Just as the title says. Are developers ever going to answer something about the really important issues discussed here?
The community is continuously giving its feedback here, in Aoezone, Reddit, Twitch, YouTube, etc. about the changes that are urgent and really necessary for this game to grow and not transform into the new “AOE2: HD”. Much of this feedback was given by experts like Tatoh, Hera, Viper and MBL but I see that devs only respond to ridiculous topics like “translation problems” without focusing on performance issues, matchmaking, balance, the spectator system (this is really important for streamers), provide a database of games played ( also very important for streamers), etc.
This is the time to listen to the community if they don’t want this game to fail and we all go back to Voobly.
And please, if I am wrong and you are really focusing on the problems mentioned above, let us know! The community also needs feedback from you, we need to feel heard!
Their PR is kinda awful, but is hard to blame the devs, exactly. I adressed those questions on a topic right after the launch, and a dev even came out to speak, meaning that they are well aware of the situation, even though they remain pretty silent.
But thing is, from what I can tell the people who work developing the game need to take their free time to answer the community out there. They already focus their efforts on a normal shift for the development and also need to do unpaid counter shift work to reach up the fans on common issues and demands. I don’t think that this is right.
What I think that should be done is that Microsoft should invest in some PR team to specifically address this game. Someone to answer some more topics here and there, with things like “this is not being aimed right now”, “that is currently being worked on”; settle some doubts; update the common issues posts more frequently; make posts clarifying when a next update should be expected. Things like that would not hurt. On the contrary, it would greatly help.
Like a community manager. Which they have. It’s quite possible they have them working on other tasks and it might not entirely be that person’s fault… but communication on issues and timeframe has been very poor and was during the beta until people in the community made multiple posts like this one.
The impression I have is that they spent WAY too much on doing all kinds of fancy stuff, and now there are not enough resouces left to do what is actually necessary. FE is probably overwhelmed by everything and they can’t comment because they can’t take on more work.
Everyone knows how much bank they made with HD, there is no chance a decent new aoe2DE release turns out a loss. The true reason why they wanted all these fancy things is not because they listened to the community. Mostly it’s a marketing tool to achieve maximum sales. At what cost?
It’s a bit of a let-down, honestly. There was such a hype, AoE being above 5k viewers on Twitch at all times, several large streamers playing it.
Now the numbers are going down again because there is no follow-up. Problems like Cuman balance, which seem so easy to fix, haven’t been addressed even three weeks after release.
The worst thing is that we have absolutely no clue if anyone is even listening to feedback and if the problems are being addressed.
It honestly feels like the developer time was slashed upon release, and effectively only a skeleton staff remains. In the weeks leading up to launch, there were a number of big patches that had many updates and fixes. In hindsight, this feels like it was a last final push, and everything has been scaled back massively since launch.
There are still a huge number of bugs, introduced in patches in September that are still present in the game. Unfortunately we lost access to these bug reports when the beta forum was archived. It feels like those bug reports have been swept under the rug. It’s obvious that the ‘known issues’ thread contains only a fraction of what was reported in the final weeks of the beta. What happened to these bug reports? Are they even being tracked internally on the bug tracker?
What sucks is that we were told things would continue to get better after release, and that Microsoft was committed to the success of the game. I know we have had a few minor patches, but these have essentially been hotfixes for various crashes.
I would like to see some acknowledgement of in game bugs, and that they are being worked on. There’s still performance issues. There are loads of issues with balance. There are still UI bugs, stat bugs and pathing bugs.
I agree with Ferch about the community managers. Shouldn’t these people be the key link between the community and the dev teams?
I don’t want to moan about DE. I love the game and have been playing aoe2 for 20 years. I’m also an experienced software developer. I understand the intricicies of developing software. What I can’t imagine is releasing something, and then being so nonchalant and quiet about issues 3 weeks after launch. If this were commercial software and not a game, you’d have some very angry stakeholders by now.
