Thanks! I love you aoe3 folks. What a game you have!
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I think that U5 could be the right engine for every future titles in the franchise.
These are screenshots by the upcoming RTS :Tempest Rising", basically a remake of C&C
Now, Imagine AOE with those effects and High textures
Sure, I’d be happy to.
Age IV has had active support for over a year, and has Season 4 coming up. Comparisons to DoW III are at this point considerably inaccurate.
don’t think DOW III got any meaningfull post launch support, at least on what i recall
at the very least aoe4 support is there
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DoW III got a lot considering its reception and playerbase, which less than a year after release was a fraction of what IV is seeing now. They abandoned their original post-release plans to try and address the most notable community concerns, but the changes (which were all asked for by the community) didn’t help.
But yeah, Age IV is going strong with Season 4 coming up, and more committed to this year.
I will give you an example.
SC2 launch, Protos mothership, you can cast a blackhole, feature was so cool I played protos instead of terran (which I use to playe back in sc1)
Then some months later, Korean crazy pro players cried so hard that they ended up removing blackhole and instead replaced by a shitty skill, that is when I will put a stop to pro players when they mess with the core game play, you can balance it not remove it.
Funny thing the guy making this video is a pro, he realized that game would be much much better if devs don’t listen to pros when it comes to game play core 
but he is doing the contray in age IV to the point that water fights looks so muchhhhhh shitty.
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You know the answer, some are here posting every day and others that use boxes instead of trees.
How water looks in Age IV has nothing to do with competitive players.
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It is indirectly attached to pro players, Relic made those changes to please that player base even if they didn’t ask for. Also, remember the so “clarity” argument from devs, the changes, the focus on Esports post launch and the amount of money put on those is a clear indication that their scope was Esports and the game is balanced and designed around it. To reinforce this, lest look at COH launch with no observer mode or replay system ( those will be added later) so they can focus on other areas, Age IV had observer and replay system for launch showing that Microsoft/Relic approach was esports, now if you ask me, every RTS should come with obs and replay from launch. However, Age IV had no team colors at release, so you can clearly see the focus for the competitive audience, I have no doubt about it.
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I was talking about game play wise, before release the naval battles looks ugly (graphically) but it was unique, some civ have unique units, then after pro changes, it feels even worse and extremely simplistic, did naval battles improved? nah, pros are not game designers.
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The naval system is far better now, in my opinion, and I’m not a pro player. Maybe you need a separate thread for that.
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on naval system, while there was some pro specific feedback, its safe to say everyone wanted to see changes to it, because it was quite anti-fun and clearly rushed in as half-baked solution initially, so i don’t think there’s much reason to solely go after pros for this specific instance, the rest tho its not hard to come to that conclusion, but more information on development would be needed to make conclusions final, yes the game very clearly prioritized multiplayer, by a large margin, specifically 1v1 (and we know who typically asks for that the most), but knowing how games are developed now (in a way i don’t like at all), its a simple case of making a wrong part of the game the biggest priority, ignoring the obvious vacuum effect that happens in older RTS games that still live (basically, the more players there are in total across all ways of play, the more will come in contact after a while with the ranked multiplayer, and if you only prioritize multiplayer and ignore other ways of play, then there’s nowhere to bring more players from)
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I honestly don’t know.
I’m an SP gamer in strategy games normally, but does that mean the games should always cater to me? Is SP always meant to be a springboard to MP?
In my opinion that limits SP too much.
I think a game can focus on MP to provide a stable multiplayer playerbase and this can be a viable business model. I think a game can focus on coop and SP content. But combining all of these game modes is far more difficult than we might assume.
I think there can be other entry points into MP that aren’t SP. Or at least aren’t the campaigns. Art of War is a great idea for that in my opinion. I want the campaigns to be weirder, to do more unique things that might not necessarily work in MP.
But again, probably need a whole other thread for that 
my point isn’t so much single or multiplayer as modes, but rather them in context of casual vs hardcore, aoe4 imo is a great example of a game hyper focused on hardcore portion, which is maybe 20% in total of all potential players, this doesn’t mean pro feedback doesn’t matter, but as a developer you must ensure you listen to other groups as well, and as equally as possible
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I get where you’re coming from but I simply don’t agree - but I think we’ve been over this before!
The short version is that mod tools aid casual players - not the tools themselves - but what folks make from them. There are a billion pop cap mods, for example, which is a big driver (for every strategy game I’ve known) in terms of casuals having a mess about.
The campaigns I seem to have a more positive view of than most, but the effort put into them is undeniable. The narration and so on - effort was put in there regardless of how I’ve seen people judge them. This is effort that doesn’t have a “hardcore” lead-in. SP in general may in Age IV lead into MP, but the presentation of the campaigns are unique (vs. any old MP skirmish - SP campaign mission variety being a separate topic).
