I think the conclusion from the test is fair. There was really not enough done since release in order to justify an increase of the rating.
The development team must be bigger. Otherwise the development speed is by far to slow.
Furthermore they focus to much on competitive players. High E-Sport Tournaments not make the game better. Modding events with reasonable prices which bring new content would be much better. This would add new content and make the game better.
So that leaves only the Relic devs 
It only really has 1 problem, its still super proprietary code that any newly hire dev would need to learn from scratch. Personally iâm still figuring things out with the editor, and its not my main priority so its gonna take plenty of time, and ofc no kind of scripting api is immune to crap coding so saying its impossible to â â â â up in scar is wrong on many levels
Scar is really easy compared to other code lenguajes. So itâs very hard (if youâre a programmer to suck at relic scar)
+1
Apparently with focus on âcompetitive players/E-Sportâ you simply canât make a successful RTS.
Instead, to simply have a game that is fun to play and looks up-to-date,
we are getting, games that look ugly and are lame to play.
Exactly this is the reason why no new RTS can save the genre.
making x game as e-sport is what ow 2 scenario happened. making a game that is not fun or lacks several key element but also boring to watch which is happening with aoe 4.
@Huge5000RTSFan They should definitely change their focus to casual / non-competitive players. For me the extreme orientation of e-sport is one of the main reasons why we have a dramatically drop in player base.
They make big e-sport tournaments for their payed e-sport pros who only play the game to get a golden nose from the high prize pools. What a waste of money which could be better spend. When the game is good and fun enough there is no need to pay people to play it. Stronghold (love your profile picture) is one of my favorite RTS games. The campaign is very good and it is so much fun to play against the AI, because the AI has such awesome character. Good campaigns and an AI with character are to things which would both be very important for casual players. Unfortunately the AOE4 campaigns are less entertaining than those of AOE2. The AI is a stupid and faceless AI with no character.
@Franknezu11 Yes I think they mostly want to make small balance changes for competitive players and organize e-sport tournaments with high prize money. Tournaments are ok but with reasonable prices.
Stronghold Is one of my favourite game too⊠Did you hear that Firefly Is starting to develop a new stronghold game and It Will be moved by Unreal Engine 5? It could be incredible.
Wow that sounds amazing. Thank you for sharing the link. I really look forward to it. My favorite Stronghold games is the first one and Crusader and Crusader Extreme.
Further titles of Stronghold never attract me. I bought Stronghold 2 at launch. But it was one of my biggest disappointments I ever had with a game. I was very sad about it. Since then I never bought another Stronghold.
But I hope the next Stronghold with Unreal Engine 5 will be great. I would love to have another great Stronghold to play like Stronghold 1 and Stronghold Crusader.
what is going on here
This is the crux of the matter. Everything boils down to this. A studio that loved, ate, lived and breathed Age of Empires made AOE 3, AOE 2 and AOM and AOE1. A studio that didnât made AOE 4. End of story. Please reference Disney star wars vs Lucasfilm starwars for another example. All we can do is not buy AOE 4 and hope a different studio is in charge of AOM DE/2.
Unfortunately I have to agree. Relic is mostly interested in Company of Heroes 