I don’t count the golden ghost boys as animations since it’s sped up and unrecognizable, especially in peripheral vision. It’s useless for giving information. No problems seeing a cannon getting attached to a horse in AOE3, even in a messy battle.
If what they delivered satisfies you, good for you 
its been done before, I don’t see why it cant be done again. aoe3 did siege crews just fine, it is reasonable to ask to have them again.
making the game visually better is always a win. we aren’t bound by the computational limits of pcs in 1998 anymore, and visuals do matter to people.
I know that’s not your take, but for people who argue that, it’s a very dumb stance because then I could say that trees are too tall and hide my units, therefore I want the “small trees” mod from AoE II to be part of the game. I don’t care about trees being aesthetically pleasing or accurate, I just want my wood and to be able to see my units, goddamnit!
There are tons of things that technically hurt gameplay but make the game appealing and I wouldn’t want to part ways with any of it. I want my siege units crewed because it’s a nice detail and fun to watch the crews do their thing. Oh, and sentient, possessed trebuchets moving on their own give me nightmares.
The golden people/ghosts should suffice. I too think humans are not needed.
Honestly, I think from having the options of an animated crew, no crew at all, and the yellow silhouettes, I feel they are the worst. I don’t understand why people irritated from a crew/builder aesthetics can approve this setup. I just feel it is way more irritating to have yellow things pop out of nowhere, with no relevant visual cue or relation to the scenery and vanishing again. Maybe they are meant to link to the golden flash of waypoints and the fog of war lines in gold, but for me, they just came out of nowhere, haunted my buildings and catapults, and vanished again.
This isn’t really any different than the suspension of disbelief required for lots of other things in the game. Upgrades in the blacksmith just magically appear on existing units in the middle of battle, monks do a chant that magically mind controls the enemy to switch sides, dozens of warships magically appear out of thin air from a small dock, etc.
True and that is completely fine. We had dozens of threads with heated discussion on this, because where people draw this line is subjective. Contrary to some claims in these threads there is no objectively correct choice on this that would just magically please everyone.
Similarly the devs need to draw that line for lots of different elements like trees or foliage, siege crews, scale or level of detail of units/buildings. These decisions are usually based on your target audience’s expectation or perceived expectation. Until late in development these perceptions are largely sourced through market analysis.
By now they’ll probably rely on feedback like this, which is why people who disagree share their point of view in these threads. Otherwise they will end up with the line being (re-)drawn solely based on the preferences of others, who are more vocal about it.
Are you serious? No market analysis lead to the golden ghost boys! That would’ve needed some oddly specific questionaires xD
It is the result of a typical artist think tank. The gold theme is thrown on everywhere and serves no gameplay purpose. It is there because a group of designers thought it looked cool and the idea has become their love child over the course of this project. At some point someone should’ve put a stop to it and ask if it serves the gameplay or not. Seemingly didn’t happen.
With the difference that this is not the lack of something not breaking the illusion for whatever reason. It’s the design of something, which is IMO breaking with the rest of the image and therefore rather more invasive, than the lack of it would be.
They are just as unnecessary. In AOE II the Persian Elephants don’t have riders yet it does not take away their mounted unit effect. You don’t need to see a swordsmen do any cool tricks when killing the enemy. The olden style up and down is best for clarity. You don’t even need to see archers pulling and shooting bows. A still animation with arrows flying off is more than enough.
Infact why even bother with all the animation? Do chess piece type structures. Go back to the arcade area.
People who argue that graphical details is unnecessary in the era of high level graphics cards with inbuilt AI, and engines that recreate entire worlds should just go back to playing snake on their old Nokia brick phon. Nothing has more clarity than that.
You are soo true!
I still play alient invader on my phone, way more playable and readable, then age of empire 4.
But, i get tired so quick of of alient invader, that i go play age of empire 3, just to see my engineer load a bullet into the canon and fire on enemy, that are trown away by the passage of the canon ball.
