Is the AOE3 competitive scene dead for the foreseeable future?

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Is the AOE3 competitive scene dead for the foreseeable future?

Post by Riotcoke »

Just as the title asks, with AOE4 and lack of viewership/interest in AOE3 in comparison to just a few months ago do you guys see AOE3 reviving again or is just downhill from here?
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Re: Is the AOE3 competitive scene dead for the foreseeable future?

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Post by Mitoe »

I think most of the people who have been here for the last year or two will still be around next year in some form, though obviously with no events on the horizon it feels like a good time for someone like myself (having played actively for many many years) to take a break for now.

I think what is going to hurt AoE3 the most is that it is no longer the newest Age game. That’s where a lot of our new players came from: they heard about Age of Empires and when looking at getting into the franchise they saw AoE3 as the newest and most modern. Now AoE4 has taken that spot, so it is likely AoE3 will be on the decline from now on, IMO.
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Re: Is the AOE3 competitive scene dead for the foreseeable future?

Post by alistairpeter »

I hope it's not on the decline, but if it is I guess that's their loss! Same thing happened with Civilization games, my personal favorite was number 4 but the new ones took away a lot of the players and interest
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Re: Is the AOE3 competitive scene dead for the foreseeable future?

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Post by I_HaRRiiSoN_I »

Competitively I would say the game is having a well needed hibernation. its been pretty stacked last year with my self as a commentator, (attempted) admin and avid player/watcher that ive kind of burnt out and need a break from events. Currently the community has been the nicest and friendliest since the game released, a lot of negativity has left which has been good. The people who still stream and play the game do so because they enjoy the game which is nice.

Im sure there will be future events, either ESOC or personal (Im soon to be starting a new job :D ) however there will need to be a open discussion of who would be available to play and in what type of event i reckon. No point hosting a $300-$500 event when only 3 top pros sign up for example.

Aoe3 and aom will always be the unloved children of the franchise and its only natural to see the top talent push towards the newer titles too!
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Re: Is the AOE3 competitive scene dead for the foreseeable future?

Post by Garja »

yes
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Re: Is the AOE3 competitive scene dead for the foreseeable future?

Post by kevinitalien »

I miss the animation tbh like a mini tournament or a showmatch, its getting long
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Re: Is the AOE3 competitive scene dead for the foreseeable future?

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Post by iNcog »

It'll probably take a hit and then slowly come back, like when SC2 was released.

I love AOE3 to death but it was a pain in the ass to play with the garbage balance from African civilizations. Mexico released and just skimming the forums made me want to not touch AOE3 for a while. The goals of the people releasing DLC for AOE3 are not aligned with that of catering towards the competitive community.

I've made somewhat of a switch to AOE4 like a few others, the game has its own issues but it's a breath of fresh air. I'm seriously enjoying watching @blackwidow become a kick ass beast at the game as well. It's also sort of nice to see different people from different games come together and enjoy the game. I like that AOE4 has become a meeting point for Starcraft and AOE, it's quite pleasant especially for me since I've invested time into both games.

The other thing that was really sad with AOE3 was that its own community was incessantly shitting on the game and honestly ESOC just sort of wasn't a welcome place to hang around anymore. I specifically remember Marinelord mentioning that AOE3 fans could specifically be assholes in twitch chat, though I'm quite sure that's anecdotal more than anything.

Still, I definitely plan to come back to AOE3, I don't think I could ever leave this game for good. It's a better game than AOE4 imo (though maybe wacky dlc civs change that for me now. no idea who on earth thinks 8 minute Mexico FI is any good for the game).
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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: Is the AOE3 competitive scene dead for the foreseeable future?

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Post by Dolan »

Idk but tbh I watched a stream yesterday and DE looks better now.
Seems like they progressively improved the UI, added more functions, game browser, more tools to manage hosting and player interaction.
Broken new civs will always be a thing, even games with a much bigger playerbase do this (think LoL which keeps adding new broken champs every season because it sells more stuff). But eventually they scale that civ back to bring it in line with the others, from what I've seen.

If they keep improving it like this, it might be a decent game next year ngl.
Not sure if it matters if its playerbase is as big as AOE4's, there's a whole lot of people playing niche games and streaming if you check twitch.
Some even chase this kind of vibe for the hipster gamer cred points.
If you chase trends just to be a trend-hopper, it's a sad life to keep being a follower. Just play what's fun for you ig.
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Re: Is the AOE3 competitive scene dead for the foreseeable future?

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Post by MCJim »

The competitive scene is not dead but just on pause. It will come back. We've experienced the most awesome tournaments even 10 years after launch!

DE actually has many players. More than legacy probably in 2012-2020...(?) It takes a while before the new players (DE got A LOT of new players) get good and become pro. We also need the time because of all the new content constantly being added to the game. It takes a while before everything is balanced well.

