What would AOE3 look like if it had a serious pro scene?

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Re: What would AOE3 look like if it had a serious pro scene?

Post by deleted_user0 »

Don't flatter, it would be none, and everyone knows that. But who cares. Can't even compare to sc2 as it's just a way different game.
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Re: What would AOE3 look like if it had a serious pro scene?

Post by Mitoe »

If you could remove the lag and a few of the obvious bugs it would be fine. The only real randomness really is stomp / divine strike / crit mechanics with Asian civs. And warships have RNG ROF too, which is stupid.

Treasures need more appropriate guardians for the amount of resources they guard, and they'd be fine. Also remove level 3/4 treasures from competitive play.
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Re: What would AOE3 look like if it had a serious pro scene?

Post by momuuu »

Mitoe wrote:I feel like a lot of the people here are underestimating how much more there is to the game that's unexplored or ignored.

I think only a few of the current top players would even be able to compete if the game had an actual pro scene. I feel like things like water and healers (maybe not trained, but definitely from treasures), would be a lot more relevant, and people would rarely start big treasures in age 1; it's simply too risky.

I wonder if artillery would be used more or less, and whether the game would shift from being more defensive to more aggressive. Natural resources are so important in AoE3 that I could see pros being a lot more active with their units to try to deny even small patches of resources or divert attention away from more important areas of the map.

Your estimate that even a single current top player could compete simply shows pure ignorance. Not a single top player in the aoe3 community would stand a chance against a truly dedicated koreantier top player. Current aoe3 players would be cannonfodder. If you consider aoe3 as an esport you need to consider the players to be almost unhumanly skillful.

Aoe3s top skill level is extremely low compared to the average competitive game.
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Re: What would AOE3 look like if it had a serious pro scene?

Post by princeofkabul »

we clearly haven't played the same game if you think that would make aoe ready for rts competitive scene.
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Re: What would AOE3 look like if it had a serious pro scene?

Post by momuuu »

If you manage to grasp how good real esport players are, I think you inevitably conclude aoe3 has little potential as a real esport. Just imagine yourself but with 100 times the skill, and then wonder if the game isnt fully explored yet.
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Re: What would AOE3 look like if it had a serious pro scene?

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Post by Mitoe »

There have been good AoE3 players that have competed at high levels in other games.

To make AoE3 an esport you have to consider only two things:

1) Is it competitive? Yes/No
2) More importantly, is the player base large enough to be lucrative? Yes/No

If you increase the player base of AoE3 by 100-1000x, there would be enough players to make some money off of it. I think there is enough of a skill ceiling in the game that it could be considered an esport if there were enough players and spectators.

Popularity is the main factor in developing an esport; balance, competitiveness, and all other similar concerns are secondary.

Look at the rise of the battle royale genre. Can you really say that each player has an equal chance of winning the game from the very beginning? Not really. There's too much randomness in place to say that. Yet it's rapidly growing as an esport.
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Re: What would AOE3 look like if it had a serious pro scene?

Post by Mitoe »

Maybe the discussion should be more about how different AoE3 would look at the highest level if it was large enough to have a competitive scene; as whether or not AoE3 could even be an esport is too controversial. Although I find it funny that the people who say there's no chance AoE3 could ever be an esport are also the ones who claim that current top players would not even be able to comprehend how much better they would have to be at the game in order compete.

I don't see how it's possible to claim that the skill ceiling in the game is large enough that we can't even comprehend of a player good enough to compete at the moment, while simultaneously claiming the game is uncompetitive. It's contradictory.
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Re: What would AOE3 look like if it had a serious pro scene?

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Post by Aizamk »

Here's my general thoughts.

The biggest factor to consider here is how AoE3 is not a game where APM decides everything. (And that's why I like it so much)
By the modern standard of what makes a 'competitive rts game', you could argue that this is why it's not 'competitive'.
However, that is what makes it 'interesting'.

I like to cite Boneng as an example here. There's a certain respect that comes out of watching him play.

Does he make mistakes? - Yes. Quite a few.
How good is his macro? - By conventional standards, not that good.
Does he still beat 'top' players who do much better in many different aspects? - Yes. Quite often in fact. At least, when he was still active.

There are easy ways to play the game, there's difficult ways to play the game, and then there's smart ways to play the game.

