I say the same… we all want AoE 4 to be the game we all want it to be and the one we all want to play…
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Oh yeah, panning around kills performance. It did on my previous 2060 and it still does now that I switched to a 6800XT. In water maps it’s weird because it happens the most when you have a mix of water and terrain on screen at the same time. If you’re fully on water or ground, it’s not as bad.
But anyway, I’d love for that opaque water to glitch out one day and show me the real transparency. The shoreline looks good enough, there’s diffraction and the water is still reflective.
All water rendering issues aside, the PUP brought nothing in terms of graphical improvements. We were getting little things like hanging clothes moving in the wind, but the PUP was devoid of anything new, so at that pace the game will not be significantly different from what we have now any time soon and that’s very sad. At some point the game will need a massive overhaul “Definitive Edition” just to make it look 2020’s modern.
AoE 3 blew my mind when the first trailers came out back then and DE mostly added better textures and geometry. In fact some things took a step back like going from a more dynamic building/ship destruction physics to canned animations like in AoE 4. The point is, the game didn’t need much improving as it already looked amazing. AoE 4 will look like potato in just a few years time, it already does in many areas really.
the problem that coh 3 is going to be released soon and we already know how this is going to to end with our experience from aoe 4 beta. the settler game looks promising.
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“First Nations” is not an appropriate term. It ignores the presence of the people who initially populated the Americas, but did not form nations.
Thank you for informing me.
Look at that.
Lighting that isn’t a default top-down gray blueish tone. Production buildings that are up to size. The ability to rotate them at will. More proportionate units. I mean, maybe my eyes deceive me, but even that background Outpost looks bigger.
What was this all traded for? Who asked to change this?
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The ultimate answer is nobody knows. People like to blame one group or another, but ultimately the responsibility rests with the developers.
Personally, as I’ve said elsewhere, I dislike realistic proportions. It makes buildings too large (or units too small). I don’t see the developers ever being able to get this “right”, even if they’re able to make improvements to the current look.
Also, that’s a promotional picture. I’m not sure buildings were ever fully rotatable. It’s not something I remember being in any public pre-release build. There are a lot of reasons that might not have worked out separate to decisions made about proportions. So what you’re seeing is a lot of little changes adding up. Or somebody higher up demanding an unrealistic promo shot.
bcuz is the player who allows that behaviour and actions.
a IN-GAME promotional picture. They are supposed to work and not be tonned down
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Things change during development. This is true of literally every game in existence. Saying they “should” do this or “should” do that isn’t very helpful (or are “supposed to”, etc).
The game now doesn’t look exactly like that. There will be reasons. But the reasons don’t matter if people don’t like what the game now is. What matters is people not liking it not, instead of trying to invent reasons why it was changed, internally, by employees under NDA, however many years ago.
What matters is whether or not people like it now (and what the developers can do to improve things, if they’re able to).
The real question is why did they downgrade from what they originally had planned. Maybe they were trying to make sure that most any computer could run the graphics. Which they did an appalling job at anyway. The game loads slow and requires higher specs to run higher settings then the other age games that have better graphics. There isn’t an excuse for downgrading the product.
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I think Age IV looks better than any other Age game, though there’s argument to preference in the Definitive Editions, which are games developed twice anyway (and Online, which has a completely different style). Age IV has been developed once, so in my mind there’s reason for it not being as polished as something like AoE III: DE might be. You think they did an appalling job, etc. I think given the last non-Definitive non-Online title was released in 2005, “performance” is a bit of a dead-end topic. It’s not a fair comparison.
But that’s irrelevant to the topic, which is the areas the game could be doing better in (graphics-wise).
The answer to your question is that there is no answer.
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It could be they secretly hate the franchise and want it to suffer. In which case, given the average rating of the game, they’ve done an actual appalling job with that. It’s rated well, it has exceeded every “the game will fail” prediction thrown at it. Sure, it’s not SC2, but no Age game is SC2 in terms of numbers, so.
