Is the idea to create a competitive offline game scene that is streamed?

Age of Empires: DE I - Discussion
1

In recent years the game scene has changed. Nowadays there are plenty of professional players. Games like league of legends, counter strike go, dota2,… all have a competitive game scene with large prize pools.

I’ve been playing a lot of cs and lol. But I liked aoe3 more. But I ended up quitting it due to not enough active players.

I think having a pro scene helps, if they stream, people will watch it and get interested in the game, play it themselves.

Is the idea to develop a scene like this, with the ultimate edition?

2

I do not believe that is the goal with this first iteration of AoE:DE. This is purely my speculation and the reason is as follow:

  1. As you pointed out for competitiveness you need a good roster of players. I am talking hundred of thousands if not a couple of millions. The guys from the AoE team have done minimal marketing for the game, if any at all, which will not attract players for a competitive scene. (compare the marketing for this game with games such as LoL, DotA 2, SC2 , heck … i can’t believe i am saying this, but even compare it to HeartStone you might get the idea)

  2. They do not promote a system where players can compare(who has a higher score, or done X better than Y, etc.) with others such as a ladder system. Thus they do not promote a sense of “competition” among other players. This is a good and a bad thing. Good , in the sense that it promotes a good community where people are friendly as there is nothing to gain by fighting with each other. This allows the more casual players to develop and experiment and it also promotes a more family friendly tool(you won’t see me play Heroes of Newerth or DotA with a relative from because of the toxic environment that competitiveness creates) Bad: the media and market don’t promote the good guys, they strive on scandals and violence, as that is what brings in the currency from their perspective (when some one defeats some one else, the horror of a main player leaving a team and so forth, even internal social scandals between teams)

Additions to number 2 - for games such as SC2 they even had moments when they hired people just so that they would create social scandals between some teams, because that is what people want to read from their perspective. I will not post direct links to those news as i would not like to promote that kinda of behavior from the media

  1. The pace of the game is rather slow as it focuses a lot more on the macro management rather than the micro such as SC2 or DotA. It is hard to keep track of the macro on a single screen and cast it to viewers that it is to show the micro intense combat. For example people that play AoE will plan where to plant their storage yard or how to place farm to maximize their macro, things that most audience would find boring. They just want to see heads get chopped of. In SC2 for example you do not bother with that as there is always one and only place where to place your CC or most of the time a single entry in your base to defend so your base building macro is fairly limited so you can focus more on those micro combats.

  2. Fresh changes (balance changes, maybe new units, etc.) !!! Maybe the most important thing. So the guys from DotA and SC2 and other popular games do almost monthly balance changes to keep the game fresh. Example: This week zerks are OP because they get +1 dmg on zerglings, but next month maybe prothos get cheaper immortals. All those changes keep the game super fresh , because players have to adapt and use new units that the audience have not seen. In AoE 1 RoR for example, as long as i can remember chariot archers was basically the only strategy. Very little variation from there … and it has been like that for years. In AoE 2 , Vikings on any water maps and Huns on Arabia , that was basically the meta for years and i am not exaggerating . It has only been about 2 years since the meta has been shifted after about maybe 6-7 years of stalemate, where Italians are taking the water and Indians are taking down the Huns. And it has only been a couple of months since the devs started actively adding balance changes every now and then. This keeps the community engaged and makes the makes you feel like the devs do , pardon my word, “give a ■■■■” about the game.

There could be many more reasons but i think this post is long enough to give you an idea why i don’t think AoE:DE will be a competitive game in the near future. I repeat , “near future”. I do believe that if the guys that develop AoE would want to, they could push for that scene as the game has proven time and time again over the past 20 years … yes 20 years, that i has the potential to.

3

Sorry, but I have to correct you there.

Slow pace: Disagree: This depends highly on the setting being played. Some are slower than others. There are enough games where people are fighting in the tool age, in which case fighting starts anywhere between 8-10 minutes ingame time. There are other settings where people play at 2.0 speed, which is very, very fast. It’s true, though that AOE has more “buildup” time than other games. Also AOE 1 has A LOT of micro. Much more actually than AOE 2. Considering you do not have things like farm queues/auto farms, unit formations and other conveniences you need to have a very good micro.

Chariot archers is definitely not the only strategy. This seems to be a common misconception, because Assyrian wars on hill country are a popular setting. But for instance on water maps Yamato is considered to be stronger then Assyrian, Hittite etc. and Yamato does not even get chariot archers. Cavalry and camels are considered powerful units in the bronze age as well and you will see these units just as often in team games with randomized civs. Also tool rushing is very common as well.

4

@BornPants34

  1. There is over 130K age insider. It is good amount of players. Sure all of them won’t gonna buy the game, but there is still plenty of time for marketing.

