Have the officials forgotten about the co-op campaign?
While co-op campaigns still have a place on the home screen, it’s been nearly two years since the last co-op campaign update.
In addition, players cannot use cutscene PPT files in self-made co-op scenes like official co-op campaigns.
Another most serious problem is that the player numbering logic of XS and AI is inconsistent with that in the map editor. The former uses the seat number (that is, no matter which force and color the host chooses, it will always be 1), while the latter uses the editor serial number. This causes the following problem: In a custom multiplayer scene, a player with seat number 3 using blue (editor number 1) will be recognized by AI and XS as player 3, and the trigger will be recognized as player 1. Using two different logics in one game is stupid, and the problem is still unresolved.
I’ll always support the return of co-op campaigns. The fact that they just stopped developing them with no word on whether they’ll continue making more or not is more proof that Microsoft sucks at communicating with its players.
I think cooperative battles are a great way to attract light gamers, although they have many drawbacks, such as the inability to save, pause and perform micro operations like single player scenarios, or view reconnaissance and prompt texts at any time
So far, there seems to be a pattern to how they work: launch “features of the season”, promote it in the downtime between main DLC releases, then move on to something else.
Since AoE2DE released, they’ve at least tried the following - I hope I haven’t forgotten any.
— Battle Royale
— Empire Wars
— Quick Play
(Have you used the Quick Play option? Did you know it has its own matchmaking queue?)
— Co-op campaigns
There’s no “feature of the season” this year, because in the recent 18 or so months, their resources had instead been taken up by a paid extra feature - Return of Rome, and they are still adding classical AoE campaigns to Return of Rome at this moment.
You’re right, these patterns were abandoned after a brief attempt, they were just tools used to fill the gap in quarterly activities and did not receive attention.
There are no new Coop campaigns because they are finished with implementing one coop campaign from each main game DLC (age of kings, conquerors , … last khans). Did anyone expect to get all campaigns as coop?
It’s not worth for them to design coop campaigns for new DLCs because there are much less players for those
Maybe… On the other hand, the best way to bring new people into the game is 1 or 2 people at a time and the coop campaigns function fantastically for doing that. It might be they’ve made enough for that purpose at the point or they just assume modders have it covered for people who want more coop than the current offerings.