It’s been a long ride , I will see you in 28th

Age of Empires IV IV - Discussion
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So hi. I’m making this topic to talk about age of empires 4 and the long ride that we lived on since 2017. First of all , this was a hell of a long ride , and I know , it’s been 4 years since the game was announced but for me this was like AGES . And I am truly happy to see how this turned on.

Aoe for me is literally my favorite franchise and I have faith that this saga will be in a near or far future a mighty one of the pages of history.

So in this topic I want to talk about that ride we had about aoe4 , during the first hype of 2017 and the great dying of the fan preview , and the recovering of NOW , since you are reading this on 20th you are a part of the history of the game. Every one of you has been here and maybe can say to their kids in the future , I was here.

Many of us defended this game with sword and blood , a lot of us. I did even went to this forum in classes and forgot about what I did in that day just because I was fighting with some dude about visuals :joy:. This might sound silly but all of my English I learned is from YouTube and my classes (30% , basic vocabulary) and I perfected in here , you can see my first post talking in a lenguage I don’t understand.

So first of all I want to say thank you to everyone , all the things I said on this forum , even the “fights” I did have with many of you were so fun to have. Knowing that all of this will end when the game releases (probably) is the reason of why I’m saying this.

Well , let’s begin because this is going to be a long thread and I might get emotional (I’m sorry) so let’s start.

————— THE OLD DAYS ———————

Any one of this forum remembers seeing the fake trailers of aoe4 in the past? , when the game wasn’t announced and think : damm… this would never happen… and get sad? :frowning: , because that is my case . I actually did noticed that aoe4 was going to be a real thing because one night I decided to search aoe4 false trailers and did saw the real announcement , probably the craziest day I ever had.

——————2017 ARRIVES! ITS REAL!!———————

I was hyped as ■■■■ , that first trailer was a hell of trailer , it was that good that now days the trailer haves 11 million views , holy moly. I remember seeing everyone thinking of what age it would be , and they thought that it was going to be of ww1 and ended being in the Middle Ages lol , I remember being fricking hyped for over 2 years and still nothing. And then…

—————THE REVEAL——————
So , for this one I want to clarify something… I talk Spanish and that is my main lenguage , so it’s kinda funny that I was doing my stuff , I was chilling and suddenly a yt notification appears on my screen. And it was that aoe4 was going to have his gameplay today and I was HOLY ■■■■ .

And then i remembered seeing that Spanish community was pissed because the game was going to be in the Middle Ages and not like in ww1 , still nowadays they are pissed. I know that there was also controversy in the English community but that only lasted 2 months and some Spanish people are still mad about it. The community was also pissed in general because of the cartoony look that I personally did like a lot ! And it’s a shame that they did change it to be more real to be honest… there were a lot of cool things about that trailer like the golden eagle for example (it’s in game also) .

—————THE SILENCE——————

In 2 years they went completely silent , no news , nothing. Just our silence , it was that silent that some people though that aoe4 was CANCELLED , DEAR god it was a fake new , I did find a lot of people believing that and I couldn’t resist more and I did make an account of Reddit (now is deleted because my English cringe) , literally this thing went so silent that in 2018 I made this forum account , and never used it again until 2020 when fan preview was announced .

—————THE GAMEPLAY , AND THE DOWNGRADE——————

So , in 10th on April we had the fan preview , and I truly was hyped for it and I did enjoyed it a lot but then community graphic problems began , I didn’t noticed but after a lot of comparison I did knew that there was a problem , or a downgrade. Because the “Tune in into fan preview” trailer showed good and nice looking graphics and then the fan preview looked kinda dull… it didn’t took much time to my man jimmy to make the legendary GRAPHICS MEGA-THREAD. It brings me moments of sadness and happiness seeing that topic always there , PINGED. But anyways developers heard us and they did improved a LOT compared to fan preview , c’mon , you can’t deny it.

—————THE PRESENT DAY——————

Today , 20th , 8 days before launch. In what situation we are now? Well , we are in a rare situation that people don’t know if they like the game or they don’t , and that is because they forgot the experience! The only thing that I know is that I did enjoy the game and I am gonna play it.

