More realism in battle! Attack animations, death animations and blood!

The main reason for the game to be “sunny” is readability.
In a dark and foggy night it’s hard to see units and resources. In bright and contrasty lighting it’s easy.
In single player in AoM and AoE3 there were multiple missions in dim light but that’s ok, you don’t have to be competitive there.
I mean a lot of AoE2 players make their games “ugly” by making trees comedically small and put a grid all over the terrain.

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i don’t think we need shit like these, after all the game will have modding support and the modding community might make blood and gore mod

and they also want to get the T rating since this how every age of empires game have been (excluding online which got E10+ rating)

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I personally started with the CD Version of AoE 2 but around 2010. So compared to modern titles the graphics seemed bad. Maybe that’s the reason why I didn’t see the brutality eventh though I was young. Anyhow I remember an interview with Bruce Shelly where he said something like: “I want AoE to be sunny/bright because it should give children a positive image of history and motivate them to learn something about it.” Maybe I remember wrong

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All of the aformentioned is part of war, this is a game about historical warfare not a game of competitive football pansies. If competative players wants to avoid difficult realities of blood, graphical detail and historical correctnes and only focus on the strategy and competition…then let them go play ONLINE CHESS!!

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I prefer the ‘‘dark and foggy’’ aspects, or when fighting in a dessert bright and dusty, becuse it adds an aditional level of challanging the player/myself in a historical / realistic fashion.

That is why we have the term FOG OF WAR.

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Give us gory realism (it dosn’t have to be over the top) but make it an optional feature easily switched on or of in the options menue. Everyone will be satisfied.

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I would think this would add to the realism(have it be an option toggle on/off for people who don’t want it)
But to all the people saying age has never been about gore, you are right, it hasn’t, but blood is not gore, there is a difference. He isn’t asking for heads to be decapitated, and maimed arms, or people being brutally impaled, he is asking for small death animations(would add to immersion, not gory) death lines(also not gory, adds to immersion) and blood on weapons and shields(this is bloody, not gory) Maybe a little splatter of blood every now and then when a unit is hit with a weapon(and like I said, toggle on/off

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Yes, if they don’t want any blood, at least have it as a toggle.

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YOU ARE THE ONLY ONE who reads SENTENCES, while the others don’t. They are only reacting to WORDS such as blood and death, and start talking about gory mode or “blood&gore” pack. I only wanted small details. I first expected people to discuss how to balance those details and playability, but when I came back to check this thread I was very disappointed.

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Most people are ignorant

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it depend if this will still give them the T rating then they will do it, if it doesn’t and it give them higher rating then they might not do it.

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Yea, I think they want to keep those ESRB and PEGI ratings down so it’s teen or 12. I think Adam Isgreen said this in an interview. So if you’d have a toggle for blood, these rating boards would still judge it as if kids would be exposed since they could just turn that toggle on.

It is sad, but it is what it is.

Maybe having a blood toggle button, but also parental controls to reach to it would be the solution?

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Most likely having parental controls would be a solution.

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I seriously don’t understand why many people here are talking about gory mode. Was the topic of the thread making AoE a horror game? Can nobody give a constructive opinion on balancing realistic details and playability instead of maliciously interpreting the topic in an extreme way?
Or is it a cultural/generation gap? Is it automatically considered too gory for children to play when something has blood?

FYI
ESRB rating for AoM and AoE were 13+ yrs old. How many of you even cared about that when you were kids?

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i just want to see blood be Spilled on the edge of swords and pikes this is my personal opinion on blood thing.

as for the the death animation i could imagine a one where there is a different death animation for horse rider, where he gets knocked off by pikes or both of him and horse dies by swords and axe, or he slowly slides off his horse by archer if he was killed standing, or getting knocked of his horse if he was charging

it’s not up to us it’s up to companies and developers to decided what age rating they would go with

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Age Ratings can differ massively between countries. You can’t just look at ESRB and Pegi. They only cover half of the market.
Some countries are more strict in some cases and less strict in others. In Korea for example you can’t have cigarettes or gambling depicted in the game. Look at the Starcraft 2 trailers and you know why that could be an issue. (I don’t know if the laws changed).

The Company of Heroes games generally had a higher rating than Age of Empires (Pegi was even 18+) but they depicted an relative adult topic with WW2. In Germany they had a lower rating (16+) than in North America (17+) or other European countries (18+) but still higher than AoE (12/13+).
Dawn of War had Pegi 16+ and ESRB 17+ (all 3 games) despite being more brutal (from my experience), likely because of the Fantasy Sci-Fi setting.

It is expensive and makes bad PR when the the game is different in different countries so Developers prefer to make the game the same for everyone unless it’s only one country that has extreme laws (like smoking in Korea).

Age ratings do have an effect on sales and depending on country they can also impact advertisement.
Yea I started playing Age of Empires 1 when I was 6 despite the game being 12+ (Age ratings exist since the 90s in Germany) but if the game was 16+ or even 18+ I think there is no way my parents would have allowed me to buy that.
Modern children have parents that are also more aware of games and they are more likely to understand Age ratings.

I’d visually prefer something else than disappearing corpses but I see why getting the low Age rating is more important. Making all gore, blood etc. an option is not an option because that will be considered for the Age rating even if it’s not default on.
In Down of War I love that the corpses stay forever, if gives you a feeling of accomplishment securing an area that used to be a battlefield.
Dawn of War is not Age of Empires though.

Some more conservative option would be to let graves appear a few minutes after a unit dies. Might look strange if you right in the same spot twice and than you fight on a grave yard.

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ESRB has been known to exaggerate on their ratings. For example, Halo is rated M. For anyone who has played Halo, they will know how ridiculous that is, especially compared to other “M” games.

Currently, the rider doesn’t die from the enemy, the horse does, and the rider is crushed under the horse. lol

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How about having the villagers to pick up and carry the corpses of their dead in the battlefield as well as any other scattered body parts around, heads, hands, legs etc and bury them themselves while mourning?

Then the surface of that place will be slightly bumped to remind you that people’s corpses were buried there. At a second time, worms, grubs and other parasites can start making their appearance to accurately reflect the bodies’ decomposition over time. :smiley:

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These rating boards, ESRB, PEGI etc, are also both corrupt and incompetent. For example FIFA doesn’t have 18+ rating even though it has obvious gambling casino mechanics. The board members of these institutions are actually higher ups from the likes of EA, Activision, Take-Two. Is that normal? Nope. They have been exposed after the launch of an NBA video game recently. And they don’t even play the games and test them for these elements, I can’t remember what was the proccess, but that was very shady as well.

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I play a game called World of tanks Blitz and it also has gambling mechanics(rated T)

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