I know everyone is extremely focused at AoE2:DE right now, but I think its fair to say that AoE:DE needs some revisiting.
Some campaigns missions are still extremely difficult for new players, my cousin couldn’t beat Hitties mission one because yellow is now training Clubman from the start (which I don’t remember them doing)
And we could really use some updates to MP and maybe even new stuff.
Anyways, surely it won’t be any time soon, but I really hope the support for AoE:DE doesn’t just stop now that it is on Steam.
The updates seem to be more regular for some months but they are too little compared to all reported bugs.
They called it “Definitive Edition” so I hope they’ll continue until they’ll fix (almost?) everything, it wouldn’t be serious otherwise.
But as far as I know, same developers are also behind AoM:EE and AoE II HD, and I saw reported (big?) bugs on these titles too. I don’t know if it’s a lack of support from Microsoft or of abilities from the devs, but there is a recurrent flaws cycle for years about ‘new’ Age of Empires titles. They go to next title before polishing correctly the previous one.
I would need someone who better followed these games than me to confirm/infirm what I say.
So I would say, we can hope they’ll continue, but I fear it’s too slow or it won’t be done.
I would love to see that since there is obvious fundamentally unfinished/broken stuff underlying in the game.
No classic mode for multiplayer even tho it’s there already?
unit fighting animations got cut down from 2-4 to a single animation in close combat
even tho the classic soundtrack/unit sounds are there, there is no way to choose your preference
some obvious QoL stuff like:
corpses blocking pathes,
no vill command queue after building order (eg: shift hold + Q + right click on gold),
attack order is still a ground attack and not a real attack/chasing down of the unit, (chasing workers or attacking single units become a nightmare of unnecessary constant micro input)
still buggy pathfinding/attack move, military units afking in meele range and blocking each other too often, villagers blocking each other at building and having questionable paths from time to time
chat settings are too oldschool and clunky for quick switches between team/all (better enter = teamchat, Shift+Enter = allchat)
ressource spawn is sometimes wayyy to random (had a map this weak in which all the hunt and berries but 1 spawn were on the oponents half of the map (like 5 berries, 8 elephants and quad gazelles, which is way out of proportion)
balance is still kind of odd? Palmy vills and slingers for example seem to be seen as clear edges to work on as far as I know. Shang is been seen as quite the nobrainer boost as well.
(No balance suggestions for shang (questionable anyway), but maybe palmy vills down to 65 food and slingers nerf of bonus dmg against buildings/walls/towers and kill the +1 dmg of the market upgrade while giving them +1 dmg against bowmen in this upgrade?)
replay feature?
And that’s only the first things that came to my mind in the past 10 minutes of thinking.
Since they obviously broke away from the “complete classic feeling” by several features and splitted the key classic features in the “classic mode”, there is no reason to hold proper QoL fixes back with the reason “it wasn’t there in the original”.
The thing I would wish for is that they keep work on the game by getting community feedback and work on a good, honest and modern AoE1 remaster together.
The thing that’s most likely going to happen, AoE:DE is getting on hold internally while cutting away everyone but single workers to look into the worst bugs that occured with the new client, and put every ressource they have in future projects.
It’s just logical that they don’t want to promote and put big effort into a game that has no “hype-momentum” anymore, while it’s directly competing with the new project they just announced (AoE2:DE) for the 14th november.
And let me tell you, I really wish I am false here with my assessment.
The fact that I enjoy less AoE 2 than AoE 1 + being tired of these unfinished games mean that I won’t get AoE 2 DE day one, and I’ll sit there to check out what the community thinks about polishment of the product before buying, if it worth in the end. War3 Reforged should come soon also and will get my favors. (Blizzard Classic teams have also their problems but still less than AoE’s)
I agree 100% with you guys. Microsoft, just listen to the players and improve the game, fix the bugs, main issues and add some wanted improvements ! Make it become a real definitive edition!!!
Do you know someone of the old “Essembly Studios” ? They did not only listen to players - they really worked together with the best players like “the sheriff” to improve the micromanagement of the game.
Mircomanagement is something which becomes important if you have a reliable installation , graphics and gameflow. This makes a real definitive edition - and this allready happens in the very past. But thank you for the new Edition.