My hypes for this game were like HUGEEEE. I still love the game and play from time to time. But devs are taking too long to fix simple things. That’s discouraging. Hoping they can make this a better game in the future. But it is becoming the same story every patch. They fix a couple of bugs and build new features, while adding hundreds of bugs. I’m unaware of the amount of devs they currently have, But I’ve seen how in other games a hotfix is made within 6 to 12 hours and sometimes even 1 to 2 hours from a patch release. ( this part is just me dreaming AOE3 can be better )
Please, whoever leads the circus. Just a little bit more love to the game and its community?
Welcome to the path to the bottom of the pit that the community of the first game is in since the game was released
At least Age III is been updated with new features and events in comparison, but, nevertheless, the devs should work on all the games with the same dedication they show to Age II.
Even now, you have to give up on having vain hopes for the developer. They resurrected a bug that had been fixed in the past, and QA is literally messed up. Moreover, the two new civilizations of the still broken DE are still controversial. Civilizations added by the new DLC will also completely break the balance. Anyone can expect that new players or players who want to enjoy the new DLC will be disappointed with the still unresolved bugs and give up the game forever.
Does that mean that they are actively aware of the problem and show an effort to solve it? Even they are still ignoring the explanation of the balance change and asking for the win rate and selection rate between civilizations. they are indifferent to the excessive emotional consumption that appears on the forums, and they do not try to solve everything right away, but they try to solve the case when it happens. They have no will, no motivation or enthusiasm.
I said that already and I can only say that again:
Please give us a beta before a big patch
Than the community can test if there are mistakes and they don’t accidentally publish small dumb mistakes like a Aztec Home City Card that buffs Pet Jaguars instead of Jaguar Warriors.
AoE2 started doing that recently. This would be a huge help and it would make the community much less toxic if the patches would have less silly mistakes when the hit the live servers.
I work as a developer myself (not in gaming) and I know it’s easy to overlook something that small.
Eh. I’m iffy on this game with ambivalent thoughts.
Positives:
1.) From a treaty perspective, I’m glad the devs heard some of our suggestions and implemented them. I was losing hope that they were too into bug-hunting to listen to player’s cries for balance, but I was surprised and happy to see some direct implementations from some suggestions. Nobody can’t say that have been listening or reading these forums.
2.) We got the ability to whisper people and harness more of a sense of community in-game now. They are at least paying attention to our desire for more quality of life in-game.
3.) I still am grateful that we even have devs, compared to the long absence in the TAD era.
Negatives:
4.) The game feels slow when it comes to updates. Waiting for giant, monthly updates makes the players feel like they keep having to wait week after week after week for changes that seem trivial in the player’s perspective.
5.) These new patches are buggy and really hurt player confidence in the devs. Yeah, it’s exciting when the Aztecs get some cool, player-suggested changes. But the bugs really slab over the positive things. Nobody is sure how testing is being done, but it makes players feel like they have to wait yet again another few weeks for a fix (demoralizing).
Another point to consider, to be fair:
6.) Honestly speaking, the player base has gone somewhat toxic on these forums and must give the devs a ton of headaches. I understand too, as I’ve been on these forums waiting for my voice to be heard too. But case #1 - Sweden balance. Players complained so much and wanted a nerf. So it did - the first big one. But then players cried again for a buff. So it did, with new options for Age 2 strats. Then players cried again that leather cannons were OP, so more changes happened in the most recent patch, and now there’s just two sides complaining on the forums for buffs AND nerfs. Come on guys, is anyone happy?
From the dev’s perspective, how do you even fix this? People are also wanting new additions to the game and have even made new civilization posts, but yet many can’t even be happy with the 2 new ones. How are we even gonna fathom about bringing another civ in the game?
I think the built-up toxicity on these forums really overshadows a lot of the great things that this last patch has given. But I understand the frustration as well for those who’s games have been crashing and can’t play. Ouch
Despite all this, I still believe the game can retain players and has potential.
My thoughts are:
I.) Send patches on a weekly basis for bugs, even if they’re minor or really small. If it’s a small hotfix to just fix the Aztec civ problem of Coyote Runners costing W and G. I believe the dev-player confidence and communication needs strengthening, as players feel like the devs can be absent sometimes.
