My AoEII:DE Beta Experience with Some Testing and Data like FPS Development or CPU Usage

My experience with the beta, with some actual data, if anybody is interested:

• Got handed Store version. I don't have the 4k graphic set.

• My computer: i5-3570 3.40 GHz quad-core, 8GB RAM, playing off normal HDD, system on SSD, GPU AMD Radeon HD 7950 3GB (should be similar to Nvidia 1060), 1920x1200 resolution, 60Hz display.

• Streaming with OBS, 720p, 30 FPS, 2000 kb/s, veryfast preset, Genette's optimisation code (for those who don't know, simply custom coding improving performance).

For detailed look you can check out the stream (links in section titles), want to give some summary/description here, because it's many hours. Still a longer text, so if you're interested in something more than "this runs fine" or "this runs bad." Absolutely do look for other sources of opinions, this is my personal account with the game, so obviously, others will have different experience, it's all over.

Tried installing on Thursday, but couldn't download because the Store page wasn't working (Insider part went fine) - probably some temporary issue, but to put the whole story. Started working only later, things fine with install. First launching all right, just signing into Xbox multiplayer bugged and had to restart to properly get the sign-in window and permission prompt, was fine after.

First version:

I started with OBS recording for the non-stream test to potentially help the game better determine settings, it gave me Medium graphics settings, which means almost everything turned off. Resolution is tied to desktop, so for example cannot do 1080, even in windowed mode, which gives me biggest size 1366x768 - it's almost as if the game is trying to tell me I shouldn't even play at 1920x*, or not sure what's up with the options. Game benchmark test (needed to play ranked games, so basically game deciding if you have potato performance or not - threshold is 1000), already on stream, succeeded with 1037.4. I left the settings as were defaulted, as I first like to playtest games with what the designers want me to experience.

Went into MP, not too many games, actually literally just a handful, even for spectating, which seemed weird, it was at about midnight GMT on Friday, so was expecting more, especially since others were streaming, and not only the gated bigger streamers. But okay, went into a ranked 1v1, which seemed to play fine, but I'm not an active player, I have much more experience with the game from years of casting, so not the most relevant tester for that, graphics didn't bother me much, I actually liked AoE1DE's, while I though still prefer original.

Went for some testing and toying with settings into single player - turned graphics to the max, FPS was jumping randomly all the time 30-50, slight animation stutter apparent. Do not like that look of the game, which should be the best. Went back to Medium, disabled a few things like bloom, FPS went to jumping 50-60, so fine, much nicer game to look at. Persisting issue though is significant screen tearing when scrolling, no graphical settings help with that, though it's not visible on stream, so probably the jumping FPS in relation to monitor frequency since stream is lower number? Not sure.

Went back to spectate a 1v1 MP with the medium settings minus a few more things still - FPS jumping 50-90. Turned off Fog of War, FPS went to 40-70. FPS continually dropping lower as game progressed, at ca 8mins at 30-50, but during the progress it was also going up back to previous better numbers for periods of time, and then into worse, etc., but mostly as game went on, it was getting lower, put up on screen Task Manager to see resource usage, my CPU and RAM was pretty much constantly at about 80%, GPU 40% overall, meaning accounting for game, stream, browser and simply whole system, so I had clearly resources free for the game, it wasn't spiking (when I was testing for streaming, I tried game without OBS recording, and it didn't seem to have any effect). 30-40+ FPS at ca 15mins, tried turning on max details, FPS barely changed, but dropped a bit, more stable around 30+, turned into Low, which is everything off, went to 50-60 mostly - particle effects matter apparently. Went back to Medium settings (which means medium particle effects) without bloom, changing scroll speed to faster removed screen tearing it seems. When bigger battle began, FPS 30-40.

Went to spectate 2v2AI MP, stutterfest when battles began, but FPS at 40-60, Task Manager showing same numbers as before, so it's coming from the multiplayer somehow it seems, even on spectating. Stutter Rams are funny-looking.

