I bought the game on release. It had issues, fair enough, never mind the beta testing and the insider program. Happens, I get it. One year down the line, after endless patches and patches of the patches, we still get lag, not just some users, not just any games. Not just lag spikes here and there, but a completely broken type of lag. And it seems it isn’t going anywhere. I am going to spare the critique about the poor decisions expressed in constantly bombarding the community with useless implementations like the “events” we are witnessing every month or so, but the one thing I can say is if devs put the same amount of dedication and effort towards fixing actual bugs that have been around for so long (carrying from the overused Genie engine), then PROBABLY the game would be good by now. Map editor triggers are still broken. They “introduced” “new” triggers, conditions and effects, which - of course - half of them do not work. The only thing that works is that new alpaca or penguin avatar you never asked for. Menu UI is useless, it’s prone to crashing, peer-to-server induces more lag than HD’s peer-to-peer and also lacks the reconnecting option (like, what is the point in having that system in the first place). An “improved” game engine, based on a 23-year-old one makes modern hardware bend upon its weight while the same engine, 23 years ago ran on PCs that have less computational power than a modern iPod. Some people would say a new engine is hard to create, it is true. But if the product pretends to be a remaster, I do not think the old engine is suitable. New games get released all the time: are they all using old engines? No, because new engines are created all the time either, or at least frequently enough. All of this might sound harsh but it has been 1 year. One year where the never-ending complaints of the bad decisions that were implemented never got to the ears of those who took those decisions, and instead were left moldy in the forums for only the moderators to see. One year where we get laser shooting cat units and avatars of different colors and shapes but not fixing the damn lags, the frustratingly broken pathfinding and patroling or general brokenness of the code that is like a Swiss cheese and results in crashes for looking at the tech tree or because the game just decides so. One year where after so many discussions the chat filter still isn’t optional. The only good thing about the game was its new civs and campaigns. I know this isn’t an airport and there is no need to announce my departure. But I cannot play this BS anymore. I’d rather go back to HD and voobly. This game has consistently and continuously disappointed me and I gave it enough time to at least start going in the right direction. It hasn’t. Nothing more can be said from my side.
TLDR; (quite a text wall dude) but I’ll try to respond to some of the things I managed to read:
The point of not having a new engine is not it is hard to make. The main reason is that the remaster wanted to feel like the original game but a bit modernized. New game-changing feature suggestions are mostly being rejected by the community (except for a few QoL ideas)
So, imagine the number of haters of a new game just with an AOE2 skin on it (which is completely justified hate IMHO)
This and the decay are the only actual flaws of DE.
Performance issues tend to happen and they’re fixed for the most part each hotfix
No, QoL features were the selling point for me
I can understand going back to Voobly, UP, etc
But HD? The one that all agree that’s laggy as all hell?
If that seems like “quite a text wall” perhaps you should train your reading skill. And nowhere in the text did I mention anything about “new game-changing features” unless you count the game working as intended, which at this point it would indeed seem “game-changing”. Could you also elaborate about what justifiable you find in hating a product for what it claims to be, in contrast with a broken product that is not what it seems to advertise. Like, what is the difference? As for what you say what the actual flaws of DE are, I am quite sure a good portion of the players would agree the game has game-breaking bugs that are inherited through the Genie engine and not to a text in bold. Also, HD might have been a laggy mess but it was more stable than DE. I have had many 4v4 ludakris sized TG marathon matches with at least 300 pop and I do not recall a crash a single time. Besides, nobody expected much considering the limitations of the engine. It wasn’t advertised as a remaster.
Nope, you could work on your writing skills. Your text has no structure, and while your grammar seems to be okay, its just a pain to read.
Wow, that is a constructive feedback. It may lack arguments, but it is short and surely does sound convincing when you put an insult or two. Unlike mine. Obviously, moderately long texts are for bores. Especially when you don’t format them with
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Text in BOLD
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Text in ITALICS
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Bullets and lists
That completely changes the meaning of what is written and disregards the arguments. Really.
I am not being butthurt. But that is not an argument and changes the topic to a different one, it contributes nothing and is non-constructive in the very semantics of the word.
At least consider offering proper spacing and paragraphs, or try to do so to improve reading experience.
-Yes please; I didn’t read OP because of the wall of text; but I did read the reply and I agree with ArshiaAghaei.
Formatting would, indeed, help readability, though.
Imagine reading a textbook where it was just wall-to-wall (cover-to-cover) text with no formatting… from start to finish. No paragraph breaks, no chapter breaks, no line-breaks, no headers, no sub-headers, no lists, no pictures, etc. I think you’d probably agree that’d be harder to read than if it was formatted.
