Man, you quoted me, yet you misread what I wrote Feel free to read again:
I stated that âpeople preferâ, not that âthe game is better (or best)â. Also the whole âlong answerâ revolved around its first sentence"
Yet you (inadvertently) made a good point - most likely there is a correlation between how good a game is and how many people are willing to play it. Sure, there are many other factors, like its price, its availability, HW requirements, required skill levels, intensity / scare factor and so on. Still, an overall âgreatnessâ of a game is probably one of the deciding factors.
Is WoW the best MMORPG ever? Debatable.
Did it absolutely corner the market, and is the most successful MMORPG ever, by virtue of large playerbase retention, to the point that it is often called the best MMORPG ever? Absolutely true.
And no, I did not like WoW. I prefered other MMOs, like DDO or Star Treck Online. But WoW is still the most successful, by far, which is why it is the one that got cloned multiple times (Rift, Runes of MagicâŠ).
The same is true for AoE. AoE2 is the game that retained itâs playerbase, not AoE3, and also the game that got the clones (Cossacks, America: No Peace Beyond the Lines!, Tzar: Burden of the CrownâŠ).
People often forget that the Videogame Industrty is Capitalistic, not Art, and therefore the product that most successfully retains userbase, is the one to mimick and expand upon.
By every Industry measurement, AoE2 is the superior game, the one worth cloning, and the one worth expanding with DLC.
This is just the reality of things.
This WHOLE SERIES, was ressurrected by AoE2 HD back in 2013. Not by AoE1, not by AoE3, not by AoM.
And that is also why AoE4 has the same setting as AoE2, because they REALLY want to mimick itâs success in player retention, cultural impact, and ease of selling DLC after DLC.
What I find funny is that every aoe2 player has as itâs main argument that âthe numbers prove 2 is the best gameâ. No. Is just the more popular. In entertainment (and many aspects) of life, what drives the numbers is not what is âbestâ but what is more popular, and that popularity stems from a lot of factors, not being the technically the best. Got to Spotify and see the top songs of your country or the world. Are THOSE the best songs ever? Of course not, but theyâre popular for may other reasons, which is fine btw, but got tell a musician that the top charts is the best music produced and youâll receive a stern look. The same happens with movies, series, books and many many other products. Gamers are not some illuminated bunch that TRULY determine what piece of entertainment is the best just by numbers. Is Fortnite a better game that, say, Crusaders King 3, just because you have millions watching the first one on twitch and just a few hundreds the latter? Of course not. Throwing those numbers make this a popularity concept, nothing else.
In my case, me and my friends LOVED age 2 when we were young, and when 3 came out, it blew our minds. Even if our PCâs couldnât handle water maps, we still played it to the end. When de DE versions came out, we bought 2 again and played for hours and hours, and when 3 DE came out, we slowly abandoned 2 and came back to 3, and havenât even touched 2 in months. Does this personal experience determines which game is better? No, it is just something that happened to me and my close group of friends
Age 3 is a great game with better and more complex mechanics than 2. Age 2 is a great game and is more popular. In my personal experience, more people that have played 3 have abandoned 2 than the other way around, but again, is just what I have lived.
Which is the best game? To me, 3 hands down. In my mind, that doesnât mean 2 is bad, just another game that I loved and introduced me to the series.
If you want to talk sales and numbers, itâs ok. That doesnât mean one is better and the other trash. Talk about mechanics, freedom, chances to turn a game around, at what point one player should surrender or does he have other options, how does it feels playing with friends (as more people play casual than ranked), how similar one match plays to another, and such. That would be better arguments that âthe one I like has more peopleâ.
