The Case for EP 2.0

[RefluxSemantic]

You're telling me that if I'm an average player looking to test my skills in a tournament just for fun, there has been no way for me to play in a major ESOC event in the last 3 years?

That probably hasn't helped with player retention either...

Just wanted to say that as a mediocre player, getting a few surprise top 32s was the absolute highlight of my experience in aoe3.

Spoiler

I'd have even gotten a top 16 had princeofkabul not smurfed on somppu's account for the final game

In the end, a tournament format with a lot of preparation time is just such a delightful aoe3 experience. The experience where you manage to punch above your weight due to extensive preparation is magical.

[RefluxSemantic]

Balancing is a horribly divisive activity, beyond the first simple and obvious balance changes. It's inevitable that one would be forced to make decisions on more general gameplay. What's fun to one, might be considered "lame" or "broken" by another. It becomes pretty hard to organize such a project in a pleasant way; if too many people have influence, they'll struggle to agree on anything and get into a fight. If too few people have influence, you alienate big parts of the community. Both scenarios were an absolute reality with EP, even if we remember it very positively. I distinctly remember having a long chat with Mitoe over this, where he openly wondered whether EP actually had a net positive effect on the community. I wonder the same thing from time to time; sometimes I wonder if a SSBM-inspired approach would be better: Fix the blatant imbalances, and practice acceptance beyond that point. Focus on "getting good" or switch main civs, instead of going to the forums to have endless, unpleasant discussions.

Maybe a sort of conservative legacy approach would be suitable for EP 2.0. You could have a small team that spearheads suggestions for changes, which the community then gets to vote on. Such changes would only be accepted by a sufficient super-majority, to ensure that the game moves in a direction that is broadly supported by the community. This typically also ensures that a game stays true to itself: our community is united by our love for the original product, and therefore on average our preferences do not deviate much from the original product. There are some nice examples of this, like old school runescape ingame polls or smogon suspect tests (if anyone has a nice overview article for this, I'd love to read it).

[gibson]

You're telling me that if I'm an average player looking to test my skills in a tournament just for fun, there has been no way for me to play in a major ESOC event in the last 3 years?

That probably hasn't helped with player retention either...

Just wanted to say that as a mediocre player, getting a few surprise top 32s was the absolute highlight of my experience in aoe3.

Spoiler

I'd have even gotten a top 16 had princeofkabul not smurfed on somppu's account for the final game

In the end, a tournament format with a lot of preparation time is just such a delightful aoe3 experience. The experience where you manage to punch above your weight due to extensive preparation is magical.

@KINGofOsmane thoughts?

[kijenB]

I never stopped playing the game through all its journey.
but playing with no hope of a balance patch is just breaking me away bit by bit.
every game my opponent is otto or mexico or other broken civs I hate myself for wasting my time on a non enjoyable match.
please if not EP2 at least can we try to pressure the devs into making another balance patch ,, or integrate changes made by verified esoc members as official.
I hate to stop playing the game after all these years over some minor broken shit.

[Adribird]

I commented it a couple of years ago and I comment it now with some variations.

In case you would like to make an EP2, my proposal is this (it will sound radical, but I don't care):

- Fix the multiple annoying bugs both in the gameplay and in the interface or observer/replay mode.

- Simplify the game more (keeping its identity), reducing the number of playable cards in game (20 each civilization instead of 25 as before or less with other civs like Mexico and USA) so that you can predict, along with exploration, the possible builds of the opponents. More balanced and reduced treasures per map and even that the game warns you that a shipment or aging of the opponent, before 5 seconds, is going to come out. All this aims to reduce the RNG a little. Other simplifications have to do with treating revolutions as what they should be, an all in and not almost like another civilization (perhaps with the exception of South Africa in the economic aspect), as well as reducing the number of competitive maps with their consequent natives and mercenaries. With all this, it would still be the deepest game of the franchise and by far.

- After doing all of the above, an agreed balance would be produced with a majority of high level and analytical players. It is important not to fall into a toxic/troll elitist attitude when it comes to listening to opinions, since even a medium/low level player can give a good idea if he/she knows how to reason it out. All this, pointing to the potential nerfs of very effective strategies at all levels that currently exist (or even some minibuff to some specific civ), especially in medium/high level.

From there, it would be pure discussion of balance and debate and I think the game would have a wider reach without any doubt, as it will be more understandable to much more audience and competitive players will be more comfortable (except those who like to abuse the broken things).