Your post is pretty lengthy; and to not have any formatting seems a little odd. If you want more people to read and follow along better, formatting would help things. It’s your call, though, whether or not you want to follow common writing practices to help people along. I’m okay either way; just trying to help and clarify the importance.
Well check your facts, the game is miles ways ahead peer to server than peer to peer, the only bad things is that it doesn’t have too many neutral servers, i hate to play vs southamericans with 50 ping and me using their far away server with 270ms, to me playing vs them is the same garbage it was playing on voobly and hd.
The game has a reconnect option, you just don’t see the window but the game is actually trying to reconnect players keeping the simulation running, once reconnected if successful the game will speed up for the player that dropped.
Aside from those 2 points, yeah the game got stuck at several points, no one asked for changes in the UI or events with avatars each patch, i know they hired people for that matter, but the resources should go to fix other things.
3.1k elo players seems ok for the devs, MM pairing you with way lower or too high players, noob bashing at his best, forcing players to play maps they don’t like cause limited ban options on a terrible system(this by itself is enough reason to stop playing the game), because they specifically said “we want that players have more skills on different maps, than just playing one map” nice but the current 3000 elo players shows how little it really matters to them to have an accurate elo.
Not having a save and restore feature when someones drops, the sportsmanship died on DE.
The nasty chat filter they added because of a hand of big streamers asked for it, cause youtube will demonetize their content, cool but we the players got our communication censured, it is still censoring any basic conversation in spanish.
Balancing civs seems more like a lets see how it goes instead of actually preventing the overuse of certain civs or units, it is not that hard at this point there is enough data to fix that.
The performance is not going to change, genie engine is just too old and so is the player base, i am tired of reading guys complaining about how bad the game runs on their end comparing it to the vanilla game from 2000 which is plain absurd, the performance is ok in comparison with the HD and looks much better, if you can’t run it properly update your rig.
Ludacris size is a joke and its unplayable, i remember playing in the HD York campaign at 1-2 fps…here i could play it just fine.
problem is they break the performance in their patches. The anniversary patch has introduced extreme lag for everyone in team games as soon as they hit imperial. So the least they could do is not make it worse, and if they do make it worse at least roll it back or make a quick fix. It has been days since the patch broke team games and yet no action.
I never said it was. I wasnt saying anything about your content. But if 5 out of 6 posters tell you your text is hard to read, and several (me inculded) didnt even feel like reading it…dont you think that you should put in the effort to properly write? After all, you want your thoughts to be read or you wouldnt have come here.
Agree completely. I cannot believe we’re a year on and still 4v4 TGs are NOT POSSIBLE due to game performance. I have not had nor have I SEEN any 4v4 that did not have performance issues.
And of course in this Anniversary Patch, performance has gotten worse.
It is driving people away from the game. I love the work the devs put into balance, QoL, etc., but THE FUNDAMENTAL issue with this game right now is performance, and the fact that a year on we’re still where we are is just completely unacceptable.
So I relegate myself to 3v3s or below, missing my favorite game mode, but I KNOW other people just try it out, see the terrible performance, and leave.
Yeah, I just played a quick play empire war. The stutter… ugh… and that’s 1v1. Idk why on earth a 1v1 online match can be this laggy despite decentish single player performance.
Yeah, I think you need to re read your own message dude.
Maybe you are not, but don’t act like you are
And your response to me is considered constructive?
After the hotfix? Because as for me, before the hotfix I had a 1v1 Quickplay Empire wars and I had 56-60 almost constantly (obviously you can get a different result, but just stating my own experience)
While the anniversary patch did bring lags, it was never a huge issue before it (and ofc after the December update IIRC)
No. Before the hot fix. I did not receive any update request at the time of playing.
Yeah sorry for you, but you lost this one bruv.
That really is a TLDR wall of text by any definition.
On top of that probably not the best thing to criticise an aspect the devs admitted to accidentally messing up (the lag stutter whatnot issue). These things happen and they literally fixed what they broke.
Also we still have the highest player base for an RTS on steam… If we consider the fact that RTS is not the most popular genre by far… Then aoe2 is doing extremely well regardless of these “issues the devs can’t resolve”…
but I did read it and agreed with him. so did many others, lost or not, take the argument of wall of text some other place.
Maybe we should all start posting walls of text 
I’d probably be the resident king of text walls
How.can u guys still be mad? This game was almost free in that many things, they bimplement. They make , shift comand, wich is very life improvement, they are seeing inbalance in lancers, so they fix them. They try to do game better and u still just spaming how badizt is, guys, at least stop talking nonsence. To many life improvement over years for free. In this game is no microtransaction so stop doung this nonsence, or u want them to quit and let the game die? Whats wrong with u. Still knocking on their doors and still complain, but never see the good thing? I play Aoe as a child and now its super to see they dont forget it and try to do best.