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Maybe there are technical constraints with the engine in adapting it for an Age game, in which case we’re stuck with it and hope the devs keep learning to adapt (which is the case for a ton of games - look up how much trouble the DA: Inquisition team had with the Frostbite engine).
The answer doesn’t matter, because it’s not going to change your mind. Is it? If they had a rock-solid reason for the changes they’ve made . . . wouldn’t you simply expect them to have made better choices? Or to make improvements in the future?
Which is why all we can discuss is improvements to be made in the future. That’s the way I see it, anyway. We could all have the “answer”, and imo we’d all still be arguing over what parts we like vs. what parts we don’t vs. what parts we think need improving.
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My hypothesis is that Relic and MS agreed to make AoE4 on Relic’s existing engine. And as clean as that idea sounded to both parties, they quickly realized the engine did not suit Age of Empires very well, and for the past six years, they have been cramming a square peg into a round hole.
I believe that further to compound the problem, all parties involved were not themselves personally super familiar with the franchise and tended to pull it into new directions that felt right to them but that feels foreign to many of us, particularly those of us without much experience playing the games that those people had previously designed.
The resulting product is on its own a decent game to many players, but for those of us who measure its success against the earlier Age of Empires games, it fails to hold up in countless areas. The engine issues are responsible for much, but certainly not all, of these threshold failings.
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Umm AoE 4 has worse animations than the other game especially 3 de. And most certainly are not 15/16 years ahead of 3 from 2005. The main problem is that the colors are all washed out, the armor and weapons don’t look like metal, it’s very drab, not sunny like the other games. Building are a little to squat, like a knight or camel rider/archer are taller then the stable. It’s not a terrible game it just doesn’t measure up and is a very disappointing product for everyone who has waited years for a new age game
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Yeah, I know people have issues with the destruction physics and so on.
I’m just saying that for me, the visual coherency is great, and the bits that let it down are stuff that break that coherency (like TheAchronic showed with the deep sea plants). You’re not the only person who’s waited years for a new Age game.
So like I said: what would answers get you? If Relic could, transparently, give a rock-solid reason for every single thing that they did . . . would it stop you complaining? I don’t think so. Heck, I don’t think it should. It’s up to Relic to provide the best game possible for anyone who’s interested in playing it.
That said, I do think this will result in a game that not everyone likes. And the problem here is: is that okay? It is for something like Civilisation. Some people still play Civ IV every day. Some people play CiV every day. And of course VI is massively popular itself.
or rushed 1 month before release and the aboslute toyish graphic texture which makes you wonder if they tonned down becuz they failed to bring on time or they know the graphic were imposible to pull or something. in any situation ms management fault
what REALLY matters is if they bring what they promise
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It definitely feels like the Art director got pushed aside somewhere.
There was an initial visualization that made sense for the game. That just disappeared towards its release.
I’ve said it before, and I know people hate to hear it. Opinions from small groups of players likely overrided actual experts on the matter, and we ended up with what we have today as a result.
Not for everything, mind you. Doubt any players would have issues with more variation for lighting for instance (which their engine is entirely capable of doing). Small things like that makes me question whatever happened to the team.
Really screams “unfinished product”. I know that for the past year, they’ve added a million small things since release, like player colours (lmao?). But, how many things were added that actually improve visuals?
Almost nothing. With exception of DLC, it almost seems like the art team got moved before the game was done and never placed back to polish up.
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The AoE community has always been fragmented. The problem is people’s expectations were sky-high after such a long wait for the next AoE and they thought perhaps AoEIV was going to bring everyone together.
The lack of details leads to a lack of immersive experience for me. Everytime I feel motivated to give AoEiV another shot I quickly lose interest. I don’t think there’s much Relic can do graphically to get me to install it but more content is needed. Whether that content will be intriguing enough for me to purchase it is another matter. The free Ottoman/Malian update certainly didn’t.
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yes it’s a lmao and other things like an actual sp content and betetr skirmish mode bcuz they screwed that one recently.
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