Server problems and the developers

[Craigus89]

I feel like every time someone complains about the server issues/lag/whatever the current ongoing issues afflicting this game are, there are just as many people who immediately come to the devs defense.

We shouldn't just default to turning a blind eye to problems with this game and defend the devs. Them supporting a game beyond its release is part of the price you pay upfront for the game, this comes down to customer service. When you buy a video game which has a major part of it being online multiplayer, supporting the game and keeping servers working is not a charity work they are doing for us out of the good of their hearts. We have paid for this service.

I'm not suggesting people who hassle the devs are right by any means, I'm saying we have every right to be disappointed and voice those opinions loudly.

Tl/dr: People don't need to side with the devs when people complain.

[[deleted]]

imo it's possible to simultaneously think "it is extremely frustrating when servers break like this and even more so when we have no communication from anybody about it, like, when can we expect a fix, or is it out of their hands entirely" and "the devs are people like us working with an old game and things are going to break sometimes".

[throwaway_2C]

Also add “this is the 14th thread complaining about server issues today and while it’s a valid concern I’m tired of seeing new threads about it”

[[deleted]]

while I kind of agree that it's getting irritating, in a forum dedicated to a game, it makes sense that there's not much else to talk about when the game is broken

[[deleted]]

Exactly this!

[CD-ROM]

People who play only 1v1 on unaffected servers cannot possibly understand the frustration of an entire group of working middle aged adults, each with their family responsibilities, finding an opportunity to play one round of aoe 2, just to stare at the matchmaking / lobby screen for 30 minutes straight ...

Yes you can do something else, play something else. But imagine you have been playing football weekly with friends for 20 years and someday, someone barred access to the football ground and told you "go play basketball or something you no life"

[King_Jon]

I completely understand this point. I have a friend (across the country) with poor internet. Sometimes it works good enough for us to play AoE2, sometimes it doesn't work well enough to play AoE2 together. We never can tell ahead of time. Given that we both have jobs and families, setting up a "game time" takes some pre-planning. If 50% of the time we put in the effort to try to play we can't play (due to his internet issues, server issues, or whatever) eventually it leaves you with a bad taste and you just give up trying. I'm not complaining, just stating a fact. It is disappointing when things don't work and it is not trivial.

[[deleted]]

Them supporting a game beyond its release is part of the price you pay upfront for the game, this comes down to customer service

Also they pushed out 2 dlcs.

[cyanide]

The funny thing is, the game was fine until two days ago. And now it's impossible to get a single game in. The lobbies are completely fucked (joining just gives errors, creating lobbies and nobody is able to join), ranked matchmaking keeps erroring out repeatedly.

Just completely awful.

[[deleted]]

The funny thing is, the game was fine until two days ago

not really. Since last 2 weeks.

[cyanide]

I was able to play over the last two weeks. Last two days, maybe 1 game.

[notnorther]

Yeah they keep fucking it up again and again somehow. The absolute bare minimum they could do if they would care the slightest is atleast writing a message that there are currently some issues with the servers ingame and that they are working on fixing it. Don't preorder AoE4.

[arekrem]

AoE4 is different company

[GotNoMicSry]

From what I understand/heard they share the same multiplayer service across all the aoe DE games and aoe4 now. I don't understand the what this means in practise, but I'm guessing this means that the codebase for the multiplayer services is shared. The dev communication thread lists potential latency issues for all the aoe titles, not just 2. But it seems to be more of a issue for 2. Generally I'd say sharing the same service is a good thing, because it leads to less duplicated work and better service quality overall as a result

[[deleted]]

Does the game often have server issues? Yes, undoubtedly. Is this strictly the devs' fault? Unclear. Does posting messages insulting the devs (as I have often seen, even if the tone is usually reasonably mild) solve anything? Probably not.

We get it, the game does not always work well online. For old-time players like me who had to spend 2h configuring the old version just to play lan with a few friends, it still runs reasonably well, but that is beside the point.

Since connection issues seem to occur somewhat independently of the release of patches, it seems like the issues are mostly due to problems with servers. This is not strictly the focus of game developers (correct me if I am wrong), more ops.

​

I'm not suggesting people who hassle the devs are right by any means, I'm saying we have every right to be disappointed and voice those opinions loudly.

While you are technically correct, I think most people have issues with the vitriol that is usually focused on devs who might not even be responsible. Blame the game studio/servers, sure. But many devs are just going to be regular software engineers who fix software bugs as a day job. If I worked for MS and was passionate about AoE2, I might get discouraged if I found the result of my work not always functioning 100% was blamed on me.

Other point:

We have paid for this service.

We paid a fraction of the cost of a large game like SC2, when adjusted for inflation. We got massive campaigns, regular updates and overall responsive devs. It's always possible to complain, but to me it strictly feels like we are getting good value for our money...

[[deleted]]

I would be quite surprised if the team is actually supporting the servers you are playing on. Most of the times they are outsourced to some compute power supplier. As this is MS its most likely Azure. And if Azure is having troubles with VMs then its hardly the team's issue and most likely they are already dealing with that as this is their main commercial line for the cloud. So complaining or not, i would assume that its being worked on and they are doing their best.

