I think Relic delivered a solid game with a very solid foundation which one could further develop into a true masterpiece. Unfortunately, Relic’s after-sales service/support has so far proven to be extremely slow. Players are quitting the game in mass. Every week the game loses around 1K players. Currently the numbers are already below the ones from AoE2DE.
The main reason being that there is barely anything on the horizon which we can look forward to except some basic features which should’ve been in the game straight from the beginning, let’s be honest (like being able to pick your color). The fact that those features are now being released 6 months later, underlines that the game got released unfinished. The only major thing on the horizon is the mod support but with a dead community there won’t be any mods. There’s no lookout for upcoming DLCs or anything. The recently published roadmap is a joke at best. And then there is also the lack of balancing. It took them weeks if not months to fix something completely broken (like the Fire Lancer or siege weapons). Lame strategies which are not fun to play or play against dominated the top ladders (like tower rush or Mongol TC) and made many pro players quit (like Hera).
I think it is World’s Edge’s responsibility as “overseer” to assure that the Age of Empires series is in good hands. And frankly, although as I said Relic delivered a solid game, I don’t see that here. It feels more like Relic has already finished with the AoE 4 project and moved on to their “baby” which is still CoH. This is in big contrast to Forgotten Empires which are even supporting the less popular AoE 3 with regular updates and DLCs.
Dear World’s Edge/Microsoft, please consider giving the live service responsibility to a different team. Otherwise, this was a nice but very short revival of the AoE series.
How long are we supposed to wait for a complete game? If you’re fine with waiting, more power to you, but being discouraged by a rushed release is not a community problem.
It released too early. The pace of patches post release is fine. If it came out a year later with everything they are patching in already there people would not complain. The release date is not Relic’s problem.
You haven’t played a single RTS besides Aoe4 have you? Basic functions like colour selection is not even available. Warcraft 3 already had a map editor which lead to the developement of the first Moba, Defense of the Ancients. This game has neither a map editor nor colour selection.
Regardless, THANK YOU for sharing a similar sentiment. Relic is not even concentrating in this game it feels like. Why would they still rely on them? Just end the contract and hire somebody else (if possible then hire in addition someone in addition to Relic).
Being discouraged is one thing. Making up negative to the point of defamatory claims about the developers, as the OP has done, is another. It sets the tone for the thread and informs how people are likely to reply.
We are not talking about brand new contents like civs or campaigns. We’re talking about some basic functionalities that could be easily implemented 20 years ago, and relic is not likely to be reinventing the wheels.
Now, are these (color selection, map editor, etc.) extremely difficult to make for the current development team technically? Your choice:
Yes: shame
No: I cannot imagine how you would have to either delay the entire game for something so simple, or release the game without it. There must be something severely wrong with the project management.
The pace is not fine and that is exactly the point of this thread. 5 months is a reasonable time to implement mod support. It is NOT a reasonable time to implement something as simple as being able to pick your own color or custom hotkeys.
And we’re not just talking about missing features but about balancing too! Balancing is changing a few digits in the code, that’s it. Of course you might wanna do some internal testing if it is a drastic change but that’s really it. There is no reasonable justification that some major balancing issues which have shown up in the 1st week of release already, get patched only months later!! This game will NEVER be able to be part of e-sports if they take months to fix absolutely broken balancing issues!
To clarify my statement: yes I think AOE4 was released a bit too early if we compare them to RTS two decades ago like AOM or Warcraft 3 that I bought at their release.
BUT things have changed, games are more expensive to develop and the trend is now more with releasing at a (too) early stage. I don’ t approve this, but they don’t ask for my opinion. Just a fact.
So if I had to blame someone, it would definitely not the dev, who did an outstanding job in my opinion, but the producer.
Now, I have a lot of fun playing it and color selection and mods that you are (righly) asking are coming this year ! So once again, just be patient and don’t ask for another developper ! Relic has still a team working on these improvements and future add-ons (or DLC as we call them nowadays). And they do fix bugs and balance.
Making up unprovable statements about their internal priorities is negative and serves no constructive purpose.
Nevermind the fact Relic is capable of working on two products at the same time (they were working on Age IV and CoH 3 in parallel), it ignores the fact we have a public roadmap and a commitment to a large update this season / quarter. They’ve kept on top of messaging about this update as well.
I’m sympathetic to people wanting more. Or wanting different things from what has been announced. But I will absolutely not stand for people taking criticism about the product and turning it into a way to attack the developers in bad faith. “they’re not properly working on the game” is just that. It undermines their commitments by claiming they’re not committed.
I do wonder why Age2DE and Age3DE both get significant updates on a regular basis but AOE4 the flagship new title seems much slower. I dont know if its fair to compare them those games have been out for much longer but I seem to remember the pace of updates being quick on release as well.
Are they capable tho? Because currently it looks like they are neglecting one product in order to cope with the other one.
The features on the roadmap are basic features. The only thing worth mentioning is the mod support. “Large” would mean at least for me new maps or civs which is not the case. So far we don’t know the capabilities of this modding tool either. Let’s hope they release it more or less bug-free and you can actually modify a lot.
This is another thing which I don’t like about Relic. Usually they let you know about an update 1-2 days before they release it. There is almost zero communication inbetween the updates. There is also no feedback that they acknowledge the feedback from the community and are actively working on the problem. They just leave you in the dark. Another reason why players are leaving. The players don’t know what’s going on or what’s coming. Are there any addons planned? Any DLCs? Anything MAJOR at all?
Except one has already been released. I’m talking about their scope to handle the development of two products at the same time. Pre-release development teams are always larger than post-release support teams, even for live service games (which Age IV is not).
Your claim of “neglect” is based on “why aren’t things happening more / faster / etc for Age IV”, and I’m sympathetic! I’m a player who’s literally waiting on mod tools. But that doesn’t mean the game is being neglected.
It’s entirely possible Relic are working on a third title they’re not even ready to announce yet. The problem for you is the pace of updates for Age IV. You don’t need to invent a specific scenario where CoH 3 is sucking up resources to make this point.
It’s impossible to know to what extent teams borrow from each other. In some companies teams are heavily silo’d and there’s little cross-communication at the developer level. In others, developers on different projects are pulled to and from projects all the time. I understand you wanting more communication and / or progress from Relic, but why insist on a comparison you have no way of proving?
In your opinion. And regardless of opinion either way, that doesn’t map to the effort required to implement them.
And if moved to a different developer entirely, but still using Relic’s Essence Engine? Do you really think that’ll result in faster and more efficient work? I’m going to say “extremely doubtful”. In-house game engines are very specialised things. It’s easy to blame this on “spaghetti code”, or whatever else people like to say is present in Relic’s games despite having no experience of working on the engine or probably even modding their titles. But game engines are complex, and giving something made in-house to a third party very often leads to Problems™.