Something important is that ESOC keeps hosting tournaments imo. It slowly arouses interest to the (new) lower level players.
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Re: Is the AOE3 competitive scene dead for the foreseeable future?

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Post by Mitoe »

iNcog wrote:The other thing that was really sad with AOE3 was that its own community was incessantly shitting on the game and honestly ESOC just sort of wasn't a welcome place to hang around anymore. I specifically remember Marinelord mentioning that AOE3 fans could specifically be assholes in twitch chat, though I'm quite sure that's anecdotal more than anything.
This has kept me away from ESOC as well. Not a lot of positivity here.

I understand where MarineLord is coming from as well. While I don't think AoE3 fans were assholes, I would say that the community could sometimes be quite obnoxious in the early weeks after release. I think it's because the AoE3 community has always been told that it's not very good and that its best players would never hold up to pros from other RTS games, and when some AoE3 players were doing very well the fans were understandably happy and vocal about it.
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Re: Is the AOE3 competitive scene dead for the foreseeable future?

Post by dansil92 »

I've noticed a lot of youtubers reverting back to their old games. BoItTv is back to mythology from IV, samurairevolution is primarily back to aoe3 legacy, we still have esoctv and age of streaming. I think we're all on a pause right now- I can't stand the current state of aoe3 de right now but im still playing with friends on ep- because theres a large number of factors keeping us from kinda knowing where we stand. soon enough aoe4 will form its own coalesced group and us aoe3 folks might have some semblance of balance with which to enjoy aoe3 de, or maybe lots of people migrate back to legacy or ep. who knows? I think there's lots of room for good tournaments in the future
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Re: Is the AOE3 competitive scene dead for the foreseeable future?

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Post by Afroholic »

I just start to play this game like 2-3 years ago. I am kind of a new one (still). From the date I start this game, I see many players grumbling about how this game. They keep complaining about game balance or player pool. I agree that the game balance is not the best mostly but even they do same mistakes about civ design, they keep adding new features and improving the game. People always mention about good old legacy days. I played like 8-10 months this game in legacy. Most of my time was wasting on the lobby page just because lack of hosted games. Also huge lag problems and out of synch were plus. I was playing in the day time in-week and there were nearly 2-3 lobby games and people did not want to play with me just because I am a master Seargent :D. So there was not a game for me for a long time. This game has come a long way and after last nerf for Mexico, the game is playable and good position imo. If they did not add new civs or dlc, it would be just some european civs fighting with skirm-goon comp. As I remember Japan, India and China were also kind of dlc and native civs like lakota, hauda... The main problem is people are keep shitting about game. Everytime I join a twitch chat I read at least 4-5 times " This game is dead" "There is no reason to play it" comments and its demotivates the people who already playing this. I really enjoy to play this game and I hope this game will keep improved.
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Re: Is the AOE3 competitive scene dead for the foreseeable future?

Post by Pedrownage »

I'm hoping the balance will reach acceptable levels soon (perhaps it already has), so that at some point in 2022 new tournaments/show matches will be organized. This will lure top players back, forge new top players and hopefully keep the community alive for many years to come!
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Re: Is the AOE3 competitive scene dead for the foreseeable future?

Post by yoqpasa »

Competitive scene gets hurted with every DLC. When they stop releasing DLC's it will start recovering.
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Re: Is the AOE3 competitive scene dead for the foreseeable future?

Post by LazarosVas »

Game is pretty fine, recently friends of mine bought the game and are playing multiplayer quite often, they love the game!

Its up to us fans to continue playing and give the game as much love as possible.
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Re: Is the AOE3 competitive scene dead for the foreseeable future?

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Post by kevinitalien »

Afroholic wrote:I played like 8-10 months this game in legacy. Most of my time was wasting on the lobby page just because lack of hosted games. Also huge lag problems and out of synch were plus. I was playing in the day time in-week and there were nearly 2-3 lobby games and people did not want to play with me just because I am a master Seargent :D. So there was not a game for me for a long time. This game has come a long way and after last nerf for Mexico, the game is playable and good position imo. If they did not add new civs or dlc, it would be just some european civs fighting with skirm-goon comp. As I remember Japan, India and China were also kind of dlc and native civs like lakota, hauda... The main problem is people are keep shitting about game. Everytime I join a twitch chat I read at least 4-5 times " This game is dead" "There is no reason to play it" comments and its demotivates the people who already playing this. I really enjoy to play this game and I hope this game will keep improved.
must stop with this "the game would be boring skirm goon comp ", let's be honest plz only 4 civ play skirm goon as main army (dutch, fre, hauds and ports) so plz have to stop saying that really, its makes no sense, tbh my point of view is "the game is currently laming musk which destroys everything" and it is true

On the twitch chat I agree
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Re: Is the AOE3 competitive scene dead for the foreseeable future?

