Devs should definitely listen to majority of paying customers. I just didn’t realize there were complaints about stone, walls, and castles. I shall be the Lorax for the walls. What are people talking about? (Walls should be 10 stone and double HP in fact and Castles/Towers should have 50 fire armor). They are paper. The game is very heavy with siege. Bombards melt walls and castles. Even in feudal, for 250 wood, a ram punches holes in them. Not pointless enough, now great bombards are even more ridiculous. I love the archers on walls mechanic, and I would argue that for bronze noobs, it is probably frustrating that it is so hard to defend against rushing. Walls also give siege a purpose in life. Also, not sure about meta, but also no one uses the stone towers it seems since they are not cost effective. Stone Towers and Castles melt to melee soldiers just beating on them in seconds. Walls, castles, and towers are not defensive, rather need to be defended. Finally, I understand limiting stone. But stone is the new gold. It is platinum [insert stolen catalytic converter joke]. Subsequently [insert inflation joke] stone in the market hits 500 in some team games. Oh well.
actually stone towers don’t see use cuz most upper ladder folk can’t think for themselves and follow tournament rules, one of which is no stone towers, cuz too op or whatever their reasoning is
I am in no way a competitive player, but walls being too weak definitely isn’t it.
price is a tad high on walls, but not much else, until we arrive to build mechanics for walls, thats the actual problem imo
Walls are pretty boring, since you can’t reliably build anything but straight lines, and they can’t be used to block paths between buildings or be used creatively. They are… well, walls. The unintentional benefit of AoE2’s walls was that it allowed for many ways to interact with the mechanic.
AoE4 walls are simplistic and pretty one sided; it is one of the few mechanics that will force every opponent, of every civ, to react with the exact same thing; siege. And all for what, a little stone?
At the end of the day, I get that it is a history-based game. But, removing ways to interact with mechanics is fundamentally what creates a sterile environment. If I wanted to send a million MMA towards the wall, why can’t I?
You might say; that is a bad play. Who cares? I don’t play for money. I paid for the game… so I could have fun. And many others, most, don’t care if plays are good or bad nor do they care for the Esports that this company panders to. We bought a game to enjoy the experience, not to be gatekept by armchair professional gamers.
well, thats smt modern RTS devs don’t seem to understand, given how many times this exact design direction failed last decade, are there not enough RTS corpses yet?
Ten thousand people have ten thousand ideas of what’s fun. Your fun will not be mine. Mine will not be yours.
Balancing from the top-down works and has very little to do with “fun”.
And hard counters vs. soft counters are another debate entirely. MAA can be balanced around either doing some damage to walls, or doing not, but not both. This game goes one way. Other games go other ways. You’re not being “gatekept” from anything, it’s a design decision by the devs, as simple as that.
Reminder: I am not a competitive gamer. And we’re all preaching from our own armchairs. You, me, anyone with an opinion.
You can dislike whatever you want, but blaming a design decision on “pandering to esports” is just you trying to find someone or something to blame.
This is pretty ignorant of the comment I made above. Because it only addresses the last point, without the conetxt.
The reality is, competitive players will be competitive whether the game is balanced or not. This is always a very small portion of players in almost every game out there, but specifically within this genre. My comment above was noting that fun should be prioritized for the primary audience–not the reverse. Competitive players will find ways to be competitive, even if the game was literally some sticks and rocks on the floor.
People can have fun in different ways. I never said they couldn’t. But, you’re very naive if you think the majority of players of RTSes as well as AoE4 specifically are players who take it seriously and play ranked all day. It just isn’t the case, and never has been.
