The game is dying.

[User]

The game is slowly dying. Very few multiplayer players, few game rooms, meaningless matches that constantly crash (out of sync)...

I'm a big age of empires fan. It's a game I've been playing since 2005, maybe every time I switch on my computer, and I've enjoyed it immensely.

As a marketer, I have been in many game studios before, both as a marketer and as a community manager. Based on this, I think that someone in charge will read this comment and forward it to the necessary department.

AOE III DE is a really great production, especially the recent DLCs have added a completely different atmosphere to the game. However, my observation is that AOE III DE is a production with less budget-time spent compared to other AOE games.

When I leave here and go to AOE II DE, I see hundreds of game rooms. I think this is a strange situation for AOE III, the sequel of the series. I partially call both the game programmers and the community team to task.

Here are clear requests and demands from the players of AOE III DE. Even if some of these requests and demands are irrational and illogical, the community team should take care of these players.

Especially recently, the "Out Of Sync" error that we have encountered in 3 out of 4 games has become very annoying. In addition, the need for new civilisations can be clearly seen here.

These civilisations can be the following:

-Persians
-Koreans
-Canada
-Finland or Norway (whichever is historically possible)
- and others.

At the same time, a new system can be introduced to the Age Up system and an economic/military boost can be brought according to the selected age up option.

These and similar community requests are endless, but your team needs to urgently address this issue and find a solution to the ever decreasing number of multiplayer players.

Yours sincerely,

The King

[Homer]

okay

[[deleted]]

you're wrong

[[BRE] Léonard "le Fol"]

The problem is exactly the DLCs, there is no QoL, if they worked on "online status" (UI), easy to use over imposed chat, not lagging chat, better font and more immersive UI background, other QoL stuff like the main game "Supremacy" not being cornered into a matchmaking that makes you wait up to 5.5 minutes sometimes before launching a 2 v 2 game.
1 v 1 are much less time angry for the matchmaking, but why only determined style of games are favored? Why rooms with ranked treaty and ranked deathmatch and no chance to create a Supremacy\classic room?

But I repeat: how it is possible they focus on DLCs? and instead there is tons of Lobby\QoL\UI stuff to improve: the online status of players is impossible to decipher! It's like 10 walls were designed in between players that want to know each other!
I managed to speak to one yesterday after 1 year! Most of people use it to insult others!

Think about it. Yes the game is mostly a single player object. This is so sad.
And of course pro player use the videos for their channels and their top 10 top 20 ranking show off and that's it.

Why all this compartmentalization of everything? WHy they don't see the elephant(s) in the room?!

The game needs to stop to push this nationalist fantasy.
There were not communities. Yes the Norwegians were important already in 1200.. and with the conquest of Iceland etc... ok maybe the first in the Western continent before Colombo, however why adding so much national stuff.. ok do it but first do what is important.

Censoring players names is just damaging the game.
Ok they offend someone? Let people report it. or just don't allow people to have offensive names in one way or another, push them to change it.
But allow us to see it so that we can add them..

there is no easy life in playing with others and meeting them again. It's all a "one shot experience"... this is incredible failure design.

Sure! The game now has more depth with the gameplay due to the balances and civs and rework of damage etc etc etc.. it's not easy job to do! (they should stop changing meta though constantly introducing tons of updates to units etc). The game has really a feeling of bigger depth to the vanilla.. I did not try the esoc patch on vanilla though so I should not speak on this.. maybe it was already good there, but the QoL in lobby etc was much better, now tons of things are gone.

From the working chat
The online status of players easy to see and play with someone
the better looking UI and background and fonts
The icons of units, less cartoonish stuff in general.
Not 50 gb of space needed...

yes the various graphic options are good especially the big zoom. But... there are huge fundamentals that are not considered!

The Developers and production are disregarding the original and hardcore fan base: the supremacy players
the standard type of players
instead they favor the single player fantasy ones that have mostly not much to do with RTS and those that buy NFT (that type of mindset).

