I might agree with you if we were talking about a game lige cyberpunk 2077 which was litteraly unplayable for many players upon release. I just really cant see the release of aoe 4 as some big injustice towards gamers.
In terms of the industry at large, I fully agree that there is an issue with publishers rushing out unfinished products, I just dont think this was a very good example of that - yes, some corners were shaved off, but this game was absolutely playable and in terms of content, easily worth the asking price.
There might be a reason why game developers are so underpayed when compared to similar jobs in other tech industries & why the only games that are really making money these days are games-as-a-service games, where the money can be made by getting whales to pay insane overprice for cosmetics - the truth is that gamers at large are simply not willing to pay what it costs to create the kinds of games they want to play.
I see many people here saying that the launch should have been postponed by half a year, but ask yourself, would you have been willing to pay for that half a year of development, if it would have meant a 80$ game instead?
All Iām saying is we donāt have to lie down and accept these practices.
I would say however that rus being able to infinitely spawn relics for an entire month feels pretty game breaking. Sure it was fixed, but after a month.
There are other serious exploits and bugs like this I really donāt want to go into, but look around, they exist.
I understand the frustration with those who seem to complain more than offer upstanding support for their beloved titles through constructive feedback regarding bugs and exploits which are causing them grief, however, this vocal minority had, beginning two and a half months ago, left a lot of that constructive feedback with bright eyes and hopeful hearts. What we read now is hardly worth responding to in defense of the Dev team, they surely have proofreaders that sample posts in these forums for anything useful rather than burning themselves out with it all.
On a different note, the silent majority communicated something far harsher when they left the game with fewer players than itās brother from another mother. That is what saddens me.
My friend, much has changed in currency devaluation; 20 US Dollars has not been able to deliver a worth hamburger in my country in years. In the year 2000, $20 was as bad as spending $60 for most of us. We were working for $4 an hour raking leaves or making a hefty $30 shoveling snow for hours. Or worse, working on the farms.
I get that, my point wasnāt necessarily the literal cost of the item, but the principle that it is priced as a full release, we should expect a full release, I really feel like that is a basic request of anyone offering a product. Be it $20,$60,$1000, if that is the industry standard for pricing, it should be finished.
Like literally even hera is trolling how broken the game is.
The project should always be finished as a matter of principle, however, principle has greatly gone the way of the dodo in the modern world. There are few Stradivari walking among us today. In my company, our owner tells us to deliver the best product we can every time, even if it loses him money, but he is old and these are his beliefs that he has someone watching over his work on earth.
We canāt expect that sort of thinking from a large scale company, or else it would never succeed (except for Honda) in the modern market. Besides that, game Devs from 20, or 40 years ago usually made games on a thought that they had about something they themselves would want to play with friends for a long time, so you had that spark of inspiration behind their landmark titles that made them something of a lifeās quest.
This game appears to be like many sequals to anything great, just another project brought to reality by demand of fans. But I do not know.
I donāt know what that has to do with the game being broken, could be a valid stylistic choice depending upon oneās view of it.
I think this is the biggest point where I will agree with the critizism - they did drop the ball by not hot-fixing actual game breaking exploits quicker - it seems like a misstep on their part, to not have some kind of pipeline set up to handle these kinds of issues, where it is not tied to monthly patches.
The long wait for ranked and custom games are also really unfortunate.
I just dont think these things were done out of malice, and I am sure that the developers are more bummed out about this than any of the players.
I still dont think these affects the degree to which the game was worth the asking price, but then again, that is ultimately a subjective judgement.
Iām not sure it is a bad one, we see many wonky ideas for balance sake being done in RTS games. I am not sure how much this one affects things in the large scale of games played, but it mustnāt be too much as I have not seen any other complaints about it that I am aware of.
Perhaps we ought to open a new thread on it to see what the community posters here think of it.
I like it because I do. Like, itās entertainment. The game hasnāt crashed for me, and Iām not good enough at multiplayer for the bugs to really be hurting me yet. The campaigns are where Iāve been at, when Iāve had the time.
I play plenty of other games that have bugs. Civilisation VI has a list of outstanding bugs, for example, that youād need a spreadsheet to reference them all. Itās a massively-popular title that sold well. Still has bugs. Still has players that want those bugs fixed.
Youāre allowed to not like the game. Youāre allowed to be upset about bugs. But likewise, Iām allowed to like the game, and it doesnāt make me a worse person because I do. A lot of the time I get the impression in these kinds of arguments that just because I like the game, Iām somehow a bad person. And thatās just not on. Just as it would be if I attacked somebody personally for being upset with the game.
