Ofc, but he wants to get rid of family sharing completely. Not just for ranked like the original poster who I agree with.
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There isn’t way to lock family share accounts from ranked. In game doesn’t know if you own game or not. It’s either disabling family share or not. Personally i support disabling family share for the game. It would solve many big issues like smurfing and hacking ruining other people’s fun. Game is 10€ on sales so very small loss for core fans who are currently play the game fairly trought family share.
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I think this would be a really bad idea that punishes people who legitimately use the family sharing functionality. Removing it would just be a shallow workaround to avoid actually addressing the problems with the game (exploits for hackers, poor matchmaking system, etc.).
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i agree with disabling family sharing. My family also play the game but each bought a copy of the game + dlcs, it’s so cheap and provides THOUSANDS of hours of entertainment and fun, there’s no excuse to play it for free! (also ppl who have no interest in multiplayer will probably just torrent it anyway) Oh, and I also have friends who have 5 smurf accounts using family share.
You know what’s not fun? Getting your bottom kicked match after match, listening to “noob get rekt, fkn noobs n00b etc” 11 11 11 105 over and over on chat. Now that’s not fun at all.
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This is another example of hate comments, reflecting personal traumas that have nothing to do with family share.
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well it has a bit to do, because i check the steam account of the people who wrote it using aoe2.net, and it’s very easy to know if they’re a real person or a smurf account lol ¯(ツ)/¯
But for me it’s all the same if they disable it or not, i’ll keep playing ranked anyway. In my opinion though it’s something to consider, that’s all i was trying to say.
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I agree, but I’d rather have a shallow workaround than nothing at all. Who knows how much effort they’re willing into detecting cheaters, let alone fighting smurfs. In the mean time, this Band-Aid fix can be implemented tomorrow.
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Sure. I also agree with not letting family share accounts play ranked. After all, if they play ranked, they should buy it on a new account. Don’t force people to play William Wallace, especially if you only let them do one mission a day. I’ve beaten William Wallace on 3-5 previous versions of the game, and I can’t be bothered doing it again. That’s how I see it.
Not only smurfers ruin other people’s day. I think the people who resign early or don’t try to win the game also ruined my day. What I am saying is that everybody can always blame other people for any reason. There is literally no way to fix all these issues.
Making people to buy the game again isnt a solution. This game isn’t that expensive
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I am really curious about where those good guys came from, who contribute the games by using family share, making mods to contribute the community but really poor to afford buying the games separately.
Or is this the imagination or a fancy excuse from those jerks who abusing the smurf accounts?
Sure if a jerk want to buy a account to smurf, let him do it so this game can gain the money at least.
But right not playing a smurf is zero cost.
Everyone with common sense should agree that banning family sharing will probably improve a lot of the cases on smurf abuse.
Again and again, to me those who play smurfs defending the family sharing, are REALLY disgusting.
This guy even made up a fancy scenario of mod makers to formalize the use of family sharing.
Yeah, I wouldnt deny this possibility, but I would rather believe it’s totally an excuse from these pathetic smurf abuse guys.
DISGUSTING
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I’ll say it again: THINK about the consequences before suggesting dumb stuff. You cry like a kid about the game dying but your proposal will just kill the game faster if you kick out a portion of active players. I’ve seen it before; narrow views and bad decisions kill business fast. We are at the point where income comes from dlcs and new content, not the base game. RTS games in general have a small niche after all, and aoe2 de already hit the new player growth celiling after 2 years + aoe4.
At least OP is all about disabling it for ranked only, unlike your dumb and short-sighted posts here and on other threads about removing family sharing. Your posts are just ignorant. Worst, you refuse to see how bad of an idea that is, so stubborn.
Your main arguments are “paying again” so the company gets money/discourage smurfing, plus not affording the game again “doesn’t contribute to the community”. But just a remider that on voobly, game rangers, etc, most people didn’t pay anything at all. They pirated the game. Yet the game survived because there were active players; now you want to kick out a chunk of active players. About you saying they don’t contribute to the community, look, back then those players supported modders. Guess what, The forgotten was a mod and the FE team were modders. Without an active playerbase years ago, aoe2 de wouldn’t even exist. Furthermore, on a previous post you questioned if such portion of the active playerbase was big enough to be considered. That’s not important. What’s important is that it exists and helps the game to be alive.
