People have a lot of demands for the game because they want the game to go well.
RTS games are standing at the crossroads of destruction.
the reason people want high quality in the game is because they want the game to survive.
at least those criticisms help to develop the game.
think of it as a way of love
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Gameplay is forever gonna be more important than the graphics…otherwise, every COD or Battlefield would be declared as great.
I respect people’s opinion, however, I have to say…do you guys really think even if they delay the game, they would go back and change and redraw whole art assets? Game designers are way smarter than us. They have data and they sure know how to make the game…it’s always the gameplay that ruins a game.
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Wtf you even saying? AoE Online has been DEAD for like 10 YEARS now. It was even removed from being downloaded online around 2014. The SERVERS have been SHUT DOWN.
There IS NO COMMUNITY. The game is DEAD. There ARE NO SERVERS ONLINE. 
EDIT: Just to be clear. “Project Celeste” is NOT “AoE Online”. It is a “FAN site”, NOT the official servers.
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Graphics are MORE IMPORTANT FOR SELLLING GAMES.
A game DOES NOT need to be “good”, or have “good gameplay”, in order to SELL MORE COPIES.
Relic Entertainment and World’s Edge are GAME COMPANIES. In other words CORPORATIONS. Onwed by microsoft. Which have INVESTORS. Investors WANT PROFITS.
Better graphics = MORE SALES
Sales have NOTHING TO DO WITH “GAMEPLAY”.
WRONG!
WRONG!!! Ever heard of Age of Empires 3? Which sold 5 million copies. Yet Age of Empires 2 SOLD 10 MILLION COPIES. Not to mention, that was before both games were even put on Steam. Where each game (years after release), sold approximately THE SAME AMOUNT OF COPIES ON STEAM, as they originally did upon their original release.
Gameplay DOES NOT SELL GAMES.
“GRAPHICS” SELL GAMES.
Do you mean in terms of “gameplay”, “innovation”, “graphics”, OR “GAME SALES”.
Call of Duty SELLS MILLIONS of copies in each release. Approximately 10 MILLION or more copies for each game, per game.
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More like AoE Offline 
apart from the fct caps desnt really state the truth-
Actually its gameplay thats most important in game. an in sales. See Nintendos First party titles as a great example.
CoD/BF also have innovation and gameplay twists within their own specific genre
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Graphics are important to get attention, important for the first impression and atmosphere.
Gameplay is important to convince people buying the game and keep playing it.
Nice graphics are useless, if gameplay is shi*. Nice gameplay is useless, if graphic is shi*.
Nice graphics doesn’t mean necessarily, that it’s high definition.
It above all have to look good and authentic with a style fitting to the genre (realistic, cartoony…).
That’s why we have succesful low definition, authentic games like Minecraft, but no awful looking succesful games. Unless the game is so bad, that it’s fun again. 
However I agree that people wouldn’t buy Battlefield/Cod with low resolution or cartoony graphics. But you can’t generally say that people only buy games because of graphics. It ever depends on the game itself and target group.
Main Aoe target group probably prefer realism with some adjustments for readability.
Also we should look at communities from big competitors like Stronghold. They wish nothing more than a new great Stronghold. Gamestar video about Stronghold gets 100 thousands views every time, not far away from Aoe popularity.
They prefer hyper realism. Hyper realism is of course nothing for Aoe, but anyway we should not forget those people from other RTS games, who prefer realism and also looking at alternatives because Firefly doesn’t make the game they want. If Aoe4 is too cartoony, many of them probably don’t care about Aoe4.
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I am still unsure if the main AoE target group actually DOES prefer realism though, thats debatable. It seems MS doesnt think so at least, and they do have data from us, and pre-game-ballots were done to gather info on what players want
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And player retention has nothing to do with graphics. Gameplay keeps players playing the game.
Ok, go make your own RTS game, come back when you are done
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Hello Ogiwan!
As usual Its the whiners and the complainers that are the loudest. Most of the reactions that Ive seen is just redicilous and very poorly underbuilt. This is still a game in the making not a finished product. People need to understand this. But for some its like the more you complain and whine the better you feel about your self. I agree with you that apart from some minor estethic flaws like scaling of buildings and colouring of some details, the game looks just amazing. And Im sure this things will be adressed long before the game is released. I have great hopes for Age of Empires IV and very much looking forward to playing it.
