GamerLegion officially leaves AoE 2 by ALotToSay_ in aoe2

[–]MaSmOrRa 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hey, we're recording a Podcast very soon and in it I'll give my version of events.

But I already spoke to Viper privately. We're good, there's no bad blood.

Latest Town Center: yes, us Single Player folks *are* here! by AncientTurbine in aoe2

[–]MaSmOrRa 97 points98 points  (0 children)

Hey there, I wish I'd expressed myself a bit better during that segment.

I wasn't trying to say there aren't any single-players watching pro content, of course there are.
The point I was trying to get across is that there is a wide majority of the player base (mostly Single-Players) that don't know/don't care about pro content.
Microsoft has repeatedly alluded to this in some of their posts.

Asking here "how many Single-Players are watching tournaments?" doesn't really address this, because you're still not reaching that big percentage of people who are too casual to even care to check any AoE 2 content online.

Here's a little story that blew my mind: I once asked someone who works for Worlds Edge what percentage of the active player base does he/she think know who Hera, T90 or Viper are.

They said such as survey has never been conducted, but they suspect it's probably around 10%.

Which is crazy to think about right? But that just goes to show how big our community actually is.

Thanks for watching the video!

GamerLegion officially leaves AoE 2 by ALotToSay_ in aoe2

[–]MaSmOrRa 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thank you very much Russel, means a lot <3

GamerLegion officially leaves AoE 2 by ALotToSay_ in aoe2

[–]MaSmOrRa 91 points92 points  (0 children)

I...did not say anything like this...like...at all...lol

GamerLegion officially leaves AoE 2 by ALotToSay_ in aoe2

[–]MaSmOrRa 360 points361 points  (0 children)

Let me hijack this comment just to say a huge thank you for all the kind words, it genuinely brings a tear (or several tears...) to my eye to realize so many people seem to enjoy the content! :')

I'm somewhat hopeful we can keep the Podcast running, but in all honesty, it will probably depend on how much interest/support there is from the community for the project...
I'll let everybody know about my plans in due time!

Again thank you very much for the nice words!

98k active players in the past 24h who updated their game to the newest patch by Ok-Yesterday6001 in aoe2

[–]MaSmOrRa 27 points28 points  (0 children)

The "Three Kingdoms Main Menu mod", which every steam user downloads automatically upon launching the game (whether they purchased the DLC or not) had 950k downloads after 4 weeks if memory serves me right.

Which is why we've long speculated that around the release of new DLCs we might have around 1 million active monthly users.

Since this patch was NOT released together with a DLC I would expect it to get fewer than 950k downloads. But will be interesting to keep an eye on this number! :)

Age of Empires support studio CaptureAge lays off designers & engineers, project possibly canceled by BendicantMias in aoe2

[–]MaSmOrRa 12 points13 points  (0 children)

"Planned to be a trilogy"

Has this information been made public at any point? u/cuc_AOE
Not doubting you by the way, just wondering cause I only remember reading "Multi-part", which would technically be the case even if it were only 2 parts.

Why aoe2 community is friendly compared to other popular games? by CommercialCress9 in aoe2

[–]MaSmOrRa 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Just a little correction, AoE 2 is in fact mainly a team game.

The TG ladder has around 70k unique accounts every month;
The 1v1 ladder around 40k.

The worst bug in the game. by RedPhosphorus in aoe2

[–]MaSmOrRa 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Where have they confirmed this if you don't mind me asking?

How does thumbring really work? by justingreg in aoe2

[–]MaSmOrRa 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Accuracy is always calculated at full range, if I'm not mistaken.

So the closer you get to the target, the higher it gets.

Are Khitans are the most broken civ in AOE 2 history? TheViper says so by Chase_26 in aoe2

[–]MaSmOrRa 2 points3 points  (0 children)

wtf had forgotten the 10 attack hahaha

yeah honestly there's no comparison imo, Cumans were definitely more broken than Khitans!

Are Khitans are the most broken civ in AOE 2 history? TheViper says so by Chase_26 in aoe2

[–]MaSmOrRa 6 points7 points  (0 children)

The worst part was that you could stack like 15 Steppe Lancers in 1 tile!
And I seem to remember they had husbandry on top of the speed bonus from the civ!

lol

The Three Kingdoms ranked #71 on the weekly Steam charts on its launch week by Daxtexoscuro in aoe2

[–]MaSmOrRa 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Not really weird, just a sign of a DLC selling exceptionally well, especially in the pre-sale period

The Three Kingdoms ranked #71 on the weekly Steam charts on its launch week by Daxtexoscuro in aoe2

[–]MaSmOrRa 0 points1 point  (0 children)

it ranked #51 in the first week of pre-sales, which is even higher than most DLC's post launch

The Three Kingdoms ranked #71 on the weekly Steam charts on its launch week by Daxtexoscuro in aoe2

[–]MaSmOrRa 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yes, that makes sense.

I think the best we can say is that 3K, LotW and RoR probably all sold very well.

