Hello, I am writing this only to note that alot of SC2 pros and other RTS gamers are looking for the next fun RTS game to dive into and make very popular on both twitch and steam. The 1v1 ladder will be an integral part of that. I understand that aoe3 has its own community but AOE 2 gameplay is still the gold standard for competitive aoe, and the concerns about aoe2 are the slow starts and games taking 30-50 minutes on average when compared to starcraft2 (10-30 min) does anyone know if they consulted any pros on how to develop? I am just wondering how I should limit my hype for the game ^.^
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The developers have very big plans for eSports, as we apparently do for the AoE 2 tournaments. AoE 4 will be injected with a lot of money, so yes, it is being developed for sports as well.
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It’s being developed to be commercially successful. Those targets are both casual players, who are the majority of players, and competitive players and their viewers, who attract the majority of attention from potential new players. Anyone who says the design is geared exclusively for one segment of the population is usually coming from a place of unnecessary fear.
In my experience, game studios are teeming with lots of very experienced video game players who love games so much they made a career of it. Those people are very often still more casual players. The competitive players are a very important minority of players. I presume that’s why the council has a significant share of them. But those people often know the game so darn well. It’s like asking a professional athlete to discuss game strategy. Sure, there are some boneheads who are talented despite themselves, but there’s also some super smart students of the game and genre.
Those people say some really interesting things. And they aren’t often very loud on the forum. The level of discussion can be great. I am not, by the way, one of them. But damn I do enjoy their company.
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I totally agree and understand that the games purpose is to be a commercial success. What I am asking and what I mean is that the game will be the most popular/successful if the 1v1 games are competitive, paced properly, and engaging/fun. That will lead to twitch streamers playing lots of ladder games and viewers watching to learn, which increases exposure of the game and causes more downloads. It is what made PUBG explode (good competitive gameplay being streamed on twitch).
So I was wondering if any devs have talked about game length, 1v1s, and what they are anticipating. Also whether there will be inaugural touranements.
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Dont know that since we havent seen an actual match being played. But just wanted to point out that AoE is probaby the only classic RTS that is played competitively in team games as well, it is also designed for balanced teamgames, unlike Starcraft.
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In my opinion, AoE 4 has every chance, since now the only live RTS on the market is AoE 2, there are simply no competitors, so this is definitely a green light.
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I’m not sure I’ve seen the devs discuss competitive pvp in any interviews, but I feel like they’ve generally mentioned it.
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I hope that there’s a good system of ranked play with tiers from Bronze-Diamond/Masters. I like going through the campaign as a tutorial and unique scenarios, but its the competitve play that keeps me around.
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If they incorporate things like AOE3 Snaring system or slow responsive unit you can inject money in the tournament but in long run the game will die or be small
If they haven’t commented on the 1vs1 scene or competitive its a huge ooph to the longevity of the game. If it plays like starcraft2 or aoe 2 it could be the biggest RTS launch of all time. I am tempering my excitement due to lack of gameplay shown and lack of discussion about competitive/tournament play ; (
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probably not. the defining feature is all the different things you can do with walls around your town
but this “aoe2 = slow” narrative is a myth
aoe2 has lots of fast maps, but people just focus on the slow turtley imperial age stuff like arabia/arena when those are basically fringe settings. arena is literally a meme where you start with walls around your base and arabia is just a map with nothing on it and nothing to fight for.
if you play aoe2 on good maps and adjusted the game speed to match sc2’s game speed, then the pacing is very similar
starcraft mostly has short games because the culture was to play it on the fastest setting in multiplayer (which might be fun to watch, but it makes casuals unable to play the game). if you played brood war on normal speed, it’s probably even slower than aoe1 and aoe2 were
I wasn’t trying to make an absolute comparison. But I have played more than 1,500 ranked ladder games on both games, and I have extensively watched the pro scene/twitch for both games.
The average game length matters a LOT for competitive play to translate into good Esports. Esports translates into much higher viewership and then — Players.
I know I had seen a video with TaToH (professional aoe2 player) at microsoft studios in an aoe 4 video so I was wondering if people like him were helping with gameplay/gameflow or whether any of that information had been made public yet. I believe we haven’t been given info regarding what the multiplayer/ladder/tournament setup is going to be?
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Any community members in the video you saw playing were part of the community council
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Luckily, most of the world doesn’t care about tryhard Twitch tournament play. Hopefully the game is balanced and can accommodate it, but making a good game for AOE fans should be the priority.
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If the priority is most units sold/best game. Balancing the game that will keep the twitch viewership highest (1v1 ladder) will lead to the best overall results in my opinion.
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Hope you don’t have an exaggerated demand for APM like starcraft. Excessive micromanagement does not go with the AOE saga. In starcraft at 8 or 10 minutes they are almost in the middle of the game, while in age of empires there are hardly any troops.
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