It is called a red flag. When you place down enough of them around your product, potential customers start sweating.
Why not both? They want good money for it, so why is “running base game” the only expectation? They should include staple AOE features or make the game cheaper.
Getting that is not a given. If the game gets abandoned those features will never be implemented.
Believing in the devs to deliver on such a promise… are we in church? How naive are people today? It’s not as if you have to search far to find the bodies of similar dev stories gone wrong. Oh look, over there: The rotting corpse of DoW3. It’s still fresh. A few miles down the road you can find the mummified AOEO. At least some fans built a shrine around that one.
On the other side we have success stories like Dirt Rally, where Codemasters just threw the game out on steam in early access to see if enough people are interested. After community feedback and enough player interest they made a roadmap and delivered.
It is basic because every game before it had this.
Literally everything else aside from multiplayer and campaign is coming “later”, who knows if it will when the game gets abandoned…
This game tries hard to cater to casuals yet does only offer campaign for them. Most players do not play MP.
Those players can not just mess around with cheats or be creative with the scenario editor.
We still don’t know if the editor is a map or scenario editor - the latter having control over triggers and allowing things like this:
Also in MP custom rule games like AOE2’s CBA or other special matches who often get presented by T90 will be missing.
Is there diplomacy? King regicide? The list goes on, as nothing can be taken as granted anymore.
I kind of did get used to it, that game development by RTS is fundamentally wrong, C&C4 without base build, Dawn of War3 as moba, Age of Empires as free2play online cartoon, Warcraft III: Reforged that lacks features from way older original game.
The devs knows and thats the important thing. We dont have to know. And what fact do you have to support that the game will be abanoned? Pure speculations…
No they dont so you can play against the AI. Possible allready in the Beta…
No you cant do that with a new game. Even though Im firmly convinced that all features found in AOE2 and 3 will be present on AOE IV Just wait and see.
This keeps getting said. Means nothing.
The comparison is with the current status of previous Age of Empires games.
Comparing with launch status decades ago is pointless.
It is current status. It is now.
Otherwise would be deleting all experience from decades, and tech, etc.-
I like your positivity. Let’s hope most features will be.
issue comes down to rts slowly dwindling due to budgets going to whatever is the fad in gaming at the moment… one point FPS after halo, Coop everything (honestly… was ok with this being in lots of games), Mmo’s, Open world anything due to GTA3, then the dark years of mobile gaming focus, f2p whale hunting
I mean, a lot of people on this forum says that the devs know what we want better than we do. Why the devs would think different if so many people defend what they are doing…? (like you were doing?)
Congrats on getting into the beta and I’m encouraged based on your comment that you had a blast. I wasn’t invited to the beta, so I’m still waiting.
I wanted to point out some misunderstandings that people seem to have in comments below. The Devs haven’t “forgotten” anything, and in many instances it’s not that these items aren’t ready at launch. Often, software is developed with a set of features, and a line is drawn showing that some things are critical for release while others can come as a follow-up. They may require additional testing, infrastructure changes, initial data collection, or simply need more focus and need to be prioritized. If the development company’s data suggests that a majority of players can enjoy the release without map editor, and similar functionality in the first few weeks, they won’t delay the release. Those basic components are ‘the game’ that many users are looking forward to.
Similarly, things like ‘cheat codes’ are often not built as easter eggs and extras for players/customers. They are used for developer testing, so they don’t have to play the game end-to-end to test functionality. They might rename the codes so they are fun, but they exist in the game as functionality that the devs may not release right away. A great example are the cheats that give a user a lot of food, gold, etc. Rather than the devs and testers play for 20 minutes to get sufficient resources to test a new unit or building, or similar, they just use those short cuts. I’m quite sure I’ve never read a description of the game promising them, for any version.
As several others have indicated, there are lots of reasons not to buy a new piece of software on launch day. If you’re concerned about these ‘will be added later’ pieces of functionality, then give them a month or two after release. Those of us that like campaigns and playing games with friends and family are willing to start playing with the launch features.
I hope the game turns out to be everything you’re looking forward to, even if it’s not there day 1. I am looking forward to it and did pre-order it. Fingers crossed I get into a late Beta as well.
I work for a completely unrelated game development studio, and I appreciate what you (the OP) are attempting to do here, but you should realize you are probably causing more harm than good.
These forums do not encompass every user. They do not represent proportionally the userbase AoE IV will have when it launches. While all of your requests are fair, the expectation to have them is not.
Categorizing nostalgic features as “necessary” and QoL features such as the map editor “essential” is hyperbolic and counterproductive. I think you are being unfair if you think the developers are happy not shipping features you have asked for. Everything needs to be prioritized and just because there’s a majority vote in the forums doesn’t mean it’ll directly translate into hundreds of thousands of content purchases.
I haven’t been paying much attention to the information coming from the devs as you have, so perhaps there’s more than meets the eye, but I think it’s totally fair for the developer to have a different opinion than the select few people willing to voice their opinions in the forums.
Thanks for linking that article. I am certain that the developers have no interest in facing down a seemingly endless wall of negativity. It does not surprise me to see the developers these days not really participate on the forum and drift towards giving interviews and occasionally hopping onto reddit, which seems generally to be warmer to AoE4 than this forum.
I hold players of Age games in high regard, though certainly it gets toxic around here. Heck, I am a moderator and I have been very negative and outspoken about aspects of AoE4.
I’m not sure how our community is supposed to handle the release of AoE4 or what we are supposed to do with any strong negative feedback. I certainly have zero interest in hurting anyone’s feelings or driving them away from responding to players’ concerns. But I also do not feel comfortable asking people to refrain from voicing their concerns in a sincere, good faith way.
Historically around here, I have found that when players understand more from the developers’ perspective, that arms the community with good information to help dispel toxic assumptions and explain developers’ intentions when other players inevitably vent about certain decisions.
Your post is itself a terrific example of this with how you lift back the veil and speak from the point of view as a developer who would be unhappy to ship an incomplete game but resolute given the realities of prioritization.
We need more of that around here. We used to have developers/community managers on the forum who spoke directly to us, who took our questions, and who joked around with us. Hopefully one day we will get that again. It really helps connect the people who play the game with the people who make it. It is a big part of what glued me so tightly to this franchise.
I think the reason many end up being toxic is because they argue with each other. I have fallen into this trap many times because they tend to attack players who play a certain game. They forget that the page globalizes an entire saga and not a specific game.
So that’s why many forums are full of garbage that nobody is interested in reading because they do not give ideas or constructive arguments.
Some of it is this, but plenty of times I’ve seen people here immediately jumping to conclusions and assuming the motives of people they’ve never met and have no way of knowing.
For example, if there is something they don’t like about the game they say it’s because the devs are lazy or stupid or whatever. They can’t seem to comprehend that their preference is not automatically the “right” way and lots of things are likely intentionally done a different way than they would prefer (and for reasons they aren’t even considering).
Totally fine to disagree with those decisions, argue for changes, etc, but the moment they go to attacking the people making the decisions and not just the decisions themselves they are not someone worth listening to.
it’s literally my fav!