The essence engine they used isn’t the best for an AoE game. Main issue being the clunky way units move. There is just a clumsy feel to the movement. The other issues aren’t because of the engine, such as the animation, and somewhat bland gameplay. They are caused by decisions made in production.
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Today, I spent hours trying to make my own custom fully remappable keys
boy am i disappointed. many missing units, buildings to the point its actually unusable.
does NOT work well
this is most certainly a classic case of sloppy work – lacking passion.
100% not “fully” remappable.
and looking at how pathing is, it really reflects the mindset of those who wrote it.
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one more thing, this topic has over 100 replies, i just wonder if they bother reading at all. they certainly do not seem to bother in discussions.
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The game runs, for starters.
Have you ever played an actual, bad game? Do you remember what Arkham Knight was like at launch? Now that was a bugged release.
Another thing could be developer discussions about developing the game itself. Like how I think it was Bioware that opened up about being forced to use Frostbite for everything - including games that Frostbite wasn’t suited for (like DA:I).
We don’t have that information here. It’s hard to say how the engine is “not bad”, but let’s list the general strengths it has:
- It’s an RTS-first game engine.
- It’s developed by an RTS-first game studio.
- Said developer has released many highly-rated games, and the fact that everyone goes on about DoW III has little to do with the engine (some complaints about the fixed camera angle). Most of the issues with that game were design-related.
- They were able to build a mod browser for it that bypasses the Steam Workshop (presumably for the joint MS Store and Steam release). This is new!
- Mappers have done some absolutely great things with custom maps. The potential to make great-looking things is there; the fact that the developers restrain themselves with official offerings is an intentional choice (for performance / balance / whatever, I don’t know).
The weaknesses it has, are weaknesses it’s always had. Patches invalidating replays, input delay on unit commands . . . these are longstanding things that Essence has come with.
It’s good that the Age community is pushing for changes here, because we might actually see them. But that hasn’t stopped it being a good engine for RTS games for the past 18 years.
In that case, every single developer who’s ever worked on AoE lacks passion. There’s stuff not working properly all over the place. The DE versions are full of issues.
This kind of logic always has massive holes in it.
But yes, the game works well. “fully remappable” hotkeys were a post-launch addition that still have some issues that need ironing out. Doesn’t mean the game doesn’t work well. The game worked just fine at launch without them.
This isn’t the same as saying “they shouldn’t have added it”. Fully-remappable hotkeys are a great thing to have and the devs should be encouraged to keep fixing issues with them (as they have done, repeatedly). But this is a completely different argument as to whether or not the game “works well” when I was discussing the game engine with another poster.
bad games can run well.
also ms have their own as I mentioned with bang and the aoe 3 de
that made flop like dow 3 which means they cant use it properly.
probably the only good one but their ui still a mess and probably worse than steam one
only few can handle as the editor is very complex but not gamemodes that it used to be in other rts for the same issue.
yeah its all weakness but the trade off to get those benefits is too short to be fair.
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Why am I discussing something with you if you’re not going to read what I say? 
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dow 3 demostrated that they are not capable to build something clean from their own engine along with designing rts. that was the point. I have to connect the dots for you?
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Making unpopular design decisions has little (if anything) to do with what the engine is capable of.
We’re talking about the engine. Just the engine. Right?
There are many other games that are better in just about every aspect… i like the aoe series mostly because of randomized maps.
AOE4 performance is poor (whats with high gpu usage in main menu?); mm system poor, UI poor, plenty of bugs, modding system poor, pathing poor, scores poor… and dev communication exceptionally poor…
AOE4 has some good ideas i must say, has potential to go further…but really hindered very much by the team themselves.
There’s without a doubt very sloppy work at play here.
Take for instance a few months back on how they placed players in team games
1 1
1 1
2 2
2 2
not even separated by lines
I mean yes it works, but seriously if you can design stuff in this manner, not getting it right in the first place, how can you do many other things right?
And now, to name another is biome, what the heck is the point? There’s only so much absurdity my brain can take. I usually use much harsher words (yet deserving) than this.
I do wish people who don’t use the mod tools and likely never will would stop presenting misinformation like this.
I get it. You don’t like a bunch of stuff. You don’t need to make bits up though.
The mod tools are great. We have some fantastic modders. We have people who use the tools to make great stuff. If they’re too complex for you, I’m really past caring about it anymore. Especially when it’s often used by people who have no interest in them beyond using them to criticise the devs.
