One thing the development team doesn’t seem to understand is that there’s quite a lot of pressure to get this right, and there are various groups in the community that want particular things.
Not including cheat codes and a scenario editor is a huge blow to the content creators, which single handedly kept aoe2 and aoe3 alive. If they release a game which does not address at least partially some of the wishes of all the groups that make the community, all those dissatisfied will simply walk away. And content creators are literally the most important part of the age of empires franchise.
I feel like the devs are going down the same route as sc2, with a lot of hype and build up, releasing a half complete game. But I don’t think they are willing to pour as much money as blizzard did (and the game still ended up dead), so I have a feeling aoe4 will be a swift and resounding failure if they do this release. They would be better off delaying the game.