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Communities of AoT, trying some community service
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Azarath_
post Mar 28 2018, 04:54 PM
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Hello,


we still have three small communities and probably nothing will come out of this thread anyways, but why not. There are some proposals to work towards unification, though that will probably not be achieved anytime soon if at all.


GameRanger Audience Targeting
This is a proposal on improving the Voobly Platform in a matter that embraces GameRanger players to join up. GameRanger Players don't want to play competitively and like to change their name.

Imagine a user group which checks "non-competitive" and get's a nick overwrite and has no ELO score. They don't get ratings and don't loose them and don't see them in the whole interface. Also they can change their nick whenever they want.

You cannot rly go smurfing with this since the most games from them will be scenario, vs PC or noob games.
Why do you want them in your Voobly? Because there are some "Jumpers" which are decent in competitive games but also play the casual fun stuff. You'll have them too and they see open games and might join a rated Voobly game instead of a world map scenario.


GameRanger Survey / Hostile Takeover
We can start asking gr. players why they play gr. over Voobly any time now, save those answers in this forums, maybe propose changes and ask if they'd switch too Voobly then.


EE Balance Cooperation
This idea is basically aiming to combine the efforts of Community Balance Patches, namely the Voobly Balance Patch and Hagr1t's EELeague Balance Patch, into one patch. There are still problems with this. Like:
- How changes are proposed
- Which changes are worked into the patch

Here we go into RTS-Politics. There is a lot of discord on the topic already. Some want it more vanilla (as MiracleMan mentioned in the first interview), others want to change a lot to everything. Another thing is the question when or if new patches should be coming out at all.
Also there are some stories on how rly easy it was to add stuff from Magic, like just a random suggestion was nearly got worked in. Also esp. with the Loki Eyes Rush Fix some weird mechanics got worked in which compete with bad game design from EE devs, so make it better pls.

I'd wish for a subforum on which everything about the actual patch can be discussed, and maybe even a second one for just discussing new proposals. It is said that people in this community don't agree on anything, but tbh. just one cramped thread in which all are supposed to talk over each other is not much room for agreement anyways.


EE United Tourney
When we have a Community Balance Patch which is applied to Voobly and EE, combined with a Tourney Map Pack, we could try a tourney which works on both, Voobly and EE.
There still will be problems, like if you have 2 players of which one player does not have EE, while the other prefers EE, there could be conflict. Some fallback solution would be required, maybe brackets could be switched up.


Reducing Voobly toxicity, flaming, trolling I.
The EE-Twitch-Community and most of the Voobly-Twitch-Community are nice people.

Basically, there are a bunch of decent and nice people, starting with the ones who use a mic instead of chatting more anonymously, but counting far more of course. But esp. in Voobly-Twitch-Chats flamers will come out. Trashtalking and trolling is an issue. And also a reason why people prefer other communities than Voobly. Some argue it is some form of bonding, but besides the 2-3 guys bonding through flame another ten are disgusted and leave.

Long story short, I think 10 minutes, 1 hour and 24 hour bans should appear more often in this cases. That is like one of the main jobs of moderation. Also there are some insult named troll accounts, just ban those permanently from twitch chats.

Maybe put some twitch moderators in charge which will get the moderator status in various participating twitch stream channels.

This post has been edited by Lilitu: Mar 28 2018, 05:17 PM

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MasterOfFreedom
post Mar 28 2018, 06:07 PM
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GameRanger Audience Targeting
We have tried this many times when i was apart of voobly. It never seemed to yield any results. Most of GR are hackers from what i remember anyways. Not to say it isn't worth another try.

GameRanger Survey / Hostile Takeover
Same as above.

EE Balance Cooperation
Cannot be sponsored by RTS-S for partnership reasons.

EE United Tourney
Same as above.

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Azarath_
post Mar 28 2018, 06:24 PM
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Partnership reasons? RTSS is not even owned by the community? gg wp :omg:

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DoD_NarVi
post Mar 28 2018, 06:42 PM
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Lilith I think you're just gonna have to accept that aot just isnt as popular as for example aoe II.
There are many reasons for it but I think people just don't care enough and aoe II is more widely known in general.
Nice initiatives tho!

