Reacting To "We Need To Talk About Age of Empires 2."

[@mrskinny8555]

23:50 really good point Hera "I'd rather have a small team that loves the game than a big team that doesn't." Also, I watch this channel for gaming news. They're really good and couldn't believe this was released. Definitely check the channel out.

[@Machoman50ta]

What’s hilarious to me is in ANY community outside of this echo chamber everyone knows Hera is a an actual female and no one cares wha this toxic female thinks

[@Machoman50ta]

Hera you are a grifter and toxic stay in your echo chamber 😊

[@DanSetiBello]

There is actually a mod called Defense Of The Ancients, which was created and maintained mostly by 2 guys and Valve hired one of these guys - IceFrog, to create its successor, Dota 2. The other guy left even before Valve started creating Dota 2 to make a spin off called League of Legends. The gameplay was the same and initially a lot of champions (such as Ashe, Garen and Mundo and many other) were slightly modified versions of the original Dota heroes. Both went to successful projects coming from mod community.

[@aleckim9337]

I've been playing AoE2 since I realized I exist, literally, I think my oldest memory is AoE2, and no matter what, this game still is an undying masterpiece

[@HeraAgeofEmpires2]

legend!

[@SQRLGRLandFriends]

same! my best bud and i would take turns building in scenario editor on coming back to aoe2 i realized why i love the classic shelby cobra so much, why it looks so familiar. bought aoe3 when it came out and my potato computer would slow to a crawl when was using navya cause it couldn’t handle the water graphics. amazing playing while game runs well

[@ederofempires8793]

As a long time WoW Player I've watched Belluar for years for his MMORPG-content, but I'm always happy when he talks about AoE as a good example for games as a whole. Happened like 3-4 times on various occassions and brings tons of attention from outside the core age-community.

[@kartoffelmozart]

I never understood why it's not common to hire modders. Like it seems so free. A group of crafty programmers dedicated to making the game as good as it can be. If you want your game to thrive then surely the modding community is your most precious resource?

[@HeraAgeofEmpires2]

literally same, it seems egoistic from any companys pov, not even sure if there are any downsides

[@ObiwanNekody]

​@@HeraAgeofEmpires2 at the very least it can complicate proper liscensing of the software. If you hire a modder to work on a game and one of their unpaid mods does something like add Pikachu, you can expose yourself to legal problems. Likewise, from the point of view of the modders, companies generally restrict what you are allowed to do for free if they intend to sell your work.

[@bradr3541]

To be fair with AOE 2 we all got to be modders. Greatest part of AOE 2 was making scenarios. One of the easiest trigger systems ever to create new modes with. Strangely, another game at the time which was a first person shooter was the same way. MOHAA had lots of user modders and custom skins and new game modes were created (freeze tag was the best one). And both of these games are playable in 2024. ❤

[@beaky8138]

Bethesda hires out of the Skyrim modding community from time to time. Keeping a whole modding team together is often tricky because licenses restrict your ability to profit from your mods (including stuff like Patreon), so you need to have talented people willing to work together for nothing, which is a tall ask, at least over long periods of time.

[@ObiwanNekody]

I would really love to see some StarCraft pros try to climb the AoE2 ladder.

[@MaGGoT90113]

1000% agree. Artosis needs to take a break from losing to cross spawn protoss..

[@samadams2203]

While Day9 isn't a pro, he played Franks for a week or two a year or two ago and that was interesting seeing him struggle with the different game concepts.

[@T779298RA1]

Former C&C pro here, it's veery different in mechanics although it may not seem like it. We get a big boost in the learning curve, but it's logorithmic

[@trevordigs4826]

@@samadams2203 day9 was always better then artosis and more of a pro

[@ObiwanNekody]

@@T779298RA1 yeah. Different games in the same general category can vary a lot. Remember that Super Smash Brothers and Tenkin are both technically fighting games.

[@lyinarbaeldeth2456]

Starcraft 2 is declining in part because Activision-Blizzard went out of the gate pushing the competitive scene super hard, hosting tournaments and co-sponsoring teams and giving it all a veneer of spectacle and professional sports. The issue with doing that is it means no competitive scene develops organically, from the community, as it did in AoE2 (and Starcraft 1). Once the articifial corporate support stops, it all starts to collapse, because there's no real foundation.

[@arthurreede4478]

Good point, never thought of it like that!

[@AHappyCub]

IMO esports in general is the worst thing that could happen to any game, mid sized competition here and there is fine and even good, but the moment it got big, then prepare for the game to die at random time

[@zonetropper]

The starcraft 2 initiative did prove that even with blizzard ditching the game into it's abandonware state with the money it flooded in sponsorships and tournaments; it managed to make an abysmally large playerbase that is 4x the size of aoe2 to this day still. We just have a role reversal now where de2(aoe2) is no longer abandonware and sc2 is but sc2's playerbase decline is very slow due to lack of a good sc2 successor.

