Today marks 8 months since World’s Edge betrayed AOE3, and to mark this, the social media manager decided to commemorate the milestone by banning me from every single one of the studio’s social media accounts.
Remember, this studio doesn’t care about you and no matter what they say, they don’t want to hear anything other than unceasing, sycophantic praise and will block you if you do not comply.
Remember to not buy the variant-filed slop DLC for AOE4 nor the Japanese dlc for AOM that they used AOE3 models and mechanics to make but did not credit nor the Alexander dlc for AOE2 where they fired the level designers immediately after completing the dlc work.
All those things are bad, but barely nerfing Otto for like 2.5 years might be the worst thing they’ve done lol.
jokes aside, it’s impressive how poorly they managed everything. 2 years ago they could have given us a send off patch focused on balance and bug fixes. They could have told us how much they enjoyed working on the game and most of the community would have thought things ended on a high note, especially if there were a few signs it was coming.
But let’s say they don’t do that. Instead of announcing a DLC, announce that it’s been a joy to have updated the game and that they will be working on minor balance issues and bug fixes going forward with one-to-two small patches per year until the game is stable and doesn’t have any major issues remaining.
Okay, but they had no foresight so they announced the DLC, figuring it’s a later problem. In October of 2024 announce it will be coming in October of 2025 for the 20 year anniversary. Get some community help (I’d imagine there are a few talented modders could be convinced to help out on a DLC for a small paycheck and having their names in the credits). Or just give it the development time required to actually make fairly simple 2 euro civs. Go traditional with them, each having roughly 1-2 truly unique units and 0-1 UBs. At least 70% of the cards can be totally recycled, and a sizable subset of the player base would actually find a “vanilla feel” very comforting after some of the DE civs.
I understand, bro, I went through the same thing as you a few months ago, simply because I reminded them a few times on their tweets that Age of Empires 3 existed.
Making good graphics is not too difficult.. Older games did it well in their time, and then even better with remasters. AOE-4 opted for a less organic style, which isn’t compatible with a franchise based on history and war conflicts.
We just need a rough, organic look, like the classic games.
It’s more complicated here, but I’d say AOE-3’s gameplay should be the template for the next game. AOE-4 has AOE-3 mechanics, but introduced in subtle ways, and only in certain factions and situations, when many of these things should be global. For example, the Ottoman Imperial Council should be a global mechanic for all civilizations.
AOE-3 has some very good core mechanics, such as:
Troop training in batches of up to 5 (standard).
Treasures on the map (Incentivizing exploration and micromanagement in the early stages of the game).
Minor factions, mercenaries, and outlaws (Making each map feel even more unique).
III features and gameplay are good for that game but objectively is not for a brand new game
This have been demostrated over and over again, just see why II and IV have more players than III
I don’t think so. Many things can be extrapolated to other periods. And the best things AOE-4 has right now, most of them don’t come from AOE-2. Besides, in the latest AOE-2 DLCs, they’ve introduced AOE-3 mechanics, and they’ve been well received.
