People who quit the game/took a break, why did you do so?

[RefluxSemantic]

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I am more amazed by the fact that so many people seem to stick to one game and one game only. Gaming has so much to offer, why would you limit yourself to one game? You play aoe3de for a few months after release and then naturally move towards other games. People will come back once in a while, but the post launch numbers are generally the peak.

Many of those, myself included, just aren't gamers in the first place. We came to like AOE3 for not just the competitive aspect, but also the historical setting and the aesthetic. Having invested so much time and effort into this very game, getting into another game (that does not check all the boxes AOE3 does) just isn't as attractive of an idea, it's too much effort overall. For me personally, I'd rather not play pc games at all than try out another, maybe even similar game - which is what I mostly do if AOE3 bores/annoys me for some time.

Its not that there are no people that dont focus on one game. I just dont think thats the norm

From my xp that is definitely the norm, depending on your definition of "focus". Most gamers I know often switch games.

Maybe four negatives in one statement is a bit too much. What I saying is that there are people that focus on one game, but I dont think thats the norm.

[fightinfrenchman]

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I am more amazed by the fact that so many people seem to stick to one game and one game only. Gaming has so much to offer, why would you limit yourself to one game? You play aoe3de for a few months after release and then naturally move towards other games. People will come back once in a while, but the post launch numbers are generally the peak.

Many of those, myself included, just aren't gamers in the first place. We came to like AOE3 for not just the competitive aspect, but also the historical setting and the aesthetic. Having invested so much time and effort into this very game, getting into another game (that does not check all the boxes AOE3 does) just isn't as attractive of an idea, it's too much effort overall. For me personally, I'd rather not play pc games at all than try out another, maybe even similar game - which is what I mostly do if AOE3 bores/annoys me for some time.

Its not that there are no people that dont focus on one game. I just dont think thats the norm

From my xp that is definitely the norm, depending on your definition of "focus". Most gamers I know often switch games.

This is a really funny use of "xp"

[helln00]

I stopped playing for 2 weeks after stalling in the ladder and then played through the aoe de campaign. That took about a week, went back to aoe 3, stalled again and now I'm looking at the aoe 2 de campaigns.

Its healthy to take breaks I think

[AndiAOE]

Well yeah obviously. But for most people gaming is a hobby that is undertaken for fun, not a quest to become the best there ever was. From that perspective it really isn't that strange that player numbers fall, of course they do. People just move on.

But if you compare it to the top games, they multiply their playerbase in months or years, having way more players X years after release.
CS:GO started out as a failed CS:S upgrade and then more than increased its playerbase to be roughly 20x the size of it in the first few months.
Same as League of Legends. Or new trendy games like Valheim. Game came out of nowhere and broke all records. Same as the battyle royale shooters... Fortnite, PUBG... or the minecraft craze which just doesn't die down.

This is a huge difference compared to "normal" games, who have their peak playerbase in the first month, and from then on, it's a constant downfall.

People leaving doesn't matter if in return, even more people enter.

just want to say that that absolutely isnt the norm for mp games. Only very few exceptions can keep players for so long. Most Multiplayer games tend to die pretty fast. Also CSGO only started growing once it implemented casino features and reward systems (lootboxes), so think of it what you will .

[helln00]

Well yeah obviously. But for most people gaming is a hobby that is undertaken for fun, not a quest to become the best there ever was. From that perspective it really isn't that strange that player numbers fall, of course they do. People just move on.

But if you compare it to the top games, they multiply their playerbase in months or years, having way more players X years after release.
CS:GO started out as a failed CS:S upgrade and then more than increased its playerbase to be roughly 20x the size of it in the first few months.
Same as League of Legends. Or new trendy games like Valheim. Game came out of nowhere and broke all records. Same as the battyle royale shooters... Fortnite, PUBG... or the minecraft craze which just doesn't die down.

This is a huge difference compared to "normal" games, who have their peak playerbase in the first month, and from then on, it's a constant downfall.

People leaving doesn't matter if in return, even more people enter.

just want to say that that absolutely isnt the norm for mp games. Only very few exceptions can keep players for so long. Most Multiplayer games tend to die pretty fast. Also CSGO only started growing once it implemented casino features and reward systems (lootboxes), so think of it what you will .

Lol can you imagine a gacha system for the cards in this game. It will turn into yugioh duel links

[fightinfrenchman]

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Well yeah obviously. But for most people gaming is a hobby that is undertaken for fun, not a quest to become the best there ever was. From that perspective it really isn't that strange that player numbers fall, of course they do. People just move on.

But if you compare it to the top games, they multiply their playerbase in months or years, having way more players X years after release.
CS:GO started out as a failed CS:S upgrade and then more than increased its playerbase to be roughly 20x the size of it in the first few months.
Same as League of Legends. Or new trendy games like Valheim. Game came out of nowhere and broke all records. Same as the battyle royale shooters... Fortnite, PUBG... or the minecraft craze which just doesn't die down.

