As a software engineer myself I cannot accept that a masterpiece of gamming desing as AOE 2 has not yet come to solve the recconection problem. THIS IS INADMISSIBLE
I can understand that back in the 90s when the game was first thought the idea of reconnection was dificult because BY THAT TIME wifi didnt exist, broadband neither so any multplayer game would need to be in a LAN enviroment so if the player disconnects it probably means the whole lan crashed so it is pointless try to reconnect (that can be a fair assumption back in 2000)
BUT 20 YEARS HAS PASSED
People use internet to play, and local temporary failures ARE NORMAL…
ABSOLUTELLY NO SERVICE IN THE INTERNET WOULD MAKE MONEY IF THIS “NO DISCONNECTION ALLOWED” POLICY WAS APPLIED
watching an instagram live… got disconnected for 2 seconds? sorry cant rejoin
virtual classes? meetings? disconnected… cant come back!
by the time im writting this long post my internet disconnected twice and i sill am able to keep writing and later post (bad hotels internet)
I bet noone plays AOE singleplayer mode… not even the begginers not even to practice… IT IS BORING
I myself tryed to finish all campaings so i could feel myself that had explored the game, but i got bored after the first one.
so begginers dont have patience for single player and PRO gamers get too easy even the ultimate AI… single player is there just to fill the layout
If the game had be abandoned ok we could forgive this mistake… BUT ENSEMBLE keeps trying to squeeze any money out of it by making expansions (even the mode pay to win is now avaiable with the recent PAID civilizations which have some clear advantage), skins (what i think is the lammest thing a game might have… how old are the players? 12? i bet no!) and gameplay changes… so it is inadmissible that such a big BUG HAD’NT BEEN SOLVED SO FAR
As I see there are few EASY TO IMPLEMENT STEPS ROADMAP THE ISSUE
1- give each player a “disconnection counter” at beggining of the match (each player already has a PAUSE counter, IMHO that should be shared)
2- for each disconnection of a given player during a match, if the counter lesser than threshold (lets say 5…) pause the game and start a countdown of 25 secs (trainning time of 1 villager and BASIC TIME UNIT OF THE GAME)
3A- if player reconnects, game follows on.
3B - if player doesn’t reconnect and he was the last member alive in the the player’s team → OPPONENTS VICTORY
3C - if player doesn’t reconnect and the player’s team still has members fighting
- share all resources currently owned by the disconnected player among all other players
- put the AI to continue playing as the disconnected one
YEAH, put tha AI to keep playing.
even if is a very easy AI… the simple fact of someone abandoning a game makes everyone IMPACTS THE MORALE and makes everyone else also quit
the information of someone disconnected should be TEAM restricted or not even showed to the players (so they keep fighting as hard as they can not knowing what happened)
“But places an AI in is an unfair advantage to the team” so put a very easy AI… the one that is basically “filling the map”
advantages: keep morale up, doesn’t aware the enemy, MIGHT makes the match still PLAYABLE
If the producers really want the game to be considered COMPETITIVE this is a must that has to be done for YESTERDAY
if the producers only want to squeeze more money for any fool that loved the game in the past… so okay dont fix bugs, only pay designers to make some skins and ■■■■■■■■ for kids. It is easy, cheap, doesnt bring compatibilities issues, doesnt even need to test…
skins are the easy way to “take a candy from a baby”… so companies without a good product/idea use it to make money out of kids