So with that in mind, are you really going to pretend that said minority of players, aren’t gatekeeping? Because they are, just like with your commenting addressing the most irrelevant part of my comment on top of making it out to be about yourself.
i did bring up the actual genuine problem with walls being their build mechanics
i wanna go into specifics
in aoe2 it acts as the following:
only wall segment going through the woodline, stone deposit etc. is being prevented from construction, and gates can be build independently or on not yet built wall
in aoe3 it acts as following:
this is how the game skips trees and mines etc. to enable easy construction
here is the example of pillarless walls micro trick used to save bit of wood and speed up construction, update to stone in aoe3 is done on the walls or via church, global either way
and here are the gates after you convert the choosen segments, only longest segments count for gates
now how it works as of this moment in aoe4:
this is how wall behaves when nothing blocks construction
proof that the gates won’t be allowed to construct until you start building that wall segment
gate being constructed, after the wall segments were already built at least partially
what happens when a single tree or mine is in the way of the wall
and stone gates sharing palisade gate requirement of premade wall to allow construction
i hope this post provides enough evidence on what the actual problem with aoe4 walls is
also not mentioned above but worth noting, you can incorporate other buildings as make shift walls, for instance houses, military production buildings, all buildings work like this really, in aoe2 and 3, and in both of those games, the walls and buildings can be used to connect your walls and teammate walls as a single barrier, in aoe4, you cannot use buildings for walls, and you cannot connect your actual walls to your teammate walls, it always leaves a gap if attempted
I’m allowed to respond to any part of your post. The bit I replied to stands by itself and I don’t think I misrepresented it. There’s no amount of context that changes or enhances the meaning, imo.
Competitive players tend to be competitive regardless of the game, but they generally won’t stick with a game that isn’t competitively-balanced.
I personally think competitive balance has to be balanced against “fun” mechanics that are difficult to balance (instead of say removing them), but that’s not even what’s being discussed here.
“fun” should consider the entire playerbase. This includes competitive players, but that’s the reality here.
I still don’t get why they’re the bad guys here. You apparently can’t play the game that you want, which appears to be a game that works in a different way to the way this one works. It’s like complaining that you can’t play a melee hero in whatever game as a ranged hero and then blaming a group of players for this.
The developers make the decisions in this game.
I never said they were. You’re putting words into my mouth.
No, because you’re complaining about a design decision the developers chose to make. The hard counter system would’ve emerged early in the design process.
Doesn’t look like we’re getting anywhere, so let’s agree to disagree.
no, you not. please follow the rules the forum without oftopic.
They invented awesome(not) mechanics: build rams with units. with pop 200, you can not build a ram, delete some units, unqueue units for rams. Feel the pain of the attackers who wanted to fight up the walls.
If they allow A-click шnto the walls, who would use awesome(not) mechanics above?
The majority of players simply wouldn’t care if the ‘pro’ players stayed or left. I’m here for team game madness boiiiiiiiii.
The only time I game about the competitive scene is when they push through balance changes that negatively impact team games.
Right now, everybody attempts to break walls, rather than occupying walls. That’s why walls can’t have too much health.
If we were to buff walls, which imo can be done, we need to pair the buff with much cheaper siege towers. Probably also remove the pop requirement for siege towers. And the micro with siege towers need to be changed as well. You should be allowed to lock a siege tower to a segment of wall, and set military buildings’ rally points onto the siege tower, so that the units automatically climbs the wall through siege towers.
Also, I don’t think there’s any problem with bombards destroying walls, they should remain equally effective if walls were buffed.
This can be a very good idea, the devs should do something like this, because this could revive the siege tower in the game (since no one uses them). In the last survey they made a question about siege towers so i think that they have some ideas in mind ;D
The game would be nightmare if you making it like this.
Archers need to be buffed against battering rams. Make the placement of archers on walls mean something. It’s a strategy game, we need to enable tactics.
This entire post is senseless. The author clearly plays in low elo, I dont even have to look it up. Then he also gets mad at some solid explanations.
Delete this
while i don’t agree with the op’s diagnosis as to why walls don’t work well, its a fact that building walls atm is super clunky given how easy it is to have something in the way, as for you low elo claim, in this case you’re part of the problem, but op doesn’t word it best, its number of individuals that have either 1.no standard for quality or 2.are part of the 15% of the playerbase that this game solely panders to so they don’t even see what the problem is
Dear Wall Haters - Wall Lorax - Age of Empires IV / IV - Discussion - Age of Empires Forum
feel free to take a look, i hope you’ll get it
Next you’re gonna explain how bugs are fine because this is the only game that makes you feel anything.
Problems do not go away when you become “better”. This ridiculous fallacy needs to stop, if you’re not addressing the issue, don’t gatekeep.