It’s 2023. Modding games is harder than it was in 2005. Simple technological fact.
i think this is more so implying how restricted the modding in this game feels next to the ogs, example having sound graphic or even UI mods that i can use in multiplayer matchmaking is still a no go it seems, basically, having them as their own categories instead of cramming them all into tuning packs
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Don’t get me wrong, there’s improvements that would be great.
But that doesn’t mean the tools are poor. People are comparing it against stuff they could do in Notepad nearly 20 years ago and complaining that it’s harder now.
Sure, it is. But we can’t undo that.
i mean its kinda like the notepad, just different looking window and some graphics adapter requirements for the most part, with built in resource manager (for aoe3 you need an external tool for instance)
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I have to say I still do not really buy this sort of argument.
Older 2d games used sprites and you need to literally photoshop every direction of the sprites. Then they were imported and loaded in a very cryptic way.
You can also create your own 3D models and use them to make sprites like the developers did, but 3D modeling was also very difficult back then.
Stats and data were also bundled into cryptic files that need special tools to open and edit. And they were massively different across engines.
Games become more complex yes, but also more modularized. There should be possibilities to make even easier to use tools.
It’s like I wouldn’t say because computer programs have become more complicated, it is more difficult to program than in 1946.
In fact high schoolers nowadays can write complex functional programs with some proper training but only top engineers can realize even the simplest calculations in 1946.
Similarly we have far more mods for the newer games than in 2000s.
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And if you opened an XML file in Notepad you’d very quickly be cursing life 
The software abstracts all that for you and handles converting to and from the binary file format the game processes. This isn’t “new”, but it’s just one small part of the complexity that goes into games these days. Binary files were likely used in AoE III if not earlier. But the general complexity was lower. Less nodes to edit, less game logic exposed in this user-editable data layer.
I spent a few days modding vDoW to completely redo the weapon data (was making a total conversion). The same thing would’ve taken me twice as long in Dawn of War 2 (if not more).
Sprite bitmaps were often editable in much simpler (like Paint dot NET) and / or open source programs (like the GNU Image Manipulation Program. Sorry, the forum censors its acronym). Sometimes custom formats made this a pain but then the act of editing them was easier.
Why? Because they were smaller! Less detailed! Whatever you think of Age IV’s graphics, the decals on your player banner aren’t 64 x 64 pixels. Army decals in Dawn of War were! I could make my own! I’m not an artist, but that kind of pixel art I was fine at.
3D art has similarly always been difficult. UVmapping, texturing, rigging and animating as well. I keep going back to vDoW because I know it inside out, but I could handle stuff of that kind of complexity. By the time DoW II came out just a few years later, I was outmatched. I’m just a programmer. I’m not a 3D artist.
It’s worse now. Textures are comprised of more layers. The types of textures are more numerous. Models have higher polys on average, animations are more complex (generally). I taught myself Unity (the game engine’s) original particle system (pre-Shuriken). It was fiddly. But it was maths, so I muddled through. That was over a decade ago. Particle systems nowadays offer so much more, and do so much more.
It all adds up.
And that’s before the unfortunate increase in proprietary software that requires you to pay a license to use. That’s nothing new either, but it’s not gotten any better either.
You can’t make XML parsing easier. It’s a solved problem. But the tools to edit it now are better than the tools to edit it then. How do I know this, besides professional experience? I’ve been modding Relic games since 2005. And other games along the way.
(XML is just one small part of modding, too)
Software is always improving, but so is the complexity of what folks are creating with it.
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Okay it’s good to know where the complexity is from.
But do you think modders back in 1990s and 2000s also have relatively easier tools to mod games back them?
(This is a question not a rebuttal)
pretty sure every modding tool currently used for ogs was fanmade (other than ingame editors ofc)
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Varies a bit. Like KG19991380 says, a lot were probably made by the modders. Modders sometimes even got hired by the devs.
Fan tools were vital to so many mod scenes, even back in the “good old days”. Developers very rarely had the resource. Heck, Dawn of War had a bunch that were more popular than some of the official tools.
But they could also be janky. Depended on what the people making them specialised in / were good at. Wasn’t always easy to use.
just like the rest, i don’t really agree with you.
its very evident to me that there’s either lack of skill or lack of passion… or both… and most certainly poor directing.
again, they can’t even get basic UI stuff right, and its surely nothing to do with modern game engine or complexity.
when it takes you 1 full year or more to have the map name on your loading screen… while they work on unimportant things… err yea, no, the issue is surely not complexity. i do not want to have to name more than this, because i can.
but ill just add this other one…its so complex that they randomly had china/abba influence helper when placing buildings working in the past and this season it’s just painful.
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None of this has anything to do with my reply to you about mod tools!