It is hoped that the existing resource gathering method will be simplified to the model of Age of Empires 3

Age of Empires IV IV - Discussion
41

Funny enough, they started adding ideas from AoE 3 into the other games.

Ottoman Vizier System? Lite version of AoE 3’s Home City
Landmarks? Like the wonders for AoE 3’s Asian civs.
Infinite farms? Like AoE 3’s mill but much cheaper.

Also in AoE 2:
Flemish Revolution? Like the AoE 3 revolution (and one of AoM’s god powers)
Ratha having two fire modes? Like in AoE 3
Khmer Farms? Like AoE 3’s resource gathering

AoE 3 has a way worse reputation that it actually deserves. It’s underappreciated.

7 Likes
42

I think they should take the best of each series, not the most controversial.

Innovation ≠ Something positive in all cases.

43

That’s right… I agree on everything…AoE 3 is hit from all sides, but then they stay without ideas and they remember AoE 3,that is a very underrated innovative game…

44

Marketing would be the key in that scenario.

If you are selling it as AoE2 3D or AoE2 DE-but-this-time-for-real, nobody would complain. It’d be AoE2 reimagined. Heck, if you do it right you could finally kill the original 2D AoE2.

However, if you sell it as AoE5 or something else, then yes, people will complain about the zero creativity in simply recreating an older game. To make matters worse, replicating every single mechanic just as it was in AoE2 wouldn’t be a simple task and folks would also complain about pathing and such.

There is a precedent with StarCraft and SC2. Blizzard was clear that SC2 was pretty much a 3D version of SC and it was extremely well-received.

I would sell a kidney for AoE2 3D, with small improvements and tweaks here and there. That’d be the only RTS I’d ever need.

45

You make it sound like people hate 3D, AoE 4 fails not only on graphics section but mostly contents. They streamlined everything for the sake of competitive gameplay that the game feels lifeless. It’s like comparing eating your grandma’s cooking you a hearty meal to eating a fast food. Take a look at this:

this is from an indie developer

image
image1920×1080 399 KB

vs a giant tech company…

image
image1200×675 147 KB

and this picture comes from the 2019 trailer that I actually STILL hyped for it.
I can’t screenshot what the gameplay looks like now (it looks worse than the 2019 trailer) since I uninstalled the game already.

46

yes, but i play aoe3 from time to time - but it’s to much. some features- choosen wisely can fit the other games good. but all of them together is to much for me and most gamers.

so maybe the will be a culture without resource-gathering-camps in aoe4, but only one and not all. that would be indeed interesting.

aoe3 is a good rts, but it is the strangest aoe. between aoe1,2 and 4 and also aom is more constance. if you know how one game works, you can handle the games pretty well.
and than there is aoe3 - with alot of mechanics which needs alot of time to get into.

after the event in aoe3 de i admitt: the game is a good one!

but not intuitive for some mechanics . also the conters of units are not so intuitive. maps are to small - sadly even in de, the graphic bugs (missing shadows in farest zoom), the units moving like on rails. also this game needs alot of polish - even after all the years. but also do aoe4.

1 Like
47

This is funny, because it also applies to III and Online.

Whatever game the devs chose as some kind of base would be criticised by others. This is a separate argument to polish and QoL features; I’m talking about baseline design.

We’d still be in some variation of this timeline nomatter what happened. It’d just be a different group of posters.

And when IV tries to be its own game; something completely new, it gets criticised for being not Age. I get that, but it then makes it impossible to not base it on past games. And for all the people that enjoy them, III was divisive, and Online was straight up just not successful.

I’d have preferred more innovation myself. But I can certainly understand basing it more on II, while adding stuff post-release that echoes III more. It’s a logical progression.

1 Like
48

Yes, my statement has some exposure as arguably applying to any game and thus rendering the statement invalid.

However, in my experience across our games, I find that AoE2 players appear least open to trying new things. I have met a lot of AoE2 players who admit to never having played any other Age game. I cannot think of any AoM, AoE3, or AoEO players who haven’t played all of our games. (Accordingly, I find the opinions of AoE2 players about what makes or doesn’t make an Age game the least helpful – often the people speaking up have no idea what they are talking about outside of AoE2.)

After all, I am an AoEO player because I played every Age game when they were each launched. AoEO happened to be the last stop on that train, and so here I sit.

The people who still play AoE2 seem to have a natural stickiness that players of the other games don’t share. Because of this, I respectfully submit that there is reason to say what I said about AoE2 and not to apply it to the other games.

3 Likes
49

Not really. As a rule I have found Aoe 3 and AoEO players to be much more accepting then a lot of AoE 2 players. Don’t know why but that’s the way it is.

5 Likes
50

This is an excellent post that articulates things well without getting too controversial, which is something I’m not capable of doing after countless heated debates since the release of AoM in 2002 vs a specific segment of the AoE community. And so, I shall refrain from adding anything further.

Thank you for this.