II.) Re-align the game to the aspects of the TAD multiplayer formula that has proven to retain players for more than a decade. Multiplayer truly is the heart of the game. We have to protect that and sharpen that sword. I’m still advocating for old ranks in casual lobbies to increase player satisfaction from their games. I personally have stopped playing that much recently, since most games seem to either be overkill or a 2v3 of skill, with me usually 1v3ing after another player gives up hope. Having a teammate who is still age 1 at 9 minutes while I’m getting 2v1’d in a rush is the most depressing feeling. It’s a game design issue that I can’t prevent in DE like I did in TAD. I hate losing even my casual rank to games like these. And honestly, it’s the main reason why I haven’t gotten on that much recently - skill imbalances leading to unsatisfying games.
III.) Improve the testing of the new updates, because I feel like the community will multiply the toxicity for every bug they find.
I) Smaller patches released more often (once a week) is much better idea. Simple bugs will be fixed quicker. And community needs to see that game is constantly evolving. According to Steam data we are slightly losing players every month and game is just half of the year after premiere. I believe bugs are the main reason.
Gamers do not have patience to wait a month for the next patch to fix a simple card bug. Moreover we do not know exactly when the next patch comes and what it will contain. Players don’t like it.
II) Agreed. Nothing to add.
III) It is quite strange how some of the bugs leaked unnoticed by the developers. Of course some more complex bugs can be overlooked because it is impossible to test everything. But how is it possible that Pet Jaguar is improved instead of Jaguar Knight? It means that this change was not tested at all. Community reported this bug 1-2 h after patch release. It bothers me.
PS These are some suggesting what can be improved but as @PerseusLegends4 said I’m grateful that we even have devs working on that game and listening to our requests.
I expected that there would be a patch at Tuesday but we didn’t even get any statement from dev and I am totally disappointed. They are busy making DLC while players suffer from enormous bugs. Not only the game, but also the forum itself is buggy- replying at mobille device is nearly impossible.
The people working on DLC are separate from those working on bug fixes. I don’t know why a hotfix hasn’t been come out yet but it has nothing to do with DLC.
Even Forgotten, totally different company, helps Tantalus and Relic make their own games. You can’t say that making DLC doesn’t affect bugfixing for DLC making is being done by a seperate team.
I’m happy that the devs are listening to the community. But the bugs in the latest patch need to be fixed ASAP (honestly I can do this by myself in a few hours). I was expecting a quick fix in two days, but it has been a week since the release of the patch.
I’d rather believe the devs are busy with sth else because there used to be hotfixes in two days or even two hours.
But a better way to deal with this is at least testing anything before releasing them.
The only way to settle this is to show the win rates, in all skill levels. But we don’t have that either.
Expecting patches weekly is unrealistic. Too many code changes that frequently will not help with stability nor balance. The last patch helped a lot and I think the game is at a state where I wish it was when it launched in October 2020, but here we are now and the game is in a good spot. While the game seemed to have launched prematurely, these devs seem really committed to improving functionality, balance and fixing bugs along the way.
Yeah its a shame that khorix who is a top player and was a frequent streamer stopped playing the game, has been a noticeable loss to the ESOC community and Aoe3 twitch community as a whole. hopefully he will come back and resume the grind soon enough
Help what? The most impactful change at the last patch was significant increasing of unit stucking. There were some good changes but those things were relatively small.
I also agree that smaller maintenance patches can be done that don’t change balance in specific moments to fix certain things. As an example, this new patch has completely destroyed the single player experience: ai dont send decks, you can’t save your decks in the campaign and historical battles are bugged too. I am afraid they are going to wait for the next month update to fix this and present it in bulk with with qol and balance changes, when problems like this could and should have their own schedule because is not part of the game you are building towards but fixing things that are not working correctly. Fixes and balance changes should, in cases like this, come in separate builds
QOL UI improvements, online improvements, balance improvements - are we playing the same game? I saw a few bugs related to Aztec changes, but where are these widespread bugs or hacks you’re alluding to? What issues are not solved that you would like to see fixed?
Bugs from this patch:
AI can no longer select decks in skimirsher
Your decks can no longer be saved in campaign mode
Historical Battle civs are bugged
This three destroys completely the single player experience, and many here play MP, a lot of people play SP and can’t in this build.
There are now more crashes to desktop than in previous builds
Units are getting stuck in buildings more than in previous builds
Travois can’t build in TP sites because they are bugged unless you micro them
Aztec units don’t have the wood cost removed when sending aztec mining
Attack move is still bugged and not working as intended (it has gotten slightly better I think, but still underperforming)
These are the ones I’d like fixed. I agree that the game is in a much better state than before, but sadly many issues arise from those same patches that were supposed to fix things. I understand coding is hard and it’s old code, that’s why I believe maintenance patches and QOL and balance updates should go separately