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Azarath_
post Mar 28 2018, 07:05 PM
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Sure it is not very popular and that's what we get for sticking with an old game, but there are inner problems which are very sad, but look like they could be solved. Well, I still guess nothing will come out of this, but it's worth a try.

Personally since the interest in modding and scenarios is pretty low in the general multiplayer community I'll have to pick up on competitive RMS writing again some day. X_X

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Black Adder
post Mar 28 2018, 07:33 PM
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QUOTE(Lilitu @ Mar 28 2018, 10:54 PM)
Hello,


we still have three small communities and probably nothing will come out of this thread anyways, but why not. There are some proposals to work towards unification, though that will probably not be achieved anytime soon if at all.
*



This is a good topic to talk about, as this is something that could help AoM get to a better place, if we could unify somehow more.

However I look at it, it seems to me that at the current situation, the best place to converge on is Voobly, however imperfect it is, for a few simple reasons - it just offers the highest amount of common things of the three platforms and some important extras.

EE should've been the saviour and the greatest thing for us since ESO - well, it wasn't and it isn't, everyone knows it, and while it offers some nice features like matchmaking and new content (both official and workshop), the drawbacks for the community we have (this is important, the specific community we have, ie old and such) are just too significant - the fact you have to buy it and also that it requires something better than a toaster is a deal-breaker for so many. And then you have the bugs and inevitably the biggest problem, crappy netcoding, making especially team games, which are the most important community-bonding type, a pain.

GR is the casual haven, no ladders whatsoever, no competitiveness, but also no anti-cheat and specific game-feature support. It is simple and accessible though and runs plenty other games, making it popular overall, which is its strength.

Voobly is where the competitiveness happens and kind of distills (for better or worse both), where the ladders make at least kind of sense, place where you get anti-cheat and moderation, offers mod centre, the actual game is supported by trying to make it better (within the limits allowed). Also works for everyone and is for free.

Voobly simply overlaps with the platforms the best, as it offers a place to play for GR players however they want to play, no reason why they couldn't play unrated - it's pretty much the same thing otherwise for them, the downside is that Voobly is less straightforward to get into. For EE overlap, it offers the competitive side in a more stable way and with more features (ladders and tournaments and such) and for free, downside is missing automatic matchmaking and the datadisc (which is not exactly hugely popular though), that you need the original game, but plenty players do have that, so it's just a partial downside.

QUOTE(Lilitu @ Mar 28 2018, 10:54 PM)
GameRanger Audience Targeting
This is a proposal on improving the Voobly Platform in a matter that embraces GameRanger players to join up. GameRanger Players don't want to play competitively and like to change their name.

Imagine a user group which checks "non-competitive" and get's a nick overwrite and has no ELO score. They don't get ratings and don't loose them and don't see them in the whole interface. Also they can change their nick whenever they want.

You cannot rly go smurfing with this since the most games from them will be scenario, vs PC or noob games.
Why do you want them in your Voobly? Because there are some "Jumpers" which are decent in competitive games but also play the casual fun stuff. You'll have them too and they see open games and might join a rated Voobly game instead of a world map scenario.


GameRanger Survey / Hostile Takeover
We can start asking gr. players why they play gr. over Voobly any time now, save those answers in this forums, maybe propose changes and ask if they'd switch too Voobly then.
*



From my attempts to learn what could be done on this over the years the problem with GR players is that their reasons for staying are pretty much irrational, and they stay usually "because they have friends there," they don't really have a hard reason why not do the same on Voobly, they just don't feel like it. In such a state, I don't much see how to change that, even if you offer them the same as they have there - what can you offer more to people who exactly don't care about the "more?" Any more insight into this from them would be useful.

The only thing I can see is just make the entry barrier as minimal as possible (which is a long-running problem with Voobly and everyone knows it, all mods and admins know it, but... reasons), and playing the long game - one by one trickle. We could try at least externally to do as much as possible to make the setup as painless as we can.

Non-competitive accounts, I really don't think that's the problem, like really, why not just stay at 1600 always and play unrated, there are plenty games played on Voobly without ratings. At the same time I could see how it could be done, simply two states of the account, one shows ratings and can do rated games, other cannot, and it would be possible to switch between those (rated one would be the default, and non-competitive would be basically only a skin). Seems simple enough, some coding work that seems doable, but that would need some real strong case that it would actually help something to invest the resources.