Post by harcha »

yeah twitch chat is kinda toxic but i think it is the same in most communities, most competitive games.
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Post by Yukietti »

I think competitive scene will revive with new players I see a lot of new players that started to win against good players like ungurs so I am hopeful
Probably the only problem will be the lacking of tourneys since ESOC is slowly trying to be an aoe4 forum (or maybe I just misobserved that) also ESOCTV was really good at gathering the community up on Twitch streams I just hope ESOCTV will continue to stream aoe3
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Re: Is the AOE3 competitive scene dead for the foreseeable future?

Post by Afroholic »

kevinitalien wrote:
Afroholic wrote:I played like 8-10 months this game in legacy. Most of my time was wasting on the lobby page just because lack of hosted games. Also huge lag problems and out of synch were plus. I was playing in the day time in-week and there were nearly 2-3 lobby games and people did not want to play with me just because I am a master Seargent :D. So there was not a game for me for a long time. This game has come a long way and after last nerf for Mexico, the game is playable and good position imo. If they did not add new civs or dlc, it would be just some european civs fighting with skirm-goon comp. As I remember Japan, India and China were also kind of dlc and native civs like lakota, hauda... The main problem is people are keep shitting about game. Everytime I join a twitch chat I read at least 4-5 times " This game is dead" "There is no reason to play it" comments and its demotivates the people who already playing this. I really enjoy to play this game and I hope this game will keep improved.
must stop with this "the game would be boring skirm goon comp ", let's be honest plz only 4 civ play skirm goon as main army (dutch, fre, hauds and ports) so plz have to stop saying that really, its makes no sense, tbh my point of view is "the game is currently laming musk which destroys everything" and it is true

On the twitch chat I agree
Im not complaining about Goon/skirm comp. Tbh I like that comp. My point was , If we blame all dlc civs and keep play just the civs which are exist when the game launch, All we got european civs with skirm/goon comp. Every comp can be boring if all player play at same style. I like variation. I line up with variation , different civs means different units. Different units means different comps. Different comps means you need to find new strategies to win this game. This is the key thing make this game better imo.
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Re: Is the AOE3 competitive scene dead for the foreseeable future?

Post by Squamiger »

yoqpasa wrote:Competitive scene gets hurted with every DLC. When they stop releasing DLC's it will start recovering.
There’s definitely something to this. To have a competitive scene, you need to have enough stability for a long enough time for a meta to develop. Competitive play gets interesting when there’s a meta to adapt to and counter. If you add a new civ every few months the meta is constantly being shaken up so it’s very hard and unfun to try to develop strats, Bc the winning strat will always just be to play the new civ and bandwagon onto whatever the basic OP build for that civ is
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Re: Is the AOE3 competitive scene dead for the foreseeable future?

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Post by look »

aoe3 will be back bigger than years ago..
believe guys
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Re: Is the AOE3 competitive scene dead for the foreseeable future?

Post by MCJim »

Squamiger wrote:
yoqpasa wrote:Competitive scene gets hurted with every DLC. When they stop releasing DLC's it will start recovering.
There’s definitely something to this. To have a competitive scene, you need to have enough stability for a long enough time for a meta to develop. Competitive play gets interesting when there’s a meta to adapt to and counter. If you add a new civ every few months the meta is constantly being shaken up so it’s very hard and unfun to try to develop strats, Bc the winning strat will always just be to play the new civ and bandwagon onto whatever the basic OP build for that civ is
^This

Those two comments give a perfect answer raised by OP.

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Re: Is the AOE3 competitive scene dead for the foreseeable future?

Post by SquidTheSid »

Riotcoke wrote:Just as the title asks, with AOE4 and lack of viewership/interest in AOE3 in comparison to just a few months ago do you guys see AOE3 reviving again or is just downhill from here?
I'd say so. You can't really build a competitive scene when every single DLC or patch seemingly introduced some new broken civ that lames their way to FREELO on the ladder. It's like TAD Haud rush all over again, except every 3 months, and arguably worse (at least TAD had lobbies where you could opt out of playing against lamers, not so with DE).

I'd say the only chance the dev team has at retaining a competitive scene (since most of the pros stopped playing this game) is to consult the actual high level players and get their direct feedback on every single balance decision from this point out. Get their feedback on the civ design for the upcoming DLC and take their criticisms seriously and practice restraint. Hell, Garja is the one responsible for figuring out the BO for the Hausa Tower Rush and Mexico FI cheese, let him be in charge of balance.

But this is DE we're talking about, so they'll probably continue to mindlessly push out P2W DLC and run this game further into the ground.

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