I’ve been playing this game since the ESO days. I was 1750+ and always played on GameRanger or Voobly.
This new edition of AoM has a lot of good things going for it. The graphics are stunning, and they did an excellent job overall.
However, I’ve noticed this forum has been dying out gradually. There are only comments from days ago. It feels like people are losing hope that their voices will be heard here maybe?
For instance, the post about Fimbulwinter is a month old and everyone are apoiting the problem with it. A whole month. They even released a new update and didn’t make any balance changes. It makes me wonder if the developers even check this “Discussions” tab on the forum to see what’s going on. Are our voices being heard?
I’ve decided to take a break for now because playing the game has stopped being enjoyable. It’s frustrating to play FFA or 2v2v2, or even World Map matches and constantly deal with Fimbulwinter and Implosion every 30 seconds in your base. If you play Zeus, like I do, and decide to go Hephaestus = GG.
How are you supposed to counter Fimbulwinter and Implosion in your base with Vault of Plenty? The wolves even take the vaults! Hahaha. They literally get everything, killing caravans with no mercy. Caravans can’t enter in town center.
Sorry for the rant, but the game is becoming unplayable. I want to play competitively again, but all this is really demotivating.
They actually changed/improved many things that were talked about a few days ago. The AI (still not perfect) works way better now. They actually attack with difficulty settings lower then hard now and they upgrade walls and stuff. The desyncs in long online games where drastically reduced and many minor bugs are fixed now. The latest survey highlights many aspects of the game players were talking about here in the forum. I believe that they are reading and that they try their best to improve the game. Developement takes time. I’m not a competitive player in AoM and yes, i hear here and there (and see it on streams) that the balancing has problems at the moment. To be honest AoM was even back then not a perfect competitive game and was more fun on a casual basis (in my opinion). And i think retold will not change that alot (and it doesn’t need to in my opinion). Players doom posting about the fast dead of the game because it loses players so fast (for a niche game like AoM i think the steam charts look totally normal compared to other games in this section). Retold will never be the next big esport or super competitive hit and that’s okay i guess. But that’s just my point of view. Maybe for the competitive scene it might be a little bit disturbing but i don’t know. I love the game and i’m excited for the upcoming DLCs.
If you say something hear it takes time for devs to read it. after they read it , it probably takes at least 3 months to implement the feedback to the game cause thats how game development works. also there seems alot of formalities needs to be done for every change. A good example for this is the centaur nerf. Centaurs were considered OP by every pro. They always kept complaining about it even in the beta. yet it received the nerf nearly 2 months after release.
And about fimbulwinter. Although this forum is valuable but the truth is that this forum only represents a fraction of the community.
What has kept the game alive until today is exactly the competitive mode. Look at Voobly, the community literally released updates, and there are many other versions of the game beyond the official The Titans version. These versions were completely altered by the community itself to keep the game competitive. On Voobly, there is even the Elo system for ranking. Take a look.
Maybe the ranked mode would gain more visibility if it were like before, where you just choose your god and go straight into the match. No waiting room or any of that. The game had a configuration for all players, no optional auto-queue or resource management options.
In my opinion, these modes should all be either enabled or disabled individually according to the players’ preferences.
What you say doesn’t make sense:
Fimbulwinter requires a lot of favor to reuse it and the Norse are the worst pantheon to do favor per second since they only gain favor by fighting and in a game there are at most 3 or 4 battles.
As an old AoE player since my childhood, i know voobly very well. In my eyes a game is alive if it’s played. This also counts for offline and lan players. Voobly kept the competitive szene alive, yes. From my perspective it’s a small and dedicated community compared to other games that focus way more on the competitive multiplayer aspect (especially if we only talk about AoM).
Don’t get me wrong, i totally get your points. It seems that competitive players in older games that come from a community supported/modded environment suffer always from that when they come to a new official remastered version of their game. You could say they are so used to the community patches that it feels very off to them to play suddenly a completely other and new version of the game. And i can totally understand this. Especially when the community patched version had better competitive balancing than the new remastered version (what is mostly always the case). And yes, modern game studios rarely seem to be good in creating uncomplicated straight forward online acces with a healhy elo system etc. (and i really don’t get why).