[KINGofOsmane]

You're telling me that if I'm an average player looking to test my skills in a tournament just for fun, there has been no way for me to play in a major ESOC event in the last 3 years?

That probably hasn't helped with player retention either...

Just wanted to say that as a mediocre player, getting a few surprise top 32s was the absolute highlight of my experience in aoe3.

Spoiler

I'd have even gotten a top 16 had princeofkabul not smurfed on somppu's account for the final game

In the end, a tournament format with a lot of preparation time is just such a delightful aoe3 experience. The experience where you manage to punch above your weight due to extensive preparation is magical.

@KINGofOsmane thoughts?

I just cant

[Goodspeed]

I think there is no doubt that both fan patches had a positive effect on the community, EP in particular. Results speak for themselves. In the 5 years ESOC was releasing patches we saw an unprecedented increase in strategic variety at high levels of play. This kept the game interesting for high level players, made it more entertaining to watch, and inspired viewers to play. The community thrived at least in part because of that. We should remember that there were many naysayers before we started on EP, and they were making mostly the same points as they are now. Some people are just averse to change, afraid of losing what they have, and you will have to drag them kicking and screaming into a better future.

Since there have already been two fan patches in this game's history, when contemplating how to approach a new one you have the luxury of being able to learn from their mistakes. ASFP, for its part, made a lot of standardizing changes and we ended up with a homogeneous musk/huss meta where almost every civ was doing mostly the same thing. Changes like giving the native civs steel traps and standardizing civs like Japan and Brit by normalizing their economies feel painfully wrong with the knowledge of today.

It helps to understand why we, a team of high level players, thought it was a good idea to standardize to this extent. I think what it comes down to is that standardizing is the easiest and most obvious way to balance. For example, when you looked at native civs back then you would see that they were losing games because their economy lagged behind. When figuring out why that is, you notice that other civs have steel traps and they don't, so you give them steel traps. Back then we were, or at least I was, unaware of the fact that any balancing effort has an inherent bias towards standardization, and when you're unaware of your own bias, you make mistakes. It's not that we were standardizing on purpose, it's that we were drawn to such changes because it was the most obvious way to balance the game, and that made it easy to agree on the changes. We learned from this and for EP one of our most important starting principles was not to make standardizing changes. For example it's why, when nerfing abus guns, we changed their ROF instead of their attack. We didn't want them to feel like just another RI (in ASFP we nerfed their attack and gave them RI multipliers, and they felt like yet another reskinned skirmisher). This rule is why we ended up with so much variety in tournaments, instead of another homogeneous meta.

How does this translate to a new patch? I think it would be important again to have a no standardizing rule, although I think with the current state of DE a few exceptions will probably have to be made. You need this to counteract the inherent bias towards standardization. And this has consequences for how to structure the process of deciding on changes as well. A democratic approach risks losing sight of this rule, because who is there to enforce it? You will end up standardizing because standardizing changes are obvious and you will find they are the easiest to get people to agree on. I think you need someone who is acutely aware of biases to enforce important principles like limited standardization, to make sure civs don't lose their identities.

Ultimately, even EP did end up standardizing to some extent. There is a bit of a grey area between a civ having a unique identity and a civ being too one-dimensional. It shouldn't be the case that all civs have all ways to play, but it also shouldn't be the case that civs have only one way to play. That is a hard balance to strike, and a truly balanced AoE3 is one where it is struck perfectly. EP made a start in that direction, but even at the end there was a lot of work still to be done.

EP made its own mistakes, too. Jerom mentions unpleasant discussions, and he's right, there were a lot of those. I think where I personally went wrong most of all is I was too eager to get into discussions, and was often a bit combative. I was also too focused on making what I felt were the right changes, popularity be damned. The result was that people didn't feel listened to. In some occasions I should have simply given the reasoning for a change and not defended it beyond that, or made the pragmatic decision to sacrifice what I thought was a good change because it was unpopular. Not only because it makes people feel listened to, but also because I might've been wrong (gasp). Basically I was sometimes stubborn and combative and this left a sour taste in people's mouths.

What I think we did right is the structure of the team. Flawed though I was, I think one person having the final say on balance changes is important (hand Frontline the keys, imo). It's also important to have a team of high level players in close communication with them who are prepared to spend time discussing and testing changes; no one can do it alone. What we also did right is frequent polling of the entire community to gauge the (perceived) state of civ balance, and the popularity of specific changes (example).

