I have mentioned this issue before and it seems the game does have an inbuilt (!) response delay.
This I find very irritating, as it makes the game and especially micro feel very indirect, clunky and non-controllable.
2 years ago Aussie Drongo had already shown a comparison of aoe3de vs aoe4 in terms of responsiveness.
It is something I noticed RIGHT AWAY when trying the betas and I found it very frustrating.
Will we still get a fix after all these years?
It is one of the remaining technical issues of aoe4 which keep me off playing it.
Then the engine (Relicâs engine) has to be worked on.
Aoe3(de) had INSTANT response.
Canât see any argument that justifies a game 16 years younger, having crazy long response delay.
The gameplay is not preferable, but it is not a technical error. If you were to click multiple times within the 125ms window (the base tickrate that the game processes commands is 8 times per second, or once every 125ms) then it would only hold the final command. It feels clunky in practice, but is designed purposefully this way. My opinion is that I would prefer a lower tickrate, but am satisfied with how they handled it.
As to addressing it, that may be harder to accomplish than it appears. Weâre talking about a base level process that handles how all information in the game is processed. This is why the delay appears in a local game in AussieDrongoâs video, it is a client side feature rather than strictly server based âlagâ. For reference, other games that Relic has developed on this engine have the same tickrate. In company of heroes or WH40k dawn of war the tickrate is not a detriment, but thatâs because those games are paced slower than the age series.
I do not have experience playing AoE III in multiplayer, Iâve played pre-assembled lan games and singleplayer content almost exclusively in that title. Is there a noticeable lag when players are distant from each other, like EU playing against someone outside of EU for example? If there is, is the lag felt for both players or just the one most distant from the server?
Epic fail then.
For a 1990s game with slow internet and low bandwidth that is acceptable, but not 2021 competitive RTS.
No words.
That makes it even worse
Server-sided would at least (with improvement bandwidth/ping by investing into better hardware/infrastructure) be fixeable.
That is exactly my though.
In coh2 it was not ideal but definitely OK.
For aoe this system is just absolutely non suitable and non-acceptable.
That being said, I played tons of coh2 pvp in the past years.
That our opinions differ on things is already well understood. I am just trying to help clarify why it is what it is. Efforts have been made through previous patches to fix errors that were generated by this, in particular animation cancelling. It was possible early in release to animation cancel torch tossing to get almost 2x attack speed, and elephants were able to use their melee attack far more often using the same bug.
I just wanted to clarify⊠you make it seem easy to fix or that it is an error made as a result of incompetency. The situation requires a more complete understanding if we want to go in-depth on why it is happening, and more importantly, how it can be addressed.
Yes, decades have passed since other games released with a lower input delay, but the reasons for things being the way they are is more complicated than time passing. Please also keep in mind that while we may disagree on the reasons for things being the way they are, we at least agree that it is something that could be improved.
Differences in engine architecture can change everything when it comes to input delay or patching, but that difficulty is not impossible to overcome (as the animation canceling patch shows).
And that is where our oponion differs honestly.
I am going way deeper into the problem than you.
You are like âhmm⊠we have this shit game now, why not make the best out of it and try and like itâ even though we paid a lot of money for it and waited for 16 years for it, being promised a triple aaa competitive rts"
Whereas I am saying, Microsoft was greedy, Relic was greedy.
They made a game and saved money left right and center, just to quickly produce a trash game and throw it on the market.
Instead of carefully choosing a good engine or even creating a new one, as it was done for aoe3 in 2005.
Civ designs were made in a haste, you can clearly see that.
The different civs are incompatible balancing-wise and things like Malians not having heavy melee infantry while there are civs like hre which have heavy melee inf which does extra dmg to heavy units and the an infantry unit which does massive aoe dmg and malians not having an answer for that, is just absolute nonsense.
Again, this game was meant to fail longterm and was never planned as a triple AAA rts and a worthy aoe title after aoe1/2/3.
Never.
Itâs all about cashing in quick money and then letting the game die.
