Whilst this probably nobody reads that has actual influence to the game development of AoE4, I still decided to give it a shot:
Hello! I am Chusik, former player of AoE3. I fell in love with the game in 2010 and attended in multiple 1v1 tournaments since 2013. The announcement of finally getting AoE4 was so exciting and really made me hype.
However, you lost me and many of my friends to a different game 2 years ago. I want to point out the issues Age of Empires 3 had, that made the game impossible to play any longer (on a competitive level):
Balancing: Balanced maps and civilizations is a must. The resources on the maps have to be almost perfectly equal, to make it a competitive game, and therefore having a large playerbase.
Treasures: On the first look, treasures seem to be very interesting, but here’s the issue. Luck must not be awarded by any means.
No Patches/Changes: AoE3 was my favourite game of all time so far. Yet it stayed the same for years and years without any changes. I want the game to be alive. Patches, balance changes, meta-shifts, etc.
Matchmaking System: in all AoE multiplayer games (as far as I know) you can choose your own opponents by deciding whether you want to play or rather kick a player out of the lobby that might be a threat to your rank/elo. STOP THAT. Hosting games and having the might over letting certain People join or not is disastrous. Of course you should be able to play with your friends, BUT MAKE THOSE GAMES UNRATED.
Bugs/Pathing: If bugs exist, I hope you fix them and dont let players abuse them for 3 years before doing anything. Everyone who played AoE knows about the pathing issue, especially for melee cavalry in AoE3.
Disconnecting from game: please make it possible to reconnect to a game if it has not finished yet. This is so frustrating if you’re playing a 3v3 with one player disconnecting, wasting so much time for nothing.
Keep this/suggestions:
I liked the homecity shipments, but I wish more variety! maybe also have something like a “skill tree” with different options where you can only chose one.
All in all: I’m very thankful and however it will turn out, I will be happy and buy it for sure.
AOE III had a great competitive community with constant meta shifts in between patches and expansion releases. But yeah there has been a gradual decline in numbers since official patching ceased.
@Strotinarx said:
AOE III had a great competitive community with constant meta shifts in between patches and expansion releases. But yeah there has been a gradual decline in numbers since official patching ceased.
I mean expansion releases were in 2007 or 2008? nothing has changed since then sadly :c
@DeckTester said:
I want a ranked mode with tiers such as league of legends, for example.
yep that’s perfect, with a similar matchmaking too
You mean the matchmarking tiers? Starcraft Franchise use that system to find opponents of your same level (not always with the same skill thought).
However the game is pretty good in many aspect except the hosting problem, I mean joining a lobby with some people with higher homecity level / ELO rating and being kicked because you don’t have enough (which is associated with newbies players).
Also the hackers/bugs that have been invading the game, it sounds a bit stupid but I love to play AOE III and sometimes I get crushed by overpowered players that I feel they were cheating. I don’t get mad but I feel terrible when I look at current support status of the game (last patch was at february).
Balancing: Balanced maps and civilizations is a must. The resources on the maps have to be almost perfectly equal, to make it a competitive game, and therefore having a large playerbase.
What do you mean with resources on the maps have to be equal?
Balancing: Balanced maps and civilizations is a must. The resources on the maps have to be almost perfectly equal, to make it a competitive game, and therefore having a large playerbase.
What do you mean with resources on the maps have to be equal?
In aoe3 you gather Food, Gold, Wood. I had way too many games with almost no animals nearby to gather from, and this is brutal. if your opponent is at least decent, he knows how to abuse this and he will just crush you. With equal resources i mean that every player should have an equal amount of animals and gold mines in the same distance from the towncenter. (trees are usually not the problem)
I find that if you make the game super competitive , you will lose a lot of the “casual” gamers. “Overbalancing” this game would make it very generic and i’ve seen this through experience. I’ve played both competitively and casually - you lose all the fun when you’re competitively playing trying too out APM your opponent. It’s like with starcraft 2 - they tried to release a million balance patches for the competitive scene that it lost its “casual” gamer base which is greater than competitive player base and now the game is pretty much dead. I miss the generation where games were “Fun to play again” instead of trying to make it a E-sport thing. Don’t get me wrong, competitive play should be included, but not to the extent of what SC2 is.
AOE2 HD’s competitive play seems to be pretty good, and I think they should stick with that formula of game-play.
@PunjabiSpartans said:
I find that if you make the game super competitive , you will lose a lot of the “casual” gamers. “Overbalancing” this game would make it very generic and i’ve seen this through experience. I’ve played both competitively and casually - you lose all the fun when you’re competitively playing trying too out APM your opponent. It’s like with starcraft 2 - they tried to release a million balance patches for the competitive scene that it lost its “casual” gamer base which is greater than competitive player base and now the game is pretty much dead. I miss the generation where games were “Fun to play again” instead of trying to make it a E-sport thing. Don’t get me wrong, competitive play should be included, but not to the extent of what SC2 is.