[Guigs]

I think there is no doubt that both fan patches had a positive effect on the community, EP in particular. Results speak for themselves. In the 5 years ESOC was releasing patches the community grew steadily and we saw an unprecedented increase in strategic variety at high levels of play. This both kept the game interesting for high level players, made it more entertaining to watch, and inspired viewers to play. We should remember that there were many naysayers before we started on EP, and they were making mostly the same points as they are now. Some people are just averse to change, afraid of losing what they have, and you will have to drag them kicking and screaming into a better future.

Since there have already been two fan patches in this game's history, when contemplating how to approach a new one you have the luxury of being able to learn from their mistakes. ASFP, for its part, made a lot of standardizing changes and we ended up with a homogeneous musk/huss meta where almost every civ was doing mostly the same thing. Changes like giving the native civs steel traps and standardizing civs like Japan and Brit by normalizing their economies feel painfully wrong with the knowledge of today.

It helps to understand why we, a team of high level players, thought it was a good idea to standardize to this extent. I think what it comes down to is that standardizing is the easiest and most obvious way to balance. For example, when you looked at native civs back then you would see that they were losing games because their economy lagged behind. Not having a second hunting upgrade is a big reason why, so you give them steel traps. Back then we were, or at least I was, unaware of the fact that any balancing effort has an inherent bias towards standardization, and when you're unaware of your own bias, you make mistakes. It's not that we were standardizing on purpose, it's that we were drawn to such changes because it was the most obvious way to balance the game, and that made it easy to agree on the changes. We learned from this and for EP one of our most important starting principles was not to make standardizing changes. For example it's why, when nerfing abus guns, we changed their ROF instead of their attack; we didn't want them to feel like just another RI (in ASFP we nerfed their attack and gave them RI multipliers, and they felt like yet another reskinned skirmisher). This rule is why we ended up with so much variety in tournaments, instead of another homogeneous meta.

How does this translate to a new patch? I think it would be important again to have a no standardizing rule, although I think with the current state of DE a few exceptions will probably have to be made. You need this to counteract the inherent bias towards standardization. And this has consequences for how to structure the process of deciding on changes, as well. A democratic approach risks losing sight of this rule, because who is there to enforce it? You will end up standardizing because standardizing changes are obvious and you will find they are the easiest to get people to agree on. I think you need someone who is acutely aware of biases to enforce important principles like limited standardization, to make sure civs don't lose their identities.

Ultimately, even EP did end up standardizing to some extent. There is a bit of a grey area between a civ having a unique identity and a civ being too one-dimensional. It shouldn't be the case that all civs have all ways to play, but it also shouldn't be the case that civs have only one way to play. That is a hard balance to strike, and a truly balanced AoE3 is one where it is struck perfectly.

EP made its own mistakes, though. Jerom mentions unpleasant discussions, and he's right, there were a lot of those. I think where I went wrong most of all is I was too eager to get into discussions, and was often a bit combative. I was also too focused on making what I felt were the right changes, popularity be damned. The result was that people didn't feel listened to. In some occasions I should have simply given the reasoning for a change and not defended it beyond that, or made the pragmatic decision to sacrifice what I thought was a good change because it was unpopular. Not only because it makes people feel listened to, but also because I might've been wrong (gasp). Basically I was sometimes stubborn and combative and this left a sour taste in people's mouths.

What I think we did right is the structure of the team. Flawed though I was, I think one person having the final say on balance changes is important (hand Frontline the keys, imo). I think it's also important to have a team of high level players in close communication with them who are prepared to spend time discussing and testing changes. What we also did right is frequent polling of the entire community to gauge the (perceived) state of civ balance, and the popularity of specific (impactful) changes.

Isn't standarization also a result from the similarities of what was considered "balanced" and thus the starting point of balancing things around ? I'm talking about most euro civs having similar designs and units, making it a good base to start from.

If such a project would happen, it would be nice to have you and others previous EP team members to assist imo. I also agree on handing the keys to Frontline, he plays every civs afaik, has a good understanding of the game and isn't biaised from the legacy game (since he didn't play it ?).
Question is, would he even take it to begin with (putting yourself in the spotlights gets you a lot of hate) and would he get enough support from top players to balance, and devs to implement

[MaxMagous]

Can someone articulate how an EP2 would have made the last esoc tourney better / more competitive?

