I understand that more people are going to throw money on DLCs than leave the game due to its bugs, because “shiny new thing” is more attractive to most people than “quality old thing”. It’s been the modus operandi of game companies for over a decade now. I’ve seen countless games go down because new things kept getting added while the very fundamentals of the game needed fixing and were ignored.
So, just give me a DLC that fixes pathing. Put the A-team on it, I’ll pay it, we’ll all pay it. It’ll be the top 1 recommended DLC for new players. I don’t care at this point, take my money even though I already paid for a game that should be working, make a fool out of me, but fix pathing.
They are not professional enough to do it.
DLC and balance patch are more like mods, quite a few people can do it.
Fix pathing might need to investigate source code which is much harder.
No fucking way I would pay for that. I already paid to have a good pathfinding when I bought the game.
They are taking their time to do it, surely it’s slower than we want, but asking to PAY for what you ALREADY paid is huge, hyper, mega, ultra absurd.
Not sure if just a bait or pure dumbness, but, congrats, you got your 5 minutes of attention.
and what is the alternative mr Dark, cry about it … it has been like 4-5 years already and pathing getting worse every year
add one more vote to this … I would pay for better pathing and better lobby system … things like these takes money to develop and I’m happy to pay the price for a more playable game than these extra civ DLC garbage
you know the coporate jargon - “you asked, we listend”
yea that bs. somethings shouldnt need to be asked to have it implemented if they just played a game or two, test play after every patch but they just wont do it. whenever a bug is filed they’ll just do 1 thing and that bug alone, while leaving evrything else out.
latest example is siege ram ungarrison that was reported like half a year ago.
the bug would cause double click selection on the empty ram when selecting all ram, include ram with units in it, and not allow you ungarrisoning them. you’d have to double click select the ram with units in it for it to work.
most recent patch fixed the bug above, but as expected they only fix it for pressing the actual button on the UI. so this bug extends to hotkey and its the same shit all over again. another 6 month to go
I feel than something like that is coming in the next few years. not for age of empires, because it isn’t the worst at this by far, but some other game (eg starfield) that just has false advertising and is broken on launch. steam and some other stores have started giving full refunds for some games even if they have been played for longer than 2 hours (eg. the day before). It would just take one landmark case, where a company gets found to be cheating their customers
This would set a very bad precedent. If we start paying for bugfixes like that, the game will basically become a pay to win. The devs would have to still maintain a version of the game with bad pathing for those who didn’t buy the dlc, and they would still face players with good pathing in multi. Plus it would be a guarantee to have future bugfixes also be part of DLC’s and the problem would just get bigger and bigger.
I totally agree with you.
Bad pathing is awful, still, AOE2 is in a much better spot than others. There are companies locking purchased game content after cancelling internet connection to older titles (thanks, DRM); companies adding lootboxes and microtranshitions; consoles requirying monthly fee to play online; advertised content being cancelled; broken games never getting fixed etc.
The problems kept getting bigger and bigger anyway. Since the start of DE, there were noticeable bugs compared to the HD/CD versions, which have never been fixed. In 4 years. Instead, they kept getting worse, to the point where we’re at right now, where we consciously avoid certain unit compositions because we know they’re impossible to play with.
It would indeed set a bad precedent. I don’t know how to express better the idea that if money is the incentive they need to fix pathing, I’m willing to give it to them.
The only plausible solution, to me, would be to put the code as open source. Let people test the code and all versions of the game on their computers.
It’s the only game I know where your units literally disobey you. There are 20+ years old RTS which have never been updated and still have perfect pathing. Whereas AoE II keeps getting updates which lead to more bugs. I feel the knowledge on how to make a working game should be evolving, not devolving. This is clearly not a technical matter, but rather a “financial resources allocated to X task” matter.
No matter how many “it’s not that easy… we have to modify the source code… it could break the entire game…” they come up with, there’s no excuse for units behaving as they do now.
We’re not talking about the same problem getting bigger. I’m talking about the hypothetical scenario where paid bugfixes have been introduced and the devs start milking the concept, creating an unfair divide between those who paid for those dlc and don’t suffer from bugs and those who didn’t. If you’re ready to pay for bugs to be fixed for you and don’t care about what it will mean for other players, then you’re incredibly cynical and loving the game won’t change that.
Somthing like pathing can’t be fixed by a DLC, since there couldn’t be 2 ways of pathing, one for players with DLC and one for the player without it.
Rather, I think it should be a patch avaible for everyone.
If the problem is the lack of funds, FE should be trasparent and say it, the community will find a way to support.