Switching of names, if I understand things correctly, you can change names on Voobly freely as well provided they're not taken? With a normal account, you just cannot hold/block more than two names, but you can change as often as you wish (again, I have never tried this, so correct me if I'm wrong).

QUOTE(Lilitu @ Mar 28 2018, 10:54 PM)
EE Balance Cooperation
This idea is basically aiming to combine the efforts of Community Balance Patches, namely the Voobly Balance Patch and Hagr1t's EELeague Balance Patch, into one patch. There are still problems with this. Like:
- How changes are proposed
- Which changes are worked into the patch

Here we go into RTS-Politics. There is a lot of discord on the topic already. Some want it more vanilla (as MiracleMan mentioned in the first interview), others want to change a lot to everything. Another thing is the question when or if new patches should be coming out at all.
Also there are some stories on how rly easy it was to add stuff from Magic, like just a random suggestion was nearly got worked in. Also esp. with the Loki Eyes Rush Fix some weird mechanics got worked in which compete with bad game design from EE devs, so make it better pls.

I'd wish for a subforum on which everything about the actual patch can be discussed, and maybe even a second one for just discussing new proposals. It is said that people in this community don't agree on anything, but tbh. just one cramped thread in which all are supposed to talk over each other is not much room for agreement anyways.
*



The patches are already similar as they take from each other, but you cannot make the same patch for two different games - EE with TotD is just completely different, you even have new units there for the old civs.

Overall people cannot agree on things because too many care way too much about their personal agenda and also put too much stock into their "skill" and "knowledge," and then there's just the blatant lying and underhanded counter initiatives only aiming to destroy for whatever reasons what others did, just for the sake of it it seems. Just to name one of many, the popular "stop forcing the patch on us, we don't want to play it and you won't let us" when it's fully 100% optional and you can play as many rated original 1.03 games as your heart desires. And players of course do all the time, the patch-nopatch ratio is about 50-50 usually.

It's a wonder we even have a rather well-accepted and working patch going in such an environment, so thanks Patch team. This just reminds me of AoEIII, where a Fan Patch basically started as soon as MS stopped support soon after the second expansion, and it is living with updates until now, widely accepted by the competitive community. For 10 years.

Patch things and ideas are discussed regularly on the forums, there's not a problem in that, the problem is as I said previously, personal agendas derailing the topics into train-wrecks.

QUOTE(Lilitu @ Mar 28 2018, 10:54 PM)
EE United Tourney
When we have a Community Balance Patch which is applied to Voobly and EE, combined with a Tourney Map Pack, we could try a tourney which works on both, Voobly and EE.
There still will be problems, like if you have 2 players of which one player does not have EE, while the other prefers EE, there could be conflict. Some fallback solution would be required, maybe brackets could be switched up.
*



Don't really see how this could work, and I think there's already decent overlap of players - Voobly players play in EE tournaments and EE in Voobly. Ultimate cross-over would of course be compatibility patch as in AoE2HD, allowing EE players to play on Voobly with EE - that would be an absolutely hugely spectacular thing doing for the community the same thing it did for AoC - I so wish we had some skilled programmer between us who could do this!

QUOTE(Lilitu @ Mar 28 2018, 10:54 PM)
Reducing Voobly toxicity, flaming, trolling I.
The EE-Twitch-Community and most of the Voobly-Twitch-Community are nice people.

Basically, there are a bunch of decent and nice people, starting with the ones who use a mic instead of chatting more anonymously, but counting far more of course. But esp. in Voobly-Twitch-Chats flamers will come out. Trashtalking and trolling is an issue. And also a reason why people prefer other communities than Voobly. Some argue it is some form of bonding, but besides the 2-3 guys bonding through flame another ten are disgusted and leave.

Long story short, I think 10 minutes, 1 hour and 24 hour bans should appear more often in this cases. That is like one of the main jobs of moderation. Also there are some insult named troll accounts, just ban those permanently from twitch chats.

