Just in that sample that you posted I can see completely different Monasteries, Docks and Mills. The “arab” stable is also completely different from the other two.
The only thing those have in common are the tiles they occupy, which of course limits the creativity, but AoE II is amazingly asymmetric in that regard, while maintaining consistency and familiarity (e.g. a stable is recognizable not because it’s identical across civs, but because it has visible horses. That’s the common denominator).
If you want to compare both games, the Keeps in AoE IV are like the barracks in AoE II. Same basic shape with minor variations:
Rhomboid shape, 2 inner/higher towers, 3 exterior/smaller towers, gate flanked by two tower-like structures, central opening. Some of them are almost a blatant copy paste job with just different roofs.
TBH, aoe2 is a 20 years old game. Large game code bases were very difficult to deal with using the technologies of that time, so having generic symmetry is a byproduct of techs that day. Look at the contemporary warcraft2, which had 2 races that had an almost complete symmetry, just different models.
The fact that we got to compare aoe4 with aoe2 when it comes to symmetry and art is a moral defeat for aoe4. I am just hoping that the dev team realizes this and fixed things in the last few weeks it has left.
Has it occurred to you that the level of asymmetry in Aoe4 and likely even in AoE2 is completely intentional? More asymmetry is also not inherently better, it’s just a different way of doing things. Also, that’s not what moral means.
Totally not what his point was, and “moral defeat” is a legit expression?
But thats not important, is it? @Moonshadow7475 made a critical comment about AOE4, so we have to dodge and weave, dodge and weave, avoid and distract! Add a bit of grammar nazi and question sth. he didn’t even say, just to further derail the discussion. Dodge and freakin weave, guys! Not long til release, DODGE AND WEAVE HARDER!!!
I have no issue with criticisms. I gave them a long list of my own during the beta.
My issue is that people continue to assume that because something is not exactly a certain way they prefer it, that means it’s inherently wrong and they often start assigning motives or attributes to the people who made the decisions with no evidence whatsoever.
And there lies the other MAJOR issue with AoE IV: We have no evidence because there has been a total lack of transparency and communication. In the end I can’t blame US, the community, for trying to come up with explanations for why certain decisions were made. Was it just laziness, game engine limitation, readability, performance? Like the Critical Drinker would say: “Don’t know!”.
It was only until like a couple of weeks ago that some devs started replying on threads, but only with the most canned, political responses which mostly repeat the same: “thanks for your feedback but with the game so close to release we can’t comment”. Gee, thanks.
The fact we compare aoe4 to aoe2 at all is thanks to the expansions, mods, and re-releases. The original Age of kings was a great game for the time but it was missing most of defining features of that exist today. Likewise the graphics only are comparable because HD and DE improved on their predecessors.
I agree that the graphics are not the best part of aoe4 but they are good enough that the deciding factor for aoe4s success will be how fun the core gameplay is. Increased asymmetry, and other tweaks can be made via expansions as they were in aoe2.
I certainly think they should have communicated/interacted more, or at least better, and I really hope they do post launch as they do patches.
But I think people can definitely be blamed when they make speculations, assume they are true, and then attack those assumptions, which happens all over these forums.
I mean when you have a person who shows up late to every party, with either excuses of “oh sorry, my car broke down”, then “oh sorry, my cat got sick”, and then “oh sorry, I couldn’t find parking”, and then “oh sorry I didn’t know where the place was”, I’m glad you are noble enough to give them the benefit of the doubt but it’s only natural that people start speculating if that’s really the reason.
Though I too wouldn’t call it lazy. A team never does anything lazily. If anything it was a cost effective measure, maybe they took the money resource from that and reallocated it to something else. It’s definitely intentional but why it is, is the issue. And no one is buying the “readability” excuse which is what they used for every downgrade in graphical detail or textures. (Not referring to art style)
You’re at the crux of it.
Aoe IV is going to have 8+ races at launch.
It is simply bad design to have every building look completely different imo.
Houses, especially in similar regions (europe) don’t have to be represented in completely obtusely unique model sets. It just isn’t worth it.
This comparison was going to happen no matter what. Aoe 2 is currently the most played Aoe game.
And Aoe IV is very much seen as its successor.
Im unsure about how we can have a meaningful conversation about this topic if we aren’t going to able to disagree on issues.
I would separate these mentions of laziness in two fields:
The devs are just twiddling thumbs and copy pasting building designs, not adding crews to siege, using basic textures, not testing their own game, etc.
There have been decisions made at exec level which were aimed towards a simplified game with a shorter release cycle while minimizing risks. The AoE franchise carries a lot of momentum and anything will sell.
They can be either both true or just the second one being true. Can’t be only the first because you can’t have devs turning out mediocre work to execs who expect perfection. If both were false then we would have a mind-blowing game at release.
I do believe that the actual devs getting their hands dirty with code, testing, etc. have been tirelessly trying to make the best out of what they have been given. However, I consider that the uninspired design/mechanics choices come from higher up the chain.
Many things can come into play when designing the game. Like, Relic doesn’t put their entire life savings into a game. It’s possible that Microsoft gave them this ridiculously low budget they had to work wi and a ridiculously restrictive time frame.
The reason why I only do 3D modelling and art as a hobby is because the game industry sucks the life out of you with restrictions and deadlines. It’s one of the most abused industries in the world. I wouldn’t fall for the smiles in their promo videos. Also Riot games, the owner of the best streamed game LOL, is one of the most abusive industries to their game designers.
