Seriously:The size of the aoe4 house is too weird!

I agree. So far AoE4 has been a series of “You asked, we heard your feedback, sorry we only cared about your esport feedback. P.S. we also added a color picker.”

Promises are made here and there - such as AI improvements etc. But I’m yet to see any big change that makes AoE4 feel like a masterpiece.

The franchise forgets that esports isn’t the reason why AoE as a franchise is so loved through the ages.

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the chance of being a masterpiece has been there only on day 1, long gone is that opportunity

also this statement captures the issue perfectly, think about it, what RTS game, or any other game, with player colors had its players wait for 9 months just to patch color picking in?
also anyone that thinks a game after year of patches is a different game than on launch has as far as i’m concerned officially developed stockholm syndrome

People are still whining about improvements only being made for “eSports”?

Okay. Fine.

Like normally I’d argue against particulars, but you can’t argue against belief that ignores reality like that. You just can’t. People can’t even remember what’s in the patch notes, nevermind the fact we just got two civs for free some months back. It all means nothing. Just blame “eSports”, problem solved.

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here’s the thing with 2 new civs for free, the only reason they’re free is due to game doing so poorly in retaining players since launch, before you say, yes aoe3 has a player drop that was never recovered, but atm and basically since that drop it has exactly 20 to 25% of those still around, and the number is stable, aoe4 meanwhile fell even below aoe3 in that regard, had 2 permanent price reductions and is given big discounts on every sale, within a year of release as well, but it only recovered from 10% of launch to 20%, that 20% is during once a week spikes of in this case 15000, which only happens sparingly usually its more like 11 to 12000, and this is where the esports/competitive ranked 1v1 focus becomes apparent, how is it possible that a brand new game fails to attract bigger % of initial wave back like this, unless its only improving to that specific group of players, campaign players didn’t get anything yet, the editor is still too limited in its capabilities, not well structured (example of well structured editor like this is the Starcraft II editor) and most importantly, it alienates anyone that didn’t already use relic’s past editors with DOW or COH for instance, and no amount of documentation can correct that, you can give someone a bible worth of documentation for software work but i can assure you most of those that then try to code smt will fail to get anything done, thats just how it is

the biggest giveaway however in terms of who this game is for has to be the graphics and building scaling
i showed this game to 4 of my irl buddies, the FIRST question i got was, why are graphics so bad, followed by why are some buildings smaller in height than unit on a horse, and looking into any available information about this game’s development gave pretty clear answers to both: why are graphics so bad looking (sterile, lifeless, devoid of detail and so on)? because esports/competitive 1v1 crowd wanted clarity and lack of distraction on all levels, why are some buildings so tiny? because once again that exact crowd complained in early closed betas that they’re too big at default scaling, same with why units were made larger but that one isn’t bad in nature, but units only became a problem because they’re designed to be tiny, hence why weapons are used for recognition, so scaling them up like this exposes lack of detail in both texture work and models, as they were never supposed to be this big to begin with, they looked fine to my eye on X019 trailer for instance, to cap it off, clarity (as competitive 1v1 bros put it) was also the reason behind saturation being tuned way down, so that only units have it, which most people agree is offputting

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ignoring the core of aoe as whole is also so ignorant to just say “still whining about improvements only being made for “eSports”?” This part ignored is not negotiable and was tried before with other aoes. what is the important part that makes one person being atraccted to the game so they play mp next? pve or sp which right now is nost bland out every aoe. I have to say again that we re in the second year and any content improvement was added bcuz they are still busy on the basics which lead them and the focus on mp since day 1? we can add (supporting @KG19991380 comment) which this month is 8,383.8 player accordding to steamcharts (Age of Empires IV: Anniversary Edition - Steam Charts) which is way lower than the last year and the best month f the year to show the full activity because the month’s holidays. which show thta even after the changes in mp and the free civs with no pve or sp aside it gets dragged down in player numbers.

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Honestly, AoE4, just like the other games, aren’t made just for competitive players but yet many at the developing team allegedly act like it’s made only for competitive players. More improvements are definitely needed which is why Season Four is going to help with that and hopefully, the building scale is addressed in that season.

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Unfortunately, unless you can show the game is 100% made for esports only, with not a single one design or update catering to sp or causal players, you’ll be picked on your wordings down to the tiniest details forever. And in that case, “it’s not absolutely 100% esports” = not a problem = you cannot complain.
Wait and see.

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i’m fully aware
its my intent to draw those to it, not all people in that audience are blind to this yk, you’ll find quite a few that want the game to not cater just to their preference, even if just for the sake of vacuum effect of more people playing naturally resulting in more multiplayer people, even 1 in 5 is still net positive growth

i hate being negative in general, but season 4 won’t cut it, not in what was disclosed at least, yes nomad mode is great, as is a new seasonal biome (which i read as map with all 4 seasons), but once again, everything else is for that specific target crowd, and imo, the building scale will never be walked back, unless the very audience that demanded that change does a complete 180
i absolutely want the game to do better, thats why i post here, but ultimately, given relic’s attitude on this game’s priorities, i do count indirect cases, like the pride in adding shift queue waypoint markers by community manager, personally i’d be embarassed if i didn’t have that figured out day 1, same goes for zoom, fog and so on, it just feels like shouting at a wall, you know the person on the other side of that wall doesn’t give a damn, but if he/she does, its often mishandled, i’ll never forget the embarassement of the winter update when they said post game view is added but it actually didn’t work, took 3 months to fix that
i want to be positive, but when bad things are smt i can pick with a shovel and good ones require an oil drilling operation, then that bad part just ruins it

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Frankly, they can add 10 more civs to the game, but if the problem is at the core of game design then it doesn’t make it better.

