Age of Empires III: Definitive Edition - Update 13.27885

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Re: Age of Empires III: Definitive Edition - Update 13.27885

Post by iNcog »

Synchro wrote: ↑
26 Oct 2022, 22:00
iNcog wrote: ↑
26 Oct 2022, 20:03
Like I've been saying, they're doing the intelligent thing.

There's no money in providing for, or caring for, the competitive community. You can see even Redbull took one glance at AoE3 and noped the fuck out. There was an empire wars mode made and everything too, lol

There is much more money to be made by providing paid cosmetics and whacky DLC that offline and casual players will eat up. And there's nothing wrong with that. Commercially, it makes sense to push things that make you money. Forgotten Empire devs decided that making some extra cash with paid DLC was better than trying to cater towards the competitive scene of AOE3. So in that vein, they're going to push out as much shit as possible, as whacky as possible.

Quite sad. Competitive AoE3 must once again look towards a 3rd party patch for hope. Except that this time, it won't happen. No one will be willing to split the community again and no one could come to a consensus on how to make good changes anyway. When you look at the appalling bullying that Zoi went through when the EP was in our hands, it only makes sense that AOE3's competitive community doesn't really deserve to be taken care of.
Sorry, many mention this zoi i don't know the story, can anyone tell me what happened to this zoi? I hear this mentioned by many people.
So back before DE, this site ran a patch called the ESOC patch. The idea was to give players access to better maps, better laddering, better balance and there was also some anti-cheating mechanics put in there. The ESOC patch allowed for aoe3 to be played competitively at a high level and it did a lot for the community. ESOC hosted a bunch of great tournies on the ESOC patch.

the EP was initially spearheaded by @Goodspeed and there was a team that worked with him to find the best balance / design changes to make the game as engaging as possible for the highest level of play. When goodspeed decided to move on and do other things than balance aoe3 (remember this was all community driven), the successor was a gentleman named Zoi.

Zoi was an interesting character to say the least, who insisted on using proper grammar, punctuation and idiomatic English. His posts were truly the best to read because how well he wrote them. He had an avid interest in the game and did a lot of work when it came to coming up with changes that were, at the time, diverging from traditional AOE3 design. Off the top of my head, he made some changes to China's banner armies and I think tried to buff the crossbow out of being a borderline useless unit.

The community was outraged and opted to pretty much gang up on Zoi. There was a fair amount of flaming, vitriol and hate. Look at my posts when I hate on DE and imagine that, x10 but aimed at a single person instead of a company [Forgotten Empires]. Zoi was putting a lot of good faith work and even reached out to the likes of ME, in private channels, in order to ask about the quality of the changes. He did a lot of work asking for many different people what their opinion was on things. When one individual's opinion wasn't taken into account because Zoi had other ideas, then that individual would become anti-Zoi. Which ended up being like 80% of people on the forums? Zoi was treated horribly and unfairly by the reactionary AoE3 community, which led to massive flame wars.

Zoi ended up leaving the community and cutting ties with everyone. I haven't heard from him in a long time and I've known the guy since 2008 or so? He was genuinely friendly and a good person. People were salty because they didn't want to bother reading posts made with proper grammar, syntax and vocabulary.

viewtopic.php?f=80&t=19861

Today, we have Age of MEMEpires 3, CASH GRAB EDITION. It's funny in retrospect, because Zoi's changes were teeny, tiny and small. They were made in good faith and with a genuine interest in improving the game. Compare that to Forgotten Empires who doesn't give a fuck and is totally fine destroying the competitive scene of AoE3 in order to sell DLC to casuals. What can I say? All those fools probably wish Zoi were in charge of design changes for DE now. You reap what you sow.
Garja wrote: ↑
20 Mar 2020, 21:46
I just hope DE is not going to implement all of the EP changes. Right now it is a big clusterfuck.
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Garja wrote: ↑
20 Mar 2020, 21:46
I just hope DE is not going to implement all of the EP changes. Right now it is a big clusterfuck.
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Re: Age of Empires III: Definitive Edition - Update 13.27885

