Is there any possibility to figure out which metrics are being used when the balance changes are taking place? (e.g win/loss ratio, player tests etc…) There is also not benefit of bringing it up in official forums, however, including several players who brag about how they can influence the balance of the game. There are also twitch streamer players who claimed some changes before taking place and indicate about “this will be unplayable next patch anyway”
These questions require an official answer from devs because currently, the public beta preview has multiple questionable changes which are not demanded by the player base on the forums nor discussed before here, so that it’s important to know about with which approach the game is being balanced right now, and if the game is balanced around secret balance discords without an explanation, what is the point and importance of the official forums?
Hi everyone, so today I was hanging around Iamturk’s twitch stream, then I’ve encountered with 2 top players of aoe3 discussing about the balance of the game, Kaiserklein said that there is a forgotten empires discord where another top player kynesie is in
and he doesn’t care leaking it
Can forgotten empires devs confirm it? so everybody waiting an answer. somebody lights me up pls. im liarliarliar on aoe and liar3times on twicth
This way of speech doesn’t help anyone at first place, especially if things are getting leaked this easily on random twitch chats and meanwhile where community users don’t know what is going on behind the scenes and the player who leaks it says “go ahead who cares”, that is not the most ideal thing to wish.
This is interesting. I am a ghost on the ESOC forum, and I remember a while ago Kaiser posting something along the lines of: “You don’t know how much the top player are involved on the patches.” that intrigued me.
Knowing the existence of a Forgotten Empires Discord with top players explains a lot.
Also, on the PUP the Russians settler batch cost a little bit less food. Which is something that only Haitch and Kaiserklein have proposed. So it’s very clear that the top players are involved on the balance patches…
So Breeze have a method to his madness when he talks about the semi-ff gang… most interesting.
But I do think they should listen carefully to what the top players says because they are the people who play this game the most.
Also, I think a brief summary on the patches notes explaining why that particular change was made will be enough.
I think I remember him saying that too, it seems that aoe3 balance is based around top players mostly, except that wouldn’t explain the Aztec hidden nerf thing, it’s possible the devs only partly listen to the pros
Good point, that was a buff no one really thought about, from what I’ve seen kaiserklein doesn’t think Russia is as bad as most people think but he still thinks they are below average, at least that’s how he was talking about one time on stream in a game Russia vs Dutch against Kevin. That’s why it makes sense that when they buffed Russia they buffed Russia in a small but meaningful way.
all i want to say they are not age of empires developers , they are kaiser and his friends developers. everyone know it . dont talk again like "we are upgrading for balance and make a playable game for you. everybody knows U are upgrading this game for kaiser and hazza and the others. i dont wanna read or listen your lies AAGAİN. İ PAİD THE PRİCE LİKE THE OTHERS, İ JUST WANT TO PLAYABLE GAME. WE JUST WANT TO PLAYABLE GAME. if u want do ur job with honor just listen to other top player . this gmae is not being only two of them. ENOUGH
I agree man. Kaiser and others only play some civ and patch will buff or nerf some civs. I want to play the game all civs but thanks to devs we can able to play some civs because other civs dont have facilities to win the game. Who choose İnca or other civs? You cant win the game with native nations and Ottoman or Russia.Sweeden and Japan are storngest civs but reality they arent strongest civs.
I think, first of all, i am GLAD that the devs to not take in consideration most of the balance changes proposed in this forum, since most of the balance changes are “REMOVE SWEDEN, REMOVE JAPAN, REMOVE USA” or are usually made by low tier players.
Also, i dont think the devs owe us any explanation at all. Its their game. If they want to balance based on the top its their prerrogative. If they want to do it from the bottom, its also their prerrogative.
The only problem i have with this approach of “only top players”, is that several top players find difficulties in setups that low ranking players do not, hence i hope that the devs do look elsewhere for other feedback regarding these issues.
I also think that forums could be an important tool to show an idea of what the general player base wants, but the problem is that its full of posts like the ones above mentioned.
Another questionable issue regarding it is that, the invited player base does not represent the community or the majority of the players as whole, but rather represents the opinion of a group of player which is putting a big question mark into the balance changes mostly the changes that were implemented to civs other than sweden, spain.
I have created a brief summary of some of the figured balance changes on the pup forum, if you are interested, I would be sending the link of it to you from private message.
Agree with you at particular extends, I will try to give my response about russian change(s) without name calling since I believe that is the best approach to have constructive discussion. For russian case, they also have faster trained villagers added to cheaper vills which has potential to snowball quite effectively and end up russia becoming one of the dominant civ in this game. Hopefully the faster villager train could be checked, but mainly, some of the over changes possibly would create another overperforming civs with balance issues.
Another questionable part is, there are decent amount of water changes, and there are known players in the competitive level who are performing effectively on water, as far as I know, noone of them has been consulted when this many changes are being implemented, while a group of players are continuously brag about how they can influence the balance of the game into buffing their own way of playing, civs. Which is far from being professional.
