This is honestly getting us nowhere. We might as well agree to disagree, writing giant posts to back up your opinions isn’t going anywhere. The proportions are weird, that is true but for those who don’t mind, that is fine enjoy the game.
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speaking of original artists vision, units being bigger than what was intended by factor of 2 made him look bad, reason? he and the team designed them to work at tiny size, so simpler textures, weapon based recognition, player color being 99% of the texture and so on, it looks bad now because the units were never suppossed to be this big to begin with, this is art problem that came to be due to last minute rescaling, which is why many ask for more detail on units now, because it would frankly improve their situation substantially
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So just a few months passed and you already forgot the long posts like “players will find themselves not enjoying the game anymore even if they are even allowed to zoom out more”.
Fun fact: this was the main topic under discussion here before you jumped in with your classic “no because there is a reason”.
How do you think ANY game with initially different building sizes than AOE4 designed their models?
AOE2 castles occupy far more grids compared to houses. AOE3 (forts) less so. But they are all consistent compared to other buildings in the respective game. How do you think it is even possible for those two games to design different sized models from similarly sized real-life objects? Fewer substructures, smaller courtyards, overall more compact designs. A lot of ways.
If anyone can do it from scratch, then you can definitely redesign them for the same purpose. Just ignore the anchoring effect from the existing model. Do a new model that was made for smaller grids from scratch.
Look at the buildings in your own town. Buildings designed to have 2 floors are not simply a 2x enlarged version of a one with 1. Buildings with 10x10 footprint are not simply a 4x enlarged version of one with 5x5. There are buildings that are taller but occupies smaller area. There are buildings that are the other way round. Larger buildings do not need to use larger tiles, larger bricks or larger windows. There are buildings that are both taller and larger. How do you think they are designed?
For example:
(I can foresee you going on picking “no it does not reflect to the case in the game/ it’s not strictly 3x3 or 4x4”. I know that. This is just a very abstract example. I’m not an expert on this. The developers are. Here are some possible, very abstract, solutions, just to demonstrate how this could possibly done, in principle. All of these need a lot of improvements in detail but I think the developers can handle it):
(1) Overall structure design:
If you want to reduce the size of (1), while other buildings are not changed, it would look awkward if you directly shrink it (refer to the next two sections to find out the reason).
You could either reduce the number of sub-structures, or reduce the spacing between them.
(2) Height
With a reference unit next to it, the door would look ridiculously small if you shrink the entire structure both in width and height, especially if a smaller building has larger doors than it.
You can still keep the original height, but make the area smaller, or the model more compact, like I’ve mentioned before.
(3) Width
Here is one sidewall of a building. It was intentionally designed to fit 3x grids, for example. Now I want to make it fit a 2x gird. Instead of shrinking everything like in (2), you can simply reduce the number of windows for example on each side, like in (3).
And if that makes the structure too tight, like I’ve mentioned, you can keep the height.
All of the above require a re-design with new details and assets that fit the new size, not some small adjustments on the existing model.
Here is yet another example, to show why “simply shrinking” looks awkward.
AOE2 bombards are somewhat designed to be small, mobile units. So they chose a (very unlikely in reality) small, compact, single-crew model so that it looks as if it belongs to the same realm as other units:
Now what if they took a model that was originally designed to be larger, with more crews and a carriage, and shrunk it to a smaller grid?
Or think about fantasy settings. Are dwarves and giants simply shrunk/enlarged versions of normal human beings? No. They have different body proportions. Usually dwarves are designed to be “fatter”, with a relatively larger head and thicker limbs. Giants are designed to be more muscular, and usually have relatively longer limbs. This is to make them somewhat “authentic”, to give a feeling of “what they might look like if they appear in the same world as ourselves”. All of these are compared to the body ratio of normal humans.
Now what if someone does this:
All of these need some changes in the design, not simply a change in the size, to make them feel like a natural part of their surroundings.
If this is a problem with units, then it is the same problem with buildings.
Good design:
Bad design:
That castle model is meant to occupy more grids. If you want to make a smaller castle, design a smaller castle, even a fictional one. AOE2 already has an example of how a “smaller castle” should be like, look at the structure on the right:
It is NOT a 50% shrunk version of the left one. The size of gates, windows, arrowslits and tiles are almost consistent between the two buildings.