[@budphone]

dont forget, Microsoft did try to kill AOE2.. Voobly kept it alive.. It was 100% the fans who kept it alive

[@HeraAgeofEmpires2]

true but microsoft coming back is still huge, they are doing great things for us

[@marcuspontius3967]

I don't really know what that guy was talking about the other publishers, but I think it was meant, MS could have invested considerably in going after Voobly and probably would have been able to shut Voobly down and than its very likely the game would have died pretty much. Also I don't know about FE, maybe they were approached to either take their very popular mod down or work for MS. Doesn't matter really, since luckily it turned out well, from what we can tell.

[@ObiwanNekody]

@@budphone there's a pretty big difference between trying to kill a game and abandoning it, especially when you don't try to shut down the fan support community. Here's looking at you, Nintendo.

[@budphone]

@@HeraAgeofEmpires2 Don't get me wrong, the game is great, always has been, ever since AOK! Now its at its best without a doubt. I'm grateful they invested.. now.. but I just think credit where its due.

[@profhobo8681]

I think both things can be true. Yes, Microsoft tried to kill AoE2. Yes, Microsoft is pushing big for the current revival. We should just enjoy the current era where AoE2 is at its biggest

[@CJ-111]

I bought all of the dlc on sale for pvp. I'm happy with my purchases. Great video and reaction

[@iidarnyii2572]

Hey Hera, watching your videos got me back into Aoe2. Hadn’t played for over 20years lol . Play on Xbox though but happy to support the growth of Aoe2!

[@HeraAgeofEmpires2]

amazing! Welcome bro

[@benjaminnguyen554]

ill be playing AoE2 for the next 50 years, i been playing since i was a child when AoE2 lobbies were on Microsoft play zone, its like how old people play board games all day now except better

[@ihmpall]

They’ll need that long to fix pathing

[@MS-vp6uj]

May the devs overcome all of their challenges and obstacles in life save one, so they will always have something to strive for.

[@brianparrish1076]

See you on the ladder in 2074

[@benjaminnguyen554]

@@brianparrish1076 ill be there 😎

[@Jaageful]

I'm over 50 years old and been playing this game from beginning. I hope i can play for next 50 years.

[@LuisM_Santana]

The point at the end of the video is so important... if we value getting content for games, is important to support games who do this. I don't hate games who are focused on selling you skins, the problem is about companies making the decision to heavily support that model only

[@ShizukiShirano]

Yep

[@L3monsta]

This game new dlc feels tailor made for me. I'm looking forward to it and I'm hopeful to see a chronicles of Egypt and a chronicles of Persia follow up dlcs

[@RuStyMoNkeY964]

The main problem I have with F2P games is the grind and/or the price of the products they sell. Some of the skin prices in games are wild OR you have to grind 1000h+ Edit: He said it at the end...

[@Avinash_Lincoln]

It was fans yes, but I would say SOTL played a huge part with his videos to keep the fans hooked to the game, I know I got into aoe2 with one of SOTL videos it's great to see that his videos create such deep impact.

[@milliondollarart]

Its more of the community, people came because of T90, Viper or SOTL and then maybe stayed because of Hera, Memb, Daut or others

[@Avinash_Lincoln]

@@milliondollarart agreed, it was the community as a whole.

[@Jovian999]

You've hit the nail on the head at around 20:00. Age of Empires has always been more than a competitive RTS. It's a casual strategy game, it's a history teacher. A city builder. This is why AoE2's community is so strong. It's why AoE4 is successful and AoM has a remake. And the unwillingness to touch the competitive balance of Starcraft 2 is the reason that game is stagnating.

[@mauriciobetimpaesleme8702]

As a single-player player who does not want to learn all the different matchups of multiplayer....I fucking love it.

[@LaddRusso91]

I'm curious, what do you do in single player, vs AI or what?

[@LaddRusso91]

@@blaubeer8039 oh nice, I didn't know that. I never really got too much into the campaign.

[@caleblu08]

I would like to see Hera plays more campaigns in the new DLC

[@benryhenson]

re: what you said around 20:00, supporting the casual players is counterintuitively important for the ranked ladder, because it creates new players who evolve into more serious players, and keeps the meta fluid. you see similar effects in the fighting game community: if a game only caters to the hardcore it will always only be niche

[@EagleTopGaming]

AoE2 is a true classic. The initial cinematic comparing AoE2 to chess I think is spot on. AoE2 is not a great game because it is complex or clever but it is a good game.

[@IfonlyIwassmaller]

Wow, I didn’t know a lot of this. That’s so freakin’ cool! No wonder the AoE2 community is so awesome! I had a guy give me tips in ranked earlier! Made me a better player! There really isn’t another community like this one. I love you guys!!!