You justify and defend what the game is like and be like âwe donât have to critizice, we should just eat the food the publishers feed us, pay for it and be happy. just stomach has to be filled, with ANY foodâ.
whereas I criticize their marketing strategy.
They promised a triple aaa rts and delivered an alpha at release.
Now we got a beta-version at least.
The choices being done (engine, civ design, massively missing qol, insane amount of bugs) are just showing that Microsoft was hyper greedy with this game and still is.
Minimal investment at absolute maximum profit.
And THAT is what im criticizing, but people like you donât seem to mind it at all and are very happy with this very american selfish market strategy.
I just canât understand how someone can say âthanksâ for being fed feces and even paying for it.
Sorry for my choice of words.
This topic gets my very angry and English is my 2nd language.
All Iâm saying is, Microsoft never had the intention to deliver a triple AAA rts, all they wanted is some quick profit and this SHOWS!
Their marketing is just straight lies.
Indie studios are devliering games which are letting aoe4 look like a 1man project and 1st attempt of someone ever making a game.
And it makes me absolutely furious how people defend this practice.
If Microsoft doesnât receive a shitstorm for this, we will never again see a good aoe.
Using an engine for this game, which is absolutely NOT suitable for aoe, being a 100% aware of this way in advance, just to save time and money and force a quick release of the game and grab the pre-order cash, is just disgusting and one of many things that show what a scam this game is.
Ok, sorry for the inaccuracy.
So, an engine which had been specifically developed for the needs of an age of title, by the same team that made aoe1, 2 and 3.
Can we agree on that?
Not an ancient engine of an external team, that was used for an entirely different game, where usually a splitsecond in micro doesnât make much of difference and where you got a few squads instead of hundreds of manually microed units each player.
Right?
The trade-off is units teleporting across the map when youâre playing with people with worse connections (because if everyone is a shared peer thereâs no centralised authority).
The input layer is a buffer before commands become final (e.g. communicated to the server). It allows for split-second cancelling of moves, which actually in a way enhances micro for those capable of taking advantage of it.
(which is separate to bugs around animation cancelling, though thereâs an argument about animation cancelling in general and its impact on balance)
Why? Whatâs the difference? Do you think CoH doesnt require such split-second reactions?
You seem to think so, which is funny. The original Dawn of War didnât have this latency in the same way (terrible pathfinding though), because it was pre-Essence. People did all that classic RTS micro. There was a great video I once watched of a top 1v1 ESL game (years ago) in vDoW where one player was able to rotate his Ork squads via animation timings to maximise hits and avoid the common issue of getting stuck in melee.
Then CoH came out. Folks adapted. Players adapt to what the game is capable of doing. They didnât whine about how the devs were greedy and how exact micro timings didnât make much of a difference. If they liked the game, they got good at it.
All that tells me, no offense, is that youâre not that good at CoH. And neither am I I always preferred Dawn of War (and DoW II), but I can at least recognise when things exist for a reason, instead of folding literally everything ever into the same âdevs badâ post you make.
Itâs a common misconception that Relicâs RTS game donât require micro just because they have squads. Just like itâs a common misconception to blame the input layer in Essence as being a relic (heh) of an ancient engine. It serves a purpose (and is a lot lower than it was in past Relic games).
I mean⊠youâd have to use an engine from another studio since the original team that made Genie and Bang are dissolved. Worldâs Edge is doing a great job using the same engines that were used to make the classic AOEs. If you want to have a new game youâre going to need another studio, and that means using their proprietary engine. (I understand you are asking for a game engine to have been developed specifically for this project⊠but keep in mind that undertaking can range from 100s of millions to billions (when competing with unreal or unity))
The game was already built on the Essence Engine. We have to live with that at this point. So with that in mind, we have to live with some of the things that come with it. You can remove the input layer, but as GorbMort already pointed out, that exists to keep units from teleporting across the screen.
For an example of gameplay with absolutely no input delay, look no further than building placement. Since only the player who is placing buildings has these rendered they have no reason to have the same delay that is on unit commands.
