And I said “I don’t understand what you’re saying”, and you responded with hostility.
Anyhow. What you’re saying here:
Is the same as what I’m saying here:
So I did correctly guess at what you were getting at. If you think Age IV needs to hit 70k to be a success, I’d say you’re simply being unfair, and you’d never apply that kind of number to a game you actually enjoyed.
Pretty much every game dips post-release. It’s 2022 and people are still trying to push “the game did badly because it lost players post-launch”. So did Mass Effect Legendary Edition. So did Halo Infinite. So did Civilisation VI, which is fantastically popular by any number you can throw at it (and uh, hasn’t hit 70k since May 2020).
I’d love to think that people just want the game to succeed. But if you’re not going to admit the game is doing well until it hits a number that Civilisation can barely reach (and the 4x genre, sorry, is just waaaaaaay more popular than RTS)? That doesn’t seem fair to me.
Yes be the good AOE3 player.
Accept failure.
Accept the biggest advantages of AOE3 are all mistakes.
Do not request anything from AOE3 in our shining new favorite child.
Do not say anything from AOE3 is done better than our shining new favorite child.
Then the merry upper caste will never be annoyed by our existence and bash our poor little game and we will live happy ever after.
I like how you enjoy forcing people into clarifying everything and also reading what people do not even say (as criticisms of AOE4 of course)
The only point I’m making here is DE is not equivalent to a new release SO you cannot make the comparison of “XXX DE is released only one year earlier so it is a new game released one year earlier”.
It is simply not a new game because it mostly brings back old players (~40k at peak) and does not have the potential to attract a lot more players like a true new game does (~70k).
Because 70k>40k and you cannot assume all the additional 30k people are those who were returning AOE players but just skipped the DE and went straight to AOE4.
Period. Nothing else I’m getting at.
Why can’t I? People were doing it the other way around when AoE III: DE was doing better. Either the numbers matter, or they literally don’t matter at all and we’re all silly for relying on them.
It’s simple enough to me, anyway. There are some people that, regardless of how well Age IV is doing, will always try and paint the game as having failed. It’s why I appreciate that EricGonzalezM actually liked the Malians. He’s trying things out (and has been for a while). Regardless of me disagreeing with him, he’s clear about what worked for him, and what didn’t. It’s useful feedback for the devs.
Arguing over numbers? Less so. So nevermind. Like KG19991380 said, it’s pretty dumb at the end of the day after all.
I dunno, because ultimately everything just boils down to our subjective opinions, no matter how much we want to quantify them or prove them. AoE4 thus far hasn’t grabbed me and AoEO did in 2011 and has never let go. All I can do is try to explain why these things have occurred from my perspective and hope that this information may help someone else design something that will bring joy either to me or to others.
Mali is essentially just AoE3 Ethiopia ported to AoE4.
They’ve both got buildings built over gold mines, cows as a major part of their economy, a javelin throwing unit as the core of their army, and a limited cavalry roster.
If AOE3DE is already a re-release of an old game which does not have the potential of attracting a lot new players, and WERE even doing better than the new, heavily advertised AOE4, where do you think that problem was?
Or do you think AOE4 suddenly magically gained more players just by itself and its brilliant superior designs? (Yeah price reduction and new contents do not exist)
BTW I remember you have very high moral standard and are the single most objective and unbiased human being ever existed on this forum. I am surprised why you copy other people’s malicious wrong evil behavior if you were so against it when others are doing it.
Read the thread first. I literally mentioned the price changes further up (to someone else, but hey, you’ve got to get your digs in ).
But yeah, I predicted this argument. A re-release is still a new game, and should be judged on the merits of being released in the year that it is. If someone remastered Half-Life 1 but kept the graphics, in 2022, that should be talked about. If someone remastered Half-Life 1, but kept the physics, in 2022, that should be talked about.
Something being a re-release doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be treated as a new release, even if it’s not a new game. They’re still asking for your money.
Well, I wish you luck. Sincerely. I doubt a game like AoE: Online will ever exist again, at least in a PC-first kind of context. Maybe the developers (whoever they end up being in the future) will be able to experiment differently in future.
It’s tricky. I don’t think people realise what the RTS space is like, compared to other genres. The funding isn’t where you think it should be.
Considering AoE3:DE a new game that new players will pick up and play if they didn’t know of it from its original iteration is like expecting someone to go a watch Watchmen, the Director’s Edition if they didn’t see or didn’t like Watchmen as it was shown in theaters the first time.
AoE3 is a very old game with a very healthy player base for what it is.
Same goes for AoE2. It had a strong player base and retaining power way before its own DE came along. DE just cemented that for the next 10-20 years.
Few people start playing an RTS in their DE version if they didn’t know or played the original.
My argument have always been based on the potential number of new players a re-release can attract.
If you avoid that then we are not talking about the same thing and our definition of “new release” are on different dimensions. You can raise your own definition of “new release” but it does not invalidate my argument at all.
And you forget about it yourself and try to imply the increase in number of players is due to superior design.
Maybe to you. Some films get Director’s Cuts rather frequently though. Sometimes you don’t even know what cut is actually being distributed. How many cuts has Blade Runner had again? Would I even know without explicitly looking at the recording?