I don’t care losing in ranked, since i aways go revolution and don’t build a villager.
Love seing my villager gather resources and turn into military units at revolution.
Some time, i doo win, but i always have fun. XD
I agree with your point but all these animations are on a continuum and at a certain point with more and more reduced animations and effects, more and more people will be unimpressed and turned off of the game. For some people, that point is already at siege operators apparently. I’d guess they are in the minority though. Past AOE games did not have siege operators on most siege units. The “golden ghosts” are kind of an elegant compromise in my eyes. I also wouldn’t mind if they had fully realized little men operating them but it’s more of a minor detail in the larger picture of a game that does so many things right already.
Never has a game ever been criticised for doing too much in the graphical department. Why are remasters always so successful? It’s because you are adding things that wernt possible Back then due to technological restrictions. What have caused games to fail are games that they were unable to live up to their expectations.
All these people who say games can get away with fulfilling the absolute bare minimum requirements for a game, being a decades old established franchise are really people who have no idea what makes or
Breaks a game.
Cyberpunk was one of the most hyped up games due to its graphical fidelity. People went nuts at launch and mass bought it. What destroyed the game was when the actual game graphics was so much worse than the trailers and it was filled with graphical bugs.
That’s what these arcade lovers don’t understand. People are spoilt with the modern era of graphics and that’s what they want. Hence why gaming studios put so much production into graphics and generating life like particle physics and dynamics. That’s what sells. When games go nuts at launch, and they are new, it was because the trailer gave off this absolutely unreal graphics insight that made people so into it.
It’s like saying you can sell a cheese burger by putting a day old burger infront of a camera and it will sell just as much as a big Mac that went through all the processing and touch ups. It’s a thought process completely unrelated to real life gaming in 2021.
And while manned siege units wernt a thing in age for most siege weapons, you’d notice that changed as the game improved. Age of Empires 3 and Age of Mythology have more manned siege units than AOE II and AOE. That’s intentional and that fits the devs promises of improving the game. Unit textures became more complicated, mechanics became more realistic. Because even back then they knew that is what majority of the gamer base want. Not the old RTS cult that want to keep graphical fidelity at the 19th century because they are use to the readability of snake games on Nokia phones. That a tiny bit of graphics affect their neural processing in such a way they become overwhelmed.
Games have to evolve just as technology evolves. And that concept is not limited to just games, it’s all technological advancements. Imagine in the era of electric cars you’d have people still building antique petrol cars that don’t have parking sensors. And saying that “I don’t like Peking sensors, the beeping annoys me”. You are literally destroying the industry of that particular manufacturer.
GET. WITH. THE. TIMES. 
just thought I might add that I agree with you, I wasn’t arguing against you haha
Not always - see WC3. But many times they are, yeah.
Pretty sure no one is saying that. Not really sure what you mean but AOE IV is exceeding past AOE games and adding new elements in lots of ways. Persistent siege operators just isn’t one of them.
Not really. Graphic fidelity is amazing, at least on PC. The major bugs have been quashed. It was hyped up because people were expecting a different game than it was - with a lot more of an open, living world to it. That aspect of it was terrible. As a story-driven, linear narrative game with flashy graphics, it worked well.
That’s like saying that past racing games did not have cars with transparent windows so they should still be black rectangles. You have to improve. The devil is in the details. I don’t care if all 8 civs are the most balanced ever if I get bored looking at a lifeless map. That’s where we should draw a clear distinction between eSports and gaming for enjoyment. Give me wildlife, give me manned siege, amazing water reflections. Does it help me defeat the enemy? Heck no, but I love those things and they keep me coming back. Do you remember that AoE I (that’s ONE) had lions attacking deer? Are we going backwards?
Stop defending a game that is still clearly incomplete and lacking a lot of inspiration! You don’t get improvements by being nice.
You just used an example of a remaster that took away features rather than add them. Infact that example proves my point even more.