There are so many casual friendly game modes that are easy to implement. But they would rather push more civs than have casual friendly modes that people in the other games enjoy. Forest nothing, treaty…

Its been a year and only now they are adding nomad next season. They probably want to make nomad into an esport too. Which is not bad in itself but I’d rather have more things to do with AoE4 BEFORE these things become all about online competition.

And yeah… I played the campaign and felt that it was so trivial to play through that they didn’t really spend time designing it. Only wasted a ton of cash on eye grabbing documentataries. So no, i dont consider that enough casual content.

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Even with a full esports focus (though it is of course not 100% the case) you can still improve on the current visuals without altering gameplay at all:

  1. As has been mentioned, remodel the shrinked buildings. Remove some parts. Reduce the spacing between the sub-structures. Make the structure really occupy fewer grids, instead of directly shrinking the original model.
  2. AOE3 buildings occupy much smaller areas (relative to units) compared to AOE2, but the ratio does not look much worse. This is because the structures are tall. They are a lot of design tricks one could try to make an “unrealistic proportion” still look good.

In this case esport player’s favorite “big units and clear visuals” is not affected at all while it could overall look way better.

And I believe the devs are entirely capable of doing them, as long as they want to.

Just take civ 6 for example. We know it is a true “cartoony” game and the units are ridiculously big compared to buildings, taller than the tallest tower in this image:


But do the buildings with different heights look as if they are built for different-sized people? This is how you make it feel like a “real” city (or at least a well-crafted miniature of a real city) even when it is relatively tiny.

Or think the other way round: would you like it if the units are different sized humans (in a realistic, not fantasy setting)? Not the usual taller or shorter kind of difference, but some humans are simply enlarged or shrinked versions of the others with the same proportions. (Seriously, even for giants and dwarves, their body proportions are also adjusted compared to “normal humans” so that they do not look like enlarged/shrinked human beings which would be really weird).
This is how Empire Earth II handled heroes units and tbh I do not like it (note the mounted unit with a mace):


If it is bad for units then it is equally bad for buildings.

I think I have made my points clear enough already.

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Eh. That’s reading reasons into it. I could disagree, you could disagree with me, and so on. But that wasn’t my point. New civs appeal to most players. Competitive, but definitely non-competitive players too. And civs are one of the biggest pieces of content that the devs can give, right?

See, this is one I just disagree with. And, as I often say, I’m not a competitive player.

Easy is relative. Have you tried? The modding tools don’t let us easily do much on that kind of level right now. You can, but you need to pair it with other kinds of mod data.

So let me ask you. Which is better for the game: adding more specific game modes that specific demographics will enjoy, or improving the tools for community-based longevity?

Full disclosure; I’m in the latter camp. I don’t shut up about mod tool improvements. Just don’t want to hold anything back here.


(Happy New Year for all of us that observe it too!)

To be honest, players colors should have been a day 1 release feature…

Relic is making two games

Age IV: day 1 released with observer mode and replay system, beta was eSports test, in beta and alpha they reduced building size, they also removed hills bonus and archers engaging in melee, this for the sake of eSports, all the feedback they took was from the “pro” beasty, actually the game plays as beasty wanted to play as rebalance the game base on his complains… Will that bring more players ? Of course not, pros are not game designers, they just play for money, they are in age IV because sc2 is not giving them more money.

Coh3: game focused a big single player campaign experience offering a dynamic campaign total war style and a linear campaign both In a single game, coh3 is not releasing with observer mode and replays day 1 these features will be release later, they addressed the graphics and UI issues and delayed the game to further address the criticism, game is not removing any of the previous COH mechanics, instead they are adding new one ( elevation bonus)

You can see here that one game focused on quality and offering a big single player experience while still offering multiplayer that later will be polished while the other game offered a laughable campaign with a a massive focus on eSports and art of war for competitive players…

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Yep. I think all of this deserves to be in its own thread than in the “houses too small” one.

Relic is only a pawn here. The decisions were made by world’s edge. Relic did as they were told.

or ms in that case. They already ruined other ip like aoe.

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on campaigns, having the same level repeat 4 times in a row isn’t good design, actually thought i clicked replay at one point

happy new year to everyone on this thread from me as well

thing is its hard to decide who’s to blame, not saying world’s edge is innocent in any way, but given most of DE development wasn’t them, i don’t think thats any different here, we shouldn’t ignore relic’s role in all this

I think there are too many empty spaces inside the building area, making them look flat visually. You feel like you are building a small village or camp, not an empire.

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And you are?

Relic (and World’s Edge) listen to a wide range of players. Of course, you’re never going to believe this, but I figure I’d say it again for the record.

Very few people are games designers. This includes competitive players, me, you, and most forum goers. So why criticise pro players for demanding changes to a game? At least they (or the one we’re talking about) like it.

The building sizes have been debated for years. There’s been a lot of discussion. But this habit of blaming competitive players just reads like you not caring for other people’s opinions. We can disagree without whining about people not being games designers.

Like, it’s just silly. People can talk about “echo chambers” or the mythical people who have “left the game” as much as they want, but the reality is you want your own echo chamber. You want a game designed for you. And you’re just not going to get that.

And the funny thing is you’re not going to get that with CoH 3 either.

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