3 Likes
51

I think this is completely reasonable r.e. experience, but as someone who is committed to being IV-first for various reasons, I see that stickiness playing out on repeat, and not just from AoE II fans. That’s my experience of the past three years or so, anyway.

It’s a tricky one. Everyone wants to be right. And it’s easy to be a fan of a different game and to therefore predict it’d have turned out better. And like I said, I’m more into innovating myself. I have nothing against AoE III (and you know I have nothing against Online).

But I respectfully don’t think it’d have mattered. Mechanics are beyond the surface level appeal. They help with staying power, with retention, but people need to stick with the game in the first place. To that end, replayable content, better stability, and QoL are core. The devs have been steadily working on the last two, admittedly post-release. I’m getting louder and louder asking about the first. I’m getting a bit sidetracked though.

I mean, we even know we have folks claiming IV is “taking” from III. Isn’t that the point?

Isn’t that the whole thing that we want here? More of the good stuff? Or are people getting stuck on what they want to play?

I’m very used to arguing with people who don’t like change. It’s very common in the RTS genre (and it’s pretty prevalent in my time spent in strategy / 4x game communities). I definitely think IV was (too) conservative in its approach. But I don’t think that’s the problem here. I don’t think the core problem is that the devs went with II first and foremost.

AoE II is the most popular title, with the largest playerbase. Therefore, you’re going to come across the greatest breadth of opinions within its community.

I’ve personally encountered just as much opposition from Age fans that prefer other games in the franchise. From my perspective, what’s the difference? So long as they care about making IV better, that’s all I really care about. It’s why I’m here.

1 Like
52

You are 100 percent correct that AoE4 was destined to fail in the eyes of many of us. (I said this many times over the few years before launch – somewhere on this forum.) It would be insane if I tried to walk that back here.

So as players performing the AoE4 autopsy to determine its cause of death, we are burdened with the noisy data knowing that no matter how the game was built, someone would have been conducting an autopsy.

If I speak for anyone besides myself around here, I speak for players of the greater Age games who were distraught to discover that AoE4 was built without almost any regard for the wounds the other games endured or the strengths the other games brought. But it is simply not constructive to impede our feedback just because a hypothetical AoE4 game that took those lessons to heart would have hypothetically upset some hypothetical other player who would have been upset to see well made civs with varied unit and building rosters and colorful icons and vibrant gaia.

Apologizing for AoE4 by muddying the waters and saying any game would have had its critics is a poison, if ingested, that would ensure the people making our games never learn these lessons. I’m sure it would feel good to the devs to tell themselves that, though. And at a human level, maybe they need that kind of noisy distraction from the problems at hand.

But if we are moving forward as a community to more games, then we can’t have that. They made a game that breaks my heart and the hearts of so many of us. If many of us are ever going to play another new Age game, those lessons must be learned.

And absolutely you are correct – I have no idea what AoE4 would have needed to have been to have pried me away from my precious AoEO. AoEO just brings me so much freaking joy. And now that we are making new civs (civs that I personally am designing), I just am in deeper love with the game all the time.

I face a credibility problem if I cannot truly imagine leaving AoEO and ever playing a sequel. I have thought about this a lot over the last few years.

But were I to ever move over to a sequel, that sequel would absolutely need to feel like the people who made it understood the insides of all of games and loved that sequel with a similar passion.

AoE4 feels to me somewhere between soulless and flat on the one hand and noxiously out to lunch on the other. Until the franchise is in a position to reckon with itself on those terms, I fear we are destined for more of the same.

3 Likes
53

In a dazzling display of self indulgence, I now quote myself. Here I am back in 2017 agreeing with you, @GorbMort

"Just be certain to take a moment for quiet reflection on how one day we will look back nostalgically on the days we had nothing to argue about except our own preconceived expectations of the game. Once we actually know things, whatever those things are and no matter how good those things look, there will be plenty of self-satisfied I-told-you-so posters.

“Right now, Age of Empires 4 is simply a vessel in which we pour our hopes and dreams. Once it moves from hypothetical to real, the real flames burn. Someone’s going to be angry. And they’re gonna get loud.”

1 Like
54

AoE 2 players tend to be quite conservative when it comes to suggestions which is something you rarely see in the other games as well but not as much as in Age 2.

While new stuff eventually is accepted (iirc the charge mechanic for the Coustillier was controversial), proposing changes such as dropping the building requirement you need to age up (e.g. two Feudal Age Buildings on top of the resources to go to Castle Age) for all civs often results into the person presenting the suggestion being flamed.

Regarding AoE 4, I don’t think Microsoft/Relic really did themselves any favours by going back in time and revisiting the setting of AoE 2 as - whether intended or not - this will cause comparisons throughout 4’s entire life time. Relic was probably in a dilemma because if they had covered WW1 and WW2, comparisons with their original series - Company of Herores - would most likely have been made.

2 Likes
55

Gorb brings up an interesting point I’ve been wondering about myself. I’ve seen plenty of remarks from AoE2 players about AoEIV but not on the forum. The AoE2 folk here have isolated themselves which is a far cry from all the years I’ve been active in the AoE community in one form or another. I don’t know why that is. Most of the people that criticize AoEIV these days seem to be people that hate-play the game.