I’m truly hyped to see what is inside of the 4k graphics package dlc if you ask me! Maybe it won’t be a total difference but I think is going to be pretty good!! Or at least good…

Well so , yeah thank you everyone to be in this adventure and in this long ride , and see you in 28th!

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Nobody wants to talk about something or tell their opinions about aoe4? :frowning_face:

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Oh man I remember seeing trailers like this all the time.
It felt quite weird when I saw the first trailer in 2019 and I though I wouldn’t be buying the game.
Now I am really happy with how the game turned out to be, I think the devs did an amazing job with this game. I havent been hyped like this for a game in a very long time.

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Haha lmao , it’s true! I saw that!

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If the 4k DLC pack will improve textures on models, buildings and water, i’m going to change my impressions as many of us, i suppose.

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I respect your opinion but to me graphics isn’t everything, I rather have better gameplay first.

The graphics are doable for me not bad and not amazing either but good enough. The gameplay however is smooth and feels good which is number one priority for me :blush:

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Thats right though , 20 characters.

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Thank god we didn’t got this :joy:

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Well l it looks kinda nice but definitely this don’t feel that much as aoe lmao

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Im adding this poll to the thread : Pre-launch Poll , go and vote for it!

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Well, all I can say to you is wish you to have fun with the game and enjoy it for a long time, my friend. Hope it lives up to your hype.

I for one can’t say the same thing about myself. I’m already scared about the reviews it’s going to receive. I was very hyped for AoE4 since its reveal and spent a lot of time here as well gathering all kinds of info early on, but now I know it will not leave up to my expectations, and even the developers admitted they haven’t created something groundbreaking. I think what bothered me the most is that developers haven’t interacted here at all, and only after that comes the fact that the game is nothing close to legendary. So for me the time spent here was mostly a waste of time and energy. It was an interesting ride, but a useless one in the end.

I will leave this link here on what Relic declared early on about the opportunity to work on AoE4 (opposite to what they are saying now that the team is going just for a new AoE game and not necessarily a genre defining new entry in the series):
https://www.relic.com/article/8349

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Well , everyone can have their opinions and emotions , so I think I will agree with this one.

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I think they didn’t want to change too many things or innovate too much to respect to the identity of the franchise and to maintain the core elements of the game.
For me the game is amazing because it feels like aoe, I loved they improved and expanded on existing mechanics that we all loved rather than doing something completely different and trying to innovate too much.
Old aoe games, specially aoe 2 have aged up really well, and are still very alive, like the good old saying; if it ain’t broke dont fix it.
I am personally a fan of aoe3 but if you look at the past aoe3 didn’t do so well not because the game was bad, but because for many it changed too much and felt like a completely different game and it was no longer an aoe game!

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Yes, I understand that and I didnt want an alienated game either, but part of that identity are also all those basic functions we kept talking about and which are not in the game. So in many aspects it feels like a downgrade to past titles in the franchise.

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Thank you for your positive emotional post. We are also looking forward to October 28th! Thank you for helping the team, sharing helpful ideas and comments. We appreciate for your feedback and would love to hear more from you!

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Holy cow , I didnt expect you in here. Thank you! I hope you enjoyed it.

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I personally think that this game needs a bit more of asymmetry on the new civs that they will make in the future and that it’s feels good for now lol

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I was still in school when Age of Empires 3 came out back in 2005 , now I’m nearly 30! (Civilisation 4 came out the same time, what a year!) Its fair to say its been quite the wait for Age of Empires 4 but here we are with less than a week to go.

The best thing is that I reached out to an old friend who I used to spend many school nights playing AOE3 with against the computer (usually getting beaten, we were pretty clueless). We got togeather to try out the betas for AOE4 and loved it so now were both getting it to do the exact same thing we did with AOE3 all those years ago. :slight_smile:

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Damm! That’s a good story actually , I actually remembering playing aoe3 (my first aoe game) when I was 7 or 8 , I love it and I still playing it now days :smiley:

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Idk, maybe a bit more wouldn’t hurt.
Of course the balance and competitiveness should be taken into account, right now the design of the current civs are a great set up for future civs to come.
If they make new civs too asymmetric it can really hurt the competitiveness of the game.