AoMR lobby features for AoE2DE

[Skadidesu]

@Thire7

8 players with 250 population is already a struggle for a lot of machines. That’s why there’s a ranked benchmark, so that low-end machines don’t ruin the experience for everyone else.

That’s one of the reasons why ranked is limited to 200 population despite more being possible.

@Thire7

More machines to communicate across the network, more server demand; more inputs per second to resolve

There are many games out there easily handling the inputs of thousand players at once. This part is really not that challenging anymore. Games like Warcraft 3 and you know Age of Mythology have been handling that for decades now.

But of course having 16 players doubles the risk of one of them having a potato machine which slows down everyone.

@Thire7

AI players actually take up more resources than human players do.

Yeah but the effective impact would be lower since they don’t have their own computers that could cause lags.

@Thire7

In that Dev Talk or whatever, the guy said pathfinding has been improved from taking something like 90% of computational resource to just 10%, which is huge.

Those might be the steps that they are working on so they can increase the player number in the future.

@Thire7

But for the players who would be most inclined to use it, and who would get the most use out of it, double the train time is a small price to pay for 100 villagers instead of 20.

That would only apply to the most inexperienced players. Like the people who just picked up the game very recently. After a few hours of playing it would already be worthless.

Also who would ever set the setting to such high number in the lobby? Like if I’m a super new player I would probably not go out and join online lobbies that set it to 30. Effectively values over 5 would never be used at all.

@Thire7

but really a 1 second delay is basically nothing.

Thats why it’s the lowest option. Of course it’s not much but enough to make a difference for high ELO players.

@Thire7

5 seconds of idle TC time per villager is about the level of a 700 to 800 Elo player

Is there any data for that or are you making those numbers up?

@Thire7

ICK! No! That’s the part I dislike the most about Stronghold Crusader DE: it’s not their own engine it’s just an off the shelf model.

Almost every game that is currently being made uses an of the shelf engine instead of making their own from scratch. It frees up a lot of resources and let’s you focus on the important things. Just using an of the shelf engine doesn’t make a game bad or anything the same way it doesn’t give you a perfect game without effort. It just allows you to focus on the important bits like implementing the actual game logic instead of basic things like rendering, physics calculations, performance optimisation and path finding.

Unity is relatively easy to learn so there are a lot of very low effort games out there but that doesn’t mean a good team can’t make something amazing in Unity.

@Thire7

although lack of monetizability probably put a damper on it as well.

It could be monetized indirectly. They could sell a bundle of huge scenarios that are only possible with the increased player limit. One really cool thing they could do similar to the historical maps in AoE3 would be official multiplayer scenarios where you can play both sides of a larger conflict, like imagine playing a 100 years war scenario where one player is England and the other one France. Or a massive fall of Rome scenario where you can choose between playing, West Rome, East Rome, the Huns, Goths (West and East), Franks, Saxons, Persians or Celts. We are still missing civs like the Vandals or Alans though.

[TheTowerDefender]

@Thire7

Side note: when’s the last time you reported one of those bugs? And did you include the requested information to go with it?

i reported a ton of bugs in the first year after release (in particular the chat filter, the broken lobbies, multiple crashes, pathing issues), since none of those got fixed I gave up.

Why put any effort in when the devs obviously aren’t?

[cs-mark]

As a fairly new player I was amazed the individual difficulties aren’t in the aoe 2 de game

Seems a glaring omission especially for new player

[Thire7]

@Skadidesu

There are many games out there easily handling the inputs of thousand players at once. This part is really not that challenging anymore.

“anymore”, but the core of the engine is 28 years old. And games that handle a lot of players have to take certain tradeoffs to do so, or have to be designed for it from early on.

@Skadidesu

But of course having 16 players doubles the risk of one of them having a potato machine which slows down everyone.

Yes.

@Skadidesu

@Thire7

AI players actually take up more resources than human players do.

Yeah but the effective impact would be lower since they don’t have their own computers that could cause lags.

It’s a give and take. Sure, they’re not adding more machines to the list but they are adding more demand to those already in use. Campaigns would be the hardest hit. I would assume a large number of the campaign players use lower end hardware, which may be good enough for the current demands, but if that demand gets doubled it could cause a significant chunk of campaign players to become upset, and they’re already treading on shaky ground as is.

I guess the main point is that it’s a lot easier to talk about than it is to actually implement.

