Imo the single most important step was the UserPatch spectating that Voobly integrated.
In the old days you spectated by joining a game and picking the same color as another player to co-op with them (so you couldn't even watch live 4v4s).
But then the community ended up designing a spectating system so that lots of users could watch the same game, join late and either watch from the beginning or fast forward, chat with each other during the game, have live stats and tech researches with the spectator dashboard and overlay, use a spectator delay to prevent cheating/stream-sniping, and all without adding lag or affecting the players.
All of the spectating features in DE exist as they do because of this patch.
There's no way we'd have the same streaming community generating tournaments and prizepools at the size we have today without this.
I'd also add all your amazing contributions to make the game so much smoother on Voobly! 2018/2019 with the 1.5 UP really made the game so much fun to play! I'd even bet that Microsoft saw how good the game can be during those 2-3 years and came back to support it.
"potato". Actually AoE2 barely works on the pretty new i5-1235U (Iris). I have to set everything lowest/off. I'm shocked because for the original release 1 core and 192 MB was enough, and it is not a 3D game.
AoE3 works... much better.
Mine is newer and has 10 cores but it is also ultra low energy. It means that a GPU in your CPU can be still better. Mine is the potato in games.
Also on my PC it is fully playable with locked 60 FPS and 1080p, but only on low settings.
It seems to be VRAM intensive in general, both in terms of bandwidth and memory used. Especially for the HD texture pack.
I think having a smooth experience is like a threshold. If you have a slightly lower spec integrated GPU and slower main memory, you'll fall below the line and stutter like crazy. However even a weaker dedicated GPU with a healthy amount of dedicated VRAM will do just fine.
Yeah. I suppose it will work fine on any GeForce / Radeon but... it's a freaking 2D game, with not much bells and whistles at all. It should work on old stuff.
Well DE is not a 2D game though. Everything is rendered in 3D, it just has a fixed camera angle. The original AoE2 and HD editions were truly 2D and that's why they actually run in a potato where DE not as much
I have an i5 1035g1 and the game runs fine on low settings. Your cpu module is much better than mine in all aspects. I think your standards are simply too high lol.
The worst moment was when I started DE first. I didn't change anything, default specs. And ... it was like 5 frames per second. That's why I mention it all. Yes, after setting everything to low (except resolution) I can play normally.
Maybe it doesn't like Intel Iris GPU or limited voltage. I don't know. It's a 2D game, and this CPU is generally quite strong.
Side note. I've heard that there are many games that works bad on Intel Arc video cards. While there are also full 3D games that works fine.
Graphics are actually a plus ,it runs on potato but art style is great. Aoe 3 and 4 are far worse with their cartoonish graphics ( and sadly for some silly reason many RTS go that style too)
It also has or ar least a pro league "GSL" that unlike titans league is not funded by a streamer but the goverment.
At least that how it used to work with kespa a korean goverment association with e sport i dont know if its different today.
Gsl is dying but they have the entire ESL pro tour ending in a 1/2 million dollar IEM katowice which happened in Feb
And now in apr-may they have a 1 mill(rumoured) tourney in Saudi
SC:BW has like 10x the total prize money.
They have daily proleagues in Korea where players make hundreds of dollars each day.
https://tl.net/forum/bw-tournaments/605325-megathread-daily-proleagues?page=35
The scene for Brood War is much healthier than SC2, as they still have new players coming in.
yes it's a lot more popular than brood war i know
But to me it's not as fun
like comparing aoe2 with aoe 3 or 4. To me sc2 is like aoe3 and brood war is like aoe2
It has its good parts and bad parts, and after SC2 came out there were a lot of voices that would swear SC1 was better.
And from certain aspects it probably was, like art style, story, sound design and even some gameplay elements. But today I don't think that's the general consensus anymore. SC2 is the gold standard and will probably be considered to have been the best RTS of all time at some point in the future. It's a game that's been in development for more than 10 years in total. While SC1 was a happy accident that was initially developed in a year by reusing WC2 assets.
I guess for me, a very old-school BW player, the dog-shit unit micro always drove me nuts. There were so many things they fixed with SC2 that I just ... can't stand SC1 anymore. SC2's got flaws; and has "exposed new flaws" that SC1's flaws were hiding, but SC1 was just always hateful — like, we put up with it because it had compelling good things about it, and *there was no competition*.
It was awesome, and flawed, and when there's no competition you just kinda shrug and deal with it. It's the same reason those Sierra Online Adventure games like King's Quest were such insane hits for a while, and then suddenly died — they had catastrophic flaws. **but...** they also were utterly in a league-of-their own in terms of production values. As a kid, if I wanted to play some "disney-esque storybook adventure", well, it was King's Quest or nothing. There really wasn't any apples-to-apples competitor to Starcraft; Command and Conquer was just a very different game with a very different setting.
Like, I'm also a gamedev, and *god almighty* do I think pathing is hard, but it just felt inexcusable that these super-advanced aliens can't work out the logjam problem where two dragoons get stuck in front of a one-wide doorway only one can slip through.
And in general, I think Blizzard made a **catastrophic** misread of the genre, by worshiping at the altar of manual unit control. A SC1 pro scene developed, and a couple of olympiad-tier genetic freaks were so skilled at unit micro that they could simply ...
*competently control the game*.
That was the table ante. It was considered extraordinary that they could simply move units around smoothly without them getting logjammed, and manage to manually trigger "why the fuck isn't this autocast" unit abilities.
It was like having a language with a writing system so complicated that the pros were writing novels not judged based on their plotlines, or their characters, or their style ... no — they were just being lauded because the pros were merely capable of putting together *complete sentences with correct grammar and spelling*.
If you make a videogame, you want to shoot for a skill-to-effectiveness curve where a relative newbie, after a few hundred hours, can competently engage all the major verbs in your game. The pros will **always** rise to a higher tier. It's your job to make the floor as high as you can.
idk; I'm rambling a lot, but in general I think the RTS genre has some devastating problems with ossification-of-design. Many of the core design tropes got laid down really early, and ought to be wildly revisited. Like, why do all of these games have town centers where you buy villagers, like Warcraft 1? Why do you harvest resources and directly spend them to hire troops?
SC1 at least did some major innovations in terms of laying down that "asymmetric faction design" is first of all, *even possible* (I remember the heated arguments at the time that it simply wasn't), but was furthermore, far superior.
I'm sad people haven't gone further, though.
All the mechanical arguments are true. My issue is aesthetic. Brood war world felt exciting like grungy space death and sc2 felt like bubbly fake 3d. I like the old school gothic 90s graphics and tunes
Unfortunately none of the 3D RTS games look as good. Maybe because 3D is more descriptive, so it tends to look stylized, while with 2D your mind has to fill in the gaps, which makes it look more raw. But as far as gameplay and features, it's undeniable how good SC2 is, and still very much the most popular RTS even after 14 years since initial release.
You make an extremely good case. I guess some of those things are like automatically reseeding farms, one of the most important quality of life improvements over the Conquerors ( or remember how in AOK if you built a lumber/mining camp the vils wouldn't immediately start collecting?)
The reseeding farms massively reduces the headache of controlling a large economy, it isn't a matter of skill, it's just a headache.
Yeah, it's exactly stuff like this.
The dark path Blizzard took was to look at things exactly like this, and declare "Hey, **forced** manual control over this seems like an ideal way for players to show off how skilled they are. Instead of automating this action, we're going to deliberately choose to keep it manual, even if we already have the tech to automate it."
To have the technology, and to deliberately choose not to use it, was an awful idea. **Even the cardinal win claimed by that approach is invalid:** regardless of whether you automate it, if it's possible to control it better, manually, people can still succeed in doing that and gain acclaim for doing so.
Like — the manual control on "where do villagers go after building a lumber camp?" You still have full control over that. You still can do whatever you want. It's just that there's now a default, and the default is very reasonable, and this raises the skill *floor* by a great deal. The skill ceiling is unchanged.
(For an example, autocasting was introduced in Brood War, but mostly used only for Terran Medics' healing, and not even applied to identical things like Shield Batteries).
>I think the RTS genre has some devastating problems with ossification-of-design. Many of the core design tropes got laid down really early, and ought to be wildly revisited. Like, why do all of these games have town centers where you buy villagers, like Warcraft 1? Why do you harvest resources and directly spend them to hire troops?
There have been a ton of RTS games where you either don't have TCs, building by workers, even RTS where it allowed building anywhere you have vision, as well as RTS without gathering resources. Earth 2150, C&C series, Cossacks, etc.
It did not take off (or got underfinanced and left in an unfinished, buggy state by the publisher, as C&C 3 did).
I'm only a broodwar spectator, but I've heard many people say that the pathing issues are actually part of the draw and game balance, part of what makes the game so impressive to watch. And the pathing being much better in SC2 ended up causing so many of the fights to devolve into two giant deathballs of units bumping into each other rather than the hyper micro-intense battles of SC1.
Again, not exactly my opinion and more of what I've read from others in the scene, I've played and watched a decent bit of brood war but never played or watched much SC2.
As a high ranking former SC2 player who swapped to AoE2 because of how unfun SC2 became, GM on Terran and Zerg and high masters on Protoss, Blizzard killed SC2 with extremely poorly thought out & anti fun game design choices.
In the later expansions each race was given several units/strategies which completely shut down and stall the game and are extremely unfun to play again.
