The Next Major RTS Will Fail. This Is Why

I don’t know if the Devs for this game are even in charge of their projects when I look at what has been done until now and what is planned for the near future.

All the game needed was content and all it needs now is content and after it gets some content, it needs more content to make up for lack of content.

The casual community is the spending community, and ALL they care about is content, awesome or meh, they want it yesterday.

I still believe a 100k tournament for this game was the saddest use of funds for this game. It should have gone out to a modding event post launch of the editor. That could have been an amazing show of support for the game in my opinion and probably would have attracted more players than an event I and thousands of others couldn’t be bothered to watch.

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If Relic was trying to cater a wider audience, they should had stick with a modern warfare or futuristic to Age of Empires. Who cares about Company of Heroes?

You can improve them a lot with ReShade and the AMD Contrast Adaptive Sharpening filter. They really should just build it directly into the game. This shows the difference between how the game is as standard, and how I play it, with the CAS filter on strength 3.0, and also a small curves adjustment:

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and here we get problem.
if it is focus, where HOTKEYS and other useful stuff? where responsiveness? Where? where? where?

I think the focus of the game is youtube audience, i mean it’s very wierd focus, but certainly not pros (at least on the release). Now, yes, they fixing multiplayer but not at the release.

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Interesting.
I love RTS games. I really enjoy the campaign and love to play skirmish against AI, but i really dont like multuplayer.
I fought i was an absolute abomination in the community for these preferences, and it seens no to be the case.
I would really like to have more customazable skirmish choices to my battles against AI, like handcap, limited maximum age, being able to set the amount of initial resourses for the AI…etc.

Hope this kind of upgrade came to AOEIV.

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I’m between 20 to 50 years old and I enjoy the graphics. I really don’t get on with these nonsense sweeping statements, because they paint a picture of a game I’d never enjoy and like never would have.

I’ve been playing RTS games for years (not aiming to win any prizes, just pointing out I’m not new to them), but this attitude to me is indicative of the problem. Everybody wants their own, specific, RTS. Now this happens in video games in general, but RTS for some reason appears to be a more unforgiving genre due to the expectation of its fans. Maybe because it’s a relatively niche genre in the first place, I don’t know.

Maybe the RTS audience is a generation (or three) trapped in time. And that’s an ongoing problem. As we get older, if the genres of game we enjoy don’t attract a new audience, then our genres will die out. Because we’re a diminishing demographic. And by courting new audiences, the expectations of “what makes a good game” will also diverge (by an argument to popularity). So it’s kind of lose-lose in a way.

We need to be more accepting of change. Not for change’s sake, but any change. This doesn’t mean we should accept bugs, or settle for a lack of features, or whatever other strawman somebody wants to throw my way. But in terms of design philosophy, we need to embrace change. You can see that even in this community, between the purists of a specific version of Age (normally AoE II) and others.

Be a purist if you want. But if you’re going to be, accept that this comes at the cost of being in a vastly diminishing demographic - inside a diminishing demographic. If you want to be a purist, games already exist for you. We shouldn’t have to keep making games for you, forever.

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It most likely will but it’s definitely going to take a backseat to the competitive elements of the game because that’s what the market is shifted towards nowadays, especially for RTS games. It’s not as bad as several years ago when League was at its competitive peak but the PVE experience isn’t as important to work on compared to the PVP one. SP content is, after all, not what offers a game longevity in a lot of cases like AoE or RTS games in general. Starcraft is carried entirely on the back of its MP and that’s the big one, but even smaller games such as Stronghold, DoW, COH, and TA have been kept alive thanks to their MP. Sure you can pop in every few years in one of those titles to play through the campaign again, I do so with Stronghold, but they have a niche but dedicated MP population that’s keeping the game from dying out completely.

Same thing with AoE2 before all the DE and remakes started pouring in a few years ago. Before them, the population was infitismal but dedicated.

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O yes, I remember you also enjoy DOW3… Again Mr Gorb numbers don’t lie.

Yes, I used sharpening and it improves the game but the biggest issue are the units, they look cartoon/Disney/Childish, when I played age lll amor age 2 DE there is a huge difference in quality… But graphics is just part of the problem, they also removes or ignored core age mechanics…

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According to the forum, I remember aoe4 has been intentionally designed in this or that way to intentionally appeal to old AOE (2) players and/or casual players and/or young people and/or competitive RTS players especially from SC2.
If any one of these groups does not like it, it’s definitely that guy’s fault for being a purist, or being too young or old to appreciate it.