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@Skadidesu

@Thire7

5 seconds of idle TC time per villager is about the level of a 700 to 800 Elo player

Is there any data for that or are you making those numbers up?

I suppose I am making them up, but I am basing them, at least loosely, on what I see from watching people play. It’s not every villager that gets delayed that much, but every few villagers gets delayed enough that it averages out to that.

A 1 second delay is basically a “set it and forget it” value whereas 5 seconds is a “set it in case you forget for a while” value. Perhaps that is the distinction that makes the idea so controversial. If you expect “auto-queue” to do one thing then you’ll judge it against that expectation even if it’s being considered for the other.

The other question is whether it applies to military units as well. If it does, then even a really large delay could be a huge aid if you forget to make units a lot. In my opinion, if it were to be added it should not apply to just villagers.

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@Skadidesu

Unity is relatively easy to learn so there are a lot of very low effort games out there but that doesn’t mean a good team can’t make something amazing in Unity.

It’s the quality that is my concern as it is a matter of ownership: if you’re using an engine off the shelf then you really can’t take pride in it. It’s kinda the way I feel about LLM usage, it’s not yours its somebody else’s.

@Skadidesu

They could sell a bundle of huge scenarios that are only possible with the increased player limit.

That runs into the above AI problems

[Thire7]

@TheTowerDefender

Why put any effort in when the devs obviously aren’t?

“Any effort”? The devs “are not putting in any effort”? That’s a lie and you know it:

Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition - Update 169123 - Age of Empires - World’s Edge Studio

Stability & Performance

• Fixed a crash happening upon pressing the Restart button on the ESC menu while watching a replay.
• Fixed a crash happening upon using Assisted Farm Placement (Shift+Left Click on gather points).
• Using object-data-attack-delay in AI scripts can no longer cause a crash.
• Added a fix to prevent a crash that would occur when a new game is started while missing a player.
• Fixed a crash that would occur when launching a game with an invalid player configuration.
• Fixed a rare out-of-sync issue that could occur when starting playing on certain maps.

Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition - Update 153015 - Age of Empires - World’s Edge Studio

• Fixed a crash occurring when trying to launch the game when Steam is closed.
• Fixed a crash which could occur in prolonged games with AI players.
• Fixed an out of sync issue which was occuring on Great Wall real world map when playing with players on different game platforms.

Preview: Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition - Update 95810 - Age of Empires - World’s Edge Studio

• Fixed an issue where game crashes when creating a lobby using Restore Multiplayer Game.
• Fixed an issue where game sometimes crashes when clicking the Return of Rome Multiplayer button.
• Fixed a graphical issue where various Palm Trees have black sections in their textures.
• Fixed the issues with death and decay animations for Slinger, Man-at-Arms, Female Forager.
• Imperial Camel saddle cloth texture no is no longer incorrect on one of the angles.
• Magyar Huszar spear is no longer slightly cut off on several unit animations.
• Fixed a graphical issue where Chariot Archer had doubled bow.
• Male Woodcutters no longer lack idle animations on all except one angle.
• Babylonian Wonder destruction animation no longer turns invisible close to the end.
• Added visual trails to bullet projectiles.
• Fixed an issue where Priest had the wrong creation sound.
• Romans units no longer have slightly distorted voice audio.

If you’re just gonna tell lies, it would be better that you not speak at all.

[Skadidesu]

@Thire7

And games that handle a lot of players have to take certain tradeoffs to do so, or have to be designed for it from early on.

The player inputs are really not a lot of data. Like even with inhuman APM you are still sending significantly less data then like a super low quality mobile phone call.

@Thire7

I would assume a large number of the campaign players use lower end hardware, which may be good enough for the current demands, but if that demand gets doubled it could cause a significant chunk of campaign players to become upset, and they’re already treading on shaky ground as is.

If they just went and made scenarios that are twice as big as the current ones in every way then yes, then it would be an issue. But if they use the additional player numbers to just split up the existing AI players without increasing the overall size of the map nor the number of units then it wouldn’t significantly increase performance cost. Like imagine a scenario with multiple towns that now have to be controlled by the same AI that could be controlled by different AI after the update. That wouldn’t really increase performance cost but it would improve the way the scenario functions because those towns could act individually and be different civilisations with different architecture sets and so on.

Currently that needs complicated AI scripting and lots of triggers to get around, like reskinning buildings individually or spawning troops manually.