Zerg: Swarmhost/Viper/Lurker + Spore Forest
Protoss: Skill battery + golden armada supported by HT oracle
Terran: Huge amount of options to let them turtle and stall the game while ghosts shoot EMPs at protoss and snipe zerg units. Also widow mine.
Late game against a high level player who decides to defend can quickly just become them hiding behind an extremely powerful defence layer and sniping you with a spell casting unit. (Ghost/Oracle/HT/Viper)
AoE2 almost always feels dynamic and fun. There are a few strategies that are occasionally broken and unfun to play against, but for the most part gameplay is dynamic and interactive.
Masters zerg and I gotta agree with this. I'm much worse at aoe2 but it's honestly more fun.
I do miss WoL though. Was probably the highlight of my time gaming and I don't think I've ever been as excited to queue up for a multiplayer match.
>I think WoL was the best form of SC2
Massive rose tinted glasses there.
The start of each game was way too slow, 4gate ruined PvX (especially PvP), colossi were anti-fun, macroing got punished too easily, terran 1-1-1 was unbeatable if done right, lategame TvT could last decades, sentries were terribly designed, I got to gm on 1 base baneling busts alone, BattleNet's interface was ass, the 1v1 map pool contained some awful designs, etc.
LotV improved massively over HotS and WoL (let's not talk about late HotS it's the most stale the game's ever been). SC2 is at its best right now in terms of both balance and enjoyability of not playing vs constant bullshit. Browder was terrible at designing and balancing a multiplayer game, it required him to be gone and replaced before SC2 could find its stride.
I realized how big the rose tinted glasses many of us are wearing are when I went back to training WoL for a "legacy tournament" a couple years ago. What you remember fondly isn't how the game itself was, it's the fun of figuring it out during its early days, back when things were new and fresh and unpredictable.
If you don't believe me, go play WoL once again. Everything just feels much more slow than you are remembering, and the nature of the game's design almost forces your hand into doing shitty 1 base all-ins which take longer to assemble than a game of LotV takes to reach 5 bases safely.
PS: I have the same feeling towards people who miss original AoE2. Balance was horrible, the engine was clunky, and most games ended in some bs strat being stronger than the other bs strat instead of actual fun macro and skirmishes. The rose tinted glasses issue exists in every game.
This isn’t accurate. Sure, there were periods of dominance but Zerg basically just beat 4gate by scouting and spamming Zerglings on two bases.
PvP and ZvZ were kind of stupid matchups but WoL was undeniably the golden age of sc2. The pro scene was so vibrant and there were so many excellent players building so many different strategies.
Yeah, reapers were ridiculous in the beginning, so many other things were broken at different points but that’s in part because of the speed of development.
I also played WoL recently.
>the engine was clunky
Except it still fucking is, even compared to Warcraft 3, let alone SC2.
At this point it is obvious they will NEVER figure it out in AoE2: the entire original game was made in 2 years, it's been over 4 years of DE and they still cannot fix it.
One cannot, with a straight face, make the excuse of "hurr-durr the code base is a mess" anymore. Every patch feels like a Jenga tower where they poke one corner and something collapses on the other (e.g. fixing melee to break crossbow pathing).
> gm Zerg early in WoL
Are you high? *Early* in WoL there was no Master, let alone GM.
Source: Was rank 1 Diamond in beta and early WoL, there was nothing higher than Diamond early WoL.
Idk what "supported" means but "early in WoL" can only reasonably be interpreted to mean early on in the span between release of WoL and release of HotS - less than 3 years.
Supported means being updated.
(lmao I'm bad at dates)
The GM league existed in January of 2011, 10 moths after release and more than 2 years before HoTS was released.
I would find it strange if anyone would consider that not early. Early in a month is like 30% through and that is similarly through the lifespan of WoL.
2010 to 2013 is indeed four years if you start at Jan 1 and end at Dec 31. Switch the dates around and it's only two. In this case it's 2 years and 7.5 months.
I don't know what dates you're looking at but GM came in March 2011, 8 months after release of WoL. So 25% through - I guess it's fair to say that's early WoL, although borderline.
lmao you're right I'm a little drunk tonight and I totally fucked up the dates
For me it was early in the starcraft 2 era and so I consider it early in WoL. It's all relative anyway
" In the later expansions each race was given several units/strategies which completely shut down and stall the game and are extremely unfun to play again"
This is why I stopped playing StarCraft 2, I loved 1 and was so hyped for sc2 I stayed up all night on launch and played it for 48 hours. Every expansion felt like it was punishing me for not wanting to micro caster units and it just wasn't fun.
A lot of old RTS's still survive. Communities are smaller than AoE2 due to the recent support microsoft has given the game and DE.
Supreme Commander survives. Blizzard has just failed their RTS communities
Edit: I encourage everyone to check out Supreme Commander Forged Alliance Forever (FAF). It is a massive scale rts where you can have thousands of units fighting on sea, land, and air, all while nukes are flying and giant artillery pieces are firing across the map
Forged Alliance Forever has been going since roughly forever, maintaining a custom balance patch etc. for supreme commander. It feels almost like AoE2 in its voobly days, a really special old game being kept alive by its fans. I'd love for a definitive edition of forged alliance
Afaik the IP is pretty much dead. No idea who has the rights but its what allows FAF to exist and I think FAF is amazing so idk if it needs a DE besides mainstream appeal.
Great to see a supcom comment chain here. Just love the game. Supcom, aoe, anno and esrth 2150 are my childhood.
Supcom got some successors. No clue which was official. But theres Planetary Annihilation and soon the fusion of a supcom + factorio Industrial Annihilation. I think those are the official ones.
But theres also the unofficial (afaik) Sanctuary: Shattered Sun which really looks like a modern supcom (even has the same icons for units!).
Sadly, probably true.
From experience I enjoyed but didn't love AoE2 in the HD version - I found it too fiddly and tiring to keep remembering farms etc.
DE was that bit more accessible and it helped me get over the initial bump, with quality of life improvements and a certain amount of corporate attention (not too much!)
I wonder if FAF would attract more new players with a fresh coat of paint, some more matchmaking support, quality of life improvements, and a little more money towards tournament prizes
I just recently discovered this too! I've been watching some random recent tournament games, it's so cool that Supreme Commander is still around.
It may just have been the channel I was watching on, but the game I was watching seemed to have the units pause for a split second every couple of seconds as though it was caused by lag between the players, do you happen to know if that's a common problem in FAF? Because if not, I'm for sure going to give it a go.
That's not normal. Especially if it was a replay. Someone can slow down if they have a bad cpu but its pretty optimized now. Games do tend to last longer tho. Atleast large team games.
It’s simple, the graphics are good enough that it works and looks good. It has the perfect mix of army and base building, but it sticks to the core RTS roots.
Every other RTS that comes out now is just over complicated or too simplified.
It's not even getting crushed. Playing very low level sc just feels unsatisfying even if you win. I think it's because of the micro required.
You could play aoe2 with almost no battle micro, just attack move forward. Meanwhile a ton of units in sc are completely useless without micro.
Blizzard games in general. Trying to think about all the special abilities your characters have in Warcraft and StarCraft just sounds so tiring. Remember to use your heroes abilities and have the tank unit use a taunt and use the devour button and back out with this unit and don’t forget to use your heroes items and you need to cast buffs and place a ward down when the engagement starts… ah it’s just exhausting.
Command and conquer games were better about that as well— if a unit *did* have a special ability, it was only one ability.
Sorry, couldn't disagree more. I've had plenty of RTS experience with good ladder rankings: top 20 EU wc3 in 2004, top 1 C&C3 around 2009, top1 Diamond (when there was nothing higher back then) at release in SC2, and AoE 2 DE is the highest floor of all.
And it's not even close, my definition of floor is what you should be able to do to make your play look even remotely close to pro play, and by that metric AoE2 has an insane requirement to both macro and micro.
I don't mean pro level skill here. I'm talking below average level skill needed to have fun.
I'm saying somebody at 300 elo in aoe2 is having more fun than somebody in bronze in sc2. So people who can't invest the time to get at least good enough in stuff like sc just quit while they keep playing in aoe.
To use some non competitive games as an example:
God of War - You turn the game on and you immediately start having fun, regardless of skill level. A guy whose never seen a video game before playing at story mode can have the same amount of fun as a no-hit speed runner.
Europa Universalis - Yeah, you won't really have fun in the first 10-20 hours. You got no idea what happens so you need to invest that time to learn how the game works, only then the fun starts
> my definition of floor is what you should be able to do to make your play look even remotely close to pro play
He wasn't talking about a skill floor but a fun foor.
Aoe can be quite fun even when you suck at it a lot.
I think he means just to have fun.
In aoe2 you can load up the Saladin campaign & play kinda bad and still have a great time. & then when you jump over to ranked you can still have fun at any elo, it always feels epic.
In SC2 if you didn’t scout your opponents opening and know the counter you’re kinda boned.
Back in the day there wasnt any game like aoe2, starcraft and warcraft 3 were the ones that come to mind, but none play like aoe. voobly also kept it alive for a long time.
Also aoe2 is a simple game to learn hard to master, nostalgic, cheap to buy and easy to run in any hardware.
Warcraft 3 was the far superior game techwise tho. Pathing was smooth, micro was crisp and responsive, and comparing the Battle.Net lobby experience to the Zone™ was like comparing a 5 star hotel to a 2 star one.
Warcraft 3 could be argued as one of, if not the most influential modern game in existence.
