If AoEIV is not a success, AoEII will be next

Age of Empires IV IV - Discussion
122

I personally find it fun, especially the context. Imo, it will be very memorable a few years down the road

Not what I read

Not many indie projects do. If it isn’t a smashing success the not many people ever know about it. I’ll bet you anything that only hardcore RTS fans ever knew about it, I never once got an ad for IH, I have already gotten at least 10 for AoE4 and CoH3

image
image1920×1080 266 KB

They look just fine. Better than AoE4 or AoE3 DE. CoH3 is the only one I can think of that has better models

Stealth missions are awesome in RTS, it accentuates the strategy part of it.

That was pretty boring, I will agree there.

1 Like
123

I don’t know, right now they hardly talk about the game, there is not a single content maker for this game who would somehow popularize the game. Online games in Steam are extremely small. I don’t know, maybe the game will get a lot of updates and people will want to play it again and it will be heard again, but now the interest in it is low.

Perhaps the messages may not be exactly what I mean, I’m using an auto-translator.

For an indie game, this is a really successful story. The game raised a lot of money on independent platforms, received additional money from Deep Silver, this is an indicator that they saw some kind of potential in the game. It seems to me that the game could have more originality. For example, robots, this is the main theme of the game, but their mechanics are not disclosed as well as they could, they could have different modules for modification, players could destroy the modules of enemy robots (Something like ships in Star Wars Empire at War), you can it would be more and more interesting to come up with, but for some reason the developers settled on a simple option.

Yes, as I said, robots look great, explosion effects, particles and other special effects look good.
The infantry and small guns seemed to me not detailed enough, CoH 2 shows the best results.
And yes, of course it looks better than any AoE, it is a tactical RTS, it should be as detailed and beautiful as possible.

But they are confusing. You have furious RTS gameplay, action, dynamics. And then you are forced to go through a long stealth mission without the possibility of checkpoints, it’s seems superfluous. It would be better if the degree of intensive dynamics only grew.

124

Ha not sure why they’d be more open minded. If there are more vocal people from aoe2, it’s just because there are more aoe2 players total. There’s nothing special about any of these player bases. People complained it’s too close to aoe2, not close enough to aoe2, too close to aoe3, not close enough to aoe3, etc…

125

For an RTS nowadays it isn’t doing too bad. You can’t compare it to something like CoH2 or AoE2 as those are extremely successful games that attracted a wide audience. Also, CoH2 had a big event where you could get it for free on steam a few months back and that brought in a big chunk of players.

Might be

They look better than CoH2 personally

Agree to disagree

126

RTS with multiplayer player base, kind of is something very rare.

Issue is, we kind of don’t see a stable multiplayer audience by RTS games. Even by RTS that have people online for PvP like, Company of Heroes 2, Age of Empires 2 and even by Starcraft 2, they are a minority. By focusing on Multiplayer part, RTS these days kind of did miss adding proper single player.

The only solution is in my opinion like by Spellforce 3, make single player focused game first, that try to make a multiplayer version that is cheaper than the base game, and is designed together with its community.

The only solution for AoE4 I see, is to make in long term an Standalone, that does approach issues of the base game. Spellforce 3 did some very interesting things by its sequels.

1- It did add more readable and more different factions.
Em, base factions very, very similar like in AOE2. Add-on factions are very unique, like Warcraft 3.

2 They did add “Spandau” AI, an AI that does behave like a multiplayer person.

So maybe an Stand Alone for AoE4, can be the success we need?

127

No, Hell NO.

why u want to destroy genre? Play tower defence games for SinglePlayer.
RTS always was and meant to be for PvP. Imagine Dota/LoL against AI - nonsense.

The problem is obvious. People dont know how to manage units. They literally dont know how to use keyboard. A lot of noobs move camera with arrows - wtf.
U fans of single player have no limits, want to convert RTS into PvP. I even did not finish sc2 campaign, I play only PvP. Go play witcher 3 for single player.

Solve the problem that stops people from play(management), dont ruin the genre. PvP - easily could be popular. To get money u can sell skins or to come up with other solution that wont ruin the genre.

128

You’re comparing two completely different genres. LOL/DOTA are MOBAs while the AOE franchise is an RTS.

I’m enjoying AOE as a franchise fine in singleplayer. Doesn’t mean that AOE4 should solely focus on SP though, but there’s undeniably a lot of people who are not interested into the PVP aspect of it.

2 Likes
129

how it’s completely different. Game is game. PvP always were popular and to think that PvP is the problem of the game…Well u dont understand similarities cause u dont play multiplayer.

but there’s undeniably a lot of people who are not interested into the SP aspect of it.

