The missed potential of a new Age of Empires game

Age of Empires II: DE II - Discussion
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Reading through both of these threads:

I remembered how AoE games were primarily single-player games at the time of their first releases. At this time computers were less powerful, and the market had fewer games available in comparison to today. I think being pure RTS games was therefore not just a choice of design and more a choice of what was possible to do and what people knew at this time. For that reason, I think many people played AoE games not like an RTS game. Many people loved just the graphics or the historical period of these games. They used them as a city builder, economy simulator, tower defender, or even for role-play. What I want to say is that AoE games were at their height of popularity when they were seen as a tool for your own adventures and not just as RTS games in historical settings.

Having now realized this and also remembering how I myself played AoE games around this time, I now see a big difference between current development of AoE games and the old ones. Ensemble Studios was, for me, not focused on making competitive RTS games; rather, they wanted you to immerse yourself in your own world and use their games as tools for that. Making good competitive RTS games was not their primary goal. New AoE games should therefore have this in mind.

Modern AoE2 is now known to be a strong competitive multiplayer RTS game. Sure, many play AoE2 only as a single-player game, but still as an RTS game. I’m sure there are not that many players left who play it as a city builder or anything else. Nowadays there are many games on the market that cater better to the needs of such players. Therefore, many people know AoE2 as this great game from the past, where they just had fun playing it but never played it as an RTS game.

That brings me to the point of this thread. Because people who only remember AoE games and don’t play the current versions don’t expect AoE to be a pure RTS game. They expect it to incorporate proven features of other games like Stronghold, Anno, Total War, and other big single-player games that they played, but not for it to be the next big competitive multiplayer game of the year. That, I think, is and was a big misperception of current competitive AoE2 and StarCraft 2 players. Which brings me to AoE4.

AoE4 was developed to be that next big competitive RTS game, so why did it somewhat fail to be that? As I pointed out, AoE games were never before developed to be that way, and many people never played them that way either. I think many people hoped for a big single-player game with multiplayer features but with the main focus on single player. AoE4 is a multiplayer-first game, and that did clash with expectations. Many bought the game on release only to be surprised that it was so multiplayer-heavy. Map size, unit scaling, flat design, and mobile graphics were some of the biggest complaints, all things that are considered good things for multiplayer games. Then why did it not (fully) succeed as a big competitive RTS game? Simple, because it still copied mechanics and features from the other AoE games, which, as I said, are not primary competitive RTS games. This also clashes and makes it unappealing for people like StarCraft players.

So why this wall of text? Because there are rumors about an AoE5, and I really don’t think Microsoft or Forgotten Empires really know what they’re doing here. The current focus of them fits not what made AoE games great. They are heavily single-player-focused games packed with features and ideas to play to your own imagination. In the current time, this means a merge of the best single-play features of city builders, economy simulators, tower defenders, and some RTS games, and all these features need depth and cannot be only superficial. This would be an expensive project that also requires unparalleled top talent. I don’t see them doing that at the moment, and with AoE4 there is already a modern RTS game in the franchise.

Tell me what you guys think of all this. Also, don’t get me wrong, I do like the Forgotten Empires team and what they’ve done for the current version of AoE2. They are sure some talented people there, but also their focus is only on RTS.

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i think age of empires games (and DLC) are in a crisis of identity. there is no clear idea of what age of empires should be, it feels like a soul-less “let’s make another one” franchise. Primarily focussed on making money instead of making a good product.

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Exactly!
Very Soul-less and has a harmful identity crisis
It does not know what to be just money takes

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I’m curious what you mean by the games being soulless and bad products, what would you prefer to be different going forward?

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I am not so sure. Imho, Age of Empire (1-4/M) was mostly about combat and lesssss about building an empire.

In the sense that economic system is quite simplified, diplomacy is not really into gameplay loop and so on.

I think a medival city builder would be cool, but for most part besides the city builder, Dont we have those as 4X games already?

Would be quite a shock to me (imagine if EU5 becomes RTS!)

Btw AoE mobile somehow (being a money grab game, I know, that game is junk) is more similar to what you perceived - city builder, eco management, a bit of role playing. May not be relevant topic at all.

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the DLC civs don’t understand what makes aoe2 great. A good game has a clear core identity and rules it follows. When new additions break those rules, they do so with purpose. Look at all the combat gimmicks that have been introduced in the DE civs. How many of them serve any purpose? Most of them could have easily been replaced with normal stat changes and bonus damage. That makes those additions superficial and gimmicky, instead of engaging.

Compare and contrast:

A unit like the Huskarl or Cataphract. It’s a unit with unique stat adjustments compared to their generic counterparts (Militia-line and Knight respectively) that actively change how one player uses them and how the other player reacts to them.

In contrast:
a Keshik generates gold when fighting units. Do people use them differently because of this? Do people react to them differently because of this? This is superficial complexity
Shwarma riders. They have a magic shield that blocks arrows. Do people use them differently from a (hypothetical) fast cav unit with high pierce armor? Do people counter them differently?

What’s the point of adding thesse fundamental changes to the combat system, if it plays out identically?

