Suggestions from a Season Pass 1 Player

[:1]

Now just because I have payed for the season pass doesn't mean I intend to proclaim that my suggestions are worth any more than others, I am simply indicating that I have payed for this game and I'm a supporter. But above all else I still see alot in this game that could use some work and I think there are some critical issues that I should mention should the development crew happen to discover this thread. So here is my list.

1. Seamless PVP Matchmaking: I can't tell you how annoying it is to search for a pvp game and be unable to talk to players or work in the capital city, it is just aggravating. While I'm waiting for the game to inevitably find pvp opponents I want to be able to do something else while I wait, such as maybe advertise people to start matchmaking as well. Right now it doesn't seem like ANYBODY actually pvp's that much at all, pvp seems to be a barren wasteland, and I think this is one of the causes. PVP should be seamless and allow players to do other things while they wait for it, in fact it would even be good to say allow them to do quests, then when a match is found it will bring up a dialog saying "Match found, start pvp game? I love playing pvp, but waiting for that matchmaker ends up taking far too much time.
2. Faster Quests: Ok most of the quests I've been playing are just plain boring, alot of them are the same repetition of (turtle, build up, steamroll enemy). Sometimes you get the occasional fun quests here and there but a majority of them are just the same boring repedative nonsense, I can barely log on and do 1 quest before I immediately get bored and log off.
3. Less Grindy gear hunting: As I mentioned before, quests are slow, but also the treasure camps just seem silly in their design, they are scattered across the map waiting until you find them and stomp on them with your massive army, whether you complete the mission objectives or not the gear is just waiting for you forever to inevitably find it and take it. Half the time I skip the gear because I'd rather just move on to the next quest to get more experience. I think what would make the gear hunting more exciting is if players had the option of enabling aLoot Rushoption, where the treasure camp's aren't hidden, grant better loot, but disappear if you don't grab them in time. This would encourage players to challenge themselves by seeing how fast they can build up to grab these treasures before their clocks time out, in age of empires 3 where the treasure camps originated from, you had to grab them before the opposing players grabbed them, but in age of empires online questing, you and your allies are the only ones who will ever be hunting these.
4. Better Chat Options: Create some kind of chat channel option that shows a list of players currently online so that we can find people on topics we care about, right now the current chat is a cluttered mess of spam and noob questions, we could just overall use better tools for communication.
5. Improved Capital Cities: We get the idea that the capital city is meant to be a form of farmville kind of setup, we have the ability to decorate our city to be pretty when players visit it, but in all honesty I doubt that many people even care what their capital cities look like, in most cases it's just for self appeal. Most players simply just plant their utility buildings anywhere they fit and proceed to quest and pvp, there just doesn't seem to be much to do in capital cities.

This next comments probably going to get me alot of rage from the (anti-farmville AoE fans) but can we maybe get some mini-games or such to do in capital cities? Some that compliment the unique looks for them? Like maybe some kind of sport that other players can play while visitting a friends city, or even just have a little unit that they can walk around with and do stuff in the city.

I'm sure some players would think it would be nice to have some kind of option to attack other peoples capital cities, but I doubt there would be any way to balance that considering the amount of clutter you could make with the buildings, I just think if there was some kind of attraction outside of "Having a store" that would encourage people to visit other cities, then maybe more people would be interested in decorating their capital cities (or at least the people that actually care about decorations)

6. Larger Scale Multiplayer: I'm sure thousands of people have already mentioned this, but let us play with more than 4 players, age of empires online has a big community but we only get to enjoy it with a small portion at a time, let us play some large multiplayer games with 8 or more players, either Co-op or PVP, theres alot of potential in this area that alot of people are expecting.

|||That's a great suggestion, but theres one problem... The Season's Pass 1 is way too expensive (99 USD).|||I know it's expensive, but I bought it and therefore feel like I should voice my opinion on what I think this game needs.|||

I don't think they need faster quests, at least for lvl 1-20ish. They just need to start putting timers on everything to make people do it faster.

On the other hand, they need more gimmicky quests. ex. Most of the quests in SC2.

|||I agree, particularly with the seamless matchmaking. Especially seeing as we have to wait so long to find an opponent. Also, would it not be possible for the players from different 'realms' to pvp vs each other? That would cut down the waiting time nicely.

I also agree in particular with the capital cities point. Obviously they are meant to be a focal point of the game, and a mini-game in itself, but as it stands, the only two admirers of my decorated city are myself, and my brother who visits it to make the occasional purchase from my shops.