… as this starts to be ridiculous
16 Likes
Always has been
3 Likes
Agreed 100%. “Ms reward” scheme should be discontinued for AoE2 or only reward game time or matches played. Littering real users’ (the people who actually play the game) lobby browser with useless lobbies is not behaviour which should be encouraged. And I disdain the fact that it is.
If by off-chance anyone with power or influence to fix this is reading, here’s a socratic dialogue-monologue to try to convince you.
Why should we care?
Because this harms the user experience.
Why does it harm the user experience?
Because the user expects to find lobbies where the host wants to play a game. If they find many lobbies which take up lobby space for no reason by intention (this is not just someone who’s fallen asleep while waiting for players) and because you’ve encouraged them to (this is not just some random act of malice by some person who wants to make my game experience worse for seemingly no reason), then it will frustrate the user.
Why will it frustrate the user?
Because they expect all lobbies to offer a host wanting to play at least some sort of game. And they don’t expect a large number of lobbies to fail this most basic expectation.
But isn’t idling in a lobby the game?
No, it is not.
Why not?
When people access the lobby browser in Age of Empires II, they want to play Age of Empires II.
But the user is sitting in a lobby… in Age of Empires II! How is this not playing Age of Empires II?
The lobby browser, along with all the menus, is just a shell. It’s the user interface which lets your users facilitate, start and play the actual game. Using that interface is not playing the game.
But it says on our system here that gentleman/lady over there waiting in a lobby called “MS XBOX REWARD POINTS NO PLAY” for 3 hours, 43 minutes, 5 seconds and counting is indeed playing one of our titles called Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition. What do you say to that? You don’t seem to have all your ducks in a row!
Look. You essentially have two types of consumers here. Customers who have bought your game and actually play it. And Game Pass subscribers who start the game application with the sole purpose of littering the lobby browser so they can game your ‘rewards’. Which one of these consumer groups will give you more revenue both short term and long term by satisfying at the expense of the other (“ms reward point” exploiting at the expense of decent lobby browser experience for actual players versus decent lobby browser experience for actual players at the expense of “ms reward point” exploiting)? I support this game and buy every dlc despite not necessarily always being a huge fan of every new dlc. I might re-evaluate doing that. I might not be the only one in this position. You think you will lose more money from disappointing game pass subscribers that they can’t abuse aoe2 to farm “ms rewards” anymore?
7 Likes
I just ignore them and scroll away.
Random malicious lobby hosts (because that’s just how some people are) I can accept just ignoring and scrolling away…
Systematic and recurring scores of faux lobbies (because there’s some function in place put there by developers encouraging this when it doesn’t need to) I should not have to just accept to ignore and scroll away.
5 Likes
The attached screenshot is not of filtered results. I just sorted it by ping and it was hard to read and find a game because of those trash lobbies. Once you have 60-70% of those and some random, valid lobby in between, you just get annoyed.
People create/enter those lobbies and go to sleep. For what? For some digital points? What a waste of electricity. We need to hire some eco activists lol 
6 Likes
The problem is, the way the lobby system currently works in 2 DE, you simply can’t scroll away. And usually, players won’t use sites like Spectator Dashboard to browse for lobbies.
5 Likes
I love how the xbox crossover has literally done more damage to this game than it helped it
4 Likes
These reward lobbies were already around before the release of the console version.
AoE 1 DE is pleagued by them as well but obviously not on the same scale as AoE 2 DE:
The reason for that is quite simple: as AoE 1 and 2 are relatively on the PC’s performance, these reward points are easy to grind.
1 Like
Things like this make the lobby an inferior system compared to ranked. Gladly we have ranked in DE, so we arent stuck only a lobby.
6 Likes
lmfao 