Maybe put some twitch moderators in charge which will get the moderator status in various participating twitch stream channels.
*



I think putting this on Voobly is quite unfair, there are even players who are purposefully toxic on Voobly-related topics and fine on EE... Also some EE players that have come to Voobly for competitiveness and still play both are the toxicity seeds. As I said today, I think the players are not that different, but since on EE you have Quick Match which limits player interactions, it's kind of easier to avoid it in some cases. And then there's the fact that competitiveness does tend to breed toxicity, and so if EE would be the competitive place, you'd see the same things there...

At any rate, toxicity sure is a problem, actually a significantly big one, and the main reason for that is that as you state, some people think it's funny, and some dare to believe it's even "helpful," and it's usually the most vocal ones. And the major, biggest problem is that some of the prominent sources are players that are respected for their skill. And those influence people, and therefore spread this problem further.

I'm pointing this out for so long and trying to convince people they're hurting the community and in effect themselves as part of it, it's the reason for small growth and all kinds of other things, but nobody of those really wants to listen, they just don't care as long as they have "fun." I want to clean things up and get rid of this, though frankly I cannot moderate everything, and the experience so far is that nobody else really wants to do this, as people are kind of afraid to do something that could net them flaming in return, or they don't want to ban a friend or something, as this community is just small and everyone knows everyone. You might have noticed me taking action against some cases already, here and on Twitch and elsewhere possibly, and I would very much like to weed this out. This also includes completely useless troll-esque posts posted under every patch topic for years by now - yeah, you've posted this 55321452455 times already, it doesn't make any sense but you would sell your mother for it, we get it, if you have nothing new to bring to the discussion, why bother souring it again with this as all the 55321452455 times before, what news is it going to bring. Senseless negativity crusades are also a big problem of this community and need to leave.

--------------------

Overall what this community needs the most are more people stepping up and "doing" things, instead of just talking about them, or worse wanting someone else to do them. That's how things get moving and improving.

There is so much that could be done here, on Voobly, elsewhere, but there have to be people behind those things making them happen. They won't happen by themselves, and they certainly won't be done by the mysterious, omnipresent "someone else."

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smurphcity
post Mar 29 2018, 10:24 AM
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I had to move over to GR because Voobly started loading for me extremely slow after one of the latest patches. Also seemed like the game got much laggier. Works perfectly on GR.

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MasterOfFreedom
post Mar 29 2018, 09:36 PM
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Thank you Black Adder for that well written post. To quote one of our old staff members, you guys got to help your self.

We are all volunteers, this is our hobby and most of the time it means that these community related activities replace actually playing the games we love so much and want to improve. I have not played AOT in years now. There are only so many hours in the day, we just need people to step up and make stuff happen.

It is funny, when i was a mod i wanted to be an admin because i was in college and had free time to spend. I spent most of that time developing many things for the community, but sadly most of them got tossed out by the owner. By the time i became an admin, years have passed and i was just out of college starting my career. I lost a lot of free time, and what time i did have, i spent trying to further my career. Currently i am about to complete my Masters degree, so that is where all my free time is spent. There is progress being made, but most is behind the scenes and has been for years. Hopefully we can start rolling some of these projects out to live soon.

The moral of the story is no one is "responsible" for anything in this community. We are a community but very few contribute to its well-being.

The staff here at RTS-S, Voobly, and RTSL are absolutely amazing. The amount of time and effort they put into "regular" events for the community is astounding. We are always looking for more people to lend a hand, but that in its own takes time to set up.

I have a lot of respect for our staff and community leaders. They do a lot of work and often enough just get bitched at for something stupid instead of being appreciated. I've taken breaks because i got sick of the bullshit at times... but something keeps bringing me back. We have a vision for this community and we have been working on shaping it to fit that vision. We would love to hear your idea's, but more importantly, how those ideas can become a reality.

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Azarath_
post Mar 30 2018, 08:29 PM
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Well, at first I'm sorry about the rage posting. Some parts of this story are kinda sad or even enraging.

About the suggestions: It is rly sad to also be uninformed on what is possible and have no address to ask about what might be doable and what not.
- What can we do with Voobly? Can we modify (the program) in any way? Are there devs we can speak to about wishes or is there a way to mod something in ourselves?
- What is with the VBP, will it stay like that & do you just not want the discord about this to rise up again?
- What can we do with this partnership thing going on? Why do we have this?
- Who even owns this page, why and what does that mean for us?

