I don't understand honestly

Age of Empires IV IV - Discussion
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I now look at aoe 4 and coh 3 from relic. And don’t understand why aoe 4 that is currently developing by prime A-Relic team with leads and vets from both coh and dow series, with giant budget and giant development time looks so much worse than lower-budget coh 3 from dow 3 B-team with less experience and people? Why secondary team has so amazing communication and feedback between community and players and actually hear critics, while prime A-Relic vet team ignore everything and only make community angry, aoe 4 has probably with dow 3 the worst communication between devs and players I ahve ever seen, aoe 4 community managers from relic like not doing a job at all, and in result we have that aoe 4 is now have bad and controversial rep in RTS community, and many of us seriously not without reason thinks it will be flop and disater.

In many terms it reminds me when bioware A-prime team that made mass effect series repeat all mistakes that did b-Bioware Montreal team with mass effect andromeda and failed even more with the game.

Is it so hard have actual good communications for both projects if relic capable do such things with coh 3?

Otherwise I don’t understand why coh 3 team (former dow 3 team) has so amazing communications and take active feedback from community managers, while aoe 4 team communication (prime star team behind homeworld and coh series) has probably the worst and the most incompetent communication between players I have ever seen?

It’s just sad because if aoe 4 had such level communications, there wouldn’t be worries and concerns around aoe 4 at all.

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You ddidnt play the CoH 3 Alpha (yet), one can assume. Because the game actually doesnt look better than Age4.
The realistic style may be your forte, but it doesnt make the game look better in any capacity. Currently it actually looks a lot worse, but we are in a Pre-Alpha, so thats fine.

I am ot sure if there actally are secondary (B) and primary (A) teams. I think the dev has 300 woekers all of which are part of any team they are assigned.

However I agree that I would have loved better comunication from the beginning as CoH3 does. BUT this leads to some issues, especially if the passionate playerbase doesnt understand what they play.
I can only imagine (also after being in the forum here for a while) that age fans have less knowlege / interest in how games are actually developed. So if we were shown an alpha version (see fan preview) there would be plenty of criticism, some of it necessary and good, other rather useless.
However they must think their playerbase will know what Pre Alpha means. I sure hope they do.

However I assume relic is not 100% responsible for the development of the game. It seems SEGA wants coH3 to be well received by fans, therefore having early feedback rounds. Maybe they also have a more stable build than age 4 had a year ago.
Maybe they think (maybe they are right) CoH is such a nice, it doesnt need an E3 or Presentation asides form a live stream, because they want to mainly catch their niche.

On the other hand, Marketing of Age4 seems to focus on Presentations and building up hype (spoiler: doesnt work for me), so the sensible data like civs etc are not testable by us folks until they are all revealed. It somehow makes sense, I think.
And Age 4 team (MS most likely) must have decided they are so confident in their chosen council that the dont need all the age players input a year before release. and then decided they would rather hype the game up and then start a beta than the other way. I personally wouldhave chosen a different way though.
However with the council, tehy gathererd feedback even earlier than CoH3 does now.
Its like, 3 sides of a coin, so to say.

There is an argument for building up hype, and with the council they didnt really need more player feedback (thats also a LOT to wrk through unless its like the coh feedback page, only 1 place to enter text).

I guess the question is: Does the company want to choose their “most dedicated players” by what they achieve (which is why many PvP streamers are in the council, they gathered a lot of viewers/attention for the game, so they are dedicated, just as great modders or AoEO.2 creators)
Or let they decide the community if they are the most dedicated by letting them log in (technically MS does this With age insider) connect to steam, download the preview and play it?

Basically CoH Pre Alpha is like Age insiders+, how it should work to get the most feedback imo, but also making each player less impoortant. Which is a good thing if you want broad feedback.

Anyways, they chose this way, we have to live with it and I hope that next week after PAX, we will know about the 2 last civs in detail, so we can finally get the invites to beta test, and then give valuable feedback, if only on bugs etc, because the gameplay in general will be set by now. (As seen with CoH 3 the general gameplay direction is ready about a year before release)

Maybe they also learned from DOW 3 and now want to get feedback as early as possible :wink:

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however I do not see how the com between devs and COmmunity is in case of age 4 any worse than anywhere else.

Usually thats how it works, maybe apart from the beta teases. Games get announced, feedback in forums is broadly ignored, game gets released.
We are palyers after all, not devs

the reasons many think age 4 will flop, mostly graphics and setting, are no concern though. Thats not why games flop, and there is no need for anyone to change that approach. The game will speak for itself.

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Here is a person who did not play the game, but just looked at the screenshots, most likely, or he was confused by some dubious personalities on this forum. In fact, COH 3 looks bad, which is confirmed by the reviews about the alpha in Steam, probably because the game is not working on the strongest branch of Relic, the game is completely unreadable, it will be difficult to play with someone on the network, the game looks in fact more “cartoonish” and colorful than AoE 4, as it contrasts with COH 2 which was all gray and dark, so this is certainly not a failure, but it is clearly not possible to compare with AoE.

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