AOE:IV was great as a SP game. Horrible as a MP game

Age of Empires IV IV - Discussion
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Take this video, one of 27 documentary videos. They have to pay to take the crew there, for each of the cameras they are using, and for the director, producers, and editors. They have to pay for the living arrangements, per diem of about 200 for each crew member. They have to arrange the timing window for the correct time of day, weather, and schedule of the people they are shooting on camera.

Then they have to edit the footage. This includes sifting through hours of b-roll, audio correction, music and sound effects, color correction.

A lot of the labor cost that goes into shooting the cinematic is being ignored by your comparison. They have to do all of that AND include CGI.

We have a conversation on the cost of the game about once every 2 months since launch at this point. A lot of times the conversation revolves around ballparked figures. The real cost of this game is actually very large, it’s what makes it a AAA release.

For reference, a documentarian doing a private 14 day shoot would cost about 75k. That’s for one person. Scaling the cost with a team of as many as 7 people, it becomes several hundred thousand dollars in total, maybe even millions depending on location and total footage.

Source

Something that would help settle the issue would be a quote for a project of a similar scale to AoE IV! Much more reliable than us going back and forth over theoretical numbers.

More than cost, you also have the physical reality of filming in a location. The most recent expansion was set in an area that is undergoing severe conflict. There are many reasons to go for CGI/animation over film. It’s not always a cost issue.

Edit: some additional info

Here are rates for filming: https://www.reddit.com/r/FilmTVBudgeting/comments/16hyszv/day_rates/
You may note here that there are a lot of people involved in a 4 day shoot… 3 people in the camera department, and upwards of 6 in grip & electric department.

More on topic with the thread, I have a lot of shared experience with the concerns the OP has with multiplayer. I can understand why there are less features in customizing the game than AOE 2 (20 years of support will do that), but it is definitely lacking. The absence of multiplayer pausing and saving will hopefully be addressed in season 9, the next major patch coming in late October. Mod support is far less than I would like as well.

Something that I think could positively augment the multiplayer experience would be the addition of PvE Co-op experiences. They have the foundations of it with the Malian and Ottoman Art of War scenarios. There are also the co-op campaigns from AoE 2 DE that they could take inspiration from.

For inspiration outside the series, there’s co-op missions from Starcraft 2. You can queue in varying difficulties, or even max difficulty with modifiers that are randomized weekly. The missions are based on events following the campaign, and I think that could be applied to AoE IV as well. There is also a progression system that unlocks more for co-op commanders as you play, and profile rewards for progressing. Something that would help drive purpose in having RPG features, like the Jeanne d’Arc variant.

A lot of my friends don’t play at the same level as me, and we all deeply crave a cooperative experience that isn’t as punishing as PvP. They should absolutely focus on addressing the existing issues, but I hope we see something along those lines in future updates/expansions.

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This error is not common. It is likely that this error is due to your local network or some issue with sharing the game with your family.

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Oh, I see. Clarified the term I DISAGREE:

  • AoE IV has THE BEST MULTIPLAYER of the franchise, first of all because its Ranked IS FUN:
    – You can play in feudal with unique units and unique mechanics for each civ.
    – There is more than 1 unique unit per civilization.
    – There is many options to analyze when you play aggainst some enemy Civs, like age up with one or another Landmarck, or choose a combination of units for your army.
    – You are not forced to kill all the enemy villagers hiding at the edge of the map (AoE2, AoE3), unnecessarily lengthening the game, but rather destroy landmarks. And in case you prefer the traditional AoE2, use Advanced Game Mode to select the victory condition to Total Conquest.

  • If we compare it to the vanilla AoE II multiplayer, I didn’t like it at all, because in 1vs1 it was pure "Feudal Archer Fight, until the first one to produce a mangonel won by default. Almost all Pro Arena competitions were THE SAME.

  • About AoE2:DE, for the multiplayer we had to wait for a patch where they Yapped with technologies to the Militia Line and the Light Cavalry so that there would be more variety in combats in Feudal Age.

  • AoE2 multiplayer in teams, to keep up with the competitive game (and not be insulted), almost forces you to use MODS that alter the art of the game too much, to the point of making it very ugly: 1. Microscopic trees, 2. uniform sterile terrain, 3. ugly palisades, 4. too flashy area lines. I’ve even seen mods for 5. Signs that tell where they are Boars and relics, it’s already an abuse.