As for your other arguments, just let me remind you that people could create countless free accounts on voobly and game ranger to smurf. But they didn’t because the environment was different (better elo calculation, ranked lobby, team limiters, etc). That just shows that the main problem isn’t family sharing, but the current aoe2 de environment instead. Banning family sharing is just ignoring the real problems and reducing active players. For example, imagine they implement your dumb suggestion, but there are chinese whales who just buy the game again and they still smurf and hack. The result would be the problem still persisting and a portion of the playerbase killed. This is why companies don’t hire any clown who can’t see the bigger picture to take decisions for them.
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you are really insisting you point, dont you know everyone hates the smurf now?
We shouldn’t argue much here because you seems think you are a long visioned, smarter guy here.
let me just simply as you a simple question:
Forget about the family share,
do you think smurf is ruining the game, ruining other gaming experience?
I am really curious you as a smurf, what is your answer here.
And it’s funny that the one who like this reply, the “SouMexican”
is also a guy who play smurf accounts which he admitted before 
And I search about the rules of family share:
First, It’s supposed to be one account to play at a time, I really dont know how the poor family can enjoy the game together from this Rule.
(But the smurf is definitely fine with it, because from all the time, mostly there’s many “single toxic person” abusing this feature with very good imagination about many good families)
Secondly, how about we keep the family share, but improve the Smurf reporting system, if any smurf is found and under a family share, the whole family share accounts will be banned forever and they need to purchase the new game in order to keep playing it?
I think this way we can really save those real good families.
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Because that’s how it’s supposed to work, genius.
All the examples I mentioned involve single player, I never said people played together. How old are you? aren’t family sharing features well known by the steam community by now? You just found out this today lol.
On the other hand, those links even strengthen my points because that means that the people who smurf already bought multiple copies of the game. So banning family sharing won’t solve anything since they can just change their names through steam profile and keep playing or switch accounts. The only thing that can stop them is VAC bans. But even then, they can just create a new account and buy the game again on a different pc… like they’ve been doing so far.
The funny part is that you didn’t even know this. You just informed yourself today. All this time you’ve been wanting to ban family sharing without having a clue about the system. So ignorant.
no, the whole comment you said to yourself sounds super non-sense and stupid.
Banning the family share will immediately stop all smurfs accounts for the multiplayer access.
and you didnt even answer my question:
Please stop keep raise out something not even related to the reasons your play smurf.
Those examples said by a smurf is really disgusting.
Please directly answer why you play smurf.
Forget about the family share,
do you think smurf is ruining the game, ruining other gaming experience?
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No lol, that’s just dumb.
For TGs, they need to log in at the same time to smurf. That’s not covered by family sharing.
As for 1vs1, smurfing will make them hit the elo ceiling sooner or later. So their only option is losing points on purpose to play with low elo players. Which they can do anyway without family sharing.
I swear you are just ignorant about family sharing yet you want to ban it lmao.
You don’t say, Sherlock. Plus you realized you are wrong.
so if anyone with clear mind knows that your statements are insane.
Now we see what your moral standard is, to me you are just a selfish guy who trying to justify your selfishness by telling me some stories which appeared with no support.
I wont deny there are few propotion of people is using family share in a right way. But defintely not your fantansy story. Everyone agrees the smurf abuse is more serious right now.
smurfs are used to push the others in TG.
smurfs in 1v1 arent happned as many as TG but it’s still disgusting, imagine how many beginners are beaten by smurfs.
@RadiatingBlade edit: Please do not call out players on the forum per the code of conduct. If you would like to report a player, please do so in game or by submitting a request at support.ageofempires.com.
If family share is banned for multiplayer, everyone will be happy.
But this is already been told that this separation wouldnt be possible.
And to stop playing smurfs without cost, banning family share is the only solution.
I wont reply to you anymore as I think you are really not clear about the whole picture.
And I have no interests to discuss about banning family share with a smurf who playing a smurf for winning abuse or other selfish reasons.
I think family share will cause more problems but banning it seems the most logical thing since the devs can not track and shut down hacking and or smurfing accounts
I think there should be limitation for certain things
For smurfs
For ranked so its random maps but not random civs
There should be a ranked Lobby for people who play mostly arabia or arena and it should have a counted tating
But the true purpose should for now be banning family share to limit the use of smurfs fix tg and rankeds at all Punishing alt f4er and stabilize the game so it wont be the fossil of age 4 also people who smurf and play mostly play 2 maps mostly like suemexican or the other ranter are just 20% of the community
We need to safe aoe2 not destroy it
First, I will blame the management of this game for not taking the issues into actions for a long long time.
Second, I will blame those disgusting smurfs ruining the game from what the leak of the system, they are typically same as cheating also.