Surely you cannot handle house music. Neglecting one (imo crucial) music genre is nonsensical. I see it as weak as life is supposed to portray whos good at listening to all music genres. I’m happy it’s forcing people to listen to all music. The world is not just “freeform” and never was. Also I’m quite confident you’ll never be able to have choice over what you listen to ever again, so gg.
This is seemingly getting into a very childish argument where you just copy paste what I said without realising it doesn’t even work back that way.
This here didn’t also clearly caught your eye at all. Which explains that things in this game are meant to be used, they were put in there with reason in them. Creators of this game define how it is to be used and clearly they want you to play something else too than arabia, IF you are playing ranked. Surely you can go to custom lobbies and play meaningless arabia games all day long if you want. But solely playing arabia is not a way to show your skill. Agree or disagree, the fact won’t change.
Also theres one clear distinction with your fantasy and whats reality: I am having most of the time a choice over what I’m listening to, you on the other hand, won’t be able to choose your precious arabia every game, sniff. 
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I wholeheartedly agree.
Also, autoscouting is the horse armor of this game.
This here didn’t also clearly caught your eye at all.
I consider it a non argument that is not worth adressing, but let me do it anyway since you asked;
The game was not created by 1 entity, at least we can make a distinction between the original devs and the new. Also during the process of DE there were multiple devs tasked from different studios to work on the game. Clearly the new devs made a radical change in contrast to original freedom, so calling it 1 entity is not correct. Saying that DE is an entirely different game would be ignoring the past, the majority of the playerbase stems from the original.
Your whole argument is based on the premise that they decide how the game should be played, this is your subjective opinion and nothing more. You fail to have any perspective other than your own, since the only reason you belive this is because you enjoy the current state. You have no controll over what the devs do, so any change you dislike would mean you are in conflict with your own statements.
meaningless arabia
Right…
Also theres one clear distinction with your fantasy and whats reality: I am having most of the time a choice over what I’m listening to, you on the other hand, won’t be able to choose your precious arabia every game, sniff
What do you wish to accomplish by mocking a large part of the playerbase?
The game was made -99, the fundamental way how ships affect the game hasn’t generally changed aside from very minor things, like malay fish traps on small ponds in an otherwise waterless map. I was arguing about the fact that naval units are an important part of the game and how you can handle them alongside everything else should also be part of the consideration of a players skill on a ladder that is supposed to portray it.
It also does matter cause he is throwing it back at me in a manner that does not compare, acting like he is making a point when in fact, he isn’t. Dude is comparing listening to music to a sport.
It was a response to this bit, where he is daydreaming about how cruelly life is going to treat me back like he it is treating him. Which is obviously a false statement. If you try to argue your position, which is probably why anyone comes to the forums, you ought to make some intelligent words come out. He clearly couldn’t come up with anything sensible but like a child he can’t give up and must respond anyway without any substance whatsoever. So yea, obviously I’m mocking him.
You don’t seem to understand analogies and you are quite manipulative in your wording. It is your opinion that the devs should have full controll over what players get to enjoy in the game. It is your opinion that every player should see the game as a sport, or that every player should partake in each dicipline within that sport. These things are never only one way. You are not worth my time.
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Ranked ladder is sport. Now that’s a fact. Now if you don’t care about sport, you can play whatever you like in the unranked. Nothing to cry about then, atleast seemingly in your case. Talk about manipulative, I never claimed the whole game needs to be seen as sport, I was talking about the ladder, so stop putting words in my mouth. I enjoy a fair bit of the unranked side of the game myself. Also yes, I do think if we are ranking players with only a singular universal rating, it then should rank them on whos better than another all around, not in just 1 setting. If there was an “arabia rating”, “islands rating”, “arena rating” and so on, then it would work to have people compete on just specific maps only. However, that’s never been the case so far.