Tell me what future has a RTS with this status of development....
Adding more DLCs Civs would destroy the game.

There is a reason why you are expert in marketing and communication and not creating content, Marketing and communication are superficial activities to sell more. It's not stuff that creates the core of a business, the strategy the mission, these are done by other people: CEO, Design Lead.

What is missing is this, not more marketing, more communication, more dressing of a not complete, not polished system of UI and QoL.. whitout that you have no space for DLC because that would add issues also until you destroy the balance of gameplay due to civs that take so much time to be balanced and patched and meta constnatly changed.. so much it becomes a game that requires all your time to be played and understood which is disrespectful. Keep META THE SAME. Stop changing constantly stop adding new civs (AT LEAST UNTIL the QoL isn't fixed, the UI, the game isn't polished.

AT THAT POINT U CAN ADD WHATEVER YOU WANT!

[User]

Hey,

I understand your point, and, yes the new civs are still a need even after this long commentary.

I totally agree with every single problem you mentioned. But you are ghosting my and other players’ wishes about new civs.

Why do we need to select one? We can do both.

Instead of selection, we can do a priority system.


The problems you mentioned are valid, indeed. So let’s start with it. Let's make some changes in UI/UX first, and do some more balancing based on vanilla, these are all fine.

But after that, since the game needs to refresh itself and bring more action/excitement to its players, we need to add more civs or age-up options.

So since the problems you mentioned are critical, the order could be:

1. UI UX
2. Multiplayer fix
3. More dynamic player system that allows people to add, chat, and play easily.
4. More age-up options
5. More civs
6. Maybe a more realistic graphical update?

How about that? I mean, we don't need to eliminate wishes to make other wishes come true. Just do a priority table and that's it. I believe in that way, everyone, including you, will be satisfied.


With all due respect,

The King

[[BRE] Léonard "le Fol"]

It is what I said. There is no need for more civs, there is need to finish the game development that is definietly not finished. The look of it is BBB game, the UI, the functionality is Objectively terrible, any player anyone who has a minimum understanding of what we are talking about here would say it. I can meet people in chat rarely and talk about it.

This game has become single players fest. It's just the dead sentence of this game and its community for the happiness of finance that earns money from DLCs buyers who are the black curse, like a plague of this market... consumers with problematic spending disorder. And it's on steroids this thing. You can go check the US, EU and generally Asia etc healty recovery institutes.. it's even full of private companies who earn a lot the more of these fragile people continue supporting this system.

And gaming is becoming trash... Yes.. it's much better to work all day.
I am not eliminating anyone.
I respect you and anyone else. Not those that come to troll and harass. (not you clearly).

It's rare to find educated people nowadays in steam forums just becasue people despise this place and don't think that putting a good word can help. But hell if it does...

People jhust wanna use this place and just leave it rottening. It's sad.

I understand there are kids to grow, lives to conduct...
But today these places and not only these virtual places are becoming owned by trolls and harassers that destroy any proper future of each organization, project, institution..

I agree there is need for a priority and priority top is actually an emergency and it would benefit so much the game and the finance of the company!

It's not me to be satisfied, it's the name of such companies (are they temporary shops to money launder? I don't think so!!... Tantalus Media, Forgotten Empires, Microsoft Xbox Games Studios are I guess clean and not backed by dirty investors.. because there are actually in the so called "industry" but I guess not them... Maybe I am wrong?
Anyway... they are making really a sad impression in the market with such behavior and treating like this players, and especially game development.

Game development is seriously mishandled with such behavior.

There are crucial steps when you do a game. It cannot be dysfunctional, disrupted, broken in the UI and QoL a great absent.

Anyway I am done with this.. Read or not.. Until it gives some pleasure I do play after that I live it to die on Single player targeted playerbase for their "new civ" to play against a UI.. in their solo-ist room.