@Thire7

if you’re using an engine off the shelf then you really can’t take pride in it.

Well that doesn’t apply in this case anyway because no one who made the engine is now on the team.

A lot of big studios are switching from their own engine to Unreal or Unity because it’s just so much less work. Writing your own engine is kinda like writing your own operating system nowadays. Only super big companies with many studios can afford their own engine because then they can have multiple studios that use it.

@Thire7

That runs into the above AI problems

They can increase the hardware requirements for that DLC.

A lot of people should have better PCs then they did in 2019 when the game came out. Also the game is more optimized now on top of that.

[Badsoup]

He’s one of those “lazy devs” guys, better to ignore the hyperbole.

Sure the game has bugs. The thing about bugs is that they are hard to find, and when you fix something it can break something else. It’s a slow and endless process, at least it is being worked on.

Show me a game without bugs and I’ll show you something that doesn’t exist.

[TheTowerDefender]

@cs-mark

As a fairly new player I was amazed the individual difficulties aren’t in the aoe 2 de game

Seems a glaring omission especially for new player

yeah, it’s strange how many objective down-grades there are in this game compared to the HD edition.

@Thire7

@Skadidesu

Unity is relatively easy to learn so there are a lot of very low effort games out there but that doesn’t mean a good team can’t make something amazing in Unity.

It’s the quality that is my concern as it is a matter of ownership: if you’re using an engine off the shelf then you really can’t take pride in it.

tell me you know nothing about software engineering. Using existing libraries is the norm. There is no point in implementing your own “isPrime” method, when there are tried, tested, and optimized libraries available.

The same goes for game engines. Why should I implement my own isometric renderer? my own shader system?

@Thire7

@TheTowerDefender

Why put any effort in when the devs obviously aren’t?

“Any effort”? The devs “are not putting in any effort”? That’s a lie and you know it:

it’s not a lie, it’s very mild hyperbole. there are so many bugs that are in the game since launch, that haven’t been addressed.

Literally the most popular post on this forum about aoe2 is complaining about the chat filter being extremely buggy. It’s not even asking for it to be fixed, just an option for it to be disabled. That’s close to a one-line code change.

Profanity Filter -> Optional

Hi I think at this point there has been enough discussion on both sides on whether the new profanity filter is good or bad. Personally I think it’s bad because people will find different ways to be toxic if they want. But that doesn’t matter. Just add a setting to disable it for those of us who appreciate freedom of speech. If people are willing to explicitly set their game to allow “profanity” (more like, being able to say “brb pee” or “onager” or “wtf” with friends) why refuse to give them …

they have known about this issue for 6 and half years and done nothing about it.

@Badsoup

He’s one of those “lazy devs” guys, better to ignore the hyperbole.

Sure the game has bugs. The thing about bugs is that they are hard to find, and when you fix something it can break something else. It’s a slow and endless process, at least it is being worked on.

stuff like the chat filter doesn’t need fixing, it just needs a simple option to disable it. Not implementing it is stubborness or laziness. take your pick.

@Badsoup

Show me a game without bugs and I’ll show you something that doesn’t exist.

bugginess is on a scale. Saying “all games have bugs, so we shouldn’t hold the devs accountable” is a dishonest argument. A 7 year old game, by one of the biggest companies in the world, has no business being this buggy.

[Skadidesu]

@TheTowerDefender

stuff like the chat filter doesn’t need fixing, it just needs a simple option to disable it. Not implementing it is stubborness or laziness. take your pick.

That’s a bad example. They very likely intentionally decided, maybe because of a general Xbox/Microsoft policy, to not give people to disable this filter. It’s likely for legal reasons only not because they are lazy or because they personally like the filter. They just want to be able to keep the current Age rating.

[TheTowerDefender]

it’s still objectively buggy. random, completely harmless sentences get censored. Stuff like “go FC” has gotten censored for me. Also it’s inconsistent, with the same message being censored only some of the time.

And it’s arguably racists too, as it goes completely haywire when writing in a language other than English

But the bigger issue is the lobby browser. It has been broken since day one, I have sent them bug reports with reproductiong steps multiple times. So have friends of mine. Nothing got changed

[Skadidesu]

Not denying that, just saying that they can’t simply add an option to remove the feature for legal reason. They would have to add age verification for that which would obviously be stupid.

[TheTowerDefender]

is this something they have stated publicly or are you guessing?

