More interviews added!! Check them out above.
Also don’t forget to tune in for Relic’s stream next week- they will be able to address a lot of concerns directly because QA will be live.
False. Rather it’s not a realistic representation of medieval warfare because if it was then this would be as far away from an AoE game as you could possibly imagine.
False. It’s not graphically intensive because, unlike say - Total War or Spellforce 3, maps are not easily rendered static models. In AoE maps are dynamic entities with variables everywhere (every tree has a wood value that it tracks, etc) much like you would see in a survival game like Valheim or The Forest. Except, unlike those slow paced survival games, AoE is an RTS and we expect to be able to jump the screen around without delay, which means AoE can not afford to stream only relevant information like survival games do and instead has to keep the simulation running for everything at all times. This takes immense amounts out of your resource budget and unless they’re willing to compromise by having a tiny pop cap, or small map sizes, or something like that, then they have to compromise by scaling back “super fidelity” gfx.
I’m simplifying, but you get the gist.
Yes, and that box is called the AoE franchise. If they wanted to make a original rts then they wouldn’t be using an existing IP.
Not to worry. They get that from these forums anyway.
False. First of all AoE4 has plenty, plenty, of new mechanics. Second of all there are no relevant modern rts’s so there’s nothing you must add to be accepted by the cool kids.
Yes. Being relevant for all ages and geographical markers has always been a AoE staple so the direction is as it should be. I agree it’s a shame about the blood, particularly a loss for the kids as they love a slight edge ( they are the ones torturing insects, after all ), but it’s a sign of the times, I’m afraid, and we can blame twitter addicted parents for that one.
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I don’t understand exactly your point.
Your GPU only renders what’s in the screen. So the game just doesn’t keep the entire map running all the time, just the interactions between AI, and players, and that was done in the first AoE game with 1999 HW.
And keeping track of variables for every tree etc is NOT a problem. It was done in 1999 too.
With today’s hardware, they’ll only dumb down the game/graphics if they choose to do so, not out of necessity.
Reducing texture quality has almost no impact on CPU which is what simulates the parts of the game that aren’t on your screen.
Not in an rts it doesn’t. A few things might be turned off but generally things need to stay prepared in the pipeline. This is because in an rts you need to be able to flick the camera back and forth between completely different parts of the map without a single lag spike.
Notice that in graphics heavy strategy games, like planet zoo or something, there will either be a lag spike or delayed information as you jump to completely different parts of the map (assuming a complex environment with lots of stuff going on). Usually this is accompanied by camera movements that are somewhat more sluggish than what we expect from rts’s. This is down to how gfx heavy strategy games handles information and rendering to allow for high fidelity gfx across a large map, and it is completely unacceptable in a fast paced rts.
No, you’re right, it isn’t a problem. But it becomes a problem if you combine it with high fidelity 3D gfx and the need for snappy, no delay, camera movement. Wood values on trees are, of course, just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to dynamic maps like what AoE games have - they are not comparable to games with static maps in the slightest.
False. Reducing texture quality has no impact on CPU if your memory can handle all of it anyway, but it has a massive impact on CPU if it means less texture pages needs to be swapped.
Not sure how AoE4 does it but they most likely want to keep all textures in memory at all times, to keep the game playing snappy and smooth with no need for streaming or swaps. If that is the case, and if they have a lot of texture variety between terrain and units on any given map, then high-res textures are completely out of the question or the game would have required 50GB of RAM or something ridiculous like that.
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I sincerely doubt that anyone would be able to play AoE2:DE or AoE3:DE for instance, if everything or almost everything was being rendered all the time. You would see a MASSIVE difference in fps all the time when fighting 4v4 instead of 1v1.
You can really tell the difference in fps when there is a large battle on your screen vs. when there is not.
These “little things that are turned off” are much more important than you are implying.
Also, in an FPS game when you turn around quickly and render what wasn’t on the screen it’s still smooth, so it also still leaves things prepared in the pipeline? How is that different than AoE?
