Gotta love how running rough shod over fundamental design concepts by tertiary, inferior developers has lamed feudal age naval combat, gave us palisade gates, and one day led to the creation of the Cuman civilization.
other than the cumans, no one has ever complained about any of the other “issues”
Many players don’t like that the average game length is now roughly 3x as long relative to AoC. Balance decisions, such as the inclusion of a cheap, four tile blocking monstrosity or moving fire ships forward an age, directly inflate match times. Don’t ask me to explain the correlation here; if it isn’t obvious to you, you’ve not played enough.
Match length is going to be a very high hurdle for this game. In addition to removing palisade gates entirely and reverting the fire ship change, nerfs need to hit the Voobly meta boomer play style, if this game is ever going to become more than a niche curiosity.
Has someone palisade gated your militia in? have they raided your fishing ships with fire galleys? Because those specific issues almost seem personal to you at this point.
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Funny of you to blame voobly for ruining the game, when it’s exactly what kept the game alive until now.
Also I don’t know how it isn’t obvious to you that you can make fire ships as well.
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In all honesty, I’d have rather the game died with the zone than to be over developed into a sim city franchise. Most of the bad balance decisions were implemented post-zone collapse and at the behest of, or at least accepted by, the Voobly community.
To fix this game, revert those changes identified and also comprehensively nerf buildings:
Walls by ~ 50%
Town Centers by ~ 60%
Houses by ~ 75%
Castles by ~ 80%
Build times remain the same or longer, and construction cannot begin until villagers ‘deliver’ stockpiled resources to the build location from either T.C., lumber or mining— aka good bye quick wall scrubs.
You have absolutely zero sources to back this up. Simply because it’s untrue.
The switch from AoC to HD balance did not produce any increase in game length. You can ask any high level player who played on both and he can attest that. Watch some recs. Compare tournament games. Length inflation was not a thing.
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Nah, you’re just a troll
I won’t waste more time talking with someone who barely understands the game.
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The original design can be wrong and is.
So there’s benefits to being smart?
These unit mechanics are also far deeper than simple damage bonuses.
The rock-paper-siccors triangle emerges out of the unique properties of all these ships.
Fire ships are great against fishing boats.
Galleys can also be used against land.
Demo’s can be used to destroy tons of land units if too close to the shore or on shallows.
That’s not the issue. Even if all the bugs on Age of Empires 2 DE are fixed and the game is feature complete, I still don’t want your change.
If you want games to be fast and skip the early game, do you like playing deathmatch?
Imagine telling a former alpha tester of multiple Age releases that they don’t know anything about Age of Empires…
Zone matches were typically around 20 minutes; most games today approach a hour. Even when there is a sizable skill difference, a quick match today requires an arduous amount of “winning” to actually win and finish the game. The reason being the litany of changes that elevated spawn camping to near-meta level.
From this perspective, I can confirm: this game has been changed by people who weren’t up to par with ES, neither in terms of design acumen or rigorous play testing.
The changes should be reverted and eliminating the abuses of game mechanics, such as quick walking and building scouting through the fog of war, should be the devs focus going forward.
First, most 1v1 games don’t approach 1h. The average 1v1 on Voobly on WK is 40 minutes. And surprise, AoC games are 5 minutes longer on average, with 45 minutes.
Maybe something you don’t realize is that game style evolved since the Zone. Without a single balance change, play style changed drastically over the decade since the Zone shut down. So you can’t blame increased game length on bad balance decisions.
And again, the average game time length didn’t increase when people switched from AoC to Voobly, so your argument is moot anyway.
I just think you got attached to a play style that was used on the Zone, and now you disregard all the evolutions in strategy that happened to AoC without a single balance change being adopted for a decade.
The ages of skirm spear flushes let way for scouts into archers, drushes and more recently, the rise of man at arms.
Similarly in Team Games, the pocket meta of going FC into knights gradually changed to Fast Feudal into scouts. All that in AoC. Strategies change over time, as people perfect them.
And finally, if I may add :
The expansions made walls weaker and longer to build, reduced HP on houses. Increased infantry bonus vs buildings and added arson. So much for making camping stronger than in AoC.
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Man you are not thinking right… Did you drink or …???
Fire ships are OK, they are a moderately expensive unit, in II age even more expensive if you think of the number of villagers. And they are well countered by demo ships. What is the problem ???