Anyway best way to increase the skill ceiling and then make this "pros from other games would roflstomp the current top players in aoe3" argument actually valid is to make everyone play on fast mode so APM actually matters.
oranges.
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Re: What would AOE3 look like if it had a serious pro scene?

Post by [Armag] diarouga »

I totally agree with aiz, and we had this discussion in another thread: I think that aoe3 would be a lot more competitive if we played it fast mode. I tried to play it, and it's interesting because you can't have a perfect macro anymore, raids are super hard to be dealt with, and thus efficient, and it's very hard to micro.
As a result, hand cav would be more viable because people wouldn't be good enough to micro against it, and it would be possible to go for more cheesy builds as it could work if the opponent makes a mistake.

However, in normal mode, I think competitive play would just kill the game. I mean, from time to time, a pro would come with a new strat so that would be nice, but they would just punish every mistake. That's what I claimed in the "ff/rush" thread, agressive strats such as cav start would be punished, and only passive play would be really viable.
And I think that raids wouldn't be viable at all, since they would have an insane map control/map awareness, and they would see the raids coming (with buildings for LOS), and just deal with it because it's not hard in aoe3.
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Re: What would AOE3 look like if it had a serious pro scene?

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Playing on fast mode seems like no fun.
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Re: What would AOE3 look like if it had a serious pro scene?

Post by deleted_user0 »

it's fun, try it sometime.
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Re: What would AOE3 look like if it had a serious pro scene?

Post by Jaeger »

[Armag] diarouga wrote:I totally agree with aiz, and we had this discussion in another thread: I think that aoe3 would be a lot more competitive if we played it fast mode. I tried to play it, and it's interesting because you can't have a perfect macro anymore, raids are super hard to be dealt with, and thus efficient, and it's very hard to micro.
As a result, hand cav would be more viable because people wouldn't be good enough to micro against it, and it would be possible to go for more cheesy builds as it could work if the opponent makes a mistake.

However, in normal mode, I think competitive play would just kill the game. I mean, from time to time, a pro would come with a new strat so that would be nice, but they would just punish every mistake. That's what I claimed in the "ff/rush" thread, agressive strats such as cav start would be punished, and only passive play would be really viable.
And I think that raids wouldn't be viable at all, since they would have an insane map control/map awareness, and they would see the raids coming (with buildings for LOS), and just deal with it because it's not hard in aoe3.

Playing on fast mode is a really cool idea for a tournament or day of streaming, or at least like the "only pikeman challange" stuff @Interjection was doing.
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Re: What would AOE3 look like if it had a serious pro scene?

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[Armag] diarouga wrote:I totally agree with aiz, and we had this discussion in another thread: I think that aoe3 would be a lot more competitive if we played it fast mode. I tried to play it, and it's interesting because you can't have a perfect macro anymore, raids are super hard to be dealt with, and thus efficient, and it's very hard to micro.
As a result, hand cav would be more viable because people wouldn't be good enough to micro against it, and it would be possible to go for more cheesy builds as it could work if the opponent makes a mistake.

However, in normal mode, I think competitive play would just kill the game. I mean, from time to time, a pro would come with a new strat so that would be nice, but they would just punish every mistake. That's what I claimed in the "ff/rush" thread, agressive strats such as cav start would be punished, and only passive play would be really viable.
And I think that raids wouldn't be viable at all, since they would have an insane map control/map awareness, and they would see the raids coming (with buildings for LOS), and just deal with it because it's not hard in aoe3.

Do you think artillery would be used more or less?
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Re: What would AOE3 look like if it had a serious pro scene?

Post by gibson »

I think many people dont understand how good pro gamers are. I have a friend at work whos global at counter strike, which is the highest rank you can achieve on official servers, so equivalent to pr50 for aoe. He and some of his friends played a semi pro team and lost 16-1. That semi pro team played a tier 3 team and lost 16-4.That tier 3 team played a tier one team and lost 16-3. So the highest normal rank that someone can get to is like 4 tiers lower than top tier with each tier being non competitive with the tier above it. So he's literally garbage compared pro players. Like they could basically play with their monitors off and still win, even though my friend is in the top 1% of people who play the game.
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Re: What would AOE3 look like if it had a serious pro scene?