[@farlandmich]

Watched this one last night. Was a good video, he seemed to have a good grasp of situation. Also like seeing other outsiders take notice. Good pr.

[@nicholaswoollhead6830]

Im juat happy whenever someone who just covers video games at large talks about the revival of AoE2.

[@flynnbuffington5591]

Campaigns are super fun! For someone especially like my Dad who isn't competitive and is more then happy to turtle against the AI. Talking campaigns we've experienced is super cool!

[@thomas1644]

8:12 I know that hera is exaggerating here, but I love the idea that the AOE 1 ladder just consists of one guy that absolutely feasts on the other guy and no one else has ever even played a game

[@HeraAgeofEmpires2]

im not exaggerating believe it or not 11. What I said was 100% what I saw : D

[@attilathechilla.1383]

19:48 I will say that the casual starcraft players have a massive amount of games to play in the arcade. it's basically like having an entire library of games within a game.

[@mrskinny8555]

I'm not usually a campaign guy, but this new DLC actually sounds great. Maybe it's the t90 dock fix, maybe it's infantry that seems good, but yeh. I'm currently keen to get it - after I see a review or two (been burned by expectations)

[@ObiwanNekody]

Gonna have to go watch the og video. For the Algorithm!

[@Dracobyte]

Yeah!

[@Dracobyte]

Thanks for this great reaction! Keep up the good work!

[@janovolkner8108]

I gotta say, I love that you put the health of the game/community over what you need/want from the game. I think that's the only possible way for pro players if they want to stay pro

[@gebhard128]

for me Return of rome failed because it requires the AoE2 base game. Not enough AoE2 players are interested in AoE 1 to attract them and the AoE1 players dont want to pay 20$ extra for a game they dont wanna play, with Return of Rome beeing available standalone i see this issue fixed, but obviously its too late for that. V&V was just poor quality imo, the massive fixes in the last patch showes it. Especially to the localisation was poor with most dialogues in other languages read by an AI and poor translation. I hope they learned theyre lesson and bring the new DLC in good quality, for singleplayers its just a must

[@MannElite]

Quality voice acting was one of the best parts of the original game lol so much nostalgia thinking about the OG voice acting

[@marcuspontius3967]

I love both aoe 1 and aoe2 and Return of Rome is I think still the thing that many hoped aoe:de would be. Its sad it didn't take off. But as a single player that doesn't matter to me all that very much, I got Return of Rome - the version of aoe1 I dreamed of for years and I can enjoy it every once in a while. I very much agree with you that people absolutely should not have been forced to buy the other game. I love the integration in one client though. What they should have done instead is same implementation as now, just if you buy Return of Rome you can only play that and for the AoE2 players either should have scraped Romans civ altogether or make it a separate AoE2 DLC for max 5€, I would even say rather 3.5€ They could still make it a bundle so people can buy it discounted for both aoe1 and 2 And they should have made the aoe2 tutorials for free for the Return of rome only players, so they can get a taste of AoE2 and should make the AoE1 learning campaign and the classic Rise of Rome Demo scenarios (which were free in the old days) free for the AoE 2 players, so they could get a taste of AoE1 nostalgia and rather have that leading to informed and dedicated buyers.

[@AttiliusRex]

I agree, nothing i hate more rhan paying full price for a game i already bought. Several times.

[@Steve-mx9rr]

16:22 i am happy that they still making classic DLCs like DoI. because there is still soo many interesting History and Civs to discover in the Middle Ages. but if they also making this Chronicles DLCs from time to time: then we eating rly good as AoE Fans

[@pratikpatil6160]

Started playing AoE and AoE2 in 2003-4 as a 6 year old. Fell in love with the game tho most of the times i didnt know what the fk i was doing. Took me about a year to understand the game. Completed the all the campaigns in conquerors on easy mode then i stopped. Was just checking out on steam about AoE4 last year when i realised that there were multiple DLC's for AoE2 that were out over the years. Never felt so happy. I'm now almost done with all the campaigns and looking forward to hop into PvP. Tho i dont think I'll improve much as a 26 year old with a construction business lol but hopping on my laptop to play AoE2 DE when i get back home from work is my highlight of the day

[@L3monsta]

Starcraft did invest in the casual player base but they did so too late. The co-op mode and campaigns are amazing. They set themselves up to make dlc campaigns like in AoE2 with the Nova campaign and it was very well received and financially successful but Activision put a stop on any and all projects that didn't make billions of dollars. It's really sad and I'm hopeful that with the Microsoft acquisition we could see a team made to create dlc just like how they breathed new life into AoE2.

[@LeicaFleury]

I agree with bellular and Hera that smaller passionate teams achieve more than large corporate factories with no soul in their offices.