Our developer team do listen to people. I don’t think there is a shady thing going around. Put yourself on the dev shoes instead. There is probably a private group where talk goes around. It happens in any competitive game that’s no news. in LOL there are 3 stages. Casual play, Elite play and Pro play and some champions are addressed differently due to how different the game is played in all 3 stages. And for the most part Changes go around PRO play only but they do listen to casual and elite play and here and there changes are made around those but they’re not the focus. But they have been transparent about it and the entire community knows.
Something happens with aoe3 just that it is not clear yet. There is surely not enough transparency. There isn’t that much why to the changes.
But a pro player handles any situation in the game much differently than majority of the players. This might be the reason as to why they ask pros 1st or even show them information they see in this forum and compare it to their thinking. It is not bad. But a small group of pro should not be the only way game is balanced around. There are decent players [ not casuals ] who have nice ideas and are just ignored because X player might not be as PRO or doesn’t provide as much to the community.
I would say if anyone do care so much about balance and want to Collab with them. There are ways to do it. You can start slowly on the forums. Do content yourself, Create voice of your own. You’ll definitely be heard by devs in the end. It just takes time. There are people who don’t need to do that as they could be close friends to the devs and that’s completely fine. Just more transparency maybe?
I’m passionate about this game and without knowing much of what is going to happen I’m sure I’m still going to play it and enjoy it as I’ve always done.
@FoggierWizard41How exactly would you buff russia that it doesn’t get to struggle as it currently do vs lots of matchups?And has better chances without breaking them?
I do think cheaper vill could be a solution as it is one of russias early struggles as making vills and constant unit production is not easy it requires too much food and they have no vill shipment mostly crates.
Have to say that AOE3DE has gone far from how ESOC was handling it back then. I think ESOC had a statement where they didn’t want to change the core of the game. And as far as I know sioux currently can wall and most native civs and train mortars. I don’t think this was an idea given by pros. I read alot of those ideas here in this forum
I think here is the key issue. There is a reason for why some cards or units have not been buff enough to be viable and open themselves up for diversity in playstyles. Top players obviously do not want to have to deal learning how to play and deal with a new meta/s.
Honorary mention to 150food 2 leather canons vs 500 food 8 chukonu +1 flamethrower.
I know I’m not froggerwizard but I have an idea, bring back the old villager cost of 270, and give some sort of card that makes cav archers and musks deal more dmg to cav, this could be an age 2 card called something along the lines of “ improved anti cavalry weapons” and it would increase the multiplier of musks and cav archers vs cav by one.
Well to be fair I’ve only played like 10 ranked matches and won 4 and two of the 4 were against Sweden witch has no skirms so it would be possible I guess, however when I play against Russia I find I do best when I make a good mass of cav with some sort of ranged infantry behind it, for example I would make with china the forbidden army and the territorial army or with Germans I will make more uhlans than I normally would with my skirm war wagon and I find it works well.
I wouldn’t be so against listening to the pros if I didn’t know what they push for…which is the standardization of the game…
They complain about everything new that appears and push for a boring 1-fight-semi-FF style, which goes completely against what AOE3 was supposed to be, a game where a LOT of strats should be viable (An AOE3 original dev from ESO said on an interview that the variety of possible strats were the main reason for the HC cards concept)
But since the ESOC patch they push towards killing anything that is not their play style, they massively nerfed rushing, they nerfed raiding, they nerfed turtling(this one I agreed with tho, XD). etc.
I hope the devs realize how boring the game will get if they listen to pros. And also realize that the top-player tournaments attract no more than 400 people MAX, which is less than 15% of the player-base.
I don’t know exactly by which ways they pick balance change but they speak in some patchs about winrate sometimes and often the winrate at low level so they are definitely thinking about casual players.
On the other hand many pro players stopped to play including people like kaiser and hazza, unhappy for a long time about the balance. It is a common feedback in the community to say that the balance is currently in a terrible state for competitive games and tournaments.
So it feels to me really non sense to say that pro players had any influence about the balance until now. They certainly didn’t have more influence than the rest of the players around.
But well as usual people like to try to find a a guilty person when they see a patch and they don’t like a change…
The next patch is going to be the biggest since the release because of the DLC so it makes totally sense to me that they try to take much more time to collaborate with top players (before they all left) and content creators, and I don’t see anything wrong with that.
Just wait and see.
I don’t know the information about age of empires 2 Balance process since I don’t play the game, but what is questionable here is that in aoe3, some of the players who are publicly explaining to be involved in the balance making process are continously treating the other causal players in public in a rather claiming way that they actually control the game.
I’m myself is currently a top4 1v1 player and a top10 team player in aoe3, this is the first time I’m actually promoting my own rank on these forums but not in the intention of self promotion, but in the intention of explaining what is actually going on. After the game I’m playing against another known top player who is publicliy stating to be in a “secret balance discord” where he can control the game (according to his claim), he is sending the message of, “I will see you next patch haha” it does not feel any normal at any extend in my opinion.