Post by [Armag] diarouga »

Fast mode is fun because you have more options and it's actually possible to outplay hard, which isn't possible in the normal mode.
Actually it feels a bit like playing starcraft, because you can actually win thanks to your macro, and do considerable damage with harassments.

@Jaeger I think artillery would be used more. People would go greedier as I explained, and I think that French mirrors would evolve toward 4v/700w/700c/1000w/1000c builds into artillery, because skirm/goon/falc is just better than skirm/goon/cuirs with proper positioning.
Furthermore I think it would become common to send 2-3 vills with a push in order to wall a position. That's something some pros do on aoe2, and it would make hand cav even more useless than it is now.
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Re: What would AOE3 look like if it had a serious pro scene?

Post by [Armag] diarouga »

gibson wrote:I think many people dont understand how good pro gamers are. I have a friend at work whos global at counter strike, which is the highest rank you can achieve on official servers, so equivalent to pr50 for aoe. He and some of his friends played a semi pro team and lost 16-1. That semi pro team played a tier 3 team and lost 16-4.That tier 3 team played a tier one team and lost 16-3. So the highest normal rank that someone can get to is like 4 tiers lower than top tier with each tier being non competitive with the tier above it. So he's literally garbage compared pro players. Like they could basically play with their monitors off and still win, even though my friend is in the top 1% of people who play the game.

That's true and it's the same thing on sc2, there's a huge difference between low GM (ie top200 on the server) and top GM.
However, it would be slightly different on aoe3 because the skill ceiling is super low, and thus pros couldn't shine with their mechanics.
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It would change far less than everyone thinks. It already had a competitive scene where what a $10,000 tournament occurred where h20 won (essentially beating who you guys would call real pro's). People like to talk about sc2 players and over exaggerate them like their some gods. When in reality their closer to guys like TheLastSamurai who was one of the best sc players in his country and he won some tournament. Yet at aoe3 he is just a real good player not even top top. He is just one example. The main thing that would change things is not having some of the sc2 "gods" here but instead just having a very large player base of real skilled rts players. But as I said it would still change things less then most people think.
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WHAT does check your stove means? And how do you do it?
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Re: What would AOE3 look like if it had a serious pro scene?

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Also AOE3 has like skill caps where its impossible to do anything better. Since res gather kinda slow and units train in batches. For example when players start a game and drop a stable at age 2 and train 5 cav. at that point in the game if you get 5 cav out and same eco ups then there was nothing more you could do better then the best player in the world. It's just the game wont allow it, its not like if you macro bettter you could of got a 6th cav out. you and the best player ever would still each have 5 cav out and same vils and eco at the exact same gametime.
Lasol wrote: :hmm: just Saw a YouTube video with giveyouanexiaty. He Said check youre stove, if you Want to improve youre aoe3 skills.

WHAT does check your stove means? And how do you do it?
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Re: What would AOE3 look like if it had a serious pro scene?

Post by [Armag] diarouga »

giveuanxiety wrote:Also AOE3 has like skill caps where its impossible to do anything better. Since res gather kinda slow and units train in batches. For example when players start a game and drop a stable at age 2 and train 5 cav. at that point in the game if you get 5 cav out and same eco ups then there was nothing more you could do better then the best player in the world. It's just the game wont allow it, its not like if you macro bettter you could of got a 6th cav out. you and the best player ever would still each have 5 cav out and same vils and eco at the exact same gametime.

That's partly true, but not entirely. You can macro better than your opponent (get more manors with Brits for example, or age sooner), and make a small difference.
I think that the biggest change would be the build orders, which would just become more precise to hit a big timing.
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Re: What would AOE3 look like if it had a serious pro scene?

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giveuanxiety wrote:It would change far less than everyone thinks. It already had a competitive scene where what a $10,000 tournament occurred where h20 won (essentially beating who you guys would call real pro's). People like to talk about sc2 players and over exaggerate them like their some gods. When in reality their closer to guys like TheLastSamurai who was one of the best sc players in his country and he won some tournament. Yet at aoe3 he is just a real good player not even top top. He is just one example. The main thing that would change things is not having some of the sc2 "gods" here but instead just having a very large player base of real skilled rts players. But as I said it would still change things less then most people think.

Wow really? TLS is a SC pro? Also the thing with H2O, I thought it was a consensus that grunt was far far better but he was just really rusty.
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Re: What would AOE3 look like if it had a serious pro scene?

