Our goal remains to preserve the experience you love while looking for ways to grow Age II: DE

Age of Empires II: DE II - Discussion
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This is a quote from the latest update, and I just want to air my thoughts on this bit in particular.

This part about “preserve the experience you love”, it’s already dead. The line has been crossed with the Wu, Wei & Shu in ranked and all the baggage they bring.

If you want to preserve what people love about AoE2, get them out of ranked. I have no issues with weirder stuff in alternate game modes. For example; Battle for Greece was really enjoyable…but that does not mean I want to fight Athenians verses Franks, or worse…Byzantines.

For a brief glimpse of me as a player; I play both ranked and campaigns and also partake in smaller tournaments. So I like to appreciate civs within the context of their campaigns, but also enjoy taking several random Middle Ages civs and fighting them online. While Three Kingdoms does the former (not well, given the magic and repeated final level) it actively ruins the latter.

This is why Battle for Greece is ok with me; because I don’t have to think of these antiquity civs within the context of a Middle Ages setting. But for Three Kingdoms, I do. I have to see them every time I select a civ. Play against them if someone picks one. And think about how to play against them if they are used against me. To make things even more clear, I have never been this angry about AoE2 before. Other content I could ignore if I didn’t like it, but not this.

I play AoE2 for Middle Ages content. If I want antiquity, I play Return of Rome or Battle for Greece. If I want magic, and heroes in ranked, I play Age of Mythology.

So for me, keeping Three Kingdoms in ranked and continuing to enjoy AoE2 are incompatible.

I know I made a bunch of topics about Three Kingdoms, but…

1: I want to make it clear what this phrase means to me. That “preserving AoE2 you love” is not compatible with keeping the 3K civs in ranked (And from the mass of other angry comments, I am not alone in this postion). I’ve said before that replacing them is the best option for everyone, so I’m not going to demand that the DLC be made less valuable.

2: It’s been the biggest disappointment I have experienced with this game, ever. The hints were leading in one direction and went the other way. And I had been hoping for a exploration of Middle Ages East Asia for years. Now that’s firmly in the trash.

3: I really really enjoy this game, played it as a child and came back to it more recently after its revival. But Three Kingdoms are a stain on it for me, and it saddens me that to avoid constantly being upset/frustrated/disappointed every time I boot the game up, I will likely not be playing it for much longer. Certainly not buying any more content for it, that’s for sure. Unless these three civs are dealt with.

If not, I’ll be finishing my mod and peace-ing out.

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Also the fact that this needs to be said at all is astounding.

Hey you like a game? Well our goal is to not make you like it less.

In a vacuum why, oh why, would you ever need to clarify that?

I think it’s because they know they’ve stepped in it.

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Agree, if they are honest about “preserve the experience you love” then they should move the 3 Kingdom “civ” to an alternative gamemode.
On this forum is suggested to have a Legend mode beside the Chronicles mode, I imagine if the dev want to do a King Artur or Robin Hood story, something that straddle the line of of AoE and Age of Mythology, it could go to that version.
With that, they can preserve the experience we love, while also do more experimental things when they feel like it.

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I still fail to get the idea of forcing them onto the main game especially ranked

The “ideal” ranked players would take anything
The not-so-ideal ranked players (ie many people) care about the theme and consistency
The presumed “target audience”, Chinese 3K fans who may have never played the game before: how likely would they see the game and thought “oh I must climb high onto the ladder with the 3K civs otherwise I would not buy the game at all!”

More likely they did this to fulfill some stupid KPI or failed promises.

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Fucking lmao

There’s literally no way they thought they were doing this…right???

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that whole statement was nothing more than pr lip service and the only thing to take away from this is that they’ll keep pimping out the game to milk as much money as they can out of it, even at the cost of turning the game into a mere shadow of its former self. At the very least it’s a concrete answer and F U to the playerbase and the perfect sign to tune out of the game while you still have some love left for it.

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No announcement really needed, but good luck with your mod and other video games. Hopefully the devs see your comment, as that’s who it was probably meant for.

We deserve to boot up games and have fun rather than frustration, for sure. Hopefully you have other game franchises you can turn to that have a near-impeccable record of never deviating from their roots.

Pretty amazing run for a game, though. Approaching 30 years, then one $10 DLC with a few new civs that might get updated someday or moved to Chronicles irreparably ruins it all for you. Unfortunate. But, there are a ton of games out there, you’re bound to find some to meet all your gaming needs. Did you ever try Baldur’s Gate 3? Now might be your time to try that. Turmoil is simple but surpsingly addictive. I like Defense Grid 1 and 2, if you enjoy tower defense games. Others might have some suggestions. I’m not sure about other RTS games, as AoE is the only one I really like.

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Disagree. The line was crossed with the addition of “Flemish Revolution”.

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The civs won’t be deleted even people don’t want them.
Things are happened. Don’t stop, just keep moving on.

The very first, easiest and most possible thing is to make the 3K civs more accurate and balanced.
No matter what, a civ should be accurate to what they represent and be balanced when they are in ranked, whether it is in the base game or in a separated mode. I’ve created a topic for this: Move on and make Three Kingdoms more accurate and balanced. At least the 3K fans can be more satisfied.

The second thing is to introduce new civs based on neighboring groups of medieval China.
Particularly like Bai, Tibetans, and a Khitangut split. Don’t use those groups to “rename” the 3K civs since that is making the civs neither decent to 3K nor decent to the medieval groups. Bring them as their own civs properly. Even if the 3K won’t be moved, we still can enjoy what we’ve been long for.

The last and most difficult thing is to move the 3K out from the ranked, from the base game.
This is definitely going to disappoint the 3K fans as that was promised in the promotions. But at least we would have already brought the more accurate 3K and other new multiplayer civs at the time so perhaps that could become more acceptable.

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This is just a slogan. They said one thing and did another.

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They preserved my money.

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I hope that was more forced into it/a mistake.

I’m willing to give them a chance to correct course, and most importantly correct this mistake. But I will not be spending a penny until they do.

Sadly this is the 5th time this has happened to me recently. So honestly…I’m running out.

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They ever ask any of us how we might design civs creatively!?

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:open_mouth: Wow! I haven’t had a ton of luck with 2 or 3 of my favorite franchises either (can only think of 2 off the top of my head)… they tend to eventually go down a path I don’t like… but I think ‘5 times recently’ takes it to whole other level.

I think games have a habit of following trends or ideas I don’t personally care for. In the case of 3K, the ‘magic powers’ and ‘auto-gold gen’ lean heavily toward a style I don’t particularly care for in an otherwise ‘realistic’ RTS game. Those didn’t break my AoE2:DE spirits, since it’s subtle and I can avoid playing them if needed… and it adds a little variety that I hope they don’t go overboard with. I can see why it would be a big problem for others. (For AoE3, though, this type of thing was pervasive and unavoidable for me (i.e,. no resource drop-offs, artificial build limits, audio I didn’t like, and some other things), so I had to stop playing AoE3 as I wasn’t having fun anymore.)

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Might be part of the reason I am fighting so hard against this. Too often it has been completely outside my power to do anything. Just give up and leave.

But here there does seem to both be enough anger, and positive noises from the devs so far. Let’s see how it goes…

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Adding new architecture sets - Balkan, Chinese and Nomadic should also be added.

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Not at the top of my list but certainly wouldn’t complain. 10 civs using East Asian is a bit much.

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We need to follow the trend to enriching the game following the elite UU skins and castles. In advance of regional specific monasteries and villagers.

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Bigger than Icons DLC?

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Icons were a nothing-burger. Didn’t care and they don’t impact my enjoyment by existing.

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