Burgrave is even more useless, cool to know they are reworked.
No its not reworked they will do better with order of dragonâs playstyle
What can I say. I could give criticism and describe the issues. But, the developers hardly listen. So instead I will say this: I am truly disappointed. Bad, lazy, uninspired work.
But even worse, I am appalled by the idea of these civilizations actually existing in the official game mode. I would much rather see them either dissolved and have their mechanics given to their original counterpart, or lock these civilizations to a different game mode so that I wonât be forced to engage with them.
They feel like a cheap custom mod by an intern. They actively lower the value of this DLC in my eyes.
7 Likes
the worst thing is that all this is in the hands of Microsoft, this should be a AAA RTS, but itâs becoming an Indie.
everything when this trailer comes out! everyone expected an immense masterpiece, but we ended up in the pit, millions of people happy for a new chapter, I saw people who had never opened an RTS go and try the beta, but sadly now we are here.
7 Likes
There are so many things wrong with everything to do with AoE4 that it hard to even begin listing it off.
The variants are likely not even made by Relic, so I canât even blame them directly. But, someone gave the greenlight to a group that were clearly not in tune with the franchise, the community or apparently knew what the game was about. I mean, why on godâs green earth do they pick JADE EMPIRE followed up by Who Xiâs What? And OOTD is literally just a random order with zero significance that existed at the end of this gameâs period, name having nothing to do with the civilization at all. And donât get me started on JdA.
So yea, there was an individual that authorized a clearly unqualified group to make this. And beyond that, it wasnât changed during production to something sensible, and was even accepted into the final product. There is no sensibility left in this project between these companies and I have completely given up believing in them.
It has been two years. The minor good things they have added are overwhelmingly overshadowed by every gigantic mistake they have been doing since. If this DLC was AoE4âs last big shot, then it is already over.
14 Likes
Idk about AOE4 being over. The reddit (arguably a better player representation of a more average player) just ran a poll on how do you feel on the variant civs. The results today are 358 satisfied to 40 dissatisfied. People complaining at this point are a vocal but scall minority.
1 Like
AoE isnât over. And Iâm not stating that AoE4 is either. But, this DLC is clearly attempting to put together a large effort to change the course of this gameâs stagnation, and all of these random elements coming together into a DLC named after Sultans kind of shows that. Like they put together multiple projects despite it not fitting.
If they do hope this effort to make a difference then I do think it wonât accomplish that I think it is setting out to do.
2 Likes
I completely understand what youâre saying, but you have to think that those who use Reddit are also a minority, for example I donât use it, I only take a look at it if I happen to, like for example now that you talked about the Poll, those who have lost hope go away and it doesnât follow what happens, 400 votes arenât many given the large amount of players, and moreover many who use Reddit are fans of Beastyqt and others, which clouds their thoughts, I also watched Streamers and YouTubers, but many times one has the illusion of taking their words as holy, and making them divine, when they are people like us, I mean who is here on this Forum, perhaps they are people who are looking for an in-depth argument, and who is on reddit is a person who follows the game but in a shameless way, obviously Iâm generalizing, but I hope you get the point, with this Iâm not saying that our opinion is worth more, for example Iâm happy with the 2 new civilizations but not the rest which only risks polluting everything.
Itâs almost jokingly bad. Even gilded villagers? Could devs not think of a better name? Order of the dragon⊠hmm, if only the variant name had some flashy word we could use⊠Nah, gilded it is.
This variant was basically slapping âgildedâ in front of every unitâs name, reskinning them, modifying a few stats and calling it a day.
Oprah: You get gilded! You get gilded! YOU get gilded! EVERYBODY gets gilded!!!
Why stop at units? Gilded sheep, gilded farms, gilded relics, gilded treesâŠ
Oh, and the hints from Age of Noob about population efficiency almost surely means lower pop cap limits. I guess itâs either a general civ limit (say, 150 units) or that the heavy hitters like knights and MAA will take 2 pop each.
10 Likes
This is what happens when you give permission for designers to stain the franchise. They design something entirely random, and at the very end, they slap on a name on top of it.
I heard many of the developers apparently played at top levels. I wince at the idea of them holding all of this back, because to them, mechanical design is all that matters in RTS games, ignoring what people love about the AoE franchise.
They put the wrong people in charge. That is for sure. Here is hoping AoE5 will have different studios on it.
6 Likes
Then all of a sudden history does not matter to the franchise anymore. Ah gameplay more important. Ah the series always had inaccurate stuff. Ah esports balancing competitive generate more income. Ah most players since 1997 came to and stayed in this franchise because they cared only about the gameplay.
Historical fans betrayed the franchise. Not the other way round. They restricted AOE from being the most popular RTS or the national esports in Korea. They made ES dissolve. They wasted the devsâ precious time in changing the great name of âEmpire of Jadeâ to another great name of âZhu Xiâs Legacyâ. Keep that in mind.
EDIT: itâs laughable that some people used to adamantly defend the choices and names because they believed there were some deep and coherent thoughts behind them.
Now you see: âgilded everythingâ's are such well-thought-out names with hundreds of hours of efforts put into them.
Donât worry. Letâs switch to ânames are not importantâ.
