As a former AoE 3 player, I can already see the following trends:
multipliers were increased by 25% without increasing HP or armor by 25%
defensive buildings were nerfed
I have already seen these problems in AoE 3, when units that counter other units have a 1:10 trade with them. I also already seen the problem that in a 45-minute 3v3 game, only 3 castles and an infinite number of walls were built, while not a single upgrade of towers or castles was made.
After looking at this, the developers released a patch that increased the time for building walls by 50%, and a year later the game was closed.
Nobody built melee infantry because it didn’t work.
Defensive buildings were nerfed after they were buffed, but are overall buffed since launch.
The buffs were pretty controversial and a lot of players complained about them, granted buffing them was also a requested change.
I don’t think the playerbase really has a strong consensus on what they want buildings to be like.
It doesn’t matter who wants what. If the building is present in the game and it requires investing resources and time - it should work. Everything is very simple and has nothing to do with the players’ wishes.
OP does have a point. Developers are making questionable decisions.
It was indeed true that buildings were deemed weak, but the way they buffed them was too much.
Now they are nerfing and buffing things at random. Like nerfing TC range which literally nobody asked for. And the huge nerf to towers which basically makes them useless. At the same time siege weapons have been buffed to the moon and are very difficult to stop.
So yeah, people leave the game despite the devs doing what some might have asked for.
This shows a dev team that lacks experience and goes on doing huge buffs and nerfs at a time, which is not how to do things.
AoMR has a higher peak then AoE3DE.
Since both games don’t have a subscription fee nor micro transactions (if we don’t count that 1 explorer pack) so they get 0 money from having people playing the game.
Active player numbers =/= sales/income
Not sure why people always think it’s all about player numbers.
AoE3DE has so much more multiplayer content then AoMR.
There are 22 civilisations plus revolutions plus minor civilisations in AoE3DE while AoMR just has 5 civilisations and 16 Major gods overall.
Though AoE3DE civilisations have a lot more differences between each other then different Major gods on AoMR have.
Different Major gods play more like having different Home City Card Decks then entirely different civilisations.
AoE3DE is more multiplayer focused with the AoE3 campaign never being all that popular. They tired copying AoM but that obviously doesn’t work well in a historic setting.
AoMR is just not as well suited for multiplayer. God powers and myth units are always harder to balance but they need to be powerful to make the game “fun”.
Oh and that completely ignores that AoE3DE has a limited free to play mode while AoMR costs 2x as much as the full game of AoE3DE.
So even with less sales they can make more money.
But anyway.
The game losing players does not prove that your point is correct.
You don’t know why the people stopped playing the game. It’s very unlikely that they stopped playing because of those very specific issues you mentioned.
I am 100% sure that because of these shitty features people did not play AoE 3, because if you do not lie about the number of players (and these are people who are guaranteed to buy the DLC) and if you do not lie about the fact that any RTS is a multiplayer game, then we will see that games with modern graphics, badass explosions and destruction of buildings, gorgeous music and special effects lose to the pixel crap of the 1990s.
The problem is exactly what I indicated here.
Imagine if Warcraft 2 was more popular than Warcraft 3. What could be the reason for this?)
AoE2DE proves that this is wrong.
A lot of active AoE2DE players are not buying the DLC.
If you look at ranked stats the DLC civs always have the lowest pick rated even if they have high win rates.
Romans are a good example, high win rate but low pick rate.
Multiplayer people are apparently not that interested in buying DLC.
There is always a player spike when a DLC releases. Not because people want to try out the new civs in ranked, they play ranked every day anyway, it’s because people want to play the campaigns.
You think people don’t like the home city cards, minor civilisations and revolutions?
AoE 2 is a bad example because there are 100 civilizations, versus 5 in AoM and 22 in AoE 3. In AoE 3, DLCs were always bought. Although the campaigns there are crap or not exist. They were bought for multiplayer.
I think they didn’t like that 50% of strategies (like the turtle) don’t work in the game, and 1 mistake is fatal, because one hussar kills 50 streletz.
I dont even know why they dropped aoe3de but if numbers dont increase it will happen to aom retold too, I dont think theres another dlc after the japanese one. Their last try would be the a popular pantheon or civilization but they dropped the ball on some graphics stuff, it looks way too cartoony, I get its cheaper but numbers dont lie.
Numbers absolutely lie. Statistics is notorious for this, you can twist them to draw almost any conclusion you want if they’re misapplied. There have been numerous high profile court cases over the years that perfectly illustrate this, where misused statistics were used to falsely imprison people.
