Have you actually played the game, Nomadic? Because the core AoE experience is in there, albeit muddled due to the whole loot system/persistent leveling.
Also, I've joined the game. Anyone look for me should check for DebaserZbs in Marathon.
I was in the beta testing that went on in the AoE Heaven and I've played this as well when it was released.
No it isn't. Like the poster above me, name me a game where I had to spend more money on getting the civilizations I wanted to play as. There is no story, there is not campaign its just farmville with an AoE covering. Its the worst game in the series.
Have you actually played the game, Nomadic? Because the core AoE experience is in there, albeit muddled due to the whole loot system/persistent leveling.
Also, I've joined the game. Anyone look for me should check for DebaserZbs in Marathon.
I was in the beta testing that went on in the AoE Heaven and I've played this as well when it was released.
No it isn't. Like the poster above me, name me a game where I had to spend more money on getting the civilizations I wanted to play as. There is no story, there is not campaign its just farmville with an AoE covering. Its the worst game in the series.
The multiplayer (pvp) is also severely gimped
I like it, but I like it as it's own thing. I'm not looking at it in comparison to other AoE games. A lot of the criticisms are valid and I don't like everything I see. It is an interesting idea, and as a persistent RTS independent of pricing I think it's development could be fun to follow.
Or it could be dead in 6 months. In which case I'm out $20.
Have you actually played the game, Nomadic? Because the core AoE experience is in there, albeit muddled due to the whole loot system/persistent leveling.
Also, I've joined the game. Anyone look for me should check for DebaserZbs in Marathon.
I was in the beta testing that went on in the AoE Heaven and I've played this as well when it was released.
No it isn't. Like the poster above me, name me a game where I had to spend more money on getting the civilizations I wanted to play as. There is no story, there is not campaign its just farmville with an AoE covering. Its the worst game in the series.
The multiplayer (pvp) is also severely gimped
How is the multiplayer gimped? I haven't played the core game long enough to get to PvP.
Basically: so far I'm kind of missing interesting challenges. Quests are either super easy or "yup, gonna need some more levels to unlock X" and quests don't seem to scale with coop. Or at least not enough to make it noticeable.
But still: this only just came out, I'm very curious to see where Microsoft will take this.
I've ran into a few harder ones, like later challenges that really push you to refine your build order. Consumables can really help though, usually summon some mercenaries to defend on harder economic challenges so I can focus more on mining or whatever. Also bandit towers come in very handy early on in difficult defend missions.
I'd only say that if you were fairly high level, if you were nearing the lvl 25 required for ranked for instance.
At lower/mid levels the gear difference isn't very large. With the stuff I have now I have a handful of blues and most of them are 2-3% difference from greens. Several blues I've upgraded out of with greens I found on quests.
The big difference would really be advisors, but they can be extremely specific, since you can only have 4 max and they only activate once you reach the era for them. To fully take advantage of them you'd need to force yourself into a niche that would leave you open to be countered by the enemy. Plus at mid/low levels the premium player simply isn't going to have a whole lot of them to make really useful combinations anyway since they're drops for the most part.
So, if you enter your Xbox Live password incorrectly, it asks you to enter a product key. Y'know, instead of giving you an error or anything useful. Not a great start.
Edit: ...and it's actually still pretty fun. The quests could be more interesting, but the core gameplay is solid. It seems like it should be more co-op oriented, but it also doesn't look like the sort of game you can hop on and play with friends; the leveling system and skill tree gets in the way. And I didn't even get the option for co-op until I'd been playing almost two hours. Playing this at a LAN party would be like playing WoW at a LAN party.
The premium civilization unlock looks like a mixed bag. You get, what, four new units? That is the proper way to do things; add more units, but balance the units so that they have a counter that F2P players can use. Having new balanced units to play with (and against) is interesting. Having a random 10% buff on everything is not. It's stupid and awful. It reeks of marketing department interference.
By the max level, will one have unlocked everything on the tech tree? The "redistribute points" button seems to indicate not, and I don't know if you start getting more unlock points per level as you go.
It looks like you have to pay for a premium civ before you can do any PvP whatsoever? You access PvP through the arena, which I can't build. The game says you need a premium civ for ranked PvP, but I can't find an unranked PvP. Maybe I'm missing something?
I'm having fun with it, it's not super in depth or anything, I mostly just mash out quests while listening to podcasts. Although the higher I go the more I rely on exploiting the AI to win. Stuff like making walls around the very edge of islands so they can't land troops. Sometimes they will halt their attack for no real reason, on some missions you can rush them and wipe them out in the opening few minutes.
I managed to scrape through one mission to gather wood. My main base got overrun and I sent all my workers into a pocket of trees and built about 15 layers of walls to keep them safe and then had to chop wood as fast as I could while murderous barbarians slowly smashed their way through wall after wall.
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FreiA French Prometheus UnboundDeadwoodRegistered Userregular
I will play this game when there is a Norse civilization.
Someone PM me when there is a Norse civilization.
Are you the magic man?
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CorehealerThe ApothecaryThe softer edge of the universe.Registered Userregular
I *loved* the original Age of Empire games -- Age of Empires, Age of Kings, and Age of Mythology to be precise. But what I loved about these games were their open-endedness for me and my friends to play in the world they made.