It wouldn't have changed a thing, as DE civs were barely picked and barely got any wins throughout the tournament - 2 pick, 0 wins in the two final series - and most of the EP talk and supposedly effort would be directed towards tweaking DE civs. Otto was picked many times, but off the top of my head it was never played in the way that would be addressed by supposed future balance tweaks (church FI and stuff)
This has much to do with Baja being banned and as 3k elo + players never fail to point out "old players are more comfortable with older civs" but again, if something was blatantly overpowered or broken...you know, it would just be picked over anything else regardless of how much less familiar it feels. And it would win most of the time.
But yea surely ladder games would vastly benefit from it. Maybe, just maybe, future tournaments. But I just can't see a no-EP2 future where tournaments are dominated by DE civs when "older players will have become accustomed to DE civs"

[iNcog]

Question is, would he even take it to begin with (putting yourself in the spotlights gets you a lot of hate) and would he get enough support from top players to balance, and devs to implement

Maybe the head of the EP should get an anonymized account given the abhorrent treatment that previous EP leads were given. Thankfully a lot of the bad apples are gone which should help

[Goodspeed]

Isn't standarization also a result from the similarities of what was considered "balanced" and thus the starting point of balancing things around ? I'm talking about most euro civs having similar designs and units, making it a good base to start from.

Using civs like France as a baseline is good if you're only doing it to gauge the strength of other civs. It makes sense that, when changing a civ, you look at their performance against a "jack of all trades" civ like France, because it's a good way to see if the civ is weak or strong. But you have to be careful because there's a thin line between that and using France as a baseline example of what other civs should be like. You do that, and you're going to end up giving native civs steel traps and changing abus guns into another reskinned skirmisher.

If such a project would happen, it would be nice to have you and others previous EP team members to assist imo. I also agree on handing the keys to Frontline, he plays every civs afaik, has a good understanding of the game and isn't biaised from the legacy game (since he didn't play it ?).
Question is, would he even take it to begin with (putting yourself in the spotlights gets you a lot of hate) and would he get enough support from top players to balance, and devs to implement

It's true that a thick skin is a job requirement. The biggest question mark in my mind is time. Frontline mentions he's been playing since '06, which makes him a good candidate on the one hand, but it's also worrying. Anyone who has been playing for that long will be pushing 30 at least, and that's right around the time where real-life responsibilities tend to ramp up. @Frontline Do you actually want and have time for this? Are you prepared to quit your job, abandon everyone and lock yourself in a basement? Make no mistake, that's what the project demands

[Mitoe]

We should remember that there were many naysayers before we started on EP, and they were making mostly the same points as they are now. Some people are just averse to change, afraid of losing what they have, and you will have to drag them kicking and screaming into a better future.

I think the lack of rated games, matchmaking, and a difficult-to-read game browser make this significantly harder to get people to adopt compared to previous fan patches.

[Squamiger]

Can someone articulate how an EP2 would have made the last esoc tourney better / more competitive?

It wouldn't have changed a thing, as DE civs were barely picked and barely got any wins throughout the tournament - 2 pick, 0 wins in the two final series - and most of the EP talk and supposedly effort would be directed towards tweaking DE civs. Otto was picked many times, but off the top of my head it was never played in the way that would be addressed by supposed future balance tweaks (church FI and stuff)
This has much to do with Baja being banned and as 3k elo + players never fail to point out "old players are more comfortable with older civs" but again, if something was blatantly overpowered or broken...you know, it would just be picked over anything else regardless of how much less familiar it feels. And it would win most of the time.
But yea surely ladder games would vastly benefit from it. Maybe, just maybe, future tournaments. But I just can't see a no-EP2 future where tournaments are dominated by DE civs when "older players will have become accustomed to DE civs"

Yea, exactly. EP2 would be basically equivalent to just doing civ bans / tourney rules for lobbies. It would benefit ladder play a lot, but it's impossible AFAIK to implement a fan patch into the qs ladder, so that point is irrelevant. If all EP2 is doing is making tourneys and lobbies have a default "ban baja and otto church FI" setting, then I don't really see the point since we can already have that with civ rules

[Frontline]

Yeah, I've played since 2006, and like everyone, took extensive breaks over the years. I had my own ESO account in 2008 and started terrorizing the ladder as an 8 year-old, 2nd Lt Otto lamer, but it wasn't until much later that I began taking the game more seriously.

And yes, I'm willing to helm this project and commit the necessary time to it, but there are some caveats: we'd need the technical expertise to update and alter some of the systems and mechanics, we'd need a large enough pool of active playtesters to provide precise feedback on design choices, balance, and bugs, and ideally we'd have someone capable of creating or modifying in-game assets.