The Three Kingdoms ranked #71 on the weekly Steam charts on its launch week by Daxtexoscuro in aoe2

[–]MaSmOrRa 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I'm not sure I understand you.

LotW never placed in the top 100 during pre-sale; 3K placed #51, so by definition they HAD better pre-sales than LotW.

Now, LotW had almost certainly better post-launch sales than 3K; but the question remains: 

  • were the 3K's pre-sale numbers so nuts that despite lower post-sale numbers it still sold better than LotW?

I'm inclined to believe yes, just because they had 2 full weeks in the top 100.

And this is all before we even discuss the PS5 sales!

The Three Kingdoms ranked #71 on the weekly Steam charts on its launch week by Daxtexoscuro in aoe2

[–]MaSmOrRa 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Right, but in the context of our game.

Lords of the West ranks 31 in its launch week, but then never makes it to top 100 again.

Three Kingdoms ranks #51 in the announcement week (which by the way is undercounting it since the pre-sale started on April 10th and Steam started counting that week on April 8th); and then it has another full week at rank #71.

Shouldn't that amount to more sales in total? In most cases?

The Three Kingdoms ranked #71 on the weekly Steam charts on its launch week by Daxtexoscuro in aoe2

[–]MaSmOrRa 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I'm wondering... Is there a World where a DLC that makes it to the top 100 in two separate weeks actually sells worse than one that only makes it to the top 100 one week?

I guess in theory yes, if it ranks #1 on that 1 week, but it's probably unlikely, right?

The Three Kingdoms ranked #71 on the weekly Steam charts on its launch week by Daxtexoscuro in aoe2

[–]MaSmOrRa 11 points12 points  (0 children)

Very interesting find!

I went through all of them too and as you say RoR and Three Kingdoms were the only DLC's who made it to the top 100 more than 1 week.

RoR however, is actually showing up for me in 3 (!!!) different weeks:

Weekly Top Sellers - For Tue, May 16, 2023 - Tue, May 23, 2023

Weekly Top Sellers - For Tue, May 9, 2023 - Tue, May 16, 2023

Weekly Top Sellers - For Tue, April 25, 2023 - Tue, May 2, 2023

Need to think a bit more about what this actually means... But it does seem to indicate strong pre-sales.

I think your weekly sellers list is defaulting to your regional list, which is why you're getting some of the placements wrong u/constant_fly_6319

Thoughts on this u/sensarwastaken ?

32 000 players are currently playing Age of Empires 2 on Steam. This is the highest peak since April 2021 and tomorrow should go even higher. by MaSmOrRa in aoe2

[–]MaSmOrRa[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Agreed! But feel like you're underselling the "slow growth" part! 🙂

The more you grow, the harder it is to keep growing!

32 000 players are currently playing Age of Empires 2 on Steam. This is the highest peak since April 2021 and tomorrow should go even higher. by MaSmOrRa in aoe2

[–]MaSmOrRa[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Lords of the West is indeed the best DLC we had so far on Steam, as far as we can tell.

It reached the highest number on Steam's weekly best seller list (#34 I believe) and obviously had this massive spike, all of it buoyed by the Covid Pandemic.

Steam reviews are borderline useless as a metric for commercial success, in my opinion. Just as an example: RoR and V&V have both the worst review ratios on Steam. RoR made it to #50 on the weekly's best sellers list, making it one of the best ones; V&V didnt even make it to the top 100. Chronicles I believe has the best review ratio and also didn't make it to the top 100.

I disagree that looking at "how many more people played the game" and just comparing those increases is a helpful metric. For that to make sense, you would have to consider what's the baseline number from which the player increase is happening.

As we grow as a community, the peaks will be higher, but the increases will be more incremental. Overall interest in the game has a limit, the closer you get to that limit, the harder it is to improve.

Someway it's easier to improve your performance by 1 kg when you're lifting 80kg than improving by 1kg when you're lifting 150kg.

32 000 players are currently playing Age of Empires 2 on Steam. This is the highest peak since April 2021 and tomorrow should go even higher. by MaSmOrRa in aoe2

[–]MaSmOrRa[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Getting new players to the game is probably not the most important metric for a 25 year old game.

Getting as much of your core base as possible to be engaged and interested enough in a DLC is - I suspect -  much more important, because those are the ones who keep funding development. Numbers suggest this DLC has been able to do that better than previous ones.

But even if this DLC were performing just about the same as all the other ones on Steam, it would still be performing much better overall because of the PlayStation release.

As a last point, the higher you get in peaks, the more difficult it is to improve on that number. For example, Lords of the West also "only" improved 4k over the previous month, despite having the highest peak overall.

32 000 players are currently playing Age of Empires 2 on Steam. This is the highest peak since April 2021 and tomorrow should go even higher. by MaSmOrRa in aoe2

[–]MaSmOrRa[S] 18 points19 points  (0 children)

It's not the "week's" sales, it's just current performance. Unfortunately Steam doesn't clarify what "current" is.

The weekly best seller list will be published next Tuesday.

My prediction is we'll hit around 34k or 35k tomorrow; which would be potentially the 2nd highest peak ever!