Why is aom retold losing players so fast?

Age of Mythology: Retold Discussion
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It is kinda funny how closely AoMR is following the AoE3DE line after release:
https://steamdb.info/charts/?compare=933110,1934680&release
I linked this comparison before. If you align it by release date and not by current date then you can see how AoMR is always a little bit above AoE3DE and now the first peak aligns with AoE3DEs first peak.

If Immortal Pillars is good then we will see a much higher peak then Arena of Gods. Not many people were hyped for this addition.
Actually even if Immortal Pillars is bad there will be a larger peak on it’s release just followed by disappointment. I sure hope that won’t happen.

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203

This game is a classic, and the remake is making everything better and more.

There will always be players who’s here to try and then leave for other game, that applies to every game.

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AoMR has worse voice acting also the new Wonder Age and recastable God Powers is causing issues in Team games. The current system should of been a new game mode called Wrath of the Gods. I hate not having the ability to play with the past rules and I know i’m not the only one. At the very least allow for disabling of Wonders just like you can with disabling Titans.

Also

AoM AI options
AoM AI options1439×1079 158 KB
t
Look at options we have lost with AI in AoMR

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205

It is definitely not perfect; I think we can all agree on that.

I believe the game is doing fine, usually the first few months of a game release will always show a sharp drop in number.

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It seems that the developers of this game were neither players of classic AOM nor developers of classic AOM.

Removing essential features from the game, like the auto-queue in competitive matches, was an absolutely absurd mistake! The AI-generated images of the gods also don’t help at all, especially when compared to the images from classic AOM, which were extremely original. These could have been improved instead of being removed completely or left in the background to buy in dlc.

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They decided to listen to pros whinning about Military Autoqueu, and those same pros quit.

They need to make MAQ a default option just like in quickmatch and stop dividing the community SMH


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208

it’s doing fine. i’ve looked at tons of games on steamcharts. player numbers are always high on launch then drop fast before finding a stable level for any game. i expect it will maintain similar numbers to age of empires 3. if it does i will consider that a success!

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Although i agree with you I personally dont like autoqueue. I think it is better to not have it. BUT the inconsistency that it has is in my opinion terrible. Either it should be in or out. Why allow it in casual play and not in ranked. Why are u putting an option which will split players based on it. Specially considering that that the more important AQ (namely villager AQ) is already part of the game.
Adding civilian unit AQ and not military unit AQ I think is confusing. on top of that allowing it in casual play (or leaving it for the host’s liking in custom games) and disabling it in ranked play is even more confusing!

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210

examples would be nice to add, as i can’t think of any “modern RTS game” that really competes with retold or any of DEs, except ofc with aoe1 and that game’s pathing

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  • AoE4
  • Starcraft 2 could be considered a modern RTS. Although it’s not fully current, it has been periodically updated in such a way that it hasn’t fallen behind.
  • If AoE5 were to come out tomorrow, it would surely surpass Mythology. (And NO, it’s not because of the mythology—people like mythology or at least they don’t have a special allergy that prevents them from playing an RTS with mythology if it’s good
)

Obviously I’m talking about games with a minimal budget

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to be fair, i do consider these myself, i just always saw too many downgrades in aoe4, although they did to their credit address a lot of them, just not every single one, SC2 definitely still up there just calling it modern idk, it feels modern due to every other game falling short of its controls and pathing, i’d argue feature wise you could easily put stormgate in there or some other indies, indies are the ones trying new things the most

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Personally, I don’t like AoE4. It has visual issues that I find unbearable. But even with the aspects that need to be improved, gameplay-wise it has better pathing, better battles, and a more balanced game.

Stormgate was a big fail. I never had faith in it; I could explain why I think it failed, but I’ll sum it up by saying it’s a knockoff SC2

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I like some of the features AoE4 has in its base building, like the automatically spawning decorations and walls that can be manned.
What I don’t like is that (when I last played) even their biggest maps in skirmish are smaller than small maps in AoM, and arrows can’t miss their targets and are twice as big as the archers.
No idea if patches changed any of that.

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size was changed very recently again, trajectories were improved, still sketchy tho, but always hit behaviour wasn’t

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You are just right, friend! They are splitting up the players with this mistake. I dont play too much with friends from China because of this point, for example.

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whats up with china and auto queue. im from china too

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Aom now falling really quickly now completely behind aoe3 haha

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Not true, always plenty of people to played in multiplayers games very quickly haha

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When AOM was first released and it had a peak of 25K I constantly had trouble finding games. but now eventhough players numbers have gone down, I easily find a game in 3-4 minutes everytime.
Comparing AOM to AOE 3 isn’t very correct since AOE3 has solidified its player base during many years.

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Then let’s compare launch numbers.

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Let’s establish the presuposition that we are comparing apples to apples. Given both games launched in mid October of their respective years, this is pretty easy to assume (interestingly, AOM launched one day earlier on the week, hence why the periodicty is offset).

The numbers speak pretty plainly; AOMR has fallen behind AOE3DE. AOE3DE’s players dropped off quickly due to the terrible launch state, stabilized, and then rose as the game was patched. On the other hand, AOMR has dropped steadily over 2 months, with a brief, dramatic spike due to Area of the Gods, which has already dissolved. At this point post launch, AOE3DE had higher peak player counts.

The picture gets worse once you start considering average player counts. While SteamDB doesn’t have averages that far back, we can safely make the assumtion that the daily pattern is roughly consistent. If we look at this last week:

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AOE3DE and AOMR traded peaks back-and-forth, but AOE3 had an average player base 20% larger than AOMR as AOMR has a dramatic daily spike at 20:00 GMT.

Other metrics bear this out too once you start peering behind the curtain. If you look at the official AOE leaderboards, AOMR has ~17000 1v1 players and AOE3DE has ~4800 1v1 ranked players, a 4-to-1 advantage. While this looks like AOMR still has a much larger ranked scene, remember these records go back over 30 days (you start losing ELO at 30 and you still show up for a while), which means this actually incorporates every single plyer who has tried AOMR. If we compare 1v1 players from the last 7 days (doable through many fan sites, I used FFP which has both AOE3 and AOM numbers), it drops to ~4800 in AOMR vs ~4400 in AOE3DE, meaning the ranked scenes are now dead-even between the two games.

Your anecdotal obervations that it only takes you around 3 minutes to find a game doesn’t establish it’s popularity, since AOE3 matches only take longer than that to find at the quietest part of the day.

At the crux of it all; AOMR is now below AOE3 in popularity. This shouldn’t come as a surprise, given legacy AOE3 was more popular than legacy AOM. But this isn’t a bad thing. AOM will stabilize, get two DLCs, etc etc. If it manages to keep a playerbase close to AOE3, that’s a very good thing, since AOE3 has gotten 4 content DLCs and the Free-to-play demo!

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