Just to be clear: I don’t see AoE 2 as the gold standard when it comes to UI design. I just wanted to bring the icons into discussion as imo having unique looking icons is better than having the same icon and just adding dots to indicate an upgrade.
The example @ArrivedLeader22 posted is something I’d love to see for 4 - three uniform icons that are still unique enough to communicate to the player that they’re the upgrade.
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The thing is, even if I didn’t have a preference towards more colourful and expressive icons, there are egregious decisions with AOE4’s icon presentation. I’m reminded of this example that I’ve brought up in the past;
The MAA himself is just a cutout image that is shrunk down for whatever reason. So despite it already being a small image, it feels even harder to really see the icons and get any sort of connection to them because they don’t even encompass all the space they are given. And that is shared across all icons in this game for whatever reason–I’m guessing some designer felt it made it feel cleaner to neglect displaying these in their full glory.
This is an image that I posted a while back in relation to icon portraits. It should still be in line with the topic of how AOE4 feels less interesting. So what is the issue with this image? Well, basically, it is a combination of two things. The first, mentioned above, and the second being that this is suppoused to be this icon’s portrait. Do you see that it too, does the same thing that had already been done before? So you get this super scaled down image that vaguely conveys what it is with no details to be seen. All the visual data that you could appreciate about it visually is almost destroyed in that process of literally shrinking it to nothing. You can tell it is the Camel Rider; but at what cost, when you could’ve done so if it was scaled normally either way?
Here is an example I have made of that Camel Rider scaled up. Forgot to include Unique symbol.
I would’ve gone through the effort of making a fresh new example with the icons themselves instead of portraits for say, MAA–but this should get my point across just in the same way, and considering that people will ignore my point and try to explain it away why “actually shrunk down is even better 
”, it’ll have to do.
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I love your adjustment to the icon every time I see it. The icon still should never have existed, but you successfully proved there are problems stacked upon problems with the UI.
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my bigger offence with this particular icon/UI element is this: unlike in og games, clicking on it doesn’t take you to that unit on the map, minor detail, but its not that hard to implement relic
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It centres the icon and allows you to see the whole thing.
That said, this goes to an extreme with the unit portrait on the unit itself, because a square inside a circle loses too much space. The pips are too scaled-down, too.
But I still disagree with your proposed solution, because you’re cutting off quite a bit of the unit (not talking about the symbol). Yours looks cleaner, but losing some of the detail kinda defeats the entire point of the symbolism, and I dislike the floating pips too.
I haven’t given pips enough thought in general. I like them conceptually, but the implementation needs work.
I’m beginning to think people are substituting preference for problems ^^
Do you care about accessibility at all? Or is your personal appreciation for preference the overriding thing you’re looking for in a game that has to appeal to you + thousands of other players. Honest question. Loaded, but honest.
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its not about profit but the level of acceptance to be charged to the base product. msot of them that refund probably did for those details.
thats the problem. true aoe fans comtenplate other aoe. aoe 2 only cares about that game. before aoe 4 announcement, aoe 2 playerbase mindset vs other aoe. Tose were in a eternal fight onhow the franchise have to evolve. aoe 2 hates the changes and that one didnt change nowadays and others aoes tend to like new interaction to the base formula. back to making a new interaction is important to know because back then were multiples attemtps to make a new game with new mechanic but it always fails to catter everyone and that one is important for every dev that wants to make a new interaction because the last one was aoeo and was so disastorus to make the franchise be sleved for almost 2 decades. From that and experience from every new aoe since 3 is that aoe 2 dont hange much there whic they are the short term profit (saying that one because you care about if adding x thing is not or is profitable for the company like this one. The fact that FE devs understand this and made an update that makes the playerbase grow a bit says loudly
) but cattering to newest ones are for long term.becuse they tend to keep playing and paying for gamepass or attracting more player via steam.
About that one
is because of your actions and probably the ones on the council because most annoyance from the game are still unsolved but you seem to go defensive which some may wonder if you accet those agreedments during the coucil meeting or not care of it at all. Also I take consideratio your likeness to the ui style which its confrimed on that one
which it dont take the perspective and the average iconography that is very used on aoe 3 ownward which are not minimalist icons and they are readable. art is subjective but videogames has to eb practical in its mechanics and menus to make easy to understand the art behind an game for the player. Also your ultra defensive position on counter argument and say that we dont undertand the game or devs …(dunno which more you said) makes the point of seeing you not as a true fan but probably only for aoe 2. For those reason your point of view of ui design is biased form an objective and subjective point of view.
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Pointless gatekeeping. I was playing other games when III came out. The next entry in the franchise is IV.
If IV had been more based on III, I’d have been fine with that too. I love the Malians.