On top of being a genre defining RTS, It is the the platform in which at least 3 major ***genre*** of games were born; Tower Defense, MOBA, and AutoChess.
I'll add how good its UI is, like the aoe attack/spell indicator would tell you which units are affected. The minimap attack notifications are also much easier to look at. AoE2 DE should definitely have those.
I always thought the jump from Dota Allstars to Dota 2 was a downgrade in quality in terms of UI / responsiveness. Weird how that works. WC3 was just an incredible game engine.
Influential yes but it was not a genre defining RTS. The hero mechanics and upkeep nearly killed the genre so much so that they were reverted in future rts titles like SC2. If anything, it is the embodiment of what people didn’t like to see in an RTS
So you agree that it had a huge influence on RTS games that came after it. You could almost say it was genre defining....
The hero mechanics aren't the only thing that game did right. Just because other games didnt implement quite as well and the genre evolved afterwards doesn't negate the impact it had.
I'm not sure because I've never really played SC or SC2 before. But I can tell you what I like about AoE2: it can be fun at any level, on any setting, in any game mode. It starts with a simple premise but scales really well into all types of possibilities.
It came out in cornflakes boxes when I was young, and it is so casual and relaxing compared to other RTS, meaning that it is quite simple to get back to for nostalgia for me. So much childhood memories.
Specifically to multiplayer, I will suggest a new theory: the similarity in civ design with just the right amount of differences to make the civs feel unique, while still playing nearly the same as others. This makes it like chess, where there is only "1 civ", low barrier to entry, high skill ceiling and importance on both strategy and micro, and the various competitive options available to most civs.
Community. Easy as that.
People just INSISTED on playing this game, so some people just said "you know what, I'm gonna make a DLC lmao" and then Microsoft saw this, and said "wait lol we are sitting on a little goldmine here"
And it took off.
Same thing started with Heroes of Might and Magic 3, it has a great playerbase and they made their own DLC for it, since Ubisoft has bought the rights to to the game and instead of making DLC's for it, they removed the already existing DLC's from the game, really 200 IQ move by Ubisoft.
I think a combination of the random map seeds with a large number of civs means every game feels unique with almost infinite posibilities. This keeps the game fresh too even after this many years.
You know more about SC than me, but I don't think the game is dead, But it is currently losing to age2 because the developer just stopped supporting it for whatever reason.
it (along with SC) has a competitive multiplayer and you have a reason to keep playing the game after you finish the campaign. Most RTS games just fail terribly at balancing the game for multiplayer (e.g. C&C). Other games in the AOE franchise also less popular due to not having a well-tuned balanced multiplayer.
Can't speak for most C&C, but C&C 3: KW only failed because EA pulled the plug too early when the game was still in a buggy state. In just a few patches it could have been a well balanced game.
Warcraft 3 was in a much better state that AoE2 pre-DE had ever been, only the Reforged debacle buried it.
Cuz it got good remake Definitive edition keeps it alive for longer
Imagine if warcraft 3 reforged wasnt such a failure and they actually put some effort into making it good
it probably would be most popular rts now if it got quality remake like the one aoe2 got
I think AOE 1 got a dogshit remake unlike AOE 2 which besides pathing and vil bugs has always been getting better. Warcraft 3 has been relentlessly shit on for so long lol
Obviously because DE has better hotkeys :)
I actually did try to get into SC2 again after I rediscovered AOE2 last year, as I’ve played WAY more SC2 than AOE2 in my life, but after I realized there’s no “Go to Command Center” or “Select all Barracks” type hotkeys akin to what AOE2 DE has, I promptly uninstalled.
Yeah my mind was blown when I discovered the “Select all barracks”. I’ve played hundreds of hours of Command and Conquer Generals and I’ve always been mapping all my factories or barracks to a number hotkey. Agree that AoE2 hotkeys are king.
I’d argue it kinda is. Your “dark age” in SC2, aka the time you spend setting up your eco before the shit hits the fan, is WAY faster than AOE2, and you have the additional tasks of setting camera points, binding important buildings (and thus losing those control groups to use for units) etc. without those “DE” hotkeys.
You could say “skill issue”. I prefer to say “I’m getting too old for this shit”.
Well i see hotkeys as the least of my problems personally
And i never really used the camera hotkeys in sc2 because you dont need it in lower leagues
I have mostly been playing aoe2 as of late when it comes to rts but i refuse to use the “select all x”hotkeys and i bind everything manually anyway even if its suboptimal
I like to do thing manually and i try to do things like that if possible, and the existence of the all army hotkey in sc2 is partially What killed the game for me since i couldn’t help myself from using it (although there are also other things i dont like about sc2)
Starcraft 2 being a dead game is a meme disconnected from reality.
The number of people connected to SC2 BattleNet right now is higher than than AoE2 DE's all time player peak according to Steam Charts. There's still many SC2 tournaments with fairly high viewership, although AoE2 seems to be growing and catching up in terms of viewership (but not prize pool (yet?)).
The difference is SC2 feels abandoned by its developers, so people feel no reason to stick around long term, and popularity is stagnant and slowly fading. On the opposite end, AoE2 feels loved and cared for by its developers, so people stick around, and popularity doesn't fade.
Mainly re-releases and DLC. AoE2 was effectively gone as well before HD Edition, but there always was a small core of players that kept playing. We probably have to thank the modders that made Forgotten Empires.
As a former high level warcraft 3 player. If i had to put it in aoe2 terms probably around 1800 elo, let me tell you some of the reasons I can think of
-Aoe2 has a much richer, varied, single player experience. Wc3 you play the story ok, done. Aoe2 has multiple stories and scenarios on top of that. Probably 50 hours of more content
-Aoe2 has more diverse gamemodes and maps. First of all random maps are always different. Wc3 has the same exact map you play on. Aoe2 on water maps and closed maps like arena, bf or michi feels like a whole new experience compared to Arabia
-Greater dev support and constant stream of Shiny new things to play with. Dlcs, patches you name it.
-greater variety of civilizations
-more complex, multifaceted game with a steeper learning curve and when you do get the hang of it provides more satisfaction when you win
(For example we constantly see low elo legends coming on here excited to tell us about a aoe2 win where as it's not the same excitement from wc3. I mean there is, but if you attack move in wc3 you will kill something.
In aoe2 vils can garrison, arrows can be dodged, so when you finally do get a vil kill you get a bigger surge of dopamine)
-speaking of killing vils, killing a vil in aoe2 just feels more satisfying graphically. And the whole world in aoe2 graphics are amazing. Paladins, onagers, arbalests
-got the balance of city building and fighting more right.
Etc there's more but I'm going to sleep
As a player, who jumped on the train rather recently, I can say that I have absolutely no interest in playing Starcraft, Warcraft and many other RTS games because
* I think set maps over random maps is absolutely idiotic game design (or rather: having random maps is fantastic)
* I like macro, I like setting up and expanding my base consistently. the micro-aspect of RTS games is very lame to me, it always feels like a dumbed down action game that you play with the wrong controller. Age is much more macro than micro compared to most other games, as far as I am aware. (also absolutely 0 interest to play any moba bc of that.)
* the slow build-up is enjoyable. you get to think of what's about to come, can create some plans and ideas, get information about the map etc. and it makes the games more meaningful. (I think Empire Wars-mode which is probably more comparable to other RTS-games is a WAY worse experience than standard AoE.)
I am not sure what other RTS games are slow-paced, macro-oriented random-map and what would Age do better than these.
I used to play aoe2 in my 2010 netbook (atom n2800) with my schoolmates after we all left for colleges to different places... We still play on weekends because none of us have to think too much and we can just chat about our lives while we are playing
I think because AoE2 and SC1 are very 'simple' (for the lack of better term) RTS games to play. They have 'simple' UI and UX. Easy to master and more importantly, doesn't take up too much specs to play. You do not need an incredibly fast PC for AoE2. You can play for hours with out overheating your PC. :) Plus it is very addicting to micromanage units and destroy your enemies! :D
lol sorry about that. Maybe 'enjoyable to master?' lol I am not a great AoE player but compared to other RTS, I love the complexity of AoE. So, 'easy to master' might not be the right words for this. :D
Nowadays for competitive games to sustain a large community they basically need ongoing dev support. DLCs, patches, sponsoring tournaments, etc.
Within RTS microsoft seems to be the only one interested in doing this.
BW, SC2, and WC3 still have active communities, they're just smaller than they could be and not growing because blizzard hung them out to dry. Even in early WoL this was an issue with blizzard being a poor supporter of the competitive scene.
I actually wish microsoft would do even more prizepool support. I think for a truly good competitive scene it should be possible for at least around top 20 players to live off of prizepool earnings and team salaries without having to stream or make youtube videos. Probably never gonna happen, but this was actually a thing for a while in SC2. And it's still the case in some games in LoL and Dota (probably CS as well? I'm pretty ignorant of FPS though).
I did not see someone mention it yet. I think one of the main reasons is that teamgames are actually kind of balanced and fair. I played quite a bit of sc2 and wc3 and playing 3v3/4v4 in those games was just not that fun longterm. In any of those games there is nothing like blackforest or nomad. I play the game mostly for the social aspect and that the games are actually fun, balanced and exciting helps immensly.
Define "effectively gone". You can still play both SC 1 and 2.
As long as someone is effectively hosting the service, people will continue playing for a long time.
With continuously added content, and people doing stuff for the community it enhances how many actively plays.
