relationships, with percentages for when all these gentlemen who left with the fashion of the DE, and are forced to return when this game closes its servers, or when MS gets tired of trolling them with a patch every time more broken than the previous one, that they understand that playing in Voobly, stremaming using Voobly, is a privilege not a free gift.

Currently, those of us who continue to buy premium accounts, we continue to hold Voobly because we know what it is worth, we are the people who are holding the platform, they are neither Viper, nor Tatoh, nor Memb, nor Nili, so it would be good for Voolby to think in those of us who continue to trust and know the value of your product, and not to bring paradise to these completely ill-educated and ungrateful people.

 

[Faultier321]

@chris_voobly

keep it up and dont listen to those guys. we are thankfull for your work.

 

[doacid]

It's amazing the things you get to read.
How easy it is for them to hit Voobly today.
With the insane numbers that the AOE has moved in the last 3/4 years, criticize Voobly for what they did with 3 thousand dollars?
How much money did Viper earn playing AOE in recent years, with donations to his channel, tournaments, subscriptions?
...

Personally I have no knowledge about this. I couldn't care less for all the internal wars that have occurred in the past and all the silly feuds that are still going on, I'm on neither side. But I'll make a couple of points.

Asking what has happened to $3k donations that were advertised and destined to be used for tournaments... doesn't equal to hitting someone. It's just a question. Surely if nothing wrong was done the question can be answered and there's no harm done.

When you mention other people making money off their hard work as streamers and professional players to minimise a possible "mismanagement" of $3k.... that's just such a horrible mentality, sorry to say this. It's the same type of thinking that sadly is ingrained in much of the culture of my beloved Spain.
What has one thing to do with the other? In what possible dimension is fine to "mismanage" $3k because there are successful people enjoying their life? WTF man

By the way, as some people said... it didn't take you long to come back.

 

[Tarsiz]

With the insane numbers that the AOE has moved in the last 3/4 years, criticize Voobly for what they did with 3 thousand dollars?

Maybe that is just my unpopular opinion, but it's not really about what they did with the money but what they did not. It's a question of principle.
If you take money from people to do something and end up not doing it, that is basically scamming. Whether that is $ 3k or $ 3.

 

[Tempires]

...

Welcome back after long 12 days!

 

[Carlini8]

It's amazing the things you get to read.
How easy it is for them to hit Voobly today.
With the insane numbers that the AOE has moved in the last 3/4 years, criticize Voobly for what they did with 3 thousand dollars?
How much money did Viper earn playing AOE in recent years, with donations to his channel, tournaments, subscriptions? Where did Viper, Tatoh, Nilpferd play AOE? Wouldn't it be wise to think that Voobly as Host of the tournaments would take a part? But if they were not even able to buy some premium accounts to serve as a model and promote support for Voobly in new people who were approaching the platform.
Voobly's problem was not to kick them when he could, when he demanded nonsense like placing the platform wolf in the broadcasts, and not even that was able.

But it is a good time for Voobly to understand that the people who actively play in this place do not do so because these professional gentlemen play, right now none is playing in Voobly, and yet we continue to fill the Medieval rooms as a semester ago behind.
It would be a good time, if it were my company, to think about serious contractual relationships, with percentages for when all these gentlemen who left with the fashion of the DE, and are forced to return when this game closes its servers, or when MS gets tired of trolling them with a patch every time more broken than the previous one, that they understand that playing in Voobly, stremaming using Voobly, is a privilege not a free gift.

Currently, those of us who continue to buy premium accounts, we continue to hold Voobly because we know what it is worth, we are the people who are holding the platform, they are neither Viper, nor Tatoh, nor Memb, nor Nili, so it would be good for Voolby to think in those of us who continue to trust and know the value of your product, and not to bring paradise to these completely ill-educated and ungrateful people.

I think you miss the point here. Yes, streamers make money now. But people donate to Viper, Tatoh, Nilpferd for them. They do so willingly. robos point is that the funds were donated for a specific reason from the public and is asking if they were used that way (which he seems to think they were not).