Everything else is you taking my playing AoE II and inventing random nonsense out of it. I don’t judge anyone for the Age games they prefer. You shouldn’t either.
If there’s a stereotype of AoE II fans and how they act about other games in the franchise, your reaction to that shouldn’t be “assume anyone who ever played AoE II is that stereotype”. It’s just a dumb thing to do. It puts you on the same level.
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I don’t know anything worth sharing about accessibility. Could you explain how accessibility affects icons?
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idea gorb suggests on accessibility is having little color helps people with color blindness, i don’t disagree there, but having it as toggleable option wouldn’t hurt anyone alongside more “colorfull/artistic” portraits us oldfangs are familiar with
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I will let gorb answer to explain ofc, but it would be news to me that making a game accessible for players mandates the removal of colorful unit portraits and building icons. Colorful icons are in all sorts of modern games that presumably are designed with similar accessibility objectives in mind. For that matter, I understand they are in all other Age games, even those released recently, and also in Relic games, not that those are particularly relevant to this franchise, though they do seem relevant to speak to Relic’s tolerance for color.
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never said i necessarily agree with ultra simplistic icons with 1 color, imo this is fixing an issue that doesn’t exist, both DEs for 2 and 3 added colorblindness and other accessibility settings in without altering art of the game
imo best solution is following: make proper portrait icons, and let us effing mod UI if we want to add smt more specific, smt impossible to do rn in any real capacity
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Accessability is something I take incredibly serious but this is a faulty suggestion. It should come in the form of options rather than alteration of the overall experience for everyone. Gorb’s point about accessability is also making the assumption that our proposal to an alternative style would require colour perception for the icons to be recognizable (which I’m pretty sure, we don’t). This of course ignores that colour does not take the same design space as shape, and you have both have every shape and every colour on top of each other without altering either. You wouldn’t mistake a circle for a trinagle just because it is blue. There are various of types of disabilities out there, and it is a difficult topic to address as currently, there are few states that actually has a good foundation of laws directing companies in games to follow through making their experiences more accessible.
I think it is something that should be enforced far more than it is, and many companies treat the whole deal as the wild west. Having said this, I don’t think it is a nice card to play, to say that the rest of us are proposing icons that make it a feverdream for those with disabilities or that they should not also get accessibility options to get an equally good experience. At best, you’re misunderstanding what we are proposing. At worst, it is just a bad strawman for the sake of arguing.
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As if we hadn’t all been new players once.
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Your argument sounds reasonable. Especially considering the devs nerf the only “cool” units of civs.
Like Chinese Grenadiers, Malian Musofadi Warriors & Mongols Mangudai which have been destroyed with TRIPLE nerfs.
This game is all about horseman & archers now for the most part. Kind of boring, I agree.
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have to be based more on itself or I mean a new identity that take some elements from thei previous entries
it exist because its trues to an long extent. prove of it are the aoe2 pro players who returned to their game and the same reaction from every new aoe and the reason why there low players on new entries compared to aoe 2. unfortunately is true so aoe 4 has to ditch aoe 2 preference (which is not hard they already did) to make a new game that actually appeals to the rest of the fanbase.
I totally agree with this. Aoe4 taking it’s own identity is key to attract a fanbase wanting a more “modern” style of game.
But it would be nice if Devs would lean in more on the “unique” units of each civ to make EACH CIV more interesting. At least to convert normal players into actual “fans” of the game. It feels they are doing the reverse with all these nerfs to unique units making most civs very similar.
Agree with this
Agree with this
That really made a lot of AOE2 fans refund the game (AOE4)
I completely agree with your statement!
Well said!
Couldn’t say better than that!!!
Yep, they are making most used and loved unique units completely useless.
Many of your suggestions in the Council brought AOEIV to its failure, more than 95% of players already left. Good job!
Your BIASED arguments arent good too…
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This is all true and it just comes down one fundamental issue: That is that all the other RTS games you mentioned looked GREAT FOR THEIR TIME. AOE 1, AOE2, AOE3, C&C Generals, Red Alert 2 etc… were all revolutionary from the graphics point of view. AOE4 on the other hand looks very BAD FOR ITS TIME. We have already had better looking games than AOE4 which came out 15 years ago. AOE4 just isn’t as cutting edge as the other games were at their time and seems more like a step backwards than forwards.
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Viper, Jordan, Hera, Daut etc. were doing quite well on AoE 4 before they returned, including both ladder and tournament performance, so that’s not the reason.
May I remind you that Viper won AoE 4’s 1st S-Tier (Genesis), did quite well on Golden League 1 and that Hera won several Winner Stays on and last year’s Winter Championship? Or that Capoch grinded to get a spot on AoE 4’s part of RBW:L as well?