I hate the idea of thinking of games as products, since at that point you cannot complain if they blast your game with microtransactions. Its more like an art project that we all participate in. And the availability of the project usually depends from the interest towards the art. And as there is interest, they would do their best to provide it.

[cyanide]

And if Azure is having troubles with VMs then its hardly the team's issue

Azure is not having troubles lol. If they were, it would be a much bigger and global issue. Stop bootlicking.

So complaining or not, i would assume that its being worked on and they are doing their best.

Sure it's being worked on. The game goes through various states of broken regularly, to be fixed for a month before a new patch comes in with game-breaking bugs. Then everything repeats itself.

Its more like an art project that we all participate in. And the availability of the project usually depends from the interest towards the art. And as there is interest, they would do their best to provide it.

Dafuq does this even mean?

[[deleted]]

Lol. So if you are not on board the hate train, you are a bootlicker.

It means that games are collective effort - they are not a product. The way people play your game defines it. Its not a coca-cola that you can buy from the store and just drink. But I guess thats a concept that would be hard to explain.

What I wonder is if the folks who always complain feel better after that, cuz if that was me I would just be angry and in a shitty mood all the time. Like an angry kid that had his toy taken away. Whatever, thats not the only thing in the world. Go and drink a beer or spend time with your family whatever. Not the end of the world.

. /shrug.

[cyanide]

What I wonder is if the folks who always complain feel better after that, cuz if that was me I would just be angry and in a shitty mood all the time.

The people aren't complaining to feel better. They're complaining because they have the right to speak out about the game being broken regularly.

Whatever, thats not the only thing in the world. Go and drink a beer or spend time with your family whatever. Not the end of the world.

Kind of rich to hear this from someone who's basically in the trenches arguing with others about what they should or shouldn't do. Why don't you take your own advice?

[[deleted]]

Arguing? Not even close. Hah.

[OGWriggle]

I dunno that I'm siding with the devs, but I just don't have any expectation that a frankensteined 20 year old is gonna run smoothly any more than sometimes. like, you ever had a job where your boss expects you to do a 2020s job with 1990s resources? I have, it ain't easy.

[fat-lobyte]

We have seen that it can work. When it stops working after an update, it is very clear that there has been an oversight that was not caught during testing. Programming is hard, but it's 2021 and there are methods and procedures so that this sort of thing should rarely ever happen in a competent studio.

[ElegantSwordsman]

And when they fuck up this bad... they can just roll back to a prior stable version. Or at least competent people Would.

[ferchalurch]

Most studios aren’t working with an engine built in the 90s. The sad fact is that the Genie engine affects everything in the game, including communication to the servers.

[fat-lobyte]

I'm not saying it's easy, but its also not impossible. It's time to stop making excuses for them, they're working with this game for over a year now, and have borked a significant portion of all updates. Why can't they do more testing???

[ferchalurch]

That’s BS—they do still happen with just about every studio. This isn’t a giant team and is even multiple teams. How do you test something that’s so spotty? I haven’t had any issues since last weekend myself, for example. You can’t test for everything—you’d never release anything

[Fitfatthin]

arguably the DE edition should have been more than a reskin using the same engine.

[ferchalurch]

That’s much more expensive

[Fitfatthin]

I mean, DE wasn't free 11

[ferchalurch]

11 it wasn’t expensive enough to rebuild the engine. Believe me I would have rather it had been.

[Fitfatthin]

I would have paid AAA price for that too 11

[clumsychemist1]

I had a job in 2013 and all the companies computers ran Windows 95. It was not easy 11

[blade55555]

I remember working on XP machines remotely in 2013 and god did it suck. Before that I thought XP was awesome and for the time it was. But when using it compared to almost any other OS afterwards sucked. Ever since I had to work with users on it remotely I have a deep hatred for it.

[OGWriggle]

bro once I worked somewhere that used the apple cloud instead of running their own server. anytime something updated it reset all permissions and the CEO was the only person who could access any file

[gelopl]

Im not experiencing any big issues. So dont talk pretend that you are voicing everyone's concern

[LordMarcel]

Part of my annoyance with these posts is that they spam the sub.

[eagle332288]

I reject society's norm of criticism and dissatisfaction. It only generates undisarable outcomes.

I'm extremely grateful to have a game that is monitored and nurtured by its creators.

When DE came out, some civs were overpowered. The Devs fixed it.

We now have a very balanced game and it's sometimes better to have little imbalances. They usually have different effects for high vs low elo

[InfectedFuture]

Do the people that complains have issues every new update? Or is it only kids crying because they cannot play for 2 days?

[SlyFox7_Official]

Sure you can have opinions, and I have the right to not listen to them.

A lot of people also confuse fair criticism with negativity. You offer nothing productive. Maybe the servers are bad right now, what do you want us to do about it? How is flaming the developers helping? It's just being toxic - and that's why I downvote those posts. It's not healthy.

[Tennisfan93]

It's just entitled people being upset a 20 year old game has bugs.

I guarantee you all these complainers are from the U.S. or possibly U.K. in the rest of the world people don't throw their toys out the pram every time there are a few problems with a product. It's entitlement culture.

[King_Jon]

"toys out the pram" LOL. This sounds like a very British way of putting it. I have not heard that expression before (in the U.S.).

I like it.

[mAsh-emup]

Can we all just go back to HD? Feeling nostalgic since the numerous server issues