Before anyone is getting triggered by this post, it’s supposed to be constructive critizism of specific things that have to get improved.
As a result of that, there won’t be any “positive feedback” in this post, since it’s not about writing an overall review, just pointing objective things out where work has to be done.
I want to play the game badly, I love it and want to love it even more, so don’t take this as a "bash/hatepost.
In this post I go through the things one by one with video timestamps to refer to the things I am talking about.
For anyone who hasn’t seen it before, Age of Empires 4 just got streamed with its’ newest showcase of Rus vs Delhi in a showmatch.
1. Some animations are not properly looped
Speaking about attack animations here, the Wolf, Archers on the Elephants, the mounted archers and Streltsy don’t have properly looped animations.
What do I mean by that?
The unit model in the beginning (first frame) is in a different position than in the end (last frame) of the animation, making the unit model itself “clip” into a completely different position from the end to the start of the next animation run.
For archers for example that means, that in one frame they are holding the bow into the air, in the next one they have it aimed on the ground without any transition.
It’s not properly looped, it just looks off and bad cause those animations are not properly done.
They would work in a “one time played” scenario, but not for a repeating attack animation.
Wolf:
Elephant Archers and Mounted Archers (look at the top right elephant archer and mounted archer):
Streltsy:
2. The Elephant meele attack animation is super lackluster
The elephant meele attack is basically it moving its’ trunk in slow motion.
It doesn’t have any impact and ppl are just magically falling over around it, making it look really bad.
Again: bad animation and this time it just needs a completely different one instead of an adjustment compared to point 1.
Same goes for the spear attack of the War-Elephant (not archer elephant).
It just pokes into the air on a complete other direction and therefore needs directional animations for attacking (front just tusks, side the spearman poking down).
The other question here beeing: when the elephant can only target one target and only frontally anyway, why have the spearman for the side attacks at all? Just delete it.
Only problem of that beeing is that the elephant is supposed to have 2 different attacks stacking, one dealing bonus dmg against cav and probably triggering meele armour twice so the animation/unitmodel reaches out into the unit balance at this point.
Elephant meele:
War elephant:
3. Military building siege is lacking a building animation
Right now they just duck next to it and the siege builds itself.
It looks really bad, while a general building animation with the villagers using a hammer is already in the game.
I’d suggest you just recycle that one on the military models, to make it look cleaner.
Rams getting “build”:
4. UI clarity is still not there
Alot of playing and watching in the feedback posts made it quite obvious.
Whether you like the UI design or not, the clarity of it showing you which upgrade you currently have by tiny dot indication or the lack of a global production queue makes it incomplete.
It already has been suggested that a quick fix would be to replace the dots with bigger roman numerals to make the upgrade stages more distinct.
Upgrade indication in racks and archeries:
5. Spectator UI is lacking crucial information
Informations such as production queue, upgrade comparisons, pop comparison or villager numbers are completely absence for the viewer.
I am reusing another image right now, since literally nothing changed in the spectator UI:
6. Past critizism didn’t seem to get addressed at all
What spooked me out alot is that alot of things that I am reading in this forum for over 6 months now don’t seem to get addressed at all.
The same UI unclarity, the same spectator UI information, the same zoom level critizism and the same animation issues with horse archers for example in the mongol showcase 6-7 months ago.
I always defended the game that these minor things don’t have anything to do with the core of the game and are therefore easy to fix.
UI or animation on a certain unit are final things that are getting changed and is therefore the most easy to work on and replace.
But now, 6 days before release watching them playing the game, really makes me feel like alot of the stuff just fell on deaf ears… or blind eyes.
I still stand by it, that these things are not the world and can be boiled out really easily with a HUGE quality of life effect for players and viewers, but that someone has to point out that animations should be looped for repeating attack animations is…
Let’s say it’s just self explanatory…
I hope some devs read this (or better, already noticed and are working on the issues) so we can get rid of these problems.
Best regards.