So it’s not false, it’s partially false. You seem to be trying too hard to be “right”, no need to fret man, this is not a competition. Even then, games that are releasing nowaday have very high texture quality that you can still lower if you can’t handle. And those games have vast worlds that render many different objects all the time + SEVERAL npc’s and generally it’s not a problem.
AoE might be a bit more demanding but it’s definitely not an excuse for the graphics that they’ve shown so far.
They’ve said it themselves after all: They want potatoes to be able to run the game.
Either they have included a vast variety of graphic options or they just downgraded graphics that recent hardware would be able to run.
I guess I know which one they’ve chosen.
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It’s not literally being rendered, it’s being prepared in the pipeline taking up active resources, and yes some fps’s do the same for things that are behind you.
Not all fps’s do this though, and they do it to various extents, which is why some fps’s will feel more “sluggish” than others ( and usually have slower gameplay to compensate ). The reason quality twitch fps feel so smooth (Doom Eternal, Unreal Tournament, etc) is that elements all around are kept in the pipeline to an extent they don’t even do in Battlefield.
Of course, Doom Eternal still gets to look pretty good because the player can’t long-distance teleport, so you can still segment the map and it’s textures, and they operate with a limited amount of AI’s at any given time, and the simulation elements beyond player and AI’s are kept to a minimum. That Eternal got more cartoony than 2016 probably still wasn’t an accident though; it is likely the case that when they wanted to increase the AI numbers and overall chaos then this new art-style was a good way to hide some of the concessions that had to make to keep things super smooth.
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I don’t know why everybody is so negative. AOE4 looks good to me and they clearly put a lot of love in this project. Sure, it’s not going to be AOE2 or AOE3, but that’s great too. It has to stand on its own.
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I was going to reply with counter-counter points, but you are missing the point of my post in so many aspects that I lost interest. But I did laugh at this:
So since there is no competition, there is no incentive to take risks and innovate? Have you seen Intel lately?
AOM was as original and as separate from the rest of the AOE franchise as they come and nobody mistook it for something else.
I’ll reserve judgement until the game releases and I see a sufficient number of reviews, but if it’s very similar to the mental picture I have from seeing the latest trailers, I’m definitely out. The biggest competitor to AOEIV is ironically AOEII:DE and I’m glad I have it and can keep playing it indefinitely.
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To the contrary. They are taking tons of risks and are being innovative. That they aren’t being innovative is something you have made up in your head. Having a off the wall nomad civ like the Mongols in a traditional rts, doing walkable walls in a traditional rts ( as opposed to in a more management-like strategy games ala Stronghold), Monks can carry Relics in to battle to act as nuclear conversion bombs^1, etc etc; stuff like this has deep gameplay ramifications for the classic rts gameloop. I don’t know what more you could ask for other than to say that they aren’t being innovative in the particular exact way that you want them to be; but that’s not what being innovative is about.
Also, doing medieval again in the face of the mammoth that is aoe2 is the risky move. The easy choice would have been to distance yourself and capture a separate market. This puts extra pressure on them to be, you guessed it, innovative.
It’s not that there isn’t competition, it’s that AoE is a market leader, they are not obligated to follow and do things that the competition does just to gain favor; they can take the lead and do things their own way.
I love AoM but AoE3 was way more original. Don’t be fooled by the title - it’s not original just because it has a different name. None of the AoE sequels were actually supposed to be named Age of Empires, that was something MS enforced against ES’s plan. That AoM was the only one MS granted a original name for is purely incidental.
^1 biased much, Relic? I’m on to you.
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Relic talks about “cartoonish” graphics, moddable UI layout, modding support, complexities in combat system, and map diversity.
Check out the New Video above! Thanks.
Also added link to their Twitch stream.
