Most of us play aoe2 since the age of kings or conqueror. Since the game became better and more complex.
Did you succeed to convince friends to play aoe2?
What can be done to bring new players?
I try many times to convince friends but I didn’t succeed because there is too much things to learn.
Starter require a lot of hours to be done correctly and convince them that they will never be good because even when you have no interactions with the oponent you know that you are a loser.
Hiden value everywhere
Impossible to play without hotkey
Defaut game setting aren’t good
Game translation who misslead players
Defaut hotkey are based on qwerty keyboard that’s mean new players have to modified them or learn this mess (and we can’t ask for another hotkey mapping for non qwerty keyboard)
Just don’t tell all these details at the start. Just start with the basics and let them figuring everything out by themself. Not everyone should play to become the next TheViper or Hera.
Best way to start the game is doing the art of war campaign. It will teach you the basics of the game. After he is decent in the art of war campaign just jump straight into ranked. Yes, your first games might be a disaster and you will loose them. But after some games the game also know you are not a good player. As result your rating drops and you will play against other people who also don’t know all these details. And also don’t know any/many hotkeys. Even at that level you can still enjoy the game. And if you really want to improve, then you are able to climb your way up the ladder.
You don’t have to do that. Playing SP against increasing difficult levels of AI can also be good practice. Running on the assumption that everyone should play ranked, or that it is objectively the best part of the game is also unreasonable, there are tons of worthwhile SP things as well, such as the campaigns. Also, if you’re trying to introduce a friend to the game, after they play William Wallace and the Art of War, I might advise playing 2v2s with them against the AI, that way, they get an opportunity to improve, and if you’re trying to introduce friends to the game, it’s probably a good idea to play with them, rather than dragging them into the game, and then throwing them into ranked.
You learn those hidden values on your own, hotkeys and game settings and all of that is unnecessary for a new player.
I do agree that tooltips are somewhat useless or misleading, I think there’s a mod that will make tooltips also show hidden values, but also… are you really going to explain hidden values to a new player? ‘Halberdiers have large bonus damage against Cavalry’ should suffice, and that’s more or less told by the tooltips anyway.
New players generally start out by playing against AI, on Easiest if they’re new to RTS games. You start slowly from there. If the player has some experience in RTS games, they simply jumpstart to a higher level. You as the one who drew your friends to AoE2 can explain the generic unit roles to them, and the most basic build order for things.
It’s usually expected to lose a lot when you first play a new multiplayer game, so I don’t know why this would be a deterrence. You’re not going to become a top player, especially if you haven’t been a top player in any other game.
There’s also co-op campaigns that they’ve recently introduced. You could try playing those with your friends.
I grew up playing all the AoE games on single player. Didn’t get into multiplayer until aoe 3 de came out. Which is what I play online. AoE 2 I tried on multiplayer for awhile but I kept losing, like everyone else, well mostly everyone, was way better, I would just get steam rolled by the knight hord. And I don’t think it was always that I just happened to be on the bad team sometimes it was but a lot of the time I felt like if I had been better we could have won or done way better. Maybe it’s cause I never learned how to use hot keys, or focused on build orders, I know the unit counter system and all the technology to research and stuff. I really wanted to like it online but it was just to hard, so I went back to playing AoE 3 where I can actually win. Guess I’m just a noob
Apart from the other suggestions here, if you have enough people (new or otherwise) consider trying battle royal with them in a lobby. Its easier to get into as the games start and end fast. And while it isn’t representative of a random match game it’s great for teaching them about unit composition and civ strength and weaknesses (the post imp ones at least) without overwhelming them with macro and eco management at the same time. Once they’re familiar with some of the civs then you can transition into random map games where they learn to macro. I recommend putting them in pocket on arena or black forest so they focus more on their build without being harassed.
list of building to build to unlock other building, ex: mill to unlock market, blacksmith to unlock siege
counter unit and how it work. ex: when a pikeman is efficient against cavalry?
villager doesn’t collect resources at the same speed even if the same resources ex: berry vs hunting
How slow is to build farm without hotkey:
click on vil
click on build economic building
click on farm
click where you want to build the farm
That’s mean if you have to build 10 farms, you have to do 40 clicks
A friend after 20 hours of playing, he stoped trying to play because he feels like a loser. He have few thousands of hours play on Dota 2.
If you start Dota 2, also a competitive game after 2 hours you know the basic and can enjoy playing.
There is no reward for new players who do their best and nothing who can show they do bad practice. For example build a mining camp between stone and gold who are 10 tiles a way. New players beleive that’s better because they have to pay only for one mining camp.
Here’s the advice I’ve used, based on my experience whenever I try and bring people into the game. If you want them to stick around and improve, you have to play with them. Get them to complete William Wallace and the Art of War, and then start playing 2v2s with them against the AI. After each game, go through the rec, and pick out a few important things for them to work on. Maybe learning a simple build order, or explaining why it’s so important to create villagers all the time. Don’t throw them in the deep end straight away, just slowly build up, give them time to learn the game and improve.
For a new player, they won’t need to know about the unlock chains so much, if you play a 2v2, and they ask how to create something, tell them. At the start, you don’t need to know anything as complex as the ideal ratios for a fight between units, it’s good enough for now to know that something like a spearman is typically good against cavalry units. Knowing how many of each need to be there to be worth taking the fight is something that comes with experience (or watching lots of SOTL). You don’t need to explain that vils collect different res at different speeds. Maybe introduce them to the idea that some food sources are faster than others later, but not too early on. You don’t need to stress hotkeys yet, just let them focus on finding their footing. Once they know how to play the game, then they can start working on getting more efficient. For something like the farm, that’s where I’d tell them that by holding shift, they can queue up tasks, significantly reducing the number of clicks they need.
most 800-900 elo have very low APM, have (I reckon) very little if any hotkey usage and only know build orders at a basic level - typically they have a lot of idle TC in dark age and it’s not uncommon for them to make huge mistakes such as a bad boar lure 4 tiles away from TC or losing a vill to boar.
If you are a new player and play in this elo, the game won’t feel “tryhardy” or hard to learn for you. Of course if you wanna improve, you will have to fix your mistakes, something you can do slowly too.
My #1 tip for people trying to improve is fixing 1 thing at a time, for example, on a certain week you could try to work on not having any idle TC time in dark age. The week after, you could add 3-5 hotkeys. The week after you could learn a basic strat such as straight archers opening. The week after you could try something more advanced such as trying to win/gain an edge in Feudal age and understanding the intricacies of Feudal. Learning Feudal and how to react to every strat that can come at you (full walls, all in scouts, 2 range archers opening, tower rush etc.) can take some time but I think this type of approach won’t make you feel as if the game is too complex because as a new player, you won’t be learning stuff you don’t necessarily need to learn right away (such as how to win in Castle age or army compositions in Imperial age or Imperial age macro or how to counter Bombard Cannons).
To be fair, I don’t think that’s a relevant skill at all for a new player, considering the chances of them using BBCs are already very low I’m pretty sure.