For example, I loved a style of play that we called Shimo-style for Age of Kings. Basically, we'd play a 8 player free for all, but you could make temporary alliances. Though there could only be one winner, players would gang up on stronger players, fights would break out over valuable territory, and there was all manner of backstabbing and silly fun like that. And we'd sometimes mix it up by, say, playing an 8 player Shimo game on a tiny Migration map. Migration starts all players off on a small island, with most of the resources on a big central island. But the map was so small in our case that Trebuchets could hit neighboring starting islands, and the whole map turned into this awesome land-grab.
We'd come up with lots of ways to play those three games, and the settings were so open-ended that it supported players coming up with dozens of unique ways to play.
But it seems like AoE:Online forgot about that, and wants players to only play in a tiny little box, and much of that box you have to pay for. It's a shame because Age of Empires wasn't ever merely a historical real time strategy game. That wasn't it's niche. It's niche was it's open-endedness and amazing community that took advantage of that open-endedness.
Posts
The multiplayer (pvp) is also severely gimped
I like it, but I like it as it's own thing. I'm not looking at it in comparison to other AoE games. A lot of the criticisms are valid and I don't like everything I see. It is an interesting idea, and as a persistent RTS independent of pricing I think it's development could be fun to follow.
Or it could be dead in 6 months. In which case I'm out $20.
http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198006524737
How is the multiplayer gimped? I haven't played the core game long enough to get to PvP.
Basically: so far I'm kind of missing interesting challenges. Quests are either super easy or "yup, gonna need some more levels to unlock X" and quests don't seem to scale with coop. Or at least not enough to make it noticeable.
But still: this only just came out, I'm very curious to see where Microsoft will take this.
Apart from that elephants are my go to strategy.
On another note, here's an excellent guide to Materials and Crafting in your home city that I found super useful.
http://forums.ageofempiresonline.com/forums/thread/81099.aspx
I'm not sure of the time - but the general word seems to be don't bother if you are not premium. (Haven't tried it myself)
http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198006524737
At lower/mid levels the gear difference isn't very large. With the stuff I have now I have a handful of blues and most of them are 2-3% difference from greens. Several blues I've upgraded out of with greens I found on quests.
The big difference would really be advisors, but they can be extremely specific, since you can only have 4 max and they only activate once you reach the era for them. To fully take advantage of them you'd need to force yourself into a niche that would leave you open to be countered by the enemy. Plus at mid/low levels the premium player simply isn't going to have a whole lot of them to make really useful combinations anyway since they're drops for the most part.
Edit: ...and it's actually still pretty fun. The quests could be more interesting, but the core gameplay is solid. It seems like it should be more co-op oriented, but it also doesn't look like the sort of game you can hop on and play with friends; the leveling system and skill tree gets in the way. And I didn't even get the option for co-op until I'd been playing almost two hours. Playing this at a LAN party would be like playing WoW at a LAN party.
The premium civilization unlock looks like a mixed bag. You get, what, four new units? That is the proper way to do things; add more units, but balance the units so that they have a counter that F2P players can use. Having new balanced units to play with (and against) is interesting. Having a random 10% buff on everything is not. It's stupid and awful. It reeks of marketing department interference.
By the max level, will one have unlocked everything on the tech tree? The "redistribute points" button seems to indicate not, and I don't know if you start getting more unlock points per level as you go.
exciting
It looks like you have to pay for a premium civ before you can do any PvP whatsoever? You access PvP through the arena, which I can't build. The game says you need a premium civ for ranked PvP, but I can't find an unranked PvP. Maybe I'm missing something?
(Please do not gift. My game bank is already full.)
Single player isn't too bad though.
I managed to scrape through one mission to gather wood. My main base got overrun and I sent all my workers into a pocket of trees and built about 15 layers of walls to keep them safe and then had to chop wood as fast as I could while murderous barbarians slowly smashed their way through wall after wall.
Someone PM me when there is a Norse civilization.
I *loved* the original Age of Empire games -- Age of Empires, Age of Kings, and Age of Mythology to be precise. But what I loved about these games were their open-endedness for me and my friends to play in the world they made.
For example, I loved a style of play that we called Shimo-style for Age of Kings. Basically, we'd play a 8 player free for all, but you could make temporary alliances. Though there could only be one winner, players would gang up on stronger players, fights would break out over valuable territory, and there was all manner of backstabbing and silly fun like that. And we'd sometimes mix it up by, say, playing an 8 player Shimo game on a tiny Migration map. Migration starts all players off on a small island, with most of the resources on a big central island. But the map was so small in our case that Trebuchets could hit neighboring starting islands, and the whole map turned into this awesome land-grab.
We'd come up with lots of ways to play those three games, and the settings were so open-ended that it supported players coming up with dozens of unique ways to play.
But it seems like AoE:Online forgot about that, and wants players to only play in a tiny little box, and much of that box you have to pay for. It's a shame because Age of Empires wasn't ever merely a historical real time strategy game. That wasn't it's niche. It's niche was it's open-endedness and amazing community that took advantage of that open-endedness.
Sigh.