This is a huge difference compared to "normal" games, who have their peak playerbase in the first month, and from then on, it's a constant downfall.

People leaving doesn't matter if in return, even more people enter.

just want to say that that absolutely isnt the norm for mp games. Only very few exceptions can keep players for so long. Most Multiplayer games tend to die pretty fast. Also CSGO only started growing once it implemented casino features and reward systems (lootboxes), so think of it what you will .

Lol can you imagine a gacha system for the cards in this game. It will turn into yugioh duel links

That would be very Toon World for them to do

[Kyo_]

This game is dreadfully boring. Tired of queuing just to find the same exact players. Impossible to find balanced games. And I just can't imagine using civs other than Dutch/Germany because rest are all absolutely BORING!!!! 4000 hrs and I still don't know how to properly use any civs other than Dutch/Germany. GAME'S BORING!!!!

I still only play because I LOVE the community and because Dutch/Germany are BARELY bearable and not mind-numbingly BORING, and TASTELESS!!!!

I can't absolutely imagine using DULL civs like France and Brit. I've tried dozens of times to practice with them, but after 10 seconds I want to slit my wrist out of BOREDOM!!!

Also everybody is a try hard nowadays and takes ELO seriously like it means something... it means nothing lol

I love the community tho

[Mr_Bramboy]

@KyoKusanagi You spent 4000 hrs, on two civs, and you claim the game is boring?

[Challenger_Marco]

This game is dreadfully boring. Tired of queuing just to find the same exact players. Impossible to find balanced games. And I just can't imagine using civs other than Dutch/Germany because rest are all absolutely BORING!!!! 4000 hrs and I still don't know how to properly use any civs other than Dutch/Germany. GAME'S BORING!!!!

I still only play because I LOVE the community and because Dutch/Germany are BARELY bearable and not mind-numbingly BORING, and TASTELESS!!!!

I can't absolutely imagine using DULL civs like France and Brit. I've tried dozens of times to practice with them, but after 10 seconds I want to slit my wrist out of BOREDOM!!!

Also everybody is a try hard nowadays and takes ELO seriously like it means something... it means nothing lol

I love the community tho

I want your elo pls.

[Cleters]

For my part, I find DE just amazing. I went back to vanilla few times since the release, and exept that for some reason DE seem less reactiv, I find the game better. Like I'm not sure I could return to legacy.

But I do miss some features a lot, like the privat messages, the ranked lobbies, or just I liked to play some scenarios when I wanted to chill at the end of a game session...

[aaryngend]

just want to say that that absolutely isnt the norm for mp games. Only very few exceptions can keep players for so long. Most Multiplayer games tend to die pretty fast.

Of course, I never claimed otherwise! This is a new phenomenon, back in the day, if a game failed, it failed for good. But now, games can be reborn and become extremely active. Best example would be Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn.

Also CSGO only started growing once it implemented casino features and reward systems (lootboxes), so think of it what you will .

I know, it was the Arm's Deal update (August 2013), I was one of the first people to see it, since I didn't give up on CS:GO yet when it barely hit CS:S numbers. I even bought the Operation Payback challenge coin
The first time I saw that dude sitting on crates of weapon skins, I knew a new era for the game just begun

I just wonder when we will see the first expansion to aoe3:DE (something tells me they have something in the works) and how that might affect online numbers.

[Kyo_]

@KyoKusanagi You spent 4000 hrs, on two civs, and you claim the game is boring?

4000 hours over 14 years, comes down to less than 47 mins per day

[gibson]

I don’t think it’s the time, but how can you say it’s boring when you’ve explored 2/16 of the civs?

[fightinfrenchman]

@KyoKusanagi You spent 4000 hrs, on two civs, and you claim the game is boring?

4000 hours over 14 years, comes down to less than 47 mins per day

Imagine if you spent 45 minutes a day exercising for 14 years instead of playing an unpopular RTS

[Dolan]

I quit AOE3 a few months before I got involved in the ESO Community project, when it was just getting started, in the first months of 2015. The main reason for quitting was that most games lagged hard and it was killing any fun of playing AOE3. Before quitting, I got a new computer and got 1Gbps internet, to give it one more try, but the lag was pretty much the same, so I realised it was because other people had bad setups.

Then I came to ESO, played a few games on RE, it was a bit better, but not significantly better. I started obs-ing games played by Aizamk and Musket_jr for a while. That's when I got involved in ESOC and stopped playing, because I had less time.
After leaving the ESOC board, I started playing LoL, so I didn't bother playing on the new patches, I mostly watched the streams. It was fun while I played, but as GS said, RTS are time-intensive games and have a steep learning curve, so if you don't have as much time to invest in a game, you're probably going to play the game suboptimally, on a lower level.