Just writing long posts about the state of RTSS is not much community service here. But if you want people to step up, provide at least some transparency, give them something to work with.

Like this News topic, pls scroll through the messages and tell me what's the difference between the people asking for quick search here and never getting any info & the EE devs ignoring Nakamura for a year: http://www.rts-sanctuary.com/RTS-Sanctuary...dpost&p=2498887
Same thing. No one cares to even inform anyone. Some regular "State of the RTSS"-Speech would be a start. You might have some intern info about something, but I do not.
I don't want to say that it's some Community Managers responsibility to inform the community, since you are right, all we got are volunteers. But if the people with the connections to the partnership/dev/whatever-departments don't forward the community questions and report what answer they got or if they are being ignored, no one else can or will ask the right people.

This post has been edited by Lilitu: Mar 30 2018, 08:59 PM

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LNC_GoldenAxe
post Mar 31 2018, 04:13 AM
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About two weeks ago I was playing on GR and Wookly joined our game because there were no games on Voobly(around 11pm est) and he goes like why don't you guys come to Voobly and a GR player tells him "because this version is more funnier".


When a company loses value, the shareholders will demand the CEO is replaced because it's completely his fault.

These are basic questions people at the top need to ask themselves:

-Why is Voobly AoC still alive and active?
-Why did DM die on Voobly?
-At what point did GR become more popular than Voobly? Voobly did something that gave players a reason to quit or lose interest, some of them switched to GR.
-What group of players from this community destroyed EE's balance? The original game was perfectly fine, now RA, Gaia and Hades are unstoppable on EE.


Two quotes... :o
Awhile ago someone interviewed Mista after a tournament and asked him something like what's the future for this game and he said "... this game will be played for many years to come". :crazyeye:

The other quote is from Hellz, well not a quote but he said something like the patch isn't meant for medium and low level players so these groups shouldn't worry about the changes. Right now all the 1650 players are demanding the patch on Voobly. You should see Hagrit's balance patch topic on Steam, lol 95% of those people discussing the patch can't even play water maps.

Guys, don't get me wrong, BA, JJ, Hellz and MF have done a tremendous amount for this community but at this point it's just common sense what needs to be done.

This post has been edited by LNC_GoldenAxe: Mar 31 2018, 07:22 AM

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Black Adder
post Mar 31 2018, 08:41 AM
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@Lilitu: Information is posted all the time and regularly across topics, for example here, (you think there's little of it? Well it's because there is not much to tell in the first place) and tbh the situation is kind of the same for years (unfortunately) - who follows the community has a good idea how things are, who to talk to, what's needed, repeating things over and over and over every week/month is not really going to bring anything new, exactly as I said (it's like the same conversations about Patch over and over and over again - I get it someone new didn't read the past topics, but, well, it's not leading anywhere new, is it, it's literally going in circles, so if you do a bit of digging instead, you'll get the feedback you're looking for as well). Tbh it's not that hard to figure out where to look and who to contact anyway if you want to.

You don't even need any of that information to step up and do things though, that's just pretty much trying to avoid doing anything (finding reasons why not to) and blaming others for it. Which is the long-term stance of the community that I'm pointing out is the problem. Did your apparent lack of information keep you from making your conversion mod? No. Does it stop anyone from streaming and making videos? No. See? It's all about wanting and not trying to find reasons why not to.

If you want to help, all you need to do is just ask "How can I help?" or "I'd like to do this" and we'll work it out if it can be done. We're (or at least I am) even rather regularly reminding everybody how many even simple things could be done e.g. here, so it's not like it's any secret what help is needed, and if you look around, it's kind of clear as well. You just need to pick and choose. The only thing you cannot assume is that whatever wild (even if good) ideas you have, that they will 100% get implemented - there are limitations, and not few tbh, so you should approach things with open mind and be ready for and open to workarounds (which is kind of how we work long-term, trying to fit inside quite tight mantinels).

