This is a cool idea.
I think if you could even have more “meta” categories. I want a fast imp civ. I want a random booming civ. Open civ, closed civ. I want a challenge, give me a civ that’s struggling on the ladder. There’s lots of potential for different groups.
you might want to include websites like AOE2 stats.io.
I like your first idea of DLC purchases going to prizepool. That’ll just make players themselves promote the DLC a lot, so it could work.
This is just bad. The newer players might struggle with “a lot of civs” but could still want to play their favorite civ. Imagine if someone bought the game and the Dotd expansion to play Poles because of their love for Polish history or something. And then they can’t even play that civ.
At a straight glance, it might look like a good idea because it unlocks next levels similar to individual campaigns but there are several modes of playing - just campaigns, custom scenario like CBA/CBA Hero, battle royale, king of the hill, defend the wonder, exploding kings etc There are several players who just play these things for fun but might still have their favorite civs to pick. These players will stop playing once they can’t play with their favorite civ and have to “tryhard” to unlock something.
The second thing is its really not a “reward” when some civs get unlocked. Imagine spending hours and hours to improve in the hope of unlocking Malians, Gurjaras but Dravidians gets unlocked. That’s going to be even more demotivating - the order in which civs unlock.
There are several mid-elo and casted tournaments. Unfortunately not enough audience for it. Even some of the biggest players hosted mini tournaments for their discord community and even casted the finals or something. This idea is great but I think the prize should be free coaching sessions or training with some high level players.
This exists - the legacy AOC and voobly. No one is going to run ads there because if they can’t afford 20$ for a game, companies are not going to be interested in paying for ads. The sell-through is going to be extremely low.
Then 750 will become the new median. That’s just how elo works.
Oof. This sounds terrible. I have a lot of friends who’ve started playing recently. We just play custom games against each other, they have little to no interest in campaigns or ranked or anything else. Why limit them to just a small subset of the civs.
If we look at how Smash Ultimate does it, DLC characters are always unlocked right from the start. AoE2 could do the same thing with DLC civs. And Smash Ultimate’s unlock system was incredibly dynamic and you were always unlocking new characters due to their sheer number. AoE2 could do the same thing, so you aren’t without the full roster for long.
The current Elo starts at the average Elo of all players (current is around 1000 Elo)
Pure and simple statistics
The magic of 1v1 Elo is that you will win/lose 50/50 of all your played games
Hera did put alot of good points there. I agree with most of them.
The pro scene was and is ruining this game.
Don’t listen to the pros, they just want profit.
Obviously they’ve got to make a living but they just want opponents. Above 2k players have to queue up for a hell of a lot longer than we do waiting for opponents. Even 1600+ have long wait times. That’s why Hera and other top players are giving away build orders and tutorial videos; because they want more top competition. Is it selfish of them to want opponents to play against? I don’t think it is. If that is selfish, then it’s just as selfish as campaign and single player only players dismissing ranked games and wanting the Devs to focus on campaigns only.
the most important thing is the friendship system
How so? I’ve overall got the impression that the AoE 2 pros are doing a lot for the game
Why would anyone want campaigns only? Bug fixes pathing balance all affect SP base too.
I have been playing this game since release and for the first time playing a skirmish map offline the game crashes. I guess the developers, whomever Microsoft outsources to these days, finally broke the game. NEVER since I have been playing this game has it ever once crashed on me until today.
All of these pros just want a payout. Million dollar payout? Come on now man. Most do not care for this. You shouldn’t cater to a certain area of players. Many like me just want a casual game to play. All of this DLC has just unbalanced the game and Microsoft of course, only did this for a easy cash grab as it’s severely already overpriced for what it is.
Everything these days is aimed at streaming, advertising and this hurts the core base players of the game. It helps the publishers and those who benefit from it but hurts the core base.
They absolutely are, but many of the balance changes that were/are done for the sake of pros hurt a lot of the player base.
Crossbows were already a middle-tier and difficult to use unit in the low-mid elo range. Now that they have been nerfed, it’s even more difficult for that range.
Another example is the monks, who the pros want nerfed. However, monks are among the few units that makes things work for non-cav players in castle age.
Don’t get me wrong, pros are one of the best things about the game, and I got back into the game because of Viper and T90.
However, if more changes are done just for the pros, sacrificing the rest, I might turn into an AoE2 watcher than a player. I’ve had enough of the mindless Knight spam in the game.
Agreed and cav players need monks too, to heal their knights and convert camels.
A big money tournament would attract viewers and would get aoe2 in the press. It has a die-hard following but it’s a pretty underground scene compared to other games. I don’t think $1 million prize pool split between the top 16 or top 32 is unrealistic. There needs to be a well paid competitive scene to attract young e-gamers and future stars. There were some high payout tournaments in the very early days of the game in the iamgrunt era of the early 2000s.
It’s only overpriced for developing countries. $10 is not at all expensive for a DLC, especially compared to the cash grabs you see in other more popular games. And Steam often has discount sales and bundle packages. How do you propose they can afford to keep running the server and paying a dev team to make civs, do balance changes and fix bugs if you guys are only willing to pay a one-off fee of $19.99? If existing customers won’t pay, their only other market is new players, so of course they need things like big tournaments and streamers to attract them to buy the game. You guys can’t just live in a Bolshevik utopia where your beloved game costs next to nothing to buy and continues to be updated and fixed indefinitely free of charge.
Amen to that. It is funny seeing grown up men complaining about 10$ cost and pretending Microsoft to maintain the game forever for free
the only major change to xbows was the increase in upgrade cost. if your build orders are so tight that you can’t stomach an extra 100 res in castle age then you aren’t in the elo range where you consider xbows difficult to use.
I would like you start treating low-mid Elo players with a little more respect. These people make up the vast majority of the playerbase, and they are not brain dead morons.
Now, let me tell you why that nerf did affect everyone. You are only thinking about it in terms of resources. A 100 extra resources, which is 4-5 villagers working for 1 minute. But wait, it used to be 200 resources and now it is 300. That’s 50% more resources which is a substancial number. This is more like 15 villagers working for 1 minute. That’s a LOT for early economy.
In practice, it is a much bigger expense. Low-mid elo players have a much harder time keeping their archer mass alive. This change makes that substancially more difficult. 3 knights will absolutely destroy your archer mass, even if you have 10-15 of them. Upgrade them to crossbows, and now you are fine. Those 100 extra resources matter a LOT here, in terms of timing.
If you are playing archers and your opponent gets to castle age first, this is a death sentence. Considering how easy scouts are at low Elos, this is a significant nerf to archer play at that range.
I agree, although the same point about micro could be argued with scouts being easy to counter at low ELOs by just adding a few spearmen to protect your archers. Small investment but well worth it to preserve your archer numbers for castle age.