Post by Garja »

that didnt age well apparently
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Re: Age of Empires III: Definitive Edition - Update 13.27885

Post by Synchro »

I understand, let's say that this poor Zoi where he had done a hard job was heavily flamed, if I'm notstake min you wrote that he was comparing with good players for his changes but he did not follow these tips and comparisons and he did his own thing, I would say that flammed him they did not lead to a better result but only a worse one. I would say yours as mine are frustrations by game changes where developers bring senseless changes to competitive game and favor casual game which is there but obviously I don't see heavy offenses against developers and doubt forgotten empire see the threads esoc. If he used punctuation and good intent I would say better because it leads to being watched and noticed. Maybe it was a community plan to drive him crazy and disappear. The difference is that Zoi only earned flames while forgotten empire made money and little banter from us.
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Re: Age of Empires III: Definitive Edition - Update 13.27885

Post by iNcog »

Garja wrote: ↑
27 Oct 2022, 12:37
that didnt age well apparently
I mean, we all thought (myself included) that they would take proper care of the game and do minimal balance changes. No one had any idea they would do... what they did.
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Garja wrote: ↑
20 Mar 2020, 21:46
I just hope DE is not going to implement all of the EP changes. Right now it is a big clusterfuck.
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Re: Age of Empires III: Definitive Edition - Update 13.27885

Post by Synchro »

This was what many thought but it was clear from the beginning that it was not a long-term thing, from the first dlc we began to understand the trend. At the beginning of DE there were many good players back even from the golden timem of aoe3
Starsky: Think, always think what you can improve... There is sooo much room for improvement, which most guys simply dont see, because they just use very strong bos and units combos (wws only --> easy and toooo strong). (2006)
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Re: Age of Empires III: Definitive Edition - Update 13.27885

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Post by callentournies »

Zoi did the hard job of reevaluating items taken for granted to improve gameplay. Zoi had the impossible job of improving gameplay because 1) no one knows what it means and 2) how to do it. Actually everyone thinks they know what it means and how to do it and that was the problem (always will be). The type of people who play the same imbal strategy game for a decade are the type of people who resist change, even to improve gameplay.

When Mart (goodspeed) began heading EP, internal boards were set up to facilitate conversation between top players and a few scrubs (why tf is SirCallen in here, famous Prinz post i want put on my tombstone). There were lots of opinions regarding 1) and 2) above. At each iteration of EP discussions got more fruitless and patience ran thin, desire to contribute lowered, etc.. This led to Mart disbanding the boards and coincided with choosing a successor.

Note, every iteration utilized tourney data and public opinion polls. A common misconception is zoi didn't take in external opinion. He did too much imo. Game design isn't a democracy. Zoi wasn't undemocratic. (The best of both).

Discussions didn't cease. Zoi carried them on endlessly in private channels. He took on the cross of weighing everything all at once because someone had to. Zoi doesn't speak in tweets. The twitch & twitter generation didn't know what to do at the thorough musings of everyones' musings and did what people in groups do -- ganged up. It's hard to discuss something so in depth at every turn. It's necessary and needs paying.

Zoi went about iterating (that's all we can do, iterate) with elegant tweakings of many things, because aoe3 has many things. Overhauling many things is reckless. The most common rebuttal to this was to decry "random changes." What's a random change? No one knows, but we've seen some *real* examples in DE. Actually zoi made some mistakes; that's OK. He changed changes setting pride aside.

This is the short of it: people who played the same game for 10 years didn't like any change that wasn't theirs. Their changes probably sucked, since how do you make good changes. Probably they didn't have any changes at all actually; right, they didn't want anything to change. Zoi was basically Christ among Fallen Men. It's 100x easier to not [make good changes]. People in groups did what people in groups do -- ganged up. This is how religions start; people realize someone was wronged who was right. Call me a disciple.

You had the sense zoi was right, then. You don't have the sense DEvs are right, now -- both in intent and in product, iterations. That's the difference.
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Re: Age of Empires III: Definitive Edition - Update 13.27885

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Post by tabben »

Unreal how they first need 1 week to release a "hotfix" for the ransom bug, then it turns out it's not fixed at all :hmm: I guess a dev tried to ransom once in campaign mode and declared it's been fixed :uglylol: Mind-blowing how they're not able to at least test it properly, when one multiplayer game seems to be all you need.

