There have been several topics below over the past year asking about adding a matchmaking feature to Age of Empires II: DE Return of Rome DLC. I was really looking forward to playing team games, comp stomps and the occasional 1v1 but without matchmaking these take a long time to set up due to the lobby mini-game. Let’s face it, the lobby system is outdated. It’s based on the premise that up to 8 people can all agree to do something at the exact same time which quite often leaves me frustrated when I’m supposed to be having fun playing the “real” game. Every other game in the franchise has matchmaking as a feature. If Return of Rome is supposed to be a new and improved version of Age of Empires: DE, then why doesn’t it have a matchmaking feature? I feel like the original Age of Empires playerbase has been treated very poorly. First Age of Empires: DE was not given the full definitive edition treatment to bring it up to modern standards and then Return of Rome DLC is released and it too is missing features to this day, including matchmaking. Is playing a “complete” Age of Empires set in the ancient time period to much to ask? I have hopes at least that Age of Mythology: Retold will have matchmaking. Please add matchmaking to Return of Rome already.
I’ve never played RoR, but I do think it needs more attention. I think the big problem of why it isn’t very well-received is because it’s basically the same thing as AoE DE.
Nice idea, you also linked to one of my threads, but i think it is already too late. RoR is death and match making wont make it alive again. The devs should have give us this at launch, not after years.
And if they will add this, then make sure you can queue for normal AoE2 and RoR at the same time. That would be my only hope for a revival.
- New people appear and ask for development.
- You keep responding the same to all, I remember: “But” stop asking, it’s dead, it should stay dead because late now.
What you do is not helpful, if not annoying. Please.
To the topic 
,
some things should be done because it’s a fair to be done, and an obligation. Since RoR has a price, it should have all the necessary stuff.
also needs for aoe2 and ror a new league system becuz i believe so its more playability
The rockiness was mostly the concept. A lot of AoE1 fans weren’t happy that the DE was being abandoned and they needed to pay again to access quality of life features that should probably have been in AoE1 DE at launch, and AoE2 players weren’t happy that the DLC just had a single faction for their game.
Personally I absolutely love Return of Rome, it finally brings AoE1 up to par with its sequel as far as I’m concerned. It delivers things I’ve been wishing for for 25 years. I wish more of a community could spring up, it would be great to have someone like T90 casting for AoE1.
There were quite a few updates in the months after its release, but it’s been getting increasingly quiet. The last hotfix was in May, and the last balance/content update was in December 2023.
T90 would reply that his game/area is aoe2, not aoe1.
The thing is, RoR is aoe2; aoe1 has now become aoe2 game mode. So, that reply would be irrelevant imo, because they don’t understand yet that aoe1 is now aoe2.
And it’s a shame, because RoR can’t be less fun than various community scenarios T90 and other streamers may present, like forest nothing for example. RoR is serious aoe2 content right there; many new civs, strategies, and stuff.
Trust me, it really is less fun. ROR is poorly balanced, has a lack of real polish, and is much less beginner-friendly. Unless you’re very aggressive the entire game, you will probably get stomped, because there are NO hard counters whatsoever. Honestly, the entire game mode should be overhauled slightly to make it more AoE2-friendly, like adding counters like I mentioned, as well as allowing players to have a more defensive playstyle. Archers should not able to instantly destroy houses. Also, many units in the late game have stats like cheat units, which just makes the game feel a lot more dated.
I don’t post here often, but my previous post (just over a year ago) was replying to you about this exact subject. RoR is brimming with hard counters: in the Tool Age alone, Bowmen behind walls > Axemen > Scouts > Slingers > Bowmen.
What particularly stumps a lot of new players is that you can’t rely on towers or Town Centers to protect your economy. You need to decide quickly to either wall off all access to your economy (with ranged support behind those walls), or rush out a military to pressure the enemy ASAP. It’s hard to do both effectively, because the former requires diverting Villagers to mine stone. If you’re short on stone and depend on Houses to block areas, then yeah, they’re going to go down quickly to Tool Age units - that’s the trade-off.
But it makes for a good watch, because you see a lot of action early. A much bigger proportion of matches end in the second age than in AoE2, but when players do manage to reach Bronze or Iron Age, it gets wild - because there are a lot of hard counters, and maximising the capability of one unit type will usually leave you vulnerable to something else.