I hear you but I think the creative bound has more to do with franchise sequels in general. Council or not, the developer would still have to give answers to the same big questions and make compromises. If there were also eSport players and content creators in the council I find it more likely that the devs were already fixed in pushing towards that direction and wanted the opinions of these players as well rather than that the players changed the game’s direction.
I also imagine that for many game designers working on a title like AoEIV would be a nightmare. There’s not an empty canvas that you can start painting however and whatever you like but rather designer’s creativity is walled around certain fixed parameters and constraints defined by a creative brief that someone else based on someone’s else work. What you do will always be compared with what was done before you. Imagine now an artist, given a brief and tasked to complete an unfinished painting or to make the next sequel in an art series, then another one comes up to supervise the former’s work that stays within this creative brief. None of them has worked on any part of the painting before. I see no need for a council for something to go extremely wrong here. They both follow someone’s else blueprint and try to make sense of it while fearing of not being too different, of not being too similar, of not messing something up and of leaving a personal mark as well (?) (golden/blue aesthetic?). Confidence is probably low and I too can see in AoEIV a mediocre game of low confidence and ambition despite some very bold and senseless decisions that were taken (UI?).
However, if the existence of a council can tell us something with certainty, that’s that the developers were quite baffled on many things to begin with.
On the other hand, a designer that gets a task to work on something he has already worked on in the past, not only is he better aware of the tiniest details that should be removed or maintained (manned siege?) but the creative part of his brain will naturally refrain him from thinking on the same exact lines as he did before. Old recurring ideas (eg symmetric civs?) will drop and something new, creative and well thought will come up. This is how Ensemble made wonderful games of the likes of AoM and AoEIII.
Oh and if something is your own offspring you probably care about it a liiitle bit more and show it a liitle bit more love than if you’re just contracted to babysit it for a while.
Speaking of UI, try play a team game, have your friend be host, press “quit” in summary screen and you’d get this “Would you like to leave the group y/n” and dont press a thing. Next, have him press play again…
try and see what happens when game starts.
IDK how this disgrace hasn’t been fixed after over a damn year. Many have already fell victim to it. Instead, lol biome enhancements!
And in the very first place, if the UI was competently and creatively made, there shouldn’t even be the possibility of these things happening.
I answer this a lot, and I can answer this again, but the existence of the Council both here and in CoH 3 came directly out of the post-mortem for Relic’s last RTS (DoW III), where one of the key takeaways was that they should’ve involved the (franchise) community earlier on in the development process. The forums they said this on are now offline, but I promise you that I’m not misquoting them.
Knowing what to do isn’t the only problem. Ensuring it’s received well by a multi-generational fanbase is also a big one.
but as you can see the execution of it is bad. Most player feel that their opinion dont matter the cattering to x group and the game is lackluster for a big portion of the fanbase.
DoW (the first one) is still popular because of mods. It wouldn’t have anywhere near the players it does now without them - sync kills or no sync kills.
This is why I keep raising the mod tools here as something I want to be expanded & improved!
Also the DoW mod tools are pretty complex, for a game from 2004. We had the ability to import custom meshes, animations, textures, etc. Full 3D assets! None of this was easy - it required actual 3D modellers, UVmappers, texture artists, riggers, animators, etc. Thankfully a lot of them were interested in modding the game!
And that’s before we get onto UI modding, AI modding, etc. A lot of what is possible in Age IV and CoH 3 started way back when.
The same applies here. Dedicated people will create the content, if they’re properly-supported. The issue isn’t “we don’t have people who can use the tools”. The problem is they’re often blocked or otherwise limited by the existing state of the tools, which haven’t seen much improvement since launch. There have been fantastic additions to the documentation, and much-needed bugfixes (and support for new content that has been rolled out), but we need more than that.
can relate a lot of this to aoe3 as well, its a relevant point, its known the current tools for aoe4 are unfinished at best, we’ll see how finished ones behave, eventually, hopefully
As the topic here seemed to be about the randomness of say ‘boars’ . whether it was intended or not, randomness in most any game gives it flair. If with every new match there are some things you can’t control, isn’t that in itself what sets that map apart from if you played that exact map before.
I read many post topics and it baffles me how many people complain about anything that posses a challenge from something they can’t control to they have to press too many buttons setting up a game. Appreciation of what the Devs have done get notice far too little. Forums are the best place to get out there what you think of your new game and anything that may be a nice addition or something that’s not working right. Happy gaming to all.
if you say you desire to be expanded it means it was limited before so the statement goes anyway. other rts has similar benefits and feature and from that went to aoe 4 state is an downgrade which is further worse when they are not getting an updtae as you said. also because it needs more it usually means a revamp which in this case is truth for the bugsfixes and the game itself on its core.
You can twist anything into a criticism if you want to.
Me wanting improvements to mod tools doesn’t mean they’re bad, no. They launched in a perfectly acceptable state, but now we need them to follow through with improvements they said they were looking into (post-launch).
I don’t expect you to understand. It’s not like you’d ever use any tools nomatter how easy to use they were
you can twist the reality to an negative criticism as you did in old reponses but the game tool is not accesible for everyone as they did in previous aoe and that may have great consecuences as only ones with hard coding skills can make something in the mod tools which it will greatly reduce in comparison.
It’s harder to make games than it was in 2005. Technology is more complex, and does more things. Sure, this makes things less accessible than they were in 2005. That’s reality. Every game series suffers from this problem. The golden age of people messing about in Notepad are mostly over. Games have mostly advanced beyond this stage.
I’m a modder. I’ve actually used the tools. Trust me when I say “the tools are acceptable” (or were on launch). Or don’t, it’s your life. I’ll continue to ask the devs to make the tools (and the game) better regardless.
Twenty years ago, I was writing HTML in Notepad. Trust me when I say that’s not the best way to develop websites anymore.
I believe the bang engine is solid, but I doubt any of the devs were familiar with it. It’s used in AoM, AoE3, and AoEO, so those communities know it very well. But I don’t think anyone at worlds edge or relic were all that experienced with it.
well its certainly only pandering to that tiny demographic so this point fails right away, esports, for better or worse are the only thing devs seem to think about, not saying it is the only thing, but it sure as hell looks like it based on launch day and support since
as for modding tools, the baseline is there, it works, but the inability to import custom assets like at all only gives shady posibilities (i can guarantee relic won’t repeat the mistake of COH2 that allowed for it which then damaged their skin sales)