I do understand analogies and his didn’t quite work. And you even fail to try to explain to me why it would work, hence back to what I said in my post before:
I’ll rephrase it a little nicer: if you want to argue your point of view, you should try to explain it to the other party. Now instead you leave me with this and calling me manipulative while yourself twisting what I was saying (as I explained above) and telling me I’m not worth your time. Which I clearly was since you ever joined here to reply back straight to me. Atleast I don’t need to act in denial, I came here since I found this greatly worth my time.
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My perspective was giving some arguements other than just the subjective feeling of what is a good map to someone and what is not. I too have to play maps I don’t enjoy but I understand that doing good or bad in them also represents my skill which again the ladder is exactly for.
Thank you! We buy the game to have fun but we can’t play what we want…
That’s what happens when you let people that don’t play the game enforce such nonesense “Oh we gonna make the game so much fun by forcing everyone to play all maps”.
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But you can, at the unranked lobby. Ladder is meant for serious play.
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You must be joking right? I want to play ranked for true competitiveness. Unranked is casual and people can leave the game whenever they want. You understand now?
Eitherway I can go unranked and destroy everyone even 1v2 or 1v3 is easy for me. I rather play against good players and compete for points.
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This week I have wasted my time and resigned around 12 times or more whenever I get a map that is NOT Arabia. Apologies to those whom I wasted their time too.
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Then why are you here and not at the ladder as we speak. You just claimed you wanted to be competitive. Ra ping just one map is not that. Current system is. You don’t get to choose “I want to be competitive just on arabia lelz!”, when theres no separate rating for arabia. If you are to earn your rating, you should be able to play competitively on many different environments, not just 1. It doesn’t accurately reflect your skill.
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Such sad and toxic behaviour. 
Hopefully they’ll start giving cooldowns to people who keep abusing this.
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What’s wrong with being competitive in one map? It’s the same game no? I don’t understand your hate and judging on people that want to play just Arabia? My skills are reflected whether you like it or not lol.
Environments?! lmao what are you talking about I simply enjoy and have a lot of fun playing Arabia? Can someone please explain fun to this guy?
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They will give me a good reason not to play DE definitively. The only reason I smack the play button of AOE2 DE in my steam library is because I can play Arabia; otherwise I dont even see my self here talking to you.
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Rofl what. You seriously saying now that theres no difference between different maps and no need to have any different knowledge of the game when playing one or the other. Different strats work differently and some aren’t even viable. You don’t go rushing on arena like you do on open maps for example. Playing island maps or nomad is also in many ways different and you need different skills than “usually.” You also need to realise that competitiveness is not always fun and you just have to also deal through stuff you don’t like or consider fun. And what’s this about me liking or not? That’s got nothing to do with. Playing only one map, whatever map that is, does not portray your skill across all the maps, and rating is supposed to do just that.
Don’t tell me you really didn’t understand that? Different map layouts are different environments and have different ways how they play out. How can something so simple go over your head? But it seemingly can, like everything else does too by the looks of it.
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Whatever you say friend.
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- Development is highly sales-focused.
Instead of putting some time and effort to to work on stability you guys continue to work on superflous marketable-features. This becomes more evident as the game is as unstable as it’s ever been and we will reach the point of no return.
But hey, at least you can auto-scout now.
Random autoscout rant. every game development is sales-focused because they are for profit. also game is not very sales -focused as there is no new dlcs or microtrasactions on sale after 4 month even though people are begging for regional skins and would pay for them
- Priorities
People, including myself, have had issues of crashing every single game. There’s people that had this issue since launch and continue it to have it today. It’s OK - you can release a crooked game because you already charged us for it anyway.
But the developer eyes don’t seem to be in fixing the instability issues. Even though, many people have paid THREE times for this game. What do we get instead? A PROFANITY FILTER. #Priorities
This seems just rant about profanity filter. There has been weekly post about why microsoft isn’t doing anything for offensive & racists text since HD launched. Profanity filter may not have been what was excatly asked but you cannot say it doesn’t do it purpose. Problem with filter it that it’s very strict but that can be improved over time(it was only added recently).
- A highly competitive RTS is now a casual game.
Age of Empires was like chess. Timeless, balanced, each game was different.