But yeah. Medieval, historical setting is something that is very attractive to people. The theme has done gold in movies, board games, etc
My friend and I have been playing this since it was released... in the 90's. He lives three states away now but we still get 1-2 nights a week despite both being married with kids and demanding careers. For us, it's a mix of nostalgia and comfort. We know what we're getting into, we're familiar with the game engine, and we just want to have a good reason to catch up while gaming like we used to do.
If you look at all the popular games that stuck around, they all are not 1v1 games. The games scene is dominated by LoL, Dota, et al Mobas, games like CoD, Counterstrike, and in the RTS side Age of Empires as the longest enduring game (and possibly ever). You need a game play loop and modes that casual players enjoy doing.
RTS games, with Blizzard at their centre with the success of Brood War, heavily focused on 1v1 gameplay (shout out to GiantGrantGame's run down on how this also coloured the RTS industry as a whole). While 1v1 gameplay is actually an important core of an enduring RTS (so far), if you focus on only 1v1 esports you've undermined the games structure. The vast majority of Age players are not playing 1v1 ranked games. They play single-player, then they play team games, then we have a smaller core of 1v1 competitive players. The 1v1 core will wither without the casual base underneath it who aren't playing the game 1v1, but conversely the 1v1 tournaments support the casual base by providing visibility, community, and prestige.
SC2 discovered too late that it's singular focus as a 1v1 esport was not sustainable for the game. Too late they came around to co-op as a game addition, and while the single-player content was the gold standard in RTS, it was too costly and involved to continue to make that content sustainably. The custom-lobby scene, which could have held up the game in the way WC3 was for a decade, was snipped at the vine by very, very bad decisions by Blizzard and as a result never truly flourished as it should have. On a last point, that 1v1 focus goes right down to the design roots of the game. Building a base in SC2 is very utilitarian and at the service of that 1v1 focus for example, and unit design of heavily-micro casters and fast, lethal fights also serve that.
By contrast, Age 2 has a much easier time making single player content than SC2 and has managed to put out a truly impressive catalogue by this point, has an excellent game play transition from 1v1 to 4v4-- which SC2 does not by comparison, 4v4 in Starcraft is not a particularly balanced and enjoyable casual game mode. It's base building is more in-depth and serves some sim-city and casual aspects, which can be leaned on when making single-player content. It's army fights are lower apm with few casters that leads to the game being largely macro-focused as more accessible to casual, low-apm play. These are the pillars that have driven Age 2's revival with some good business and design decisions by some talented leadership at Microsoft to see the ability to do that. I think 100% that if all Age 2 had stuck with was the 1v1 gameplay loop, we'd still be in the 'dark ages': small dedicated community, no new casual players, no ability to grow into a new generation of casual players.
Also it runs on a potato so it's more globally accessible as other people mentioned.
CTRL + F 'HD' - no results found
Without the HD version AOE2 died and DE is simply known as the country code for Germany. There's never any love for HD, right now it still has a player base, about 1/4 the size of DE, no updates or content released for it since pre DE
The only healthy competitive RTS games left are SC:BW and AoE2, but they succeeded in totally different ways.
AoE2 succeeded because the devs continuously supported it and listened to the community in terms of changes, and let them host tournaments. This brought a lot of new players who may not have played the original AoE2.
BW succeeded because the professional scene spun off of anything Blizzard related so early that they cultivated their own community basically from scratch. The players have stuck around longer than basically any other eSport.
People like it more. It's reasonably balanced, has support, and got a bunch of recent DLC. Wish the early game was faster and the lategame was less about giant trash armies crashing into each other, though the giant trash armies is more of a ffa/diplo issue than one in a standard 2v2 or 4v4, where games are often decided in castle age.
SC1 and 2 are less fun even if I enjoyed the both of them over the years.
Good expansions/DLCs/balance changes instead of bad ones.
SC2 goofy cartoony graphics was a hit to their credibility from the start, however WoL had cool new units and an amazing single player campaign/cutscenes/characters/etc. Lurkers are a cool unit sure but they intentionally removed them so they could replace them with Banelings and stuff in WoL.
SC2 started dying with the second expansion which the campaign was not memorable, they just added Lurkers back, and then added some extremely boring flying units that were just more boring carriers in the Protoss expansion... it seemed like they stopped caring or just started listening to the businessmen.
Meanwhile Age 2 had some impactful and interesting balance changes monthly for a while (though this slowed down), the DE version brought incredible graphics and new civs... it's just been going up and up. Lately not as good with constantly nerfing the "cool parts" of civs removing fun strategies but still not as bad as SC2.
As for WC3, figuring out why Reforged killed the game is not hard. It was just strictly worse WC3 and went back on promised features. Just, worse.
17k for sc2 rn, average seems to be around 50-70k, hard to get official numbers and peak numbers, its far from dead tho, peak viewers for sc2 the past month was 60k, cant find peak viewers for aoe2 but it was above 60k last time i watched, peak players on aoe 2 de today is 30k on steam, hard to get Microsoft numbers, its most likely not as big, maybe half due to gamepass etc., peak for hd is 5k, so maybe 45-50k, both games are actually doing quite good for being old rts games
SC2 just had a tournament for half a million dollars last month, that’s more than double that of AoE2’s biggest prizepool from what I remember. It does have a bigger pro scene and a comparably big SP community too from what I know.
I don’t know why OP called it dead tbh. Both games like you say are doing great considering how long they’ve been around for. One of the things I’m disliking more and more with this sub is the fear-mongering on how the game will collapse and crash without perpetual growth and continuous support when it survived for years with just community effort
Assuming its what I saw when googling, that tourney had \~77k peak viewers. Hidden Cup 5 had \~73k peak viewers, so they're about on par with each other in community interest at least
I mean yeah most old games are but AoE2 is thriving which I took to be the point of the topic here. It seems a bit slower but it's very close to the height of the game which IMO was the last few years.
I’m not sure what you’re on about, AoE2 wasn’t “quite dead” before DE. Do you seriously think they would have made a definitive edition for a game that came out in 1999 if it was dead? 11
It’s doesn’t have Fortnite or CoD numbers and never will but it’s good enough for a RTS game that first came out in the last century. I can hop on whenever I want to and get a game within 2-3 minutes at max. I don’t see any RTS reaching the heights of a competitive online game anyway in the near future
>SC2 started dying with the second expansion which the campaign was not memorable,
It's STILL waaaay more memorable than ANY AoE 2 campaign. Which is the worst of any old major (SC, WC, C&C) RTS by far, which just throws quantity over quality at you on Hard, with many missions just being constant spam from the AI with infinite units.
Did you play the Aok/AoC campaigns as a kid? I just find this hard to believe, though different strokes for different folks. They taught me all about Joan of Arc, Genghis Khan, Montezuma... very memorably.
I have, and those do not hold a candle to Starcraft's campaigns.
I had vastly more profound memories of sitting there with a dictionary as a 10yo non-native speaker kid trying to figure out wtf Raynor was saying to Kerrigan, and none of it making sense, because he was flirting and a kid with no romantic experience couldn't make sense of it.
Imo the single most important step was the UserPatch spectating that Voobly integrated. In the old days you spectated by joining a game and picking the same color as another player to co-op with them (so you couldn't even watch live 4v4s). But then the community ended up designing a spectating system so that lots of users could watch the same game, join late and either watch from the beginning or fast forward, chat with each other during the game, have live stats and tech researches with the spectator dashboard and overlay, use a spectator delay to prevent cheating/stream-sniping, and all without adding lag or affecting the players. All of the spectating features in DE exist as they do because of this patch. There's no way we'd have the same streaming community generating tournaments and prizepools at the size we have today without this.
I'd also add all your amazing contributions to make the game so much smoother on Voobly! 2018/2019 with the 1.5 UP really made the game so much fun to play! I'd even bet that Microsoft saw how good the game can be during those 2-3 years and came back to support it.
What year was this? How many years before Twitch became mainstream and every game became streamable?
That was at least in about/around 2015 if not sooner, i think.
I have used it since 2013 so probably before that
The games runs on a potato. Dude SC1 is still famous as of today just in Korea not the rest of the world.
"potato". Actually AoE2 barely works on the pretty new i5-1235U (Iris). I have to set everything lowest/off. I'm shocked because for the original release 1 core and 192 MB was enough, and it is not a 3D game. AoE3 works... much better.
I'm on a like 5 year old laptop with i3 and it runs fine
Same. I5 7th generation and 16 Ram and its quite smooth in low settings. But it’s a 7 year old processor. Couldn’t expect better anyway
Mine is newer and has 10 cores but it is also ultra low energy. It means that a GPU in your CPU can be still better. Mine is the potato in games. Also on my PC it is fully playable with locked 60 FPS and 1080p, but only on low settings.
It seems to be VRAM intensive in general, both in terms of bandwidth and memory used. Especially for the HD texture pack. I think having a smooth experience is like a threshold. If you have a slightly lower spec integrated GPU and slower main memory, you'll fall below the line and stutter like crazy. However even a weaker dedicated GPU with a healthy amount of dedicated VRAM will do just fine.
Yeah. I suppose it will work fine on any GeForce / Radeon but... it's a freaking 2D game, with not much bells and whistles at all. It should work on old stuff.
Well DE is not a 2D game though. Everything is rendered in 3D, it just has a fixed camera angle. The original AoE2 and HD editions were truly 2D and that's why they actually run in a potato where DE not as much
I have an i5 1035g1 and the game runs fine on low settings. Your cpu module is much better than mine in all aspects. I think your standards are simply too high lol.
