I know my worries can be look like non-constructively, but the more I read and hear from the devs that they create game as esports discipline in the mind that want catch up all possible audiences, not for target audience, and choose strange decisions like extremely simplifield graphics and speed up gameplay by butchering animations, limited cap and simplifield physics and etc the more I afraid this game will be a colossal failure and indelible giant stain of shame both for aoe franchise and microsoft’s and relic’s reputation. I know readability is really important thing, but I feel relic is too obsessed with that idea and ready do absolutely everything to create a game that pure developed as esports discipline in mind, while it doesn’t work at all and all esports rtses was created just for fun without any esports ambition in it. Relic did this mistake with dow 3 I remember, they create graphics for absolute clear readability too, but in the end they overdid it and got opposite result, and I worried all this design for readability may end in the result that map will be unreadable mess of giant arrows, messy animations and unrealistic effects like this in aoe 4 too
If you want make game more readable, do it carefully like it did gsc with cossacks 3, that not superb realstic too, but not completely turn into cartoon mobile graphics and ui and everything for esports, look cossacks 3 looks very good and has great readability
This is how you should make things right
And also, don’t even try make some new experimental esports multiplayer non classic as new standard game mode and don’t even try balance around it, like you did with dow 3, you only make more damage to the game with such idea.
Even more I worried if all my fears will become true, game can be abandoned completely in a very short time, like what happened with dow 3.
Dear devs, if you read this, if you see bad reaction, please if you know that overall reaction is negative, delay and rework game like what happened with halo infinite, or at least improve it after release like what happened with games like fallout 76, no man’s sky, sea of thieves.
