I’m back to playing Age of Empires II, after over two years of not playing it. I stopped playing it back then because I got bored of playing it in the multiplayer mode. The game lost its magic after I spent hundreds of hours playing it in multiplayer mode and as my friends’ skill levels kept skyrocketing to what I consider absurd levels, playing it just became boring and even annoying. Having to click the mouse faster than your friends was what it all boiled down to, in the end. This is because there are practically only a handful of different, winning routines or strategies to choose from at the start of the game and then the heart of the game is just executing them as fast as you possibly can. If the skill disparity between players is too high, you get to ridiculous situations like your friends building an entire castle right outside your village’s gates while you still barely have an army. It destroys the illusion and the fun when the skill disparity is so high. And I never really bothered to study the professional players to learn new tactics and routines. I did naturally learn stuff because how could I not learn anything when my friends were getting so hardcore at the game? Meanwhile, a friend of mine who sucked at the game already has over 2 thousand hours of play time and he can now obliterate me before I’ve even reached Castle Age. All the more power to you, dude! But if you’re asking me to spend 2 thousand hours to get a little bit better at clicking buttons a little bit faster, you are out of your mind. Let me instead enjoy the game at my own pace and take the displayed beauty in.
Which is why I am playing singleplayer mode now. I want to enjoy the beauty of the game by playing its campaigns. Immerse myself in the history of empires. And actually face a challenge that I can deal with. This way I will still be able to “smell the flowers”, as icycalm wrote when he analyzed James Jacobs’ similar view.
The Stillest 