AOE2 HD’s competitive play seems to be pretty good, and I think they should stick with that formula of game-play.
@PunjabiSpartans said:
I find that if you make the game super competitive , you will lose a lot of the “casual” gamers. “Overbalancing” this game would make it very generic and i’ve seen this through experience. I’ve played both competitively and casually - you lose all the fun when you’re competitively playing trying too out APM your opponent. It’s like with starcraft 2 - they tried to release a million balance patches for the competitive scene that it lost its “casual” gamer base which is greater than competitive player base and now the game is pretty much dead. I miss the generation where games were “Fun to play again” instead of trying to make it a E-sport thing. Don’t get me wrong, competitive play should be included, but not to the extent of what SC2 is.
AOE2 HD’s competitive play seems to be pretty good, and I think they should stick with that formula of game-play.
Sc2 is dead, how this happens?
As of Jan 2017 there are only 7000 players online. All of their custom game lobbies are pretty much dead. Legacy of the Void came out two years ago - pretty big drop off in the player base since then.
@Augustusman said:
I don’t buy the last expansion.
I do, you should give it a try, the campaign was hilarious
By the way, the main problem of starcraft 2 belongs to balancing units at MP games because the game itself becomes a unique strategy / order build like as massing air units (Protoss) or going early rush (zerg). If you become Diamond or higher league tier, you will see the real micro games.
@Augustusman said:
I don’t buy the last expansion.
I do, you should give it a try, the campaign was hilarious
By the way, the main problem of starcraft 2 belongs to balancing units at MP games because the game itself becomes a unique strategy / order build like as massing air units (Protoss) or going early rush (zerg). If you become Diamond or higher league tier, you will see the real micro games.
Here’s my suggestion to OP: some good points in your list but you should have really started with AOE2 to actually understand why 3 isn’t played. Actually you can do that now, go play AOE2 and you will change your standards to a way upper level
I think AOE2 is a lot micro-intensive for a RTS today, especially in economy. Don’t get me wrong. Units and battle in AOE2 are so balanced and diversified that it’s still my favorite today. But it is kind of lame for a game to be decided heavyly on the ability to put each villager on each tree, optimal position of farms, hard time hunting effectively, and handling over 100 vills. If someone can’t do this, the game IS lost. When both players have equivalent economic micro skill THEN strategy can define the game. Games like starcraft went nuts on this part. I’m ok to have the top players handling hundreds of decisions a minute. I just don’t get why is everyone doing exact the same hundred of decisions.
AOM made the bold move to remove a resource (stone). AOM Titans though went too far IMHO:
automatic unit creation (including villagers). That surely made the game a lot easier to play, but it removed one of the greatest differences of a novice player and a average player: always keeping the TC working. Also it made a lot easier to handle economy, battle and keep army building at the same time, making even pro players needing a lot longer games to finish players of much lower skill.
they also made the super atlantean vills. A lot of patches were released before that worked. Still, it was a lot easier to handle fewer vills and not needing to worry about routes for trees for example.
For me AOE3 has reached the best balance so far as economic micro difficult. AOE3 has more expensive vills that work faster. You still have to handle hunting. And scouting, and building position. But not renewing farms didn’t make a lot of difference in the game. Fewer but more expensive farms. Some very slow infinite resources. The 2 concepts I consider more controversial are the trading posts and the Home cities. Still i found trading posts a lot better than the bizarre land commerce of AOE2. Home cities gave some choice to the civ and to a great extent to the strategies. But the way it was done with levels didn’t let all playeres enjoy the full range of choice without a lot of playing. This was surely frustating to most players and I think ES saw it. In one of the AOE3 expansions they made a choice of letting you create a city in lv 10. Also the history setting, units and battles of AOE3 wasn’t so appealing as medieval warfare.
For AOE4 I would prefer medieval units and battles. A lot of chaos with walls, archers, knights, monks, siege engines, land and water. The very complexity of AOE2 makes it so unpredictable that even today it is nice to play. But for competitive reasons maybe it’s necessary to move the economic micro more toward a simplified model. Eco is a great part of Age of Empires. They shouldn’t simplify it to the Titans level (or to the Command n Conquer level which is almost non-existant). A RTS with micro and macro decisions, economic and military without becaming a APM race (like Warcraft3) is what Age was for me. To me this is even more important than the time setting of AOE4.
@Tymofarrah I believe AoM eco management was pretty good (especially for the first 3 civs). The problem with AoE3 eco is the Home City Shipment and the lack of drop-off sites. But I like having the possibility of autoqueue units. Also reseeding farms on AoE2 is tedious not fun, I don’t want them to last forever but have the ability to autoqueue farms can be better than having to go to the mill to manually queue them.