Post by [Armag] diarouga »

ovi12 wrote:
giveuanxiety wrote:It would change far less than everyone thinks. It already had a competitive scene where what a $10,000 tournament occurred where h20 won (essentially beating who you guys would call real pro's). People like to talk about sc2 players and over exaggerate them like their some gods. When in reality their closer to guys like TheLastSamurai who was one of the best sc players in his country and he won some tournament. Yet at aoe3 he is just a real good player not even top top. He is just one example. The main thing that would change things is not having some of the sc2 "gods" here but instead just having a very large player base of real skilled rts players. But as I said it would still change things less then most people think.

Wow really? TLS is a SC pro? Also the thing with H2O, I thought it was a consensus that grunt was far far better but he was just really rusty.

TLS was a very good sc2 player.
As I said though, he earned 5k $ in like 5 years, so I'm not sure you can say he's a pro, he was a very good player still.
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Re: What would AOE3 look like if it had a serious pro scene?

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[Armag] diarouga wrote:
ovi12 wrote:
giveuanxiety wrote:It would change far less than everyone thinks. It already had a competitive scene where what a $10,000 tournament occurred where h20 won (essentially beating who you guys would call real pro's). People like to talk about sc2 players and over exaggerate them like their some gods. When in reality their closer to guys like TheLastSamurai who was one of the best sc players in his country and he won some tournament. Yet at aoe3 he is just a real good player not even top top. He is just one example. The main thing that would change things is not having some of the sc2 "gods" here but instead just having a very large player base of real skilled rts players. But as I said it would still change things less then most people think.

Wow really? TLS is a SC pro? Also the thing with H2O, I thought it was a consensus that grunt was far far better but he was just really rusty.

TLS was a very good sc2 player.
As I said though, he earned 5k $ in like 5 years, so I'm not sure you can say he's a pro, he was a very good player still.

Hmm so why do you think he wasn't top then in AOE? Because to be good in SC mechanics is more important, while in AOE its strats?
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Re: What would AOE3 look like if it had a serious pro scene?

Post by [Armag] diarouga »

ovi12 wrote:
[Armag] diarouga wrote:
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TLS was a very good sc2 player.
As I said though, he earned 5k $ in like 5 years, so I'm not sure you can say he's a pro, he was a very good player still.

Hmm so why do you think he wasn't top then in AOE? Because to be good in SC mechanics is more important, while in AOE its strats?

Well, he left in 2012, came back last year, played a few random games and left again. It's not like he really tried to get good at aoe3 when he came back.
Besides, on sc2 he wasn't great mechanically (he was much much better than me of course, but he said that himself). When I talked with him, he said he was a "slow hand, fast brain" type of player, which means that he wasn't as fast as other pros, but efficient and smart.
As a result, he was slightly faster than other players on aoe3, but nothing too crazy mechanically. And considering his lack of knowledge in aoe3 (because of the new meta and new maps), it's normal he couldn't be a top player.
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Re: What would AOE3 look like if it had a serious pro scene?

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Aizamk wrote:Here's my general thoughts.
There are easy ways to play the game, there's difficult ways to play the game, and then there's smart ways to play the game.

Mistir Aiz! I hav cuestion for iu, anser plis? I notice that you and Boneng figure out a few strats for each civ, and often repeat those strats every game. My question is, which part of the game involves "playing smart"? Is it the initial coming up with a strategy that works, or is it the small in game decisions, which can make you "play smart" whatever BO you do?

I hope my question makes sense.
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Re: What would AOE3 look like if it had a serious pro scene?

Post by Djigit »

The game would be without any doubt much more balanced. Units, buildings, shipments and upgrades would all have their utility, may it be by removing some or balancing them. Therefore the meta would be more diverse than it is right now.

I also agree with diarouga regarding the use of vills to build forward walls to protect your units or pillars for LOS. It's something I always wished to do, but never tried because I don't have the sufficient APM and because I'm too lazy.
Vills outside the TC area are extremely underrated. On Texas, if I'm not playing a civ that has 2 explorers or scouts, I send a vill to capture the livestock. You can do that on Pampas Sierra as well, not necessarily because you need that livestock but rather to prevent your Asian opponent to have it.

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