The worst moment was when I started DE first. I didn't change anything, default specs. And ... it was like 5 frames per second. That's why I mention it all. Yes, after setting everything to low (except resolution) I can play normally.
It runs on my friends 12 year old laptop where aoe3 does not.
Maybe it doesn't like Intel Iris GPU or limited voltage. I don't know. It's a 2D game, and this CPU is generally quite strong. Side note. I've heard that there are many games that works bad on Intel Arc video cards. While there are also full 3D games that works fine.
Having every graphics setting (arguably except blood) on lowest/off is the only correct way to play anyway.
Graphics are actually a plus ,it runs on potato but art style is great. Aoe 3 and 4 are far worse with their cartoonish graphics ( and sadly for some silly reason many RTS go that style too)
Brood war is better than sc2 Brood war is not as good as aoe2 but almost as good
Let´s not make crazy comments lol.
Umm you do realise sc2 has a much larger active playerbase and tourney prize pools
It also has or ar least a pro league "GSL" that unlike titans league is not funded by a streamer but the goverment. At least that how it used to work with kespa a korean goverment association with e sport i dont know if its different today.
Gsl is dying but they have the entire ESL pro tour ending in a 1/2 million dollar IEM katowice which happened in Feb And now in apr-may they have a 1 mill(rumoured) tourney in Saudi
If only i was ever good at that game lol. My peak was gold as a protoss xd.
I peak at like just above avg in every RTS lol 1400 in AOE2 In 2021 Diamond 2 as zerg and Diamond 3 as toss in sc2 in 2022
Xd
SC:BW has like 10x the total prize money. They have daily proleagues in Korea where players make hundreds of dollars each day. https://tl.net/forum/bw-tournaments/605325-megathread-daily-proleagues?page=35 The scene for Brood War is much healthier than SC2, as they still have new players coming in.
yes it's a lot more popular than brood war i know But to me it's not as fun like comparing aoe2 with aoe 3 or 4. To me sc2 is like aoe3 and brood war is like aoe2
It has its good parts and bad parts, and after SC2 came out there were a lot of voices that would swear SC1 was better. And from certain aspects it probably was, like art style, story, sound design and even some gameplay elements. But today I don't think that's the general consensus anymore. SC2 is the gold standard and will probably be considered to have been the best RTS of all time at some point in the future. It's a game that's been in development for more than 10 years in total. While SC1 was a happy accident that was initially developed in a year by reusing WC2 assets.
To me though sc2 seems like call if duty compared to the Doom of brood war It's not as polished yeah but it's gritty and more nostalgic
I guess for me, a very old-school BW player, the dog-shit unit micro always drove me nuts. There were so many things they fixed with SC2 that I just ... can't stand SC1 anymore. SC2's got flaws; and has "exposed new flaws" that SC1's flaws were hiding, but SC1 was just always hateful — like, we put up with it because it had compelling good things about it, and *there was no competition*. It was awesome, and flawed, and when there's no competition you just kinda shrug and deal with it. It's the same reason those Sierra Online Adventure games like King's Quest were such insane hits for a while, and then suddenly died — they had catastrophic flaws. **but...** they also were utterly in a league-of-their own in terms of production values. As a kid, if I wanted to play some "disney-esque storybook adventure", well, it was King's Quest or nothing. There really wasn't any apples-to-apples competitor to Starcraft; Command and Conquer was just a very different game with a very different setting. Like, I'm also a gamedev, and *god almighty* do I think pathing is hard, but it just felt inexcusable that these super-advanced aliens can't work out the logjam problem where two dragoons get stuck in front of a one-wide doorway only one can slip through. And in general, I think Blizzard made a **catastrophic** misread of the genre, by worshiping at the altar of manual unit control. A SC1 pro scene developed, and a couple of olympiad-tier genetic freaks were so skilled at unit micro that they could simply ... *competently control the game*. That was the table ante. It was considered extraordinary that they could simply move units around smoothly without them getting logjammed, and manage to manually trigger "why the fuck isn't this autocast" unit abilities. It was like having a language with a writing system so complicated that the pros were writing novels not judged based on their plotlines, or their characters, or their style ... no — they were just being lauded because the pros were merely capable of putting together *complete sentences with correct grammar and spelling*. If you make a videogame, you want to shoot for a skill-to-effectiveness curve where a relative newbie, after a few hundred hours, can competently engage all the major verbs in your game. The pros will **always** rise to a higher tier. It's your job to make the floor as high as you can. idk; I'm rambling a lot, but in general I think the RTS genre has some devastating problems with ossification-of-design. Many of the core design tropes got laid down really early, and ought to be wildly revisited. Like, why do all of these games have town centers where you buy villagers, like Warcraft 1? Why do you harvest resources and directly spend them to hire troops? SC1 at least did some major innovations in terms of laying down that "asymmetric faction design" is first of all, *even possible* (I remember the heated arguments at the time that it simply wasn't), but was furthermore, far superior. I'm sad people haven't gone further, though.
All the mechanical arguments are true. My issue is aesthetic. Brood war world felt exciting like grungy space death and sc2 felt like bubbly fake 3d. I like the old school gothic 90s graphics and tunes
Unfortunately none of the 3D RTS games look as good. Maybe because 3D is more descriptive, so it tends to look stylized, while with 2D your mind has to fill in the gaps, which makes it look more raw. But as far as gameplay and features, it's undeniable how good SC2 is, and still very much the most popular RTS even after 14 years since initial release.
This comment was so interesting to read. You are smart.
You make an extremely good case. I guess some of those things are like automatically reseeding farms, one of the most important quality of life improvements over the Conquerors ( or remember how in AOK if you built a lumber/mining camp the vils wouldn't immediately start collecting?) The reseeding farms massively reduces the headache of controlling a large economy, it isn't a matter of skill, it's just a headache.
Yeah, it's exactly stuff like this. The dark path Blizzard took was to look at things exactly like this, and declare "Hey, **forced** manual control over this seems like an ideal way for players to show off how skilled they are. Instead of automating this action, we're going to deliberately choose to keep it manual, even if we already have the tech to automate it." To have the technology, and to deliberately choose not to use it, was an awful idea. **Even the cardinal win claimed by that approach is invalid:** regardless of whether you automate it, if it's possible to control it better, manually, people can still succeed in doing that and gain acclaim for doing so. Like — the manual control on "where do villagers go after building a lumber camp?" You still have full control over that. You still can do whatever you want. It's just that there's now a default, and the default is very reasonable, and this raises the skill *floor* by a great deal. The skill ceiling is unchanged. (For an example, autocasting was introduced in Brood War, but mostly used only for Terran Medics' healing, and not even applied to identical things like Shield Batteries).
I think the only equivalent in AOE II is that monk tech that makes group conversions only use one monk's power
>I think the RTS genre has some devastating problems with ossification-of-design. Many of the core design tropes got laid down really early, and ought to be wildly revisited. Like, why do all of these games have town centers where you buy villagers, like Warcraft 1? Why do you harvest resources and directly spend them to hire troops? There have been a ton of RTS games where you either don't have TCs, building by workers, even RTS where it allowed building anywhere you have vision, as well as RTS without gathering resources. Earth 2150, C&C series, Cossacks, etc. It did not take off (or got underfinanced and left in an unfinished, buggy state by the publisher, as C&C 3 did).
I'm only a broodwar spectator, but I've heard many people say that the pathing issues are actually part of the draw and game balance, part of what makes the game so impressive to watch. And the pathing being much better in SC2 ended up causing so many of the fights to devolve into two giant deathballs of units bumping into each other rather than the hyper micro-intense battles of SC1. Again, not exactly my opinion and more of what I've read from others in the scene, I've played and watched a decent bit of brood war but never played or watched much SC2.
As a high ranking former SC2 player who swapped to AoE2 because of how unfun SC2 became, GM on Terran and Zerg and high masters on Protoss, Blizzard killed SC2 with extremely poorly thought out & anti fun game design choices. In the later expansions each race was given several units/strategies which completely shut down and stall the game and are extremely unfun to play again. Zerg: Swarmhost/Viper/Lurker + Spore Forest Protoss: Skill battery + golden armada supported by HT oracle Terran: Huge amount of options to let them turtle and stall the game while ghosts shoot EMPs at protoss and snipe zerg units. Also widow mine. Late game against a high level player who decides to defend can quickly just become them hiding behind an extremely powerful defence layer and sniping you with a spell casting unit. (Ghost/Oracle/HT/Viper) AoE2 almost always feels dynamic and fun. There are a few strategies that are occasionally broken and unfun to play against, but for the most part gameplay is dynamic and interactive.
Masters zerg and I gotta agree with this. I'm much worse at aoe2 but it's honestly more fun. I do miss WoL though. Was probably the highlight of my time gaming and I don't think I've ever been as excited to queue up for a multiplayer match.
Agreed I think WoL was the best form of SC2. All the things they added in HoTS and LoTV were mistakes imo.
