Initiatives to attract and keep new players

[iNcog]

I was thinking a bit to myself recently and I was wondering about what it takes for a game to attract and keep new players.

A lot of AoE3 players are old and it would be cool to see some very fresh blood. I'm not saying that we can do anything about it, but I'm wondering what it takes for a game to get new players. As we can see, it's easy to keep them (note all the people still playing the game after all these years).

I think it would be neat to to start a few community initiatives for AoE3 and try to attract more players, but I'm not sure what those would be. What are the community's thoughts?

Edit: this is my exact 3600th post.

[momuuu]

something with ftj and very clear directives on this side on how to solve it would be good I think. I know its in the guide for new players but we need it larger, more appealing so that new players wont miss it. A thread with the entire collection of ideas and methods to fix ftj.

[iNcog]

FTJ is a non-issue once you figure out how to beat it.

I'm talking more about publicity for AoE3.

[fightinfrenchman]

What does FTJ mean?

I think the best way to do this is to be a little more open and positive about the game. Sometimes people here can only really see things from the perspective of top level players. Also, I feel like we shouldn't really push new players to download the patch, as they won't be able to play against anybody near their level of play on it.

[zoom]

Steam is key.

#steamkey

[momuuu]

FTJ is not a non-issue at all. Some ftj problems are harder than you think. I bet theres ftj problems you yourself wouldnt be able to solve.

Sometimes finding out how to portforward is so discouraging that people just give up. Say you buy this game in a steal sale for a few bucks, you'll probably not spend hours trying to figure out how the fuck you're supposed to join other players. Maybe youd do so now, but imagine a somewhat technologically impaired gamer that just wanted to see if he could have a few hours of fun with aoe3.

Its the biggest, or at least largest most solvable way to keep players once you've attracted them really.

[medinos]

Lower the price of the game on steam its a little overpriced for a quite old game..

[fightinfrenchman]

Lower the price of the game on steam its a little overpriced for a quite old game..

That's not something we can control though.

[momuuu]

Make a strategy guide, tell microsoft they can add it to the aoe3 package and then advertise for esoc in that guide. That could be sweet.

[91]

A true beginner to this game does not need an in-depth strategy guide, but rather super simple build orders to get started and get used to the game.

How about - when the strategy wall is a bit bigger - have a visible tag on each strategy. For example: "Beginner", "intermediate", and "in-depth".
Beginner: Just simple build orders, not specific matchups or anything
intermediate: Build orders, but also a little bit more information on matchups or what to do in specific situation. Or maybe a bigger general idea how to play the civ
in-depth: more information of how to play the civ in general, matchup tips, maybe several strategies etc.

I know most people on eso-community are pretty good, but I also know some people who just started the game, and they REALLY need a simple BO, not any in-depth at all. You just want to get started playing the game decently, so you need a basic BO, you don't want to study ALL strats and matchups when you dont even know what units all civs have. Just get people started on actually playing or they will get tired of reading walls of texts before even starting to play

[r4go]

Money, we need money, when age was active, 70% of people played it to be op and earn money, from wcg and tournament. What age need is competitivy. I means more even, not only 1-1. When age was active a big fall was the lack of team tournament, clan wars, and i mean for sup, dm, tr. Mono 1-1 is not the way, also becouse for 1-1 sc2 is more good. And you have to understand age is a hard game, players want game where you can be op easy and soon, just nerding. This is way a game like LOL Heartstone are so played. In age what we(i mean me and the die players of an age active) hated, was the fact that for start a game, 3 hours. Becouse it was all the time. Gp or i'm out, no otto, no dutch (nilla situation), no jap, yes no jap becouse you can think what you want but jap is the op civ, whit cina and iro, so all the times, no jap no iro no cina no india no ger, fix deccan. If team, my god, if players see a team up, you had to pay them for play. So this is a problem will run again if age would be competitive again. What we can do is use media to sponsor age. ZOI IS RIGHT. But first that all, we have to find money to invest in it. We did new maps, we did a fp, we did tournament, we can do more, but we need money to call players.

[r4go]

* i mean more EVENT

[Rikikipu]

I vote R4GO president.

+1 for your awesome english also.

[Mimsy for President]

We could :
- Spam csgo, lol, dota2 and sc2 twitch chats to promote AOE3.
- Ask PewDiePie to play a colloseum game with Interjection, the Basement members, thebritish and bpds.
- Upload AOE3 vods to YouTube but with clickbait titles like 'TOP10 Fastest cars in the world' or 'why do we drip after peeing ?'

[Dolan]

Yeah, I agree with Jerom and R4go about these barriers that still discourage people from playing this game.
The Steam forums are full of people who are interested in getting a cool classic game to play. They see AOE3 is still played, they ask lots of questions about it, but nobody answers them. They are asking whether they can play the game on Windows 10 or 8.1, if it's easy to level up, if you can get a game going fast, if you can jump into multiplayer straight from buying the game or it's more of a hassle until you get to that point. And I suppose some of them don't see any of these questions answered by anyone there and they leave.

They're also interested whether AOE3 can get a Workshop like AOE2, if Microsoft still patches the game, if there's still support for it. Again, nobody answers these questions. So, they must feel like AOE3 is some old game that is not worth going back to and ESO is a ghost town, populated by a few remaining maniacs, that can't simply let go.
Maybe the most persistent of them watched Twitch streams and they decided it's worth the hassle of getting the game. And then they run into the FTJ problem. Which, btw, is not easy to solve, especially if you have a retarded router or no idea about how to create exception rules in your firewall. So, naturally, the comparisons follow: Dota doesn't have these issues, LoL is very easy to get into - install the client, pick a champ and there you go, you can play online etc etc.

