THE UX Designer at Relic is Wrong about catering to wider audience

Age of Empires IV IV - Discussion
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Yes, the average castle in reality is bigger than the average ship for sure. (and obviously much more than 4 houses). Lets say that the larger a unit is, the scale ratio becomes smaller.

Example:
human: 1.7m height —> becomes 1
elephant: 4.5m height —> becomes 1.5
old house: 7m square —> becomes 2.5
ship: 35 m —> becomes 5
castle: 80m square —> becomes 7

PS: An easy way to solve each units size in game is to pick some values like the above and solve a linear equation ax+b so that you have the minimum average square error for all the above cases, and use after this equation to find each unit size. ( I sayed linear equation, but it might be more complex with mone unknown variables than a and b. For example with 5 pairs of numbers, it could be a linear equation with 5 unknown instead of just 2 )

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Dude, one thing we must do is reconize we are the minority.

My most played game is Dota 2, a game that is 101% gameplay and 0% anything else. But I am in the minority. I reconize that most people do not like a game that is extremely competitive and all about gameplay like Dota 2.

In Age2 you are the minority. Most players are casual that play skirmisher against AI while they build big cities and perfect squared farms. They like to see their army clashing against the enemy armies and they like the immersion of a medieval battle.

Do you think that most Age2 players use small tree mod or show grid to destroy the visuals of the game…? They don’t do that. They don’t want to make their game uglier just to be more competitive. They just want to play their casual matches and be immersed into medieval warfare.

Really dude…? You are really gonna talk about the graphics of a 1999 game where people could barely see anything on their blurry 480p screens…?

I find it incredible the lenght you go to defend 100% of the decisions of the AoE4 team.

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I do Not try to defend anyone, I Simply try to explain. Because they cant or wont :smiley:

Also IT Happens to be my Personal opinion based in my professionel knowledge.
That often, Not only Here but also in other Games Like WoT, coincides with choices devs did that a minority finds wrong :wink:

Regarding monitors- the fact WE have better res now doesnt increase visibility per se. Why do you think the DEs also have huge weapons? Because the Higher the res, the farther you can Zoom Out, the länger the Screen the farther you have to, to GEt an Overview. And there its very Important.

I btw dont usw the small tree Mod nor do I personally Play conpetative. Im a Casual pve and Coop vs ai scrub :smiley: yet still i Play for gameplay and Story, Not Immersion. And all age Players i personally know would say The Same, so Like 10?
So I assume the majority Likes the gameplay. And building a nice City. Not Immersion per se.

Apart from huuuuuuge arrows, the Just a Bit big weapons wont disturb any of the 11.
And i never Heard complaining about IT in age2DE either. Because ist is a necessary evil

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And regarding 100%- See my Posts in Beta Thread. I certainly hatte the fact they announced a Beta months ago and It seems now IT will BE a Balance/stresstest, which isnt a Beta imo.
So I dont agree 100%.
I also thought Units could ne more Detailed Abs they seemed to have done that until E3 Stream where Units did have more Details

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I think that there is no-one happy here about the beta delay. I am also sure that everyone is here because of it. :slight_smile:
( And I don’t mean that because of the delay beta, I believe the game will have problems. I am from these that I am almost sure that there will not be any problems. I just want to play the game as soon as possible… )

I also know that when beta released, these who ask for the beta now and will not have selected will ask for more information about the gameplay etc. And I don’t blame them. And for me it is hard to stay patient and not start asking for extra infos all the time. ( Obviously there are differences how someone ask for something. Sometimes its good, other not so good. )

By the way, 103 days and today until release. :slight_smile:

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well, for one, i was insider since 2de, so not everyone os here because of age 4 :wink:

and I also would say that not everyone will ask for details from beta. I personally wont even if I am not invited. I will just be happy there is a beta still. or be angry that they call it beta, but its actually a stress test because nothing can be changed for release because of time^^

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I don’t want to step here on anybodies toes,
but apparently is very wrong on very basics how AoE4 was marketed over the years.

Let’s take a look, what people who are professional with games, do say about wide audience.

Source 1

1 One of the common misconceptions caused by publicly available research is the perceived popularity of certain game genres.
People unfamiliar with how games work, but familiar with marketing research in other industries assume that MOBA is like “cola-flavored soft drink” and MMORPG is “ions-enriched sports drink”.
When marketing research is talking about MOBA popularity and MMORPG decline they automatically assume it should work like in other industries — people switching from Gatorade to Coca-Cola, while there is plenty of space for smaller imitators and local brands.

2 Games aren’t products
But games, especially big ones, aren’t consumer products. I’d go as far as to say that each multiplayer game is a cultural self-reinforcing phenomenon, relying on its perceived popularity more than on its market share. It’s not enough to just offer a superior product with better marketing and brand recognition to convince people to switch from League of Legends to, say, Infinite Crisis. Yes, the latter has DC characters, TV series, comic books and even some movies. But the former was here first and didn’t just create the market — it is the market.
So we can’t really talk about genre’s popularity when one game has 50% of the audience and another one has 30%. Unlike in consumer goods market it’s not sustainable to hope for 1% of a huge market. Production costs aren’t scaling down when you have a smaller game, where in, say, soft drinks, you would just order less bottles, syrup and water.

3 Audiences are vastly different
Both Dota 2 and Torchlight 2 gamers spend a lot of time playing their favorite games. But while Dota 2 players only play Dota 2, Torchlight 2 audience gerenally tries a lot of games — ten times more on average.

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Source 2

How to market your video game and find your target audience?
Identify your target audience – and only target them
Doing a shotgun approach, blasting everyone everywhere [with ads] is not effective. Even if you reach 100,000 people, if only 2,000 people actually like that game it’s not a good use of your capital. Better to hit 10,000 people where all 10,000 are excited by it."

