But it is an essence to campaigns and single player, which is the core focus of their marketing
Yeah , same thing happened with aoe3 , the civs at launch went that asymmetric , Spanish and english were the “main civs” , the civs that aoe2 players can pick and play but they are the most weak…
And then , new dlc came and civs were super asymmetric
Nations are not too asymmetric at all. Its about right if we want to have 14 and more factions in future.
If anything some bigger asymmetry mby between groups of nations like East Asians vs Europeans being more different than Asians vs Asians is good idea. Like knight having different basic stats than lancer etc.
On this case dlxs can bring new campaigns and game modes.
Most ppl go for the multiplayer experience, and the competitive scene is what keeps the game alive.
This is one of the reasons why aoe2 has so many more players than aoe3.
I am not saying that new civs should be a copy paste of the current ones. But they shouldn’t stray too far either, specially if ppl want the devs to continually add new civs to the game.
2/3 of AOE II players are in single player.
It’s definitely not for its multiplayer scene. And the game
While it always had it, wasn’t made with the focus of competitive play at all. So to make it even close to the primary focus is changing the Franchise
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Yes, i really don’t know Why people Think the competitive scene Is the main mode.
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I think it’s because they come from other games which were MP focused. Like Starcraft. But AOE has traditionally never been so competitive focused.
That still doesn’t mean they should go crazy with new civs and ignore balance.
Only reason why these games were alive for so long is because of competitive players streaming, tournaments and things like that.
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That makes 0 sense. If that was the case then competitive play would be the most popular pet of the game.
But everyone loves the game and it is their childhood memories. The advertising it did in 1999 and the success of the next series were the reason why it survived.
The revival of the game through improved graphics as well as adding the MP revived the franchise. But many were already playing.
And many people who do play are living their childhood memories or refunding their passions that stemmed from the game. You will see in YouTube comments of AaOE II DE of how people love the history part of AOE II and how it made them into history.
It’s just a fad that competitive players try to force onto the franchise. That competitive play “kept it alive”. No. Even if you took away the competitive players, the game has a huge player base.
Nothing affects balance. It’s another reason people just use to shut down the asymmetry idea but games with more asymmetry never had any balance problems (not talking about gameplay)
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What?
Just look at aoe3 and the amount of complaints about balance it has.
And the esoc community which is a group of competitive players have kept the community alive through tournaments to the point that aoe3 de when it launched was pretty much a copy of esoc patch.
And specially now if they want to turn the game into an esports balance must be taken into account. Otherwise if multiplayer wasn’t that important there wouldn’t be a whole balance team behind the game and they would definitely have made civs much more different from each other.
I find it hard to believe that people will play the same game for years just to play vs the ai.
Ppl stay on the game for years because they want to master the game and see how they fair against other players.
There are several ways that they can make the game better for single player base without having to wreck the balance for ppl who want to play online. New and improved campaigns, new game modes and more
Actualy, competitive and mutiplayer is what made me stop playing the aoe series, because players are unable to behave like humain being. (People get intimidated if they do not folow the only holy best build of the moment)
Players get kick out of every room if they are not at max level.
Only played for story and the few good game mode.
Sounds like someone else was the intimidated one and is now gaslighting the whole situation.
But AOE 3 had problems from the beginning because of gameplay. Asymmetry to me is basically the only thing the game has. If you were alive during the launch of AOE III you would have seen how negative it was.
The thing is gameplay is just as important as graphics. If graphics is trash the game is trash but if the gameplay is trash the game is trash. But if the gameplay is good but graphics is trash, then you will have Atleast a small community that will defend the game. Like cyberpunk.
You definitely have not joined any of the popular communities on social media that play games on voobly etc. you have not been watching pro players. Spirit of the Law’s AOE2 vs History videos go up to 660K views each . Viper’s campaign play through are so popular he decided to expand to other games as well like AoM.
It’s a very narrow minded thinking that the 70K viewership of the recent Wololo tournament is a barometer that competitive play has kept the game alive. 70K is the highest in AOE II tournament views but it ain’t that much at all.
How can you take a game into esports with a feature where people say gg wp before even finishing a game. That kind of stuff looks garbage in competitive streams where someone sends like 10 men, all their men dies so he gg wp. People want to see games reach their finality. Hence why the wololo tournament had a couple of good games but the rest were trash.
You have an example right here. And there are soooo many more. It’s the stories of the campaigns that people remember or having a relaxing game with their friends. Not one single person remembers how he micro’d some mangonel or how he remembered the entire build order. There are many of us who survived the entire 20 years without even caring about which civ had which bonus against who. You just played any civ like whatever.
You don’t force your likes on other people, especially those who have been playing this game since 1999. Which are a huge number, especially in this forum.