Monk relic conversion bombs stink of eSports demands (Starcraft already has Zerg units with similar mechanics) and I don’t love it for an AOE title. Units on walls date back from at least 2004 with the Battle for Middle Earth games. Civs with radically different gameplay is something they already did with AoM (not to mention countless other RTS), so that’s not innovation either.
To further complicate things, I am not asking for innovation just for the sake of it. In fact, my perfect AOE IV game would be AOE III, but do it medieval, get rid of the home cities concept, upgrade graphics and physics to Relic’s standards and add some of the mechanics from the old BfME games, like units on walls, forest ambushes, cavalry that actually charges at fleeing units, manned siege, specific voice acks for every different unit type.
AoM was the first AoE game using a 3D engine, the first not using history as its foundation, the first with completely different civs from one another, the first to add strategy to age advancement (gods), the first to add timed powers and abilities. AOE III went back to a simplistic playstyle in comparison. It only added the home cities concept which wasn’t loved and improved on the graphics and physics, that’s it. I bought AOE III and I recall being disheartened to find out that the building demolition physics were canned.
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Got citations? I think you are dead wrong.
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and @jimmy19846071 I just love you guys. You guys are fortune teller who render judgement without playing the ■■■■ game. I like it.
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This guys opinion are better than some of the guys with negative vibes here.
Negative vives? Ahh yes I remember those back before DOW lll release… Unfortunately they were %100 accurate.
What are you refering to?
And you are the fortune teller that says that the game is just in beta and it will turn out to be fine when it releases?
We’re not fortune telling here. There are many statements from the devs themselves saying they’re going for “panterly” style and prioritizing readability above all else.
And then there is the common knowledge that devs rarely change the graphics/style/animations of the whole game so close to release.
“But the video is MONTHS old!!!”
Another lame excuse. If you are a dev and don’t want your current progress judged by something it’s not then you simply don’t release old footage.
It’s not being negative. It’s telling what it is.
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Yes, it’s weird that they show shots several months old …
here
The difference between fortune telling and analysis, is to make an statistic.
Ok, allow me to repeat just a handful of games where it did not work out.
Actually all of them, except those 3 from Blizzard, made very long ago.
So let’s check games that specifically did focus on E-sports mechanics,
like build expansions and asymmetry in last years
2019 War Party
2019 A Year of Rain
2018 Forged Battalion
2017 Dawn of War 3
2015 Grey Goo
2015 Act of Aggression
2008 CnC Red Alert 3
Was any of those titles successful? Can you even remember buy and play them?
So for over 10 years we did not see a Strategy game, to become the next E-Sport thing.
So why should suddenly by AoE4 something happen, that wasn’t possible for last 10 years?
E-Sports ruins and corrupts the very fabric what makes RTS good.
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2019 War Party - low budget indie
2019 A Year of Rain - low budget indie
2018 Forged Battalion - experimental indie
2017 Dawn of War 3 - tried to add moba elements to gain moba players for increasing playerbase and failed
2015 Grey Goo - successful for an indie game. Great campaign, multiplayer was fun, but AI was stupid
2015 Act of Aggression - that game was a total shame. I had huge hopes. false advertisement
2008 CnC Red Alert 3 - successful and still playable with best naval mechanics that none of other RTS has
The most successful game which is starcraft totally focused on e-sports. But like AoE4 it had skirmish against AI, co-op modes, custom games, mod support. So it’s not wrong to focus on e-sports and all together. They have the budget to make it possible so they are doing the right by adding everything possible for a good RTS.
From devs perspective they want to reach much more players because RTS genre has low player base nowadays. RTS is hard to learn for newcomers and there are many games that are easy to learn like mobas. You can also see Frost Giant studio that tries to solve how to make an RTS easy to learn without dumbing down the game.
I was expecting next gen graphics, it’s been 20 years but if devs vision is right about art direction, I’m happy to play for many years.
Besides graphics, devs are going to add modes to teach the game mechanics and we have campaign too, so hopefully AoE4 can be a successful game.
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