With that said, this project would only have a chance at longterm success if it's broadly well received and slowly adopted by the current community. So while I have a vision for where I think the direction of the game should head toward and eventually settle at, I have no desire to impose overly controversial changes for the sake of ego or of change itself. At the end of the day, I just wish for AoE3 to be the best version of itself realistically possible.

[shake2020aoe]

Yeah, I've played since 2006, and like everyone, took extensive breaks over the years. I had my own ESO account in 2008 and started terrorizing the ladder as an 8 year-old, 2nd Lt Otto lamer, but it wasn't until much later that I began taking the game more seriously.

And yes, I'm willing to helm this project and commit the necessary time to it, but there are some caveats: we'd need the technical expertise to update and alter some of the systems and mechanics, we'd need a large enough pool of active playtesters to provide precise feedback on design choices, balance, and bugs, and ideally we'd have someone capable of creating or modifying in-game assets.

With that said, this project would only have a chance at longterm success if it's broadly well received and slowly adopted by the current community. So while I have a vision for where I think the direction of the game should head toward and eventually settle at, I have no desire to impose overly controversial changes for the sake of ego or of change itself. At the end of the day, I just wish for AoE3 to be the best version of itself realistically possible.

i think the idea is awesome but seeing how divided the community is at the moment i dont know how many players will play EP exclusively. so im doubting it would be worth while for the people spending time developing it.

[gibson]

Can you quick search on de with a mod and match with people who have the same mod? If there’s no the ability to have ranked play I feel this could be dead on arrival.

[Adribird]

Yeah, I've played since 2006, and like everyone, took extensive breaks over the years. I had my own ESO account in 2008 and started terrorizing the ladder as an 8 year-old, 2nd Lt Otto lamer, but it wasn't until much later that I began taking the game more seriously.

And yes, I'm willing to helm this project and commit the necessary time to it, but there are some caveats: we'd need the technical expertise to update and alter some of the systems and mechanics, we'd need a large enough pool of active playtesters to provide precise feedback on design choices, balance, and bugs, and ideally we'd have someone capable of creating or modifying in-game assets.

With that said, this project would only have a chance at longterm success if it's broadly well received and slowly adopted by the current community. So while I have a vision for where I think the direction of the game should head toward and eventually settle at, I have no desire to impose overly controversial changes for the sake of ego or of change itself. At the end of the day, I just wish for AoE3 to be the best version of itself realistically possible.

i think the idea is awesome but seeing how divided the community is at the moment i dont know how many players will play EP exclusively. so im doubting it would be worth while for the people spending time developing it.

Well, we will have to work so that little by little it starts to be less divided.

[callentournies]

Shakeventiventi will call the EP lead six slurs

[Mitoe]

Can you quick search on de with a mod and match with people who have the same mod? If there’s no the ability to have ranked play I feel this could be dead on arrival.

Once you've installed a data mod the game informs you that ranked is unavailable until you disable your mods.

[Goodspeed]

It probably would be DOA if it's just a "regular" mod, would have to be its own executable or you're severely handicapped. This is potentially problematic because with server-based multiplayer and more robust server anticheat you might run into server-side constraints. ESO just checked if you had the same version, set up the connection and forgot about you. DE's server is likely to be more opinionated.

[Misha]

EP 2.0 has my support conditional on there being EP DJ Spin

[shake2020aoe]

Shakeventiventi will call the EP lead six slurs

i already miss ur streams hope u doing well in life

[iNcog]

It probably would be DOA if it's just a "regular" mod, would have to be its own executable or you're severely handicapped. This is potentially problematic because with server-based multiplayer and more robust server anticheat you might run into server-side constraints. ESO just checked if you had the same version, set up the connection and forgot about you. DE's server is likely to be more opinionated.

might need to be a voobly style launcher, which is third party. you enter a lobby, you both click ready, the third party launcher launches DE and sends you both into a lobby to play a game. the replay gets uploaded to check the result, etc

[musketeer925]

On the technical side, I could commit to implementing basic balance changes if they're defined by a balance team. I am not sure that I could commit to doing major work on a launcher.

[musketeer925]

On the technical side, I could commit to implementing basic balance changes if they're defined by a balance team. I am not sure that I could commit to doing major work on a launcher.

Thinking about this further - support for ranked games / etc via some launcher setup probably isn't necessary for at least the first several iterations. Initially the focus should be high level players involved in patch development to test the balance, not wide adoption or ranked play. Using the built-in mod functionality probably makes sense to start and limits the technical challenges.