Hello. I play Age of Empires II since it’s realease in 1999. Played in all Multiplayer platforms you could imagine (even the very bad ones like Hamachi or Gameranger) . I reached 2150+ on Voobly which is a top 50 player in the world mark, and currently in DE I have reached 1850 in 1v1, even being pretty innactive. I don’t think my opinion is worth more than anyone else’s just stating for people who care about having a “expert player opinion” or whatever you want to call it.
So yes, I am a Multiplayer-player and don’t care too much about singleplayer or campaigns or whatever. I care about competitive gaming.
So I come to the forum to search for important topic and addresses:
Countless bugs, Villager stucking, the pathfinding is honestly worse than ever, and sadly all Team-Games crash before starting ( I think I tried playing like 30, 15 of them someone crashed before starting, and like 5 of them in the first 5 minutes or so). The size of the Hitboxes isn’t even written anywhere in the forum. How come that it’s impossible to click a villager building a castle from the north, because it just clicks the building. or trying to right click to go near a house because it’ll click the house. This didn’t happen in other platforms. Of course sometimes it was hard to click a tree next to another tree, but now all architecture has giant hitboxes which is really harmfull for Micro-Intensive players like myself.
I do want the best for the game and I really hope everything is fixed, even if I don’t have much faith since it’s been 6 months already. But I do want the best of the game.
So this is a call for MultiPlayer-gamers who want to improve the gamegame. Please let’s unite in order to achieve a playable game. Let’s focus on important things
Anyway here’s my top 5 problems to MultiPlayer:
Crashes
PathFinding (Melee units can’t be used any more practically)
Hitbox sizes (Buildings don’t need such a huge clickbox, it’s ruining Micro-intensive players and calling for a mall passive playstyle which is boring to play and watch)
Cheaters (just put a random dude to ban players who cheat, it’s literally opening 30 secs a recorded game and IP-ban the dudes)
Other General Bugs. ( units randomly stuck somewhere, patrol not working, units not responding to commands)
I love AoE II competitive scene, please don’t let me lose this game
I agree 99% with you: Balance should be the priority after all you pointed out. But i think it still could be discussed, since doing a balance change takes literally two minutes and you don’t even need to touch the code to make it (with AGE tool).
Otherwise, yes, I agree any other topic is both pointless and counterproductive. As I said before to someone “is useless to discuss about future if we have no present” and current game is broken. So broken even campaigns seems to be broken
An excellent post, the sentiments of which would appear to appeal to quite a few players, particularly the competitive crowd, who actually want to improve the game (the game everyone has loved since release and not a version so diluted that the game no longer bears any resemblance).
From recent topics it seems like there are simply agendas without displaying any credibility. I wish no attention was given to such topics as it gives them more traction with less focus on important subjects like you point out, when such threads should just be left to die.
In respect of balance discussions, there should be strict rules of engagement or the thread should just be deleted (some topics somewhat achieve this and it becomes quickly obvious who the man children are).
Hi! I hope someone of MS Team could read your message. I think is the feeling of averyone who has been played this loved game for 2 decades and now we can see how was destroyed his wonderfull playability in order to put some fancy stuffs.
We as a community were the responsibles that the game evolves without official support, MS should lisen us.
Single player users were not the people that kept alive the game for more that 2 decades. Plus i think your comment minimize the importance of this post and the problem it discuss. Saying “it’s okey because the part of the game I use is working fine” is not a great addition
I don’t think “will get handled eventually” is good enough, and I am really worried that you think so!
So if 1000 people come to a hospital because of a flu that doesn’t harm them, medics should worry about the flu and not about the 250 people who came dying of an actual important desease because the majority cares about the less important flu?
Well I think different topics are good too, but it’s a disaster when in a tournament with more than 100,000 people are watching the transmission, units start skating. And don’t talk about many crashes, glitches and hacks reported everyday, and the fixes pass and can’t resolve it.
There is a section dedicated only to bug, crashes and malfunction of the game in general.
However I strongly disagree with you, everyone has his preferences about the game, for once, I was always nostalgically tied with campaigns, and even now they are my favorite part, despite I play the multyplayer too.
Every one have the right to discuss what they want here, campaigns, balance changes, I understood that for you personally it’s more important some other things, and you can share it, but saying that other people shouldn’t share their opinions it’s pretty selfish.
Anyway, don’t worry, devs don’t listen to us about balance, new civs, and new tech or units. Barely they listen about campaigns.
Devs will not see this post, or they can this simply ignore, and this not need to be theit fault, they can be also under pressure of their emploieers. But we can have the way to change this.
We can influence the Pros and Streamers. They make money on this game, if this game go worse, they simply lose their job. They have the way to contact Devs, maybe even they can start the process for compensate their losses.
Devs will see stats of this game. If numbers of players will drop down, Devs will see this game has issues, what force players to stop play. No players - no money.
DEVs AGILE PRIORITY -> stop creating 1 month aesthetic content (may-ham, spring, winter…) until 5 mentioned CRITICAL issues are fixed
And even if the code is already done for the minor aesthetics, releasing them with such big issues unsolved makes more people suspect all resources are not dedicated to what matters
I completely agree with you the game need get fix the important stuff.
I add too improve the performance because in low settings many gpus and processor could be run and the moment not.
We don’t need more icons, skins of units, diferent colors and balances for the moment, first the things that do a game more competitive, I love the game but I feel that could be a great game with many many players.
I strongly appreciate your post, this discussion should be supported by the vast majority of players who like to be involved in the multiplayer experience. Needless to say, the staff needs to do something as fast as possible, since the game estimation is going down and the community is asking an urgent fix for all those problems.
What exactly are you proposing mate. I dont see how players can fix the severe issues DE has. Bugs has been reported since the first day of the beta… Developers are working, I still got faith, but the sadness and uneasiness levels keep rising.
This is why I have stopped watching or patronizing them and will continue to do so until they quit dancing lightly around major issues and divisive decisions about both gameplay and matchmaking.
I get they want their tournament money from Microsoft. Frankly, I don’t care if they get it or not. I would rather have the game be better developed than watch another AoE2 tournament.
And if it doesn’t work, believe it or not, there are other games to play, watch and give my money to that I’ve put off because I loved this one.