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Azarath_
post Mar 31 2018, 11:15 AM
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Okay, it may be me missing out on info. Across topics sounds a little weird, since announcements should go in announcement threads and not in small talk. But for now I had posted some questions, like partnership reasons: Is it still the WSVG-Partnership? It was announced 2014 to go for three years which is over now. Also the wsvg sites linked are dead by now x_x ..do I have to research on their page to find out if they still have a partnership with RTSS because I cannot find it anywhere on RTSS? Even that is hard to do.
- The wsvg.net link is dead: http://www.wsvg.net/
- The wikipedia starts in past tense "The World Series of Video Games (WSVG) was an international professional electronic sports competition.": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Series_of_Video_Games
- (trivia) In 2015 they did not pay out over half the prize pool?! X_X (source wikipedia)

But I guess it is the Voobly partnership. Are the terms for this one out anywhere?

I learned that RTSS is not owned by Voobly anymore when it was down this year from this thread: https://www.voobly.com/forum/thread/282029 I also did read something about Voobly planning some RTSS overhaul, I guess that is not going to happen now too?

Basically, I feel like I have no idea what is going on and the news forums are kinda not that informing. Except of course for tourneys and stuff, that works great.

This post has been edited by Lilitu: Mar 31 2018, 11:31 AM

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MasterOfFreedom
post Mar 31 2018, 04:23 PM
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WSVG was kind of abruptly ended due to some shady business practices that set both Voobly and RTSS back a good bit. The reason you do not hear much from either Voobly or RTSS is because of legal issues now surrounding WSVG...

To put it simply, Voobly got in bed with the wrong mate.

Voobly owned RTSS since 2011 when Robo sold it to Elusive (Owner of Voobly). You might see a lot of my posts referring to Elusive as Torm as well. Sadly this is just history stuff, and if you weren't here for it, it may not be known.

Right now i can say there are plans and actions being taken for RTSS to be reborn. The reason those are kept quite is because this community has suffered through these promises before only to be let down time and time again. I do not want more of the same.

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ChronoJJ
post Apr 1 2018, 07:08 AM
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The slow death of AoT/Voobly, or the causes of the death, is probably a rather complicated topic. It's easy to create a bullet list of items, put tough to really prove anything. Word of mouth is always word of mouth, I can say 500 people said they quit Voobly because of this, that, or the other, but really in in the end it's just me spouting off. I do have some ideas about why Voobly/AoT is dying, probably some good ones, maybe some wrong ones, who knows. I don't think the patch has anything to do with the decline of Voobly. Really I think that patch has had no effect either way; I doubt it's drawn anyone in/kept anyone, and I doubt it's driven anyone away. Given the rather neutral effect, I will say the patch has been a disappointment, or not accomplished what I thought it would (bring people in). So on that note, I would say the patch was a failure, and if I were to have the ability to time travel, I'd go back and make sure I didn't waste any time helping with it.

Having said that, I think there are many reasons why Voobly population (and AoT as a whole) is declining. It's obviously down compared to a year or two (or more) back, but it's not just Voobly that's down. Gameranger is also down. The only platform that is up is EE. But even EE is hardly a thriving community. Overall, population is down for AoT across the board. Here are some reasons, in my mind, for the decline of Voobly (and, AoT as a whole, in some cases). In no certain order:

Extended Edition (EE) is receiving most of the new players.

When EE came out, it initially took Voobly players away, but the majority of them came back shortly after, because EE was awful/unplayable upon release. I'm pretty sure Voobly population was at its highest sometime after the release of EE (and during the Voobly fanpatch). However, EE slowly became improved, and, of course, is the most accessible platform for new players. When Tale of the Dragon came out, and subsequent updates, EE retained players even more effectively. Fewer transitioned to Voobly. Now, there are very few who make the move. With most new-generation players (or old nostalgic dudes) staying on EE, there aren't many who replace departing Voobly players. Additionally, EE has quicksearch. Voobly does not. Quicksearch is far easier to use when trying to find 1x1s. This is one of Voobly's largest drawbacks. Players constantly cherry-pick opponents and gods. Join a 1x1? Host goes afk cause he knows what god you play. Host a 1x1? people join knowing they can counterpick.

Gameranger (GR) is easier to use and has better networking.