What a sad thing,.. gaming should be a cooperative experience and it has become just a spend and personal pleasure hole.

[User]

Look chief, I am having a hard time understanding if your anger is to me or to the studios, or to a system. But, if you think that I am, and other players like me are the reason, I would probably reject this statement.

As I said, I totally agree with what you said, plus, I could do anything to see you peaceful, to be honest. It seems you are done with all this money stuff, etc.

But to address your worries, what did you do to change what needs to be changed so far? Did you write to the Game Product lead or anyone else about all these?

[James3157]

I have not played multiplayer yet, but even if I did and decided it was not worth it because of not enough people playing on multiplayer at least there are videos on youtube for entertaining us with multiplayer mode. At least you could potentially learn how to become a pro against the AI first before getting bored with the game from single player. Also, Canada did not even become independent until 1982 which is long after the Industrial Age and even after 1982 Canada still has closer ties I think to the UK, France (but only for Quebec), and possibly (at least in theory) even China than the United States despite being neighbors to each other in addition to the fact that the French language from Canada during the 21st century at least is slowly dying out as well which could be because English is the predominant language and even the French from Quebec can also speak English from at least most of them. Historically speaking I think that Norway might have had a more significant role during this time period than Finland up until World War I. I also disagree with you that the game is dying with its 82% positive rating on Steam, except for maybe multiplayer mode where it might be slowly dying out; although, I am not 100% certain of this since I have not spent enough time yet playing multiplayer to know this with 100% certainty.

[James3157]

If Canada were to be included the people would most likely speak English instead of French (which as mentioned previously French language is apparently slowly dying out in Canada), but only problem is that as mentioned previously Canada did not even gain independence until 1982 which even Australia gained independence before Canada. I also get that there is India being colonized, but India existed long before it was colonized by the British.

[Maxillian]

Originally posted by James3157:

If Canada were to be included the people would most likely speak English instead of French (which as mentioned previously French language is apparently slowly dying out in Canada), but only problem is that as mentioned previously Canada did not even gain independence until 1982 which even Australia gained independence before Canada. I also get that there is India being colonized, but India existed long before it was colonized by the British.

Whilst the community has been and still is quite strict on want can and can't be included.
We've seen however that the DE devs are fairly lenient with what they want to add to the game.

As such I do not really think that Canada being part of the British empire is a problem.
Game play wise they'd likely be some form of hybrid faction, borrowing content from the US, British, French and Haudenosaunee, through Home City Cards or tech.

[James3157]

Originally posted by Maxillian:

Whilst the community has been and still is quite strict on want can and can't be included.
We've seen however that the DE devs are fairly lenient with what they want to add to the game.

As such I do not really think that Canada being part of the British empire is a problem.
Game play wise they'd likely be some form of hybrid faction, borrowing content from the US, British, French and Haudenosaunee, through Home City Cards or tech.

And if their were to be an Australian DLC it would probably include at least two new civilizations called the Australians (at least somewhat similar to the British) and Aboriginals as well if there were to be a DLC for Canadians included. It was for example still during the Industrial Age at least for the British since they started the Industrial Age before everyone else when Australia was first being colonized.

[Krosis Priest]

Quality > quantity. I'm enjoying myself here exactly because it feels like the game is made with attention to quality and the playerbase is also healthy as a result.

If something, AoE2:DE is sprinting off a cliff, it has a disgusting playerbase and exponentially growing amount of bugs.

I might even see myself trying multiplayer in AoE3:DE, which I will NOT touch with a ten meter pole in AoE2:DE.

Also, multiplayer is not, never was and never will be the most important aspect of AoE and a low multiplayer count means absolutely nothing.

[Catalytic]

I think there's certainly room to improve the MP user experience. MP is often looked at as a key driver of longevity for an RTS game so it absolutely must not be ignored. Desyncs are a critical issue that must be addressed because it ruins the experience for all players in the game. The lobbies need to be optimized, and the matchmaking systems should be honed as much as possible within the confines of what a small player base can actually expect out of any statistically driven model.

