People always think no manned siege and frozen chickens/horsers are not that important so now I love your comment more than ever lol
2 Likes
You bet 
Never forget the chickens!™ 
That’s too bad! I enjoy environmental touches here and there that show nice attention to detail. Motionless chickens like plastic lawn flamingos doesn’t seem quite right 
5 Likes
The house chickens are not animated either, they resemble the horses from the original AOE II. And war machines move on their own, either by the influence of spirits, or they are like those wooden sculptures made by an artist, which move on their own like medieval automatons on the beaches… The truth is that I was happy to see medieval civilizations vastly better characterized and better made than in AOE II DE, even with more specs and more perfection than in AOE 3 DE, but some details of AOE IV are disappointing. These automaton siege weapons, “wind sculptures”, with no one to fire and carry the machines (as there are in AOE 3 DE), the absence of sailors on boats (in some AOE 3 DE boats there are visible humans piloting, though unfortunately not at all! This gives a lot more realism), and these static scenery elements, like the frozen chickens in the houses… There’s a lot, a lot, really cool, that I’m really happy to see in AOE IV, but there is a certain setback compared to AOE 3 in some aspects, including the detailing of the units seems smaller to me. There’s no hyper zoom, there’s no way to check what the units look like up close, so I can’t be sure of that, but the units look like they’re made of clay, not real materials, they’re like Clay Fighter from the SNES. Even so, it’s better that they’re Clay-Fighter (which could be another graphical style of the game, perhaps designed to appeal to younger people, who like cute and cartoony things), and that Abbasids have Arab and European-looking infantry. have European infantries, Mongols have Mongolian infantry and Chinese have Chinese infantry, otherwise everyone would produce Western gentlemen, as is that sadness of unspecificity and lack of real change in the AOE II DE.
They are dead but forgot to fall.
1 Like
How could a graphical detail harm the game? Only if you’re going to think about making it heavier. Well, in AOE 3 DE the game got heavier with more details, but it didn’t get worse compared to the original version. It’s really cool to see the best animations of the loaders preparing the cannons and firing, and it’s great to see the African boats full of snipers, paddlers and even a master at the helm. It didn’t make the original game worse, it got better. All that is needed is a stronger machine and in AOE IV this is needed from the start. And yet the graphics don’t look as pretty as the AOE 3 DE, which is a shame.
2 Likes
There’s a whole thread related to siege unit operators, so I think those discussions are best held there.
Really quick, though… I know it’s weird, but I put environmental details and set dressing in a different category than siege operators. Mainly because there’s no potential gameplay impact to environmental details, but there are (potentially) w/ operators. I don’t care to have siege operators, and their lack of presence doesn’t bother me in the slightest, visually or gameplay-wise 
On the other hand, things like motionless chickens cause me to think, “Darn, I wish they moved around.” If they moved around, I’d internally praise the attention to detail. Same with beautiful water, underwater details, waterfalls, decorative gaia (toads, birds, fish, flowers, time of day changes, etc.). Just different categories in my mind
That’s a ridiculous claim to make. I’m pretty sure no one looked at AoE3 and thought it was worse for having more graphical details than AoE2.
4 Likes
Man the T-Posing characters always get me cracking. I laugh every time.
Cyberpunk was a big shame though. After Witcher 3, they really tarnished their reputation with that mess. But as you said, Relic provided a game that’s more than playable. It’s rough around the edges, and there’s no excuse to some missing features, but a playable, fun experience is what they shipped.
Cyberpunk was a historically awful launch.
2 Likes
I kind’ve did, since the gameplay, certain gameplay mechanics, and audio were not that great, imo. Seemed like they suffered because so much time and energy was spent trying to make the game look pretty
True. If there is one thing AOE 3 lacked was historical campaign. Would have loved to fight actual historical battles of that era, but still I enjoyed story of Morgan Black and Elizabeth. Everything else, the setting, gameplay, the audio, Music soundtracks, maps and graphics were great.
The same could be said about the stables with horses that doesn’t have any animations either.
Exactly, the trash campaign and progression system for multiplayer is what doomed it, not the game looking great. And the complete lack of support for a decade unlike AoE2 didn’t help.
1 Like
Sounds like the gameplay went in a different direction from AoE2 and you didn’t like it, not that the graphics were too good.
Nope, not really. Just bad and questionable game, gameplay, and audio decisions and devolutions here and there. And, no, I’m not talking about the glaringly obvious ‘cards’ and ‘shipmements.’
At any rate, you’re not a mind reader and I’m not going to detail out all my reasons in a non-AoE3 thread. So, let’s talk about motionless AoE4 chickens here. Hop over to an AoE3 pros/cons/analyses thread if want to discuss or debate AoE3 in-depth
Your point was that too much effort was put into graphics and other stuff was neglected. My point is that it was not neglected and the gameplay decisions were intentional and executed properly. You just didn’t like the decisions they made.
AoE4 demonstrates that you can neglect both equally since it’s lacking in both graphical detail and good gameplay mechanics.
Again, you’re not a mind reader so you don’t know all my reasons for saying what I did. We have a difference of opinion, and me not clarifying mine doesn’t necessarily make you right, for the record. Have an open mind, is all I ask.
AoE4 motionless chickens is the topic here This is my last reply about AoE3 graphics vs. gameplay/audio in this topic
You’re the one saying AoE3 is bad because you disagree with design elements. I’m not sure why you mentioned it in a thread about how AoE4 was released with unfinished features.
I was mimicking or predicting how people might defend it similar to them defending a lot of other things. And here they come.
This is something that I personally do not see in communities other than RTS.
Many other communities I feel would criticize such lack of details or regard them as a limitation that needs to be improved in the future. If the devs cannot improve them without wrecking the gameplay it’s their problem.
RTS is like: “Dear devs please do not improve (graphical detail etc.) because we all know you cannot handle them well without ruining the gameplay or optimization.”
Because you wrote, or (in retrospect) baited people with…
For the record, I never gave absolutes at the start of this. I said, “Seemed like…” because I wasn’t on the dev team, don’t know their budgets, wasn’t on their design meetings, don’t know if they had to implement half-complete mechanics because of needing to spend time making pretty graphics and siege unit operators, don’t know why the decision was made to make every building have the same generic sound when clicked, don’t know why cards were implemented, build limitations, low pop counts, tiny maps, and many other things. I wrote:
So, please try to move on
What half complete mechanics are you referring to? I’m not aware of any incomplete features. Population cap and map size are due to balance and technical limitations of people’s computers, not because they spent too much effort on graphics. AoE4 has a tiny pop cap for the same reason as AoE3 (but AoE4 ignored the balance part with 1 pop knights).
1 Like