Current player count is probably a good indicator for multiplayer-focused games like MMOs or CoD, but the stellar singleplayer campaign has always been a large part of AoM’s appeal.
Sales numbers are a better indicator of the game’s success or failure. The Chinese and Japanese DLCs could be purchased bundled with the base game, so it’d be harder to tell how much continued interest there is until if/when a third DLC comes along, but as far as I remember AoM’s sales have never been the greatest compared to the other games in the series. It’d certainly never be able to compete with AoE2 or AoE4. I don’t have high hopes for much more in the game’s future.
So basically, I agree with the conclusion of what you’re saying, but I disagree with your reasoning for it.
The first is probably true. People like to be able to turtle.
The second, probably not. Most RTS have those kinda things and I feel like they are stronger in AoE2 or SC2.
A single Mangonel shot can decide an AoE2 match or a single Psi Strom in SC2.
AoE3 has less of those moments.
An AoE2 Paladin can probably kill more Skirmishers then an AoE3 Cuirassier can kill Strelets.
You are looking at the wrong numbers.
They get 0 money from player numbers. Absolutely none. Actually it costs them money to keep the servers up.
They only get money from sales.
AoMR has a higher peak which implied they sold more copies on release. And AoMR is available on 3 platforms, PC, Xbox and Playstation which also increases sales.
A significant percentage of AoE3DE players are also free to play players that never payed anything.
Also AoMR costs more so they make more money for each copy.
We both don’t know how much both games really sold.
The other reason why I don’t think they will cancel AoMR is because they did cancel AoE3DE.
They moved the AoE3DE team to AoMR. They decided to sacrifice AoE3DE in favour of AoMR.
Why should they also kill AoMR now?
Unless they are already working on AoE5 I don’t think that will happen.
And this is the effect of WE creating and acquiescing the atmosphere of “if you don’t have enough players or sell enough, I can freely kill you without dignity and get away with it”
Players are now busy fighting each other on who sells more, proving themselves are more worthy, feeling victorious for NOT being sacrificed this time, instead of overthrowing the m-f-ing WE who caused it all
People keep forgetting that they stopped supporting AoE1DE long time ago and almost no one seemed to care.
RoR also has gotten almost no love since it’s release either.
Recently AoE2DE and AoE4 fans were pretty upset with DLC releases too.
AoMR seems to actually be going the best. Yes numbers are not as high but most people liked the last DLC and are looking forward to the next one.
The vibe here is generally the most positive in my experience.
Yeah, what do AoE 2 and AoE 4 players have to complain about?
I think they’ll survive the loss of 6,000 customers.
Nobody complains about earthquakes in AoM. StarCraft and Warcraft are balanced games in which there is no concept of multipliers. Everything is regulated there only by the type of damage and the type of armor. All units are equal. You will never lose your entire army because you chose it incorrectly. Comparing these games is pointless.
In AoE 3 one shot from a falconet can decide the outcome of the match, what are you talking about.
I probably haven’t played AoE 2 for over 10 years. The last thing I remember was me(mongol) and the English guy going to mass archers. And we couldn’t win the match in 8 minutes.
Agreed. People are walking around with flashing signs on the leaderboard. Everyone is so positive which looks like madness for a game that only 2k people play in the WORLD. HAHAHAHAHAHAHA
As I already said, you are very lucky that Microsoft releases games by directive for your group of friends.
They didn’t lie about a DLC for a whole year then blame the players for no bugfixing.
It got a day one bandaid (porting campaigns, though not complete), frequent balance patches and tournaments and they didn’t fear mentioning it.
You think that is a good sign for the company?
If they are already so desperate for monetization, do you think they’ll axe the “disliked but profitable” one or the “liked but less profitable” one?
They just laid oft level designer for Chronicles. The only positively received DLC of AOE2 in three years, and praised mainly for its——surprise——level designs.
Or on the other hand, looking at their recent practices, do you think you could expect more quality or more garbage if WE deemed you as profitable?
When AOE3 had DLCs and a little more players I didn’t see such a high purity copium
WE is the problem. Seeking comfort from “WE may treat me better because reasons” is a lost cause.
I really want to know what the developers were thinking when they increased the damage of all archers in the game by 25%. In doing so, they screwed up a bunch of strategies, and at least one unit, and turned the game into a battle between armies consisting only of archers.
