Pre-ordering games is always a bad idea and hurts the industry, except for small indie developers or kickstarter campaigns where small budget companies need extra money for their goal.
Ultimately what matters for an RTS like AoE is not how many people pre-order though, it is how many concurrent players it is able to retain for how long. I think in a few months after launch when things will begin to settle, this number will be smaller than AoE2DE’s, sadly.
Posts like this should just be removed, they provide no value to the community and only serve to start arguments.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with preordering. It’s no different than any other purchase, you should educate yourself before you spend the money and not do it if you aren’t sure you’ll be happy.
Between the AoE2 content and the fact that gaming is pretty much the cheapest form of entertainment you can spend money on (in terms of cost to time being entertained), there’s very little reason not to pre-order AoE4.
If you don’t play AoE2, or don’t like the way the game appears to be going then you should wait until it launches and see if you like it.
If you think that your opinions on the game or preorders in general are in any way factual or applicable to anyone else, you’re incorrect.
Reverse card: your post should be removed, stop attacking me, attack the argument/post not my integrity. By the way I will give you a good ignore feature since you always take conversations very personal…
I’ve had friends who pre-orderd games they already didn’t like just because it was the next in a series they really enjoyed; that’s bad.
That’s not a problem with pre-ordering, that’s a problem with people making purchases poorly.
Saying people should never pre-order is ridiculous and will never happen because there are plenty of us who make sure we know what we’re spending our money on when we do pre-order so we don’t get burned and continue to do it.
Since the determination to pre-order is one that a person has to make based on their preferences posts like this don’t have any value.
There is no objective yes or no answer, its just a bunch of opinions that devolve into arguments, usually at the hands of people who are against pre-ordering, or dislike the game, invalidating people who are okay with it, or like the game.
This thread should be removed, all it does it prompt argument.
Whether or not to pre-order a game is a purely subjective decision so what you expect your poll to provide of value to the community exactly? Particularly when there are already several posts like this?
Also, nice that you quote me out of context to make it look like I’m insulting you.
The full quote is saying that people should educate themselves about a product before they pre-order it, not some generic insult telling you personally to get educated; don’t try to make this look like something it’s not.
People need to take responsibility for how they spend their money and stop acting like other people making different choices is somehow wrong.
Just a little feedback on your last question: Nothing Relevant vs Very Relevant is too black and white. The reality is probably somewhere in the middle but you don’t offer this choice. There should be at least 3-4 options for that answer imo.
It’s a little bit of both imo. Take it from No Man’s Sky. It was so good, and the lead dev kept promising features that weren’t there on release. It felt like a template instead of the game. Years later, it’s one of my favorite games out there.
Devs can lie or bluff until release. Marketing is meant to woo people in. I’m not saying the devs are being renegade or anything, it’s just capitalism.
Yes, but even when you pre-order when you’ve done plenty of research and know what you’re spending on, like you say, it still doesn’t give you anything different than if you purchased the game normally. And on a larger scale you still help the industry cultivate bad practices regardless if there were pre-order bonuses like pay-to-win bonus/additional content, tricks like false advertising or not. So if there is nothing extra to gain (and if there IS extra stuff to gain than you are also promoting unfair practices), besides asking yourself “then why pre-order?”, this kind of pre-order would still do a great deal for other parties. It’s a free loan, you’re essentially giving them money for free, think about it as an interest free-loan that you are handing out. For big companies this is also when shareholders come into play. So in the grand scheme of things, while it might not do anything apparently bad to you if you’re really going to get that good game the way it was advertised and fair, on the long run it would still feed a very hurting mechanism.
The exceptions are when you are pre-ordering from a small studio on a low bugdet, helping them meet their goal, an honest kickstarter campaign etc. Now in the digital age we dont really risk of running out of copies, so we cant really include this reason as well.
I’m not telling you what to do with AoE4 or other game, your money - your principles - your choice, I’m telling you why pre-ordering is considered bad regardless.
AoE2DE and AoE3DE still have a lot of bugs that likely never get fixed because their engines are much older.
AoE4 is already in a better technical state now.
I think they very likely already decided on what they want to do with AoM, they just haven’t announced it to don’t distract people from AoE4.
It was clear that the Stress Test was not there to get feedback for any relevant changes before release.
Not really. They haven’t done much before the beginning of this month.
The forum always only represents a part of the community.
Just because some here make 100 threads about the same topic doesn’t mean it represents the majority. I think most people have a CPU with AVX but we get a thread complaining about the AVX requirement every few days.
The developers have better ways of measuring what fans want.
I assume the surveys at the end of the closed beta had much more influence than all the forum posts.
That’s not true though. By pre-ordering AoE4 I got either free AoE2 content or a discount on AoE4 depending on how you look at it.
That, combined with not only what we’ve seen but personal experience from the beta and it’s very unlikely that I’ll regret this purchase.
It’s only a free loan if people don’t get their money back, which they often do. Otherwise it’s just paying for a product you haven’t seen yet since you are still getting something for your money.