Happened in my first game since "hotfix" yesterday, I ransom'd vs Alvaroes and lost points immedietly but we were at least able to proceed the game from Savegame (which he won).

Today he OOS'd me back but instead this time he got points instantly and "Sorry we have been unable to restore the game" :hehe:

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Re: Age of Empires III: Definitive Edition - Update 13.27885

Post by Synchro »

Still happening oos?
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Re: Age of Empires III: Definitive Edition - Update 13.27885

Post by Synchro »

Looking at the ep9 version it doesn't look bad as patch su could bring that version to De excluding the new civs. You will say you cannot exclude the new civs are now part of the game and even if you ban them in casul games they would not care, in community hosted tournaments they do, then I don't know if you can do something similar to the esoc launcher by creating a parallel game to aoe3de on the same aoe3de.
Starsky: Think, always think what you can improve... There is sooo much room for improvement, which most guys simply dont see, because they just use very strong bos and units combos (wws only --> easy and toooo strong). (2006)
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Re: Age of Empires III: Definitive Edition - Update 13.27885

Post by Synchro »

Damn I don't want to wait any longer for the fixes, if it's still possible oos I can't play since I'll almost always end up in oos when I'm about to win.
Starsky: Think, always think what you can improve... There is sooo much room for improvement, which most guys simply dont see, because they just use very strong bos and units combos (wws only --> easy and toooo strong). (2006)
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Re: Age of Empires III: Definitive Edition - Update 13.27885

Post by iNcog »

go pick up aoe4, it's an actually good game these days. aoe3 for life, yes 100%. but there are other good games out there worth playing.
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Garja wrote: ↑
20 Mar 2020, 21:46
I just hope DE is not going to implement all of the EP changes. Right now it is a big clusterfuck.
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Re: Age of Empires III: Definitive Edition - Update 13.27885

Post by callentournies »

Synchro wrote: ↑
27 Oct 2022, 22:25
Looking at the ep9 version it doesn't look bad as patch su could bring that version to De excluding the new civs. You will say you cannot exclude the new civs are now part of the game and even if you ban them in casul games they would not care, in community hosted tournaments they do, then I don't know if you can do something similar to the esoc launcher by creating a parallel game to aoe3de on the same aoe3de.
EP9 was essentially DE at release. Iirc they borrowed (ESOC encouraged and facilitated?) nearly all balance changes to set the baseline.

All of that was shadowed by a really buggy release that took a year to iron out.
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Re: Age of Empires III: Definitive Edition - Update 13.27885

Post by Squamiger »

It's pretty silly thinking back to October 2020 now and thinking that DE was going to carry on legacy of EP, just because they adopted EP from the start. Everyone seemed to have some expectation that that would be the case, including me. But of course in hindsight now it's very easy to see how things were always going to work-- EP was a community-run effort made by and for the competitive scene, whereas Microsoft is a giant corporation that sees AoE3 DE entirely as a piece of IP with a potential return on investment. The way to get a return on investment is to appeal to the broad mass of players, 95% of whom *have not won more than 25 games in multiplayer* (check the steam stats). The game is, and pretty much always has been, a casual-centric rts, for people who like history.

So even though there are definitely people on the dev team currently who care deeply about multiplayer and competitive gameplay, there just isn't the incentive structure that would permit them to make the kinds of detailed changes and tests necessary to make DE comparable to EP. And, anything they are able to accomplish is overshadowed and thrown out of whack by the deluge of new content that is constantly added to appeal to the casual base.