  • About AoE3 MP (Multiplayer), “it’s a mess for beginners”, first of all because Ranked is equivalent to “Quick Play”, and Customized Multiplayer is the “True Ranked”, and on top of that, with customized games, it can take you forever to find one you like that isn’t ranked:
    – The worst thing that can happen to you is entering a lobby with a 1-HOUR peace treaty game. What am I supposed to do as an intermediate? Eating PocCorn while watching the animals graze? Very slow.

  • About Disconnection, it’s happened to me in all the games, it’s not exclusive to AoE-IV. In fact, the one I had the most problems with Desync with has been AoE3. About solutions:
    – I would always suggest checking if Windows or Linux is up to date, and if the AMD or Nvidia Drivers are also up to date, sometimes you get surprises that are a month behind in updates.
    – The other thing is if your Monitor is adapted to your GPU, that is, use the proper HDMI cable, not an adapter, because if you use and adapter, visual problems could happens, or even affect your connection.
    – Well, that’s all I can recommend, even so, these server problems still happen, the computers servers are not perfect.

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Those documentaries as a reward for completing the Campaign levels were one of the most “gratifying” things when playing it.

In fact, I missed them quite a bit when Sultans Ascend DLC came out but the campaign dont have them as prize. I hope they take them up again for new campaigns, although I know they were expensive and that’s why they only came out when the game started.

There I just found out that medieval castles were not those “ant nests” of granite that they sell in Hollywood movies, but that they really were decorated with murals and paintings, and even painted. I suppose it’s the same mistake that was made with Greek and Roman sculptures, which were believed to be white, but in reality they were painted, only the paint came off when they were dug up.

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I can’t tell at this point if it’s a reading comprehension issue or just a strawman that you built. You cannot claim “something is not cheap” without making a relative comparison and having a point of reference. It’s not cheap for whom? For you? For your friend’s wedding budget? For what? That’s logically nonsensical. I literally compared the drone videography to CGI. You literally liked/agreed another user’s post who literally said that this is more expensive than CGI. Well you’re factually wrong. Now that you realized that you’re wrong you’re claiming that you had just took a single sentence out of my message to build a strawman and attack it out of context. Good job, well nobody cares if you think drones are expensive for your friend’s wedding, but good for clarifying it now. I may as well agree with you then and say that they probably are. Sometime it’s good admitting we were wrong than keep arguing out of ego.

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AoE IV campaigns aren’t that great to me they are for the most part Meh.
Also there are not a lot of campaign missions.

I like AoE I - III campaigns more with them being more interesting and AoM has the best in the franchise by far for me. Also playing Skirmish for AOM and AoE III I like the most.

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Fair enough. I think you’re underestimating real-world costs and overestimating 3D costs (bearing in mind most / all gamesdev studios have in-house 3D resource).

I also don’t think assuming everyone who doesn’t understand your point is acting in dumb / bad faith is helping either.

My friends paid for a single flyover of a single location. Of something booked years in advance for which filming has no legal nor logistical issues (because it’s a wedding venue).

I’m from the UK. Do you understand how busy York is? Do you know where the Roman wall remains in York are? Do you know how busy it is? I’ve had close relatives in York for over 30 years. I’ve visited York for decades. Have you? Can you say with any authority what charges the local council charges?

I can’t!

Liking a post doesn’t mean I like everything in it.

Prove it.

Amen. I completely agree.

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All of those points are 100% true for AoE3 as well, so it’s difficult to argue they set AoE4 apart.

Huh? Ranked is ranked, I don’t understand why you decided that ranked in AoE3 isn’t ranked and created this mess for yourself. I just play ranked search and don’t have an issue.

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It wasn’t shared with my family, we own two separate copies. We also have fiber to the premises and top of the line PC’s with updated everything (drivers, windows update etc).

But the error would actually be palatable if they had the option to pause and save. We could save every 15-30 minutes during play and load again if we got that error. Not having that option? Game is uninstalled.

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Got it. They will add this pause feature in the next update.

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They’re looking at it for MP. It’s not guaranteed.

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If you want to play AoE 4 for multiplayer, I would recommend you wait 2 or 3 years until it has several QoL updates and DLCs out (I stopped playing it since January 2023 because it no longer had any more content to offer me)… now I’m playing AoE 2 VaV, AoEO, AoM Retold and when the Baltic DLC comes out, I’ll come back with force to AoE 3 DE…

Yes, perhaps the English campaign was the most meh, the French one was neither here nor there, the Mongolian one was a bit better and the best of the original game was the Russian one… then the TSA campaign is simply a remake of the AoE 2 Saladin campaign plus some naval missions to change things up a bit…

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I’m not interested in the pause, except in the campaign like coh3

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