I praise the devolopers for that, and I am looking forward for new expansion - and I pre-ordered it alredy
In my case - What I critize is wasted opportunity, as was mentioned in another topic, the developers works with gameplay concepts, which is great. What is bad, they wasted opportunity use these gameplay concepts for actual interestig (popular) variant factions.
In new SP campaign, there are the chivalric orders as enemies - The Templars, The Hospitalers and The Teutonic Orded, they could use these new gameplay concepts for these chivalric orders. This is wasted oportunity and it deserves criticism.
Hopefully, the developers will do better choices for variant civs in the future
While it’s true that everyone has the right to complain, I sometimes feel (in my opinion) that some are being unreasonable in their criticism (99.9% of negative reviews without highlighting anything positive almost never), and it’s evident that many of them either don’t play the game or haven’t played it in a long time.
The game may not be what some people want it to be, which could be one of the reasons for the strong frustration.
Personally, I’m frustrated by this constant negativity and doomsday narrative that some are trying to portray about the game, but it is what it is.
I’ve been with AoE4 since the closed beta, and yes, the launch was disappointing, and the slow pace of fixes (still ongoing) and some underwhelming civs are valid concerns. However, in this DLC, there are also new strong civilizations and a promising campaign (plus whatever quality-of-life improvements they add).
The AoE audience is diverse, and they should try to understand it, but I also believe that the audience needs to understand each other for better coexistence.
Critique and feedback are necessary, but the type of criticism that predicts the game’s failure gets tiring.
What gets even more tiring is that no one thinks about individuals like yourself who are defending the game. We are simply sharing our thoughts on their direction of the game, and yet individuals like you and Marc feels the need self insert and endlessly put our opinion down.
How about you people stop replying to us and let the complaints exist? No, we can’t have that because apparently AoE4 needs to be protected otherwise dooooom. Totally reasonable, it is almost as if you could’ve spent the energy to instead talk about what you like in this game (which I don’t see either). But, sure. Keep on only engaging with comments to “defend” the game (more like attack anyone who doesn’t like it). That is totally not toxic.
@GorbMort you quote a section of them supposedly sharing OoTD’s history, yet it is barely a sentences worth of information. It shows that they barely had a reason to choose it. The order itself was formed outside of the HRE, before Sigmund was emperor. He was first king of two nations that were not in the HRE either.
It simply does not fit. They did not use the order to make any mechanics, the order itself exists only at the end of this games timeperiod, and is mostly a redundant and obscure order and it is barely associated with the HRE.
This is no different to ZXL where they slap on something that exists, but doesn’t design the civilization around it. It’s just a name with no ties to gameplay. The fact that you and others are fine with it is nuts, considering that this is the baseline for civilization design in these games.
I enjoy the game for its artistic design, strategic variety, and dynamism (except for some late-game phases), even though I have specific critiques and feedback to offer for further refinement, whether for single-player (SP) or multiplayer (MP).
At times, my enthusiasm and passion lead me to respond to comments with which I disagree or that I believe rush to judgment without having all the information.
So, yes, it’s better that we don’t respond to each other from now on.
Sorry if you misunderstood, I was responding to someone asking why the name was chosen. I wasn’t meaning to talk about how that translates into mechanics and units and so on.
r.e. whether or not the name fits, this comes back to what I said about people having different ideas on how to do history justice. I’m not saying there aren’t other names, or anything like that. I will however provide the developer explanation to anyone who asks where (or what) that explanation is.
I’m all for providing constructive feedback to the developers, however some people take it to the extreme and they talk about the game as if it’s going to die unless their demands are met prior to the release of the expansion. It doesn’t work that way and I believe it’s not a healthy attitude to have for the sake of this game success.
I’m fairly sure that they have taken in all of our concerns in regards to the variant civilizations but at the end of the day they’ll have faith in what they will give us will be for the better and we just simply need to wait and try it our for ourselves. New ideas need experimenting and this is the only way to try and continue to evolve the RTS genre that otherwise is dying in today’s gaming world.
Continue to provide with constructive feedback before and after we have played the expansion, this is truly the only way to continue to improve on this game and to do that we need a more realistic view on this matter and not get blinded by our own emotions.