I get that people seem to think Age IV massively prioritises MP, and hardcore / competitive MP at that, but in my personal experience that’s only a surface-level comparison.
I think it skews in favour of MP, but given the MP heritage of the franchise that’s understandable. I don’t think it’s overwhelmingly one way over the other. I’m also hoping we get more focus on SP content and the modding tools to even it out some more (and the mod browser do-over in Season 4 is a good indicator there).
Yes, plus U5 is easier to use and optimize… PS: If you can’t wait to play Tempest Rising, you have Crosssfire Legion in the meantime…
Aoe 3 DE has some of that…
Yes, the good thing is that they learned from that experience…The only thing I feel is that the changes, although they are continuous, I feel a they are come little slow (I proposed a rework to the Landmarks and it arrives almost 1 year and a half later)…also although I liked the new civs of the anniversary version, it saddens me that they did not come with new campaigns and do not tell me that Relic does not have money to do them, because they have MS behind …
In fact didn’t have it… as soon as DoW 3 came out, they started to develop AoE 4 and CoH 3…
Yes, things like that ruin the games although I guess they did it in a good way…
Yes, it’s quite a theme… For example you have in the English campaign to be able to buy troops with gold (like the mercenaries of AoE 3), build bridges in the Mongol campaign and buy settlements in the Rus campaign as well as bandit camps throughout the 4 campaigns that contain chests with resources (such as the treasures of AoE 3)…Are those mechanics good? Yes…those mechanics would serve in the MP?..maybe yes maybe not who knows?..
Sure, it would have to be 50/50…
Yes, more campaigns and maybe historical battles (like those of AoE 3) would not be bad…
I work for a multi-million dollar company (I reckon a lot of us do haha).
The business unit I work in doesn’t get all those millions of dollars. It’s spread out across the business (and in C-suite wages and bonuses). The same goes for Microsoft.
Relic doesn’t automatically have the money just because MS are involved, and that’s the sad truth. Things have to earn money to get more funding. That’s how all business works.
I am hoping we get more campaigns though!
It did. Many developers work on more than one thing at once.
A post-release support team is nearly-always smaller than the development team, but that’s normal. It doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.
Problem in this instance is that AoE4 was obviously underdeveloped. Think most people would be pretty upset if they send 30 people to set up scaffolding for only 5 people to resume the actual project over multiple years.
And before you say it, of course it is an extreme example. But, it doesn’t make the initial pricetag they charged for this any better. And it doesn’t exactly bode over well with the expectations people have had for past AoE games.
Full price should mean full game. Puppeteering a beloved franchise with corporate intentions is always going to get flack.
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New fifa or cod game comes out theres full support behind it. They dont really support the older games as much.
Microsoft/relic - make aoe4 will just very slowly update the game, put more effert into coh3, aoe2, aoe3 in the last year.
Even redbull was more about aoe2
Aoe4 should of had the most support in the last year but its stuck in no mans land. Relic has there own game and microsoft supports there older games more. Even aoe2 gets a xbox port before the new game that they should be pushing lol
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Think I can speak for the thousands of AoE players when I say I’m glad Word’s Edge is not abandoning the previous games in favor of AoEIV. I have plenty of criticisms of WE but they have done an excellent job so far juggling support for these games without sacrificing one for the other. They realized early on that AoEIV was not going to corral the majority of the existing AoE fanbase into the new game. In fact, 2DE and 3DE players have mostly stuck with their chosen game. AoE2 remains the flagship of the series and AoE3 is the most innovative and unique set in its own era. AoEIV still hasn’t found its place in the AoE universe but with time it will. It feels like its in AoE purgatory quite frankly.
It is clear to me that had AoEIV been released in Early Acess it would have alleviated or at least stifle many people’s issues with the game. Small dev teams are able to gather suggestions for their games without a problem. At this stage, it all comes down to coulda woulda shoulda. AoEIV needed more time in the oven and more input from players. Case closed.
FE is responsible for the DEs while Relic is with AoEIV. FE has been helping out with IV but we do not know the extent. It would be really unfair to the playerbases of the DEs to suffer just because Relic isn’t going at a pace people would like.
That being said…
3DE was completely left out of Redbull and the Anniversary event which supposedly was meant to celebrate the ENTIRETY of the AoE series. While the support and DLC for 3DE have been fantastic the lack of marketing has been a disappointment. Despite the marketing issues, the player numbers have been steadily increasing.
In short, there’s plenty of room for all these games to flourish.
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