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Personally I think that some buildings, mainly barracks, archery ranges and other stables, could be bigger, in height at least, so that you make sense of your gates and towers with the diameter of buildings (outpost for example) when training units in them. With other buildings, such as houses or urban centers, monasteries, markets and Keeps, I don’t see much of a problem, mainly because they already have some structure that is tall enough to say that the building is “not small”, but the barracks and the gallery have a “mini-tower” that is a bit out of place.
About the reason for not so “tall” buildings in general, I think they did it to copy the Aoe2 mods, which reduced the size of… almost everything, or even “minimized” the whole game by all changing the terrains to " only one" so that the limitations of 2D do not prevent some units from being left behind or the villagers from not selecting the trees well. The other reason I think is so that in “urban combat” when your buildings are close together and the units are fighting in the streets, you can perceive them and not lose sight of them. If there is something that is annoying in Aoe2, it is not being able to build palisades well due to not being able to observe the edges of the areas or certain forests, but in Ao4 there is no problem anymore because the palisades are in 3D. Personally, I never use those mods on Aoe2, they ruin the perspective of the game, although they do help, the important thing is that the game feels fun, and some “custom scenarios” have such cute “eye-candy” that is only appreciated if Do you have the base game?
Moving on to Aoe4, taking screenshots, I still think the cities you build still look nice in perspective, the models are beautiful. Yes indeed:
- Personally I think that some buildings, mainly barracks, archery ranges and stables, could be bigger, in height at least, so that their gates and towers have a sense with the diameter of other buildings (outpost for example) when you train units on them.
- With other buildings, such as houses. Urban centers, monasteries, markets and Keeps do not see much of a problem with their current size, mainly because they already have some structure that is tall enough to say that the building “is not small”, but the barracks and the gallery have a “mini- tower” which is a bit out of place, especially if you build an outpost nearby.
The most useful solution would be for there to be an official mod to “put into perspective” some buildings, or at least make the ones I already mentioned taller. I think there are already some fandom MODs, but it’s still in the testing phase, some buildings like the English town center don’t work and highlight a funny magic cube that says “object not located”.
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I appreciate this level of depth in describing why and how proportions matter to the leyman, as many will go on unsure why they dislike the looks of the game. Remember, it has been well over a year since launch and many who left long ago, did so without questioning why. Sometimes, it would be because of things they couldn’t describe nor cared to and so, it is important to highlight basic design principles here.
I do find it sad that this kind of response was only pulled out as a reaction to someone being willfully ignorant rather than a post by itself. It kind makes it less likely for developers to see it as part of the discussion and instead as squabbling between forum users.
But, great presentation on how proportions heavily not only visibility, but readability and eventually gameplay.
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As that was never something I said, it’s not at all relevant. But again, this is a thing you do. You switch from claiming I said something to stuff other people said like they’re the same thing.
I was actually having a productive discussion with a polite forum member before you and others jumped in, actually.
Okay, so that’s a lot of work and likely wasn’t achievable prior to release. It’s still not “devs changed the game to please competitive players”.
I hope the game has the resource to do these kinds of things in the future. I still don’t see with what you’re proposing, but we both want this kind of effort invested in the game (I assume).
But this is, again, back to realistic proportions. I thought we weren’t talking about this?
We’re not talking about units like your example of siege, becausec we both agree that’s silly. We’re talking about all buildings vs. all units, with units being scaled to other units and buildings being scaled to other buildings. The problem is, I thought, that units are too big by comparison (which I disagree with personally, hence all the disagreement).
I think AoA is onto something about agreeing to disagree. But that can only happen if my preference is respected as well, instead of people making silly posts like “if you like Age IV you obviously didn’t play another Age game” and whatever else has been thrown about.
Yes they changed it because God said so.
And again I do not care if it is practical or not, or if they have enough resources, or how long it might take. It’s up to the developers to figure out. You do not need to teach me this.
CONSISTENT proportions BETWEEN THE BUILDINGS. Is it that hard to understand?
Look at other pictures in this thread. In AOE4 the barracks have tiny towers while there are much larger towers. They are all relatively smaller compared to units (“unrealistic”) but THEY ARE NOT CONSISTENT.
I get it. Because I post examples using realistic proportion models (because they are easier to find) you keep diverting the topic to “realistic or not”. Very wise move huh.
