people would not believe, but aoe2 DE had a lot of bugs.
sync error (1 out of 10) + unbalanced cumans, it took ~2months for fixes.
i’ve skipped aoe3 cause it was lagging for streamers and after fixes i’m to lazy to play aoe3DE.
but yes, number of bugs were much less, and it was balanced. (even OP cumans were fun… 4vs4 and everyone pick cumans)
just to be fair.
I believe Andy’s point had nothing to do with trying to guesstimate numbers that both Microsoft and Steam would sue you for damages should they leak out.
AoE4 isn’t making money, it had already made the majority of its money. This unknown amount defines further investments on Microsoft’s side which we’ll see in the form of DLC and tournament prizes. Finally, the bump in sales from said DLC or events will then inform their next moves.
A game that’s bought by 1,000,000 folks, played by 500,000 daily and which sells 1,000 on DLC because no one wants that skin or faction is a failure. A game bought by 1,000,000, played daily by 5 people but which is then able to sell a DLexpansion pack to 400,000 of the players is a major success. So arguing about the player numbers is completely pointless and guessing how many of the people who’ve actually bought the game are willing to add to that $60 they’d already spent… frankly impossible.
why you even care about MS money.
it’s where problem… they will have profit anyway.
major success == players play
Or do you want to name W3 reforged Major success, with 0 investments, they did a lot of money LOL
Most of Ms profit comes from Game Pass.
I’m not that familiar with the system so i suspect that the succes of a game can be measured by the time it stays on the catalog before rotation.
Plus it is a way to try alot of games before purchasing.
What we need right now is a Roadmap to see what plans they have for future content.
yup but you can calculate how much ms will support after release with the playerbase because the amoutn of player active that are willing to pay for the new expansion is crucial. even if some wont but the higher the better chances that there are better quatity of user that will pay for the new content.
The lack of content is the problem. This game appealed too much for competitive play and did not launch with basic QoL features and other stuff. The campaigns, with the exception of the cutscenes, felt subpar and bland IMHO. No co-op campaigns, no imaginative game modes, a lack of an in game scenario editor and the editor being not beginner-friendly at all, no workarounds to modify sounds and stuff along those lines.
I think it was released too early, and they sold the idea of what it will become rather than what it is.
The educated guess is compared to steam, MS Store has 1/3 the player population of Steam (for PC players). So technically AOEIV is hovering around 12-14k daily players on a 30 day average which is still a farcry from its initial 1st base of 26k players (steam only) and its a hard drop from its initial 1st week of 60k (steam only). To be below AOE II DE and near AOE III DE on a 30 day average is pretty bad, regardless of how you frame it.
This is corect. But … Its also corect that the number of games that are in MS catalogue (behind Game Pass) is less than 1% of the offers that steam has.
This however does not negate the big drop in players till launch.
The interesting Question is why they left.
i know people on steam Review Bomb a game for far less than the problems this forum seems to have with the game.
There is something I call the “Amazon review paradox”, which is that people tend to post negative or positive reviews just after acquiring a product and those are mostly useless reviews (I just took these headphones out of the box and they feel amazing!!! 5 stars). The problem is that a lot of products don’t evidence their faults only after a while and at that point people simply don’t care to go back and edit their initial reviews or post new ones.
AoE IV’s initial impressions are good. My god was I surprised with the audio design when I played the closed beta. I saw quite a few issues but I was hooked. I would’ve posted a 4-5 star review right then and there. Over the course of the next months the novelty wore off and I started feeling I was playing a mediocre and very commercial RTS. Of course that’s just my opinion, but that review phenomenon happens a lot.
That is a valid point, there is a intersting thing that a youtube called Josh Strife Hayes did point out though. Majority of “gamers” doesn’t play a game for long. In fact, average “gamer” would play a game for around 30 minute a day in average.
a lot of people have busy lives and don’t really have more than a few hours during the end of the day to do whatever they want, and that’s usually when they play games, if they even decide to play games.
I can see that on my self even. in my younger days, I would play 8hours a day easily. every single day.
go to school come home, just play games.
but after I got married, got a full time job at a higher position, and having a 2 year old. I notice even with my quite available time, I find myself playing around max 2 hours a day on average.
And then you have that, + timespan.
if you only playing 30 minutes a day, you wont get as tired / negative of the game. People attention span doesn’t really have to much to say how many hours they put into the game.
it has more to do the length of the game.
Many people tend to loose their attention on the game after a month or two.
and by then, they moved on to a new game due to whatever circumstances.
as long as they left that game with a good impression. that is what matters in the end.
And companies know this far to well. People attention span.
its how they manage to feed the same crap over and over again by slightly re-packaging the game. (just look on EA sports games, or any fashion clothing/shoes)
So its a thing that many game-enthusiasts tend to overlook and not realize.
I certainly didn’t. And I got kinda shocked when learning that average game-time of people is 30 minutes a day on average.
And Josh does emphasize a lot on why First impressions of games are so hugely important.
why toturial levels needs to be fun and engaging. As long as they can make 4 hours of good content. They know that most people will fizzle off before they pass 4 hours of playtime in their games.
He does a interesting observation by looking at steam achievements. that even the most basic steam achievement that everyone should be able to unlock if they just played for 1 hour. Dosn’t have 100% achieved. But rather, around 40%~50% at worst, 60~70% at best.
What promise ? Nobody promised anything.
Also season 1 was without any doubt , the “great patch”.
We still need more “great patchs”
The problem is while the game is rather good, what we got now, was we have expected to have at the release :
editor, ladder, customable hotkey.
We played 6-8 month on a game, that has a lot of potential, but we were waiting it reachs it.
Now it will be the time, when you need new things to keep us on board, but not totally fixed all bugs.
So people have lost patience, and quit. And the problem is the more people quit, the less you want to invest into the game, because few people means longer queue, and you expect less new content because developpers won’t bother to maintain a game that flopped.
everyone here expected that the mods introduction patch will be the great one. Already arrived but playerbase numbers still in decline.
The thing is, if the player base is eroding, there’s no motivation from modders to invest a lot of effort into the game. Similar thing that happens to mobile app stores: if you have a phone OS that nobody uses, your app store will be deserted too.
I would love to see mods that add time-of-day options for skirmish, or more zoom, or improvements to visuals and mechanics. I was really hopeful that the scenario editor was the key to pull me back into the game, but alas, the mods already out there are just minor tweaks.
part of the story.
another part: need restart game everytime.
It took me 6 hours to debug the simplest map cause some errors.
have to save every change, restart the game to find error (should do it from the start…would finish map in 30 mins… but who knew).
although it’s powerful(i believe) but hard to master.
I don’t understand why people think mods save games lol, I have never played any mod in an RTS… I never need any mod to enjoy dawn of war, red alert 2 or age ll.
You don’t need mods to fix the horrendous graphics or UI, relic are the ones that need to fix it. They won’t do it because they are a really “proud” team. 
dunno but that one was the most replied when they responded next to the answer “it will be fixed soon”
and this is why you don’t launch a game 50% finished
can’t mod the zoom at all, same goes for visuals, for now anyway, also proper across the board UI mods are a no go, i hope they make UI mods their own category so it can work in ranked and quickmatch, not just custom games
No one plays the game and watches others playing…
What is the purpose of the game, if we cannot/won’t play it…?
And those pros are getting all the harvest (money), while you guys won’t enjoy the game as usually…
Well, good luck…