A similar issue is happening with civ identity. Both in the sense of “what’s a civ” (we now have civil war factions and unorganized tribes in the game), and in the sense of “what makes this civ unique”.

first of all the game doesn’t follow some of the simplest norms of the industry:

  • let me roll back to previous patches. Steam does all the heavily lifting for them. They have even done this for tournaments in the past.
  • don’t take content away from players (I want to play with Koreans, Vietnamese, Chinese as they were. I want to play with the navy as I am used to them)

Additionally they leave game breaking bugs in the game for years. Have you tried searching lobbies? Crashes are still common. Pathing is
pathing. Recorded games break with every patch. I could go on for hours on this.

Regarding the DLC has followed two major trends:

  • they lie about the content when promoting it
  • new DLC contains less for a higher price
  • the less said about V&V the better
  • the less said about 3K the better

several points:

  • allow rolling back to older versions
  • make a functioning lobby browser with an elo system (ideally different elo systems for different data mods/scenarios, but I’m even happy with a single number)
  • allow sorting of lobbies by data mods, scenarios, players etc
  • stop taking away civs from us
  • honest communication. stop lying and do some actual Q&A sessions with honest and clear answers.

There are also a few changes I would like to see:

  • expand the lobby size so we can play 5v5, 6v6, 16 player FFA, etc.
  • open up the ranked queue: allow queuing for a single map, allow queueing for FFA, allow queuing for a subset of civs
  • open up the modding so more things can be done without requiring data mods (eg the changing of skins for individual civs)

I’ve made a few lists like this in the past, but nothing ever seems to be done. Tbh, at this point I strongly doubt anyone with power to actually change stuff is even reading this forum.

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Yes, I fear that AoE 5 is going to end up being an AoE 4 with an ancient or colonial theme


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They might do it right this time, they learned from their mistake i hope.

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Let’s wait and see what happens


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Not sure if that was ever a large part of the player base.

Games like SimCity, Civilisation and Anno already existed at that point and were pretty popular. AoE1 was originally supposed to be a real time version of Civilisation but the focus changed during development.

With that I’m not saying that the game was ever multiplayer focused, that certainly was not a priority back then when only a small part of the population had an internet connection, but it was always designed as an RTS and most people played it like that.

Is trample damage that ignores armour not a gimmick? I mean it goes against the normal logic of the game. There are potential scenarios where the Cataphract does more trample damage then normal damage against targets with high armour.

Why not just normal AoE damage like Elephants?

Really? What do you consider more “soul full” about the base game? More pop culture references instead of historical accuracy?

I would love to see regular diaries them. Doesn’t have to be every week but at least once per month. This way we get a feeling what they are working on and we can give feedback before it is too late.

AoM just made some changes to Demeter that people were asking for since the god released. They were clearly working on those changes for a while but they never said anything until they suddenly just released those changes. It would have been so easy to say “we are looking into changing this” and everyone would have been happy.

I feel like they are supper afraid of ever saying something that then doesn’t end up in the game exactly like promised which then would make some people super angry. So they rather say nothing. Which is kinda understandable. A lot of people call the developers liars over small things that might technically be wrong if you interpret them in a specific way.

I’d love to see that. That would be a huge change.

This please. If they can’t offer official regional skins allow us to mod them without doing a data mod please.

Also allow us to use a different amount of frames per animation without a data mod. That would make it a lot easier to use existing sprites from RoR or from some event mods.

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Dev diaries be so cool. And even if the feedback is ignored, we’d at least get explanations for stuff like 3K :upside_down_face:

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So you are basically just talking about the 3 Kingdoms DLC and not the recent Last Chieftains DLC, because that doesn’t include legends, heroes and is certainly not ancient.

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trample damage isn’t a gimmick? there are lots of units that deal area damage, cataphract isn’t even the only melee unit that deals area damage (capped rams, siege rams). the way it is implemented is very clunky though, and i’d approve of a fix to this.

however the core design of the cataphract (a cav unit that’s stronger vs infantry, but weaker against archers) is good, and it doesn’t rely on trample damage to achieve this.

I think the bigger issue is the density of gimmicks. Between all the aok/aoc civs I can agree that regeneration (berserkers) and maybe the cataphract trample damage are gimmciks. that’s two gimmicks in 13 civs. compare this to the latest DLCs where each civs has multiple gimmicks.

yeah, that would also be an option. just something to see how they make the decision they are making. right now it seems like they are headless chicken running around with no idea what they are doing.

no. we call them liars for saying things and going clearly against them:

  • the devs said “we are done adding civs”. they didn’t go against this on technicality. they’ve almost doubled the civ roster since then. Cysion said on reddit that he doesn’t care about what he said, some people asked for more civs.
  • I (tbh, I can’t talk for others) don’t care if V&V contains campaigns or scenarios. But when they said “a campaign focussed DLC” that made everyone expect content like the existing campaigns. The issue isn’t that those were standalone scenarios, the issue was that they were recycled content and dogshit quality.
  • they said they “wouldn’t split Chinese”. the only split we had had to that point was the Indian split. By massively reworking Chinese they clearly did to Chinese what they had done to Indians. They stole Chinese from us.
  • they said “we are adding the civs we need to tell the stories we want to tell”. Khitans and Jurchens were needed for what story? To most of us that meant that they wouldn’t add any civs without campaigns.

I’ve been asking for this for years. Devs are useless and don’t give a shit.

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That they never do a 3K DLC ever again.

Basically everyone I know played age2 as a single player sandbox and co-op vs AI.

Dunno what you meant by ‘played it like that’ as being an RTS.

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He was saying that many people did not play aoe2 as an “RTS” which I think is wrong.

Playing skirmish or coop vs. AI is still very much playing an RTS.

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