Before people start crying about death of AoE4

They went right for the middle of the road on pretty much everything and it’s perceived as lack of inspiration and commitment to clear goals:

  • Let’s do modern graphics but tone them down so they can run on older PCs. So we ended up with a game that looks objectively worse than AoE 3 DE while at the same time looking like crap on slow/old PCs. Have you seen the “min-spec/performance mode” graphics? I tried it for laughs on an old i5 2500k I still have lying around and I’d honestly just play AoE 2 if I had to use that mode.
  • Let’s make civs asymmetric, but not too asymmetric like SC2. More like AoE2 but we reskin pikemen and keeps so we give people the impression of things being different. Let’s call some knights “lancers” while we are at it.
  • Let’s keep the tech tree mechanic as in previous AoE titles, but let’s dumb it down so that no tech depends on another. Also, let’s have all civs have access to the whole tech tree. "AoE 2 players certainly hated not being able to click on that last armor upgrade, right? Made the game worse?"
  • Let’s make a weird mix between AoE 1’s comically undersized buildings and AoE 2 correct proportions so it looks very awkward.

I could go on, but in short, it’s not just the graphics. It’s an overall lack of commitment to anything. Jack of all trades, master of none is what they wanted to create.

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By this round 80k play a month

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quickmatch is the ranked one since there no ranked option in the chart.

i guess the game is dead then ¯_(ツ)_/¯

kinda biased for the hype and the feel that aoe finally return. for new player the core gameplay is good but for older that already see that aoe can have more it may like it or be disgusted.

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Oh it definitely has its share of problems. But in my opinion, I rather have a jack of all trades than a master of one.

I’ve played to many potentially great games that is really good at one thing, but is absolutely gamebreaking on something else.

So far, at least for me, there is nothing that really “breaks” the game.
There were some imbalances and exploits at first, but they got ironed out by now.

So far since playing released, I have only been effected once by someone exploiting. and that was the abbasid unlimited spear range meme.

but other than that, I’ve had many good games so far.

Yes that everyone can upgrade everything is rather questionable. but we will see if and how new civs will be added if they are gonna run the same gimmick.

but in all honesty, there is a fair bit of asymmetry in the game.

I find playing Mongols far different than any others.
Same thing with the Abbasids.
As well as the Rus.

English, HRE and French, and maybe even Dheli to an extent plays pretty similar.

Although the Asymmentry doesn’t really lie in the military part of the game. but I like the AoE2 approach to this, where there is more symmetry with a few exception than complete asymmetry.

but that’s my preference on rts games.

Well i’ve played the AoE franchise for 20 years, and I am enjoying them all.

But whats most important is that new players enjoy this. If it gets good review from fresh players who haven’t touched the franchise, than nothing else is better.
if it can bring in more players to the AoE franchise, then this is a net positive.
As AoE4 will then also serve as a gateway for new players to try out the 2 other games, increasing the pop on the other AoE games, so everyone wins in the end.

The amount and frequency of new content will inform us about how successful the game truly is. Player numbers are an inferior proxy for profits. I’m not confident we players have nearly enough information to agree on the facts.

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but also being repelled because the buggy nature of the game and lack of content. quality in the new entries unfortunatelly have to be gatekeeped because as it show with aoe 4 is easy to mess up.

pretty much this. and so far the rate of new things has been steadily increasing now that server side patches have been enabled.

Yeah. I’m waiting to see what the new civs look like. It’s probably the most determinative factor for me in deciding whether to play.

I’ll be very hard pressed to spend another cent on this game. It’d be great if the first DLC was free, but then again nobody works for free. This was fun for the first couple of months, it’s very cyclic and boring now. 2 or 3 new civs will not change that for me. Those new civs alongside a graphics upgrade pack, or changes to mechanics would make me consider paying for a DLC, though.

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it’s unranked
ranked season 38k
@ Franknezu11 it has option “ranked season” on the left from API.

I completely agree.
Even with the low pøayer numbers of AoE3.
Its a game that is still alive and well. Despite lower player numbers than AoE2.
Yet you dont have the same level of hysteria about the game is dying on that game.

I have my confidence AoE4 will have a long rather healthy life.

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Exactly, sc2 was fun to watch but to simple and APM focused to play it, it relies extremely in APM and not in actual strategy as sc1 does, the relic for recent years is trying to copy SC the most they can, It happened with DOW3, they even added MOBA elements to an RTS :smile:

They tried to make age IV fast paced by adding “unique units” to feudal but that just broke the balance.

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No tengo el mismo nivel de histeria debido a que el age 3 ya tenia una base de jugadores algo baja, a decir verdad creció un poco durante estos últimos años, y en cuanto al age 4 no le deseo el mal pero en esta industria en donde los juegos deben mantenerse frescos siempre el age 4 se mantuvo muy conservador pero mal ya que dejo atrás muchas características básicas en su lanzamiento y si sigue estando como un juego genérico y no actúa rápido caerá en el olvido, no digo que no habrá gente que lo juegue sino que es posible que el interés se vaya perdiendo es todo

At this point they should have realized that people simple find the game extremely simple to play as an RTS, if they made a expansion pack, the focus should be in new mechanics, more unique units and for the love of GOD get rid of the Disney art style and do a more medieval approach, however this is not going to happen, they will keep balancing siege forever :smile:

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Unlike the older age of empires, which were certainly bought on steam, Aoe4 I think has a strong player base on the gamepass. I have 3 friends of mine who play from the gamepass like me for example. I think the numbers are pretty good. When the game goes on sale and new content comes out for single and casual players there will certainly be a strong increase in players. Most don’t even care about multiplayer

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What the numbers don’t show you is whether the players each day are the same players or different players. Obviously they make far more money from a different 8k players playing the game each day at its peak time, rather than the same 8k players. Monthly unique player count would be more closely related to profits than daily peak.

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What really frustrates people is the extremely slow update. Player number is just one way to show “it’s not performing well. There must be something wrong”.
AOE3 DE, despite having smaller player numbers, already received one DLC and announced a bigger DLC by the 6th month after release. Not to mention 2 DE. Not to mention very frequent updates.
Okay these are remake of old games so they do not need to design and implement everything from scratch (though I highly doubt it’s the case for AOE4), and let’s ignore the new functions added to DEs throughout the updates. Let’s look at “new games”:
If I remember correctly COH2 by this time point gets a few content patches already. Iron Harvest as a game that did not perform so well had 2 DLCs.
Earlier RTS were released in an era of CDs so small DLCs and frequent updates were not possible. Expansions usually took at least a year. But we are now in 2022.

Now what does AOE4 have on horizon? The much requested color picker!

Not to mention most players would not debate incessantly about the reasons for small and slow updates. They do not stay loyal just to stay loyal. They see one game with more content updates and one without, and they naturally shift to the former.

In fact the true problem of the not-so-good-or-bad player number is, if you interpret it as bad, why nobody does anything for it? If you interpret it as good, why does it receive much slower updates than quite a few less well performing games?

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