I feel like many of us are lying to ourselves at this point. I thought about it, and I realized how scammed we all got buying this game. I have fun with this game at times, and at others it’s just straight up frustrating. I find myself having to re-que quick match a half a dozen times just to get a playable map. I find a playable map, however there’s still a 50% chance the seed will be unbalanced with resources, or geography (cliffs/chokepoints), or special map elements (relics/sacred sights). Before a few weeks ago, we had to pray that our competitors didn’t choose a civilization that didn’t have inherent edges over other civs (these still exist on some level), and then, if this is achieved, pray they don’t use an exploitation to gain some other edge in the game (attack canceling). If they don’t blatantly cheat, there is still of course the opportunity for your opponent cheese his way through a match, where your only counter strategy completely offsets tempo of the game until you realize you aren’t even playing a “real” Age game anymore, and you’ve spent the last ten minutes knocking down a wall he’s snaked across the map. If non-of this occurs, THEN you can say, “hey, that was a good game.”
I’ve never experienced a successful game (let alone program) where there were so many variables you are relying on to have a good experience. If this wasn’t a game, and a program or some sort of collaboration tool a company was relying on, this program would have been declared a flop on release. Contractors would get fired. The community wouldn’t be like “yea, you really need to hope you get a good collaboration environment, also hope that the other people don’t use abusive platforms that give them an edge. Also, sometimes the mechanics don’t actually work as you want them to. But if the collaborators aren’t toxic and use the tools for what the developers actually imagined it, it can actually do really well.” THAT SOUNDS CRAZY.
We are letting the devs off the hook because it’s a game, and we are in 2022 where post-release patches are commonplace. But these go beyond balance issues. There are fundamental problems with this game. I can’t imagine the experience players are having in this game is what the community imagined when we thought of the next installment. And I’m a sucker, because its purely the Age of Empires name that keeps me coming back. If it was anything else, I’d be long gone.
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look, I hate the bugs they have, I feel it’s hindering new players from bothering. But I’m not gonna stop playing because when things get fixed it can be hella fun. Try team games. It’s a hard game to fix with such a small team (well they’re updating bugs like they have a small team). That said, yes they dropped the ball releasing this game half done, BUT IT CAN BE A FUN GAME! It’s the best imo RTS out there that accommodates hard AoE fans and new players, just remember you didn’t buy the game for a month, you’ll have it forever. 
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I’m having fun.
Slightly imbalancee seeds keep things interesting, only bad when there are bad relic spawns or bad sacred sights on maps where people can easily wall off. Hopefully the devs figure out how to prevent these kinds of unbalanced seeds.
Civ balance doesnt seem like a huge issue to me except for water maps. Can beat any civ with any civ on land maps with enough practice
Less popular maps wont be in ranked pool and animation cancelling should be going soon, game is just going to get better.
I can forgive the devs for not playing 1000s of games and removing bad seeds before release, but yeah a lot of issues shouldnt be in the game. At least they seem to be listening
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I am feeling optimistic today and it is overshadowing my view of the game’s negatives.
I have a lot of fun when I play 1 vs 1 or play with a mostly handpicked team on voice chat.
In other games, I didn’t mind playing anything, but in this game, due to imbalances and the strange ELO matching in team games, I must have forethought prior to playing in order to get the most out of the experience. I’m not sure how so many players get along without somebody to voice chat with during the matches, as, quite often, allies are not responsive to in game chat.
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I am not getting along, add me in-game I’ll gladly join discord if you wanna play some.
I play 2v2s. 1v1 is totally predictable. Its so predictable that you should just follow list of steps to win. 2v2 adds some unpredictability and synergy with different civs. Also its very unlikely to have mirrors in 2v2s. Unlike 3v3 or 4v4 its also pretty balanced. But still every game is very stressful. The player base is saturated and newer players won’t come because how tough multiplayer has become. And its becoming tougher day by day. Causal players mostly left so no matter how many matches you lose. You will still be queued up with same players.
I agree. I’ve had discussions here before on this topic. At this point it’s obviously a money-grab and yet people are making dev appreciation posts for this mess.
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AoE4 proved that there was players for an RTS game. The next -classic- RTS game will be a huge success if they avoid Relic mistakes.
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I mean they are a company, all sequels are basically money-grabs. AOE4 isn’t bad by any comparison, maybe I’m just jaded cause I play games made by EA.
AOE4 still has far more players playing PvP than AOE2 does though so it can’t be that bad. (I personally enjoy the game)
Sadly AOE4 is really lackluster when it comes to singleplayer content. The campaigns are solid even if not as satisfying as AOE2 but it’s AI is hot garbage.
Can you please prove it?
or compare it with aoe1, which will make more sence.
I don’t have a current chart of AOE2 numbers, but this is AOE4 players in quickmatch per day (not concurrent)
I do a lot of players play AOE2 for single player content such as campaigns.
all data (as far as i know taken from these sites)
quick check:
AoE2.net - 170k unranked
https://aoeiv.net/#aoe4-leaderboard-custom - 120k unranked
you can check yourself. i’ve counted with all data via api 210k for aoe4 and 230k for aoe2 in 30d.
but people comparing and claiming “far more”/“more” etc.
PS graph ended on jan16… could just post first week with peak players.
I doubt there was some drastic dropoff over the last 2 weeks but I could be wrong, this is just the number of players that played a match on each specific day.
At the very least this shows that there hasn’t been a massive dropoff in regards to players playing in quickmatch since release. At least it shows that the quickmatch lobbies aren’t dying off like may claim. Considering the boost in players around the November patch, I expect another surge when the Spring patch hits.
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I am super happy with AoE 4, I do not regret buying it.
Yes, I agree it falls quite short initially in content (no map editor, no ranked, no mod support, missing features, too easy A.I), but that is not a problem for me because I will get them in future patches. Meanwhile, I enjoy what we got so far, I really like the core gameplay and mechanisms, the game have a good overall feel to it.
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Play Civilization VI sometime if you want a game that is horribly dependent on beginning game variables.
When you say ‘the next classic RTS’ I think ‘AOM:DE’.
They’re afraid if they announce it will slow down AOE:4 sales.
But I sure hope they’re working on it.
those are active lobbies so that means its probably less the half of it as players plays 2 matches at minimun (also not counting 2v2,3v3,etc…). so that chart is flawed.
Perhaps, I prefer this chart to steam player counts, since when comparing AOE numbers, a lot of people use the argument that MP balance is what is causing people to leave, whereas the number of people engaging in MP daily has not decreased that dramatically. Steam charts in regards to AOE (especially AOE2) are a heavy majority offline players or custom games, not matchmaking.