Throw new and weird ideas, stop thinking about balance, let players go wild and see what happens. This was the most fun part about AOE online and AOEM. some stuff was OP as hell but was it fun? Hell yeah.
the latest expac gave us variant civs, some of it is cringe but man is it fun way to experiment and add some spice. This exactly what we want more creativity, more ways to play and more singleplayer content.
Let go of that E-sports dream, E-sports will never happen if you try to make something for that. Many games became E-sports because the game was interesting and fun to play and it organically grew. Nobody focused on E-sports sponsorship and events while making the RTS games.
Give us more narrative campaigns, more distinct looking unit, more maps and more focus on fun single player experience.
A Triple A RTS game should care about the 2 environments (casual and competitive) separately and more so in this competitive videogame market (we are in 2023, not 2000’s).
If AoE4 were to follow the path of AoEO in its time, it would be the death of AoE. Player retention is important to the franchise.
What exactly is “the conflict of interest” between E-sport and fun in practice?
I do not see OP stuff as fun in single-player skirmish, OP stuff is boring in my opinion, a player just spam OP stuff in game and other options are present in the game, but are meangless
Age of Empires is a game where many players will just want to learn and play a few civs that they are connected to or interested in. If those civs are just OK while civs they aren’t interested in are OP, how will that be fun for them? It won’t and players in that situation will likely move on. A decent amount of balance will always be required to keep the subjective idea of fun something as many players as possible experience in game.
Does fun being the agenda mean a particular focus on new things? I think new map features, like wildlife other than deer/wolf/boar, or even more gamemodes in normal matchmaking would be ideal.
You sound like the kind of guy that wants Jeanne to be buffed so the whole playerbase can mental explode and mald lol. OP stuff is not fun, and usually a much bigger problem for the average player’s enjoyment not top level. Besides AOE4 rarely makes meaningful balance decisions over the top level gamers.