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I think main Aoe target group prefers realism, as long as it don’t change gameplay too much.
So e.G. ships should be smaller, units colorful, slightly simplified battles fast paced…
Definitely debatable, what’s too much realism or too much readability look, but generally I think more realistic style is what the majority wants.
Almost all complaints are about “unrealistic elements” like proportions, animations etc.
The intros from Aoe1 and Aoe2 had a realistic look. They looked more like the Age of Mythology artstyle. The main menu or scenes through campaign levels look realistic too.
I always see you people referring to the “main playerbase” or the “majority” while there really aren’t that many people complaining about the graphics. If it were really that bad a lot more people, myself included, would complain but as it is now there are maybe 50-100 people doing that. So I don’t get where you are coming up with the “main Aoe target group”.
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Go to the Age of Empires 4 trailer video, check top comments. Or check Reddit top memes. You’ll find more than 100 people complaining or joking about graphics.
I don’t think the majority dislikes the graphics, but the majority would like more realism from what I see.
But probably they already improved the graphics. Will you say it’s too realistic then? I don’t think so.
That’s my point
I am on reddit and in this forum all the time and I don’t see the amount of people you are talking about. Also just look at how overwhelmingly liked the video is, as well as how overwhelmingly positive the comments are. I really don’t get what you mean. And I can’t say if I would like it more if they changed the graphics to a more realistic style, it depends.
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Hi!
I see a lot of comments from a lot of folks that are very passionate about this game and the series. This is a positive thing. My original post wasn’t to argue about whether or not you’re assessment of the materials we’ve seen are correct, or even to be argued. As I said, we all get to have opinions. My point is a little more about effective communication and the fact that we are a community. The devs want this game to be the best in the series and the best game of the year. Relic and Microsoft want the same. Clearly, the fans do as well. What I would prefer to see is constructive criticism and a recognition that you haven’t seen ANY finished game materials. No game play, no graphics, even the names of the civilizations (which have been debated) are still in development without beta testing. It would also be great if we could acknowledge that the videos may be demonstrating gameplay for ‘typical’ users. People that aren’t guaranteed to be on gaming PCs with high end graphics adapters, should also be able to enjoy the game. The fanbase spans decades for this game. Not everyone has the latest and greatest, and the game has to run on machines with various performance ratings. That’s why the Beta invites don’t just go to the highest spec players. They want people with crappy internet connections and average specs to be able to play and buy DLC, Expansions, etc. They have historically had great assets for those of us with high performance equipment as well.
There’s a big difference between saying, “These graphics suck! I deserve better.” and “Hey, I noticed that this building doesn’t seem to be the same scale as the others. Is this due to pre-release issues, or is there some game related reason that some structures might appear larger?” As someone that develops applications for a living, I can tell you that the first comment would get less of my focus and attention. Let’s raise the bar in our discourse in THIS community. I promise that you will find more people posting to agree with your comments and the game makers will take you more seriously.
Also, thanks for taking the time to post on my original comment. I didn’t expect it to be as active a discussion as it was.
Thanks,
-g
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I don’t understand it on two levels.
1.) The only things people have seen are pre-release videos intended to keep the community engaged. They announced the game early and it’s taken a while to produce anything they could really show off. So no one in the community has really played this game. But some of the more critical posts are very negative. People should acknowledge that they were shown a little snippet of something that is a work in progress. It’s not made just for them, just for their computer’s specs, and it’s not even finished. So being angry is not very productive.
2.) The general mode of communication from many of the posts seem to be complaints. I don’t think that is as effective in getting your point listened to, and it just creates a negative atmosphere within the community. We can do better by just holding each other accountable for raising the level of discourse.
Hope that helps describe what I was going for in the first post, and I hope you have a great rest of your day.
-g
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Huge,
Thanks for showing an interesting example. I would disagree that they don’t listen to feedback. It seems clear that they do, but that they can’t take every suggestion. Especially when there are contradictory things being said in some posts. But making a reasoned statement about something you’ve observed, bringing some data like the images you’ve included will be taken more seriously.
Thanks,
-g
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Randomly made some screenshots of newest comments and added some top comments in ~ 5 minutes.
Sorry 
Under Spirit of the Law video
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Cherrypicked? Of the hundreds of comments on those videos, this is all you can find. Hmm
no it’s not cherrypicked, except the top comments
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