Really? I may have been a kid at that time but I am pretty sure it had great reviews and a good following at the time, no one was complaining that ‘it became 3d’. But you are right it does feel quite aged especially if you play the actual original.
Course 2003 articles, harder to go by now.
I’m not saying that people were complaining, just that those games have aged really poorly.
When threads get removed it’s not because we mods are tasked to ‘censor’ any critic on the game(s) but rather that the thread derailed in some way or was missing relevance in first place, whether it’s off-topic, people attacking each other, exessive use of swearing etc. With Andy, we even have a mod who doesn’t like AoE 4. His favourite Age games are AoE 3 and AoE:O and he sees AoE 4 as a step backwards and openly expresses that opinion. And that’s perfectly fine because you’re free to have one.
And, to be honest with you, your reply reads more like a personal opinion rather than proofable evidence.
Yup. Same case with the first Empire Earth. Great game, probably state of the art graphics for its time but aged poorly.
Analyzing behavioral patterns and seeing players of the game (of which, not all of them even come to official forums like this), all posting high % of just bugs and missing features. It’s statistical evidence. It’s the same as the AI and behavioral analysis of a crowd to improve things such as ‘where is the best place to put food stands at a festival’, just a different context based on high probabilities.
You could say some other things are preference or opinion, but I think personally it was lacking in a lot of places, and so do many others.
An AoE4 should have been like a totally amazing thing in 2022, with at very least, machine learning AI, and some cool things that have happened since then. If it was, I’d still be playing it or putting up with some flaws of it. Instead it was a joke which even lacked basic modding and features that 1999 tools had. Where if lelic didn’t name it Age of Empires 4 and it wasn’t financed/marketed by Microsoft, would be already forgotten by its lackluster gameplay. It has been and always held up by non-RTS players who can’t tell quality difference anyway, and people who really think it’s like “just the next AoE4” and don’t know it’s basically not that. (different devs, no similarities, low impact gameplay, etc.), it’s nothing like the big work clearly put into the titles that made Ensemble Studios famous, Lelic is like a Indie studio compared to them in my eyes.
Yes I get you don’t want people just saying ‘yep it was not a good game for X Y and Z reason’ and then arguing with each other senselessly, with the tricked players who simply play aoe4, and got offended by not knowing some of the facts but the ‘fact’ that that’s really what it is, is the sad part. It ends up as evidence like the facts similar to the above can’t be refuted, and then ends up taken down anyway because they claim it’s offensive. In reality it just fostered the debate, the purpose of a community input/forum, and someone didn’t like such a debate was coming to.
But let me just leave it at that, as this is the wrong place and I notice myself it’s the AoM forums; so that abomination known as Age of Empires 4 is rather served as a forgotten item tossed in the trash bin that at best should not have been there, nor even existing as a thought in my mind really that it happened.
It’s not. You could do the same for AoE 1, 2 and 3 (and probably also AoM: Retold once its out) and come to similar results. While annoying, bugs are one of the most common things ever in the IT world and there’s literal no bug free program even if it’s not as visible as in other places.
With these two paragraphs you show that you’re not trying to come up with ‘statistical evidence’ but rather already have a fixed opinion. It isn’t about evidence but rather about searching for every single thing that potentially backs this up.
As I’ve said: everyone’s free to have an opinion on something but it should never ever be sold as facts.
The discussion about remastered vs remake is always intriguing. It seems like there are strong points for each possibility, especially with the term retold suggesting more than just a graphical update. If they’re using the same engine with significant gameplay and story changes, it could indeed be a mix of all three, appealing to both longtime fans and new players.
Do you think that blending elements of remaster, remake, and reboot could set a new trend for how classic games are re-introduced to the market?
Your post which I never previously read, is a classic example that holding any titles does not correlate to IQ or experience level.
It’s not an opinion, that stealing brandname, then releasing under an entirely new studio (or in this case, devs) is not a greedy attempt to ‘make sales and profit’ over ‘a quality release’.
This has been done in movies and games lately to market things and make sales, even at cost of ruining the reputation of the original brand, to sell an inferior product.
Clearly the title (in this case ‘Age of Empires’) was used to sell something totally unrelated: a game made by a studio that ‘tried making their massively online RTS’ called DoW3 a few years prior, but it flopped.