But I can do the same with not-so-realistic or even cartoon models. And the problem with CONSISTENCY OF PROPORTIONS still holds.
What if a pixar movie puts a building with 2m height door next to one with 0.5m height door in the same human town?
Are they realistic? No.
Are they CONSISTENT? No.
Ironically it is easier to fix for AOE4 because the buildings are designed to have much more open spaces (like the stable). So simply reducing the open spaces and make the main structures bigger is sufficient.
Nevermind. I’ll leave it there. Like always you just jump into a criticism post offering not a single argument but politically correct nonsense, so people get frustrated and AOE4 is protecced from the evil critics again! People will see and judge for themselves who is not contributing to the discussion but vexing everyone who criticizes.
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I’m pretty tired to discuss about that. I Don’t like the Graphic because It seems less detailed than AOE3de and Company of Heroes 3
About the graphic style Adam isgreen said this
This is a good interview and there’s a part relating to the graphic style and why they’ve choosed it. I think they have recognized the critics about it.
" Something I think is really special aesthetically about Age of Empires is that a lot of RTS games have sort of darker palettes that they use, whereas Age of Empires is much brighter and more inviting. I want to talk a little bit about why you think that unique look is so important to the series, and what it’s like nailing down the look of a new expansion or installment?
Adam Isgreen: You know, it’s funny, we were having a conversation with my whole creative team just the other day on this exact topic as we were discussing things for the future, in terms of the optimism that the Age of Empires has always projected. Because it’s true, there’s something, especially the older games, you listen to the music, the pacing of it, there’s a certain cadence to Age that’s not being like, “Hurry up, do this now!” A lot of games, you know, they’ve got pounding soundtracks, and you’re driven to do something and you’re supposed to rush, and especially as genres go longer, the games tend to get faster, right? Everyone wants the gameplay, like “Yeah, I understand this. Give me the new thing. Let me go faster.” And Age was like, “Oh, no, no, no, we have a pace.”
We want people to enjoy the game and be able to explore and have fun, but not feel so hurried. So, you know, when you talk about that, in terms of the style, I think the idea of a bright inviting world is something that’s been mentioned multiple times with Age of Empires. When we were approaching IV, we’re like, “We want to maintain this.” Like I was saying earlier, you know, cinema so portrays a lot of medieval history as drab and colorless, just browns and grays. When we were doing our research, this is why we did specifically a Hands on History about color and pigments. It didn’t look like that, we had color!
There was color everywhere, and there was vibrancy, and some of it was rare. Some of the colors were rare, right? That’s fascinating, that whole thing on purple, purple was this insanely coveted color because you could only get it from this certain snail in this certain area. And so it became like, “We own purple.” I love that, and so as we were looking for the style, one of the things we really wanted to do is have some kind of through line.
I’m a big fan of having consistency throughout the games, and that’s why we came up with that. When we’re talking about, you know, the Hands on Histories and the briefings and the documentary kind of approach. We’re like, well, how are we going to bridge history and real? How can we do this in a way that people will get the connections? That was one of the things where the art director Zach Schläppi at Relic had the idea of this golden ink concept and this idea of the illuminated manuscripts and the writing in gold that they used to do when they’re copying important documents and books and things. And that kind of became that through line that we took through the game.
We’re like, “Okay, we know, we want things bright, but we also want to have this kind of through line.” So you see in the briefings the golden soldiers overlaid over the real world, or in the game where the little people are building up the buildings, because you’re representing the idea of tens to hundreds of years, right? A castle doesn’t spring up in a minute. That was kind of our through line that kind of connects the game and the history and kind of grounds it in a way that you can connect past to the present Because that was the thing that was really important to us was, can we find something to bring people through if they play the whole experience? Where they can be like, “You know what, history is right behind me, it’s not something way in the distance that I have no connection to, it’s literally right here.”
And that was part of why we went with what we went with. I think the other challenge is always in a realtime strategy game, you’re talking about a camera that’s pretty high up right off of the battlefield, and there’s a lot of considerations to the scale of weapons, scale of people, scale of buildings to make everything readable without having to constantly play the zoom in zoom out game, which Ages never been about. We wanted to avoid anything like that. It was a lot of talking, looking at references from the earlier games, talking to people that worked on the earlier games, talking with the community, because there was such an amount of time between Ages III and Ages IV.
