AoM used to have an active community of custom scenarios, with various maps being hosted, such as Castle/Temple Blood, RPG, Tower Defense, Escape, … When people are done with singleplayer contents or tired of competitive multiplayer, custom scenarios are perfect for playing casually with friends, and thus help to keep people playing this game.
However, it seems to me that the custom scenario scene in Retold is less vibrant than before. There are not many custom maps being hosted, the most frequent one I saw is Mythic Strike. RecoN, an AoM player, has expressed similar concerns on reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/AgeofMythology/comments/1khebdw/rambling_post_about_things/
I think this situation partially results from the inconvenient design of the current custom scenario / mods system. People have already talking about them on various platforms (forum, reddit, …), so I just summarize some of them below:
1. Subscribed mods (maps) do not appear in the scenario folder
Ideally, once you subscribe to a custom scenario, the map should automatically appear in the map list (this is the case for AoE2 DE). But for many scenarios in AoMR, you need to manually move the map file from the “mods” folder to “scenarios” folder. I believe many people just give up because they can’t find the map after subscribing to it. This should be changed to be more of a “one-click” thing.
2. Custom maps won’t start unless all slots are filled with human players
Imagine hosting an RPG map whose max player number is 4, and you got 3 people in the lobby ready to go. Ideally, you can fill the 4-th slot with AI and just start the game. But in AoMR you have to wait for the 4-th people (before people run out of patience and leave). This is very inconvenient for both map makers and lobby host. There is a mod called “allow dummy AI players” which get around this issue, but this feature ought to be offically supported.
3. Small details of lobby browser:
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Custom scenarios which involve random map scripts are categorized as “Standard” instead of “Custom Scenario”.
This makes it harder to find custom maps. The solution is simple: any map which is not official map should be categorized as “Custom Scenario” -
No memory of previous lobby name:
When people create a lobby, the previous lobby name should be automatically filled in (as in AoE2 DE). Currently, there are many “xxxx’s Game” which are in fact public lobbies, as it is not convenient to type lobby name every time -
Can’t spectate a custom scenario game if you don’t have the map:
In AoE2 DE, even if you don’t have the map, you can still download it when spectating a game. This should be same for AoMR
You are very welcome to add more.