at least that sound promising.I hope
Theyāve been part of it all along. Theyāve said so themselves.
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FE is the best. We need more homegrown developers. Outsiders donāt seem to get us very much.
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I never said it was.
I was responding to your claim of some theoretical silent majority when the game itself is popular by the only stats we have available to us.
Beyond that, what does āthe wholeā mean? People who play Age II can still play Age II. People who play Age III can still play Age III. Theyāre significantly different games to the extent that reconciling the divergent playerbases is a struggle to this day (thankfully theyāve both still got relatively modern Definitive editions for fans to enjoy).
Iām done with this kind of appeal, sorry. You of all people should know how committed I am to Age IV. But it seems it might have been founded on a faulty premise, so Iāll let you respond to the above first.
That said, I just saw this.
And youāre talking of respect? Cāmon, this is just laughable from someone who didnāt even know something was fixed in the first place.
If you donāt like the core design of the game? Or are put off by changes in design and presentation? More than fine. I completely understand why youād be disengaged in that event. But to then complain that thereās work to be done when youāre not even following the work? You can understand why thatās a bit aggravating, surely?
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By the whole, Iām talking about players of any other Age game who would consider picking up and playing Age IV.
Itās great that you are committed to Age IV, but I hope itās in the best interest of the Age of Empires community and not simply praising the dev team no matter the situation.
Itās not my job to hunt through patch notes on the off chance something I asked for was addressed. Often times there are changes which are not indeed documented. If the change was there at release, like it should have been, we wouldnāt even be having this discussion. This does not fall on me.
Iām turned off to the game because the game was not designed for Age fans from the start. It was a next release in a franchise which has been around for 20+ years. Do not reinvent the wheel. Looking for opportunities to advance the game alone would have been fine. As a long-standing Age fan the game should feel comfortable to me to play and represent a natural evolution of the art, like a comfy sweater, not like a strangers leather jacket. If things donāt work in game as well as or better than they have in the past, I get frustrated and lose interest.
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I do not understand this statement at all. Then who was it designed for?
It has many, many similarities to AoE2 while streamlining some things. There seem to be ideas here and there taken from other Age games as well.
Pacing wise, the macro/micro balance, etcā¦ itās very much an AoE game.
Even among people who didnāt like the game we constantly had SC2 people complaining it was too slow, AoE3 people complaining it was too much like AoE2, a few very silly AoE2 people complaining it was too much like AoE3, etcā¦
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The game was designed, whether purposefully or mistakenly, in a way that is inconsistent with the core gameplay feel of the other games in the franchise. It is plain for me to see that the dev team was more interested in the development of their own vision for Age of Empires than one that would be best received by the community.
We shouldnāt have had to have the conversation about so many aspects of the game of the team actually respected the franchise instead of using data as the primary driver to pick and choose what is important and what is not.
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How so? How is it inconsistent with the core gameplay feel?
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I canāt believe Iām saying this on an Age of Empires forum. At a base level, the game should play like the first two Age games. The core mechanics should be the same. Build on that success.
There are many things in the game which the dev team should have left alone instead of trying to make their mark everywhere. On release, I didnāt recognize it as an Age game. Just a medieval RTS.
Ok at a base level how does it not?
For something being so āplain to seeā you do not seem to be able to articulate it very well.
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To me it comes down to unit behavior. When I ask a unit to do something, it needs to do what I expect it to do coming from other Age games.
- Will all fishing ships deposit resources in the nearest dock, regardless of which dock they were originally trained?
- Will units ungarrison on the closest side of a building to a waypoint?
- Will the A.I. behave in a logical manner or will it be completely indecisive and therefore glitch out?
- Will units completely obey my unit commands the first time or decide to go rogue or play ring around the rosie?
- Will units be plainly and constantly visible or will they disappear at random?
- Will campaigns be broken for months after release because the ācorrectā order of operations was not followed, and it caused enemy units to glitch? There should be alternate victory conditions.
These are just a sampling of all of the annoyances which I have experienced while playing this game shortly after release. I know that likely a few have been fixed since that time.
I hope new content is being used to draw interest for the game again. While Iām checking out the new content, Iāll see all the things that have been fixed and feel better about the game overall.
