I knew that the game if it was not released on Steam would have been a disaster on a technical level, it is so! They had to work and release Aoe DE to force on the Microsoft Store when they could very well release it on Steam, since they already had experience in that platform thanks to AoE2 HD.In fact not asking for the help of Steam have had to postpone the exit even 4 months. The result? There are more 1-star reviews than 5 stars on the Microsoft Store. Are there people who love this series and who pre-ordered the game on trust and what do they find? A game that does not even start and with many other problems! they release unpresentable products that need the user’s somersaults to function. How do you release such a thing? I hope you will not make the same mistake with Age of Empires IV.With this post I would like Microsoft to take action otherwise this game will be a disaster.
eh… The idea of a non-steam release was kinda strange, but considering how valve has a grudge against windows and Microsoft, its no wonder. Where is the Steam OS going anyways?
By the way, other than the Microsoft Store release only. As a game, where does it really disappoints?
If you ask me, I think there are way too little map types in the random map generator. Maybe if they let us make a few scripts and add them to the game, so we can get random map types of our own.
The game is nice. The problem was the store.
to be fair, i dont really get whats the big deal with steam here. if you have windows 10, its acctually pretty easy to buy-install-play. sure, we are all used to using steam as a platform, but in reality i dont see much difference. i was angry for non-steam decision before but i think people just exaggerate it.
i had zero issues. everything worked smoothly.
those 1 stars are not for the game, i bet. game is good too. sure it has problems, but nothing deal breaking.
to be honest, at this point, its just annoying to see same “no-steam-no-buy” attitude over and over again.
besides, valve dropped half life 3 just because they were earning super easy money with steam, doing nothing, developing nothing. im acctually happy that i dont have to buy&play through steam for once. finally i dont have to support valve for dumping half life 3.
what is steam? its just a platform earning free money share over products they dont even create. i rather buy it from acctual creators store: microsoft store. its not broken like origin or uplay, and it runs good just like steam do.
Pathfinding killing it.
Try to walk with Hannibals elephants and you know what i mean!
The irony is that they release it on the store/W10 only but even people who have w10 have bugs like not launching etc.
And i agree with Cleglaw the mad about steam. Why should one game be a steam slave ? But on the other hand i understand it’s easier to have all games on few launchers.
i think everything related to windows 10 is far from a good direction in technology… Why so many waitings/connections/hubs/stores/apps when the old (still perfectly working) methods are good? Why is the need for new bullshit and clean designs so important and it gives NO advantages whatsoever, just slow downs, please waits, connection to’s , BULLSHIT… windows 10 is a 21 century example of an all in one bullshit product
I don’t think any of the problems you mentioned will be gone if it would be released on Steam. Because they are not caused by the platform, crashing games and bad pathfinding can be seen in many games on Steam. Why would a game be magically better just by releasing it on a different platform?
Its quite simple: Valve takes 30% off of every sale made on Steam. MS doesn’t want to pay that and has its own platform, plus Age is probably their biggest franchise on PC and therefore a way to force people to use it - like EA did with Origin and Battlefield 3 and Mass Effect 3 or Ubisoft with their games (although they are still sold on Steam, you ned Uplay for most of them, especially the big titles) did. Its mostly business decision.
Steam release don’t will fix the pathfinder… or add requested features. or crashes…etc
I agree on your point that it should of been released on steam also. Despite Valve taking 30%, I think it would be more profitable due to a large gamer base using/associating with steam. Lots of people probably aren’t aware AoE:DE even exists. Steam is a good marketing tool and they should really push for this. I 100% believe that there will be a lot more buzz if it ever makes it to the steam platform
@GenBabbage said:
By the way, other than the Microsoft Store release only. As a game, where does it really disappoints?
It disappoints in a lot of ways. Pathfinding is terrible, lag is significant, game is buggy. All very important things. A lot of people can’t even get into the game.
One of this games big advertising points was “now you can build up to 250 population!” but in reality if you even try to build a large army it just weakens you because of how often they get stuck running into each other and the trees.
Furthermore, people are reporting that mid game they get out of sync errors and get dropped. Playing and investing 20-30 minutes into a single game and then being dropped sucks for everyone in the game. One would think that in a 2018 remastering of a game something like being able to rejoin a disconnected game should be an option.
You cannot change your team color in multiplayer.
The scenario builder is clunky, outdated, and non new user friendly. Some of the features straight up don’t work. And even if you create a map, its hard to share it.
The lobby browser looks like it was made by someone whos never seen a lobby browser before. Even the original AOE Zone was better and that was what a decade ago?
Customer support seems nonexistent. I see people talking on the forums who have been trying to get into the game since release. I even have friends who still can’t get in.
The AI is awful. No other real way to put it, the computer civs do not function basically at all on any maps with water, and they only function sometimes in general. They almost always all simply attack the player with the highest score. For example, 3 players vs 3 computer, the 3 comp. will attack the highest score player while the other 2 get free reign to do what they like. Imbalanced. Sometimes the AI will just walk their villagers into a lion or crocodile and die and surrender. Sometimes they do basically nothing besides gather bushes and wood. You never know what you will get from the AI.
These are just the things I can think of from the top of my head. Not all of them are “game breaking” but they definitely create a real feeling of disappointment. For a game that was supposed to be released months ago, it looks and plays like it should have been released months from NOW. As an AOE fan, I wanted to really like this game. But it disappoints.
Maybe the developers have a lot planned to fix the game, maybe they can save it. But from what I’ve read it seems like they intend to just do a few things and then move on to AOE II DE. So honestly, I don’t expect much. It’s really too bad because I was hoping this would be a good game for a lot of people for a while. But likely it’ll just fade to a small group of hardcore players after a month or two without real developer support.
