Unacceptable state of the game (26.09.14)

*Update(22.08.14): With the recent fix on instant quit, this situation is slightly improved, but a lot of other issues remain. Thanks for listening!*

*Update(26.09.14):Match history and option reductions are nice, however this sort of match history only accomodates for a small portion of the features it's supposed to give.*

Dear developers,I believe I speak on behalf of the entire competitive community when I say that issues plagueing AoM:EE are out of control. Currently for most players, the game is simply not playable, because the minimum/recommended requirements were simply not accurate. The game is tasking those gpus to 100%. Interestingly, most of the performance issues seem to come forward only when playing multiplayer, INCLUDING LAN games.There has to be some kind of problem in the network code. Do not ignore this, please.In the current state of the game, it is impossible to set up a competitive environment. Big tournaments are held on voobly instead of here. The player base is massively declining, and entire clans are moving back to the old version. This data should back up what I said: http://steamcharts.com/app/266840 Note how all this is happening despite the 40% sales. Direct action will be necessary.DragonQ has put together a really good list of issues in the general forums. In this topic, I am revisiting that, and keeping the list of huge issues updated.Some of these have been addressed, others we have hardly heard comments about.Below I will re-iterate this list, taking out the already solved ones, and making comments on each point. Please fix these obvious issues people have been complaining about since the early stages of the beta.Revert the mod compatibility change and implement moderation for workshop.-- Many popular mods are now not allowed for multiplayer. We know these do not cause issues, implement moderation so that the ones that do cause problems can be filtered out. Marking certain mods as desync sensitive and thereby disallowing them for multiplayer would be the way to go as opposed to collectively doing this to all mods affecting certain folders.FPS issues need addressing. Some people's computers simply can't cope but others with machines that pass the recommended requirements still have FPS issues, meaning a few well-known members of the community can't even play. After the 1.9 patch this has improved due to the full pop slowdown fix, but I'm sure more can be done.--This is most relevant in multiplayer. There is no reason for why a LAN game should involve latency, yet it's the same as it is with online matches. Look into the network code.There needs to be an official way of reporting cheaters and hackers so that they can be banned. Perhaps a thread on the Steam forums will work.-- Can we have an update on this?Animation stutter brought about by latency needs to be fixed. More than one developer has said that it's an issue with the way the game is coded, which is surely nonsense because the original game didn't have this problem. It also appears in some recorded games, which is even stranger.-- Absolutely crucial, it is impossible to control units well without this fixed.The worst pathing issues (at least) need to be addressed. Pathing is actually worse than in the original game, apparently due to geometry changes, and certain pathing issues are game-breakers. For example, units just happily walking through walls and buildings like they aren't there, or villagers getting stuck in trees/buildings/gold mines. The latter seems to happen very often with Norse gold miners.-- If the pathing was at least equally good as in the original, no one would complain.2v2 (and maybe 3v3) Quick Matches. Players must be allowed to invite friends to join a team and then search. Ideally these ratings will be separate from 1v1 ratings, then we can have proper clan wars and team rankings.Remove ranked Advanced Matches. It is currently needed for team games, but if the above point is addressed then they are no longer necessary, and will just give players a way of earning easy points by setting up matches in their favour.-- These two need to go together. I don't understand why you have implemented rated custom games at all. People are not using search at all anymore, which was the main feature the competitive community has been craving for for a very long time. Why would you intentionally do this kind of damage to multiplayer?The rating algorithm should revert to that used by ESO. The only difference is that ESO used Elo with K=40 instead of K=32. It's too easy to gain points playing someone way below your rating right now, and beating someone well above your rating barely earns you any extra points. Using K=40 brings higher risk and higher reward and is generally preferred by the competitive community.-- Again, to be blunt, no one has asked for this change to happen in EE. The ESO rating algorithm is favored by the majority.Match history. The currently used system is very good for helping one add friends. It however misses some very important features, such as: SC2 style win% for each god and map chosen by self, most frequent opponent. Public visibility should be an option as well.League ratings should be totally separate to general ratings. Playing a ranked league game gains you points based on the ratings in the league (so everyone is 1600 when the league starts) but the points you gain/lose apply to your main rating too, which is crazy. This leads to a situation where people can play league games (often with non-standard maps or setups) to get easy points because their rating will be closer to their opponent than their skill level would suggest (e.g. a 1800-skill player plays 1500-skill player but because both are 1600 in the league, the far better player gets lots of points for winning).Add tabs to the Online interface like ESO had. This will allow people to use chat whilst looking for games or inside a game lobby.-- Why was this not done initially? Honestly no one cares about the event and league badges as much as proper chat options.Change various graphical effects that are difficult to see or make other things difficult to see, e.g. fishing buoys, Rain mist on Marsh, Shades' glow, chickens on certain maps. Fix other graphical issues, such as the manticore missing its spikes, underworld and locust causing texture errors, etc.__________________________________________________By fixingof the above, you will have aof regaining the player base lost. Some will not ever come back because of bad experiences. Others will not come back because they have finished their single player experience. There's quite a sizable competitive community however, who are in desperate need for some of the features added, such as the observer enahancements. We payed for your product (that we practically already did a decade ago), we supported you for a long time, even though we have been actively beta testing the released, and clearly unfinished game.Finish your development. Allow us to enjoy the product we bought.