I think I might actually go back to AOE2. Iâve played both AOE2 and AOE 3, non DE versions as well. Back in early 2000s, I played AOE3 for about a year online multiplayer. I couldnât play AOE2 multiplayer because due to lack of skill matching I didnât stand a chance. A few years ago I started the process of learning how to actually win an online game of aoe2 multiplayer. It took me about 50 hours of online play before I won a single game. Anyhow, I played AOE2de for 1000 hours and then aoe3 DE for 250, and now I think I may switch back to AOE2DE. Why? Because the player base is simply too small for AOE3 DE. I often see the same players, playing the same civs and doing the same thing. (Usually musket spam). The reason I switched to AOE3 is for unit variety and the fact that offensive castles/towers are not allowed, and there is almost zero âcheeseâ at all, such as âInca villager rushâ or a tower rush. However facing musket rush after musket rush in AOE3 isnât really catering to my sense of unit and strategic variety. And the skill matching is messed up too, due to lack of player population. I am matched with people I know I donât stand a chance against as well as people who donât stand a chance against me. One guy mentioned his rating after a ranked game and it was 150 points above mine. And I recognize the name too, and I know what they will do. Its gotten a bit boring even though I use a variety of civs and units and cards, my opponents do not. If I can just tolerate the castle drops, I think AOE2 will be better I think, mainly due to player base. Otto musket rush, brit manor boom into musket rush, french musket rush with more chance of hussars, japan ashi rush, sweden only builds caroleans, 3 majorly unbalanced civs that are so bad (Japan, Sweden and USA) I can barely stand playing against them with their easy resource generating buildings. Granted there are majorly unbalanced civs in AOE 2 (Franks and Mongols), France has been at the number one win rate spot forever since aoe 2 DE came out according to aoestats.io but they arenât as bad as Sweden/Japan/USA. And with the player base I can constantly face new opponents closer to my skill/speed level. I think AOE2 might actually have a greater variety of units that are used in any one game after all even though they typically have one unique unit/civ only. Oh and as a final point, I can zoom out more in AOE2DE so I donâ t have to scroll as much. Makes a HUGE difference to me. And also, since multiplayer AOE2DE supports graphical mods, if there is an ugly unit I can download a reskin or even create my own! (I created several cool reskin mods for AOE2DE like chukonu to ninja and war wagon to bolt elephant). Playing with cool units zoomed out is actually really important! And AOE2DE multiplayer will run on M1 macs. AOE3 multiplayer wont run on M1 macs and doesnt support ANY mods for multiplayer, not even graphical reskins.
I surely agree that âmost popularâ does NOT equal âbestâ. And I would rather avoid enumerating examples since this could cause some serious troubles .
However there are certain things that are really difficult to measure, so to say. Songs (you already mentioned those) or any kind of art, including games. And just for this discussion I deliberately classify games as art because else we already have the answer in number of copies sold and the discussion is over.
So how do you measure greatness of a song? There are certain objective parameters like its length, used instruments, number of involved artists and many other musical things I have no clue about. Yet I highly doubt we could use those to determine if a song is great or not.
So what do we do? Do we put together a committee composed of professionals to rate the song? We may do that. I am not quite sure how do you choose an objective committee composed of professionals with objective opinions (it already sounds silly) but letâs say we can do that. What would that mean for game industry? I guess, putting together a committee of professional players where I assume everyone votes for the game he/she likes/plays - which correlates with the popularity of the game.
Or perhaps we try to measure an impact of the song / game on the society? Well, this might as well correlate with its popularity.
Or you could measure how much space the game takes on disk, how much RAM does it occupy when running, average FPS, complexity of the game mechanics (more complex might be better but also worse), graphics (which is again very subjective aspect), variety of units (this may also be for better or worse), average game length (is longer better, who decides the optimum length?), number of ages (I remember Rise of Nations or Empire Earth and despite I liked those games I am personally not a big fun of going through 15 ages).
I am genuinely interested in how do you estimate which game is better if not by personal preferences or popularity (where a more popular game is the one preferred my more players) or number of sold copies / revenue the game created (if we calculate revenue then price comes into play as well, that is fine).
I think people are mixing many things together and making false conclusions.