Few people play MIRROR and they should keep being able to do so. I do not do it most of the time. But wtf is so bad about it ? If they want to play mirror - let them
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Mirror is unfair, because it allow one person to unilaterally dictate too much about the match from the outset. You wouldn’t enjoy one person being able to set the map to their exclusive preference. The fact that this mechanic was installed at all reveals how clueless this development team is. There isn’t a Sherriff among them.
Also, Voobly is not the zone. Voobly incorporated two terrible expansions, and the community galvanized around “top players” who can’t go two minutes without abusing exploits. AoC was a fast paced competitive RTS featuring incredible players while AoE2 DE is a AoE themed game balanced by and offered to SIMS fans.
You really can’t get over it. First off, no one on Voobly over 2k plays AoC anymore, so this data is from players below 2k, hardly what I could call pro. Voobly has a wide range of skill going from total beginners to high level players.
Yes it’s not the Zone, but it’s where a the majority of the community that was left went after the Zone shut down, and who have kept on playing to this day. And there, playing the original untouched AoC, with skill level ranging from absolute noob to high level players, the average game length is 45 minutes.
So I’m asking you this. Is it the fault of the new devs and their balance changes if players who are still playing the ORIGINAL game playing differently from what people used to ?
Or maybe, I don’t know, play styles evolved on their own and it’s not what you used to like (or what you remember it to be), so you have to find someone to blame ?
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Thank you for your comment, and I can appreciate your earnesty in the face of my growing frustration.
That said, play styles have not “evolved” and the top players do not demonstrate skill sets that were non existent on the zone. The distinguishing characteristic is that, today, players clearly and openly abuse game mechanics.
What we would have called petulant, unsporting conduct doesn’t even get questioned by the Voobly crowd, because the people doing them are, in fact, clearly talented. But this is wrong, and this mentality festered over the titles life to pervert the community and the gameplay into an obscenely long base builder.
Therefore, my concern is that this title will always be a quaint, obscure, fringe curiosity, when it has the potential to be so much more.
Edit: oh yeah, fire ships still have no business being available in Feudal. Bad design change is bad.
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care to gie any examples of “petulant unsporting conduct”?
A wolf or jaguar jumps your villager, so you quick wall him to avoid losing the unit and to dim the impact of a missing building ( say, dock or forward barrack). This same situation, but to avoid casualties in your wood line or berries from drush, m@arms or scouts. Sure, one could control their military to maximize their surprise factor but thats not usually sufficient to overcome wildly overpowered building hp. Quick walking is absolutely an exploit of game mechanics. Full walling, especially every game, means you are a weaker player (not to mention a lame excuse for a human being); you should be penalized for being weak.
The second is scouting through fog of war with unplaced buildings.
Both of these tactics typically are used to shore up early game deficiencies, to stall for time and set up the boom. Booming is absolutely Age at its worst.
So, to recap the thread: balance post ES is fully tilted towards booming which makes AoE2 DE a hugely unsatisfying ■■■■ tease. Fire ships were conceptually designed to match with War Galleys and advancing them an age is as bad a decision as moving archers and knights forward an age would be. Comprehensive nerfs are required to all buildings: no building should have armor, and HP reductions should be steep ~ at least 50% and approaching 80% on castles (except feudal watch towers which are fine now). Construction should not be able to occur until materials are delivered from a stockpile. And, newly added, resource nodes particularly main gold piles are reduced by half.
These changes should get turtles out of their spawns well ahead of their 40 minute imperial age, trash army push.
Basically, ES balance was perfect except when it wasn’t but in this case it’s players abusing it.
I mean, how do you even argue with that ?
Prove it. Show me all the balance changes that made walling and booming easier. And I don’t mean people “abusing mechanics” that were put in place by ES themselves. I want example of changes by FE.
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No one said anything about ES having been anywhere near perfect. I remember day 1 Teutonic T.C. rushes in vanilla and the Koreans in base AoC; therefore, in praising ES I pointed to their acumen and play testing rigor, both of which are decidedly lacking in FE. Cumans are exhibits A through D.
I have several thousands 1v1, multiplayer, and vs AI battles informing me, as I navigate this highly subjective waters. And, IMO, Age 2 was a better game without African, Forgotten, and Khans for myriad reasons and it’s unfortunate DE integrated garbage.
@RadiatingBlade edit: Stay on topic and refrain from personal insults.
IM Ok with hearing more cries from the retrograde hyperconservative people from ZONE, which is just history. THE FUTURE is D.E. and that is it. Just sorry to see the split in the community. But retrograde rigid minds have the right to say that they think ofc. Nothing against it