relic contract with using this and propiety of managing this game which in the interview clarified that one
price reduction is always good but not in this case when the only notable player number rise happens with that event and not an usual update which is the one that makes you judge how good on holding players is the game.
and you denying the facts. it’s your problem on that one
Simply because Relic has own engine. No other reasons here.
I mean, there will have been a reason why they went with Relic in the first place.
This is why I keep saying you’re talking about things you don’t know about. To be fair, we all are, these are internal decisions that’ll never see the light of day.
But the fact is: to have even thought about an external studio in the first place means: at the time, Bang was not a viable choice. Maybe it is now. Maybe it still isn’t.
The player count has risen a bunch of times, and it’s sank a bunch of times.
It’s funny how these things are only ever bad when AoE IV does it, and not for example when III: DE does it.
I think III: DE going partially-F2P was a great move. I don’t see anyone criticising it for being “inorganic”. I see people like you using it to dunk on IV. Go figure 
So you’re going to accuse me of something and then not explain it haha. Alright.
I don’t think I did make it worse. I just stated things how they are. Also, it’s interesting how you only picked this very quote from my post.
engine wise, bang wouldn’t be used for new aoe, reason being not its unworkable, but rather it was already rewritten for multithreading AND console support, i’m talking about phoenix, basically rewritten version of bang with extremely similar capability but more efficient cpu utilization, phoenix is what powered halo wars 1 and 2, so recent enough tech that only needs small scale update to be fully utilizing DX12 and the like
All I know is that the Relics essence engine doesn’t feel right. Just a little bit clunky and awkward unit movement, nothing terrible just a little off. Reminds me of Empires Dawn off the Modern World. I’m thinking it is because it’s COH engine that is designed for group unit movement.
been told the engine’s input delay was there since COH1, it wasn’t there in DOW1, and it stayed there since, who knows really what exactly is causing it
The vDoW engine wasn’t Essence, is why. There’s definitely a bunch of stuff in it that serves as the foundation, but (for example) melee combat had to be brought back in from scratch for DoW II, despite being in vDoW.
The thing about input lag is its unavoidable. Every game has it (functionally impossible to have an input system in something like a video game without it), but how it comes across to the player varies for a bunch of reasons. Classic AoE games will have it, but (again, for example) their simulation layer will be far less detailed.
The “win” of a feature in a game isn’t it actually doing the thing. It’s making the player feel like the thing is happening. Solutions to input lag mostly revolve offsetting the effect to make it feel like it isn’t happening (but it is).
Because input lag isn’t just the delay between keypress and sim. It’s the delay between keypress, sim and corresponding server-side validation (of the clientside action performed).
I could write even more of an essay on this, but basically the short version is “it exists, how much time can you spend on the problem”. And I will say that Essence has come far from where it started in that regard.
this is why i’m looking at stormgate’s snowplay system with great interest
Stormgate Technology & Art Reveal - December 2022 - YouTube
here, feel free to check
i’ll pray this is made into an Unreal engine plugin eventually
ill be 2 days offline from life when stormgate got released
There isn’t any point in trying to have a normal conversation with him, as he’s always 100% negative about AoEIV and there is never anything good to be said about AoEIV.
On top of that, I’ve yet to see any real constructive feedback on what could be improved, all I’ve seen is pointless whining & making things up to try and justify his arguments towards the hate on this game. Yet he is active 24/7 on these forums… Oh the irony!
dw, gorb knows this since day 1
Has there been any news this week about aoe4 getting new civs or even appearing at gamescom? Or is it truly appearing that aoe4’s development has been quietly canceled?
What happened with the release numbers ? Why age cannot get age2 numbers ? Let me guest, because it is an inferior age game lol
What happen to release numbers of aoe2 aswell. Its had 20 years of updates. Has sold probably 5times more then aoe4. Has much more content and civs.
But has only 8000 average players more a day then aoe4.
When aoe4 gets there first paid dlc numbers will be a lot closer. It just doesnt have enough single player content at the moment like other aoe games
Aoe2 just got new dlc and there player numbers didnt even move up. We will see how aoe4 goes
It’s normal for a new and hyped game to have a much higher playerbase. AoE 3 DE was no different here which by your definition as it can’t reach AoE 2’s numbers would be also an inferior game.
Stormgate generally seems to aim hitting that sweet spot between SC2 and AoE games when it comes to pace, micro/macro and offense/defense. Also there might be a few elements from the AoE/EE series like that scout dog. Really looking forward!
@Heaney74 I’m usually not that much into “this game is dead because player base is small, decreasing” etc but usually games playerbases do not grow over time. There’s a small window right before and after release where it can create a hype. After that short window the size of the playerbase is pretty much settled. So I wouldn’t expect the playerbase of AoE4 to grow over the years. Actually it would surprise me if it grew at all. Having said that I don’t really see a problem with games that don’t grow or are slowly declining. If you have fun playing it do so.
Apart from that I wonder if AoE2’s playerbase has even increased with its DE version. If I remember correctly voobly had like 2.5k AoE2 players online in 2012 and I from what I’ve heard voobly didn’t count in people who played campaign or simply a SP skirmish against the AI. And since we know that only a small fraction of a games playerbase does actually play MP I think one can assume that AoE2 did already have ~20k concurrent players at peak times in 2012? Does anyone have insights on this one?
There are none that I can find, but I remembered something last night. They are working on getting AoEIV ready to launch for Xbox and gamescom is a perfect opportunity to announce when it’ll come to Xbox while at the same time announcing new content with new civs that way they promote both versions in one go.
Time will tell but it will be a missed opportunity if they don’t announce something at gamescom.
We didn’t hear anything about that but if we’ll not see new announcements at Gamescom, the most important PC gaming conference in the world, we should start to worry for the future of AOE4.
the aoe online flashbacks becoming dangerously in line with current development, would prefer to be wrong about it