the difference today of aoe2 are about 2k only
What does this say about the game for you guys?
what future awaits us?
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One game does not need to fail for the other to succeed. There are clearly two different communities.
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It is hard to compare since we do not know the game pass numbers. If we include game pass I suspect the difference is much larger.
One clue is looking at twitch viewers. AOE4 seems to have about five times as many twitch viewers as AOE2.
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you can calculate it.
aoeiv net has nicknames. Any name like Name#1234 (4 numbers in the end) - Xbox user.
Just count proportions and add it.
not a metric at all.
Kodt ended ppl will play aoe4.
Before kodt aoe2 (big)streamers were prepering for tourney… a lot of things.
Twich can not be representive at all.
TheViper and T90 had massive amount of viewers.
T90 could solo boosted the stats, but now he on fb.
I like the game, its just the sheer amount of bugs have turned me away. The idea is simple, they fix the game, we return; which they are doing as far as I can tell. So probably by next patch it will all be smooth sailing, hopefully.
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If they balance it like aoe2, it will be definitively better. But there is long way to do it as you can see. Maybe they ruin game, maybe they make it nice.
is that i want to do.
The game is not that bad, I played HRE 1v1 and 2v2 stopped playing because of French abuse in 2v2 and mongoles, demo ships, water advantage over land, etc. waited for springalds fix now we have demo ships cancer…
Probably some day the game will be finish and it would had decent texture for units then I will play it again…
This game will never have the same amount of balance of AOE2 (good thing imo) because despite AOE2 having like 39 civs they are all extremely similar whereas in AOE4 the civs are much more asymmetric. Some things need balancing in AOE4 yes but I hope it doesn’t become like AOE2 where you have a whole heap of civs but they are all almost identical in terms of the way the units look and the way they play.
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My bet is it will stay successful for the next year at least in the context of a niche genre. It hasn’t and won’t bring RTS back to the top as Ms has hoped. It does good enough but I wouldn’t start looking for numbers until about half a year from now. By then, the game will be “old” enough to manifest its core audience sticking around for the whole life cycle. It’s absolutely normal the playerbase dwindling rapidly in the first months after release. Happens also to top sellers like Cod every year.
When your metric of “finished” is a perfectly well balanced game which will never have any unit or tech which favours a certain civ, then you might just stop waiting 
Moba, RTS life from unbalance, unbalance creates new meta, this is was makes LOL or dota so successful, every big balance patch creates a slightly new meta.
Ofcourse, some things you mentioned are simply broken, like demoships or springalds, but for those to recieve balance changes one does not need to wait for too long.
This is also my main complain with AoE2, it was kept at a too balanced state making it a bit repetitive.
Would be fun if they would do yearly bigger balance patches to break up the meta allowing for new strategies and tactics. But I guess at some point one has seen it all in aoe2 and there is just not that much to discover anymore (like the ram rush viper did with cumans)
I think you guys are obsessed with the player theme in aoe 2 versus aoe 4.
There will be a lot of people who play aoe2 who either don’t like what this game offers, or it doesn’t work well for them (a lot of aoe2 people have less powerful computers) …
I think they can coexist in time, the community does not have to migrate from age 2 to age 4.
You only add toxicity.
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The fact is that aoe2 is balanced and has no bugs, i will play aoe4 after they patch it, i was got 35 level here
There is a widespread and wrong concept that balance means symmetry between civilizations.
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I’m still playing aoe2 until they fix the zoom
if they add zoom I will switch to aoe4
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Im into AoE2 and at my age (38) I dont think I will ever switch to another game as main source of entertainment. I am closely looking at the numbers since AoE4 release. Beyond the Steam numbers it is very hard to compare the player numbers. There are more game pass players in AoE4 for sure. On the other hand there is AoE2 HD, Voobly and all other options to play AoE2.
To have a clue about active players in both games (AoE2 DE & AoE4) I like comparing aoe2.net and aoeiv.net there you can check 1v1 ranking total entries and “unranked” vs “custom” to compare the lobby players. For TG matchmaking its hard as in AoE4 they are broken into 2v2, 3v3, 4v4 categories. Compating these stats there are 55k vs 37k 1v1 matchmaking entries in favour of AoE4 and 175k vs 171k lobby entries in favour of AoE2 DE. It looks like to me AoE4 has between 20% and 50% advantage while the numbers are getting closer. Perhaps if we add AoE2 HD to AoE2 DE the two games are at a balance right now ( this would include gamepass players)
In the long run I think both games may have similar level of success. Even if AoE2 becomes again the most played in the franchise I think aoe4 will be very close and will always be much ahead of AoE3 for example. The reason being it is also a generational thing. As I said at my age I dont imagine “switching” to another game but also if you look at one of these charts that compare Steam numbers you would see on weekdays AoE4 and AoE2 DE peak at different time. This is demography. AoE2 peak is around 22h CET when people in their 30ies in EU and US are back from work and spend some time gaming. AoE4 peak is around 16.00 CET when there is much younger population playing in afternoons for Europe and mornings in North America.
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I come from almost exclusively playing AoE 2. I loved AoE 1 but its mechanics are unbearable now and never got to like AoE 3 quirkiness.
I have been playing AoE 4 almost daily but the grip it has on me has been wearing out. The novelty is simply not there anymore and often I have second thoughts about starting a second match. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a fun game and besides its bugs it’s well executed and evidences Relic’s experience with RTS. It’s very far from SupCom 2’s Hindenburg-level disaster for example.
I think that the extremely simplistic nature of the game is losing me. It works great for eSports and I could almost say I have more fun watching Drongo’s matches than playing the game myself. The same thing happened to me with StarCraft now that I think of it. More fun watching games and hearing the commentator than playing.
At this point I’ll probably not get any DLC. I can’t justify it unless it radically changes the experience and mechanics. I’ve seen it all and experienced the core game and it just doesn’t have a ton of longevity. I am surely one number less in AoE 4’s player base. Weirdly enough, I also kind of lost interest in playing AoE 2. It feels dated now.
PD: RTS gods, give me a SupCom:FA remaster PLEASE!
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I am not sure what are you talking about, sc1 was a finished game and it was the biggest RTS for many years, it is still played to this day, meta change? Nope, you don’t play chess with meta changes right? So you are wrong, MOBA and RTS are two different beast, I can stop playing sc1 for q year and come back and it will be the same game I won’t need to re-learn anything, counter strike also used the same model, they barely did changes, mostly graphics and it was a game played for years, meta changes? Nope, instead of changing the meta you can fresh the game with new civs, new maps, new environments, better UI, better campaign etc