So if someone doesn’t highlight at least one positive aspect is just a negative troll?
Onestly, I believe that there are just too many things some bigger some smaller that are bad and so it’s hard to see what’s positive…
The DLC is just a mess, the variants have no coherence, some have little to none historical base and are mostly fantasy. The DLC is about the crusaders, and out if 6 civs just 1 and a half are related to them.
And don’t get me started on the order of the dragon… apart from the fact that it’s waste of an opportunity to introduce the teutons, since the release people have complained that the civ is too bland and with too few unique units…
And then they release a civ with the same units but glided… that just prove a complete detachment from the core fan base.
On the contrary. I think the game would be massively more popular with the current direction. It could be even more popular if they add a space marine civ in the next DLC. It’s on its way becoming the next SC2, the biggest esports RTS in Korea, and maybe the best RTS ever made.
It has been proved that this forum is filled with haters or non-players. For example, a poll shows many users here prefer AOE3 which is unnatural for a typical AOE playerbase. Clearly there are people that do not belong to the playerbase lurking here trying to undermine the game.
So someone is on his crusade correcting this and make the forum the next promised land for AOE4 like reddit.
Would it have been a better DLC if they had only introduced the Byzantines, Japanese, and Ayyubids with their campaigns? In other words, would you prefer less content in the DLC?
The Order of the Dragon will be quite popular and beloved for a niche of players, and the fan base is diverse, with a significant portion of AoE2 players who prefer playing symmetric civilizations.
I missed this bit, sorry. This is indicative of the same issue in the OP, in my opinion. Too much rigidity in what people “should” believe and “should” post, otherwise the posters are somehow at fault for not sharing said opinion. But we’ve been over this before and I don’t want to subject that you to much more of that again.
Personally, I consider variant civilisations to be a new concept, and not the same as base civilisations (which is why I’ve been consistent in hoping the developers portray them as separate - which they seem to now be leaning towards). I have different expectations for variants, and consider them less historical (as per the “what if” scenario in the original developer note explaining variants). So long as the campaigns remain as historical as they have been to date, I’m fine with that.
I don’t think I’m being unreasonable, and I don’t think that this therefore means I don’t care about history generally, or historical accuracy in AoE IV. There are plenty of historical things that I think should still be adjusted and improved, completely separate to variant (or base) civ design (for example, weapon models).
I would have preferred a coherent DLC, with byzantines, ayyubids, teutons, venice, normans and a nomadic turk civ.
It wouldn’t have take that long to come up with 6 civs coherent the theme of the DLC, 2 new civs (byzantines and venice) and 4 variants (normans, turks, ayyubids and teutons).
More content is better than no content. However some great content is much better than a lot o medicore content.
Imo, the only time a lot of medicore content can compete with a less but greater quality content is if the content in the former scenario justs keeps coming.
Imagine for a moment the devs could create 2 factions that were the most historically immerse and had an EZZZ approach but at the same time offered high skill level ceiling!!! But they could only make 2 every 5 years and youd get zero additional content? No maps, no campaigns, no mods? Nothing else?
IMO, the multitude of content approach may the business model to keep aoe4 relevant and MAYBE find an idea or 2 that will grow this franchise. Because we’re actually a very small community by comparison and in an unpopular genre. We should be thinking money; “how do we make sure we’re not dropped by Microsoft the way Ensemble Studios got dropped??”
all there is to say is, if all you care about is quantity and are not thinking of quality, it’ll eventually bite you back and then on that day you’ll wonder how could that be, unaware of the past blunder that allowed it to happen
bit rethorical here but it has to be said, i’d prefer a 3 full civ dlc with 2 proper campaigns, all thematically coherent, over the current mess, at the same price
Hear, hear! Though, there is something to be said about all of the complaints I’ve seen from people, they seem to be centered around a fear of change and disdain for having no ability to change the circumstances. I thought this community had a fair shot at reaching common ground… but all of this bitterness between players has just poisoned the conversation. Can’t wait to see the evolving discussion come November 14!
I’d be very surprised if that amount of content came in at the same price. Just doubling up campaigns alone would imo be too costly (guesstimate, etc).