They will have an emergency meeting before they decide on the excuse. Either it be “these are in fact very expensive and time consuming” or “so what?”
1 Like
I don’t work in game development, but it can’t be that hard surely. They already have idle animations for horses. Can’t they use those? Malian ranches show that it is technically possible. At least the horses. I can understand if the chicken are the ultimate boss in term of complexity, since there aren’t any animated ones in the game.
Nobody said anything about excluding the Byzantines. Or at least, I certainly didn’t.
In five or six hundred years, a society can change a lot. I agree with you in this.
In terms of naming them? It’s tricky. Do you design a video game for a guy who three PhDs, or do you design it for what people are going to recognise? Or do you strive for a balance, and sometimes make mistakes? I figure most folks are going to hit on that third one. I certainly would. Nobody is infallible. Relic course-corrected after the original variant names went public, and whoever is supporting the game now, whether it’s Relic, Forgotten Empires, or both of them, have obviously taken more care to ensure these new variants have better names.
Demanding that the variants be literal empires is not a standard held to Age factions generally, and is therefore an unfair standard to hold variants in IV to. You may not be arguing this, of course. Someone else was.
2 Likes
The irony of this. I think if you were to ask 1000 people about the Byzantines and the Romans, an overwhelming majority would recognize Romans before the Byzantines. The irony here is exactly that identifying the medieval Roman Empire with the word “Byzantine” is exactly the result of PhD academic circles (mostly from competing regions, HRE) wanting to disassosciate the region with Roman heritage. Invoking the very word Byzantine is not only reinforcing this misidentification, it is also a word that is simply far less known exactly because it is an artificially inflated term used with the intention to muddle Roman identity.
You’re falling for it because you don’t know any better.
1 Like
But they wouldn’t recognise Constantinople over, say, Rome, in terms of attributing it to the Romans. How many would even be able to link it to Istanbul?
I’m not sure you’re getting the irony across well.
What am I falling for? You’ve given an opinion on the Byzantines in response to me saying “who should a video game be designed for” and you’re getting very aggressive in your application of history (in service of whatever you consider this “misidentification” to be).
It seems like a completely unrelated tangent. I guess I did say that the Byzantines weren’t the literal Roman Empire, which is always going to attract interesting responses from some corners.
I do notice you stopped replying to Fyrapan90, though.
Missed this one, sorry.
Animations are a pretty well-solved problem, so my guesses are “resource” or “harder to add in this specific context than assumed”. I have no idea which. I remember the animated banners being added to some buildings, so maybe it was a performance baseline thing. Or maybe they’re alway prioritising resource for other tasks. Similar to why siege death animations remain so lacklustre.
3 Likes
I don’t have a problem with the points you offered.
Every time I introduced information or asked you a direct question you blew right past me and responded to yourself.
The question was extremely simple:
What dynasty, faction, or representation of the Persian civ captures their identity in a way that could represent it as a base civilization in the Age of Empires 4 format.
Basic requirements include:
- Defining the culture independently of existing factions
- Having the flexibility to include potential future variants
- Existing in some form continuosly through the game’s timespan
At no point am I trying to argue with you about it not being possible. Just that it isn’t feasible and breaks away from the design language of a base civ.
The existence of the Abbasid Caliphate requires that Persia is a part of it. They are what made the Abbasids who they are even if they were second class citizens within their empire. For godsake, their capital was in Baghdad, a Middle Persian name in the heart of what was the Persian empire.
I would like to have that conversation with you without being told how ignorant you think I am or how little you believe I care.
Tahirids
The Tahirids are sometimes considered as the first independent Iranian dynasty, but such a view is misleading. The arrangement was effectively a partnership between the Abbasids and the Tahirids.
Samanid Empire
Four brothers—Nuh, Ahmad, Yahya, and Ilyas—founded the Samanid state. Each of them ruled territories under Abbasid suzerainty. In 892, Ismail Samani (892–907) united the Samanid state under one ruler, thus effectively putting an end to the feudal system used by the Samanids. It was also under him that the Samanids became independent of Abbasid authority. However, by 945, the government was under the de facto control of the Turkic military slave faction, and the Samanid family’s authority had become purely symbolic.
Buyids
Although the Buyids were initially Zaydi Shia, they became Twelver Shia following the Major Occultation of Muhammad al-Mahdi after the death of his fourth agent in 941. Regardless, the Buyids were known for supporting the Sunni Abbasid caliphs and being tolerant of the Sunni population, who formed the majority of their realm.
1 Like
They shifted the direction to please esports pros, then lost a huge amount of player base after first 1-2 weeks
3 Likes
Besides the graphics!
I know a great game is not defined by having the best graphics it can.
But a large amount of players actually care about the graphics on a game
I remember how then the game was called a MS Clash of Clans, a Fortnite Age Game or simply saying that the game looked too cartoony for them!
A bad mix of saturation, coloring, contrast and lightning plus very small textures and a bad unit/building scale ratio obligated a large amount of players to drop their hope on a new Age game. Then the rest is history
Relic and Worlds Edge made very bad decisions with the game since the very beginning
So is what the game is now
A Triple A game has to have several directions, that’s why it has a great budget, another thing is that its development has been a disaster and that’s something we don’t know.