Some people have mentioned that people play on GR to get away from the patch. That really cannot be true, because GR is just original AoT, unrated. That's perfectly possible on Voobly. Theoretically, every GR player could do what they do on Voobly. Obviously there must be other issues. So what are they? Well, Voobly is not nearly as simple as GR. GR is super-easy to install, and is much easier to use for playing multiple games. Voobly has different lobbies, etc, GR is all in one place. Also, and probably most importantly, GR's networking is better. I know of two top players (Ayah and Chef) who can't play on Voobly because of network issues; but GR works. You can bet that there are quite a few unknown players who can't play on Voobly, or can but don't know how to open ports, so they simply play on GR. Additionally, some players' computers (for some reason) can't navigate the auto-pilot LAN on Voobly. GR's launch into the game is much smoother; in fact I think it's impossible to mess up (no campaigned!). For casuals, better networking + less work < rating system.

Windows 10

This is actually a huge problem. Take a look at the tech forum and see how many people are posting (on a fairly dead site) about their issues. Google it. Many of the answers you find will be "Original AoM doesn't work on Windows 10." This removes some new players completely. As Windows 10 becomes more commonplace, more potential players (and there aren't many) are prevented from playing. And really, how hard do you think the average person is going to try to get a 15 year old game to work?

The stagnant state of RTS Sanct

The site having no updates/not working for a long time/barely working for a long time, prevented a large portion of the community from actually communicating. This site was the community site for AoT, both for ESO and Voobly, and, to a limited extent, GR and EE. However, mostly this site (in the latter years) was for Voobly. A community is important to retaining players. When the experience is simply playing the game, retention is alot harder. When players have a community to get involved with, retention is easier. With this site inoperable for so long, player retention suffered.

This game is 15 years old, and was the least popular (online) of the 3 main Age games

Let's face it; this game is old. How many games this old, of this genre, even have a player-base at all. RTS games aren't popular. Additionally, when people get nostalgic and think of the Age games, they generally think of AoC or AoE3, not AoM. AoE3 is a little newer and still has its official platform. AoC.. well... there's a multitude of reasons that the Voobly community is booming. It gets a ton of programming support; there are custom made stuff on Voobly that are simply amazing. Observing? Yeah, it was programmed into the game; you can have 500+++++ players spectate without affecting the players; spectators can also join after the game has started. There have been a number of non-balance patches to improve the game. The most recent one was able to remove some of the late-game unit lag. AoC HD works on Voobly. Some rich guy puts ridiculous amount of $ into the community. Finally, AoC is simply a much better game; it's a pure RTS. AoM is full of gimmick strats with gimmick units and gimmick godpowers, with a button that does most RTS stuff for you. It's great if you like that kind of stuff, it's awful if you don't (most don't).
----

tl/dr? well, this stuff doesn't really matter anyway.
(also I forgot my password. what else is new)

This post has been edited by ChronoJJ: Apr 2 2018, 06:33 AM

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KeeN_baller
post Apr 1 2018, 10:58 AM
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I think its the lack of hype and accesability for new players to jump into the game. There needs to be something to work towards to in terms of training and getting better at the game. just look at eeleague a lot of people started playing again and training to try and win the tournament. but after its over activity will probably fall down again. theres 2 options. host the same tournament afterwards again. youll get more players but theres a chance it will lose its hype because its the same. so there comes in option 2 you need to do an upgrade and spice it up. make the tournament better. new rules new maps etc. the more tournaments the more people will start practicing. and then therell be more streams. and thus people see that activity is booming more people will come online to play.

But I think at this point theres some big issues. people that are new get demotivated because:
1. the game is really hard to get into(they get stomped)
2. its tough to setup EE without lag
3. its hard to get voobly to work on w10
4.its hard to get aom download
5.laptops have the graphic bug issue with aom
6. most new players dont know how to watch recorded games
7.let alone how to watch recs on new patches or new maps
8. they dont know where they should play
9.they install a 100 mods and then multiplayer stops working
10.they think the game is imbalanced when they play norse and keep getting roled over by egypt

what does this all mean? that theres not enough information presented on a plate so simple that anyone get into aom in an easy way. people need knowledge and yeah u can say use the search function to find outddated informatiom and guides but thats some aomheaven policy right there. there needs to be pinned topics for new players to exactly see how to get their journey started on aom in such an easy way that even a baboon can do it



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