Request for permanently available recorded game

Age of Empires II: DE II - Discussion
#1

Hello community and developers,

I’m sure all of us are familiar with the fact that when an update or a patch is installed, more often than not, the recorded games from the time before that change will become unwatchable.

I would really like this to be remedied. A suggestion is that instead of having to incorporate this into the workload of new updates, perhaps there would be a recorded game watching mode which is ensured to be compatible with recorded games or vice versa. Maybe the game version from the time of the recorded game is preserved in a limited format in the game to the extent that allows the recorded game to be watched.

Alternatively, perhaps the way recorded games work can be changed in a way that they are not bound to the current game version that is played?

I don’t know exactly what would be the best way, but no matter the method, I would just like a recorded game to be watchable no matter how long it has been since the game was played.

I find it quite frustrating that I am not able to watch a recorded game from a match which was played as recently as last Saturday, only three days ago(!) For me and probably for many others, watching the recorded games to learn from yourself as well as from the opponent is an important part of the game. Removing that part of the game every time it changes is a relatively big deal and honestly off-putting at least for me.

Do you agree with my sentiment? What’s your take? Feel free to share your thoughts on this.

Thank you for reading,
Hjörleif

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Recorded games not playing
Older replays Error
#2

I would love to see something so you can watch games from older patches.

Kind of the same suggestion is posted as bug:

I fully agree that the devs need to add this functionality.

I have heard thinks about Capture Age coming to DE. Maybe that will be the solution? They did announce it some months ago. After that it became silent. So i have no idea what Capture Age can do for DE and recorded games.

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#3

I totally support your idea and hope the dev team somehow reads this and does something about it. It really is unbelievable to think that in a game from 2019 you still can’t watch older replays because of “incompatibility” between patches.
To solve this you just need a table in the database to record every attribute that has changed for every patch and that’s it (if you only changed archers cost and range for example you would have just two registries in the database for those associated with the new patch version). Then when you load the replay you go and look for those changes and load them into the game. It’s actually a very basic SQL / Oracle or whatever query.

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#4

I’d like to echo Hjoerleif’s point, not being able to play recorded games from just last week or a few days ago seriously hurts my enjoyment of the game.

Many player-run websites like aocrecs and aoe2 (dot) net provide players with a way to access recorded games, because watching recorded games is traditionally how players developed their own game knowledge and the metagame. Recorded games are vital for verifying tournament results, moderation in community-run events and understanding the game’s history. It’s “the culture”.

My individual frustration at not being able to learn from last week’s mistakes is okay. I can deal with it. But what actually grinds my gears is observing what all players who try to improve/watch streams/enjoy learning about the game are collectively missing out on right now.

It’s a huge oversight that this hasn’t been implemented already!

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