In essence what AoE4 is, is a game that if not titled that way, would not even have a playerbase, carried entirely by Microsoft marketing, and marketing mainly to little kids, and those who clearly couldn’t even tell the difference in quality between the two. The ‘relationship’ is in title granted, not the quality (ironic).
An example of this is that their ‘AI’ was hardcoded, and lacks the modifications/script support that even 1999s code had, where AoE2(1999) AI could be vastly improved by modders. But AoE4, with tools like Microsoft and Machine Learning available, did nothing special, and made an inferior ‘button spammer AI’, in 2023.
These are facts. Not opinions. Simply look at the statistics and demographics.
Now my ‘opinion’ was that the huge amount of daily % of aoe4 posts being ‘bug reports’ reporting broken, or ‘things that need changes’, is disproportionately high compared to the last games. Well, that’s also a fact. The opinion part is asking ‘does higher amount of reported bugs/requests matter’?
Please note that there is also nothing hateful, abusive, or against rules in this post. Removing it was an example of losing and trying to cover it up.
I wonder if you’d say the same if I agreed with you. I guess not.
I also have my fair share of issues with AoE 4 btw.
It is an opinion as your opinion is “AoE 4 is bad and this list of bug reports is my evidence.”
Furthermore, the brandname wasn’t stolen as AoE itself is a Microsoft IP from Day 1 on. This was part of a deal Microsoft made with Ensemble prior to the release of AoE 1.
They can contract any studio to work on AoE, which is what they are doing now with Relic (AoE 4), Forgotten Empires (1 - 3 DE, Retold and 4) and Tantalus (mainly 3, but also the other DEs).
I deleted your previous two posts for being offtopic as the post you replied to is already a year old and we both weren’t on topic at that point. In addition, I don’t have to tolerate people questioning my IQ or experience, do I?
It has literally nothing to do with cover something up.
I did not much intend any writing as personal. Understood.
I understand, but maybe the context lacking is, Ensemble took a name and ‘made’ that series/brand name. Their success was not guaranteed.
The online services that officially handled online matches were taken down (MSN and ESO). Much of these games survived by third party matchmaking (Gameranger, Voobly, etc.). So at least for the originals, we know the source code/name is owned, but it was just revitalizing something to modernize it, that people still played over 10-20 years later, and make it more accessible. The improvements are mostly accepted, and make it easier for people to buy and run those games which are now ~20 years old.
The main difference: relic is not ensemble and never will be, but poses with a title that tricks buyers to say that it is the same thing; Microsoft does ‘own IP’ rights, but in terms of cars, it’s like a Ferrari, made not by Ferrari.
The other ‘contracts’ can improve something already used, that people wanted anyway. AoE4 was its own thing, pretending to be something it never could be (also, it still never added editor/modding features).
Well that’s fine, I’m glad that you understand that. I think men should talk openly and not be censored. I apologize, nothing personal.
I won’t write more, understanding it’s old, but I never cared/responded before.
The majority of game franchises have games made by different developers.
That is not false marketing or anything like that. Even if the studio is officially the same in some cases almost the complete team gets changed over the decades.
Also AoE4 is in many many aspects a lot more like AoE1/2 then AoE3 is, even though AoE3 was made by the same developer.
And for the car reference, it is very common for car manufacturers to sell cars that were made and designed by different companies.
The newest Renault Twingo and Smart Fortwo is the same car or the Subaru BRZ is the same car as the Toyota GT86.
Those are some points, not entirely true though.
Reviews of Age of Empires 4, still available on Steam, show that buyers were not praising the game mechanics made by new developers, but were saying “wow, Age of Empires was good, I’ll buy the new one”.
That shows that many people believed it was the sequel, by the same group, and bought because of a brand name alone. This has happened in other brands/films too, life goes on, but people dislike the marketing trickery.
In my opinion, if AoE4 had Ensemble Studio quality, or even some simple gimmick like “AI that learns from players”, providing a nice coop vs AI experience, it’d be better; instead the AI is known horrible.
However I already stated all this. Also AoE3 with all its weird things like cards, being ‘ancient’ from 2007, is still more modern/complete than AoE4 factually in many ways. I’ve already stated why.
I’m gonna close this.
Offtopic and old.