Designing a game for competitive players means designing a good game for all players, because only an interesting, content-rich and engaging experience can attract people for any longer period of time, and steady player interest and popularity guarantee a healthy player base in which competitive scene can grow from.
Ultimately that designation doesnāt mean anything, you can have a competitive scene with 200 and 200k players. And almost any game can be competitive. Even more, pushing this pitch might hurt the game more in some cases, where people not interested in this form of gameplay can be discouraged from trying or sticking with the game.
Iām mostly interested in new story and skirmish-cooperation modes, because core PvP mode is roughly the same thing weāve been playing for at least 25 years. In itself itās fine and good and might be the core but canāt be solely that, because we have all other AoE games that are that.
Single-player (fully or mostly focused on it) games are super successful across all genres and people stopped even joking about ādeath of single player gamesā years ago. Personally I donāt understand why some companies are so afraid of pushing the genre forward and expanding on it in ways that revitalize the genre and guarantee their own existence.
A competitive scene often is arguably more of a byproduct of a great game design. And certainly isnāt a guaranteed driving force behind player numbers or sales, because the vast majority of people donāt engage with these modes on any regular basis.
In order for IV to be an attractive game there must more focus and resources put on other aspects of the game if these numbers are meant to visibly go up:
Thereās nothing preventing even a PvP-only RTS to reach a couple of millions of concurrent players, but not in this reality. RTS games aināt FPP shooters where there is a huge ecosystem deriving from generations of people playing these games. RTS genre has been neglected by AAA devs for many, many years and certainly classic RTS games outside of a couple of exceptions have significantly fallen in popularity and market presence.
If MS want AoE V to reach a playerbase ballpark of popular online games they must put a lot of effort into making RTS alive for many years straight. And sole reliance on classic PvP, especially when this game is competing with its siblings, aināt gonna cut it in the long run.
PC players love these games, but itās really not 1999 anymore. Imagine potential player numbers that for example a Warframe-like RTS could gather these days, with that YUGE Steam playerbase.
AoE2 is amazing but it exists, HD remaster exists, DE version exists, and creating āAoE2 boogaloo v4ā doesnāt push the ambitions of Age of Kings designers by any visible margin.
And if you want to make the same game again, it better be revolutionary in other aspects than core gameplay design, like the technology behind it.
I think you are completely missing the point here.
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