However, I want to focus on the single player. I'm primarily a single player myself with AoE3. It is my understanding that most players fall into this category as well. If the SP audience is the majority of the player base, development needs to focus on improving that experience. Improving the AI is a perennial issue, and to their credit, FE have consistently worked to make it better from patch to patch.

Many of us really want new content. New content is widely seen as a sign of a vibrant and growing game. FE have developed 4 DLC now with 6 new civs as well as the 2 that came with the DE version (Inca, Sweden). They've developed a number of historical battles for those of us history nerds who like that experience, but I think overall the reception to these has been tepid. Personally, I'd like to see a new campaign with a properly fleshed out story. I had a really great experience with Starcraft 2's 4 campaigns and I replay them from time to time in full because the stories are still fun. I know the development requirements for something of that caliber are immense, but I would also be willing to pay a fair price for that kind of thing.

Another angle to addressing new content is via the scenario editor. Age has always been the beneficiary of a dedicated mod community. Developing that aspect of the product would be of value because it allows the players to develop some of the things that we ask for, but for whatever reason, the devs have decided not to pursue. The higher the quality of the editor, the better the quality of the products modders can make with it.

On the topic of new civs, I have a reputation as a hard case here on the forums. I have extremely high standards for a new civ. I do not want to see a slapped-together, cut-and-pasted pile of garbage put forward as a DLC just to satisfy demands for "new." Cash grabs like that are a terrible reality in gaming today and as gamers, we should absolutely demand better. The fact is that given the age of the game, FE have already done an excellent job of giving us unique play styles and options with the current selection of civs out there. Anything new would have to meet the high standards they have met with the 18 civs already available. Nothing less is acceptable. That means new and interesting game play, unique units with great art, a strong historical niche that's well represented by the units, tech, and card deck options available in the game. I don't want to see a Siam that's a carbon-copy of China or a Persia that's a copy of the Ottomans, nor do I want to see them create a Brazil civ that plays like a combination of the USA and Mexico with a Portuguese voiceover just so they can appeal to a Brazilian market.

In the meantime, I have greatly appreciated the slow and steady efforts to improve the revolutions and update current civs with reworks. I think these are really important for offering strategic depth to the late game, but also for the treaty scene (since of course it's played in the late game). I'd like to see this continue until all of the revolutions have a unique AND VIABLE (*cough* Finland) play style. I have appreciated the rework of the Euro civs. I think they're getting very close to done, and I'd like to see them address the Asian civs next. As much as I love the Native American civs, I think generally they're in a pretty good place aside from the extreme late game economies particularly wood, but the Asian civs really could use a little polish.

And lastly, I'd suggest perhaps taking a short look at the tutorial materials. If the goal is to attract new players to the game, consider cleaning up the tutorials a bit to make the learning process a little cleaner. There's a LOT of complexity in the game, so give the player a little help unpacking it. The Von Clauswitz things help, but really I think the best way is always a campaign with scenarios that focus on drilling one particular aspect of the game until it is proficient.

As long as the game is actively being developed, I don't think the game will die. The game itself is of high enough quality, it will sell itself on its merits at this point. Anyway, that's my brainstorm for ways to try and keep positive energy in this game. Hopefully, it is helpful.

[[BRE] Léonard "le Fol"]

Originally posted by Krosis:

Quality > quantity. I'm enjoying myself here exactly because it feels like the game is made with attention to quality and the playerbase is also healthy as a result.

If something, AoE2:DE is sprinting off a cliff, it has a disgusting playerbase and exponentially growing amount of bugs.

I might even see myself trying multiplayer in AoE3:DE, which I will NOT touch with a ten meter pole in AoE2:DE.

Also, multiplayer is not, never was and never will be the most important aspect of AoE and a low multiplayer count means absolutely nothing.

