Not completely free,
but the trial “version” similar to AoE1 & AoE2 demo would be very helpful for AoE4 - first 2 or 3 missions from norman campaign, 1 skirmish map limited to III. age with England civilisation
Sure, some kind of demo version like what AoE3 is doing seems reasonable. I am all for getting more people into the game.
There either has to be some form of monetization at some point though or incentive to get people to keep buying the full version of the game. Unless of course Microsoft is fine with games just being padding for Gamepass, but I would worry about future development if that was their only justification.
One potential issue though is lowering the barrier of entry for cheaters and smurfs. I see AoE3 is sidestepping that a bit by not including ranked in the free version. That may be necessary. It is already bad that someone can create endless accounts after buying the game once.
That’s a big ask.
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have you compared it to other sucessful rts that matain more than 10 k with no updates involved?
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You got any examples?
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I don’t think it would be a good idea, given the current state of the game, to offer a free trial. You can already see that in AoE 3: DE if you look at how fast the player numbers are falling again. If the game doesn’t offer a lot of content, players will quickly turn away from it. Furthermore, from looking at the free trial for AoE 3, it is safe to assume that a free trial for AoE # ## any other game in the franchise wouldn’t allow players to play ranked. However, ranked is the only thing for which I would understand somebody arguing that it is worth playing for. The PVE component of the game is extremely lacking; modding tools are still not fully released; and the lobby browser exists at its bare minimum. There needs to be a reason to play the game, even if you aren’t interested in ranked.
It seems very little to me, if it were like 3, it would have to be the entire Norman campaign, 8 maps of the game and 3 civs (French, Malians and Rus)…
Yes, that’s true…
This seems too much for me 
Why would You give that much in Trial Veriosion?
In my opinion, the meaning of trial version / demo is to show, what is the game about, not being a charity, to provide game for free.
Or other thing is to do, what Starcraft II did, to became free to play in basic version, this is probably, what You mean.
StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty was released in 2010 and became free to play in 2017 after 3 campaign expansion .
Perhaps it is too early for this with AoE4, lets say after 2 expansions, than would be time to release that kind of free verions with 1 original campaign and 3 civilisations from base game
Yes, they should honestly push towards the whole game being free, the issue would be how they can still make money off the game as paid dlcs for civs would appear as pay to win, but it has worked for aoe2. If they went down that route anyone who paid for the game could get the first couple of dlcs for free as compensation.
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Yes, I agree, yours would be to give it a trial version first and then later, if Stormgate hits very hard, put AoE 4 for free and the civs, that are paid and come with campaigns…
I think, the priority for AoE4 is to add new expansion with new content. That would help the game more than trial verion.
With the trial or demo version, I thinik the priority is introduce the game to the new player, but not give it for free…
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Well at least they already did xd…
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