Low number of games bothered me and that I saw only Store players that I could remember, so figured maybe cross-play is broken, or maybe something else is going on - turned out there was a new patch the game nor Microsoft anywhere told me about, not when launching, not when going into multiplayer, not by mail, had to go actively looking into the Store into manual update. On DE1 you at least see games with different version, here you see only yours and up to you to figure out what's up.

Second Version:

Finally players and games, even at about 3GMT, nice. Both Store and Steam. Same settings as last time. Go into 3v3 spectating, game launches, but nothing is moving, timer not going forward, not sure what's up, so I leave a bit later, tried again, no luck. Try to go into normal 3v3 game, we start, but same issue, nothing moving, timer not starting, but apparently others are playing! (We can chat about it.) I try to see if it's going to start and try some things, and game starts going haywire freezing up with not even being able to write in chat - my Task Manager is not showing anything wrong, like before, so I finally just close the game, because I cannot even go into options anymore, the game simply not responding.

After relaunch I watch rec from before, and FPS is suddenly out the window at 15-30, mostly about 20, real bad, with low settings and everything turned off. Task Manager confirms similar results as before, GPU/CPU usage seems even lower actually. Go into single player, similar, FPS dropped to 25-35 from before. Go into spectating again, 1v1, this time it works, FPS kept low at similar to current SP numbers. Changing into windowed mode on the aforementioned 1366x768 doesn't really help with FPS, stays mostly same, with spikes to like 70. (Back to full screen) Switch to team game 3v3 and 2v2 spectating, at the start same FPS as before, during pause up to 50-70, generally wild jumps between below 20 and 40+ as time goes. With some more action, FPS tanking to like around 15, Task Manager same as always, not straining there.

I try to play a game against AI with others on Australian server (I'm in Czech Republic) with ca 380-400ms signaled by game room, FPS all over the place 25-50, regarding ping game seems playable, but I'm a noob and don't play much, so I'm probably not the best to judge. Extreme AI is extreme and its instant Drush microing is unfair, I hope the players who insisted on it learnt their lesson :d After go into spectating FeAge's 1v1 game, FPS swinging wildly 15-50, mostly around 25. Usage of CPU and co. fine as usual. With battles FPS again tanking into 15 range. (Still lowest details with everything turned off.) Similar for the rest.

Some errors come up, like unable to join game, errors preventing joining into spectating, but I can get into some games and start playing as well, so it's not like general thing - we play an 8-player TG, late-game battle lagfest with low FPS as usual.

I do the ranked benchmark, and on this game version I suddenly get only 938.3, both with lowest and ultra details, curiously enough. Safe to say this update broke something, so hopefully they can fix it if it ran better before.

Summary and points of interest and observations from a personal point of view:

• Even looking away from the obviously broken latest build (I've noticed similar mentions of dropped performance) and considering the first one, the game struggles, in team games certainly, and it's not necessarily because of hardware, because that can in my case give more, but it's not asked to do so, unless there is some automatic throttle somewhere in Windows or I don't know. I after the stream looked at core usage, and it seemed spread out and no core was spiking or struggling if I understand it correctly. It seems to me, this is just a personal guess as obviously I don't know, as if maybe too much was added on top of the original engine and the engine cannot handle the load well - like overtuning an old car.

• I ended up playing on every graphics setting turned off, was the most optimal for me to play on aesthetically and comfort-of-playing. Wasn't bad, still I liked AoEDE1 graphics better. Water looks weird. UI is nice artistically, but kind of at odds at times with content, overflowing and such, and some parts are too big and others too small. With all the graphics goodies, elevations are certainly hard/er to see, especially from the non-shadow side (top) and on shiny landscape like desert. The highlight for when a building is working is only on if you have particle effects, if you have them off, you don't have it, and as I've tested particle effects play important role in performance. Don't know if I like game simplification features gated behind computer power like that (from multiplayer standpoint).

• Cross-play between Store and Steam seems to be working fine, for playing and spectating.

• I was often telling units apart by guessing what I should expect at this stage of the game :d A few times I got surprised and was guessing what a unit is, like Conquistador, seemed like some kind of lancer when standing. About getting used to probably.