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Hmm ok, I do not see what any of that has to do with:
āThe game was not designed for Age fans from the start.ā
Or:
āOn release, I didnāt recognize it as an Age gameā
Or:
āThe game was designed, whether purposefully or mistakenly, in a way that is inconsistent with the core gameplay feel of the other games in the franchiseā
Most of those things are just bugs that theyāve since fixed. Or in the case of the crappy AI been improving incrementally (AoE2 AI was also ā ā ā ā for a long time).
The game released with too many bugs for sure. That has nothing to do with it being designed for Age fans though.
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I feel the devs changed gameplay too much and should have left well enough alone.
Familiar age-up mechanic? Gone.
Edge of map border? Gone. Enjoy out of bounds for no apparent reason.
Upgrade towers all at once with a single tech? Gone. Upgrading each individual tower is required.
Stealing herdables from other players? Gone. Now tethered to the scout.
etc.
No mod support, no scenario editor, no fully customizable hotkey support, no taunts, no cheats, etc. plus all of the bugs (and more) identified above. I did not recognize it as an Age game because of missing features and because the quality level was not what I expected coming from previous releases in the franchise.
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Ok, this is more of a matter of your personal preference than the game being bad. I have been an age fan since i was a little kid and i loved the changes, and there are many people here that love and enjoy the game. It may not feel like an aoe game for you, but it definitely does for me.
The game took many aoe2 mechanics and improved on them as well as adding many mechanics that were present in aoe3
The age up mechanic is not unfamiliar at all, it was introduced in aoe3 with the asian dynasties expansion where civs would have to build a wonder to reach the next age.
You could make a case for towers, I found it akward at the start, but now i dont mind them at all, and again its a matter of personal preference and taste.
As for sheep, this was a mechanic that I and many age fans loved. It makes early game much more simple and smooth.
If you dont like the direction or design of the game, then just dont play it. The other age games are still there and are still recieving plenty of updates and content.
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Iām glad you like the game.
Like I said, I am willing to give the game another try at the right time, such as when new content is released or the next season update, whichever comes first.
The game certainly didnāt meet my expectations at release but I acknowledge itās getting better over time, even though itās taking much longer than I had hoped. As long as the priority fixes improve gameplay for all, I can live with that.
It is, i am not gonna lie, there are aspects of tha game that were and are still quite frustrating, but its getting much better. Changes may be slow but they are coming and things are going in a good direction
I honestly think season 3 could be were we could see a big turn around for this game.
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I played a little by AoE IV, I have been playing AoE series since I have memories.
So far I sticked to 3 because the very different gameplay (seems that AoE IV got a little bit of that) between civs, the pace and the card system. That is my bias
But maybe what I feel lacking is the ambience and SP content. In AoE II you got a feeling of upgrading the units, you could see the knight being upgraded to the cavalier and the golden update of Paladin. Now every of that has been scrapped among the names upgrades (I got it, for simplicity sake). But it was cool and a sense of progression, like the names of the techs.
Same for SP. The history narration approach is cool, but you feel like a very outsider. Portraits for hero units, ingame dialogues, campaigns based in only one historical figureā¦ We all remember el Cid mission to becoming the king hero in the first mission or AoE III Morgan āAmIpictureāā¦ but what about AoE IV campaign scenarios?
Also more civs, but that eventually will come.
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Relic has to liven the maps up with more flora and fauna. It may be a small thing for some but the maps have always been a really important aspect in AoE games for me in regards to adding charm to the games. Right now, they just feel like battlegrounds for esports. They donāt even have birds in the skies.
Give the game some personality for heavenās sake.
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Both these things are annoying. I really cannot stand the stupid mechanic that you have to upgrade every tower individually. And towers donāt even shoot when you build them, you have to do an upgrade for that like wth
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@anon63664082 and @AndyPXIII are 2 moderators with different aoe perspectives (one is more into AoE1/2 and the other AoEO/AoM). Both one and the other are halfway in terms of tastes (they usually ask for different feedback), but if FE manages to convince players from differents AoE (like them) to play AoE4 again and that they more or less like it, is already a success.