It’s toxic poison to drink, I’ll give you that. But having gone almost 10 years troll hunting around here,
being on the other side brings me perspective.
We love and cherish and internalize these games, no matter how trivial they sound when trying to explain it to a nongamer. When they work (AoEO) it is nothing but love and respect and deification of the fine people behind it.
Extreme highs.
So it’s healthy to remember that we humans have equal but opposite reactions when the games fail. And just as I cannot separate the amazing people from their amazing games, so can I not but take it personally when the game is an utterly frustrating experience.
We humans can only try to be perfect analytical robots. But we fail. At least I do when ramming my head against AoE4.
Having thought more let me try to boil this down better: In a moment of quiet contemplation I agree with you that it is far likelier the hotkeys suck for any number of reasons other than a naked lack of caring by the good people making the game. But in the heat of the moment trying to play with those abominable clunky things, it feels like an intentional act by horrible people drunk on hubris. And how things feel can often be more important than how things truly are.
But Online failed. You still carry around that quote from the devs about soft launches. No? Unless “works” is a personal thing. I get that. I thought DoW III (for it faults) worked. Precious few others did.
I dunno. I’ve tied myself to particular games that strongly myself. Franchises too. So I get it. Too tired to do it these days, even though I do enjoy IV.
I’m good with hotkey improvements. But you know already that I think catering exclusively to the old guard is a diminishing return. I could’ve played every Age game religiously and still believe that.
You have the older games. It’s not your lawn. If we can trim the new green so you find it comfortable? I’m all for that. But I don’t think the grass here is going to change. I dunno.
Whatever, haha. Too many words. You shone the light into night sky (just coincidental timing really, it was on my suggested list). More hotkey options are good.
Call it Not Age of Empires if you want it to be so different. The moment a company creates a skinsuit out of a franchise to trick old timers into buying a completely different game targetting a different audience, they deserve the eternal flack until that company falls over.
Generally faithful new versions of games tend to target the audience that built it. When they pull a skinsuit edition however, it is impossible to say whoever’s vision of the game should have more lean. The company itself will never admit to who their main audience is, secretly seeking both. So even if the games designed for a different group entirely, the old timers will stick around like desperate loyal dogs–and along with it, will be constant complaints, which should just be fair considering the trick that company pulled.
This thread I’d consider one of the exceptions, but generally? Nah. I don’t agree when it comes to design. Question everything. Interrogate assumptions.
Old doesn’t mean good, just like simplicity doesn’t (though simplicity in design is often a goal, it’s not a rubric in of itself).
But that’s a broad thing. Here it just means “expand / refine hotkeys”, to which I say: yup.
Well, it entirely depends. But, you’re right that old doesn’t necessarily mean anything.
Are you designing things for the greater good? Are you designing things for maximum profit?
Are you designing things for the original audience?
Designers are handed a difficult task, and it isn’t always consumer friendly. There should be no shame in claiming that anti-consumeristic practises should be shunned, despite how much profit they make.
The tradeoff of “soft launches”, as Andy has quoted several times, is you reduce the risk of investing too much into a game that might fail or putting too much unnecessary efforts into parts that do not really appeal to the audiences, but you also increase the risk of dying on arrival.
The same logic can be applied to sequels:
You make a lot more sales than the game deserves with that well-established brand name.
You face the “risk” of being criticized by old players of the franchise if some of there expectations are not met.
Same with budgets:
You reduce the risk by assigning the budget to the “most profitable” problems.
You also upset some players so they criticize this behavior.
And the latter is probably so trivial that I’d not even call a risk. Already a really good deal. If you don’t even allow that to happen, it’s too greedy.
My answer here is generally “yes”. But it’s a yes to most of those questions.
Lotta (competing) stakeholders in a video game from the creator’s side. Shareholders are only one, but they enjoy a heavy weighting.
I don’t like that they do, but I try to keep my venting to a minimum. It’s often considered (too) political for games discussions. And to be honest it’s not that helpful because it’s the way things are. The best and only power we have there is our wallet, but that doesn’t teach much. The shareholders aren’t harmed. The devs are.
This isn’t to say we should therefore spend. That harms us. Just that whichever way it goes, folks who don’t deserve it tend to get squeezed.
To bring it back to hotkeys, Essence has always had a grid system. They’ve never had rebindable controls. The fact we’ve got it at all shows a desire to cater to this community specifically. Or at least the recognition that serving that need is the sensible thing to do. To invert Andy’s point, Relic’s fans are in general used to the grid system. Rebinding keys would be nice, but it was never the thing it is for the Age community.
So I don’t see anti-consumer here, with the hotkeys at least, in my opinion. I see budgetary choices, and a commitment post launch to serve this community specifically.
Yeah I see no evidence that they don’t care and a lot of evidence that they do, even if people aren’t always happy with the execution or the speed at which it happens.
Pretty much every patch is full of things the community has asked for. They have been fixing the hotkeys as well, although why it seems to be difficult to just do it all at once I do not know.
I do think they should have all hotkeys rebindable so everyone can play as they like.
I don’t even know why we’re having this discussion even with the existence of past threads, hotkey issues should be fixed as they appear within a few days. Then we can focus more on flaming the scenario editor which I never cared about.
They fixed mali age up hotkey, not even sure why they can get this wrong in the first place.
Strange thing to just fix one and ignore the rest, almost as if they don’t even bother reading.
Least they could do is acknowledge they are aware of these issues and then fix them 2 years later.
accept it grid is not welcome by the old school and loyal fans. even aoe 2 since iot launched has the option to custom it
also this:
aoe player are composed by the old guard. you cna tgo to a new group and say that persepective is better because i say so because that group has already an ############## taste and values. exmaple of that is aoeo. it failed because it didnt got the content it should be at launch and aoe 4 is doing the same. you want that gorb? stop defending and accept the custom hotkeys which it may help to return some player to aoe 4.
he’s only going to tell you what’s already obvious: “feature/fix x is nice/good to have”
we are in this scenario simply because there are many things that should be fixed and not new features. but they seem to think new civs (or biome… idc design team or not, waste of resources is waste) are more important… and thats where we start to look at steamcharts and then wonder.
seems very difficult to have a “spring cleaning season”
I accept improvements to custom hotkeys. But neither @Franknezu11 nor you read my posts before replying to them, which leads to comments like Franknezu11 saying “stop defending and accept the custom hotkeys”, despite the fact I’ve already accepted (and agreed) that they need improvements.
Of course it’s obvious. Bugs should be fixed. Missing keybinds should be added. This shouldn’t be controversial.
It’s only controversial when folks need to make things up about other posters, in order to turn the discussion personal
It taking a long time (and people feeling understandably impatient) is a different thing.
I don’t agree that people need to adapt to the grid system. I support custom hotkeys.
But I do believe launching with grid was an acceptable compromise (assuming the launch date couldn’t be moved - if it could’ve been delayed, I would say custom hotkeys should’ve been a priority). Regardless, we are where we are now.
so you still gatekeeping on a game that the mayority learnt to play it with custom keybind but no you just want the grid one which is applied to the recent rts or sc2, coh. there a reason why aoe is aoe and its because the hotkeys system and i said before why are trying to impose the ideal on a foreign croup when you know that one has different values and taste?
