It all could have been so beautiful: Just when Hera, one of the best players of the legendary second part, is feeling some fatigue towards its ranked matches and tournaments, Age of Empires 4 steps into the breach and does a lot right at first.
From StarCraft, #Warcraft and many other strategy games, people flock to Age 4’s multiplayer ladder, experimenting with the different races and having fun getting better together.
But the longer they play and the more seriously they take the competition, the greater the frustration about the bugs, the weaknesses in the balance and the unspeakable sluggishness with which constructive feedback is turned into patches.
In an announcement video, professional gamer Hera stated that he would keep an eye on further development, however, turn his back on the series for the time being. Instead, he is turning to a game in which he hopes to be able to fully live out his penchant for constant self-optimization and his love of competition again, and by this he means League of Legends.
More reasons for the exodus
Hera is not alone in this attitude. As Niklas, another popular and competitive Age 4 player, from the Bonjwa channel summed up on YouTube back in January, there are numerous reasons why competitive gamers in particular prefer to turn back to other titles. For his part, Niklas cited the following problems:
- Especially in the success-oriented multiplayer area, it is difficult to really concentrate on fair competition, because so many mechanics failed badly or half-finished.
- He said the balance was abysmal. By mid-November, the best strategies would have been worked out, and it had become increasingly clear that only a few peoples and approaches were at all viable.
- However, these strategies should be so blunt that they are not even funneither on the losing side nor on the winning side, which in turn also spoils it for the viewers.
- Slow patching is one thing, but long known problems and bugs to have to endure for months, wear down the players.
- The own Rank in the ladder feels meaninglessbecause in the tournaments then again completely different people show up, who were ranked rather low before.
He himself had a lot of fun for a while, but is now almost relieved to have finished with Age of Empires 4 and not have to be angry about the incomprehensible update policy.
Maurice Weber and Marco Giesel discuss in their video debate why the broad buyer base wasn’t initially bothered by these multiplayer construction sites:
The huge success of Age of Empires 4 has very good reasons
A snowball effect sets in
Competitive players like Hera and Niklas suddenly found themselves in a quandary: they were excited about an Age of Empires with a modern underpinning, sensed that they could still learn a lot from their competitive opponents, and eagerly awaited the regular tournaments that would come with prize money of up to 125,000 US dollars. are endowed.
But they’re having less and less fun playing, and their viewers on streams on Twitch are noticing. While an average of 20,000 people were still watching Age 4 on 200 channels in November, interest shrank by February by a whole 90 percent.
On Twitch, the flame of Age of Empires 4 burned hot, but only quite briefly.
Furthermore, not only is the pro and ranked scene slowly running out of steam, but so are the general player numbers are falling by 20 percent a month. The majority of casual campaign gamers have moved on due to a lack of story replenishment, and if this trend continues, multiplayer faces one of the worst fates of the genre: death by player shortage.
To put that in perspective: Age 4 was at around 9,000 concurrently active players on Steam in February 2022, while the original over twenty years ago Age of Empires 2 in its HD and Definitive Editions is still being played by no less than 19,000 people at the same time. While 9,000 is still plenty, plus all the GamePass players, it shows that the core community is prioritizing Age 2.
Opinion
Personally, I had a lot of fun with Age of Empires 4’s campaign and can only recommend it to anyone looking for entertaining (and surprisingly informative) real-time fare. At the same time, I know all too well the feeling of being let down by a great multiplayer hope.
It’s frustrating when supposed balance improvements only make things worse; when absolutely necessary convenience features aren’t introduced until half a year after release; when friends and cherished enemies throw in the towel, leaving you alone in a game you wanted to love so much.
And I’m not even talking about Age of Empires 4, because anything is indeed still possible there if the people in charge take the right steps. Unfortunately, that hasn’t happened with a lot of MMOs, shooters and strategy games in the past.
They all had the potential for true greatness, but ultimately failed because of all the little, stinging day-to-day problems that insidiously drain long-term motivation from their playerbase. These may seem easy to solve, but often the development reality is quite different.
I really wish it were different. Because unlike purely solo experiences, multiplayer games serve our need for sporting competition – and that begins and ends with unquestionable fairness.
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