After today's events, I actually feel bad for the Devs now

Hearing that AoE III DE got sidelined hard during the events today brought me to a sad realization.

The major focus was always the heavy hitters - AoE II and the eventual AoE IV, which didn’t stray from the AoE II formula much at all. They knew IV would be a cash cow and would revitalize the genre no matter what.

In summary:

-Throwing AoE III a bone in the first place through DE was an experiment to see if things would stick.
-Mainly as a formality since the other more popular AoE games were getting makeovers done, with everyone riding on the AoE IV announcement to get hopes up and breathe life back into the games.
-As a result, AoE III DE developers are likely understaffed.
-Resulting in slower development, funding, and focus overall.
-Further resulting in more bugs, sluggish hotfix times, and months going by with glaring balance issues.

In the end, it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy that if true, makes so much sense to me now:

Fund/support the small guy only a little bit, watch it not do so hot, then act surprised and say “I told you so”.

Honestly, if I’m right and they really are understaffed and left to rot in comparison to the others, I’m all the more grateful we got anything in the first place.

And if true, I believe it did result in something positive: the unintended but beautiful reality of them taking player suggestions very frequently. Getting ideas directly from the forums is a time-saver and great during time and budget constraints.

Lastly, if my conclusions are true, this makes me feel even more grateful to the developers working under these conditions.

Thoughts?

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I have said it before. The AoE3E devs are phenomenal. It is truly saddening that they work so hard and still Microsoft treats the game like this.

Still i think we got patches every month that were great. And for a while it seemed like AoE3 will get support for a while.

But it appears that many devs were absorbed into AoE4. And the company was trying very hard to get AoE4 to kick off.

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This is not surprising at all, tbh…
The business is more enthusiastic about AOE2 and its descendants.
Ever since the beginning of DEs they were forever talking about AOE2. AOE1DE was treated like a “must finish routine job before AOE2DE”. Even in the interviews that promoted AOE3DE they were talking about AOE2.
Not to mention the whole AOE4 advertising was so centered on how it is similar to AOE2 with some minor but welcomed innovations.
Now the new mobile game is highly likely to be, surprise, medieval.

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And to imagine the content they bring about, it is truly amazing.

BTW the playerbase of AOE3 is not small at all as a game. Just smaller than the favorite kid and the shiny new kid of the same series.
If it is another game under another brand with a similar playerbase it might be treated as the champion.

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Budget constraints.

The AoE3DE devs were given a car with a quarter tank but with lots of talent and passion, we got quality mileage out of it. I’m not saying this as if the game is dead in the water (we know a spring update is planned) but AoE3DE was always gonna be on the chopping block.

The devs are amazing, so much so in fact it’ll be hard to see them leave the game whenever that is. I still want to remain positive about future DLC.

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The other issue i wanna talk about is the utter lack of respect for the game.

AoE is more than wololo… its also tuck tuck tuck… its so many things…

So its very annoying when people just straight up ignore that this game exists when talking about features that were in fact TAKEN from this game.

Landmark age up in AoE4, guess who did that first.

Buildings providing aura and boosting units, guess who did it first.

Pit mines in AoE4 for Malians, guess who did that first.

Yeah, just act like AoE4 is all AoE2 with improvements. Most of those improvements ARE AoE3. Pfft!

Time to stop giving World’s Edge my money.

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What truly saddens me is the lack of advertising, even on the smallest scale.
A short showcase video? A simple retweet? A one sentence mention of the recent updates? A brief acknowledgement of the origin of some designs?
No. That’s too expensive. Better save the resource for more profitable games.

The game just got new contents comparable to a full expansion. And they do not even care to showcase it.

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Just to mention, some of them originate from AOM, which has been more ignored until today (but as AOE3 continue to be ignored after DE, who knows)

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Which begs the question why are they so afraid to show the game off? Sure, I get AoEiV is the shiny new toy but AoE3 is just so unique and innovative. The devs worked so hard to update the game to 2020s standards (what that means when color picker, cheats, and taunts are lauded as big features I don’t know) yet it goes unnoticed by everyone but us.

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Totally agree.

However, wasn’t it being drilled into us all these years that the different AoE games’ Dev teams are their own dedicated teams with their own budgets and staffing? And therefore the argument that they could be pulled from one resource to another disproven?

Or is that old news?

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Guys, we just had a big patch, with a completely rework and redesign of ottomans, and half/full reworks of French and Germans. Plus a Skin dlc.

What did AoE II had? An xbox launch? That is not new content

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The reality is none of us know how the dev teams are structured. When Keywords bought FE this summer FE entries for 3DE on steamdb stopped. Does this mean Tantalus has taken over 3DE completely? We just don’t know what is going on behind the scenes and what resources were allocated or reallocated where.

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It’s not about new content here really.

We got fantastic content so far.

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And while they are advertising the introduction of taunts and cheats…this update as huge as an expansion is almost ignored.

It was mentioned in the article though.

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I only read the recap where AoE III has it’s spot

Yeah, they could have showcased the patch for this event since that was all that was planned for the game.

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It wasn’t in the stream. In the stream AoE3DE did not feature except for in a cringy promo for AoE mobile.

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Well I have 2 (several versions), have 3 (too of course) and have played 4. And without doubts 3 had the worst launch of all (won’t mention 1).

That said from all 3, the 3 has got more content than any, really thank the devs and is a d* shame it goes unrecognized, 2 lives out of its fame (a few good dlcs, but most of their event are cr*) and 4 is forced, they want it to be the “best” or more flashy so the can sell more of course.

So, thank you devs keep the good work :slight_smile:

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Pd: Guys let’s bombard their official YouTube video with stuff about the 3, they have to make it right :rage:

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o que eu acho que esse jogo precisaria e de mais youtubers divulgando sobre age 3, aussie drongo foi uma perda enorme para a comunidade

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