It doesn’t have to be TW level graphics, does it?
Good luck to you as well 
You’d be surprised by how many people you see around common community places for AoE 4, requesting for the AVX requirement to be dropped, so there’s definitely a potential customer base.
While I empathise with this, we need to be careful of mixing anecdotes with data. The AVX requirement will exist for a reason (one thing we can count on is that publishers like sales), and removing it or working around it just to cater to a (potential) single-digit market is probably not the win it might look like.
I get the frustration from the folks who are affected. This is complete guesswork, but this effect is probably magnified in the RTS space where a lot of the classics are very old, and haven’t been superceded in decades, in a lot of cases. I definitely think the overlap with “don’t have the hardware” and “potential customer” is higher than it would be for an FPS or ARPG franchise.
I still don’t think it’s a potential customer base when that effort could be invested in other areas of the game.
You’ll be surprised how Warhammer becomes far more played than the other historical total wars that are played non-stop, and how the latest historical total war that is played non-stop gets cut in the middle of its course of development.
Among historical total wars Rome 2 which is far more diverse than say Empire or three kingdoms is better received than the latter.
Also, total war games have their grand campaign mode with HUGE differences between factions, both their locations and mechanics, and that’s how they really “utilize the same units (which is a wrong assumption but let’s pretend it is the case) differently”. Does any RTS has this level of depth on the macro scale?
Or do you imply that people are playing custom battles in total war non-stop?
And even if what you’re saying is true, it actually does more damage to your argument than good.
Because AOE2 also has far more stats difference in the shared units as well due to different availability of techs. You can hardly find two civs with “the same same unit” by your own standard (“stats difference is the true difference”).
In AOE4 because everybody shares the same basic techs, no additional bonus = literally the same unit.
I’m not saying which is necessarily better or worse, but by your standard the former is betrer.
that is because aoe4 is priced much higher…also all marketing and advertisement is aoe4. the ads are everywhere. not really mean it is that popular.
i dont think aoe4 is that bad it still has way more players than aoe3. still no match for aoe2 but very few rts can match aoe2
Aoe2 isnt that great when you talk about aoe2 vs starcraft 2 player base. Dont know what your on about how aoe2 is so great
Theres millions of gamers. All aoe4 needs is a new good campaign. Good co op mode for causals.
Wouldnt be hard to past the aoe2 player count.
Not like theres a really big gap is the player base.
as a recap of conterarguments agains yours
yup but aoe 4 demands high graph to looks crappy which is very poor optimazed which aim to a wrong market sector which don’t use much resolution even though aoe in its core and history dont neede much resources to run it which affect the gameplay and playerbase attraction potential and becomes this product we have now.
now criticism in an offense or a bad suggestion or sort of. those problems were there since launch Also niche game=/= bad products or low income for its investment on it. aoe 4 may look succesful but the playerbase decreased drastically and most profits comes from tourneys donations and ticket which is getting lower and lower the numbers of it.
to corroborate this lokks at this chart
Next timestamp from that 1.7k players low it shows 4.7k. Looks more like it’s some sort of error to me.
does it matter?
Imagine 2 years ago at release one would ask you: what minimal players will be in aoe4?
Will you suggest even 4.7k (max was 70k).
argue with windmills. twist the numbers, just to be “on the level” of other games. But what will change from the twists? will the developers report on good “averages” and get a bonus?)
people showing stats and compare against other games to motivate change something.
Meanwhile some other “it’s not 3000, but 3029” 29 players more!
Pretty much what you’re doing here.
The game is doing fine. It’s certainly beat all the expectations of folks who said it would be dead in a year.
So the arguments have changed. People are now redefining “dead” to mean something different. People are claiming fans of the game aren’t franchise fans. Anything to not be wrong.
Most games dramatically drop off after release. Look at the latest call of duty game and it’s players are 25% of that of release and dropping between 10-20% per month.
Lot’s of people buy games and barely even play them, you can see this quite clearly on playstation for example when only like 50% of game owners have the trophy for completing the second mission in a single player game.
On aoe4 there was 8k a few minutes ago and 24 hour peak of 9900, that’s not bad at all. It will likely increase a bit with the sale as well.
personally i’m not exactly sold on this being a good way to evaluate state of the game, ye it isn’t as dead as people expected, ig wording it bit different wouldn’t be as dire sounding, or as negative
I’m not really talking about the health of the game, more certain attitudes towards it in the absence of any data. The arguments have constantly been reframed.
I don’t believe in any Age game replacing another. I believe Age IV can and does stand on its own merits (even as I want more for it). I believe II, III and Online (through Project Celeste at least) all have their place, even now.
But the player numbers are healthy. Not many other RTS releases can claim that. We can favour whatever reason we want to favour, but it doesn’t change that whatever the reason, those numbers are as they are. I’ll take “beaten by AoE II: DE” personally. That’s not a bad level of success.
I just want to devs to tell us more about what they’re planning at this point.
again… would you say it’s fine 2 years ago? When you saw 70k people?
Yes, or no. Do not dodge. It’s one simple question.
I’m just comparing aoe games. Why do you bring up StarCraft? Also popular doesn’t mean good. It could be because ease to play, small learning curve, historical reason at game release, or price, or PC requirements, etc. Since aoe2 just banned me for a week for no reason I just quit that game as well. I actually prefer aoe3.
The game probably attracted a lot of new players with all it’s publicity so it’s only normal that players will drop shortly after release and many probably just played the campaign and then stopped. All of those 70k still bought the game and made them a lot of money.
Dropping from 70k instantly to 8k is also very different than going from 70k to 8k over years. So I think 8k online at once with a peak of nearly 10k a day is not bad at all. For comparison CoH3 has only been out a month and is already down to 4k online.
The very title of this topic implies that all the AoE games are competing with each other and while there may overlap the majority of people haven’t chosen their main AoE game after two decades of iterations. Sure, there may be some competition but not in the vein of “replacing” whatever that is supposed to mean.
It is all quite silly and childish.
Totally agree. A lot of players play multiple age games or all of them. Not sure what is going on but I have noticed a lot more AoE 4 players being hostile towards the other Age games recently, that didn’t used to be the case, with a few exceptions. Again the title here is really childish.
Think the problem is if i bought the latest call of duty or fifa game. I wouldnt expect the older games to get more support.
Like microsoft is doing with aoe2
Last year aoe4 2 new civs
Aoe2 , xbox release and hugh new expansion in may
Aoe 4 will get these later on, should of been first to support your new game
that was what needed to be proved.
You can not say “yes it’s fine” cause you understand.
But you do not say “no - it’s not fine”…just dodging. Simple as that.
30k → 4k => 7.5 COH
70k → 8k => 8.75 AOE
(less better)
overall pretty similar results. None of these releases have great follow up as RTS. (sales may be… but not the game itself (as multiplayer… )).