[@salvadorseekatzrisquez2947]

I really enjoy when there is conversation about the big picture of aoe2. I was thinking. Pro players can give us great tournaments. And guys that know and do mods give us great content like this new DLC

[@Jaageful]

i've been playing AEO since from the beginning and i'm over the moon how good this game has begun. And propably will get better. Amazing.

[@thelastgreataudit8112]

So I'm pretty much a campaign only player these days, but I really liked all the DLCs. I thought they were priced fine value-wise too.

[@russelldegraaf4272]

The latest DLC has huge implications for ranked and competitive play!! It essentially is testing out some potential changes outside the ranked scene to decide if it’s worth infusing it into the ranked scene. Hera, you should check out the new naval set up and do a video on if you think it could improve water play! They essentially have water “hussars,” and water “mangonels,” etc. It could make water maps more interesting. Also, it could bring new civs into ranked eventually too, since the new civs are essentially aoe2 reskinned. They would just have to work out the balance changes tho. In their current state they would be very OP!

[@mellowsunset7730]

AOE2 is my favorite game of all time, and WoW is my second so it's great to see Bellular recognizing the love that AOE2 has gotten over the years and some of the ups and downs. I still play the 2013 release from Forgotten Empires.

[@TuoDev]

Crazily enough, that video is the first video I ever watched of Bellular and managed to watch it before this.

[@12inchpvpness]

Hey! I was in China for the Livestream release of AOE: Mobile! I think the sheer amount of playtime that is brought in by the Devs in AOE and the fact that the current leads grew up watching AOE2 be brought back from the dirt. So personally knowing the skill and dedication of the modders and their pedigree gives AOE a different view, considering the context of the Voobly days. I met Will & Ernest and compared to the other devs/directors I've met its actually night and day :,) Edit: AOE1 is actually the biggest game in the series because of the Vietnamese playerbase, but they play the game specifically with bugs as their tournament rules. It's a really really really different culture over there apparently. So the release on AOE2 was #1 Not free and #2 A huge change to the status quo. Age of Empires players are notoriously super resistant to change and where we had Spider Solitaire on our computers growing up in Viet they had AOE1 in all of its bugged out glory.

[@daarom3472]

lots of nonsense on that channel. The DLC's are all great, they got downvoted by some civs being a bit OP and people seeing the (obvious) cash grab there. Point is, I want Microsoft to earn money on this. I spent like 70-90 on AOE2 and the DLC's and in return played 4K hours. I paid more for a Friday session of F1.

[@rizrizriz]

Bellular has always been a ragebait channel. Lots of negativity there I've decided to block the channel altogether.

[@ramsesvandendriessche2463]

The main purpose of his channel is talking about how most gaming companies are using games as cash grabs.

[@jonathandb91]

?? He praised Aoe2 for monetizing around content versus skins. I think his analysis around why the last few DLCs are not doing well is also correct, mainly that there just wasn't enough content to justify the prices.

[@daarom3472]

@@jonathandb91 no one outside the community is allowed to criticize. We can only complain amongst ourselves being part of this cult. MBL vululu is the perfect example: curse the game, throw a fit, lock in queue ;-)

[@zachariastsampasidis8880]

​@@jonathandb91I don't even really like bellular, but whenever "people" appear that try to appear "reasonable" when he and others criticise modern monetisation and other practices, you can safely disregard them as j*wish shills

[@dtex_zero]

AOE 1 integration, was literally voted for. I wouldn't call it a failure, the majority of the playerbase are either campaign players or custom map/game players, they want a different experience from the online players. People that play these campaigns don't sit on steam reviews downvoting them because the georgians are OP, or they introduced a pathing bug, anway most of the negative reviews are surronding the price. He seems to want to fit AOE into his narrative of what he wants done to other games.

[@HeraAgeofEmpires2]

interesting. That makes sense, still weird to see the online so dead

[@Glaciatio]

Yeah I loved it so much. The AOE1 experience is literally my childhood but the AOE1 was awful without QoL. So the single player experience I'd rate a 9.5/10. Victors and Vanquished, probably a 5-6 though as some missions were just long and a brute force

[@wailrimouche1171]

Honestly, I am a campaign only guy and I hated it. The campaigns themselves are just terrible, very bland and flavourless, and AoE 1 combat and units feel clunky and not smooth at all to play. I much prefer if thry did the Battle for Greece thing on them

[@dtex_zero]

@@wailrimouche1171 Yh everyone has their own style and favourites. But the integration was democratic, The majority of the fanbase voted for it. They didn't want to play AOE 1, they did want to play a hybrid.