It runs around the term âthe bestâ. What is the definition of being âthe bestâ? The most popular does not mean âthe bestâ. And thats AoE2. Its âsimpleâ in terms of usage (HW, acessibility, learning curve). To master the game on pro level it is very difficult but for casual players they learn basics very quickly and thanks to similarities of all civs in AoE2 its super easy to switch for another civ.
Large number of AoE2 players play only SP and thats fact - AoE2 SP is much richer than SP AOE3. It starts by scenario editor which is absolutely user friendlier in AoE2 than in AoE3.
AoE3 turns around MP mainly⊠I dont see a big SP community there so this disqualifies AoE3 a lot.
Moreover AoE3 was launched with few serious bugs related to internet connections and sync errors which harmed the only important aspect of AoE3 - multiplayer. And that is not the error of the game, those bugs should have been repaired⊠yet, they remained. That was a reason why I dropped playing AoE3 many years ago, because I was not literally allowed to playâŠ
So if we say âthe bestâ = âthe most popularâ then it is AoE2. But I disagree with this view. I see âthe bestâ as in terms of playability, innovations in design, tech trees, variety etc. And here AoE3 wins.
Conclusion: AoE3 fits into AoE series, it evolves as any game in any series because you cannot only copy old game concept into better graphics (like NHL 97-YX lol:D). As I wrote above, AoE3 provides me more fun while I like and love AoE2, too! But in terms of above described âthe bestâ definition AoE3 is better for me now.
And the final note: all those debates are absolutely irrelevant because all of us have subjective view. I tried to be neutral as much as possible but in the end we always end up in argument whether coca-cola is better than pepsi or not
It worked for Age of Empires 2, all C&C games up to C&C 4, Starcraft 2, CoH2, the Warlords Battlecry series, the Cossacks seriesâŠ
Turns out that, if your game is just a better version of your old product, or sometimes just a refreshed version with some stuff moved around or minor elements replaced, then you VASTLY retain the playerbase of your older product, into the new one.
I meant it differently. I was talking about copy-paste in better graphics like in case of NHL. AoE2 has a core similar to AoE1 but there are great additions (and thus development): castles, more variable units, concept of unique technologies and units.
C&C: I would say every game was unique (units count, units variety, faction strategies, âtimeâ periods: generals x tiberium wars x red alert) although the core mechanic was about building base and collecting resources (even tiberium was not present in every game :)).
CoH2: Do you think 2 was better than 1? Yes, I see modification to basic concept like different generals and slightly different way how their power works. But overall I am not sure with CoH2. Honestly this game seems to me like devs wanted to repeat success of 1 but somehow they were not able to achieve it⊠CoH2 was disappointment for me
By far, yes. In CoH2 you can actually win as the Allies, without having to be 3 times a better player than the Axis player. It also allows for Allies vs Allies and Axis vs Axis, which CoH was did not, out of some weird fascination with not being balanced.
I do not like CoH very much, but CoH2 is a VAST improvement over CoH1, where Axis slots got insta filled in MP, with Panzer Elite factions, and no one wanted to play Allies, so game rooms had hours of waiting until they started.
C&C Red Alert is just C&C Tib Dawn, but with Ore instead of Tiberium, and a few more advanced units.
Tank Spam, brutal base defenses, Engineer Rushes, Chopper Rushes⊠all still there. It is almost exactly the same game, but with some element swaps to keep it fresh, and more stuff added on top.
Why do you keep insisting on SC2 being a great success? It was a mediocre game at best and it never managed to live up to the expectations of SC:BW, because it was 3D and because it didnât preserve the feel of the original. SC2 and SC1 are 2 very, very different games, the only things in common are the name, the names of the 3 races and the resources are still minerals and gas. Other than that, SC2 is a completely different game. In fact, SC:BW now gets active development whereas SC2 is essentially dead. more dead than AOE3 lol.
The only reason it did do somewhat well is because Blizzard invested tons of money into it, and there was a lively co-op / arcade community, which Microsoft didnât do with AOE3. Thatâs basically the only reason.
