Go ahead and share why that is
I canāt without you confirming what weāre talking about. I asked if you meant the Scenario Editor (something you should be familiar with, given how much youāre championing it), and you told me I was wrong.
If itās a completely different tool, my answer obviously changes.
FYI I wanted to tell you you were wrong for pivoting from my question. Not as a ānoā to your question, my bad for not making that clear. In the comment you responded to, I stressed the absurdity of you comparing people who want to fiddle with AI editing to the individuals I quoted as using the editor for fun. They are not the same people.
Yes, I am obviously talking about the scenario editor.
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Alright.
Iāve given the answer repeatedly here (something about not reading, something about meaning to be rude), but the answer is: Age IV is a complex modern RTS released 16 years after AoE III.
You can find a way to deflect, ignore, or rationalise this away, but itās the truth. It doesnāt matter how much you like the aesthetics (or more likely, donāt). The technology is fundamentally more advanced in a number of ways that would take a literal essay to explain. Mappers have even demonstrated this with all sorts of wonderful creations using the tools for Age IV. The fact that the game as-developed looks and functions like it does doesnāt mean that the engine is limited to that and that alone.
In order to create a Scenario Editor for Age IV, we would first need a way to generate a map. Thereās no way around this, because the map itself is fundamental to the whole experience. This is why giving us the complicated yet powerful tools the devs have done is the first step. Before something is abstracted to become simpler, or more accessible, youāve got to have the actual complicated stuff underneath first. There is no hypothetical Scenario Editor without a map creation pipeline.
To be clear: I am not against a Scenario Editor for AoE IV.
I do not think it would be a useless addition.
However, I am against it happening at the expense of other things.
We can argue about the game not being ready, we can argue about the game needing X, Y or Z. The problem with this is at some point we have to be realistic. With that in mind, Iād like to ask you two (three) questions, and Iām really hoping we can cut the snark between us because all it does is get in the way (even as Iām guilty of it in response myself):
- Do you think it was realistic to expect a Scenario Editor at launch, given what we know of the state of the game at launch. Do you think this wouldāve been possible for the developers to achieve, without pushing the game back or any additional investment / resource from above?
- Do you think itās more important to have a Scenario Editor now, vs. whatever else the developers may have in the pipeline?
My answers upfront are: no, no and no. But I appreciate the second question is purely āwhat people wantā, and that everyoneās going to have a different answer there. The first question is a bit more exploratory.
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My answers to those questions are āI donāt know, I donāt know and I donāt knowā.
The question hinges on knowing their production pipeline and how it went down. However things went wrong is impossible to say, certainly due to legal complications but also due to their communication strategy with us; they simply donāt share.
If we are to assume that everything went according to their budgetary plan and the features that was in the game was exactly what they wanted to achieve, it would spell quite a lot of bad things. For one, it would mean they intended to not include important features, such as the Editor at launch. That doesnāt give me a lot of hope in of itself, so I really donāt want to assume something like that. But, what else can you assume? That they had management issues during production which caused them to resort to a post launch Editor? That doesnāt put them in a good light either.
The answer becomes I donāt know, because we just have no idea how it went wrong and, so, assumptions have to be made. What we do know is that something must have gone wrong because as examplified above, as neither truth really portrays the company in a good light, and surely they wouldāve intended for better if they were able to.
This goes for your question about the future as well; a point needs to be made that season 3 was chock-full of content that was not available on their roadmap, and so, came as a surprise. As pleasant as a surprise that was, it means that we as players are in the constant dark as to the gameās future, and so how can I make the assertion that I would trade the scenario editor for whatever is up ahead when I donāt even know what that is?
If we are to speak of realism and how to realistically approach this, as forum users with each individual knowledge of the broad subject, it is somewhat pointless to discuss how they shouldāve produced the game due to the lack of transparency in knowing how this project came to be. We can theorize all day long about how they should have prioritized X feature over Y, but without ever truly knowing if X never came to be due to management, budget or intentional design, it results in somewhat of a meaningless discussion.
Instead, by focusing on expressing what we dislike or like, we can signal and stress the importance of features and additions. This should if anything help developers evaluate what they should prioritize, and if they simply have not the resources, to showcase that at least there is demand. Scoping should be their responsability, not ours. And if they decide to wrongly prioritize features, then that is obviously bad. But, weāll never know if they did or if they still are doing that, so what is the point of us discussing it?
If the point is to openly state that they are doing their jobs wrong in prioritizing Y over X, then I think being vocal about X still being missing does effectively the same thing, without attacking their decision making in feature prioritization.
However the scoping of development went wrong is unknown. Perhaps they did intend to launch it in such a subpar state, but then I ask of you, is it reasonable to defend it for that price? My answer is no.