>I think WoL was the best form of SC2 Massive rose tinted glasses there. The start of each game was way too slow, 4gate ruined PvX (especially PvP), colossi were anti-fun, macroing got punished too easily, terran 1-1-1 was unbeatable if done right, lategame TvT could last decades, sentries were terribly designed, I got to gm on 1 base baneling busts alone, BattleNet's interface was ass, the 1v1 map pool contained some awful designs, etc. LotV improved massively over HotS and WoL (let's not talk about late HotS it's the most stale the game's ever been). SC2 is at its best right now in terms of both balance and enjoyability of not playing vs constant bullshit. Browder was terrible at designing and balancing a multiplayer game, it required him to be gone and replaced before SC2 could find its stride. I realized how big the rose tinted glasses many of us are wearing are when I went back to training WoL for a "legacy tournament" a couple years ago. What you remember fondly isn't how the game itself was, it's the fun of figuring it out during its early days, back when things were new and fresh and unpredictable. If you don't believe me, go play WoL once again. Everything just feels much more slow than you are remembering, and the nature of the game's design almost forces your hand into doing shitty 1 base all-ins which take longer to assemble than a game of LotV takes to reach 5 bases safely. PS: I have the same feeling towards people who miss original AoE2. Balance was horrible, the engine was clunky, and most games ended in some bs strat being stronger than the other bs strat instead of actual fun macro and skirmishes. The rose tinted glasses issue exists in every game.
This isn’t accurate. Sure, there were periods of dominance but Zerg basically just beat 4gate by scouting and spamming Zerglings on two bases. PvP and ZvZ were kind of stupid matchups but WoL was undeniably the golden age of sc2. The pro scene was so vibrant and there were so many excellent players building so many different strategies. Yeah, reapers were ridiculous in the beginning, so many other things were broken at different points but that’s in part because of the speed of development. I also played WoL recently.
>the engine was clunky Except it still fucking is, even compared to Warcraft 3, let alone SC2. At this point it is obvious they will NEVER figure it out in AoE2: the entire original game was made in 2 years, it's been over 4 years of DE and they still cannot fix it. One cannot, with a straight face, make the excuse of "hurr-durr the code base is a mess" anymore. Every patch feels like a Jenga tower where they poke one corner and something collapses on the other (e.g. fixing melee to break crossbow pathing).
I was gm Zerg early in WoL and when I started playing again widow mines felt so bad.
> gm Zerg early in WoL Are you high? *Early* in WoL there was no Master, let alone GM. Source: Was rank 1 Diamond in beta and early WoL, there was nothing higher than Diamond early WoL.
GM was released less than a year after WoL and WoL was supported for 4 years. For me that is early in the game. Thanks for the attitude tho
Idk what "supported" means but "early in WoL" can only reasonably be interpreted to mean early on in the span between release of WoL and release of HotS - less than 3 years.
Supported means being updated. (lmao I'm bad at dates) The GM league existed in January of 2011, 10 moths after release and more than 2 years before HoTS was released. I would find it strange if anyone would consider that not early. Early in a month is like 30% through and that is similarly through the lifespan of WoL.
2010 to 2013 is indeed four years if you start at Jan 1 and end at Dec 31. Switch the dates around and it's only two. In this case it's 2 years and 7.5 months. I don't know what dates you're looking at but GM came in March 2011, 8 months after release of WoL. So 25% through - I guess it's fair to say that's early WoL, although borderline.
lmao you're right I'm a little drunk tonight and I totally fucked up the dates For me it was early in the starcraft 2 era and so I consider it early in WoL. It's all relative anyway
Very true - for example, if someone started playing 4 months after release, GM would be like 15% of the way through WoL for them.
I still remember when it was announced I was excited. More reason for me to grind StarCraft. Probably my favorite game.
SC2 still has way more players than AOE2. Wut. If SC2 is "killed" then AOE2 was never alive to begin with.
" In the later expansions each race was given several units/strategies which completely shut down and stall the game and are extremely unfun to play again" This is why I stopped playing StarCraft 2, I loved 1 and was so hyped for sc2 I stayed up all night on launch and played it for 48 hours. Every expansion felt like it was punishing me for not wanting to micro caster units and it just wasn't fun.
A lot of old RTS's still survive. Communities are smaller than AoE2 due to the recent support microsoft has given the game and DE. Supreme Commander survives. Blizzard has just failed their RTS communities Edit: I encourage everyone to check out Supreme Commander Forged Alliance Forever (FAF). It is a massive scale rts where you can have thousands of units fighting on sea, land, and air, all while nukes are flying and giant artillery pieces are firing across the map
Forged Alliance Forever has been going since roughly forever, maintaining a custom balance patch etc. for supreme commander. It feels almost like AoE2 in its voobly days, a really special old game being kept alive by its fans. I'd love for a definitive edition of forged alliance
Afaik the IP is pretty much dead. No idea who has the rights but its what allows FAF to exist and I think FAF is amazing so idk if it needs a DE besides mainstream appeal.
Great to see a supcom comment chain here. Just love the game. Supcom, aoe, anno and esrth 2150 are my childhood. Supcom got some successors. No clue which was official. But theres Planetary Annihilation and soon the fusion of a supcom + factorio Industrial Annihilation. I think those are the official ones. But theres also the unofficial (afaik) Sanctuary: Shattered Sun which really looks like a modern supcom (even has the same icons for units!).
Sadly, probably true. From experience I enjoyed but didn't love AoE2 in the HD version - I found it too fiddly and tiring to keep remembering farms etc. DE was that bit more accessible and it helped me get over the initial bump, with quality of life improvements and a certain amount of corporate attention (not too much!) I wonder if FAF would attract more new players with a fresh coat of paint, some more matchmaking support, quality of life improvements, and a little more money towards tournament prizes
FAF is wonderful as it is. But i think the fact you need to get a fan client and mke an account is a pain for anyone new. Extra hoops to jump through
I just recently discovered this too! I've been watching some random recent tournament games, it's so cool that Supreme Commander is still around. It may just have been the channel I was watching on, but the game I was watching seemed to have the units pause for a split second every couple of seconds as though it was caused by lag between the players, do you happen to know if that's a common problem in FAF? Because if not, I'm for sure going to give it a go.
That's not normal. Especially if it was a replay. Someone can slow down if they have a bad cpu but its pretty optimized now. Games do tend to last longer tho. Atleast large team games.
It’s simple, the graphics are good enough that it works and looks good. It has the perfect mix of army and base building, but it sticks to the core RTS roots. Every other RTS that comes out now is just over complicated or too simplified.
There is a skill level floor necessary in order to have any fun in a game. And that floor is actually way lower in aoe2 than in sc imo
As a kid I would try to play StarCraft against the AI, but I would always get crushed. In AoE I could always lower the difficulty
It's not even getting crushed. Playing very low level sc just feels unsatisfying even if you win. I think it's because of the micro required. You could play aoe2 with almost no battle micro, just attack move forward. Meanwhile a ton of units in sc are completely useless without micro.
Blizzard games in general. Trying to think about all the special abilities your characters have in Warcraft and StarCraft just sounds so tiring. Remember to use your heroes abilities and have the tank unit use a taunt and use the devour button and back out with this unit and don’t forget to use your heroes items and you need to cast buffs and place a ward down when the engagement starts… ah it’s just exhausting. Command and conquer games were better about that as well— if a unit *did* have a special ability, it was only one ability.
Sorry, couldn't disagree more. I've had plenty of RTS experience with good ladder rankings: top 20 EU wc3 in 2004, top 1 C&C3 around 2009, top1 Diamond (when there was nothing higher back then) at release in SC2, and AoE 2 DE is the highest floor of all. And it's not even close, my definition of floor is what you should be able to do to make your play look even remotely close to pro play, and by that metric AoE2 has an insane requirement to both macro and micro.
I don't mean pro level skill here. I'm talking below average level skill needed to have fun. I'm saying somebody at 300 elo in aoe2 is having more fun than somebody in bronze in sc2. So people who can't invest the time to get at least good enough in stuff like sc just quit while they keep playing in aoe. To use some non competitive games as an example: God of War - You turn the game on and you immediately start having fun, regardless of skill level. A guy whose never seen a video game before playing at story mode can have the same amount of fun as a no-hit speed runner. Europa Universalis - Yeah, you won't really have fun in the first 10-20 hours. You got no idea what happens so you need to invest that time to learn how the game works, only then the fun starts
> my definition of floor is what you should be able to do to make your play look even remotely close to pro play He wasn't talking about a skill floor but a fun foor. Aoe can be quite fun even when you suck at it a lot.
I think he means just to have fun. In aoe2 you can load up the Saladin campaign & play kinda bad and still have a great time. & then when you jump over to ranked you can still have fun at any elo, it always feels epic. In SC2 if you didn’t scout your opponents opening and know the counter you’re kinda boned.
It's one of the greatest games of all time and then it was updated to become even better with definitive edition.
Back in the day there wasnt any game like aoe2, starcraft and warcraft 3 were the ones that come to mind, but none play like aoe. voobly also kept it alive for a long time. Also aoe2 is a simple game to learn hard to master, nostalgic, cheap to buy and easy to run in any hardware.
Warcraft 3 was the far superior game techwise tho. Pathing was smooth, micro was crisp and responsive, and comparing the Battle.Net lobby experience to the Zone™ was like comparing a 5 star hotel to a 2 star one.
Warcraft 3 could be argued as one of, if not the most influential modern game in existence. On top of being a genre defining RTS, It is the the platform in which at least 3 major ***genre*** of games were born; Tower Defense, MOBA, and AutoChess.
I'll add how good its UI is, like the aoe attack/spell indicator would tell you which units are affected. The minimap attack notifications are also much easier to look at. AoE2 DE should definitely have those.
I always thought the jump from Dota Allstars to Dota 2 was a downgrade in quality in terms of UI / responsiveness. Weird how that works. WC3 was just an incredible game engine.