Honestly I think what made EP good was *specifically* the fact that it was a volunteer mod, not tied to profit. Maybe one day if people here keep the flame alive we'll get a new EP, once DE support runs out and the game settles into a stable, long-term patch.
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Re: Age of Empires III: Definitive Edition - Update 13.27885

Post by iNcog »

Then why are AoE2 and AoE4 given favorable treatment in the regards to competitive play?
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Garja wrote: ↑
20 Mar 2020, 21:46
I just hope DE is not going to implement all of the EP changes. Right now it is a big clusterfuck.
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Re: Age of Empires III: Definitive Edition - Update 13.27885

Post by Squamiger »

iNcog wrote: ↑
28 Oct 2022, 03:09
Then why are AoE2 and AoE4 given favorable treatment in the regards to competitive play?
I don't know enough about them to answer. But it's clear that they decided at some point that aoe3 is the casual-centric game that they can test out all the really whacky stuff on.
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Re: Age of Empires III: Definitive Edition - Update 13.27885

Post by iron_turtle »

As far as I know, even aoe2's competitive scene was kept alive by the community. Only after DE, MS started actively pushing it as an esports game. And since aoe2 player base is just 10x of aoe3, competitve players there have a large say in what they want the game to be. Compared to aoe3, where even in EP days there were only about 15 -20 1v1 competitive players.

Aoe4 banked on aoe2's success and emulated that. They consulted pro players to design the game for competitiveness.
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Re: Age of Empires III: Definitive Edition - Update 13.27885

Post by iamgaming »

andrewgs wrote: ↑
25 Oct 2022, 08:53
They added 200c cost to the infinite age 4 shipment, not the age 3 one. lol.
iNcog wrote: ↑
27 Oct 2022, 12:16
Today, we have Age of MEMEpires 3, CASH GRAB EDITION.
Yes, this game is a meme. Meme for great stupidity.
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Re: Age of Empires III: Definitive Edition - Update 13.27885

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Post by kevinitalien »

I don't understand why the term competitive can't be associated with aoe3DE, I'm not saying that I like all the new stuff that's come out but as soon as something new comes out it's gimmicky, it's dumb or whatever without having tested only once, how to make the civ DE balance if nobody plays them, why would the devs listen to us if we spend our time flames and say that the game is shit, i mean tilanus the other day came on the twitch chat and all I saw were insults or people saying that the game is trash ( it makes a dev want to stay btw and then complain because no communication, yes ofc )

I have the impression that finally the half of the players don't want to try to see the game as "competitive" because in fact they just don't want to try to adapt a little bit to the new mechanics of the game and want to stay at the 2015 game EP time or whatever it was and me included I was too ( i mean then just go to EP and why come in and shit on the game, just return to legacy and thats all ), also if a little more high level people try the new civs at least maybe we would have a little more idea of ​​balanced comments but hey all the new civs are gimmicky for everyone, just one exemple look at malta and italy, we had KOTOW and all the players were forced to play the civ and oh strangely not too much criticism about these civs, they were correctly balanced afterwards and everything is going well I have the impression, strange right and on other side we have ethiopia, im sure literraly 3/4 of people don't even know how hard it is to play ethiopia rn ( even hausa )

also I just imagine one day if for exemple japan was a DE civ ( omg the shrines that capture the hunt and the opponent no longer pick up the hunt on the shrines, omg what is this wonder that reveals the opponent's vision, omg what is this unit calling yumi!!!, omg daimyo are so gimmicky a unit which can train units and which can receive shipments and which in addition improves my units !!!, my vills can't hunt!!!! huh i can send shipment 2x what is that lol ) but its fine because its a lecacy civ and its the same for aztec, for otto for china etc
But well i was like that before me too until i finally tested new civ and realized ah maybe its not that strong as i thought or less gimmicky than i thought ( only exception i agree is mexico and revolt mechanics but well we all have legacy civ we hate right )
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Re: Age of Empires III: Definitive Edition - Update 13.27885

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Post by iNcog »

Get rid of revolts and I'll stfu

The mechanic is broken as hell.

Edit:

Age of Empires 3 always had the shipment mechanic and treasures, both of which can be fairly swingy in terms of design. They can turn a fight on its head or let you get that age 1 TP up faster, etc. I think that's fine. Snare also makes it more punishing to mess up in AoE3. So the game has always been a little difficult to play since you need to be careful. But the shipment design has made the game into a great one strategically speaking.