[@konradpyszniak976]

​@@wailrimouche1171yes but they wanted to sell it to the Asia were they still play vanila aoe1. They added 3 new campaigns and Roman civ to aoe2 simply to sell it also to West. Campaigns are the highest level of quality that AoE1design allow it to be. Doesnt matter though as gameplay stayed the same. Spirit of the Law videos about Rome at War mod and overall positive reviews of this mod convince finally devs that there is a demend for antient content and even more, they want innovative changes to the core mechanics rather than stuck with conservative gameplay

[@FoxAoe]

Great video Hera, we love this game and the dev team too!

[@ObiwanNekody]

Some free to play games, like Fortnight, are also primarily advertisements for their game engine.

[@AkeNo_H]

Bellular from wow and hera coming together in one video is not what i expected

[@Piet-d1j]

MAN GOT ME TEARING UP! Love every Age of

[@adamz1988]

I love Return to Rome and Romans are probably my favourite civ at the moment especially in Black Forest

[@IfonlyIwassmaller]

Taking out gunpowder is such a cool concept to me. I loved the OG AoE because of the lack of gunpowder units tbh. I still love AoE2, don’t get me wrong, but sometimes I’ll create games with the max at castle age and with no civs that get gunpowder unique units. It’s super fun! Infantry becomes viable! It’s awesome lol.

[@wnood]

The thing I love about AOE as a whole is the fact there are so any different ways you can enjoy the game without having to pay to play. We can spectate others games, play the game in ranked, non-ranked, campaign, plus many more. Theres mini/major tournaments going on all over the world which is such a wholesome community. Theres plenty of more modern games which have tried to incorporate all of this and yet have failed as they just become a pay to play style game. To be paying maybe $15 or so every year is so is much better then the sweaty pants who pay $500+/day to advance themselves in other games. I do hope AOE continue to stay true and continue to allow this game to be accessible for all players - pro to noobs at an affordable price. Tx for the review and sharing - luv ur comments ❤❤❤

[@D.Verick]

Even the gamers I follow are moderate fellas, I love that. (In the sense that they are able to graciously disagree of topics without derailling into a virtual fist fight)

[@darkranger116]

im honestly just beyond excited that we finally have a middle eastern civ with some unique infantry units the fact that i can literally create a historically accurate Persian Sparabara formation is making me geek out

[@icyjojo93]

I've played aoe2 as a kid and still playin', I am 31yo. And I am a woman. :D Everyone loves AoE2

[@jonathandb91]

Hell yeah, 33 and same here, except I was a boy and am now more of a they

[@Broken_robot1986]

Ahhh, to be young again. Early thirties, I remember never thinking about my knees!

[@icyjojo93]

@@Broken_robot1986 oh I have knee problems, backpain aswell :D but trying to ignore it as much as I can tbh.. ^^

[@Spiror]

They can make ancient era new dlc that is possible to play and mp only with ancient civs like is aoe1 🎉🎉 with the navy changes i doubt will be possible to play medieval and ancient civs together but maybe if they ballanced out maybe is possible 😊😊

[@battleforevermore]

I have, for a long time, recommended aoe2 free to play for a few campaigns and custom senarios/unranked lobby.

[@ramosfelipe]

I bought the Romans DLC but I never played this AoE 1 just because I had to set new hot keys and get used to it which I didn’t want to confuse myself when playing AoE 2

[@indnwkybrd]

12:45 "You are technically correct. The best kind of correct." - Futurama

[@jokoska]

My main takeaway is that I need to go leave positive reviews for the expansions that I've sunk 1000s of hours into. Like it or not, the direction of AOE2 development is influenced by these metrics that a small portion of the player base contributes to.

[@dizocilpine]

you seem like a legitimately nice person

[@DomiNationsGamer123]

Thanks for reacting to this. Would probably neve find this guy. It's important to remember the good things that keeps us happy to play aoe2. IMO is a great game. Is great to learn more about the games' hisotry and behind the scense. Shoutout to Spirit of the Law. Love his content. He made me come back to aoe2. I started playing aoe mobile as well which has insane graphics. Tbh the prices on the game are reasonable. Especially if we think how much work they put in to keep our loved game going. On other mobile games you need thousands of dollars to advance faster through ages. We practicly play AOE 2 for free.

[@isaisotarriva8162]

My wish list for aoe2: - clans should not be just a list, you should be able to interact and do something together otherwise there is not point on having them. -Designated page and/or support for tournament in game. It would be great to be able to search, join, spectate and play tournaments in game, do the map and civ drafting (it could even adapt according to the DLCs you own). -A revamp of the AI and tools for developing AI scripts. Currently you need to write essentially a program for the AI and until recently it didn’t even allowed human like micro (now it has). I would love if we could also use ML (PyTorch, keras, tensor flow) to Implement the AI via reinforced learning. The current extreme AI is way, way too easy to defeat even if I don’t cheese it at all. - More DLCs with the classic 2-3 new civilization +camping formula. -DLCs covering the African, American and Oceanic civilizations. (Or Asia in the regions still underserved) - Selection groups should not be artificially limited to 60 units (I know you probably use a C array, but couldn’t you make it a C++ vector or similar) - Better pathing - A less confusing modding store. A simple list becomes too difficult to understand when you have 200+ mods to which you are subscribed. In my case I have graphical mods, UI mods (main menu backgrounds, sound mods, Better UI, etc), many map packs, and some data mods. I would love at least a way to organize them by category or tags. -A BO training mode. Currently this is done by very few people who craft custom scenarios and gives you a score based on certain goals. It would be great if there would be a less effort intensive way to create these scenarios and triggers. Maybe I could fill a JSON or a text file with my BO and it could populate the triggers from there automatically.