AOE2 radically changed the gameplay dynamic that was present in AOE1. AOE2 was built with a far more defensive focus: Castles, very strong walls, gates, garrisoning. It makes it far easier to acquire certain resources like gold via marketplace and land trading.
AOE2 feels similar to AOE1 in a lot of ways, just as AOE3 does, but ultimately it is a very different experience since AOE1 games are much faster-paced and more intense with less room for error.
Another thing to note about numbers about my experience playing AOE 3⊠and why comparing numbers of sales is irrelevant.
I started playing RTS when CnC first came out, and was 15 when AOE 1 came out⊠I fell in love with this Franchise and never really deviated from it to any other castle RTS, and tried many other RTS and never really stuck to them. AOE 2 came out and was an easy jump to play that. Man I have sketchbooks filled with drawings of layouts of how I was going to build my bases once I knew gates would be a thing⊠and was waiting for the game to come out and only had gaming magazines to give a few screenshots of⊠I needless to say loved AOE 2 even more.
But AOE 3 was different⊠an advid fan, the leap in technology was just too great for me to play it, so I had to wait over 3 years, and when I had the money specifically build my PC to play AOE3 specs. So there was 3 years of wait time for a number of player, and by that time the game was being sold at a discount with the Asian dynasties. So they lost out on a full price too.
I soon fell in Love with FFA gaming, and since then has really been the only game I ever played⊠after college the X box went away and the only PC game I really have or ever need is AOE 3.
Now fast forward to DE. Had a terrible release. I was pretty frustrated, because now a game my computer was designed to play, was outdated once again. (low RAM) and the changes made had very blurry graphics, long load times, and lag and was pretty much furious over the UI for multiplayer and lack of friends list chat.
So I went back to playing legacy, and that hurt DE numbers again.
But man do I love AOE 3. It really is a masterpiece. I canât go back to AOE 2 for more than a game or 2 as a point of nostalgia only. I may have to get some upgrades ones the African expansion comes out.
AOE2 has probably my favourite single player campaigns in the series - not continuing on that format was undeniably a costly mistake for AOE3 and I think something that still puts off a lot of potential players coming from 1 and 2. But as far as skirmish/multiplayer goes AOE3 and AOM are so much more fun to me, I just really struggle going back to AOE2.
Having all the cards unlocked from the start in AOE3DE makes a huge difference in accessibility and nearly endless possibility for strategies, for any AOE2 fans who havenât tried AOE3 or were disappointed by it at the time, I really recommend trying it out or watching some of Aussie Drongoâs vids, if youâre put off by the guns and cannons thereâs plenty of units and a few civs that use neither.
I donât think thereâs an objective best in the series, though. The best is whatever game you like the most. Theyâre all great in their own ways - even AOE1 has the best soundtrack and setting to me, plus it started the whole thing. It says a lot that so many people can still disagree about this stuff over a decade or two after their initial releases, it really shows how great the whole series has been.
Yes and letâs not forget that the Vietnamese swear by AOE1 and wonât play anything else. According to the first reply in this Reddit thread.
Apparently it is custom for Vietnamese fathers to teach their sonâs how to play AOE1 at an early age, not unlike how a father may teach his son how to fish, hunt, shave or play hockey.
I didnât know that, Vietnamese dads have great taste! I didnât play it on release but AOE1 was still my first in the series and will always have a very special place in my heart.
Doesnât matter, it replaces a core part of the gameplay. And go over to Age2 competitive players and SP players and try telling them stone isnât valuable
I think the core issue is that AOE 3 needs a nasa PC and AOE 2 can run on a toaster. That s why it never got more popular initially and is still today hindering ppl to get it up (cuz bad optimization by the DE team). The game itself is just way more stable and polished
Optimization was pretty bad for both games, Aoe2 fixed it faster, simple as that. And even before DE, there were plenty of years where the game was no longer heavy and pretty easy to run. Not many people hopped on it.
Feel free to read again:
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