The problem is that revolts take the swing design and gives it crack and steroids. You click one button and it's almost like an instant gg. If it isn't, then you find that the game state is flipped completely on its head. It's highly unfun to play against. It doesn't have any consistence and imo it's very bad RTS design.

If balance is bad with new civs and whatever, then sure fine. but as long as they keep pushing revolts into the mainstream, then the game will die. revolts used to suck which meant that pulling one off and winning was magic, it was niche, it was cool. nowadays it sounds like the game seems to center around just finding the most broken revolt and laming it on ladder. it's just not what the game should be about.

If they really wanted to make the game cool, they should remove snare and rebalance cav as a result of it. AoE3 has all the tools needed to become the best rts game of all time but we're stuck here eating glue and revolutions. the latency, responsiveness of units and hitboxes make this game so good to micro. I feel like developers should deepen THAT instead of making this age of empires 3, magic the gathering edition, where you top deck your best shipment and go revolt thanks to it.
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Garja wrote: ↑
20 Mar 2020, 21:46
I just hope DE is not going to implement all of the EP changes. Right now it is a big clusterfuck.
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Re: Age of Empires III: Definitive Edition - Update 13.27885

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Post by richard »

kevinitalien wrote: ↑
28 Oct 2022, 10:17
also I just imagine one day if for exemple japan was a DE civ ( omg the shrines that capture the hunt and the opponent no longer pick up the hunt on the shrines, omg what is this wonder that reveals the opponent's vision, omg what is this unit calling yumi!!!, omg daimyo are so gimmicky a unit which can train units and which can receive shipments and which in addition improves my units !!!, my vills can't hunt!!!! huh i can send shipment 2x what is that lol ) but its fine because its a lecacy civ
Japan is not fine.
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Re: Age of Empires III: Definitive Edition - Update 13.27885

Post by gibson »

iNcog wrote: ↑
28 Oct 2022, 11:50
Get rid of revolts and I'll stfu

The mechanic is broken as hell.
You dont even play the game and yet I look through 2 threads on the forums and see like many posts of you whining and complaining and even trying to get someone who generously offered to put up some money for a tourney to take it back. You literally don't even have a clue about how these changes effect the game but feel the need to open your mouth about it so maybe you should stfu
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Re: Age of Empires III: Definitive Edition - Update 13.27885

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Post by Garja »

Tbf revolts are more abused in DE patches than sauces in American food. I don't even know if they're funny anymore for the casual player.
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Re: Age of Empires III: Definitive Edition - Update 13.27885

Post by Pedrownage »

Ever since the barbary revolt has been nerfed I feel like revolts are in a good spot, they're really not that common...

When playing Mexico of course it can happen more as it's the unique civ feature, but it seems fairly balanced. You don't see revolts in the top of the ladder at all.

In my opinion all the new additions do make it harder to balance the game on a competitive level, but they also add depth to the game which is something we could appreciate.

What's definitely not gonna help (what Kevin also mentioned above) is the flaming of devs in Twitch chats, that was quite embarrassing to see tbh.
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Re: Age of Empires III: Definitive Edition - Update 13.27885

Post by iNcog »

gibson wrote: ↑
28 Oct 2022, 13:50
iNcog wrote: ↑
28 Oct 2022, 11:50
Get rid of revolts and I'll stfu

The mechanic is broken as hell.
You dont even play the game and yet I look through 2 threads on the forums and see like many posts of you whining and complaining and even trying to get someone who generously offered to put up some money for a tourney to take it back. You literally don't even have a clue about how these changes effect the game but feel the need to open your mouth about it so maybe you should stfu
because I haven't played the game for years and know enough to know what I don't like about the game? if that isn't enough, then know that I have actually played the game recently. just because you don't see it doesn't mean it doesn't happen. I prefer to chill, ladder alone and avoid my main account to avoid the toxicity of this community. looks like it was the right call.

I am fully credible when it comes to discussing what my gripes with the game are and fully entitled to sharing my opinion on the matter. Revolts suck, meme strats suck and they're changing way too much for the game experience to be a good one.
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Garja wrote: ↑
20 Mar 2020, 21:46
I just hope DE is not going to implement all of the EP changes. Right now it is a big clusterfuck.

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