  2. Skill level comparing (elo rank) hasn’t been made in the old AOE, but i haven’t seen anything that would say it wouldn’t be created for AOE:DE.

  3. first 6 minutes are boring, but for the rest of the game. With good amount of content showed the game can be nice to look at. Seeing food/gold collected in total. Workers created and all other stats makes it much better for viewer.
    It doesn’t matter what game you are viewing if you don’t know the mechanics it is boring to watch. Even in LOL/DOTA it is boring to watch if you cant appreciate the little things what the players have done to obtain the victory.

  4. Balance changes are coming. Changing meta actively isn’t impossible for the AOE:DE if the devs want they can make this game competitive.

So far there hasn’t been any announcement on whether this game is or isn’t getting competitive scene.

5

@BlazingGaming13 : DotA , action starts in … about 30 seconds depending on ward style for teams, SC2, action starts in about 1-2 minutes from reaper scout, to photon cannon, to zergling rush … you name it … CS , action starts in what … 30 seconds top ? … action in AoE starts on average after 10 minutes in AoE 1 and 12 minutes in AoE 2 ( if you can do an earlier militia+ scout rush you are some sort of god , other than that, it will be about 17-20 minuets which the fast castle knight rush … on water maps it might differ).

By slow pace , i mean it takes about 10 minutes for the game to get interesting. Most people get bored by that time and leave to watch something that is more action pack than watching some one who seeds 10 farms. And as you said … it is micro intensive on the things that are not fascinating to watch … I don’t believe people would like to see in a competition how efficient someone has plotted his farms or chops wood … they have farm simulator for that, or the back yard were they can watch grass grow (or in my case apple trees that i am very proud of :wink: )

A game/match is like an interview, if you fail to make a good impression in the first few minutes you kinda fail it. You might not find it fun to watch the first few minutes, i do do enjoy it, and so do the people who watch the streams, but the mass majority of people find it boring. I can try it yourself if you do not believe me. Try to bring some one to watch a stream of AoE 2 or any AoE and then let them watch SC (1 or 2) and let them vote which one they like more, and the majority (not all) will prefer SC as the time it takes until players clash is much shorter and it gets intense really fast compared to AoE. Don’t get me wrong i LOVE AoE from the bottom of my heart, and i wish i was wrong on this one, but that is the reality … it is a slow game (it takes a match picks up the pace).

And the last point is that it is not micro intensive with the things that matter. No one wants to see the micro management for the “base building” part … they want to see dead chariot archers and villagers getting picked off by heavy cavalry and so forth. This is the sad reality of it :frowning: … it hurts me to say it.

When i said chariots archer i wanted to say the lack of variety in unit composition. Compare it to any Moba or let’s say again SC and you will just how many unit varieties there are in the strategy. NEW brings people back and sparks interests. In AoE you only had the basic 3 units in toolage fights , then the chariot fest (some comps here and there) and some of the naval units with just warships (the only warship unit type) … that is about 6 units … let’s say 10 unit type max(if you throw in Camels and Cavalary). And is just those units over and over again , every single match. gets boring after a while :(.

@pate623
I was talking about the present time and not about the future. Yes MS has all the resources to do exactly what you described, but they do not seem to that … not yet at any rate.

Yes … plenty of time for marketing, but you have to admit so far it has been quite minimal marketing about AoE:DE.

No “elo rank” announced yet (or at least if there was one i am not aware of it) but there is plenty of time for them to implement one. And your most important statement: “there hasn’t been any announcement on whether this game is or isn’t getting competitive scene” . That should be the accepted answer for this question and i could not have summarized it any better.

Please take all i have said with a grain of salt as most it is my own opinion and from my own research. I could be wrong with everything and i do hope i am with most of what i have said. I do hope to meet all of you in either a PvP game or maybe a co-op from AoE:DE and best of luck for getting selected in the open Beta, and please do not forget to provide the devs with any feedback as a beta tester. Every little helps to make this game the best there is :P.

6

@cbNised said:
I’ve been playing a lot of cs and lol. But I liked aoe3 more. But I ended up quitting it due to not enough active players.
This seems weird to me. There’s currently plenty of active aoe3 players, daily peak concurrent players number hovers around 1100-2000 on the official ESO servers. Do you have the latest expansion, TAD? That’s where most people play online.

Not to mention the overabundance of tournaments lately :wink:
If you ever want to check up on AoE3 again, join us at http://eso-community.net, where competitive events are organized and in general everything around the game happens there nowadays. As for existing content, you can watch previously held tournaments on the ESOCTV youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCDpnRJ_LXufk8-S0k6AMZAg

7

The main problema at AOE 3 is ESO system, it keeps giving players some connection issues x.x