Deal breakers for buying AOE4?

Full price on Steam. With the aoe2 DLC, which I was going to get anyway, I saved $10.

But after the beta I know I am going to get aoe4 no matter what and the $60 is not an issue, so it makes little difference for me whether I preorder or wait until launch.

the price of the game is what all new games are 40-60 USD, honestly if a new game is cheaper then thatā€¦its a horrible game lets be honest. Ageā€™s 4 is worth the opening price if you play and enjoy ages 2 you will enjoy this game, its very clean and everything you wanted ageā€™s 3 to be lol

Itā€™s not about the numbers. Itā€™s what they do with it. And so far the rooster points towards shallow 1vs1 match ups. No real history behind matching 100-years-war-era brits with mongols or french knights with chinese.

AOE2 just didnā€™t give a f and expected a certain suspension of disbelief from the player when doing things like representing the romans in medieval tech (hun/goth campaigns) or giving the meso american civs halberds and metal armor. Since the basic rules were consistent (shared tech tree) and the graphics were not too up and in your face, it worked out fine. Your brain could fill in the gaps.
While it has become more apparent with AOE2DEā€™s graphic updgrade, they also added a ton of new civs in the meantime, allowing to replace some of the old, more generic choices.

AOE4 has to deliver much more since it goes more into detail. The individual civs are not as universally usable, which severely limits what they can do with them.

All that does not have an impact on PVP multiplayer, so I guess that is what they will concentrate on. For pvp it really does not matter if they are diverse in covering nations, as long as they are diverse in playstyle. I donā€™t see either so far, at least not to an extent where you can get hours of fun out of it. The tech trees are shallow and will quickly be figured out by min-maxers which then dominate the lobbies.

My prediction for future content: New civs will come paired up in 1vs1 packs (maybe with some SP content) and will be suffering from power creep (as we can see in AOE2ā€™s and AOE3ā€™s new content drops). Since nobody will care about the lackluster SP content, the mod tools will have very low priority and will take forever to arrive.

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To be clean, it look very cleanā€¦ maybe too much?

This shows that you already accepted taking it up the rear by the modern gaming industry. Things that should be patched in for free are getting packaged in overpriced 5-10ā‚¬ bundles, and now you compare that price tag with a gameā€™s base price.
It has come full circle. You, good sir, are the consumer that the marketing propaganda wanted to create. You are the long term goal of the bethesda horse armor :smiley:

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Hotkeys, fully customisable hotkeys. If I dont have that, I cant play it.

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As a 200+apm player - You donā€™t need to worry :wink:
But they could improve on hotkeys a little, but overall it is playable.

I feel there is a balance between graphics, due to the reason with the new engine allowing the game to be played at a faster and more smooth pace.
With the graphics anyhow, previously i couldnā€™t even play the game myself and from years back was a $2600 PC (Maybe this is downfall of buying pre-built). Even though i could play starcraft etc on max.
I was just lacking RAM mainly, not enough phys RAM. Only had 8gb. $330 total in upgrades later (mobo/ram) and my mate give me his ryzen 3700x.

The game plays well and looks good !
It is a fine line to try make game, especially an RTS with lots of units on the screen (4v4) to not only look decent, but to play well with the new engine and mechanics. And the accessibility of it to others who arenā€™t as fortunately as me to YOLO upgrade their PC at will.

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To get a fast apm in play, you need way more then a good pc, you need a tuchpad keyboard and a tuch pad mice.

Just that, you win the time you lose, always pressing buton.

You can also get:

a screen whit higth refresh rate.

A mutiple core computer , whit solid state drive, whit hight reading /writing.

You need fiber optic internet.

Whit this, you can win 3 time the apm easy, compare to your normal play.

At this point, it is the age of empire server and other players, that will slow you down, because of the reading/writing limit of data transfer.

If it kills AoE2 at all, that is an instant deal breaker for me.

What? So you are saying that if itā€™s so good, that people will stop playing AoE2 for it that you wonā€™t buy it? :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:

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Yes. Lol. I might buy it, but it currently costs too much to be worth it, and AoE2 still needs a playerbase. Maybe if half the players leave I could push to top couple of hundred.

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they have, its called Holy Roman Empire

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They already did that. For me the deal breaker would be if they didnā€™t change the ridiculously oversized arrows and weapons they had in trailers. I just wouldnā€™t be able to get over that.

I am not totally convicted by them animations and graphics for 60 euro game but it is fun and it doesnā€™t bother me too much. (sound design is superb especially gun sounds and dubbing in original languages is very cool)

Also its not like there are other options for new RTS games set in history so its easy choice.

For me it was the hotkeys. Clumsy controls in any real time game is irredeemable. At this point, I donā€™t expect to buy it anymore unless a miracle occurs. It simply has too clumsy gameplay.

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For me itā€™s a deal breaker you canā€™t pause or save a multiplayer game.

Me and my brothers play against AI mostly, or against each other, and want to be able to get a new drink, something to eat, answer a phone call etc.

Itā€™s really cheap and AoE4 is missing out on this.

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