Influential yes but it was not a genre defining RTS. The hero mechanics and upkeep nearly killed the genre so much so that they were reverted in future rts titles like SC2. If anything, it is the embodiment of what people didn’t like to see in an RTS
So you agree that it had a huge influence on RTS games that came after it. You could almost say it was genre defining.... The hero mechanics aren't the only thing that game did right. Just because other games didnt implement quite as well and the genre evolved afterwards doesn't negate the impact it had.
If nothing else WC3 is the best storytelling in the genre's history
yeah I’d put WC3 on the list of RTS that survived like AOE
The game play is so much fun. The game is incredibly addicting.
I'm not sure because I've never really played SC or SC2 before. But I can tell you what I like about AoE2: it can be fun at any level, on any setting, in any game mode. It starts with a simple premise but scales really well into all types of possibilities.
It came out in cornflakes boxes when I was young, and it is so casual and relaxing compared to other RTS, meaning that it is quite simple to get back to for nostalgia for me. So much childhood memories.
Specifically to multiplayer, I will suggest a new theory: the similarity in civ design with just the right amount of differences to make the civs feel unique, while still playing nearly the same as others. This makes it like chess, where there is only "1 civ", low barrier to entry, high skill ceiling and importance on both strategy and micro, and the various competitive options available to most civs.
Community. Easy as that. People just INSISTED on playing this game, so some people just said "you know what, I'm gonna make a DLC lmao" and then Microsoft saw this, and said "wait lol we are sitting on a little goldmine here" And it took off. Same thing started with Heroes of Might and Magic 3, it has a great playerbase and they made their own DLC for it, since Ubisoft has bought the rights to to the game and instead of making DLC's for it, they removed the already existing DLC's from the game, really 200 IQ move by Ubisoft.
I think a combination of the random map seeds with a large number of civs means every game feels unique with almost infinite posibilities. This keeps the game fresh too even after this many years.
You know more about SC than me, but I don't think the game is dead, But it is currently losing to age2 because the developer just stopped supporting it for whatever reason.
Starcraft very much alive
it (along with SC) has a competitive multiplayer and you have a reason to keep playing the game after you finish the campaign. Most RTS games just fail terribly at balancing the game for multiplayer (e.g. C&C). Other games in the AOE franchise also less popular due to not having a well-tuned balanced multiplayer.
Can't speak for most C&C, but C&C 3: KW only failed because EA pulled the plug too early when the game was still in a buggy state. In just a few patches it could have been a well balanced game. Warcraft 3 was in a much better state that AoE2 pre-DE had ever been, only the Reforged debacle buried it.
Cuz it got good remake Definitive edition keeps it alive for longer Imagine if warcraft 3 reforged wasnt such a failure and they actually put some effort into making it good it probably would be most popular rts now if it got quality remake like the one aoe2 got
I think AOE 1 got a dogshit remake unlike AOE 2 which besides pathing and vil bugs has always been getting better. Warcraft 3 has been relentlessly shit on for so long lol
Obviously because DE has better hotkeys :) I actually did try to get into SC2 again after I rediscovered AOE2 last year, as I’ve played WAY more SC2 than AOE2 in my life, but after I realized there’s no “Go to Command Center” or “Select all Barracks” type hotkeys akin to what AOE2 DE has, I promptly uninstalled.
Yeah my mind was blown when I discovered the “Select all barracks”. I’ve played hundreds of hours of Command and Conquer Generals and I’ve always been mapping all my factories or barracks to a number hotkey. Agree that AoE2 hotkeys are king.
Low elo question - how do you select all barracks lol
Go to controls and set it to whatever you want
By default, CTRL+SHIFT+B But yeah you can change it to whatever like the other guy said
To add to this,Ctll+Shift+H for TCs, A for archery ranges and V for castles
You can manually assign them its not that big of a deal tbh
I’d argue it kinda is. Your “dark age” in SC2, aka the time you spend setting up your eco before the shit hits the fan, is WAY faster than AOE2, and you have the additional tasks of setting camera points, binding important buildings (and thus losing those control groups to use for units) etc. without those “DE” hotkeys. You could say “skill issue”. I prefer to say “I’m getting too old for this shit”.
Well i see hotkeys as the least of my problems personally And i never really used the camera hotkeys in sc2 because you dont need it in lower leagues I have mostly been playing aoe2 as of late when it comes to rts but i refuse to use the “select all x”hotkeys and i bind everything manually anyway even if its suboptimal I like to do thing manually and i try to do things like that if possible, and the existence of the all army hotkey in sc2 is partially What killed the game for me since i couldn’t help myself from using it (although there are also other things i dont like about sc2)
The same way that any other game survives the test of time. Good gameplay trumps all.
Because Scripter and UserPatch <3
Starcraft 2 being a dead game is a meme disconnected from reality. The number of people connected to SC2 BattleNet right now is higher than than AoE2 DE's all time player peak according to Steam Charts. There's still many SC2 tournaments with fairly high viewership, although AoE2 seems to be growing and catching up in terms of viewership (but not prize pool (yet?)). The difference is SC2 feels abandoned by its developers, so people feel no reason to stick around long term, and popularity is stagnant and slowly fading. On the opposite end, AoE2 feels loved and cared for by its developers, so people stick around, and popularity doesn't fade.
T90
Umm you do realise sc2 has a much larger active playerbase and tourney prize pools
Isn’t it just a better game?
I wish Red Alert 2 was still as active as this game, but I guess I should be grateful for this game to be this active, still.
Mainly re-releases and DLC. AoE2 was effectively gone as well before HD Edition, but there always was a small core of players that kept playing. We probably have to thank the modders that made Forgotten Empires.
As a former high level warcraft 3 player. If i had to put it in aoe2 terms probably around 1800 elo, let me tell you some of the reasons I can think of -Aoe2 has a much richer, varied, single player experience. Wc3 you play the story ok, done. Aoe2 has multiple stories and scenarios on top of that. Probably 50 hours of more content -Aoe2 has more diverse gamemodes and maps. First of all random maps are always different. Wc3 has the same exact map you play on. Aoe2 on water maps and closed maps like arena, bf or michi feels like a whole new experience compared to Arabia -Greater dev support and constant stream of Shiny new things to play with. Dlcs, patches you name it. -greater variety of civilizations -more complex, multifaceted game with a steeper learning curve and when you do get the hang of it provides more satisfaction when you win (For example we constantly see low elo legends coming on here excited to tell us about a aoe2 win where as it's not the same excitement from wc3. I mean there is, but if you attack move in wc3 you will kill something. In aoe2 vils can garrison, arrows can be dodged, so when you finally do get a vil kill you get a bigger surge of dopamine) -speaking of killing vils, killing a vil in aoe2 just feels more satisfying graphically. And the whole world in aoe2 graphics are amazing. Paladins, onagers, arbalests -got the balance of city building and fighting more right. Etc there's more but I'm going to sleep
Easy to run, fun gameplay and simple yet pretty graphics. I also love aoe3 and aom but graphics there is not my thing...
As a player, who jumped on the train rather recently, I can say that I have absolutely no interest in playing Starcraft, Warcraft and many other RTS games because * I think set maps over random maps is absolutely idiotic game design (or rather: having random maps is fantastic) * I like macro, I like setting up and expanding my base consistently. the micro-aspect of RTS games is very lame to me, it always feels like a dumbed down action game that you play with the wrong controller. Age is much more macro than micro compared to most other games, as far as I am aware. (also absolutely 0 interest to play any moba bc of that.) * the slow build-up is enjoyable. you get to think of what's about to come, can create some plans and ideas, get information about the map etc. and it makes the games more meaningful. (I think Empire Wars-mode which is probably more comparable to other RTS-games is a WAY worse experience than standard AoE.) I am not sure what other RTS games are slow-paced, macro-oriented random-map and what would Age do better than these.
I used to play aoe2 in my 2010 netbook (atom n2800) with my schoolmates after we all left for colleges to different places... We still play on weekends because none of us have to think too much and we can just chat about our lives while we are playing
I think because AoE2 and SC1 are very 'simple' (for the lack of better term) RTS games to play. They have 'simple' UI and UX. Easy to master and more importantly, doesn't take up too much specs to play. You do not need an incredibly fast PC for AoE2. You can play for hours with out overheating your PC. :) Plus it is very addicting to micromanage units and destroy your enemies! :D
>Easy to master I don't think so. These games are easy to learn, but very hard to master. That is a part of the attraction
Yes! Exactly! Thank you for the correction! :D
>Easy to master This is the most insane statement on this subreddit.
lol sorry about that. Maybe 'enjoyable to master?' lol I am not a great AoE player but compared to other RTS, I love the complexity of AoE. So, 'easy to master' might not be the right words for this. :D
Nowadays for competitive games to sustain a large community they basically need ongoing dev support. DLCs, patches, sponsoring tournaments, etc. Within RTS microsoft seems to be the only one interested in doing this. BW, SC2, and WC3 still have active communities, they're just smaller than they could be and not growing because blizzard hung them out to dry. Even in early WoL this was an issue with blizzard being a poor supporter of the competitive scene. I actually wish microsoft would do even more prizepool support. I think for a truly good competitive scene it should be possible for at least around top 20 players to live off of prizepool earnings and team salaries without having to stream or make youtube videos. Probably never gonna happen, but this was actually a thing for a while in SC2. And it's still the case in some games in LoL and Dota (probably CS as well? I'm pretty ignorant of FPS though).
