Roadmap Discussion

[MS Ryz0n]

This thread is for the discussion of some upcoming features to AOE II HD as described in the recent announcement
http://steamcommunity.com/app/221380/discussions/1/618458030678429044/

[colorfiction]

Thank you very much for listening to the community's input!! Looking forward to the updated workshop!

[Iceman]

Great News!!!

[Napoqe]

I enjoyed the announcement, and I think I'll buy the expansion. But the Scenario Editor will be improved? Because him is of little, that I think is that does not need to know programming to make a fun map. At the moment I think that he worse than the World Editor, of game Warcraft 3. But same so I thank Microsoft up make. :)

[Lord Brimestone]

Thanks for all your hard work devs.

[tilanus]

I'm a big AoE2 fan and leader of a popular AoE3 mod (Napoleonic Era) and thus would like to know if MS plans to - at least - approximate the (now obviously concentrated) mod support for AoE2 also for AoE3 in the near or farther future?

As a die-hard veteran of the whole AoE community, I'd still love to see and help bringing all core games of the franchise to a coherent level of quality and popularity which they and the loyal community would have deserved already much earlier. I can assure I will give my best, but without the official support of MS all these attempts will never reach its possible peak.

[PCMaster]

Great, I was hoping there! : D

[Thordgar]

This is a great news!

A feature that I wish to see is the ability to play on LAN. Most of the times my friend and I play 2vs2 with the AI but we are forced to play while online, thing that slows the mathces. We live in Italy and the connections are quite slow.

However, thanks for bringing AOE II back to life :D

[the wookiees]

First of all thanks for supporting and keeping this game up to date :)
Ideas for future updates and fixes;
-Add a filter for ''Game Speed'' in the multiplayer lobby browser
-My recorded games from AoF show on the list of my recorded games of HD, although you can't watch them unless you switch to AoF :p However the list of recorded games in AoF works fine (no HD games there). Can that get fixed?
-Recorded games should have an actual functional ''fast forward'' button, cause the existing one is rather slow, as a lot of people have already pointed out. I'd also recommend a button that would skip a certain amount of minutes (to watch the later part of a long game).

[the wookiees]

Also you guys should really check the ''balance tweaker'' that ZeroEmpires and Resonance22 are working on! Of course this affects gameplay so its integration in a patch is a tougher decision than bug fixes, but it has the potential to revive those certain units (e.g. militia line, fire ships) that are not commonly used in higher level play because they are too situational or just not effective to be used compared to other units. In my opinion that new balance is sure to bring even more (and new) strategies to the game, spicing it up a bit ;)
Pls can i have your opinion on this?

[blitzkragz]

If you want to do this right, first and foremost, you need to get input from and follow the lead of top professional players. hd's development roadmap has been plagued by too noob and short term, short-sighted of an agenda. ludikris? cards? wtf?

There needs to be someone up there in charge that plays a crap ton of multiplayer with 2k+ elo. They will be able to tell you right away what is a good idea with long term value and what is crap. Ensemble Studios back in the day had active, expert players like The_Sheriff on the team. There is no equivalent to that now. You have the blind leading the blind.

Like what idiot decided if you have 8 players and host sets it from 6p to 8p map size to launch, everyone gets unreadied? what idiot made normal and fe separate lobbies? and what idiot decided to unready the lobby if you boot an undesirable? if the folks that are making these decisions actually personally played multiplayer a lot their decisions on what needs to be done would be more educated.

I remember over a year ago when they had a live stream announcing the forgotten, i repeatedly kept trying to ask ryzon to clarify and make sure that both normal and fe games would not be in separate lobbies. but as usual he wouldnt give a straight answer, and lo and behold they were separate, and they missed a real opportunity. if they had just listened to what the folks that actually spend time in multiplayer were saying, and made it like aoe2.net is now from the start, fe would likely not have been such a failure.

Sorry for the rant, id like to see hd do well, but i don't have high hopes unless something changes in management. these are same folks that told me they intentionally wont make an option to center the minimap like you can with userpatch. i mean, wtf? someone more in touch with the game needs to be calling the shots...

[AldonioMX]

I'll be honest here. I just purchased the Forgotten Expansion as a way to say "thank you" to the fans who put a lot of effort to make the unofficial Forgotten Expansion.

It was understandable that the quality of the Forgotten Expansion was lower than an official expansion, being the most important reasons the lack of budget and official support, it was a project from fans to fans.

But I'm not a philantropist to keep paying for further expansions if the quality of the content will remain the same. AoF stopped being a fan project, and as a paying customer I can only express disappointment if you pretend to leave the Forgotten Expansion "as is".

My expectations are to see a focus in improving the content of the Forgotten Expansion (ex. adding cutscenes and narrations to the campaigns) before you start asking for more money.

[Narama]

Originally posted by AldonioMX:

My expectations are to see a focus in improving the content of the Forgotten Expansion (ex. adding cutscenes and narrations to the campaigns) before you start asking for more money.

I do agree with that. I remember that you stated at the release of forgotten empires, that you would give us narrations, cutscenes and most important synchronisations. You said the reason it wasn't already in the expansions was because you had no time and money. Both of these things should be there by now, but instead of "improving" the current expansion to where it should have been from the beginning, you want to give us a new one. Just compare Forgotten Empires with The Conquerors and spot the differences. It's a huge quality step backwards. Don't get me wrong, I love you guys for still doing something for this game, but if you charge money, please make it worth it.

[crowdedbookshelf]

Oh, where to begin... I have been using AOEII for years since it first came out and only recently bought the package for Steam community playing. About a month and a half ago I lost all access to the El Cid campaign (using Win 7 Pro on a Lenovo Thinkpad T430, fyi). Your customer support is a joke, so you really need to fix that. I'm sick and tired of talking to confused Xbox Live people who hang up on me and/or drop the call first chance they get. DEDICATED STEAM PHONE TROUBLESHOOTING SUPPORT is a must if you ever expect to see another dime from me going forward.

If and when I get the El Cid campaign back (since every time I try to click on a scenario I'm told that 'the scenario could not be loaded') that will be a big plus. And for the record uninstall/reinstall of the Steam community and game software does nothing. There are a ton of bugs from the existing campaigns and such that still need to be dealt with from the original release A LONG TIME AGO. Example: Frederick Barbarossa scenario 1: starting with Light Cavalry when that's not on the Teutonic tech tree. Another case: El Cid cannot use Fortified Walls on 'Black Guards' scenario even though that's included in the default Saracen technology tree. The list goes on and on. You need to set up a dedicated team for campaign debugging and GET ON THAT PRONTO OR YOU SHOULD BE ASHAMED OF YOURSELVES.

Likewise, The Forgotten Campaigns right now are frankly pieces of junk. The Conqueror's campaigns were far better in that the were balanced between narrative and conflict. The Forgotten stuff spends far too much time navigating a single unit or small group of units across the bloody effing maps. BORING TIMES A BILLION.

Happy to discuss any of the above specific issues in much greater detail.

[Zetnus]

Seeing as development is ramping up again, can we post wishlists of stuff we would like to see, or has most of the work already been done?

Personally I would suggest the following:
-Fix some of the minor graphical problems on title screen
-Find a workaround to allow full-map screenshots to function with the new terrain rendering system
-Allow custom random maps to be played on all game modes
-Consider adding more of the UserPatch stuff (maximum age, resource_delta, further AI stuff, etc.)
-Allow offline LAN games
-Improve the replay capabilities
-(voice acting) (I know this is a stretch)

[FE_HockeySam18]

Go ahead and post your suggestions!