Majority of the comments have been justifying all of Relic’s graphical downgrades. The over simplified unit textures, the lack of physics, terrible projectile animation, and missing features that take the development back a step. And they been justifying it by saying “RTS doesn’t need that”, or “it interferes in readability” or “not everyone has superior graphics card” blah blah. Manned siege units and other complaints are common complaints from age players of the past. Not talking about the 1/3rd competitive player base which is a relatively new concept to AOE. Those people are going to reduce every graphical detail to the lowest no matter what. But doesn’t mean you change the priorities of a game to fit the 1/3 player base.
You have the same people who hate when people use the examples of
Successful established games with the justification that RTS can’t live up to that due to their potato pc limits. Or their opinion of successful games is different to what is popular on the market. That a number 1 selling game doesn’t represent what majority of people want 
But their minority views of keeping or downgrading graphical aspects, and shutting down graphical requests somehow fit the majority
Bro, Cyberpunk bugs became a meme throughout the gaming world. It was absolute garbage for the amount of graphical problems it had at launch and the game dev’s excuse was that they released a product they knew was unfinished. They had the same concept as many of people have here that they will release it and improve it as time goes on. But people are not that forgiving. Once a name established a stigma, it’s hard to get rid of it. Even if later down the track you fix everything, for majority of the people it is first impressions that make and break a game. Hence why AoEO was ignored. And the devs ended up admitting that you don’t do soft launches for established titles. Cyberpunk is known for its massive failure that led to record high refunds. And even if they improved since then, they will always have that stigma. It’s a my Everest they will always struggle to climb. Just like Relic’s past with DoW III.
https://www.nowuc.com.au/2021/03/cyberpunk-2077-the-decades-biggest-flop/
Oh I don’t disagree it was rushed to launch and had all kinds of issues. I waited for the first 20% off sale at 1.2 and had a blast playing through it twice without any major bugs. But my expectations were different than probably a lot of people who bought it on day one. In any case, this is getting pretty off-topic and I’m not sure how it relates to AOE IV anymore. AOE IV plays smooth as butter and doesn’t have any major bugs so I don’t have reservations about playing it and worrying about it being anything like Cyberpunk at launch.
A lot of AOE IV’s success is attributed to all the previous AOE games. Just as devs have explained, they stayed pretty conservatively in terms of gameplay where they didn’t touch many things from previous games and made minor adjustments. If you don’t like the game mechanics of AOEIV, then it is equivalent to saying you don’t like the game mechanics of AOE. Because it 98% is the same. The rest of the 2% is up for debate. Because I love their addition to wall mechanics but if you watch AOE live streams, especially the recent Mongols vs Abbasid a, you will see how people hate it. They call it “Age of Walling”.
What sets AOE IV apart from all previous age games is the graphical fidelity. Taking AOE to 4K graphics with whole new civ designs, units and modern engines.so that is where people are expecting they would really take age to the next level. But they are not? The one thing that sets the game apart from its predecessors, that they need to go ace on to beat its predecessors or compare with them, they have reduced it in several ways. Gameplay which is almost exactly the same as all previous AOE games is what people are prioritising.
Why is it so easy for AOE II players and AOE III players to skip tutorial and play the game with ease, with similar build orders and mechanics. It’s because it is practically 90% the same as the previous. Yet that is supposed to make the game beat it’s predecessors? Really?
And you are saying with all the advanced technology and AI that far outweighs the sprite graphics in 1999, the game should not try to beat a 20 year old game? Like really?
I keep seeing some people who want siege crews just assuming it’s objectively the better way to do it.
This is a subjective aesthetic preference.
They serve no functional purpose. Which it’s fine if people want them because they like how it looks with them, but that’s not a better argument than someone not wanting them because they don’t like how it looks.
The graphics and art style look better to me than previous age games, yes. Do they look “better enough” when comparing 1990s to 2020s? I would probably argue that Age of Mythology looked better for the year it released than AOE IV looks for 2021. But at the same time, I don’t really care that much because graphics are not why I play RTS games.
What sets AOE IV apart for me: