Speaking of @AndyPXIII it was really cool to you in the AoE3DE discord last week. I really can relate to your passion for AoEO as I am with AoE3DE. All AoE/AoM players are passionate about their preferred game and thatās pretty cool. We all have our preferences and bias as to what we like and want out of these games but we can agree we want the AoE franchise as a whole to produce high-quality games we can argue with each other about. 
Sure. I understood that. Thatās why I asked about Age II and Age III players who to this day vastly prefer their own games.
Youāre suggesting this group of as-yet unknown players as potential Age IV players. How would you do it? How would you design a game that unites both (to say nothing of Online or Mythology)?
See this is where my āoutsiderā experience comes in. Relicās, too. Theyāve learned (difficult) lessons on that already.
This isnāt a leading question. The current strategy of remastering AoE II and AoE III while developing Age IV as its own thing (and yet undeniably influenced by past games - by AoE II in particular) looks to be a good one in my opinion. Iām on board with it (note, Iām taking a strategic perspective instead of just looking at Age IV).
Oof. Thatās . . . I honestly donāt know. This seems silly to type on a forum.
I expected better. I know, it reads silly.
Actually, it does. If you donāt want to keep on top of the changes you literally want to see made, and then you want to use it as foundation for saying the game has a long way to go . . . I mean you were wrong. How else do you see it?
If I said the same was great because something had been added, and it hadnāt been . . . would me not knowing it be a reasonable excuse? Whyās āoops my badā so hard?
If thatās the criteria, then Age III failed me. I played Age I and II for a good while. Civilisation IIII failed. I played Civ I and a near infinite amount of SMAC.
Extrapolate that out across the playerbase. Yāknow. Instead of this weird gatekeeping youāve suddenly decided to pull.
Heh. I can think a lot of people whoād disagree with that.
If I were relic I will be focused of the amount of player based that bought the game and stopped playing, what those guys donāt like about the game? I am pretty sure that graphics turn off a huge amount of player base, graphics is also the biggest post in these forums and it was the biggest concern, other things like basic qol, lack of unique units etc.
Good to see more people playing, but only about 10%-20% will stay long term after they have played for a few weeks.
Might not like the game, finished the campaign, not enough content to keep them interested.
Relic need to do things abit faster to keep people interested in the game
Game modes
Skins
Dlc
Maps
Continue improving the game
The content editor is good but needs work to make it more simpler. Should be more like the warcraft 3 editor. You can almost make any game you like in it
Agreed, if your going to spend $60 on a game presumably you are planning on playing it a good bit. Figuring out why those players left and working on a solution is a good path. Obviously some people bought the game and donāt like the core gameplay so they probably will not return
thatās how innovation works, just polish what already works and change nothing
Thatās why I think that for an expansion pack Relic need to add more game play mechanics, rework water, more unique units, more textures, more asymmetrical play, better UI, better icons etcā¦ game play is ok for some player but for many it is too simple, I am pretty sure that if they improve with things I mentioned here, game will be better and will atract more players ( and even more important will atract age of empires fans), it is ok that they took age 2 as base to play safe but now they need to go their own route and start with inovation.
Most AoE fans, whether we like it more or less, like the variety of civs regardless of whether they are more symmetrical or not.
The game must respond to a casual audience and a competitive scene for it to continue to grow, so so much asymmetry in civilizations leads to serious balance problems.
The ideal is to be between AoE2 and AoE3 in terms of asymmetry.
I understand that but how many unique units have each civ? Just 2 if I am not mistakenā¦ I think people would love if they can add more without going 100% asymmetrical.
if they truly want to make everyone reconcile with aoe 4 just make it f2p. even at the current discount is expensive for the content provided (or 50% discount of the base price as i said in other treads).
those numbers, not bad at all.
price drop shoudl have been there from the start, kinda big turn off for players who payed full and pre ordered at much higher cost.
Umm, this is rather ridiculous. There is nothing wrong with AOE4. It is a quality game, and has been since the start.
There have been glaring imbalances in literally every AOE game, and yet, people seem to forget how those games were for the first year or so before the many balance patches and expansions. I still remember the ridiculous death star town centers in AOE2 (Age of Kings) and the insane Ottoman age 2 Abus guns that destroyed pretty much everything in AOE3, and yet people seem to ignore these facts and just remember how the game was after years of balance patches.