[@ramenrider1792]

I have to admit, what you said about the stats is interesting to me. Because in all the comments section of most Age content creators it always just seems to be full to the brim of the multiplayer community so it skewed my view and I always assumed it was the other way around. Like I thought us comfy gamer Age players were the minority. Like I consider myself an age of empires fan. I'm over the moon that AoM Retold just came out as, although it's the most different, it was always my favourite game in the series. But in all my time playing various Age games, I've never played a single multiplayer versus game, nor do I really want too. I've had quite a few games versus bots with friends and stuff but the whole min/maxing, high level macro gameplay of multiplayer versus with your screens dashing all over as you hit hotkey after hotkey and "get good" at the game, just never appealed to me. I watch pro games and see players pick a Civ not because of it's cool unique units or style but because of it's obscure econ buff that leads to a slightly quicker fast castle or better rush or something and I'm like "but, you didn't even build their cool specialty dudes, you just made stock standard boring ole knights and annoyed them at base till they quit..." I guess I'm just part of an apparent legion of comfy gamers that just wants to make a cool city, make my little army out of cool unique dudes and j chill that makes up the other side of the Age community.

[@mokadelic4037]

The only reason AoE2 is still alive is because of the COMMUNITY, not because of Microsoft. If it was for them, the game would've been shut down years ago. Corporations don't care about us, they only want our money. And luckily for us, they figured out that the best way to keep getting our money was not making new, inferior AoE games, but to do as the fans said and go back supporting the best RTS they ever made.

[@Dryfee]

Will totally buy next XP if only to show support for the amazing guys at Capture Age

[@Tactical_Hobbit]

as a player of both age 1 and 2 i really enjoyed return to rome. market trading really changes the game alot balance wise.

[@John7No]

MS came back to the money because they saw what was going on. They did not jump in till the moment they were sure that there was money to be made. They did not do it out of the good of their hearts . It was a good move since they painted themselves as the resurrectors of a 26 (now) year old game but it was the people and 3rd party devs that actually kept the game alive and resurrected it. Another thing that shows that MS will ditch it when the new Age become a hit is that they created AoE4. if AoE4 would be a hit, AoE2 will left to die after a couple of years.

[@j.p.691]

Good one as always my boy

[@pauliusmscichauskas558]

Sometimes more content isn't a good thing. Overbloating a game with more and more and more and more features may lead to a mess of game.

[@Dracobyte]

Some examples?

[@pauliusmscichauskas558]

@@Dracobyte Can't really think of an example that everyone would clearly agree on. For example, I really didn't like what happened to Quake 3 after the team arena expansion... It looked like a mess to me. imagine this: Counter strike is a very simple game, which is why it is so popular. Now imagine they started adding more and more and more mechanics to it, like double jump, cars, bikes, airstrikes, the ability to throw knives, catapults, teleporters... All of this would ruin the game.

[@legendofJupp]

I think the game needs more animal fighters. Right now we have camels, eagles, elephants, jaguars, rams, scorpions and turtles. I see a clear bias towards land animals, especially mammals. How about an aquatic DLC? I would like a literally damage sponge unit, a star fish unit (maybe it can replicate) and a squid unit (attack multiple nearby units)

[@legod59]

Preordered on sale, auto install... lalalalala happy times!

[@CoffeeAndBusiness]

I have zero desire to keep purchasing new civs and I have zero desire to learn how to play them

[@sokarash]