It is much like if it came out that Viper did not donate the funds from his charity stream to the charity noted or if Nili said all donations were going to the prizepool of NAC3 then didn't add it.

The second part of your message is what I believe to be the main issue with Voobly currently. As Chris has pointed out there were lots of issues in the past, they are now in the past, we can get over them. What doesn't help things is looking down on those who are currently playing DE for whatever reason - I am currently playing DE, I find it more fun than Voobly, does this mean in the future if I want to come back to Voobly I can't because I wasn't "loyal" to Voobly during this silly "war"? I really see a comparison with the militant vegan types here. If you aren't 100% Vegan (voobly) then you are a terrible piece of crap human. When in reality anyone just going more vegan than they were is a step in the right direction.

DE is going to bring in more players. We know this, it is practically a fact not an opinion at this point. Go back, look at HD, that was much worse at launch and brought in plenty of players. DE is in a much better place than HD ever was and with these twitch bounties more people are going to come in. Voobly/WK/UP are going to be able to take the work from DE and put it onto Voobly. Would this have happened without DE? No, we know this, why? It hasn't happened without it and there is already talk about which features will be moved over and which may take more time.

DE also seems to have brought Chris out into the wild. While I do look at that list of points and facepalm pretty hard maybe this will allow him to see that some of his views are wrong and by actually being vocal in the community it allows us to see some of our views were wrong too (I was under the impression Voobly ran at a profit, I now know this to be wrong). Chris, in the past 4 years the streamers have been your strongest asset even if you thought they were against you. I look at that first point of yours and honestly wonder if you watched streams at all or just had someone send you a message saying "X streamer is playing on Voobly and it doesn't say Voobly on the screen", you then open the stream, see no Voobly and assume they are against you. I watched a lot of streams when I first joined the community and can tell you that publicly EVERY big streamer now pushed people TO Voobly. I was HD fan boy before 1.5. They pushed me over. How about we use the biggest AoE2 streamer going as an example? T90. it can be argued he is best known for his community games. Hundreds of people try to play in them every week, he does them every Friday. If you wanted to play, you HAD to play on Voobly. People wanted to play and they had to play on Voobly. As a mod in his chat I had to actively help people get Voobly so they could play. In his discord there is a tech support channel which was basically just people asking for help getting Voobly / WK to work so they can play in community games. The kicker? This Friday just gone, 24th Jan he did community games. During all of the DE hype, the time that DE is getting you more viewers, what does he do? He did community games on both. Another kicker? He changed his process so you have to be in the Voobly room if you want a chance of winning. So anyone who wants to play has to be logged into Voobly at that time just to have a chance of playing. There were more people watching T90s community games on Friday ON VOOBLY than there are logged into Voobly now. Streamers are not your enemy. Start working with them ffs. The community isn't the same as the one you speak of from 15/20 years ago. Voobly must take a lot of your time and I think you have just lost touch with the community of today without the time. Get someone who is in touch that you trust and stop running Voobly at a loss, the community will easily stop that. Everyone I spoke to for years assumed Voobly was in the profit. This isn't our fault for the lack of information out there about all the hard work Voobly staff do...

 

[tresu]

Pls guys, respect Voobly (and the people behind it), a platform that has given us so much fun and memory.

Remember the days when Taff was the front man of Voobly, Katsuni the main caster? Remember the Nations Cup? Remember the day when Voobly stream first hit 1000 viewers? Voobly is like a big tree and all kinds of birds take shelter beneath it.

Regardless of the sweet and bitter past (and my personal view is that Voobly has been taken advantage of much more than it has wronged anybody), we have so much fun. The least we can do now is don't trample on it. It is still the best platform in many people's eyes and who knows how long MS will support DE, a very broken game. Nobody knows the future, the pros and casters may have to return to Voobly if their current platform is abandoned by MS one day.

