ES will patch AOE3 until next age game is released

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Comadevil
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ES will patch AOE3 until next age game is released

Post by Comadevil »

Might interest you

Oscar Santos responsible at ES for all games that have been shipped (paches etc.) has stated in an interview at gr.org
Oscar Santos: Do not worry. Not because we made a great patch with TAD 101 (based on the early comments of the community) means that we will not be patching anymore. Our current philosophy is to patch at least until the next version of the game. So that means that until we get an Age of Empires 4 (if any) we will keep supporting Age of Empires 3. The focus for post-ship will be on the Asian Dynasties though, so that we bring the community together and focus our time, development and testing resources in the latest expansion of the game.
Link to interview

It seems they realized that supporting a game very well, can raise the number of sold games.
This complies with Bruce Shelleys Blog who backs it up with piracy issues
Our customer service people say that in the last several months they have received over 500 email inquiries from people trying to get online with pirated copies. The strength of the Age online multiplayer experience is what saves our business and our jobs, and keeps us going so we can make more games. You can’t play Age online without a legitimate copy, and that helps the game remain in the list of top twenty best-selling PC games for the fourth year. It may be that PC games without a strong online component requiring a legitimate copy are doomed to modest success at best.
Link to blog

Great for online player like us and finally it's not like it used to be with AOC and AOM
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36drew
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Re: ES will patch AOE3 until next age game is released

Post by 36drew »

Good to hear all of the above. :)
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Re: ES will patch AOE3 until next age game is released

Post by RascalJones »

I've played another game recently that won't even let you play an offline game without verifying online that it's not pirated. So, the game isn't online at all, but you have to have an internet connection to play.
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Re: ES will patch AOE3 until next age game is released

Post by RascalJones »

A bigger question for me is whether game piracy and its cousins (music piracy and online game cheating, for example) are becoming so socially acceptable and widespread that they are changing our culture. Will a society that finds it increasingly okay to steal and cheat online find it similarly acceptable to lie, cheat, and steal in all aspects of offline life?
A fair question. What a bleak future, if true.
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Re: ES will patch AOE3 until next age game is released

Post by IndyBrit »

[quote=""RascalJones""]
A bigger question for me is whether game piracy and its cousins (music piracy and online game cheating, for example) are becoming so socially acceptable and widespread that they are changing our culture. Will a society that finds it increasingly okay to steal and cheat online find it similarly acceptable to lie, cheat, and steal in all aspects of offline life?
A fair question. What a bleak future, if true.[/quote]

A fair question, but I believe the answer will not be bleak. We will find a way to continue to create and reward creators. It was thought that VHS would ruin the movie industry, then broadband internet. The truth is that greater accountability will come to the online community rather than less. When your online reputation becomes who you are, then people will begin taking care of their online reputation better. We are just in an awkward transition period where people feel like the internet is different and anonymous, when in fact it is not. IMHYCUO
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Re: ES will patch AOE3 until next age game is released

Post by Cyclohexane »

^^
Hmm,
I've traveled to Mexico many times and know first hand that you can buy pirated movies anywhere. I have seen them at the pharmacy of all places! I have also heard from friends that have traveled to China that it is the same over there.

With the American economy going to crap, who are these guys going to depend on?

They could try lowering the price to an acceptable amount and sell by volume. I agree it is not right to steal or cheat by downloading music, movies, etc., but the industry does need to meet us in-between.

In the same regards, I think $20 to $30 is a fair price for a video game.
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Re: ES will patch AOE3 until next age game is released

Post by KingKaramazov »

That's great, but unless the patches come faster it won't really matter :P
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Re: ES will patch AOE3 until next age game is released

Post by Sporting_Lisbon »

In vanilla there were a lot of patches, dunno why there aren't as much now.
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Re: ES will patch AOE3 until next age game is released

Post by Comadevil »

Many patches don't stand for quality as we saw with WW Germans in Vanilla already.


Oscar Santos also said something about this
GameReplays: Why did ES decide to make one big patch after 4 months and not to publish a few smaller patches in a lesser amount of time?

Oscar Santos: In reality they were not 4 months. There are a set of guidelines that we use at Ensemble Studios to aid in patching and one is to wait after every release or patch 2 months for the community and for the changes to “stabilize” and reach some sort of steady state. Patching is fun and we want to do it, but at the same time we cannot react very fast and introduce unnecessary change. Chinese Disciples may be overpowered. Now. But we want to wait and see if it is really an issue or a fad. Bottom-line is that we wait 2 months after a patch releases before we start our work on it. For this patch, we started in mid-January after everyone resumed their activities after the holiday break. Smaller patches are still part of the plan and the idea is to provide quick updates. However, there are also trade-offs that you have to take where you have a set amount of playtesting, development and testing time that is budgeted. Of course, it grows with more changes, but a patch with 10 changes might be the same cost to produce as 20. So, if we really have 20 changes to try and get in, we will go for them as long as they improve the game and address community concerns. Another thing that makes this patch better is that TAD 101 is a balance-only patch whereas in the past we would make massive patches that involved balance and bug fixes that when a regression or bug was found and we needed to reset entirely our post-development processes for final patch sign-offs.
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Re: ES will patch AOE3 until next age game is released

Post by Sporting_Lisbon »

Many patches mean they are actually trying to solve the situation :)


Yes, it's not worthy to have many small patches but patches in vanilla were quite big in comparison to 1.01 and 1.02. Even 1.03 wasn't that much. 1.08 was huge and the others were quite something too, even though they sucked they were all some steps in the right direction, like ES like to say about 1.04 when they know it was disappointing.
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Re: ES will patch AOE3 until next age game is released

Post by Comadevil »

But i don't think there will be another fast balance patch after this huge patch. We will see the next patch 3-4 months after the release of 1.01, i think
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