EDIT: I wanna add that, I wouldnāt want this discussion to drag on for longer. The point is mostly that this decision making has been baffling, and ultimately, Iām of the camp that we should champion features we do like and shun the opposite. The discussion of production is always going to be confusing, and as the developers themselves have no official stance, it just becomes bickering between forum users.
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Iāll never defend value for money, because everyoneās is different. I defend the tools that we have, because they are value in my opinion.
Much like the existence of a Scenario Editor is, for me, not āmoddingā. Exclusionary, sure, but when a game says its bringing modding support, I expect far more than what the Scenario Editor of the past can deliver. I was modding games back in 2005 (mainly DoW, but I dabbled in stuff like Warcraft and other games), and for sure that kind of tool was great at the time. But it would be limiting now.
The sell becomes ādo we want to give dedicated modders the best shot possible, nomatter how few of these modders may be drawn to the gameā, or ādo we want to provide a historical tool in the hope it has the same resonance as it did years agoā.
There are pros and cons of both approaches (and maintaining both is effectively committing to maintaining two sets of tools with moderately different userbases in addition to the game itself - for free).
I agree on a lot of your points that debating this is ultimately āwho knowsā. I say that a lot myself (and itās used against me frequently). But we often end up stuck in a position where championing features comes at the expense of knocking what we do have, that does provide value. I canāt emphasise that enough. Just because you think it was the wrong call, doesnāt make it so.
I know a lot of dedicated modders on the Discord yelling out for support (that so far the tools havenāt seen much of). You should see the stuff they can create as-is, with the tools are they are (and Iām hoping with the much-improved mod browser ingame we have helps with folks seeing that).
I have nothing against people wanting more. I just donāt like the things we do have being snubbed, and we (imo) shouldnāt marginalise decisions taken just because the worth isnāt immediately-apparent. This isnāt like sea plants sticking out like a sore thumb in the middle of a blue sea, or poor texture maps, or missing animations. This is something that will have been decided on way back during in development (even if the tools themselves only came with Season One). Weāre at the point now where the devs need to invest in them more. This entire tangent might never have been a thing, if theyād already done so.
imo, the scenario editor was a big factor for success back in the day, stuff like CBA, yes people made variants for this in aoe4, but thing is, doing it in the scenario editors for 2 and 3 (and mythology) is incomparably easier compared to aoe4ās editor as is, this isnāt the case of tool not being able to do it, but rather having to script everything from scratch, but even more so because the trigger behaviour isnāt done in exactly presentable manner, mainly due to UI often containing too much unrelated information to what you actually need in a given situation
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Ultimately I donāt think that is necessarily the wrong take. AOE4 was built up to be the type of game that I think demands a lot more investment than it currently (maybe) is receiving. I think we are on the same page on the idea of supporting both the Editor as well as a potential introduction to a future scenario editor.
Modding is definitely a field that needs more work in AOE4, and Iām not talking about the addition of the Scenario Editor here. For instance, the game has been built to be primarily focused at competitive games, yet mods are unavailable for both quickplay and ranked games. As difficult as it would be to enable this, it would greatly benefit the modding community for their mods of visuals, UI, sounds to be utilized openly and popularized by the playerbase outside of custom games. UI mods are something I have specifically been interested in myself.
What we can hope is for a brighter future for AOE4, for currently, I would say it is likely hard for both developers and publishers above to justify investing more into the game. RTS games are already a niche market and we arenāt exactly breaking records as it stands; having said that, I hope that the addition of the editor means they felt they could support it instead of having developed it out of obligation just to not touch it again.
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Personally, for me, the biggest pain point is thereās no support for text editing. The node-based editor is great in that it prevents people from completely destroying a file, and I get why that approach is whatās provided (in Age IV).
But Iām a developer, I use VS Code, I have a linter setup and I can autoformat XML. Itās far easier to work with a textual representation assuming I know the names of the fields I need to add (which to be fair, is also a learning curve).
Even back when I modded Dawn of War, I did everything in Notepad (and later on, Sublime Text). Iām not good with visual editors (for code stuff specifically).
But yeah thereās a bunch of UX stuff they could improve on, but I think the priority for the tools is to continue with the docs (theyāre great, and cut down on being confused by the UI), but actually expand what the tools can do. I wouldnāt mind writing documentation and visual walkthroughs myself, but right now the stuff I want to do, I kinda canāt.
Weāll see. Iām trying to make time for modding again regardless. Iām big on onboarding users (professionally and as a hobbyist).
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at this point I think that gorb ideas lead to the assuption that he only thinks that mod tools are only for modders as they should be complex because big engines are compelx so only proffesional on the matter should work on them but ignoring the fact that aoe mod tools were always about simplicity and welcoming to all skill level. making it complex it just gatekeeping. Also it making harder for simple things like terrain, custom stats, objects placements instead for what it supposed to be the real complex stuff to do in an aoe map (custom ai, cutscenes, custom units, etcā¦ ) dunno the reasons but just in caseā¦
you know @GorbMort theres a say that " An idiot admires complexity, a genius admires simplicity"
dont take it too personal is just the way you responded makes everyone that you have something against mod tools easy to use and have more changes. yeah dev are not interested but that doesnt mean is not correct for the future of this game.