There were a lot of expectations of what the game could look like, but the other thing was that we had to recognize that because Ages is a global franchise, people were playing this game all over the world. So we had to make the game run on as much as we could, because we didn’t want to leave anybody behind - there’s still people that are playing on pretty low spec machines, and it was important to us to find some kind of style that could fit that. I think that we did okay, I would say, as we launched the game, and we are still refining. There are some really awesome changes coming up in the pipeline for some of the visuals that I’m very excited about that I can’t talk about just yet, but know that we are definitely always trying to improve our visuals and we’ll continue to do so throughout the life of the product.
I think Developers made strange decisions about graphic in particolar when we seeing on what Aoe4 have could be.
This Is the same quality graphic seen in the recent videos of COH3
We can only Hope for some future Graphic DLC
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its ok, that can often happen when there’s a disagreement
going on some criticism here, ask yourself this, who asked for this change? the answer: competitive 1v1 players, so yes its exactly that, based on council members throwing it out a while back, council you were a part of
was it achievable prior to release, you say no, but imo it was, we saw the scaling all the way back in april after all, well ahead of deadline, it was fixable, and its still not too late to correct it, following this post its smt they can fix by applying smart changes Seriously：The size of the aoe4 house is too weird! - Age of Empires IV / IV - Discussion - Age of Empires Forum, do proportions need to be realistic, no, but imo they should be as @ArrivedLeader22 rightly pointed out consistent, unit needs to fit the door regardless of building, not currently the case in aoe4, but aoe4 already had scaling that was consistent, i’m talking about the X019 trailer, units were fine there, as were buildings, inconsistency in scaling only popped up after the fan preview in april 2021, now yes relic is historically very slow with game development and support, given how rough age 4 was initially despite 5 years of development, but that won’t excuse poor scaling, i wonder sometimes, they’re so damn rigid about zoom and fog, but here they changed seemingly without a second thought, and did so the “lazy” way, scaling existing model down instead of proper adjustment, put it in quotes to emphasise they took the quick and easy path instead of more thought out approach based on what is known, and the known part is where you and other council members need to start spitting beans, silence won’t help bring solutions
on this i’ll say just 1 thing, dm me what RTS you played pre age 4 and i’ll be able to defend your preference, which is unknown to me still, i have no reason not to share what else i played of RTS: aoe2 and 3 extensively, and less of starcraft II and warcraft III og, my goal is being nice to people even if not agreeing necessarily
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Design choice based on what? Members of the so called council ?
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Sorry, this post got super-long.
Developers change things for a ton of reasons. They didn’t just get feedback from competitive players prior to the game’s release. I get it though, you’ve invented a baddie to blame for the decisions you think are bad.
You’ve done the same with me because you (and others) are incapable of respecting the opinion of someone who likes the game. You cannot agree to disagree. I have to be wrong. You have to be right. It’s not preference, it’s fact, etc.
Because here we’re back to - you guessed it - realistic proportions! Within buildings this time. You can say “consistent” as much as you want but your issue is actually the devs de-prioritising aesthetics for gameplay. And I respect that position. I understand why you feel that way. And when it comes to buildings, I even agree. I agree that buildings should be consistent within themselves even when the units are not.
I just don’t agree when it comes to units. I do not want the current unit-to-building scale to be changed. I’m fine with the buildings being reworked to have better internal proportions.
You’ll find some way to complain, I’m sure. Or claim I’m lying, or whatever. Doesn’t matter to me.
But you’ve got to remember there are plenty of people who think the units are too big. They’ve even posted in this thread. What you’re suggesting is not what they want. Maybe it’s a part of what they want, I don’t know. But I was originally talking about units vs. buildings, and it’s taken this long for you to specify buildings vs. buildings. Because you were far too focused on putting me down wherever possible. You didn’t understand what I was objecting to.
Another beautiful example of being unable to discuss something without insulting others.
I’m under NDA so this is hardly a fair line of questioning. Nobody who can answer this is allowed to. You’re guessing.
I’m debating this from the perspective of a player who doesn’t like realistic unit-to-building proportions. Never have. It’s why I also don’t like realistic (infantry) army sizes without a decent degree of abstraction. It’s also why I never got on with Starcraft.
Arrived wasn’t talking about units. At least, I hope he wasn’t otherwise we’ve just gone in another big pointless circle.