All of those issues you mentioned are definitely being looked at and the discussions happening in the community do help to shape the results, even if the end result isn’t exactly what you wanted because there could be a number of other things to take into consideration which may not be obvious or knowable at all without being a developer and seeing everything from our side.
I know it can be frustrating as a devoted player and wanting to be heard, I’ve been in the same position many times with other games I love, so I try to comment where I can to help people understand not just about their specific issues but in general about how it can be very difficult for a dev team to react to a large community.
Often times there will be a question asked and answered by the community or a dev, but not everyone that posts reads every single comment on every single thread, so you can see how it’s possible to miss things like a dev response to the issues you are looking at.
So don’t loose heart, we are here and listening even if we don’t always respond (or if you happen to miss it).
It would be great if you guys announce what’s currently being considered into the next fix / update. It will calm people down and stop them from complaining over and over again about the same things thinking their issues are not being considered / noticed.
With the current state of the game I think being vocal is important, just so that the community doesn’t fall apart and lose interest
Thank you for responding, I’m glad to hear that you are aware of the claims made by the community
Just as VisibleAnt2066 said, please use some mechanism so that we can know what you are working on, something like a sticky post where there is a little more exchange of opinions between you and us, that would make us feel more heard and I am sure that the number of repeated posts asking for the same would be reduced significantly
I just came to this thread through AoEZone, but I think it’s worth it to post here as well.
I dont even think we need a very big patch right now (some people were saying that there).
It’s just about sending some kind of signal and showing us what you are currently working at, so we know at least somewhat what to expect.
I 'm pretty sure something like this would already be celebrated by 90+% of the community:
Steppe Lancers -2 damage
Cumans dont get +10% cavalry speed anymore, but get free Husbandry
We are watching balancing issues right now, but we want to take a bit more time until we make specific changes. So right now we just “hotfix” the things that seemed to cause more trouble than we anticipated and will continue to work from there. You can expect a big balancing patch in the next 2-3 months.
Added the abilitiy to veto up to 3 maps of the current ranked que.
We are still working on an improved ranked matchmaking system, but we want it to be fully developed before releasing it. So right now we give you the ability to avoid maps you really dont like. Stay tuned for an update for our ideas for ranked gameplay in the future!
In addition to that you can now have a look at tech trees during que times.
We are also aware that the spectator system needs a lot of improvement. Right now our focus is to make every game played accessible to watch and easy to find. You can expect an update for that in the next 2 weeks. After that we will focus on improving the spectating tool itself.
Last but not least we are still working on performance issues, but since there are a lot of possibles reasons for problems we won’t be able to fix them all in one patch. Just expect the game to get better step by step with every single patch through small fixes. Our main priority right now is preventing disconnects during the games.
Thanks for giving us feedback and helping us to make this game as great as we all want it to be!
I think something like that would already do A LOT and give us an idea what you are thinking. I don’t understand why you choose to basically not communicate, or if you do communicate you just seem to use common phrases instead of any details that are actually relevant.
I dont even think you would need to fix everything at once to make the community happy. You just need to start somewhere and give us a good idea what you are actually planning to do (and not just “we are working on something”).
It would make everything so much better. It doesn’t have to be the big perfect solution right now. Just a step in the right direction. But I think that we need rather sooner than later. Please get us on board and don’t just do something silently and then present us the work once it’s done.
if any of the aoe 2 de dev sees this : please change the lobby system , i think the way it’s implemented is really bad , i would like to see lobby browser like the one in voobly and a chat messenger inside the game not relying on steam chat , and windowed mode for everything …
it’s really driving me crazy !!
Who is the community manager?
It really shouldn’t be hard to do a sticky post with the “roadmap” of the new few weeks/months, known problems/suggestions and thoughts on them.
Heck, give me 20 minutes on the phone with anyone on the team and I’ll do it.
This isn’t even on the Dev team, it’s on the community manager… I mean, you just got a full AOE team created (world’s Edge?) to supposedly carry the future of AOE. Just get SOMEONE to talk with people in an organized matter.
but I understand that development takes time.