The game disappoints me too. I prefer a improved gameplay than fancy graphics…
They shouldve made the game more stable before releasing it. Im having alot of bugs.
Not only the pathing issue but the menu and lobby browser are really laggy, my game crashes when i join a lobby, it crashes when viewing tech tree after 2 min, it doesnt connect me to my xbox profile and i need to restart several times. It is horrible.
And dont get me started on the AI lol.
This really disappointed me, i expected more from Microsoft.
Let them fix all the bugs first and release it on steam in 2 months.
I hope they put some effort in this game, or gimme my money back yo
@“Fate Astolfo” said:
@GenBabbage said:
By the way, other than the Microsoft Store release only. As a game, where does it really disappoints?
It disappoints in a lot of ways. Pathfinding is terrible, lag is significant, game is buggy. All very important things. A lot of people can’t even get into the game.
One of this games big advertising points was “now you can build up to 250 population!” but in reality if you even try to build a large army it just weakens you because of how often they get stuck running into each other and the trees.
Furthermore, people are reporting that mid game they get out of sync errors and get dropped. Playing and investing 20-30 minutes into a single game and then being dropped sucks for everyone in the game. One would think that in a 2018 remastering of a game something like being able to rejoin a disconnected game should be an option.
You cannot change your team color in multiplayer.
The scenario builder is clunky, outdated, and non new user friendly. Some of the features straight up don’t work. And even if you create a map, its hard to share it.
The lobby browser looks like it was made by someone whos never seen a lobby browser before. Even the original AOE Zone was better and that was what a decade ago?
Customer support seems nonexistent. I see people talking on the forums who have been trying to get into the game since release. I even have friends who still can’t get in.
The AI is awful. No other real way to put it, the computer civs do not function basically at all on any maps with water, and they only function sometimes in general. They almost always all simply attack the player with the highest score. For example, 3 players vs 3 computer, the 3 comp. will attack the highest score player while the other 2 get free reign to do what they like. Imbalanced. Sometimes the AI will just walk their villagers into a lion or crocodile and die and surrender. Sometimes they do basically nothing besides gather bushes and wood. You never know what you will get from the AI.
These are just the things I can think of from the top of my head. Not all of them are “game breaking” but they definitely create a real feeling of disappointment. For a game that was supposed to be released months ago, it looks and plays like it should have been released months from NOW. As an AOE fan, I wanted to really like this game. But it disappoints.Maybe the developers have a lot planned to fix the game, maybe they can save it. But from what I’ve read it seems like they intend to just do a few things and then move on to AOE II DE. So honestly, I don’t expect much. It’s really too bad because I was hoping this would be a good game for a lot of people for a while. But likely it’ll just fade to a small group of hardcore players after a month or two without real developer support.
I can’t express anything concerning the online problems. I hate online games. However, as far as the ai is concerned, I’ve yet to see them actually not function even on water maps. One ai enemy even created transports and sent troops at my island in one random map earlier today, as well as created dozens of triremes to counter my dozens of triremes lol. My issue with the ai is that it’s unpredictable. Sometimes it’s extremely easy and, while it does function, it still ends up killing itself by the mass suicide villagers thing many see. Other times it’s extremely difficult and sends units out to destroy you within the first couple minutes before you can even get anything really going. And the difficulty settings don’t seem to change that unpredictable nature. AI is definitely wonky in that regard.
The game could not be Just a tribute to the old players (i played aoe1 when i was a Child, dont even knew whats i was doing on the w98 demo). The game should be a game for the 2018 players to Still alive, fix Pathfinder, farms rebuild, ia and defense buildens against mass units. Ah, and the lobby on multiplayer.
What is the release date for the patch to make it work on Win7?
@EdmondDantes said:
What is the release date for the patch to make it work on Win7?
Is a joke? Win7?
Furthermore, people are reporting that mid game they get out of sync errors and get dropped. Playing and investing 20-30 minutes into a single game and then being dropped sucks for everyone in the game. One would think that in a 2018 remastering of a game something like being able to rejoin a disconnected game should be an option.
I spent many brutally difficult hours debugging out of sync (OOS) problems in the Age DE codebase, so I know a lot about this topic.
So far I’ve played literally dozens of hours of MP (during beta and after). Since release, about 12 hours of MP matches so far, with players all over the world. Some games lasted over an hour. Not a single OOS in the release build.
So far, I’m only aware of a single out of sync, caused by players either ripping the power cord or network cable from their PC. This situation is very tricky to handle in peer to peer lockstep RTS engines, because the command packets just suddenly and randomly stop going out to all the other clients. Even so, the game can usually handle this scenario.
Generally, this RTS game has far less OOS’s than others I’ve played.
As for saving and restoring MP matches, it’s possible (and it’s a feature I would like to see), but we had a lot of other more pressing matters to address first.
@“Fate Astolfo” said:
One of this games big advertising points was “now you can build up to 250 population!” but in reality if you even try to build a large army it just weakens you because of how often they get stuck running into each other and the trees.
I agree with a lot of what you said, but this just isn’t true. I’ve had quite a few high pop games in beta and release, and with a little bit of control it plays just fine. Pathfinding needs work, but it doesn’t make large armies ineffective at all.
I play single player on easy level. I tried playing DE several times, but the AI overcame any efforts I made to defend my town center and I was defeated.
I decided I must not know how to play (although I have owned and played AOE, AOE II, AOE III, and AOM). I went to the tutorial. The AI there is so aggressive, you cannot actual learn from the tutorial.
I wasted $20 on this game.