Hey, look at that! Proof that pre-ordering is not inherently bad, it’s a question of how it’s being used.
This, again, feeds back to educating oneself about the products and making sure that the spending your doing is something you are unlikely (but not guaranteed) to be unhappy with.
There’s nothing about backing a kickstarter that ensures I’ll end up with a product I’m happy with just like there’s nothing about pre-ordering a AAA game that means I’m being scammed.
Each product has to be evaluated; any blanket statement about it is simply not true.
I understand, but it’s still not. None of the issues mentioned are problems with pre-ordering themselves, they’re problems with how people interact with pre-orders.
Pre-order is unlikely to go away because it’s not inherently bad so you can’t just blanket say it needs to be removed. As long as people continue to be happy with their purchases there’s no reason to stop offering pre-orders.
Yeah, and I didn’t pre-order No Man’s Sky because there was nothing about it that gave me a reason to.
There was no pre-existing games to use as a baseline as to whether or not the team could actually do what they were claiming.
There were also tons of articles before release about the lack of promised content allowing people to not pre-order or to cancel their pre-orders.
And they can continue to be deceptive after launch. I’ve had far more games that were already out that I was disappointed with (despite good reviews or whatever) because they have mechanics I don’t like.
People making purchases based on marketing is far more of a problem than people pre-ordering games that they’ve had a change to play some of and decided they liked.
Arguably it’s no different than ordering a game after only playing a demo and enjoying that content.
My point is that they were tricking consumers. That’s the flawed system we call Capitalism. Preorders are like donating to a Kickstarter.
I discourage people from preordering games unless they know for sure they want them. I pre-ordered AoE4 and there is still a chance I may regret it. Here’s to hoping.
The reason they are deceptive about preorders is that nobody can see what’s in game. How would they decieve post launch when people can just log on and look?
We’re consumers. It’s their job to make us buy their shite.
Overall I love AoE4, but I still discourage preordering because it gives practically nothing. It’s just an unneeded risk.
This is nothing to do with capitalism and everything to do with people being willing to deceive others for profit; it happens in all societies.
It’s interesting that you call out Kickstarter though, because other people use it as an example of when pre-ordering is okay. /shrug
Because they know people don’t look into stuff.
Do you game on mobile at all? If so, have you seen those ads for games like GardenScapes that show all different kinds of gameplay in the different ads? These games don’t contain that content anywhere in them, but they still get massive numbers of downloads from people who see the ad and are interested by it.
This is where the educating yourself as a consumer comes in. You have to look at things other than just marking materials to make your decisions and if you can’t be sure you won’t be mad about your purchase than you shouldn’t make it.
Yes, and it’s your responsibility as a consumer to manage your purchases. In the US, outright lying in advertising is illegal but someone has to start the lawsuit to deal with it when it happens. It can be a pain but this provides consumers with a way to deal with companies beyond just getting a refund for the product they didn’t like.
It’s certainly possible that I won’t love AoE4; it’s extremely unlikely that I’ll be sorry I purchased it (particularly since it was technically discounted by including AoE2 content that I actually play).
Deception as a whole can happen anywhere at any time. There’s a difference between consumerism and other types of deception. I don’t want to get political and this isn’t my main point, so I won’t discuss this part. For my account not getting banned’s sake.
Haven’t seen it but I’ll take your word for it.
Mobile games are a different story. They are clickbait. Wouldn’t know about the ads, I pay a tax to not have them for a reason.
Your original point was that it’s the buyer’s fault. I’m saying it’s only partly. The companies are the ones doing the persuasion in the first place.
Wouldn’t know, not American.
I really hope it does well. I do. Even if it doesn’t, I’ll sink in the boat it drives. It’ll improve, like all games should.
People make purchases based on advertising all the time, which is why advertising continue to be deceptive despite consumers having more power than ever before to educate themselves before they spend money.
It is the consumers fault because no one is making them spend money. If you decide to spend money on something you can’t actually make use of and then find out it doesn’t work as advertised, it’s your fault you spent the money. They may have lied to you, but they didn’t make you pay before the product was available.
Constantly moving the responsibility for how people spend their money onto other entities isn’t going to make things better. People spending their money responsibly will.
Okay, so the entire point should be ignore?
If your country doesn’t provide you with any protection from companies outright lying about their products, or give you recourse when you are unhappy with your product, that’s a problem with your government, not pre-orders or companies.
The reality is that a game can be out, you can read lots of reviews and then still find the game not fun for your tastes. This has happened to me orders of magnitude more times than a pre-order has backfired on me. Waiting for a game to come out is no guarantee and requires you to get a refund either way.
But they’re still trying to be deceptive, how is it not partly their fault??
The EU is a much different system than America. We’re significantly less capitalist so we have more laws protecting consumers.
There’s no downsides to not preordering AoE4. With all this controversy, people should be skeptical. I may like the game, but still, it’s lacking. The devs hardly communicate, we can’t make an informed decision.
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