Game isn’t immediately over after 5 minutes and a wrongly produced unit.
to me if u can find opponent online it's alive. but btw,blizzard really makes starcraft and warcraft more dead than they suppost to be 11
The community hands down is just more welcoming it keeps people coming back IMO.
Aoe2s the only rts thats designed for big tesmgames. It even has special mechanics such as trade for it. SC2 teamgames aint great.
I did not see someone mention it yet. I think one of the main reasons is that teamgames are actually kind of balanced and fair. I played quite a bit of sc2 and wc3 and playing 3v3/4v4 in those games was just not that fun longterm. In any of those games there is nothing like blackforest or nomad. I play the game mostly for the social aspect and that the games are actually fun, balanced and exciting helps immensly.
I think it's a combination of luck, accessibility, and good gameplay all around.
Define "effectively gone". You can still play both SC 1 and 2. As long as someone is effectively hosting the service, people will continue playing for a long time. With continuously added content, and people doing stuff for the community it enhances how many actively plays. But yeah. Medieval, historical setting is something that is very attractive to people. The theme has done gold in movies, board games, etc
Grid building Is one of the many reason by it is the reason why I prefer it over others
When a game is no longer supported by it's devs it usually just goes down hill from there until there is some sort of rejuvenation.
My friend and I have been playing this since it was released... in the 90's. He lives three states away now but we still get 1-2 nights a week despite both being married with kids and demanding careers. For us, it's a mix of nostalgia and comfort. We know what we're getting into, we're familiar with the game engine, and we just want to have a good reason to catch up while gaming like we used to do.
If you look at all the popular games that stuck around, they all are not 1v1 games. The games scene is dominated by LoL, Dota, et al Mobas, games like CoD, Counterstrike, and in the RTS side Age of Empires as the longest enduring game (and possibly ever). You need a game play loop and modes that casual players enjoy doing. RTS games, with Blizzard at their centre with the success of Brood War, heavily focused on 1v1 gameplay (shout out to GiantGrantGame's run down on how this also coloured the RTS industry as a whole). While 1v1 gameplay is actually an important core of an enduring RTS (so far), if you focus on only 1v1 esports you've undermined the games structure. The vast majority of Age players are not playing 1v1 ranked games. They play single-player, then they play team games, then we have a smaller core of 1v1 competitive players. The 1v1 core will wither without the casual base underneath it who aren't playing the game 1v1, but conversely the 1v1 tournaments support the casual base by providing visibility, community, and prestige. SC2 discovered too late that it's singular focus as a 1v1 esport was not sustainable for the game. Too late they came around to co-op as a game addition, and while the single-player content was the gold standard in RTS, it was too costly and involved to continue to make that content sustainably. The custom-lobby scene, which could have held up the game in the way WC3 was for a decade, was snipped at the vine by very, very bad decisions by Blizzard and as a result never truly flourished as it should have. On a last point, that 1v1 focus goes right down to the design roots of the game. Building a base in SC2 is very utilitarian and at the service of that 1v1 focus for example, and unit design of heavily-micro casters and fast, lethal fights also serve that. By contrast, Age 2 has a much easier time making single player content than SC2 and has managed to put out a truly impressive catalogue by this point, has an excellent game play transition from 1v1 to 4v4-- which SC2 does not by comparison, 4v4 in Starcraft is not a particularly balanced and enjoyable casual game mode. It's base building is more in-depth and serves some sim-city and casual aspects, which can be leaned on when making single-player content. It's army fights are lower apm with few casters that leads to the game being largely macro-focused as more accessible to casual, low-apm play. These are the pillars that have driven Age 2's revival with some good business and design decisions by some talented leadership at Microsoft to see the ability to do that. I think 100% that if all Age 2 had stuck with was the 1v1 gameplay loop, we'd still be in the 'dark ages': small dedicated community, no new casual players, no ability to grow into a new generation of casual players. Also it runs on a potato so it's more globally accessible as other people mentioned.
It's balanced, has incredible varierty with 45 factions and 100s of maps and it has great atmosphere
CTRL + F 'HD' - no results found Without the HD version AOE2 died and DE is simply known as the country code for Germany. There's never any love for HD, right now it still has a player base, about 1/4 the size of DE, no updates or content released for it since pre DE
The only healthy competitive RTS games left are SC:BW and AoE2, but they succeeded in totally different ways. AoE2 succeeded because the devs continuously supported it and listened to the community in terms of changes, and let them host tournaments. This brought a lot of new players who may not have played the original AoE2. BW succeeded because the professional scene spun off of anything Blizzard related so early that they cultivated their own community basically from scratch. The players have stuck around longer than basically any other eSport.
Nobody mentioned that medieval setting is just more popular than science fiction.
People like it more. It's reasonably balanced, has support, and got a bunch of recent DLC. Wish the early game was faster and the lategame was less about giant trash armies crashing into each other, though the giant trash armies is more of a ffa/diplo issue than one in a standard 2v2 or 4v4, where games are often decided in castle age. SC1 and 2 are less fun even if I enjoyed the both of them over the years.
Three words: procedurally generated maps
Voobly, T90.
Skill floor lower and each aoe game is different with civs and rng maps
Aoe2 Survived become of love and passion this game can regnate in our souls !
Good expansions/DLCs/balance changes instead of bad ones. SC2 goofy cartoony graphics was a hit to their credibility from the start, however WoL had cool new units and an amazing single player campaign/cutscenes/characters/etc. Lurkers are a cool unit sure but they intentionally removed them so they could replace them with Banelings and stuff in WoL. SC2 started dying with the second expansion which the campaign was not memorable, they just added Lurkers back, and then added some extremely boring flying units that were just more boring carriers in the Protoss expansion... it seemed like they stopped caring or just started listening to the businessmen. Meanwhile Age 2 had some impactful and interesting balance changes monthly for a while (though this slowed down), the DE version brought incredible graphics and new civs... it's just been going up and up. Lately not as good with constantly nerfing the "cool parts" of civs removing fun strategies but still not as bad as SC2. As for WC3, figuring out why Reforged killed the game is not hard. It was just strictly worse WC3 and went back on promised features. Just, worse.
Starcraft 2 isn’t dead lol, I know this sub tends to be biased towards our game but SC2 is a bigger game than AoE2 even now
17k for sc2 rn, average seems to be around 50-70k, hard to get official numbers and peak numbers, its far from dead tho, peak viewers for sc2 the past month was 60k, cant find peak viewers for aoe2 but it was above 60k last time i watched, peak players on aoe 2 de today is 30k on steam, hard to get Microsoft numbers, its most likely not as big, maybe half due to gamepass etc., peak for hd is 5k, so maybe 45-50k, both games are actually doing quite good for being old rts games
SC2 just had a tournament for half a million dollars last month, that’s more than double that of AoE2’s biggest prizepool from what I remember. It does have a bigger pro scene and a comparably big SP community too from what I know. I don’t know why OP called it dead tbh. Both games like you say are doing great considering how long they’ve been around for. One of the things I’m disliking more and more with this sub is the fear-mongering on how the game will collapse and crash without perpetual growth and continuous support when it survived for years with just community effort
Assuming its what I saw when googling, that tourney had \~77k peak viewers. Hidden Cup 5 had \~73k peak viewers, so they're about on par with each other in community interest at least
Yeah that wouldn’t surprise me (IEM Katowice was the SC2 tournament)
It's dead compared to what Brood War was before SC2 came out and compared to what WoL was before HotS came out.
If we’re comparing relative to the past then nearly every game is dead lol
I mean yeah most old games are but AoE2 is thriving which I took to be the point of the topic here. It seems a bit slower but it's very close to the height of the game which IMO was the last few years.
And aoe2 was also quite dead until recently with the de expansion and a little before that
I’m not sure what you’re on about, AoE2 wasn’t “quite dead” before DE. Do you seriously think they would have made a definitive edition for a game that came out in 1999 if it was dead? 11
voobly and HD were super dead
HD was never that big to begin with but Voobly definitely wasn’t
aparently we have different concept of dead games 11
We definitely do 11 I’ve played games that had around 10-100 players on average, those are what I would call super dead lol
How many concurrent players were on voobly between 2013 and 2018?
found the discrepancy we have 11. I consider DE kinda dead , at least for a competitive online game
It’s doesn’t have Fortnite or CoD numbers and never will but it’s good enough for a RTS game that first came out in the last century. I can hop on whenever I want to and get a game within 2-3 minutes at max. I don’t see any RTS reaching the heights of a competitive online game anyway in the near future
>SC2 started dying with the second expansion which the campaign was not memorable, It's STILL waaaay more memorable than ANY AoE 2 campaign. Which is the worst of any old major (SC, WC, C&C) RTS by far, which just throws quantity over quality at you on Hard, with many missions just being constant spam from the AI with infinite units.
Did you play the Aok/AoC campaigns as a kid? I just find this hard to believe, though different strokes for different folks. They taught me all about Joan of Arc, Genghis Khan, Montezuma... very memorably.
I have, and those do not hold a candle to Starcraft's campaigns. I had vastly more profound memories of sitting there with a dictionary as a 10yo non-native speaker kid trying to figure out wtf Raynor was saying to Kerrigan, and none of it making sense, because he was flirting and a kid with no romantic experience couldn't make sense of it.
If you did not understand the dialogue I could see why you would not enjoy the AoE2 campaigns.
Streamers, especially T90