But yeah, still nah. This is the core problem here (generally, really). You’re thinking about you, and extrapolating. I’m thinking about me, and not. I would absolutely buy a remastered version of a game I’ve never played, because I don’t go in for old games anymore. The jank is literally always too noticeable.
Am I the only person who thinks like this? Possibly.
But let’s go to an easier question: do you think they would’ve made AoE III: DE expecting not to make a return on their financial investment? The same goes for any new release. It’s still economics at the end of the day. A set budget for a projected ROI. It’s an RTS game being released in (late) 2020. Whatever they’re banking on, be it nostalgia, graphical improvements, bugfixes, a new engine, whatever . . . they’re not banking on the game released in 2005 and last patched in I think 2011(?) to bring that money in. They’re relying on the new release. The Definitive Edition (with its unique logo).
No, I literally gave it (the price change) as a reason for the game doing better. Sorry to burst your bubble.
This is why I laugh when people suggest an RTS get made with 10 totally asymmetrical factions. Even in the golden age of RTS, this never happened. The amount of time, money and talent upfront to create that would be insane. And the player numbers are not there for it. And the most common reason I hear why gamers don’t play RTS is that it is too difficult, too complex, too much to manage. Any new RTS has to be serious about making it more accessible for new players to pick up. Stormgate from Frost Giant seems to be planning correctly for this to actually grow interest again in RTS.
Then they are not going to charge it lower than the original game or offer an even larger discount if you already own the game on steam despite having a lot more contents.
The sole purpose is to let the old players buy it again, and buy future DLCs if there is any.
That even applies to the holy AOE2. I do not see a lot of streamers who were not long-time AOE2 players but continue (emphasis) streaming AOE2DE after the first few months (emphasis). I believe that roughly could be extrapolated to average players.
BTW I do not see the connection between “targeting returning old players” and “not expecting to make a return on the financial investment”.
I do not see myself talking about graphics or physics.
I have been always talking about the potential number of new players a re-release can attract.
If you keep avoiding that then we are not talking about the same thing and our definition of “new release” are on different dimensions. You can raise your own definition of “new release” but it does not invalidate my argument at all.
Then if a 2021 re-release does not even meet the 2021 standard of graphics or physics, it will fail in its main goal to attract returning players.
You’re hopping between a lot of different things.
I’m just hoping the same mistakes that took out every single RTS since starcraft 2 aren’t repeated yet again and the devs finally realize that approach doesn’t function on the most basic level
ps: starcraft II is where solid releases seemingly ended for RTS, as a design shift occured
You’re telling me the developers don’t want any new players? Then why update the graphics? Why change what isn’t broken? You can’t tell me the DE releases haven’t had bugs - I know for a fact they have.
The investment in the DE versions is to provide a version they can update easier, with better content. It’s going to attract new players, and it’s going to attract a whole lot of old players. Like Andy preferring AoE:O, some people are going to prefer older games. And that’s good. Competition is good. Age IV wouldn’t be where it is now without people continually comparing it to AoE II and AoE III.
If players find graphics important. I do. Other players don’t.
You don’t seem to understand, there is no magical rule that makes games attract players. I agree that a remake is more likely to attract people who enjoyed the original (Eric said the same thing). I disagree that it won’t attract new people.
Black Mesa’s brilliant, I have it myself. But it is ultimately a third-party Source engine title. It’s not like DE, which are developers building their own engine architecture (doesn’t one of the DE games have a completely new graphics engine, among other things?).
An RTS game targets RTS players. An RPG game targets RPG players. New game target new players. They are all different kinds of players. Now: a remake of an old RTS targets returning players of that RTS.
Why does it upgrade graphics? Because if it doesn’t it will fail with its goal of targeting returning players of that RTS. Just like every other game. If it does not meet the current standards it fails to target its target audience, ANY kind of audience, whatever that audience is.
And however developers want new players, it still will not attract a lot of new players after all.
Even for the holy AOE2, I do not see a lot of streamers who were not long-time AOE2 players but continue (emphasis) streaming AOE2DE after the first few months (emphasis). I believe that roughly could be extrapolated to average players.
Maybe you have the examples and I’m happy to see.
And I see no connection between bugs and this topic.
But this doesn’t make business sense. AoE III is seventeen years old. There are people who would’ve devoted their lives to it then, that simply can’t now. Heaven knows I can’t put the time into RTS games I used to. I used to stay up all night, for starters
Even remakes look to attract new players. It’s a huge driver in remaking something. Old players are often still playing the old game. The fact AoE II: HD still has like 2 - 3k players on Steam right now is evidence of that.
To try and get a bit closer back to the topic, why does Age IV get new civs? To attract new players? Or to bring back lapsed players? The answer is never just one or the other. The answer is both.
ES didn’t dissolve because of AoE3’s “failure” (which it wasn’t). They dissolved because they were planning to make a Halo MMORPG that would have cost a billion dollars to make and take three years of development to release. This coincided with Microsoft hiring a new manager that would get a massive bonus if he turned Microsoft’s gaming department into making a profit by the end of the first year (which it didn’t back then since the only popular games being made under that label was AoE and Flight Simulator). So he decided to fire the people at Ensemble after the release of Halo Wars in order to save money and “can” the development of “Project Titan” that would cost Microsoft games a whole lot of money to make. Sandy Petersen as said this multiple times in interviews and I don’t think there’s any reason to doubt him.
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