Refers to graphic textures. I think it also needs to be polished better, apart from the biome and other issues.
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I mean, I’m never going to say everything’s perfect because it rarely is in any game, but blow any model in an RTS game up to 20 times its size and you’ll see all sorts of mess.
People like to reference CoH - I recommend they do the same there.
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This. Thank you. Even though we are talking mostly about graphics, physics is also a big part of making a game feel modern.
I was also hoping for the great bombard to lay waste on enemy units and instead it seems like its splash damage is going to have no effect other than killing one unit and damaging others (with the same/only animation as units dying from a villager knife, wolf bite, etc.). No soldiers thrown around, no terrain deformation, no nothing (since we are comparing CoH, in that game you can take cover in freshly created artillery craters). We come back again to AoE 4 having zero spectacle, which is one of the main draws of an RTS.
I still find it amazing that in AoE 2 a trebuchet, a ram, a mangonel, etc. have specific destruction animations, they fall apart in a somewhat realistic way, while in AoE 4 siege just “poofs” out of existence. I’m willing to bet the great bombard will also lose molecular cohesion in the same way.
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Yep those bombard when they hit and the unit is going to be killed by that hit then I would expect some physics animations( only for the units that are killed by bombard impact of course)
I’d love to know why they opted to make artillery go boom upon its defeat. It takes me out of the game completely. AOEIV suffers from a lack of immersion and part of that is due to its physics/animations and lack thereof. At least the building destruction looks somewhat good.
Artillery across the board is extremely underwhelming in all aspects.
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I remember there was a very educated buddy who left these very wise words prior to the release: if you cannot make it perfectly realistic, it looks awkward, so it’s better not to do it at all (referring to siege crews).
I think that is actually the philosophy that got strictly followed, most of the time, so units have no special death animation at all,
But wait, what about the immobile horse and chicken?
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The main issues with the graphics are at this point are that the buildings are to small, someone previously had shown a picture from AoE 4 and then from aoe 2, in aoe 4 the camel rider is much taller then the building, in the other age games they are not so even though buildings are not to scale they don’t look so awkward as they do in aoe 4. The other thing is that the weapons all look like they are made of cardboard, actually the units in general do particularly any metal on them. I also don’t know why they didn’t make the colors on the map and your player colors sharper like the other games.
There are actually some pretty detailed death animations in the game, but not for siege units really.
I don’t think they are condition-specific (depending on the weapon etc. like having different animations when killed by swords and arrows) or maybe I did not notice.
Those are my screenshots
AOE4’s graphic have been unfortunately changed due the E-sport because Developers listened a little percent of Pro-players into the Age Council
This Is the final result
These were the original renders and artworks of the Relic’s vision
Before
After
And i was imaging these models when AOE4 have been announced with Relic because i have Always knew that Relic had set the graphic standard in every RTS game.
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You don’t understand the art pipeline. No RTS has models like that. A common practise is to render the model with a high poly count and then simplify the mesh. Pro players didn’t cheat you out of anything.
And when I said “do that for CoH”, I didn’t mean “zoom in”. I meant “increase a model to 20x its size”.
Remember. CoH is designed to be zoomed in to that extent. CoH has a dramatically lower max unit count compared to Age IV. If you scaled any CoH game up to double or triple it’s current unit count, you’d start seeing large performance issues.
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This model probably yes
This not
This was the final model in the original Relic’s vision. And i seen it during a video leaks in 2018 on what Relic was working on (It was a video for Internal use accidentaly leaked, so i knew that Aoe4 would have been set in the medieval Times since 2018). These models were in moviment to test the game and they were very detailed for an early stage of the game.)
https://www.reddit.com/r/aoe4/comments/7ucq5n/leaked_motion_captures/
Also Aoe4 have been designed to be zoomed and It was clear during the First alpha version. But many people said that model graphic were very bad, so this could be a reason why developers blocked this option. the alpha forums were full of criticisms about graphic.
Oh not, they have had a role a for sure. Listening all the interviews to developers when they said that graphic have been changed due the feedbacks (and i’m not refering to the Alpha versions). And reading what developers said into the Art Book.
Readability, exagereted weapons, less polygons and textures, satured colors are elements to make the game more playable for the Multiplayer.
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The comments say it’s of motion capture. That isn’t a final model in any way, shape or form.
People can still say that about the graphics if they want. Doesn’t mean it’s why the zoom was changed, if it was.
When you say “option”, it makes me think of the config file hacks that used to be possible. Is that right?
Are you saying that Age IV shouldn’t have MP? Thinking about MP when designing aesthetics makes sense, no?
I opened that thread. (Giacomo is James in english, so Jimmy). Motion capture were on real horses and knight. I can assure you that i’ve already seen that model during that video leak (but It was not colorated) but yeas, It was a game model, not a render and It had realistic movements.
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I don’t know if It was a specific option but during the first alpha you werenable to zoom in your soldiers very close.
I’m not saying this but it’s not correct for casual players who have different interest on the graphic aspects. The right things, imho, It would have been to leave different Graphic settings for everyone.
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It was not a game model. Unless it was rigged and animated, it’s not a model the game can use (no chicken jokes, but I will laugh regardless).
Sure, but graphics can’t scale infinitely. We’re back to talking about aesthetics, but also technical decisions. A game will render a certain amount of polys per frame. A game will have a certain boundary on its texture caching and the like. These things, generally, have to be locked in early.
The source is Trust Me 
because all I have is my mobile phone right now, but you generally have to have lock these things early for two reasons. One, to limit the upper bounds of detail. To know what to optimise for. The second is minimum specs. You need to be able to render a certain amount of things on the screen at once. If you built ten units and then the eleventh was invisible (or crashed your game, etc) . . . would that be acceptable? Of course not.
You either have to render all 11, or you have to stop the player from building more than 10. This is how CoH works. You can build less units than you can in Age IV.
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I think it depends also by the engine you are using.
Maybe, the Essence Engine have not been originally created to make RTS with thousands of units and Relic have been forced to change It only for Aoe4.
Unity Engine, Unreal and also Bing Engine seem not have these issues and we have to remember what Digital foundry said about Essence Engine in Aoe4.
My concerns are also relating to the next AOE title (because Adam Isgreen said that Aoe4 was the start of a new series, the base for the next installments). It would be very sad to see a new AOE with the graphic of the old generation RTS.
So, my asking about Graphic DLC would be also preordinated to see what Relic could do with Essence Engine whitout a totally change of the artstyle. Seeing a future title with these textures Would be unacceptable to me (and i think for many other people Who are more interested for immersion and not E-sport).
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We don’t know for certain if Relic is going to develop AoEV.
maybe it’s an unpopular opinion, but I think the graphics are not bad 
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Yep, I started thinking that they have limitations with the engine, today I watched some games fron drongo and noticed that when many units snd buildings are in screen, I can see FPS dropping, I think they reduced the graphics due to engine limitations… That is the problem of using a very old engine poorly optimized…