Just like how the entire RTS genre as a whole has been accusing young players for being too impatient, old players for sticking to their old games, casual players for ruining balancing, competitive players for ruining casual gameplays for the sake of being competitive, for the failure of the genre.
Oh yes and those (young and old, casual and competitive) players who shifted to moba for…what reason? Maybe playing moba because you can blame your teammates?
Maybe first try to make good and functional games next time.

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The focus according to this forum has been shifting all the time. If you want A people may refute you because the game is focused towards competitive players. Then when you ask for B people tell you the game is for casual players.
But the core problem is not the focus. It’s that the game is not completed enough on either end.

Disclaimer: by saying “not completed” I did not mean the game is not functional. I mean the game still lacks important features or contents that appeal to many (which I do not mean is the vast majority, but still many) casual players (eg more campaigns and modding tools) and competitive players (eg many basic functions). I did not mean the game has to have these. Nor did I mean people cannot be satisfied with the current state. Nor did I mean it will never be improved in the future. Nor did I mean it’s the devs’ fault.

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Let me simplify why a lot of casual players would drop AoE4 multiplayer. Its because of bad defense and bad micro. In AoE4 TC does not provide defense against armored units which is good as these units are only available in Feudal or Castle Age or are very weak/slow in dark age (english).

But the main issue is they don’t do their job. A casual player isn’t going to select individual TC/Tower to focus down individual archer. The fact that defense buildings focus on the first thing they see e.g ram or armored unit and will keep throwing arrows on it senselessly makes game look so stupid. The fact that they haven’t added re-targeting on second TC explain a lot that their priorities are not casual players.

A pro player will be able to re-target every single outpost/TC and keep his second TC behind the base. But a casual players will quit game looking at how his TC is trying so hard to kill ram. The main job of player is to micro army. Defensive landmarks should act like turrets act in other games.

A lot of hardcore player are against this because their civs relies on early aggression. So they don’t wanna see anything in favor of early defense. My main point is not to remove early aggression. But to reduce unnecessary micro especially from defensive buildings so that a casual player can also enjoy the game. It doesn’t hurt early aggression. What it hurts is the enemy wont be able to just stand under TC and towers. For now TC re-targets back to ram after killing a single unit.

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Age of Noob showed how you can change the lighting on the game. Removing the clouds (they are ‘‘physical’’ just like trees) and you can zoom further. Modders will definitely show the true potential that even devs didn’t yet.

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And?

I don’t quite get what you’re trying to say. That because I like DoW III, my argumemt is somehow invalid?

DoW III is another product of trying to branch out in an increasingly stale genre with what seems to be an aging player demographic. Age IV is an example of playing it relatively safe (lots of comparisons to AoE II). Two different approaches by the same developer.

Me liking the game is as irrelevant as someone disliking it. What matters is how the games do in terms of popularity overall. DoW III didn’t do well at all. Age IV did substantially better, regardless of the picture its critics try to paint.

It could still get better. But your vision for it wouldn’t make it better. Sorry.

How do I do this I have an AMD card as well

The problem with using just a general sharpener is the elements in the game differ in their sharpness, so some things are over-sharpened and some are under-sharpened. So you’ll tend to stop short of a level of sharpening that brings out the details in the units because it will make other elements much too sharp. The AMD CAS filter is adaptive and tries to make everything equally sharp, allowing you to sharpen the elements in most need of sharpening much more, without over-sharpening the things that don’t need as much sharpening.

There are general instructions here for how to install ReShade:

The AMD CAS filter works with any graphics card.

ReShade exposes an automated and generic way to access both frame color and depth information (latter is automatically disabled during multiplayer to prevent exploitation) and all the tools to make it happen.

i only play multiplayer, does it work for you when you play multiplayer?

The filters I use don’t use depth information. The only AoE 4 multiplayer I’ve played is co-op vs AI, and everything looked the same as usual.

@TsudaTumiko
You are right. There must be a good campaign and lots of content. Balancing should not be the main focus for the developers. Little balance differences between civs
are not important for casual and decide not the battle for not very good players.

@LastEchoWanes
Yes the video is indeed very good. Relic should hire him as a project manager. This would surely help the game, if they listen to him :smiley:

I also had the feeling that they very much focusing on balancing changes which for casual players or not very good players are by far not as important as new fun content.

@FiveWind6951746
Good Question…

@Pomknight
Yes there is a lack of content. Awesome content is fastly needed

I also think that with the 100k tournament. Event though it was a great tournament. In the current state of the game a modding post launch of the editor would be much better.

@BrunoMagno
I agree. More campaigns and the customazable skrimish choices you listed are missing :frowning: Besides they should also add new content for multiplayer.

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