This is not how deadlines work in games development. Digital has changed that a bit ### reworked all the building assets is far more work than you seem to think it is.
And when I say there isn’t time, I generally mean “without not doing a bunch of other stuff”. Obviously if Relic had chosen to not do whatever else, maybe this would’ve been doable. The game would be very different and we’d all be posting in different threads, as the game would have different pros and cons as a result.
No need to DM, this is a monster of a post as it is.
Age II. I played Age II (and I, and a fair bit of AoM back in the day. My brother’s copy, hah). Warcraft III (all SP modes and some popular mods). I played a fair amount of CnC (Tiberian Sun and Wars, some RA3). Dawn of War (all of them, excessively). Battle for Middle Earth (both, also excessively). Does SupCom count? I dabbled with SupCom and played a fair bit of Planetary Annihilation. Again, in both games, I treated them as basebuilding sandboxes. Playing against the AI where I could play the eco game and make huge bases.
You see a pattern, right? I am very much not a competitive player. But I am a dedicated player. I put a lot of time into the games I like. I like games with a solid single player or versus AI component, and my favourites do not adhere excessively to realistic aesthetics, and if they do, that’s my last favourite part of the game(s).
Also, I’ve never been able to get into CoH. No slight on the franchise, just my personal preference. I’m not even into Homeworld (shock, horror). I’m not here because I like everything Relic do. I’m here because I like AoE IV.
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When this was first mentioned in this post:
When I first mentioned it:
Look at CIv 6.
Is there anything to do with REALISTIC PROPORTION? No. The units are ridiculously big.
Now, tell me are the smaller buildings in the city a shrunk version of the bigger buildings with smaller windows and doors? NO.
You can say “preference” as many times as you want, but I wonder any designer would intentionally make such decisions. In the case of AOE4 it’s obvious that the models are adjusted in the last minute.
If the developers got the time and resource some time they might improve it. That’s why we keep bringing these issues up before the actual change (do you see anyone complaining about zoom or color selection now?) so that they do not throw them into dustbins. That is the purpose of this forum.
“Agree to disagree” huh. I thought you respect this.
I for myself do prefer relatively smaller units, but not necessarily precisely “REALISTIC PROPORTIONS”. But I do not need to agree with every other person to share the same position.
This part is very important and sums up most of my points:
What I’m showing you here, however, is that even if one makes the compromise, that buildings as small as they are now is a good idea, the model still needs much improvements. And because you fear that would ruin the current gameplay, I wrote entire posts telling you how to make them look better without altering the gameplay. That’s the compromise I make. I’m fine with them just doing this. There are people who are not of course and will keep complaining. That’s all normal.
Here, again, people are free to leave comments about whatever they prefer (you said it). We do not need to think about practicality. The developers will consider the responses and decide. It’s their responsibility.
There are even easier fixes for AOE4 ironically, because the building designs have a lot of open spaces. It was brought up long long ago. Still no response yet.
“Without compromising playability”.
Now what is your take on the topic?
“No I’m okay with it” (why you are here then?)
“No it’s a personal preference” (who does not know that?)
“No it’s difficult to satisfy everyone” (again, who does not know that? And I have wrote long posts proposing how to make them look better without altering the gameplay, and your response is “no you’re talking about realism!”).
First you said you’re here because you “dO nOt CaRe” about building ratios. Then you said you’re here because you feel some proposed changes might ruin the game you enjoy. Then you said you’re here because you feel “dIsReSpected”.
If you just feel some people’s comments on AOE4 is too harsh, why do you not directly respond to those but went on picking on minor points of other criticisms?
You are not the representative of AOE4. Don’t consider yourself as some sort of martyr because of your devotion to AOE4. You are “disrespected” (as you claim) because you are you, one that just comes in and irritates everyone who criticizes. Do not use your beloved AOE4 as your cover.
I wrote even more posts criticizing what I “dislike” about the current state of AOE3. Be it balance, aesthetics, representations, etc. There are people who agree or disagree with me or each other. These are all normal. Not a lot of people would jump in preaching “No what you say is a personal preference. No something happens because there is some reason” to everyone. I’m not disrespecting you. I’m showing you the door because you are not contributing to the discussion.
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Thread closed, due to accumulation of flags, flaming, unfriendly situations and little constructive discussion.
I’m sorry for the inconvenience.
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