Apparently there has been a large round of layoffs at CaptureAge, and according to this post on Reddit and its comments, the two scenario designers for Chronicles, Alkhalim and Sirak, among many other staff members of CaptureAge, were hit by the layoffs. Now, I know Microsoft has laid off a ridiculous amount of employees in the past year or so, and in this month alone they fired 9,000 people, but I always thought it was weird I never heard about AoE being affected, anyway, it seems CA was the first to fall.
If they did get to work on part 2, it might be the last installment of Chronicles, if it releases at all. If not, then it might be incomplete and will never see the light of day, and I feel the future of the game is bleak.
In the last few years DLC have been subpar, some even garbage like V&V, except for Chronicles, and what do you know? The only good DLC idea they had in the last 2 years is canned. Thanks Microsoft…
It will not be the first time for them to release a balance patch only to abandon the game soon after like AoEIII. Perhaps the latest PUP balancing the chronicles was an indication of that.
It’s possible they are still making chronicles part 2 but under the regular dev team. Although seems unlikely since I’m not sure why as the difference between BfG and any other DLC released in the past 2 years is night and day, even though I have several criticisms of BfG, it feels like it was made with passion.
Stupid policy of MS. Just increases the toxicity inside the company.
People will in this scenarios always try to let the others look worse then themselves to avoid being layed off - in the end the people who stay will in huge parts mostly concerned to preserve their own position in the company. And who will be layed off are the people who don’t get the game or don’t want to play like this.
Doesn’t matter if you try to circumvent that by making smaller teams. People will see what’s happening, as it’s already at least the 3rd round of this stupid “80 % of the work are done by 20 % of the people, so let’s get rid of the 80 % who aren’t worth keeping”. It’s wrong - and it doesn’t even work this way, stupid economic idiots who think they are so clever!
Mountain royals was also an excellent DLC but you’re still right. If two out of four DLCs in the past two years are turning out to be trash that does not spell good for the game’s future.
My take: They should just follow their DLC ideas of chronicles and Dawn of the Dukes(the best dlc imo), I.e, make new civs for ranked once in a while, and make chronicles civilizations and campaigns. This would rake them in so much money if done correctly and make the players happy. It’s literally a win win situation so I don’t see why they are coming up with new ideas like the 3k when the tried and true dlcs serve as a perfect example for future DLCs and lack the risk of failure.
If you mean that the main team is finishing up the DLC, then who knows. This same team made no DLC between Mountain Royals in 2023 and 3K in 2025, it’s impossible to know what they’re doing because there’s no consistency. Hopefully they won’t abandon what they already developed tho, it’d be a waste.
Except in this case they laid off 2 out of 2 level designers for the DLC where the main appeal are the singleplayer levels
I don’t think it was at the level of Dukes or Dynasties, not bad by any means but it has mixed reviews on Steam. The campaigns were not as good imo. But yeah sad to think it was the last normal DLC, and the only good experiment gets shitcanned
I also want to point out that the so-called “pareto principle” is a wrong “utilization” of a mathematical distribution concept.
The reality of distributions occurs reliably when projecting natural measurements on a scale. Most of them are normal. If you then multiply these normal distribution with the given “value” that it is associated with, you will get a pareto distribution.
The issue is, that most of them don’t make any sense. As physicist I learned that you should always have a look on the unit to see if a value is correct - or later on makes any sense. And as I saw with almost all these “pareto distributions” these units just don’t make any sense. Like “wealth capita” or “work employee”. It’s absurd.
AND lastly and most importantly: They are usually super sensitive in the actual way HOW to get the data in. And the general approach what to measure. And every step in between. In almost all cases the “good 20 %” are often completely different and there is almost no overlap.
And that’s why this is total nonsese. It’s a natural occuring phenomenon. But it’s a totally wrong and misguided approach to get from this “occuring reality” to a “target goal”. Because WHEN you do it - you will actually just get back to what you started with. It’s a loop, because you try to trick a natural phenomenon to your advantage. Not recognizing that there is nothing you POSSIBLY CAN DO to change it. When you measure again after the release of 80 % of your emplyees you will get the same result - and if you do this 3 times of your initial 100 employees you will have 1 left. Which will do in 80 % of their time 20 % of the work.
Yes, that’s how stupid this shit is.
And only because economics don’t get what this is about. Even most mathematicians don’t get it because they live in their own world and try to get it applied somewhere. The reality is that this phenomenom is just inherit to how our mathematics is set up and how we get data in. It doesn’t has anything to do with the reality. And there is no requirement to met this phenomenon. Because it’s already occuring naturally.
And the biggest irony is, that this ideologic application of a wrong understanding of a mathematical phenomenom in economics is probably the single-handedly most value-erasing of all time. I guess it’s the 1 % that erased more than 99 % of all value erased with no need from the management in the last 2 decades.
Unfortunately though the bill didn’t had to pay the greedy economists who applied this shit. But the people they layed off. However in the believe and narrative of these stupid economists they are the best workers because they also get paid the best and receive the biggest bonusses for laying off huge parts of the staff.
Which is - next irony - exactly the toxicity that is the result of this approach. When the worst workers, those who actually add negative value to the company let it look like they are the “best” workers.
I was sooo excited when they announced the China DLC, thinking about fibally getting around to play the other DLCs I was missing on as well
Now Im even uncertain if I will ever play sinfleplayer or ranked again, ldt alone continuing with the scenarios I was working on. Im only playing it with friends in coop or lobbies
Ik, it’s superior in every way to 3K, I just said it wasn’t as good as the DLCs that have become part of the base game now. Technically, now it’s the best DLC available for purchase, if we don’t count BfG because it’s campaign-only.
I hope the chronicles team just migrated to the main AoE2 team. The fact that we have a pup with content for main AoE2 and chronicles items, lets me hope that’s what happened.
Yes, that’s correct. I should have been more detailed in my comment: I haven’t seen any comment of the Rome at War mod team that they are not employed anymore (on there discord, x, reddit) and if they are now at the main team, the main Thema also has scenario designers, so there would not be the need to keep the 2 from capture age. Of course, if AoE2 main team took over, I would have preferred that they also take over the original scenario designers, but corporate reality is often heartless.
Yeah I was thinking about it, and I don’t think this means that Chronicles is getting canned; they probably view CA having their own level designers as a redundancy when the main team level designers can do the campaign scenario level design for Chronicles. And tbh, while it’s unfortunate and there might be a slight drop (not in quality, but just in…heartfeltness for lack of a better word) honestly even in 3k the base level design of the scenarios was not really a problem (other than perhaps the magic elements in a couple campaigns, but even that is moreso a writing problem than the level design itself) The problem with 3k was…basically everything else lol.
We don’t view the CA level designers as a redundancy, but it’s a corporate environment, and Microsoft’s accountants (who really only care about the financial bottom line) apparently did view them as a redundancy.
More people than just the level designers were laid off, so it’s very likely the project is cancelled or at least the next installment will also be the last. But best case scenario (for the players, not the people who lost their jobs) is that Chronicles 2 is almost done and now FE will take over and finish what’s left.
I’ve read some people saying that Chronicles was supposed to be a trilogy, I dunno where that info came from, all I remember is that it was supposed to be a “multi-part saga” and nothing more. If they don’t rehire the people they laid off, or hire new people, then Chronicles will just be two parts and CA will focus on the spectator tool only.