Because I know a lot of other games where you can talk with your opponent, not a single one has a chat filter this stupid and many games have filters that one can disable.

aoe2 HD did not have a chat filter, but has the same age rating as DE

But you are probably right, it’s some lawyers or other suits deciding to be overly cautious and burdening us with a stupid system. Again, something where any amount of communication by the dev team would be useful

[Skadidesu]

AoE2 has a pretty low age rating, just 12+ in some places. An 16+ or 18+ game can get away with not having chat filters a lot easier.

But I don’t know the specific laws, I just know that people complained about the same thing in a bunch of other Xbox games. I wouldn’t be surprised if they just used the same filter as other Xbox games do.

[TheTowerDefender]

again, aoe2 HD has the same age rating, without a chat filter. So does Factorio, so does Terraria, to just pick a few games from the top of my steam library.

[Skadidesu]

Age ratings have been getting stricter in recent years but they usually don’t apply to games that were already rated in the past.

But in the end I don’t know. I just don’t think it’s a decision from the developers and more likely one from Xbox/Microsoft.

[TheTowerDefender]

@Skadidesu

But in the end I don’t know. I just don’t think it’s a decision from the developers and more likely one from Xbox/Microsoft.

agreed, this is definitely not a decision by the actual developers. However in this forum we have been calling everyone from microsoft “the devs”. Eg game designers, testers, project managers etc are all devs.

[Badsoup]

bugginess is on a scale. Saying “all games have bugs, so we shouldn’t hold the devs accountable” is a dishonest argument. A 7 year old game, by one of the biggest companies in the world, has no business being this buggy.

The most wealthy companies in the world, despite their wealth still have bugs in their software. Nothing can ever be guaranteed bug free, time will always uncover new problems. Besides this game isn’t exactly Microsoft’s priority, I doubt they are allocated an enormous budget.

Also you talk about this game like it was Cyberpunk 2077 on release, I guess I just don’t encounter as many bugs as you. You say regularly that it’s barely playable, but I imagine your hour count exceeds mine and I’ve played mostly bug free for a over thousand hours.

A lot of the problems I would imagine are precisely because it’s old code, it wasn’t meant to be tinkered with as much as it has been. Could it be better? Yes, but that is always the answer for every game. I just don’t think the devs are as useless as you insist.

[Akleoni]

everything has bugs, no matter how wealthy the company, from operative systems to security software through every piece of software ever made. You can’t expect every single bug to be exterminated, as long as it doesn’t crash constantly or it is security leak, the bugs are not critical to be fixed. Companies that rush fixing bugs end up creating more on the way, can you name a software without any bug ever/currently?

[TheTowerDefender]

@Badsoup

Nothing can ever be guaranteed bug free

are you intentionally ignoring what I wrote:

@TheTowerDefender

A 7 year old game, by one of the biggest companies in the world, has no business being this buggy.

I am not saying it should be bug free. I am saying it shouldn’t be this buggy.

• The lobby browser is unusable. Filtering doesn’t work, it just straight up shows wrong results most of the time. joining lobbies doesn’t work half the time. in-game friend invites don’t arrive half the time.
• the in-game chat function gets censored randomly and doesn’t allow for communication. basic game jargon like “fc” gets censored frequently (maybe the system thinks it means fuck?)
• there are still lots of random crashes
• matchmaking issues, that lead to disconnects and timeouts/bans

these are all things that need to be fixed before a release can be signed off.

@Badsoup

A lot of the problems I would imagine are precisely because it’s old code, it wasn’t meant to be tinkered with as much as it has been

“Legacy code” cannot be the excuse when talking about new features, like the chat filter. It also cannot be a valid excuse when talking about bugs that are not present in the HD version (like the broken filter function in lobbies)

They have also said in promotional material that they have rewritten large parts of the game engine, so I just don’t buy this whole “old code” argument. Especially after working on this game for 7 years, it’s just not an excuse anymore. They’ve had so much time to get their shit together.

@Badsoup

Could it be better? Yes, but that is always the answer for every game

but this is just a tautology. Yes, every game could be better. Aoe2 is particularily bad. Out of the 200+ games in my steam library, this is among the buggiest

[TheTowerDefender]

@Akleoni

You can’t expect every single bug to be exterminated

I can expect them to fix bugs that have been reported multiple times over 6 years. Especially in a game that is still in active development, constantly hawking new DLC

@Akleoni

as long as it doesn’t crash constantly

well..