Yea but this is age and I believe age players expect a different style. I personally hate all Warcraft games and am a huge Age Of Empires fan so I suspect there will be a lot of people in the same boat.
I don’t doubt that.
I’m just criticizing design decisions of what we saw so far.
Thanks for posting the podcast! I didn’t know about it. I will try to listen sometime.
I hope their graphics and scaling choices work out okay for us. Now that we’re nearing launch and learning details about the game for the first time, it’s really cool to know we won’t have to wait too much longer! 
They’re pretty locked into a plan, which will likely help them launch sooner rather than later. I just hope that if the game has a couple things that 95% of the community really thinks doesn’t work well once the game launches, that they’d be open to at least considering changing/updating the game 
And hopefully those things wouldn’t be so deeply embedded in the game mechanics or presentation that it’d be impossible to change.
This right here is what will kill the game for me if it isn’t fixed. It’s the reason I loved Halo Wars 1 but could not play Halo Wars 2. The scale was COMPLETELY off. Vultures smaller than Pelicans??? WTF? Bases that looked way too small, I know they were using Elephants instead of Pods dropped off by Herons but still I missed the large scale of bases and battles that reminded me of AOE 2’s scale. It became way too similar to Dawn of War 2 which is a fine game but in its own right but not what I wanted in HW2.
And now we have buildings so small the soldiers barely look like they can fit through the doors?! All the buildings look like Age of Empires 1 buildings. Tiny in comparison to the villagers that just built them. It kills the immersion for me as well.
There, these two quotations more or less give an answer to the whole thread.
Mann: A lot of our community plays on integrated laptops, so low-powered machines that don’t have a discrete video card. We wanted to make sure that we were able to put the game experience in their hands and Zack and the team have done an amazing job of delivering that visual and audio showcase on lower-end machines.
Zach: In fact, the strategy for the lighting and textures is such that we use painterly texture so that it’s still readable and consistent on lower-end 1080p monitors, and 4K monitors, so you don’t get stuck with lots of noise and stuff. It helps clean itself up and makes it very clear, readable, which is a nice little feature.
When you design your next AAA title of a branded franchise with integrated laptop inclusivity in mind without discrete gpus Can’t believe they’re actually saying that with pride. I was just about to get more hopeful but statements like these just refuel the frustration
Those are 20 year old games, obviously you’ll see a big part play them on integrated laptops because they still CAN. Just Age3 is 16 years old, what are we talking about here? Did Ensemble ever say we will make our games look shit because a lot of people play on Ataris? No, they were pushing the boundaries of their time with each new game.
I haven’t seen anyone sane anywhere complaining for not being able to play a new AAA game on their integrated laptop of 200$. They are not machines meant for gaming!
People who can’t even afford a discrete gpu to game, are expected to give 60$ for a single game that they will still have to set on lowest settings (imagine the ugliness) to be able to play it?
Or pay a game pass subscription when they can’t even run like half the games in there?
I assure you, most third world gamers will just pirate the game if they’ll know they can run it on their integrated potato. While many potential costumers who like beautiful visuals and can actually pay for them, won’t even bother. Then you will all be wondering why the game’s sales didn’t meet expectations.
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Where can i find this interview?
Yes, those statements are not so good, imho.
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This is the interview.
And to be fair, those are 2 things that at least I can agree on but completely irrelevant to the graphics:
Duffy: I think there probably are, to be honest. We looked at a lot of things that were part of Age II that were kind of so idiosyncratic to that engine and that technology that they turned into gameplay memes at this point, like walling off your city with houses and things. We wanted to put the emphasis back on walls, so the Palisades and the stone walls.
Duffy: We tried to get the proportion of your villager economy and your army force to be a little more even. You get a lot of games in Age II where you maybe have 150 villagers and you’re just turning out smaller raiding armies. We wanted to reduce the villager load and beef up the army load a bit, so you do have larger armies. We’re sort of capping out right now at 200 per side, so it’s in that ballpark of the Age II sweet spot, but we wanted to change that ratio of villagers to military a little bit.
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Agree %100, dark souls, the witcher, fornite etc, are games that requires a graphic card and decent PC, I can’t believe they want to make this game playable In Integrated chips… This is an insult for the people waiting 20 years for a AAA RTS and an insult for the Relic fans that are used to homeworld, DOW and COH, games ahead of its time graphically…
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That screenshot looks disgusting…you can see the low quality in graphic…
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This Is the worst parte for me
" For example, we reduced the amount of detail for small items like soldiers and units and stuff like that for better readability from your camera. We also allow for painterly type detail for the buildings and things like that. We made sure that we kept the buildings in a sort of a what I would consider the coffee-table book-tourist-town-style that’s very colourful; there’s flowers, it’s still historical, but it’s not old and rundown. It’s maintaining the celebratory view of history the franchise is known for.
Really Hope we’ll have some options to set the unit models on High quality.
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In Age Of Empires II, when a unit dies, it falls, bleeds, decomposes and only then disappears. In Age Of Empires III, when a unit dies, it just falls and disappears, but at least you can see some blood when a unit is shot at. In Age Of Empires IV, I didn’t see any of that,
and the absence of details like this gives the impression that they were too lazy to make the game.
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No blood or stuff - because they are aiming to young generation.
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I don’t know why people were expecting spectacle from an AoE game. So far I’m pretty sure AoE4 will end up looking great, but in a smooth and clear sort of way - not in a “that lighting though” sort of way.
Homeworld 3 is on the way and is likely to have us covered regarding impressive art and spectacle - and then some; I neither expected nor needed that from my AoE, in fact what I want AoE to be is simple and clean.
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But it doesn’t have to be violent, it just needs a little more detail. Although it is also for young generations, Age Of Empires is not a game for children.
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In 2005, Age of Empires III was graphically impressive. Incredible water, unit models, particles, incredible 3D engine, etc.
Sorry but In 2021, Age of Empires IV in the graphic apart is a joke, really. Cartonish and unit models poor!! i dont know. I DONT LIKE IT. I’m disappointed
AOE IV is supposed to continue with the essence… but the graphics are not A,
AOE IV needs to be AAA, and the graphics is C ? sorry for my bad english
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Ok, i decided to do another images analysis and i think there are some really different versions of the same game between the “norman campaign” and the"fan preview gameplay". This last one version it seems really recorded months ago and all models are not really defined.
Fan preview gameplay
and some images taken from official screenshots
you can see how textures are not defined (arms, faces, feet etc)
From the Norman campaing
William the Conqueror?
So, the basic models are not bad at all and as i previously said little improvements on textures and colours (for example the weapon blades should be seem iron made not plastic) and more polishing could make this game more attractive for many people.
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That’s exactly what they are doing right now.
I liked that you changed your mind a little, nice topic.
I don’t know in which world you guys live in, but younger audiences(except children) love violence 
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