3 Likes
Zhu Xiâs Legacy showed that there was no real attempt at history. The jade tinted landmarks show they were serious about their lack of of interest for it, and the rename shows how utterly out of touched they are. OoTD just cemented all of that as a fact. There is no spirit behind these variants that understands nor cares for history, or AoEâs relation to it. JdA showed that from the very start, but people had to defend it because, I guess, AoE4 is their personality and darling replacement for SC2.
Will be nice when Stormgate or some other rip off comes out. Then maybe we can see a downturn in requests for the developers to ignore history to instead make another SC.
Because right now, it is pretty sad to see people literally cheering on these ahistorical entities. Apparently it is good that they represent nothing historical. How very, very sad to see individuals try to defend them.
4 Likes
The ironic thing is, when the names first came out, âOrder of Dragonâ was the only historical one and better received than the rest.
People considered it good because (1) there is a clear historical reference (2) you have an idea of what it will be about.
People were even hyped about potential Hungarian/Serbian/Bohemian units, or popular figures like Vlad the Impaler (unrealistic, sure, but Jeanne dâArc is already here and we have to accept it).
And it ends up having none of them, and being the lowest-effort one of all.
If you look at the info page, every other civ has introductions about the landmarks for their age-wise gameplay. This one does not. That section just continues to introduce the gilded units as a continuation of the âuniqueâ gilded units in the unique units section.
BTW, press F for the poor ES devs back in 2005 who spent maybe 15 minutes coming up with the name âcoureur-de-boisâ. They lacked the wisdom. They could simply avoid wasting the time and use the brilliant name of âgilded villagerâ.
8 Likes
The variants are just like those camera kits you find on Amazon that give you a tripod, memory cards, batteries, lens filters, bags, straps, etc but everything is junk other than the camera.
This is how the variants feel. Byzantines and Japanese (the camera) seem fine but come on! At least put some effort into the additional content instead of cramming low effort content with the DLC.
If I went for a job interview with a game developer and they asked me to design a new variant civ and I came up with âletâs use an existing civ, same units but with a reskin and just add a generic name in front of absolutely all of them so they sound exoticâ I would have been shown the door right then and there.
4 Likes
Iâm going to play Cities skylines 2
I agree reddit isnât the greatest representative of player opinion, but it is closer than the forums to the average casual aoe4 gamer.
Iâm also not a huge fan of some of the decisions (In particular Zhu Xi, at least the others are actually historical if stretching realism a bit more than regular civs). The naming sense in general I feel is meh (gilded everything, the name of the DLC implying itâs about crusades but all we get is a campaign and half of the civs for it).
Still in general the average gamer wonât care much about stretching the realism a bit farther than normal in multiplayer and people will get over bad names pretty quickly once we are playing.
AOE4 is still by leaps and bounds the most succesful RTS in over a decade.
I will also probably play cities skylines 2, good game xdd.
2 Likes
Because it was the only one in those ~10 years carrying a recognized franchise name and not an obscure one at the bottom of Steam charts. It was definitely not by merits.
For a lot of people, AoE4 was good just for scratching the RTS itch, but a lot of us are definitely (and anxiously) waiting for something better.
2 Likes
Youâre entirely right. I donât go to a restaurant just for an appetizer, yet that is all theyâve served here.
The Ayyubids got extremely lucky even in this case. While I think they are the least worst offender, that is only the case because they are literally named after a faction that is relevant to the DLC. And rememberâthis was not the original case. An actual person thought it was better for them to be âSultanâs Armyâ initially.
Let that sink in. Someone thought that was better. Just who are these people making these decisions? Obviously, this is not shocking because the same individuals were likely the exact same people who refused changing ZXL, OoTD and JdA.
It is so flabbergasting to me. Using the food analogy once more; this DLC presented itself as a pizza place. Yet there was no pizza to be had. How do you make a DLC about Sultans yet these civilizations are what you show us? You had SIX shots, and many of them, as shown by the community, could easily have been related to the DLC. Franks, Kingdom of Jerusalem, Teutonic Order, Kingdom of Bohemia, Southern Song, Great Jin There was no shortage of ideas.
I love the Japanese and Byzantines. But, holy fuck how much of a mess this entire thing is.
10 Likes
I am certain these are filler contents that someone quickly comes up with, or scrapped pre-matured from a larger, longer-term update plan for the future. Same reason why a Japanese civ, a Byzantine civ and a crusade campaign with no new crusader civ are stitched together. Maybe because of sudden changes in the management or urgent need for cash, which demands them to release a relatively expensive DLC ahead of plan. Who knows.
Ironically, Iâd consider the DLC to worth the price more without them.
I have learned the lesson the hard way: donât expect companies to keep up with the quality if they find out cheap efforts still pay off. âWell if they could make some quick money with less efforts this time, they will have more money to make higher quality contents laterâ. No. They will make better use of the fact that they could get away with lower and lower quality. Seems the âcommunityâ is happy letting it pass this time. We canât decide that. But letâs guess whether the next major DLC would be more well-made civs (like 3 or 4 with Byzantines and Japanese quality) or 1 new civ plus 6 âvariantsâ, and then 8 âvariantsâ for the one after the next. Wait and see.
6 Likes