(If you look carefully the building blueprint comes down just before the villagers turn to build it.)
There are technical restraints that explain why this cannot be addressed so easily. It is actually possible to reduce the tick rate of the game⊠but it doesnât address why it is the way it is.
I said I am satisfied with how they handled it, because from my perspective they are keeping the gameplay fairly crisp considering the task at hand. I would actually love a technical breakdown that expresses how their solution could be improved.
When having a discussion on the age of the engine it is more sensible to look at the version. In this case it is Essence Engine 5.0.
For the sake of argumentâŠ
Imagine your computerâs operating system as a game engine, and letâs assume you are using Windows 11. If you were to make the same kind of argument about the age of Windows 11, we would then say that it is an operating system from 1993 (the release year of the 32bit Windows NT operating system, the thing that Microsoft has been updating to this day). It does very little to define what has been done to the codebase since its inception!
It feels like a red-herring when we get into the age of the engine because of that⊠it has very little to do with the process of game development.
In this vein, did you know that the original Essence Engine was one of the first RTS engines to include detailed faces that were articulated through animation? You wonât find much of that in AoE IV⊠Theyâve been changing Essence through each iteration, and now it is hardly the same as it was when it first came out.
Much in the same way that theyâve used Bang to develop remasters, you donât just throw away a game engine because time has passed. They are perfectly serviceable, even 20 years after their debut!
I wish I still had my notes from over a decade ago. I attended a pre-release event for the last DoW II expansion, Retribution, and they really went hard on some of the technical Essence details. This included the input delay (which was infamous in DoW II) and how they were reducing it. Iâm pretty sure it involved network optimisation (less data packets sent meant less need for as large a buffer), but I canât remember. Take my half-memory with a pinch of salt
And like you rightfully said - changes keep on being made. Engines donât tend to stay still.
ExactlyâŠ
And that is what matters.
I honestly donât care about staff shortage, downsizing and all these empty arguments.
The game is in its 3rd year after release, soon starting its 4th year.
Basic things like response delay are not fixed, inlcuding multiple years of development before release.
A staff shortage is no excuse for 3 years, maybe half a year or 1 year at max.
By that time the publisher has to hire external forces or replace the original team entirely if itâs not capable of doing its job for WHATEVER reason, including being understaffed or busy with other projects like coh3.
In business, the customer cares about RESULTS, not about excuses.
If nothing is being delivered, the fault is always at the one sellingâŠ
Which is Microsoft.
All games with a network component, whether their client-server, peer-to-peer, or some advanced version or combination thereof, will therefore have some kind of issue with latency. How this manifests in the game will vary based on a number of factors (complexity of game data, network packet size, use of TCP vs UDP, distance between clients or client and server, and so on).
I guarantee that if I played AoE III: DE with someone on the west coast of the US, there would be some kind of issue.
And we would consider this normal. It happens. No way to magically click our fingers and expect to not be half a planet apart. Not even with the best network connection the world has to offer.
Itâs not a bug, and therefore wonât be. It doesnât matter what developers are hired, or what resources MS throws at it. This is what people have been trying to explain to you.
Everything at that level of the gameâs architecture is about trade-offs. Itâs not magic. Itâs programming.
r.e. rightful criticism, I think itâd be better if players understood what the system was achieving (like MedicMaaan was asking). Because they just âfeelâ the delay, and that can feel sluggish or bad (assuming youâre used to instantaneous responses).
Itâs an issue all modern RTS games are going to need to tackle, and not every company is going to be Blizzard (and even then, the Blizzard of the SC2 era is arguably not the Blizzard of 2024). Grey Goo had networking issues, apparently. Northgard as well. There arenât many other pure RTS games with multiplayer that areât remasters (like the Definitive Editions for AoE) or already âoldâ (like SC2).
I always preferred Dawn of War (and DoW II), but I can at least recognise when things exist for a reason, instead of folding literally everything ever into the same âdevs badâ post you make.
