Nobody cares but we also have passed the anniversary of…

Are we getting any updates?

Again, don’t blame inferno. He is not in charge of this and can only say what the company allows.


I don’t know if anyone still remebers. Exactly a year ago, the game had a major game-breaking bug where the 8 crossbow card was non-functional. It was very easy to fix, but they took almost three months to patch it.
That card is very essential to several civs like French or Portuguese. It makes those civs somewhat unplayable for a while. I sometimes even lose to extreme AI because of that. It was a time when the game had 10k+ concurrent players due to the F2P trial, and I don’t know how many of them were driven away by this and several other bugs.
And it lasted three months. During that period there was almost no communication either. No reply to bug reports. No communication on patch plans. We didn’t even know when they became aware of the bug. Back then some people thought I was overreacting, so did you enjoy the three months without 8 crossbows?

It’s not the devs fault though because their actions were determined by the management and they could not release a patch unless approved. I know the devs should had already been focusing on AOMR at that time, but it shouldn’t prevent them from releasing a quick, simple fix.

So it’s not that “well who cares about communication. I can play the game without watching twitter or forum or discord”. This lack of care from the company would eventually directly affect your gameplay. The bad communication is one of the many demonstrations of the fundamental problem. It is the most apparent, and may be the only one that is observable, but it shows the company cares or knows little about the status of the game and its players. Not to mention it seems they are somewhat trying to move AOE3 players to their new games by intentionally downplaying the game and delaying its communication.

When the DLC eventually comes, we all know there will be bugs or imbalance, which is inevitable and acceptable. But who knows how long it will take them to fix it this time? If there is a major bug and no one tells you whether they knew it and when they are going to fix it, will you still have the incentive to continue playing the game, knowing that the bug may persist for another few months?

I know the AOE3 community may have a tradition of disbelief in the official developers because it “survived” for a decade on community patches and mods without official care. But it took a long time for such efforts to realize and stabilize, and most players would not go out of their way looking for community patches. They would only try the retail version and most would leave if they don’t feel like it. That will also hinder the development of community patches because of lack of players and feedbacks. When Tilanus and his team worked on the Napoleonic Era mod, it took years to reach a playable state. When they worked for FE, all the bigger updates we had were made in two years. However inefficient official support is, it is still more efficient than anything else (as long as there is one of course).

So the real thing I’m urging is some basic support of the game. It does not have to be frequent or major, but it should happen. As resources allocated to the game is limited, I’d rather prefer in-time, small fixes than major updates. In the meantime they need to provide at least basic information about their plans.


TLDR: The lack of communication is a result of the lack of care from the company at present, and the latter is the real part that should be improved.


On Monthly Challenge (9.1)
So the one-year community challenge of skin unlocking (which to me is a more like a filler for the long vacuum, but at least it is an event) has finally ended. And now we have…a restart!

Do you really think the majority of players who are still playing now have missed that skin and really need another month to reclaim it? Isn’t the whole purpose of the thing player retention? Do you think those people who only open the game once a week for the reward will do that anymore if it is a repetitive reward from a year ago? Maybe you really do because you cannot even find one employee in the whole company who has played the game once a month.

There are a lot of past awards that people are more likely to miss. You can easily come up with another series of filler events or challenges if you don’t want to do much additional work and I could do with that (though I shouldn’t if this is any other game).

So nobody foresaw the event is going to end yesterday and made any action in advance? You have 12 months to do one thing, and you still refuse to?

Does anyone from the company also remember there was an Aztec skin that failed and will be granted in the end? I’d even do with another month of challenge for that skin. And yet that did not happen either. The whole thing seems to just have rolled over automatically. Hadn’t anyone made the herculean task of adding it back to the schedule? (You have 11 months) Nobody even walked up and turned the thing off?

Are you telling me nobody has ever touched the game for the past year? Are you literally not going to do or say anything before the DLC? (and hell knows when that will drop)

BTW and nobody said a word about the event reset either. We don’t know if this is an intended reboot for people to reclaim past rewards (which of course needs to be advertised) or an oversight that will be fixed. Just like the civ rotation calendar. It has been obsolete for long and nobody thought of updating it. Did you even realize it exists before people pointed it out?
And we are now in the midst of the long weekend in US and we all know nobody will come up and do anything about it. Just let the car run without anyone at the wheel for three days or three months who cares. Like this is not something as important as a civ name change that you’ll need to work through the weekends and write a whole article about right?

31 Likes

Hilarious and genius that you posted this. It’s been over 13 months since the above was stated and got all of our hopes up, only to go completely silent with a full on reverse uno card.