 

[doacid]

DE also seems to have brought Chris out into the wild [......]maybe this will allow him to see that some of his views are wrong and by actually being vocal in the community it allows us to see some of our views were wrong too

This is the spirit guys, and even if someone in front of you isn't ready to do this... YOU can still do it. That's the mature attitude that during discussions can allow people to grow and help each other instead of doing the complete opposite. You can't control what others will do but you can always do your part.

 

[SouFire]

Game has been out for 2 months and there are guys talking about Microsoft abandoning the game, is everything ok in home? HD was a terrible game and microsoft kept the support for years 2013-2019!

Now answering the questions the pg 13 is a youtube thing, the streamer is responsible for the content and the classification of it, not voobly, if you see something inappropriate report to twitch and thats it.

Streamers have been advertising voobly for free for several years despite you couldn't see the voobly logo, you could tell by simple questions of where are you playing? is that game HD? even youtube uploaded games with the message built that this game was played in voobly.

Honestly i found chris existence few years ago with the NPL topics and in their forums they were all referring to him as a ghost, elusive on the contrary has been known since the beginning, but only very few humans have access to him. Is a good thing having one of them finally reading forums.

 

[Sney]

If you want to be happy again with DE and you ve played WC3 aswell: try Warcraft reforged!

 

[chris_voobly]

Maybe you have some comments about the $3,500 that was given into your possession 3 years ago from the now-defunct Voobly Community Team that was to be spent on Tournaments/Events?

There have been VO tournaments/vents since then, but as far as I know, most of them have been sponsored by the streamers promoting/working for VooblyOfficial themselves, and not from Voobly's available funds. The most active members of the team did not even know that they had $3,500+ to spend on events when asked.

This was clearly money that was not to be spent on server costs/go into Elusive's pocket etc as it was money donated via the community channels (Twitch/YouTube/direct donations) for the express purpose of running & sponsoring events.

The money is (still) on a separate PayPal and we have been using the money to organize small tournaments in the past three years. We had Genette whom you undoubtedly remember, and we had Jaraldo organizing countless tournaments together with his team. And there is still 1,2k left.

The money was never used to cover any other costs and has always been used for activities in the VCOM committee.

 

[Dan]

The money is (still) on a separate PayPal and we have been using the money to organize small tournaments in the past three years. We had Genette whom you undoubtedly remember, and we had Jaraldo organizing countless tournaments together with his team. And there is still 1,2k left.

The money was never used to cover any other costs and has always been used for activities in the VCOM committee.

im sure cs will get money support with its next tournament hosted by vcom

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vooblycommittee.voobly.com

 

[chris_voobly]

Now answering the questions the pg 13 is a youtube thing, the streamer is responsible for the content and the classification of it, not voobly, if you see something inappropriate report to twitch and thats it.

You can compare this with eBay, you are responsible for any activities on your platform. This is also why we removed the Twitch chat from our web site and asked Streamers to do their merchandising in the Twitch chat only. Same goes for the Gambling stuff after the AOC matches, most western countries have restricted Gambling to a minimum age of 18+ / 21+ and even if you don't believe it, we also have to enforce this on our platform, if we want to keep things at 13+.

And just for your information, our Code of Conduct has always stated, that Voobly was designed for individuals of 13 years and older. Do you actually know, what you have to do, if you want to run a platform 16+ or even 18+? You have to verify passport or other legal documents to verify the identitiy and age of every single user.

Honestly i found chris existence few years ago with the NPL topics and in their forums they were all referring to him as a ghost, elusive on the contrary has been known since the beginning, but only very few humans have access to him. Is a good thing having one of them finally reading forums.