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And youāre ignoring the fact that the last Age game with a Scenario Editor was released in 2005.
Pithy quotes donāt change that. But again, Iām repeating myself, because youāre not reading what Iām typing.
yep aoeo and see how it went down.I repeating again and again you dont understand the aoe comunitty needs which talks subtly the kind of ideas that were discussed on the council which it as the council have to agree with their ideas or sorta of it.
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AoEO has an editor now 
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āwhat the community wants / needsā is not the same thing as āwhy editors made 18 years apart do different thingsā. You kept on asking why. I answered why. Me answering why is not me saying ānobody wants a more accessible editorā.
Making something simpler now, in 2023, in Age IV, is a very difficult technical problem compared to creating the Scenario Editor in the early 00s (if not earlier than then).
And once again, you have no idea what happened on the Council. You need to stop projecting your disagreement with me personally onto everyone involved 
Like I said - PM me if you genuinely want to learn more. Thereās no need to keep going in circles.
okie ill help u guys
basically argument is
mod tools are bad (they arenāt practical)
vs
mod tools arenāt bad (they are just more complex now than 20 years ago)
and i say, now, or 20 years ago or 50 years ago if mod tools arenāt practical for use i summarize it as -bad-ā¦ even if its just docs that are bad and even if they are far more complex today. i do believe if they spent enough time and resources on modding, while communicating with the community we might be seeing daily to weekly progress on mod toolsā¦ but you knowā¦ once you have pocketed $50 wellā¦ from a business perspective you just want to throw in enough resources to keep the community from complaining about complete neglect to the point of ruining the companyās reputation. who knows weād see a future expansion (not free) thatād address so many of these complaintsā¦
if a banking website makes it very tedious to transfer $ ill just say its bad, idc how complex the banking system is and how much security checks are needed. because you do have banks that have transfers working for sure.
aka why ive always said this game just isnāt done with love. sadly, i canāt blame them considering the business model they chose.
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Iād love nothing more for the devs to work on nothing but the mod tools. Thatād make me super happy.
Other people might not be happy with this though. Other people want other stuff in the seasonal updates and smaller patches. I want modding updates to be higher on the priority list, compared to other game improvements. Other people want other things to be higher, and mod tool updates to be lower.
At this point weāre not really talking about creative choices, though.
this entire thread should have been just ādevs, can u make your mod tools more usable?ā and perhaps come up with your own UI mockup for it whatever
BAD OR COMPLEX, the mod tools are lacking based on feedback, while i havent looked at it i am assuming it to be the case since plenty of other aspects of the game are below par.
one thing i will agree with you that youāve mentioned is resource management. all these stuff ppl want in seasonal updates hasnt yielded more players. if anything less. i am happy to play season2 for another year but see bug fixes and other non balance related improvements.
balance and features can progress slowly
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Not entirely sure that holds:
But that stuff is tricky, because Age IV still has more active players than anything except AoE II: Definitive. Does that mean the devs should stop supporting III? I donāt think so. Iām not sure itās easy to judge feature development by player drop-off.
Player retention is important, and IV seems to be maintaining a healthy enough baseline.
on player retention, thank you for pointing that one out, iād argue aoe4 is doing only marginally worse than 3 and 2, idea being its the only game with minor decline (weāre talking 100 players per week at most here), 3 bounces back and forth for basically consistent average, as does 2
i also wanted to add smt for mod tools UI feedback, sometimes it doesnāt clearly show parts and functions i actually need for specific mod (like lets say changing UI icons for tuning pack (i hate this limitation btw)) while it simultaniously clutters the screen with a number of tabs that are of no use to me for that specific purpose, this one could help tons in making tools more comprehensible
i could talk the scenario editors of ogs again but iāll just say this, if a tab for smt did pop up in those, you probably needed it and opened it yourself instead of it opening on its own even if not needed, and you can see the same pattern for advanced genie editor of aoe2 and other fanmade tools 2 and 3 have besides those
iād argue this problem contributes the most to people getting confused and lost in the editor, and it makes it look 10 times harder to use than it really is
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i can tell you for a fact the seasonal updates didnt excite me. i just go skirmish, and adjust my build and then play whatever i find is strongest.
in team games i can see the most common frustration is matchmaking.
i dont often hear people complain about OP trade OP civ in my games, maybe 2% of the time compared to just about every game mm complaints.
maintaining a āhealthy enough baselineā is just another assertion that you typically like doing, its like saying the food is salty enough but really subjective.
maybe you should read other threads where people need 20-30min to find a game. and its only been getting worse. end of season 3 was much healthier
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