The fact that the game is old is a heavy rock that pulls the reputation of this game down. So having those extra issues just makes it worse. Let's face it, probably only the tryhards still keep going until they manage to get into AOE3.

The lack of new content is also a big issue. Sure, the ESOC patch has new maps, but not new content. There aren't any new textures, new units, new sounds, new music. Stuff that you can easily find in other games which are refreshed and patched almost on a weekly basis.

I don't really think organising a few hundred bucks tourneys can change that. Maybe not even a few thousand bucks. AOE2 is still more popular than AOE3 and it's not because of the tourneys with bigger prize pools, it's the other way around (game was already popular, so more money flew in).

I guess it depends on what your objectives are but it's better to be realistic about it, if you want to think about potential growth.

For me it was the lag, an issue ESOC can't do anything about it.
So, knowing that the game was made 11 years ago for the hardware that was on the market back then, I realised this issue can't be solved without Microsoft rewriting the game engine to make it work on current multi-core CPU architectures. The game just doesn't use the current hardware power to its real potential. That's a major bottleneck and I don't think Microsoft will do anything about it.

New content + fix lag issues by rewriting those parts of the game engine which manage system resources + rewrite the game networking programming -- then maybe AOE3 becomes a game worth considering again in 2016.

[fightinfrenchman]

We could :
- Spam csgo, lol, dota2 and sc2 twitch chats to promote AOE3.
- Ask PewDiePie to play a colloseum game with Interjection, the Basement members, thebritish and bpds.
- Upload AOE3 vods to YouTube but with clickbait titles like 'TOP10 Fastest cars in the world' or 'why do we drip after peeing ?'

Yesh having a game on PewDiePie's channel would bring massive growth to ESO and the podcast.

[purplesquid]

Not bashing the noobs and in general being friendly can go a long way. Also I try to from time to time pop over to the beginner chat room to troubleshoot anyone's problems and also plug this site.

[[Armag] diarouga]

Yeah 40$ for a 2005 game is expansive.

[Gear_Head]

One of us needs to win the Powerball and pay Microsoft tens of millions of dollars to fix this thing up for us...

But in all seriousness, there are definitely a bunch of things that factor into it, many of which have been touched on by other people already. I'll echo the noob-bashing sentiment. I saw a fellow really rip into a guy who said he had just gotten the game a week ago. It was pretty bad; I hope the guy has stuck around.

FTJ is another major issue and is simply impossible to completely fix on our own. It's just a massive hurdle that most people aren't willing to clear. You basically have to have an IT degree to play this game.

I love Mimsy's ideas, let's make those happen.

Finally, an active presence on steam will do something as well. Having active people there with links back to these forums where there is a wealth of knowledge will result in a few new people trickle in.

[iNcog]

I like the steam suggestion, I think it's that platform which might be the spring-board people need to get into AoE3. We should absolutely look into having a more active presence on that platform.

I don't really consider the engine itself to be a problem, since AOE3 is a very easy game to run. The lag issue is real, since it's a P2P connection. FTJ is also bad. Perhaps making >one< guide about FTJ, the mother of all router configuration guides, and linking it everywhere (here, on steam forums, etc.) would be a good idea. I know that right now, if someone asked me to link them an anti-FTJ guide, I couldn't do anything.

The new content stuff is an interesting idea though. Absolutely super interesting. Now, what I find interesting is that we already have new content out there, and it's really good. I'm talking about WoL and NE. Both of those mods are almost new games built up from nothing. I think that those mods should really be promoted on the steam forum.

I would even go farther and say that it would be nice to have a common (and easy to use) launcher which allows anyone who owns AoE3 to quickly install the mod they want: whether it's WoL, NE or even perhaps the ESOC Patch! The ESOC patch has a big emphasis on 1v1 balance changes (and new maps) but that is only useful for the niche players who play the game competitively. There is very little catering towards the casual players who just want to mess around in team games or FFAs. I am not saying that the ESOC patch should look into such changes, but perhaps it should still be discussed.

[SoldieR]

Steam forums for the game is surprisingly active, dozens of new topic in the last week. Maybe have a media team member stay active there and point then here.

Also, whoever said don't tell new players to go to EP is correct. Let the learn basics first

[iNcog]

Agree soldier.

though this thread isn't about esoc patch, it's about new players in general. to aoe3!

[britishmusketeer]

I don't think ftj is always fixable. When I'm at home I get ftj even with dmz enabled/ ports opened and with exceptions on the firewall

[EAGLEMUT]

I don't think ftj is always fixable. When I'm at home I get ftj even with dmz enabled/ ports opened and with exceptions on the firewall

True, sometimes it may only be fixed by the ISP.

[CelticCrusader]

There is quite a few new people on steam that bought this game. I myself bought the game on steam in november(i previously had a disc version which broke a while ago), and i see there is potential for more players. But i frequently see people posting of FTJ problems. I think a lot of people just give up because of that issue. Also as mentioned many people dont get answers to their problems on the steam forum, i can give game advice basics and direct them here, but stuff like FTJ i have no clue how to solve. A really good time for some more knowledgeable players to reach out to the steam community would be during the steam sales, the game was £5.99 over xmas and there was definitely a spike in activity. And thats when the new players need help to resolve these issues.