No donāt get me wrong, as Iāve said before I myself actually do like the game, contrary to what it may seem. Iām just upset because Iām passionate about the franchise and the bugs have been more pronounced to me as a multiplayer player, it feels more impactful when you loose because some player used an exploit the AI never would, it feels like if the developers wanted to put such an obvious emphasis on multiplayer and eSports and competitive play, that they should have not released with such exploits.
I appreciate a lot of what they did do, but I feel like what they didnāt outweighs what they did. I also feel like it is very salvageable if they work quickly and show the community they care about more than the money they made over Christmas.
The move towards game pass is encouraging, in my opinion, maybe itāll encourage the developers to be responsive and pay attention to the active players/subscribers.
The campaign alone is worth buying the game, because it is super good. It feels polished and the difficulty settings match the challenge.
Whether the game is worth the money isnāt really a valid question.
The real question is; where do your players go once theyāve finished it?
Players transitioning to games vs the AI eventually find it lacking and players transitioning to pvp get frustrated by bugs and exploits.
The next step, then is obviously the forums to see if the community is being engaged with regards to these issues and the experience is a lot of people shouting at a wall.
Even the bug tracking page doesnāt list the majority of reported issues.
We then get our first major update and a bunch of stuff gets fixed, only to find even worse exploits being introduced.
If youāre happy with the game you bought, Iām happy for you.
If youāre not too bothered by the bugs, then Iām glad youāre having fun.
If youāre frustrated and angry and rage posting, then I can understand.
Just donāt disregard, or invalidate anyone elseās views and experiences, or belittle them for having those views.
I am one of them.
The point you make isnāt really applicable here:
Games hardly ever get even with 60,70 or 80 Currency in the relevant time frame. Itās just the entry fee they probably have calculated as the sweet spot for getting the most out of as many players as possible. Thatās the reason why you see mtx even in SP games.
GaaS are therefore more a necessity than supporting players willing to stick to a product. You can just watch how creative publisher got around the millennium, when games started to cost expentionally more and more. They need the money from somewhere else and the requirement from big initial sales dimished for a majority blockbuster productions, as it came from supporting a product with less cost and more revenue.
Thatās also the reason why AoE4 wouldnāt have costed more. My guess is that AoE4 was planned for holiday release and not bad enough, for a postpone for one year. The context is great with basically no competition and the Playerbase longing for a new game in the genre. A big IP with a lot of nostalgia attached to it, a Playerbase used to unfinished full price products that will get finished eventually and last but not least the missing opportunity to measure it against a release in a better shape, allowed for AoE4 being considered good enough to be released.
And their gamble payed off while probably being very thankful for the release of the new Battlefield and Cyberpunk.
Still, for several reasons, I think it would have payed of better in the long run, if it was released as the game they had on paper.
make a patch to correct the errors of the patches, it already happened to age2, errors like these make the game unplayable until they correct it, which is much worse than nobody playing because of a bad āpatchā, so it is better slowly but surely , you understand!
is there any possable way to get a steam refund after you went over the time played to get one?
I know some games that were pretty bad at release like āno mans skyā they gave out refund anyways. Even after you plays over 40 hours.
If anyone knows how to get refund like this. let me know
the developers are not making the same mistake as aoe3, it was a game that the developers thought the community would like with all its changes but it was not and it is the game with the lowest rate in multiplayer. Now they are developing aoe4 with the community, they need our data from thousands of games to balance the game, so it hasnāt come out with rankeds because the game is being balanced. they do read our comments as the idea of slowing down the explorer was viper etc. And finally, in my opinion, only the campaign is worth what it costs, I play it at maximum difficulty, thatās where the fun is and the real challenge is, using control groups and ingenuity. The community has shared tutorials so you can master the game and donāt get frustrated, be aggressive donāt let your rival accumulate resources and the siege wonāt frustrate you
Interesting. I find the campaign the worst in the series, by far. Completely forgettable.
What they need to do is get to work. Get things done. They know what they need to do (fix hundreds of bugs, implement basic RTS features among 20+ other features).
Of course, this is a personal matter, and no one here is obliged to convince or hold you back, but there are a couple of inconsistencies with logic here.
First - AoE 4 patch was released recently, despite the fact that the developers went on winter holidays.
Second - SC2 is probably also waiting for a patch soon? There patches come out every month, right? And probably the game is waiting for a new DLC or some new content soon? Unfortunately no, the game was killed by its developer, and he stopped supporting the content.
Third - Compare the amount of content in a game that came out 3 months ago with a game that came out over ten years ago, thatās of course 1000 iQ move.
Just so we are clear, the community did like AoE3. Despite being released in the middle of October, 2005, it was the eighth best-selling PC game of that year. It is also ranked 81 on Metacritic, which is coincidentally the same ranking as AoE4.
so probably thatās the reason