That’s a pretty severe emotional leap. Not trying to boycott DE for keeping civs in a game and going on a hunger strike when they actually address the naming conventions and tweak some things to make them better fit historically and within the timeframe, because they didn’t remove heroes or outright rip the civs out because you hate them so much is “abandoning your values.” Like I said. I’d love to watch you lose this, but I really don’t want you to lose at my expense.
A total victory can still mean your defeat if you know not what victory looks like.
Right, so I’m going to slay this and then stop beating the dead horse.
You know what matters way more than 500 reviews on the DLC? Steam tracking the highest average concurrent player count since January 2021, the release month of DE’s first ever DLC and the third highest average player count, ever. If people hate it so much, why are they playing it so much???
People don’t hate the game, they hate the 3K DLC. People are playing the game more because of the recent update with castle skin, monk skin, elite UU skin, Infantry balance changes, new Regional units and a bunch of civs balance for already existing civs before 3K, NOT because of 3K itself.
We have the statistics for April, the castles, rocket carts, and all the other bells and whistles dropped on the 10th. April 2025 saw a 340 player improvement on average. In the last 30 days, the average has jumped 1200 players. So in the last 14 or so days, the average between April and May has jumped on the order of a thousand players, give or take.
Try again? sure why not?
Do you know the word “hype”? Hype alone is already strong enough to make people come back and play. There. Every time the dev announces some big patches, people come back, simple. It’s the same for every single game out there, it’s not rocket science.
Hype explains peak. It does not explain average. Hype is sudden excitement. It does not preserve the wave on it’s own.
Come back in a week or two. If the average dies down, “Hype” is acceptable as an excuse for the spike. If it doesn’t, come up with a new excuse by then I guess.
Thank you, exactly what I am trying to say. We are at the “hype” period, that’s why the game has 18k+ players, This is the same thing we had back in March 2024 when the game gain nearly 2k+ players reaching around 18k+ player on average like it does right now, then 2 months later, it lost the same number of players.
Shame the Hype simply wasn’t there in force for the thing you are claiming is carrying 3K right now. If the players were so hyped about the new castles the peak would be similar in April… but it lags nearly 3K players, ironically.
The top 5 upvoted negative steam reviews have plenty of reasons, and that’s a pretty standard procedure to check those reviews first…so maybe try that before scanning “dozens of prominent threads”, which actually feels like an untrue statement. As for those 6 years..i did notice…all quality post wannabes with an attempt to awe us with your eloquence. Unfortunately, the content is what matters the most.
But I did point it out. The most important factor was omitted or ignored, and only the nitpicky ones were “debunked” or how you can call it. I did read your replies, so I did not ignore parts of them
and yet you addressed the other points about the campaigns…the majority of a playerbase are single player campaign players, hence why it matters.
That alone is a very convenient argument. I don’t know whether you failed to consider proper statistics, or whether you purposedly omitted it out, but the evidence is so obvious: a new dlc drops - the average player count rises. And given the fact that the average aoe2 playerbase has been steadily increasing (apart from a few deviations) since 2022 (aka the end of covid days), this “gain” this current DLC has shown, is actually smaller than the gain from the mountain royals (november 2023), victors and vanquished (march 2024) and the chronicles (november 2024)…but, to be fair, a month has not yet passed, so the statistics are not exact in this case - when the gain is lower than any of the previous DLCs so far.
And to answer your “question” - which is very easy to answer if using proper brainpower - the gain aoe2 got…were single player players. Also, a lot of players actually don’t care about history or the spirit of the game, and will play it regardless. The ones who care though…are quite a few..a lot even, but we still love the game enough to play it - without using 3k civs, and trying our best to get them removed.
It’s been over four years since we’ve had an average playerbase this high.
We’ve had many major patches and DLC’s since then.
You haven’t addressed why those never reached an average or peak like 3K in order to handwave 3K’s average or peak as you have. Simply stated, you lack any evidence whatsoever to justify your argument.
So not only you did not consider proper statistics, but you also did not try to comprehend my message. The average player count has been this high since the chronicles, while the 3k DLC increased it by just 1k or so. The average playercount during the mountain royals has been 2k higher when they got released than a month before their release.
How is that difficult to comprehend? The reason the playercount is so high now, is because A DLC dropped and because it was steadily high before the DLC. Just because we are angry at 3k does not mean we are going to stop playing the game…right now that is, unless they declare that 3k civs are not to be removed or renamed, ever.
Wait and see the playerbase in 3 months, not 10 days after release.
Self reflection here…by keeping 3k civs in ranked play, you want to forbid us from enjoying the game. We never called for the removal of SP content or to remove them from MP games. You’re the one complaining about hypocrisy, yet you seem like the bigger one.
So, what you’re saying is, we’ve got some more players as of November. As a result, the fact we got more players again as of the DLC dropping in May is irrelevant? A reach to say the least. And further, probably irrelevant. Players are up, not down. That means players are enjoying it. If they weren’t, they wouldn’t be playing.
Right-o. Say that you will quit, cold-turkey if they don’t remove 3K civs. You won’t, because it’s bluster, it’s overreaction. Go ahead and bluff. You’ll be back.
I’ve played games that royally fucked up, and I’ve quit playing those. I’ll tell you right now, three of those dozen or so games reworked or removed some of my most favorited aspects of them, and that alone was reason enough for me to quit cold turkey. Know why? Because it opened the floodgates to them removing other parts of the game that I enjoyed in future releases simply because they’ve done it so radically before. All three of the ones I surmised might keep removing things I enjoyed kept removing things I liked so I was happy to know I called it right assuming they had someone steering the ship blind.
If they removed 3K after inputting them and not maintaining them in ranked in largely their current form, I would still play AOE but I would literally never buy a DLC again in the expectation that this sort of nonsense could occur.
You people are completely incapable of understanding the reasons why there are complaints in the first place. No matter how much is explained, you say it’s all irrelevant or try to use fallacies to discredit any arguments.
At the end of the day you don’t care about the historical aspect of the game, or its identity, or its thematics, and instead of trying to understand these aspects, you simply don’t care and yet, despite not caring, you still try to argue about this topic with people who do care, misunderstanding their arguments.
Even if it’s of no consequence to you what they add to the game, you could at least try to see things from another user’s point of view and understand what caused all this controversy, but no, we’re all delusional, irrational haters, yeah?
I will say this as briefly as I can: this game is historically inspired, but this DLC added fictional countries from a book into this historical game. Can you not see the problem? Or what, are you gonna say you don’t mind if the devs add orcs or whatever, as long as it’s “fun”?
All you DLC defenders are the same, using same copy-paste arguments.
Downright insulting even though I spent a better part of an evening understanding your complaints.
I haven’t copy-pasted any of my arguments, because I came into the discussion fresh. You came into the discussion with the same arguments you’ve been holding for a month. Sorry, you want to call me “one of them” and I am not. You are “one of them.” Now, sharing an opinion doesn’t make you wrong, but it makes you quite hypocritical to insinuate that a fresh face is just another one of the zealots. I’m not accusing my opposition of trying to take gunpowder and the club-men out of the game like people are asserting that myself and those of us who enjoy the game are either trying to introduce full-blown antiquity or literal Star Wars.
