Hello! I’m an AOE 2 medium level player with 8 years of experience. Firstly, thanks for the new AOE 4! This is really exelent game with new mechanics and new features, it has a good potential to become a new cybersport discipline.
But there are some moments that weren’t realized, and some of them are really critical. This is based on my experience and on pro-players opinion especially on my friend’s SalzZ_Vinchester (world top 10, and first AOE 4 tournament winner) opinion. Here it is:
-The greatest problem of the game is in hotkeys. This is really step back for the all series. On cybersport pro scene players need to be 100% effective and as fast as possible. We need to have every building hotkey at hand and change it as we want, without any “hotkey grid” like we have now. The best exemple is AOE 2 hotkeys, just port it please.
-First and the main balance problem is France water bonus - they have the Third Age war ship in the Second Age, so there is no any posibility to play with non-France civ against France. It has to be fixed.
-The second balance problem is pikes bonus vs cavalry, it is too small in first Ages, we have the same bonus as in AOE 2 but in AOE 4 heavy cavalry have 240 hp not 120.
-In-game stats. We really need it. The game without rating system - can’t be cybersport discipline.
-People can watch only 10 last saved demo. So, how should we watch the old demo or someone game? We need the access to all demo on the PC.
-The units don’t go to gather point if I garrison them and then ungarrison unlike AOE 2. They just stand behind the building. It’s uncomfortable and doesn’t make sense.
-There is no posibility to unjoin 1 unit from group when I press ctrl and click on units icon, unlike AOE 2. It is VERY necessary, for not clicking at every unit to set a task. With that posibillity I just can take a group of vills, click at stone, than unjoin 1 vill, click at wood, unjoin 2 vills and send other vills on food without pixel hunting, screen jumping and million clicks.
-There is no posibility to trade/send 500 resources at once with pressed shift. This mehanics also is the part of AOE 2. When you need to trade 20k of wood, you just can’t sit and click 200 times - your enemies wouldn’t wait you.
-There is exchange rate of resources in the market. In AOE 2 and AOE 3 it was displayed right on the resource button, and you just saw the rate in the moment and sell it, but now you should to place cursor on button and to read the small numbers. It’s almost impossible in fast tournament game. Better to place them right on buttons like it was always.
-Markers. There are 4 problems with markers:
1 . When you set a route for unit with pressed shift, you don’t see any flags like in AOE 2 and you don’t know where you sent your unit after 10 clicks.
2 . When you sent your unit in fog of war there is no any markers AT ALL. Pro-players make it very fast and without markers they don’t know if their order works.
3 . The hitboxes work very strange, I just can’t select the dead sheep or deer to check the food remains, and when I try to click on sheep I just don’t see the markers around unit or sheep, it is indistinguishable.
4 . The same with enemy units. When I click my units to attack the enemy. I just don’t see, what enemy unit I chose, the unit is blinking too faintly. There is also some circle around unit, but it is totally useless, because the circle doesn’t stay on moving unit, it stays on the groung behind unit, and also the circle animation confuse.
-There are some critical bugs. For exemple villager can’t build the last tile of wall - if I ordered the wall, the vills will build it from the start, but if I sent them to build any other tile, they just return to curent under construction tile. If I would click non-stop on needed tile, vill just stop and is doing nothing, then he return to curent tile. This bug can even loose the game for real.
-Also bug I saw today. I could’t attack the enemy units through my units. My archers was staying on the wall, and the enemy rams was under the wall, when I placed cursor on the rams through the archers models, I didn’t see the sword and couldn’t attack the rams. Potentially dangerous situation in multiplayer.
-Also I saw some problems with passfind a few times and the same problem I saw on the tournament yesterday. The player is fighting with group of enemy units, then he wants to fall back, he clicks back, but unit totally lost controll and went around the enemy units (and died). He even don’t react to orders at moment. Some kind of passfind issue or idk.
-If my units built a ram and then I want to build a new one, I can’t just select all group of units with a frame and make an order, becouse I also selecta ram and my infantry won’t be able to make ram becouse of it. The game just can’t ignore I selected the ram with the infantry. This is pixel hunting as well, I need to double click my infuntry without rams, to order ram, it doesn’t make sense, and it makes the players to play slower.
I hope I my post was more or less correct. English is not my native language. So I hope the game will be complete. We don’t need one more dead RTS like WC3 Reforged with 0.7 Metacritic rating. Your game is already much better, but for sure you can take the experience of legendary games like AOE 2, SC 2, WC 3 and improve your game. Thanks for your work!