With from outside the AoE-Scene (and yes Age of Empries in general, not jsut AOE2), they mostly see what MIcrosoft has done recently and was good. Its good that he adresses the backlash on the last DLCs, but thats not half the story. For years, MS basically didn't care about AoE at all. They were all in on Xbox and didn't consider it a fitting brand, plus games like AoE3 and AoE Online did not perform as expected. Then their next endavour was AoE2HD, which was a mixed bag of a rerelease (not calling it a remaster because they did nothing about the assets. Might me hairsplitting their, but I do that and think the term "remaster" is way overused for too many things). And remeber AoE1DE? Microsoft Store only. And had to be pushed back six months and still had many problems at launch, in particular to authentification. Imaging what would have happend to AoE2DE if it was not on Steam. And its not everything great since: AoE4 released to massive hype, but fell of a cliff once people realized its a barebones RTS game - one with great potential and well designed, but also lacking essential features. Its mostly fixed now and I would encourage everybody who still has and to take another look, since it as become a really good game. But it took really long. But I also agree MS is learning lessons. After Return of Rome was successfull (I guess their aren't many players who actually remember AoE1), they come up with Battle for Greece, which looks at least better (haven't played it yet, so its still a bit up in the air). And the release of AoM Retold was much better, it was in a good state out of the box and still gets better, some not so great DLC pratices aside. I'm not into StarCraft 2 anymore as I used to, after Heart of the Swarm it somehow lost me, at least for the competitive scene. I heard that these days, its playerbase is mostly carried by the insanly popular and good Coop-Mode. The classic competitive mode has been in decline for many years, with its been on life support from Blizzard.

[@koztak8171]

Typically with F2P with skins model, the mindset of the developer is predatory and that is reflected in game design. While I agree that it is up to the consumer, even simply creating that model is very indicative of the developer's intentions.

[@ar1sm70]

When DLC comes in that looks high effort, then the community will support it I think, even if it's only single player. This new DLC looks high effort. I can't wait to play it! @Hera I'd be curious to hear your take on the new Naval spin? Do you think it could be incorporated to Ranked? A video on would be interesting :)

[@thanos91410]

its the best time to be an aoe2 player

[@Dracobyte]

Indeed!

[@salvadorseekatzrisquez2947]

I was thinking could there be a free version of Age of Empires 2 DE, maybe have a limited amount of civilizations that keeps rotating periodically. Like they did with aoe3 you can play US, etc.

[@remimk]

Even hera skips the ads 😂👏

[@samlytair5168]

The thing is , the devs are basicly doing missions that are so hard only viper or hera could beat it.. i want to enjoy the game and not trying to play like tbh a tournament player or an expert AI... ( atleast for the dlc's and some new missions )

[@mauriciobetimpaesleme8702]

12:00 I did leave a negative review on Steam but had fun in most of the Scenarios. But it was a scam on some people's very hard work.

[@Dnw15]

GOOD GAME

[@m1st87]

Sadly what he said last applies perfectly to the state of Counter Strike 2 right now. They left the game to it's bare minimum and are optimizing around skins. It's sad to see because it had a journey similar to AoE2 in that it was a classic (cs 1.6) that stayed alive because of the community and then got a remake (CSS then CSGO). Some time after skins came out and later it became free to play, and skins tarted to make Valve so much money that they shifted their focus completely to skins. Now the game barely gets any content updates, only cashgrab skins.

[@MiguelAngel-dn8sy]

i think they should make the standard edition of aoe 2 definitive edition, free, that would allow to bring more new players, fact that aoe 2 DE can run in low and old PCs

[@martin_hagall]

Victors and vanquished was a big disappointment. As more of a campaign player, I expected the addition of new classically long campaigns for civilizations that do not have a campaign (Vikings, Japanese,...). Instead, we got standalone scenarios with sometimes weird gameplay. Anyway, I'll finish it anyway.. someone has to collect the achievements, you know :D :D

[@blakeburns7457]

The number of current players in the beginning doesn't even include Age of Mythology!

[@Nysyarc]

27:33 my only issue with his take here is that the game he's basing the argument around, as he mentions earlier, is free to play. If a game is absolutely free to enjoy in its entirety, why would you start playing it and EXPECT a perfectly polished, optimized experience? I was never a fan of Overwatch personally, I haven't played the second one because I found the first to have very shallow, repetitive gameplay (maybe I'm just spoiled by AoE2). But I wasn't going in expecting it to be a masterpiece anyways because I didn't even pay a dime for it, and obviously plenty of people enjoy playing it, many or even most of whom have probably never bought a single skin. I think having some free to play games that aren't optimized around content is absolutely fine as long as it remains a relative niche and not the norm.

[@javiervegasregidor1049]

Free to play is not bad if done properly. In fact, Aoe2 DE is at a point that making the base game free and keep the expansions as paid content could work very well for the game

[@quasibrodo923]