Nerf Ottos & USA already.

16 Likes

WE decided the best way to communicate with the playerbase is not to communicate at all.

25 Likes

To be fair, Inferno was probably overruled from someone up higher.

I think the Devs probably wish they could talk to us more.

20 Likes

At least the “instead of just posting game news” part was fulfilled.
We are not receiving any game news now.

15 Likes

I love Age of Empires 3, but I also love Age of Mythology, and I’m so happy that Retold is coming out in a few days, that the lack of communication or that they have forgotten the anniversary, I don’t care. Now, if we finish the year and there’s still no new content for AOE3, I’m going to be angry :angry:

1 Like

Last year:

  • Updates every other month.
  • PUP news.
  • The game became free to play.
  • New explorer skin monthly mechanic.

This year:

  • The 42 seconds (Yes, I counted them) hint at a DLC back in February.
  • No updates, no balances, no hot-fixes.
  • Desperate memes.

31 Likes

What I’d expect from that half-announcement: no new maps, no new campaigns, two “new” factions taken from fan mods…

2 Likes

time to retire for me xD

Could anyone from WE come and copy paste the following text?
“We’re working on (fill in the blank here). We’ll share more information with you very soon!”

Won’t take you 1min. And that already improves the communication as you promised.

17 Likes

Exactly (20 characters)

2 Likes

As can be seen, our communication team is too shorthanded to say anything about AOE3 for quite a while. So let’s work together and create/compile memes and promotional materials so they can directly copy paste to the official twitter!

Let us of course begin with:

January 23, 1795: Hussars captured a fleet of 14 warships frozen at anchor, a rare and bizarre instance in history where cavalry overcame a naval force… Unless you’ve been playing Age of Empires.

Credit to @ResultedRex9901

Feel free to write whatever you think is worth showcasing about the game.

13 Likes

Update 14.43676 of #AgeofEmpiresIIIDE introduces the long-requested unique upgraded models for all shared European units! We’ve worked hard to address the demands from the community and create authentic models based on their historical looks. Now your redcoats really wear red coats! Which one is your favorite? How would you utilize them to re-enact historical events? Find out more at Age of Empires III: Definitive Edition - Update 14.43676 - Age of Empires - World's Edge Studio



3 Likes

Update 13.12327 of #AgeofEmpiresIIIDE gives more accurate (and awesome) new looks to the Lakota tokala soldier and the Cheyenne rider!


5 Likes

Yes please. That is absolutely minimal effort but it at least shows that there is a light still switched on for AoE3.

This obviously looks a lot better and suits the time period of aoe2.

1 Like

Edit: merged to the main post

26 Likes

I’m not buying the “they are busy with AOM” excuse anymore. This is trivial. The simplest thing to do is simply take that challenge page down. You have 12 months to do it. I can do it for free.

The last premium excuse we gave you was “maybe they planned a full year of filler events so that they can keep us playing when they are busy and it will end the exact time when AOMR is released”. We took more efforts coming up with that excuse than what you did to the game. I wonder if any other company would be granted such a brain gymnastic before people start to riot. And in the end the event doesn’t even end properly.

We have been screaming for the basics of the basics that any functioning company will do, including yourself. We have become fine with no patches, then no news about patches, then nothing at all. Even the most trivial support is now gone. I can’t imagine the company being so focused at AOM that not a single person can have a spare time for 10minutes.

When you see this kind of rant elsewhere they are asking for patches or updates. Here we are ranting for someone to click a f***ing button.

I’m not going to mistake malice for incompetence.

14 Likes

the handle of AOE3DE should now be studied by every business disciple scholars for the next 20yrs as a classic case study of how to fail in product management.

It is an official phenomenal failure by now.

16 Likes

Well said my friend. We have been nice, patient, and loyal - including making excuses for everything even when it was unwarranted, just to give the utmost benefit of the doubt.

This has gone way, way too far for way, way too long. It’s criminal negligence and I hope an ex-Dev comes on here anonymously to write up their horror story with upper management and why everything became an absolute shit show.

Even if/when the content does arrive, we shouldn’t really forget about said criminal negligence and rejoice over “any update” at this point. We have to pounce when there’s any bit of communication and ask all of the questions then, when there’s a small chance we might catch their attention.

Not to mention, we’ll also be super scared once the next patch comes out, rightfully so, about how long we’ll have to wait for the inevitable game-breaking things to be hotfixed…which they won’t, for months.

7 Likes