Literally a strategy that forces the defender to use their villagers to destroy “enemy towers” BEFORE they will be built or is a GG.
1 Like
The game will eventually fail, because the dev is stubborn and clueless.
How many people purchased the game and probably a quarter of that continues playing. People expected AoM, not some chaotic mess.
The dev should have learned something from Voobly, every time Voobly released a new patch, they lost players… at the end RTSL only had 4 teams participating.
The first thing they need to do is remove Quick Match so people are forced to host games. In the long run we end up creating a stable community. Yesterday, I played a decent QM 3v3 and the following game was vs complete noobs, this is called a waste of time. If we had a functional lobby, we would have had a gg and then followed by a gg rematch but instead you end up facing random noobs.
For Balance…
-The most important thing they need to do is make the maps smaller.
-Bring back animal predators.
-Each map should require a different playstyle. High hunt, low hunt, etc…
-Bring back the original maps and remove the Giza, Elysium & Nile Shallows. They all look the same.
-gp’s shouldn’t be reuseable or at least there needs to be a way to block gp’s again.
.
.
.
1 Like
Ummm, NO. No current game lacks a quick-match option. Not having it would be ridiculous. It’s not something incompatible with having a custom lobby
I agree that AoM Retold is going to be a fail (at least compared to what was expected of it), but it won’t be because of that.
1 Like
There are variations of tower rushes in AOE series as well. This is impractical in AoM cause the TC can fire and in AoE3 you literally cannot place buildings so close to the enemy TC, but it is sometimes a viable strategy in AoE2.
This is another mind blowing one. So many issues would be solved if they brought back the original model of gp blocking (global god powers blocking other god powers). This is an example of a perfect synergy from the old game that was removed for some unknown reason (the unknown reason is most likely eclipse + ancestors but this could simply be targeted nerf).
I know. My point was that in Starcraft II, defensive buildings are not weak or useless, that in the context that AoM Retold devs have overnerfed Towers and Casttles inspired by starcraft II.
1 Like
Do you really think they’ve taken their inspiration from StarCraft 2? A completely different ultra-fast microgame with no connection whatsoever to the background in a sci-fi universe? Come on, be serious… The developers at aom couldn’t care less about SC2.
1 Like
I don’t think any of us know what exactly makes or breaks this game, but I think more than anything it’s the lack of new content.
people played the campaign and a couple of games, but because this game is practically the same as 20 years ago (aside from one premium god and level, and some mechanic changes), they droped it for now. You can’t expect people to play the same game for 20 years…
Just see how aoe 2 hd started with just few players and got more as more expansions where added. Aoe 2 DE was released with practically double the content of original aoe, so players had tons of new things to do.
With the new arena of the gods mod, and more dlcs I think we will definitely see a rise in players, but only time can tell.
3 Likes
Remember Microsoft now owns StarCraft 2. AoMR was marketed as the next big esports RTS.
Ps: done fighting Anubis yet?
I am sure that these four reasons play a significant role in the drastic drop in players:
- Monotonous and unvaried gameplay. This is partly influenced by the weakening of defensive play, which limits possible options and makes late game (with all its units) rarely seen
- Population. There’s not much to explain here; the difference in battle size compared to other RTS games is very noticeable and feels highly restrictive. There is a greater abundance of mods on this theme than in the rest of the ‘Age Of’ saga, reflecting this shortcoming in the game.
- Balance. Someone mentioned something similar. I’ve also noticed that (SPECIFICALLY) Hera’s lightning storm is VERY powerful. That kind of imbalance could discourage many people from continuing to try the competitive making the game frustrating
- Lack of new cultures. This is to be expected and is somewhat inevitable at the start, but with the addition of the Chinese and the Aztec/Mayans later on, this issue would be partially resolved
To this as well, I find the game horrendously tedious. Almost all units and even buildings cost gold, which is also a very limited resource. I struggle to build armies at all by the Mythic Age just because I can’t find gold anymore.
I’m going to defend AoM in this case. Maybe you’re playing with Egyptians, who consume more gold than buildings in exchange for not costing wood.
It’s true that gold is a key resource in AoM, but that’s also why it can be obtained infinitely through trade
2 Likes
I personally think that there should be additional types of gold mines added to the maps to make them more interesting, mainly in more predictably contested areas- Rich gold mines can be extracted faster, while large gold mines have a larger starting amount and could have a larger footprint, meaning that they can be mined by more workers.
Then again, a common issue with AOM retold is that the maps, especially the competitive ones, tend towards sameness, which is combined with no one wanting to play water maps (which is an issue onto itself) and buildings being a bit too fragile.
However, I doubt any major changes are going to be made yet until at least the Chinese DLC is done.
1 Like
Yes, I’m at the tail end of the Egyptian campaign.
Even though trade is certainly an option, I don’t think this is much of a credit, as defense is almost pointless because defensive structures are so weak. Maintaining trade routes are very difficult without useful walls, towers, and fortresses to look after the trade routes.
I think making buildings more defensive is a bad idea, I think buildings being overly tanky and strong leads to very boring degenerate gameplay where people just turtle up every game. I feel we’re very close to a perfect balance where 2 tc is strong, but punishable by all-in 1 tc pushes.
My guess as to why aom is declining in popularity is that the majority of players aren’t competitive, they’re done with the campaign and they don’t want to play online, playing versus other players is a big leap for a lot of people, the other day someone randomly asked me when the point was where I felt ready to hop into ranked (I told him I just queue’d up without really thinking about it) and I think alot of people feel this way, they have ladder anxiety and the RTS genre suffers from this in general, there’s alot to learn and you have nobody to blame but yourself when you lose, it can be very stressful.
I think the server issues scared alot of people away, the multiplayer browser was extremely unstable and slow, games weren’t displaying correctly and alot of its functions weren’t working the way they should. There were alot of sync issues, they still plague the custom game community today.
The game doesn’t seem to have a very strong custom game community anymore, I remember in the old ESO days there would be a ton of zelda games hosted, a ton of custom scenarios and people had clans and entire communities centered around those specific scenarios. These scenarios were a good middle ground for a player that wanted to play online, play with or against others, but didn’t want to play a cutthroat standard game with a bunch of stuff to manage at the same time.
So yeah, I think the game can still grow, but it needs new campaigns, a more stable client and alot of sync bugs that seem to appear in scenarios and large player count standard games need to be fixed.
See those games from AoM Extended Edition, look how the game evolved without nerfing the buildings even taking into account the low population (with low population it is harder to break the defensive line)
1 Like
Yes I agree that ranking can scare players, but in fact there are no rewards associated with elo, when you lose or win it only affects your elo so I can understand that it’s not attractive enough for many players…
Anyway ranked games shouldn’t affect people, whether you lose or win it won’t change anything in your life, nobody here will become a pro player or maybe 0.01%, personally I don’t care about elo and I just play full random every game, I don’t want to master a single civilisation just to climb the ladder.
Trade routes don’t have to be long to get Gold even short ones can give some gold (just not as much per distance as long ones) and any gold is better then no gold.
The fact that the majority of players aren’t competitive is true for every RTS game, even the decade old super successful ones like AoE2 and Starcraft 2.
RTS Games that cater exclusively to online PvP players, with any other content only being added as an after thought or as a form of tutorial, are pretty much dead on release. Crossfire: Legion being an obvious example.