What? Although I tried today co-op scenario (of the campaign, we played me and a random the Carrebean scenario with US, then one with US having to resist waves and then same with Russia, and it was very fun to do, in hard difficulty. despite it's not cool without an audio communication tool, I have to say that Multiplayer has always been and you have no idea what you are saying, the most important part of AOE.

Only for AOE 1 was single player mostly but then it has become famous because of msn gaming zone, with tons of rooms and people that played against each other...

The campaigns are finished.

There is good quality into the Tools with history snippets etc... but the programming of the UI is utterly low cost stuff, it's a fact.

-No online status (which is FUNDAMENTAL) and no easy to see. = no idea if one is online with a blink of an eye not even after investigating (the fact u have to IN VE STI GATE if someone is online = FAILURE, fullstop).

-Chat messages come with 2+ seconds lag (failure)

-Chat messages opens a huge bulky window that is klunky to be kind with the adjective I use.

-Can't chat while I watch post game stats

... simply the UI of the previous game was way far superior in tons of ways =

It's not a definitive edition in so many parts of it.

Yes some have been aced, but some stuff looks like for chromo-miopia, eye impeded players that can't see stuff.

Capital letters, golden yellow color, no inspiration... it looks like Mickey mouse stuff.

Where is the AOE 2 feeling, the AOE 3 cool stuff.. it was really good it had that "Antiquity" dust over the UI panels (background ) the fonts the colors.

I understand the "lightened the game" maybe but .. it's not that if you have properly working UI and high quality design u have the game lagging...

It's just unpolished, undeveloped, bare bone development stuff.

Any programmer that is also a player or not a player can confirm that.

-"Closest region" snaps back to your filter

-Green symbol near the room is insignificant

-Time of creation of room doesn't show any time ... another insignificant field of the lobby

-If you press (see profile or other things while matchmaking is ongoing, it stops the matchmaking!)

-You can't jump from a Room to another in 5-10 seconds ,no the lobby just does "freeze" or sort of and forces u to go back to "select mode of play" in order then to enter the lobby list

-In post game I roll over the graphics and sometimes they "break" as you have to go with the cursor a bit distant from the line in order to see the time in which such event happened.

-The villager idle graph could have been made a bit more clear instead of "per minute" more a point graph or other kind of solutions could be found so to understand better... (this is more ok-ish).

-I CAN CONTINUE FOR ANOTHER 30 Minutes listing tons of stuff that is just UNFINISHED.

you people have zero experience, zero taste, have no idea what you are talking about and yet you tell others they have "visions". U are the problem of gaming communities, you do help people that do criminal releases to get away with it, probably you are even devs under cover.. but I won't say that as I don't wanna get paranoic.

It's a great work game but they ruined a lot of the good of this work with seriously important stuff that has been left out.

Why SUPREMACY can't have Ranked rooms and have to rely on matchmaking?! ahahah madness

[Scud]

The game is not diying, in fact, the real problem is own much offer of age of empires, including the newest release AoE IV and the uncoming AoM DE release. Also, you guys are obsessed with competitve PvP that you forget own many people enjoy casual pvp, comp stomp or just solo skimisher games against the CPU.

[Krosis Priest]

Originally posted by Scud:

The game is not diying, in fact, the real problem is own much offer of age of empires, including the newest release AoE IV and the uncoming AoM DE release. Also, you guys are obsessed with competitve PvP that you forget own many people enjoy casual pvp, comp stomp or just solo skimisher games against the CPU.

The competitive multiplayer crowd is usually absolutely convinced they are the center of the universe and that developers have to pander to them. The idea that overall balance and good design of a game is more important than whether it allows for le epic plays on Twitch is inconceivable to most of them.

And sadly, in case of AoE2:DE, the devs are trying to prove them right, and oh god is that legendary (and I once thought, impossible to ruin) game plunging off a cliff right now.