130

According to Adam Isgreen its only thing shared between the predecessors are the mechanism of moving through ages, the basic resources and in this particular game the time period. The game overall is a fresh new franchise, meant to kickstart a new formula, not created by ESO.

“Relic has done very different things in the RTS space in the past, but it understands that this is an Age of Empires game. The feel and pace of it is all there; you can build big cities, you can wall them in – and you can have fights on the walls now. All of that is really cool and it is so important,” says Isgreen. " But it’s funny, because Relic was, in some ways, more conservative than us [at World’s Edge] at times. They were like, ‘But this is different than what has been done in Age of Empires before!’ and we were like, 'It’s cool, it’s cool. We’re going to do it…"

“It’s wonderful that we’re working with a partner like Relic and we have this wonderful relationship with them – I adore them to death – but it’s been great to have those discussions with them,” Isgreen continues, explaining that Relic have had more than a few ‘oh my god!’ moments throughout development, but that it ultimately takes bold decisions to make bold strides forward. “They are the ones that are like ‘is this too different’ and we’re like, ‘That’s okay! It’s a different game, it’s brand new.’”

2 Likes
131

I think the prioritization of “fast” games is rubbish. I don’t want less villagers. I don’t want buildings being destroyed in a few seconds, wtf?

It’s just going to be another ■■■■ show and will all be about who can smash their keyboard 0.00001 milliseconds faster.

4 Likes
132

By the way, if you have a mice and key board, you are good as death, you need a mice tuchpad and a keyboard tuchpad.

It cost a arm, but you win apm, since you don’t have to click all the way up and down.

You just need to give a litle quick presure on the pad.

You do like 2- 3 push, insted of 1 click.

It feal funny some time, because you can write faster then the computer can read. XD

Any way, we should normaly not have this conversation, since the game is suposed to be equal for every one…

( clearely not, since no one has the same pc and pc gear)

it is sad how game are being chainsaw, in the name of rts balance, wen rts is basicaly flaw…

When you beat too much, people call you hacker or bot user.

Then the game keepers comme in.

You get then baned or just be wach by game concepters, and they change part of game, thinking it was game balance that cause the win.

And it restart all over again… and again…

Was just hoping to see age of empire get out of that boxed circle.

133

I reeeeeally hope they do a Q&A session with the beta testers while there’s still time. Would help with community relations, too.

We have questions.

Can’t say more than that.

1 Like
134

microsoft shutdown ensemble studios remember, to “focus on xbox and kinect” they launched aoeo and shut it down as well. so i will not be surprised if they shut down their whole aoe franchise as they dont see any long term gains from it. they have treated their aoe fanbase very poorly and are trying to catchup with that, but i am pretty sure the suits will decide that its not worth the effort and pull the plug sooner than later

135

Despite the differences they want to inject (which is natural. Why would they make the exact same game again?), they still term it an AOE game.

Injecting new things does not make it not an AOE game.

2 Likes
136

I never said that PvP was/is the problem. I’m just saying that just focusing on one aspect would be detrimental to the game.

Yeah, that too. Not going to deny that.

2 Likes
137

The game must evolve and that does not mean that it is not AoE, that many years have passed and Relic and WE have not risked too much.

2 Likes
138

Yup, I agree. 20 chars

1 Like
139

Details do mather, it is what it make the game special.

Strip it all out and you get a naked cube, whit no flaver or atraction.

Like a ice cream whit no flaver.

1 Like
140

Well, I also used to think PvP and Multiplayer to be a right way, back in 1998, but within a couple of last years apparently the market did change, especially if we look from year 2021, it was kind of very long ago. Lets simply ask, what did PvP and Multiplayer achieve for the past 7 years. And its very generous to pick 7 years. So lets check achievements from games released after 2015.

MOBAs.
So from all the mobas released. On PC only Heroes of the Storm , Battlerite and AirMech are not shut down. Heroes of the Storm is not getting any new support, Battlerite and AirMech have both together like 500 people online. The situation by mobas is way worse than by RTS, They Are Billions as single player RTS only outnumbers single-handedly all new mobas from past 7 years on steam by 5 times higher population.

1286×727 46.2 KB

If we go ahead and check the numbers, its start to be very clear, by year 2021, PvP has less popularity than Single-player. Sadly, as official, AoE4 is still designed with the mind setting from 2006. Just from the perspective of Multiplayer Audience, that does not exist by 2021, as it did not exist back 2006.

3 Likes
141

now count the number of games with single player which failed, calculate the proportion.
would not be surprised if SP fails more often