One thing that I really hate about AOE players today is how loud the minority of haters voices are. I donāt remember this hate when playing on the Zone in AOE2. It seems like some players today just want to be toxic instead of having fun playing the game.
youāre right that aoe 4 is a mp focus game and for that reason balance have a lot of weight in the game but in other aoe it was mostly sp (campaign and skirmish) so the problems in mp was less notorius (also because not everyone had internet/stable one back then and if you live in latam multiples game copies came from pirate ones so you didnt get access to the official mp servers and unofficial ones were kinda tricky to get in). As always the vocal one that dont want to make a progress on aoe 4 on balance which is ironic because aoe 4 is mostly pvp
Stillā¦ who said it was about balance?
The game needs reestructure like naval ones (which are in progress), better pathfinding, etc. thing that previus games didnt even need a rework but a few patches. even aoe 3 got it in complete state. The point that you state or I mean the ones that said " everyone who disagree with me is toxic" are the real toxics that donāt want a functional game that instead of celebrating ruin the legacy of aoe.
Such large numbers cannot be expected, the rts genre is niche, according to the twitch ranking the one with the highest ranking is starcartf, it is in position 82
followed by aoe and warcrft 3
A new game with the core gameplay of classic Age of Empires with some new innovations on top would be enough for any Age fan to want to give it a try.
After having been on the council for years and through release, my trust level with the development team is low and it irks me when people applaud them for fixing bugs and issues which most other developers would have patched months ago. Iām not sure exactly why changes have taken so much longer than expected, but I hope by bringing on other devs to the project changes will happen more quickly.
It is impossible for me to know everything in the change log from memory since last October. I cited examples from memory because the question about specific examples was asked. Have those bugs and issues been addressed since that time I remember? Great! Are they still open? My concern is still valid. Thatās all I meant to say.
I would agree that the original release of Age of Empires III was a big departure from the feel of the Age of Empires games which came before it and some did not accept it. The DE version has addressed a few of the criticisms of the original release but it will always be its own title for better or worse.
I think we could debate forever on what formula today would make the most successful Age game but staying true to your fans and making it interesting enough for potential new fans to check it out is probably a key part of that.
I honestly just wanted to have a chat today about the game and what I still feel needs to be worked on in my opinion. It got more heated than I was anticipating and frankly my emotions got the better of me at times. I apologize for any hard feelings.
I deeply like this franchise and want it to succeed in the future. My criticisms are meant to serve as inspiration to make changes and not simply to bash the game or the developers. Even though my patience has grown thin, I feel like the future of the game can still be great if the right choices are made. Iām not naive enough to suggest that I know what all of that looks like from a fanās perspective. One thing I do hope for going forward is much better marketing and communication and more active community events, contests, giveaways, etc. Show off all of the hard work and potential new content!
Twitch is for people that watch other play, I never used twitch, I think people like to play games instead watching others play, I donāt think RTS is a niche, when age IV launched it had more than 100k players, the problem is that devs today donāt understand RTS properly, the last good RTS was coh2 10 years ago and new ones are remasters like age 2 DEā¦
Games like Dota outperform others 20 times in online players
https://steamdb.info/tag/1676/
I think the main issue here is not AoEIV itself but peopleās expectations and the hope that AoE fans from all the games were gonna have some sort of kumbaya moment where AoEIV brings them altogether. Now perhaps itās my cynical nature but I knew that was never going to happen no matter how great a game AoEIV was. There was no way after well over a decade of dormancy of the franchise, a new dev team taking up the AoE mantel, etc AoEIV was gonna do this.
The AoE fanbase is fractured and will remain so (thereās nothing wrong with that btwā¦itās normal) Maybe lightning strikes and a future iteration will bring us together but the reality is AoEIV falls in line with the rest of AoE games and thatās perfectly fine. I think AoEIV did a good job bringing new players into the fold and that is incredibly valuable and something only a new game could have accomplished.
I think frost giant is going the right way to bring in new rts players. Game could be good or crap but there will close to million people trying it on steam the first couple weeks
There making it free to play
3vd3 for casual players with heroes
normal 1vs1 for esports
Making games free to play is good makes the developers have to keep updating the game regularly