But there where many other players outside of voobly that kept the game alive. Players and modders like me that enjoyed other aspects of the game. And they will also be there for retold now. But it’s not the case that i don’t have any clue about the competitive aspects and i agree with your points. The game could benefit from the experiences players made through voobly and maybe it will in the future. We will see how the competitive aspect of the game will stand the test of time in the future.
But that aspect is not the only one ‘‘keeping a game alive’’ in my opinion. DLCs with new factions, new campaigns, new stuff in general will also be purchased from offline skirmishers, casual players that just play with friends, modders and campaign enjoyers. But that’s just my point of view. It’s not that i disagree about the fact that the game needs improvements (especially in regards of competitive balancing). I just don’t get all the hard ‘‘complainy’’ vibes and dooming things to death nowadays (not just here).
I played a lot of AOE3, reaching top 23 in the world in team and 80 in 1v1. I will say that the balance in FFA is an aberration to take seriously. It is not fair for 1v1 or team game players, who are the majority of players who play this mode, to have to suffer nerf or buff in their game mode, which makes more sense to use skills than in FFA, which is practically a game very oriented to the late game.
Obviously the impact and meaning that skills have in supremacy is not the same as in FFA. I would say that it is a very casual mode. Balance should be oriented to 70% 1v1 and 30% team games, because FFA occupies the supremacy balance. It is simply not fair.
I do not have much experience and level in competitive because I am relatively new. But it is clear that the system of getting favor in late game varies a lot depending on the faction. It can be unfair due to mythical units and powers in late game. I really do not know how to cover them. balanced without altering the 1v1 too much but it is clear that a solution to this is very complex because a minimal change would make a lot of imbalance
Regarding the state of the game I think it was quite predictable that many players would fall, AOM was never a very popular game with many players, there are many casuals who had very little fun online and played more single player, Nostalgia factor caused a great welcome at the launch of the game, I would say that it will stay more or less with a few more players than AOE3, if only much better because it is much more optimized without stupid blocking errors, that is why I see much more future for the game it is true that the premium version does not make much sense for now, because you pay for a game that has less content than the original but when the DLC comes out, well done with better features and even with its own campaign, I would say that the game will have its big rise in players again, they are doing things well I remain optimistic, but it does lack more balance to be honest, But keep in mind that due to the nature of the game it is also very very difficult to balance it.
Most people play AoM for the single player experience, even more so then AoE2/3/4.
That means they will not keep logging into the game every day like a ranked player might do so the numbers are going down.
They are currently focusing on making new single player content with the Immortal Pillars DLC, because that’s what is selling the game.
AoM does not have anything that generates money other then initial sales. No battle pass, no micro transactions and certainly no subscription.
Player numbers make them 0 money, they only cost server upkeep.
Not sure why people are so obsessed with player numbers.
They could sell skins for Town Centers, like Santa Claus on the chimney, or decorations on the hoplite armor, etc. They won’t make money because they don’t want to. It could be like the CSGO market, selling skins that don’t affect gameplay or provide an advantage.
And I’m sorry, but the ‘Arena of the Gods’ was in poor taste It’s really boring. They shouldn’t orient the game towards this kind of rushed campaign. Maybe create campaigns of epic battles with high difficulty and many different ways to complete the mission? Like a battle of Troy, for example, with a difficulty above normal to complete. A new Aquiles without the horse one to fight in it. There is options. The mythology is rich.
I don’t disagree with that. the Arena of Gods things is kinda of strange and also it came kind of too late.
Not sure if they planned more for it originally.
But I was talking about actual campaigns like the one that Immortal Pillars is promised to have. This is what mostly drives AoM sales.
They know what’s going on. They have a few staff wander around here actually, and do answer to what we post sometimes. But the decision-making is not on these very guys. We’re no strangers to “do things when they benefit”, are we?
I believe they could release new features in the Editor to allow some new features in the game, as mods are very restricted. I think it’s a shame that squad formations like COH can’t be added without crashing the game with the mod.
It’s really boring. They shouldn’t orient the game towards this kind of rushed campaign. Maybe create campaigns of epic battles with high difficulty and many different ways to complete the mission? Like a battle of Troy, for example, with a difficulty above normal to complete. A new Aquiles without the horse one to fight in it. There is options. The mythology is rich.