So they cut corners, or replicated things from the pst etc. but through criticisms of the game, I don’t target relic specifically. My critique is all the way up to the big bosses of Microsoft and world’s edge. I would say they didn’t allow relic the creator freedom they should have done to do something like their more successful titles.
I mean if you think the entire team of devs has creative agency with this game its just wrong.
At best you have the Lead designer & creative director Adam Isgreen calling the shots.
Siege likely dont have crews because he literally decided on that issue.
Every single aspect of this game is beholden to the wills of the creative directors.
The art team specifically is given tasks/has their designs reviewed by them.
No design makes it through to the final game without being scrutinized by the director.
They definitely test their own game. Most game studios have their own in-studio product testing.
As we’ve seen from the Aoe IV gameshow streams the devs literally play their own game.
Pretty much, if you have qualms with their design decisions you just have to criticise Adam Isgreen mostly. He calls all the shots.
Precisely my point. Devs just work with what they’re given. If they are subject to impossible deadlines, they will have to cut corners. If they are not given full access to Relic’s engine, they won’t be able to implement more complex mechanics, if their team is too small and lack the necessary resources, the game will suffer and so on.
Again, I do think that the actual devs are doing their best, but before they even started working, execs (directors, VPs, whatever we wanna call them) decided what this game was going to be, nothing less, nothing more.
The worst thing about it is that the big bosses will give you this ridiculous budget and timeframe, but with the expectations you will meet the demands of all the players and produce the best work. Which often leads to devs working outside of work hours, often illegally.
Like the “crunch time” towards the final product launch is the worst where devs literally sleep in their office to meet deadlines.
Then if the game fails, it’s the dev team who cops it from the customers and the big bosses.
I’d petition to Microsoft to improve the game rather than relic but unfortunately Microsoft and worlds edge hide behind relic who are the punching bags that show their face in live streams and answer community questions
yeah I agree on that then.
I think it is very wrong for people to be calling the general workers of Relic/World’s edge lazy.
They probably work overtime constantly.
And everything they work on is dictated by the higher-ups.
Concept artists for example have probably iterated hundreds of designs for the buildings/units of this game.
But at the end its the creative director who decides on what designs make it into the game.
Tinfoil hat on: To me it feels like a side-job for Relic, using a small team of devs, taking advantage of ongoing work to develop CoH3 and this was something that Microsoft themselves proposed as the plan. It’s cheaper, teams can take share knowledge to take care of similar bugs, it’s efficient and fast, the base engine has been tried and tested. Business-wise, it makes a ton of sense.
All the historical accuracy and research appears to be focused on the marketing campaign (i.e. getting that medieval weapons guy from History Channel, doing the cool documentary-style videos, etc.). They are pouring a lot of resources into advertising the game and making sure the AoE franchise/name will do the heavy lifting, not the gameplay.
I see those civ reveal and weapon videos and I can’t help thinking to myself that that is not the game I’ve played. It’s fun, yeah, but it’s clear it isn’t as complex, had that much historical research or educational value.
The only saving grace at this point is if we get the best campaigns ever included in an RTS, but since nobody has even mentioned them, I’m not too hopeful.
Tbh I don’t think they put a lot of money into advertising at all.
Like other games will literally almost create a whole new game just for the advertisements. Where they blast it with graphical fidelity and impressive animations, but the game is less than that. But relic ads have been critiqued as worse than the gameplay itself, with so little advertisements, and with the graphical flaws all present in them. Like they didn’t scrutinise their videos before releasing it to the public.
Yes. I didn’t mean resources as in just money or the amount of advertising (and especially not the un-curated gameplay videos), but when you have videos with an expert in medieval warfare who has probably spent most of his life researching that stuff, then you think some of that must’ve permeated into the game (spoiler: it didn’t). Or you get a long trebuchet video showing a real machine in action and it suggests that there’s gonna be advanced physics involved.
It’s disheartening when you see terrible unit names as you advance through the ages being stuff like “early man-at-arms, hardened man-at-arms, veteran man-at-arms, elite man-at-arms”. So if I go dig out historical documents from my library, does it mean I’m going to find “elite pikeman, elite knight, elite imperial guard, elite light horseman”? Come on, guys!
The big problem here is that may of us are asking relic to implement “little men around siege” but relic take this petition as an insult to their art style, because they are using golden ghost instead, we know that golden ghost is not superior to real men, golden ghost also fits with UI golden colors, so what we are asking here is a big change ( but a needed one IMO) does relic have what is needed to perform this change? can they accept that “little men around” is a better choise? I don’t think so, they will die with their golden ghost election… They also claimed that the art direction was chosen for clarity reasons, how wrong are they, in your picture there is no clarity, and it is difficult to distinguish some units from others, that’s why I said many times that the game needs to be worked a little bit more on its art/graphics department.
Their biggest mistake was to think that reducing graphics quality will help to distinguish units/buildings better… as many other games in the past, you can have good graphics/unit textures with good clarity, games like Dawn of war sometimes uses totally different colors for some units to help on this ( harlequin, fire dragon, apothecary etc), medieval were pretty colorful, not just blue or red lol
but unfortunately Microsoft and worlds edge hide behind relic who are the punching bags that show their face in live streams and answer community questions