As clarification, I love AOE2 and I play it consistently. All this critique comes from a place of affection, not of hatred.I'm sorry but, in my opinion, you are deluded if you think that AOE2 will ever grow beyond 18-20k average players on Steam monthly, tops.
There's a fundamental redesign of the game that would need to happen in order to convince all the tens of thousands of players who prefer to play other kinds of games consistently(or if you want to stay within the RTS subgenre, SC2).
I do agree that devs need to keep fixing and optimizing the game, and Microsoft needs to keep funding them.
I would like to see improvements such as:
- Ability to navigate the entirety of the menu while queueing for a ranked game.
- Higher benchmark required to play online, in order to avoid players playing 4v4s on toasters. It would alienate a part of the playerbase for sure, but I think it would also bring back a good number who stopped playing because of the insufferable lag in the late game.
- Ranked seasons like many good competitive games. It gives extra incentive for players to keep grinding.
- Implementing the ability to rewind replays without needing capture age and a paid membership.
- A more complete leaderboard in-game. One that lets us click on each player's profile and see everything from their match history, to preferred civs, maps, etc. without needing to visit several different external websites. This is all stuff that SC2 has.
- Modify Empire Wars to make it a bit slower(so it is less intimidating for noobs) but keeping it faster than standard RM(so that it speeds up the repetitive start that you do in 99% of games). Something like a 12 villager start could work decently.
- Implementing a separate balance for EW.
- Optimize the pathfinding as much as the 20 year old engine allows.
- Find a way to make team ELO meaningful.
If all these improvements happened, I think AOE2 could consistently float in the 18-20k active players range. But not much more than that. We have to face the fact that this is an old game, and it's already a miracle that Microsoft is still supporting it, when it could be putting the money into other games that could be making them a lot more money.