Do you think adding 20 new pieces to chess would make it better? Of course not.
Unless, you’re a toddler who just likes to mess around with the pieces because they look funny.
There was never need for 80 new civs. You had one job: improve stability and add quality of life.
Instead you destabilized the game with trivial features, increased crashes, and made the game perform worse.
There is very active competitive scene and most pros agree that new expansions are good addition to 20 old civs and balance. There are a lot tournaments, both viewer numbers and prize pools are rising to higher than in last 10 years.
When game updates, old recordings become incompatible. Yes, incompatible. Yes… incompatible.
This has always been case because nature of game. For examble you cannot watch rec with data mod with other mod or userpatch 1.4 rec with userpatch 1.5 rec. Also you could argue that Valve is doing bad job with Steam client when they don’t even offer to roll back to older updates (would be very simple to implement but instead they prefer to force you update game to newest version).
Big outrage about auto-scouting feature? Devs: implement auto-scouting
Big outrage about profanity filter? Devs: no word issued at all
As i already said there was much need for preventing offensive players plaguing game. That’s why reporting system was added to game.Filter is fine, it just needs to be adjusted.Also devs have talked abouy it in Febuary patch notes so you are lying here: " As many players have noted, a new profanity filter was implemented in the last hotfix to help protect against disruptive and toxic language in the game. This is a system that we are actively monitoring, tweaking, and planning for additional adjustments in the future."
auto-scouting is fine and outrage was overreacting as already on day one people noticed autoscouting sucks so much compared to manual scouting. auto-scouting doesn’t change game at all after 1100 elo.
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I agree with some of these points but also have a different perspective.
1) Development is highly sales-focused
I completely agree, stability is important. That said, I don’t see new features as superfluous or only for marketing. I definitely see how things like auto-scouting can impact competitive matches, but this isn’t only for esports and pro gamers.
2) A highly competitive RTS is now a casual game.
This overlaps partly with (1). To me what new civs add is the chance to mix up game play and try something new. Its not refined play, carefully honed and optimized, its just fun to play with something new. I agree, this is less serious.
3) There is no quality assurance
There have been quite a few bugs and issues plus out of sync issues. QA should be better.
4) “More is less”
Some overlap with (2). You can still learn in depth a few civs. As a casual, but frequent, player, the civ variety has been interesting. Sometimes it works well, sometimes I lose spectacularly. That’s okay, it was neat to try something new.
5) Priorities
Crashes are horrible and 45 minutes into a game losing syncing in multiplayer is horrible.
I’ve never understood why its not possible to save multiplayer games, like so many other games allow so at least we could recover.
6) Incompetence
Incompatibility across versions doesn’t bother me too much. I can see it being very hard for PvP with strangers. My friends/family and I all just agree on the version we’ll use and whether to upgrade or not and then works fine.
7) Instability & 8) Decade-old bugs are still there
These have been covered before. 100% that bugs and instability should be rooted out.
9) Ranked team games are dead
Half or more of the playerbase is all about team games
any data to back that up? I could easily believe it but I also think that people who tend to play single player vs AI are less likely to be online and in forums, streaming, etc. so it may be a large, but quiet, group. It also could be really small and I may represent a very niche use of AOE.
10) Community isn’t heard
Willing to agree here. Seems similar with many games but also largely true for AoE2:DE.
With all that said, I’ve fully switched to AoE2:DE and never go back to AoE2 or AoE2:HD. Biggest reason? The graphics are 4k and the animations soo much better. Original is very dated now. HD was okay. DE is lovely. I like playing the gigantic maps with maxed out pop, taking a few hours on a game to build epic armies that crash against equally epic AI armies. They look great, thousands die, one wins. DE made that possible and so much nicer on a large, high resolution monitor. I hope they fix bugs and stability, and for all the multiplayer community, I hope they can make it compatible (or offer free upgrades) so that the player base is large enough that everyone can find people for PvP if they want it, but even if nothing else changes, I’ve had hours of fun from DE that I wouldn’t have had with HD or the original and I am thankful for that.