I was technical staff "only" from 2008 - 2015 and I was taking care of the server and anything technically. I also wrote our Technical knowledge base and helped building up projects like the AOC Wiki. I work with a team of long-term staff who also help other players on Voobly with their technical problems (voluntary and free of charge I should add) and I am also the guy you call, if Voobly goes offline. I helped Elusive keeping the Anti-Cheat up to date over the years and I have also been the contact person when we added projects such as the User Patches to Voobly and later WK. I seldom play for usual, and if I play, I use a player name no one knows. I'm the typical IT guy, who loves open source and could be described as being weird and grumpy from time to time.

 

[Michaerbse]

You can compare this with eBay, you are responsible for any activities on your platform. This is also why we removed the Twitch chat from our web site and asked Streamers to do their merchandising in the Twitch chat only. Same goes for the Gambling stuff after the AOC matches, most western countries have restricted Gambling to a minimum age of 18+ / 21+ and even if you don't believe it, we also have to enforce this on our platform, if we want to keep things at 13+.

Still doing things on your platform is different from doing things in parallel while being on your platform. You neither have a responsibility for nor should you have a saying in streamers using "18+ language" on their stream, which requires them to label their stream as 18+.

 

[chris_voobly]

Still doing things on your platform is different from doing things in parallel while being on your platform. You neither have a responsibility for nor should you have a saying in streamers using "18+ language" on their stream, which requires them to label their stream as 18+.

The catch is the streaming icon in our case, which is why I said above, that you can compare the situation with eBay.

 

[karnal46]

why in game steel no function to mute opponent? 2020 year hello DE creators I want mute some idiots in game who spam 105 in chat and make noise and distract me

 

[n0brain]

Then again what is it about the CAPTURE AGE, it is using cheat engine to work, you make that thing public and there will be cheaters again every single corner, a less invasive tool such as the spectator mod running with the game should be the only allowed tool, i am tired of reading guys asking for it in DE, you youngsters have no clue how cancerous it was to play against cheaters and how much time it took for an effective anti cheat tool.

i am not really sure where you get the idea of it using CheatEngine from @SouFire. it is a standalone tool freely available to everybody at captureage.com if you want to check cheating options with it yourself...

i want to point out that to this day we dont know of ANY case where someone successfully used that tool to get an otherwise unobtainable advantage in a game. we have invested a massive amount of time to make this as hard as possible and are reasonably confident that it is much harder to hack our tool than just making a cheat from scratch or abusing other allready existing technology. this was allways essential for us.

 

[HongeyKong]

why in game steel no function to mute opponent? 2020 year hello DE creators I want mute some idiots in game who spam 105 in chat and make noise and distract me

You can enable / disable taunts in audio settings

or type this in game

!mute

I dont know how to unmute through command tho, I also dont know how to mute opponent only.

 

[VeNaCe]

You can enable / disable taunts in audio settings

or type this in game

!mute

I dont know how to unmute through command tho, I also dont know how to mute opponent only.

back in the days was !nomute

 

[Huehuecoyotl22]

I only played 2 games, but everytime I finish a game, I receive this message that my graphics card is not compatible with DirectX11. It is not true, so there seems to be miscommunication between the game and my graphics card. The only solution so far is restarting the computer, Steam an AoE 2 DE, which takes like 10 minutes.
Any idea on an easier way to fix this? I don't plan on playing every week, but it is annoying.

 

[MembTV]

Is funny how people talk about transparency here. Stop bashing voobly, voobly is the reason we are still alive, yes there was alot more after voobly, but all this grow started with voobly team, there was mistakes?? Probably, but everyone has done mistakes, i dont want go into details because then would not help at all but i insist...

i started streaming in 2013 thanks to voobly and to katsuni and back then nobody was interested in the game like now, and with alot less resources we keept casting and promoting every single event and also with huge lags cuz then china was huge lag not like now, without userpatch and without expansions and alot etc that came after yes, but without that very tought start this game would been dead when ms closed zone years ago.

So yes voobly and the team holded all for s long time, and nowdays the best would still be DE together with voobly features anyway dont want to go into that topic.

But voobly and people that were there deserve recognition not bs attacks ungreatful people.