I might try AOE4 when it comes out if it's good, but I don't think I'll get too involved in it. I like playing shorter games now, I don't like getting stuck in a game that's going to take more than 20min. Games should be like having a coffee break to kickstart your brain into sharp and alert mode, not boomer world-building Minecraft that takes hours to complete.

[duckzilla]

Just tried to have some games via quick search again. The first try was successful, yay!, but my explorer bugged and did not build the TP that I tasked him in early game. Took me around 2 minutes to notice, retasked and even then he did not build it. Had to manually send him somewhere else first and then back to the TP. TP was finished around 5:30 instead of 1:30 and my explorer did not explore anything. Ragequitted.

Now I try to get a second game, but the first 4v4 that nearly happened crashed before the map was loaded. Now I am in some kind of loop, because another 3v3 that I just tried to get in seems to have crashed. It shows "Waiting for other players" since ~10 minutes while still in the lobby.

[RefluxSemantic]

Iterating on what Dolan said, as I've grown up I have started to look more for relaxation than competition in games. Competition is fun too from time to time, but I feel like I mostly enjoyed the challenge and intellectual stimulus from that. But nowadays there are ways to get a similar experience in a far more relaxing manner. Genres like soulslike or the revitalized roguelike and metroidvania have been on the rise and these really scratch my itch.

And then there is the huge amount of even more relaxing strategy games like civ, eu and even some sandbox games that allow you to express your creativity or even story based games that allow you to experience a narrative. I find that games can provide a wide variety of entertainment, and that as a person I am interested in a many forms of entertainment.

[_tank]

I haven't quit DE (yet) but for me it will be when I think it's too hard to find high quality 3v3 team games (it's the same reason I quit playing TAD / vanilla 12 years ago). I can see it happening at some point, matchmaking is usually useless at finding random teammates to create fair teams (at least during NA time zone after work hours, it's better in the morning on weekends), often games end up with a severe disparity in skill levels between players or simply fail to start due to connection problems. People get around this (at least for your team) by queueing with 2 mates, but it can be difficult to find friends to play with and it makes it harder for teams to be fair compared to if everyone queued up random

[somp]

For me it's quite different, I get the the most enjoyment from competitive gaming. But first, aoe is quite an explored game with all build orders etc figured, there is no space for improvement by using brains, rather just learning to be faster and mechanically better. Second, it is dumb to focus on a game where certain admins who dislike your personality might basically arbitrarily ban you from future tournaments. At that point, all grind becomes rather unmotivating.

[gibson]

aoe is quite an explored game with all build orders etc figured, there is no space for improvement by using brains,

Disagree tbh

[louis293]

But first, aoe is quite an explored game with all build orders etc figured, there is no space for improvement by using brains

i don't think aizamk will agree with that

[RefluxSemantic]

But first, aoe is quite an explored game with all build orders etc figured, there is no space for improvement by using brains

i don't think aizamk will agree with that

With all respect, have you actually seen aizamk meaningfully improve? It looks like he is having fun for sure and he is a great player, but actual improvement? Dunno if that is actually whats happening.

[fightinfrenchman]

For me it's quite different, I get the the most enjoyment from competitive gaming. But first, aoe is quite an explored game with all build orders etc figured, there is no space for improvement by using brains, rather just learning to be faster and mechanically better. Second, it is dumb to focus on a game where certain admins who dislike your personality might basically arbitrarily ban you from future tournaments. At that point, all grind becomes rather unmotivating.

Many people are saying it's "over" for you

[JKProwler]

For me it's quite different, I get the the most enjoyment from competitive gaming. But first, aoe is quite an explored game with all build orders etc figured, there is no space for improvement by using brains, rather just learning to be faster and mechanically better. Second, it is dumb to focus on a game where certain admins who dislike your personality might basically arbitrarily ban you from future tournaments. At that point, all grind becomes rather unmotivating.

There has been many new metas created recently and in assuming this will continue to happen as more balance patches happen. Also some of DE aspect still quite unexplored like the revolutions.

Also I find that how to take advantage of the map is not optimal in aoe3 in general as yet like it is in some rts games probably because other things in the game take a lot higher priority but at the top level, I find there is probably room there to be further explored

[Dolan]

With all respect, have you actually seen aizamk meaningfully improve? It looks like he is having fun for sure and he is a great player, but actual improvement? Dunno if that is actually whats happening.

That might be because everyone hits a plateau of performance, after playing the same game for too many years.
So he might still have the motivation to do troll builds to surprise his viewers, but if you have a job and less time to play, it's harder to still be as competitive as you once were.