The campaigns are complete rubbish when the units are over simplified, barely any graphical fidelity and nothing to make the game immersive. The thing is, competitive players in AOE II use mods to simplify their graphics.
While single player, who are 2/3 of the player base I might remind, use the enhanced graphics or unique civs mod.
Neglecting any one of these two will cause problems. But you can reduce graphics using a scale. But you can’t improve an oversimplified game without mods.
But mods are a garbage way to have things in a game. Everytime the devs update the game, they don’t hold responsibility for the mods. So it breaks them. Then you have to rely on the modder to update the mod. And mods can break other mods. It’s such a messy way of trying to incorporate things into a game that should be official.
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When it comes to campaigns then yep, they could make civs much more asymetrical, bring more units, increase pop space and its very likely that they did thay, aoe3 civs have a slight different design for the campaings with the only problem being that they replaced history for magical fountain of youth stories. I am pretty hyped to see what the campaing looks like to be fair. However when it comes to supremacy games the current design of the civs is fine the way they are.
I gotta agree with you on that point.
I remember being a noob on aoe3 a few years ago and it was really hard to get started. With time a few players actually helped me and taught me about control groups and stuff.
New players get trolled, smurfed and flamed all the time, with only a few that actually tried to give tips and help.
AoE4 seems to be aiming to make it much more accessible to new players though.
The instructions, and the fact that on the tutorial they teach about control groups and stuff is pretty nice.
Hopefully devs will keep a closer look and avoid behaviours like this towards new players
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The problem is that concept is the only way the game looks good. Because that concept is your priority, you think the game is great.
Imagine playing a campaign centred around longbowmen. And noticing that the longbowmen look like every archer in the game.
Or the Zhuge nu in the Chinese looking like every other crossbowman.
It kills the campaign.
And in single player, when you are playing as Dehli, you want to build your base up to represent a great Dehli empire, and then attack a Chinese base that actually feels like you are attacking China. Not where you are Britain vs the French, but it just feels like you are fighting yourself because of all the similarities.
I also hated this. It’s like age of mythology without saying age of mythology. Although I love age of mythology.
I’m interested to see how they do it, but I’m not looking forward to using their over simplified unit designs that look like their dipped in pint bucket. Gosh that would be an immersion killer.
Civs are definitely not that similar.
Their core gameplay is symmetrical, but they have far different economic bonuses.
Units have different skins depending on the civs you are playing and if they look too similar then it’s something that can be parched.
Chinese are one of the most unique civs in the game right now, and Delhi is not at all that similar to other civs.
You are talking about AoE 2 here?
If you go into AOE II. That game has so much symmetry it’s annoying. Especially in campaigns. When you are playing the Vikings, the British or the Teutons, it would look the same.
I’m so glad they added a Burgundian civ which made the Joan of arc campaign look very asymmetric.
However, if you compare Persia, China and Britain in AOE II you will see so much asymmetry. From the walls, to the stables, to the houses.
That’s what you are doing with aOE IV.
However, AOE II goes far more asymmetrical. If you were to convert AOE II into a 3D game, you’d have to create a completely new model between China, Persia and Britain. for each castle, stable, archery range, wall, etc.
AOE IV used the same base model and did lots of copy and pasting.
Especially the keeps and walls.
And you can see what they did to the civs in the same regional location like the French and the British. Which look exactly the same with minor modifications. People make excuses s that because Europe hd similar architecture in some cities, hence why they did that. Which is probably the same excuse the devs would have said in AOE II. When in reality, while there are similarities, there are cities wthat are miles apart. And each civ has a stereotype. French being gothic, English being stony and the Germans with their orange roof. Just by sticking to the stereotype which is not innaccurate, you could have created a tonne of asymmetry.
And Chinese look like a generic Asian civ. They chose parts of China that can be made similar to Japan and Korea. It looks more like an Asian mining camp. We will see how truly asymmetrical it is when they release more East Asian civs.
Same with Dehli. Dehli should not be having so many mosque like structures with minarets. They only had 1 building ever that had a minaret. And it had 1 minaret. Yet the game turned them into this generic Islamic Civ. Which looks so similar to the Abbasid. When a game that has only 8 civs uses so much genericity then you can only assume what the game will look like after many more civs have launched.
The unit textures are so over simplified, that metal armour looks like plastic. You cannot tell what material certain things are. The paint colour moulds them together. In AOE II, the units had such intricate designs. Stripy pants, swirly shields, necklaces, iron helmets etc. and player colour was integrated into the design. It complimented the unit design. Not look like a coloured blob in AOE IV. Never has that been a problem in any AOE game except for maybe AOE III. But even them, they are more detailed.
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Definitely not 
AOE II has no unit that looks similar to one another