• General feeling is they added many things they took from the community (UserPatch and Voobly, without giving any credit whatsoever and sell it as their own ideas and initiatives, look at the gate rotation, spectating...) and managed to implement it in inferior way.

• Spectating is annoying, mostly bothersome for how miniature things are even with changing UI size, which is something you don't want to do in the first place, you don't want to eat screen space, and otherwise conflicting settings or toggles with what I would want to show. It just doesn't make sense to me. The base experience of getting into spectating is also lacking compared to not only Voobly. Spectating hotkeys (changing players' pov) on the first version were buggy and randomly were stopping working, but could be fixed by clicking elsewhere, in the second version they stopped working altogether, just to be sure.

• While some additions are nice and useful (as I'm used to them e.g. from AoM, but again, there's the line of do we want to play AoE2 or AoM?), I find many highlighted supposed improvements highly bothersome, like drag scrolling, hp bars above resources, but I can imagine them being fun and okay for new or otherwise inclined players, so with toggles, up to everyone to make the game according to them, I really like how many things are toggleable - would still add more :d I still though don't understand the drag scrolling and why it's such a high point for Mr. Isgreen, that was the one thing in all of this that made me almost rage how annoying and straight bad it was. And let me tell you, I play drag-scroll strategies regularly, for example The Settlers, so I am very well used to it, but here in AoE and needing to do things quick, it's straight awful for example when microing Vills against Drush, it's much more suited to slower-paced games. So I guess casual play.

• Multiplayer lobby and infrastructure is kind of barebones, I really don't understand why they don't look at ESO or ESO2 (AoM and AoEIII multiplayer), which were/are both excellent multiplayer clients ahead of their time. Some things they claim to have added based on player feedback were already there 10+ years ago. Some key are obviously still missing here for a proper experience, talked about all around. I viscerally dislike how after every game you end up in main menu (even after failing to join a game room). The end animation in-game is also bothersome, it's a good idea and nice, but only as some kind of fly in-fly out thing.

• Gating matchmaking behind benchmark is scary considering game's performance. At the same time if you cannot pass it, probably your whole experience with the game is going to be bad. Chosen mapset could probably include various popular maps, so e.g. Islands, maybe Arena. I'm used to various map styles from AoM and AoEIII matchmaking, and it's what makes for good matchmaking/rated experience, because it really tests you overall to determine your true skill and also statistically accounts for potential match-up imbalances, making the rating meaningful. That's why I'm not sure the Mirror match is a good idea as a general option. However, AoC is different in the balance area and the ingrained way of playing on pre-chosen maps, but still cannot help but maybe think it's just also partly a bit of a cop-out on trying to have a more balanced game, so the content/settings are curated to account for it. Automatic match-making should work on statistical evening out, so one match you might have slight disadvantage, another advantage, and with enough playerbase and games, it sets you into the correct rating. In the end, inevitably most players more caring about points will tend to play the strongest civs, and therefore it becomes about offering diversity and challenge at least through maps.

• Zoom seems underwhelming, was expecting more as such a lauded function, if you compare with e.g. AoM, it's almost nothing and kind of so that they can say "hey, we have zoom, and that's cool!" On zoom the units/graphics also are a bit blurry, the base zoom seems the crispest, which is probably one of the reasons for the limited zoom.

• Big question remains regarding player moderation - you can block player only in postgame after game, in game room you can mute a player, that's all you can do, unless I've missed something.

• Maybe some Eastern European or Middle-Eastern server would be useful, not sure, currently you have Western Europe (Germany or France?) and then India (other servers are UK, US West and East, Brazil South, Korea, Southeast Asia and Australia).

Not sure what this means for Age of Empires IV as its supposed to be the same multiplayer basis - are the problems because of AoE2 engine or because of the network and netcode? Luckily they have a few years still probably.

If you found this interesting and in any way helpful, I'm glad, but again, as I said at the very beginning, do look for other opinions and experiences to have an informed idea about things, there are plenty.

And yeah, apparently copyright claim on some song from the soundtrack. Weird.