If it makes you feel any better AoM and AoE3 were treated far worse than AoEIV. The reputation given to AoE3 from AoE2 players still lingers to this day, even from people that have no experience with the franchise outside of AoEIV. I’ve seen several prominent AoEIV streamers belittle AoE3 and I know exactly where they got their talking points from. This isn’t to say I think AoE3 is without faults. You have people leaving negative reviews to this day because it is not AoE2 2.0 The 3DE IGN review was done by an AoE2 fanboy that clearly hated #### ### back in 2005. Just ask Daut and The Viper what happened when they started streaming 3DE just for fun.

I like discussing all things AoE and AoEIV is the newest of the bunch. I like to keep track of AoEIV and even though it’s a game I don’t personally find much enjoyment in. However, I do want it to be the best game it can be (oftentimes that sentiment isn’t returned). What I am wedded to is the AoE franchise as a whole. We’re all guilty of our biases getting in the way of objectivity, it’s natural. Dare I say the playerbases of all non-AoE2 titles have a lot more in common than they might think? I think so.

@GorbMort The mechanics AoEIV is drawing inspiration from AoE3DE are all well done. It’s just too bad many AoEIV players don’t know where they come from because maybe just maybe they’d get some enjoyment out of 3DE, too. Yep, purely selfish motivations on my part.

3 Likes
57

I think this is where we differ, but maybe it’s more optics than the meat of the argument.

Any game would’ve had its critics. Every game does. But I’m not trying to say “and therefore lessons aren’t necessary”. I’m trying to say this was going to be problem nomatter the dev’s choice of base inspiration.

The Age franchise is a bunch of contradictions. I played Dawn of War a lot inbetween Age. It has the same problems. The iterations of each game are pretty different to the extent the fanbase is split. And while it can definitely be argued things were improved each time, they’re too closely tied perception wise to the game as a whole. People are bad at taking something from DoW II without including their baggage from other parts of the game.

I see the same here. And the funny thing is the devs have experience in trying to find answers to this problem. Both CoH 3 and Age IV feel like different answers, both compared to DoW III (that didn’t succeed), and to each other.

  • CoH 3 kept remarkably close to CoH 2, and has been plagued with technical issues. The user scores reflect this. Reception has been trending up consistently as they’ve patched issues, but slowly.

  • Age IV started with a conservative base in II, but also in number of ways tries to be its own iteration. The technical issues haven’t been as egregious as CoH 3’s. The constraints are more subtle.

  • DoW III was a precise mix of both previous DoW games. It made a few poor decisions that didn’t help the game take off, and ultimately didn’t resonate with either playerbase.

They’re all different attempts at finding an answer. Succeed or fail, these answers are important. You can’t bring a franchise forward without that kind of knowledge.

58

I’m convinced it’s FE behind the post-release aoe4 stuff. They know this franchise and borrow stuff around the horn, just like anyone would want. Sometime I should paw back and list the things they borrowed (gasp) from AoEO and used in aoe2 and aoe3. It’s adorable seeing people love that stuff on one side of their mouth and scoff at AoEO with the other.

The best artists steal. nanos gigantum humeris insidentes

5 Likes
59

Exactly. I’ve seen this many times. The most glaring are those certain AoEIV streamers I mentioned in the previous post. One of them stated because AoE3 is less successful than II/IV there’s nothing IV can take from it. He says this as he’s playing the Ottomans lol. It’s not like AoE3 wasn’t successful when it was released in 2005 but I don’t expect transplants that follow the $$ to know much about AoE.

One of the things I hope World’s Edge is aware of is these players will dump AoEIV once the next hot RTS comes out. They have no loyalty to the AoE franchise.

And I agree, FE is handling post-launch support for AoEIV which makes me rather nervous about the future of 3DE. That game still has so many stories to tell and the DLCs have been amazing, and so have the updates. I worry FE is spreading itself too thin and sacrifices will be made, although they have been hiring specifically for AoEIV. I can’t help but feel a little paranoid given the history of AoE3 and how despite the stellar support World’s Edge has treated it.

3 Likes
60

I have not been impressed with the insight of most of the content creators I’ve interacted with. I’m sure some of them know their stuff. But (surprise surprise) the personality traits useful in being charismatic or talented playing a game don’t necessarily overlap with the personality traits of being well versed in the franchise design.

And that’s before they play to their audience and flame their competitor games.

AoE4 streamers have a financial incentive for AoE3 to be ridiculed. There’s no wonder they feed that fire.

The financial incentive is toxic. It makes otherwise intelligent people stupid and helpful critics sycophants. Bleh

5 Likes
61

I’m convinced it’s Relic and World’s Edge, personally. It’s been a year, there’s lots of knowledge sharing that could’ve gone on.

Biggest “issue” seems to be pace. CoH 3 got four (decently sized) hotfixes within a week or two of launch. I don’t remember IV ever having that kind of resource.