I disagree with the characterization that MS learned a lesson from V&V. A few things. Firstly SOTL did two videos on the Rome at War mod, both later in 2022. We know the videos helped the mod grow in popularity and the videos and resultant mod popularity, eventually got this project greenlit. The first video was about two years ago now. Secondarily, because of the game files we know a couple things. We know some text resources for the DLCs are kept in a folder where the DLCs are numbered 1 through 6. We know looking through the files that DoI is 3, TMR is 4, and V&V is 6. RoR is not in that folder however, being a "mode" it's files are held separately, ultimately within the "modes" folder. DLC 5 was seemingly skipped over. Thirdly DE DLCs have released on a pretty regular interval since LOTW, 8-9 months between releases. The only deviation was RoR, which was about three months late for it's interval, but TMR was back on track, with about 5.5 months after RoR. So MS seems to like it's DLCs about every 8-9 months, and generally plans accordingly. From this I think we can infer a couple things. One) V&V was greenlit after DLC 5 which has yet to release. Two) The upcoming BfG is unlikely DLC 5 as it will almost certainly be a "mode" like RoR. Three) DLC 5 was definitely not meant to release in March, that'd only be about 4.5 months after TMR, not the typical 8-9 months. So why would you greenlit V&V after DLC 5 was greenlit to release before DLC 5, for a time you knew releasing DLC 5 would have been impossible? I think it's because the original plan was to release BfG in March, and to then have a proper aoe2 DLC for the 5th anniversary on DE on November 14th. Problem is this is CA's first DLC and ontop of that it was quite ambitious. My guess is it became obvious around the new year (give or take a month) that there was no way BfG would be ready for March. So V&V was created on an accelerated timetable to fill the now open march release slot, which actually explains why most of the content was recycled. Recycled scenarios, recycled intro and outro slides, no new assets, etc. Only by recycling almost everything could they have something ready in such a short amount of time. Then it seems like FE had to devote more time to AoM:Retold than originally thought so DLC 5 was not ready for it's intended release of the 5th anniversary, but BfG, thanks to the extra time now was ready for release, and as such became the 5th anniversary DLC even tho thematically it's a terrible fit. Thus I don't think any lessons were directly learned from V&V. I'm pretty sure BfG just needed more time, the schedule had to be filled, they did presumably the best they could with limited time and resources to make V&V, probably knew it was underwhelming but just hoped for the best. V&V wasn't an honest attempt that you then learn from. V&V was a panic moment that I think they're just happy to be able to put behind them.

[@linety007]

Ty for the analysis

[@haroonahmed1077]

I love this attitude of Microsoft about AOE 2 : if someone is adding value to your game, just hire them

[@paulojose7568]

Still can't host a server on my own machine. It sucks

[@stratbomb]

Did anyone else notice how they banned the patrol stand ground trick from the next S-tier tournament? Fair reason or no?

[@k5555-b4f]

The Sponspor skip 😂 Hera sides with the People kapa

[@gdgd5194]

When I opened aoe2 on steam, this remake infuriated me as usual: accessibility narrator was on by default and impossible to turn off unless you dig deep into the settings. Typical buggy greeting xD Then I setup hotkeys... And it was all gone the next time I opened game. Rough start but after suffering through setting the game up, it looks like the best remake ever made. Of course you compare it to all the trash remakes but still, it's by far the best of all remakes on steam.

[@EstebanGrasso]

That last point applies perfectly to the AoE mobile game... Free-to-play, but not even close to the original content and full of micro-transactions

[@hullbarrett]

Aoe2 has so much potential to expand on civs, units, and architecture. Mamelukes are not a unit, they're a civ. Slavs are not just a Ukranian civ, as the Poles, Bohemians, Goths, and Bulgarians clearly indicate. Where are the Russians? Where are the Croatians and their first King, Tomislav I, who defeated the Bulgarian Tsar Simeon I the Great? Where are the Albanians and their legendary Lord Skanderbeg? Where is Bahmanis, Melwa, Mewar, and Vijayanagar? Jaunpur? The Tamil Kings? Sumerians? Philistenes? Hittites? etc., etc.

[@OwenLeBlanc-l7h]

The bigger issue is not asking permission to remake. Licensing can be bought for the right price.

[@WackyConundrum]

The Rome expansion was a disaster, because it introduced a hell lot of bugs also to those who didn't buy it. They had to introduce major changes to the game code to accomodate that weird AoE 1 mechanic.

[@Johnnybravo40]

I guarantee that AAA are not taking notes. I would bet that Microsoft isn't even paying attention. I think the devs are getting to do what they want because microsoft corporate doesn't care about AoE2. They just see the small amount of income it brings and thus allow it to continue. They mostly only care about a big game at release when it can generate massive sales. Player count means nothing to them, it does not bring income, only main title sales.

[@88porpoise]

I think my main takeaway from thag video is that he is really jumping the gun on the new DLC. We don't yet know how it will turn out. I am waiting to see how this expansion is recieved. I think MS knows that just adding 2-3 Civs and a couple campaigns every six months is not a long term option and are trying to find some other model for recurring revenue and single player focus is the way to do that. If this works, great. But I could easily see a large portion of the playerbase rejecting it for a combination of not being integrated into the main game and being seen as "charging for mods". Would that be fair? Probably not. But I am interested to see what the general response to it is.

[@aadeshabhang2657]

Leeching at its finest, Keep up the games entertaining

[@linety007]

😂😂😂