How many new customers did it bring in?
Like completely new who never did play before AoE games?
Exactly all people here had already years ago some AoE game.

What AoE4 marketing has done so far was a double mistake, to “shotgun” approach at people who play DOTA and Fortnite, but not something else.

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i think you have a misconception here. WHY do you think , as you mention, all ppl here have already palyed an age game? and are here? because the playerbase is still into the game, and interested in age 4. Only a very very small fraction in this forum seems to have given up on age 4. And thats mostly because of the general graphics style, which wasnt particulary made to cater to everyone.
also misconception 2 is that they approach dota/fortnite players. Doota, yes. Fortnite? not at all, just some ppl who dont get how graphical style works seem to think cartoony=Fortite=Age4. which of course is wrong

The fact the devs want to get some MoBA style gameplay in age, to make ppl focused on MP, is not wrong. as they still cater to their target audience. (as we can seee in the forum). As long as they stay true to age main mechanics, which they do, they focus on their target group. and that is RTS Players. there is plenty of RTS players who would be nwe to age nowadays, and even Dota/Lol are somewhat RTS. so the targeting of a broader target group, as long as its synonymous, works.

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Not everyone that plays AoE is on the forums. I played AoE for nearly 15 years and joined the forum last year only to get a beta access for AoE3 DE. I’d assume that only a small fraction of the playerbase is active on the forum.
Furthermore, how do you even know that a game that isn’t even released doesn’t attract new players? Atleast wait for the release and the number of games sold before claiming that this game has a flawed marketing/wrong approach.

Who says that they specifically target the DOTA/Fortnite audience? DOTA may have some similarities but what does Fortnite have in common with RTS-games? AAA games generally don’t target a specific audience unless its a nieche market that they try to cater (like RTS-games) or a market that they compete with. Their focus is on RTS players, however they mentioned more than once that they wanna make this game in such a way that the average casual gamer(who never played AoE before) can also enjoy this game by making it more beginner friendly, so they target the usual AAA market aswell. If they make this game “easy to learn - hard to master”(like AoE2 for instance) then for myself this is perfectly fine.

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1 We have seen how it turns out by DoW3.
2 Why should an Average DOTA2 player, who owns on average 12 games, get as his next game AoE4?

3 They do have for over 15 years a big misconception. While alienating the existing audience from Strategy games, the E-Sport/ wide audience doesn’t show up.

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if they would try to reel in dota players, for one, the graphics would be realistic. thats the main difference to Lol from dota…

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Great insight.

Age 2 built on the mechanics of Age 1 and made the wheel better.
They didn’t try to reinvent the wheel

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But you do. You constantly say on this forum that the ‘graphics are great’, with this exact wording. There is not a single criticism you have against the graphics and you defend all their decisions, from cartoon art style, to buildings proportions and weapons (if it was up to you, the arrows would continue to be logs), to low detail textures, to bad animations and water, etc…

You don’t explain, you defend all their decisions. (And we know exactly why these things are the way they are, people just don’t like them).

It just means you have a ton of corporativism incentives to defend devs at all costs.

We already know you defend devs at all costs dude.

Of course they do. Just get any remake and we can see details way better on units.

Because they have the moral obligation to be exactly how the original game is. I could find it much better with proper scaled weapons but I would defend at all costs that the Definitive Edition looks exactly like the old game in respect to everyone that like it that way and want a true DEFINITIVE EDITION, not a reimagination.

And Forgotten Empires respected the fans making things exactly how they were.

Playing for the story and building a nice city IS immersion. Maybe you have a different meaning for immersion that I use.

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Wow, good thing you defend only 99% of their decision and the only thing you disagree with is with schedule, not anything about the game design.

But lets see, list 3 major problems with the graphics and unit animations.

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There are people out there who thinks graphics are great. To be more specific, most of the people here thinks that graphics are great.
The enemy of good, is always the better, so yes, it could be even better, but this does not mean that they are not great already. I see every day the few videos we have till now, and I like them more every time.

It is not weird to like these graphics. In my opinion weird is someone who sees them and finds only negative things to say.

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Exactly. It is quite bigoted to say people are crazy to like them, just because you don’t

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The AOE fanbase has so many concerns right now i’m actually starting to get a bit scared. Like as a singleplayer AI-skirmish only player I hope that myself and other fellow AI-Skirm players can actually do what we love to do in ANY Age of Empires main-title game. Play offline-AI only Skirmish games.

I hope they look great too. Non-AOE fans will not drive up the sales for this game. The AOE fans will first, then non-AOE fans will pour in after the fact. If they lose us the game falls. :frowning:

I want AOE 4 to give me everything I love about AOE 2 and AOE 3 so I never have to play these games again to get that amazing AOE gameplay I love. I’ll only go back for nostalgic purposes. I want AOE 4 to be my main AOE game now. Not the old ones. It can’t be if I don’t feel immersed in the experience like I love for AOE 2 and 3. AOE 4 needs immersion or it won’t be something I like at all.

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graphics are great-thats my opinion. that snot defending anyone.
Actually there is a criticism I have, being the models, but theyworked on those. And the arrows (although I did not get to realize the issue there myself just from watching the trailer as I was focused more on beautiful building), the scaling leading to archers not fritting through wall doors- and they worked on those. So now my OPINION is graphics are great.

Defending them is explaining, and I explained often enough that within the artstyle the graphics look great, and the artstyle was chosen because it depicts medieval times in a colorful, picture like matter, and that UI fits well within the theme of a Documentary. And the scaling is fine for an RTS. It may be toned down a bit, but it will never be realistic, because that wouldnt be fun. Also they did already change it, and (as I also very often stated) its likely also a camera angle issue and we will have to see in the Beta, if there will ever be one, if thats the case. All these arguments, which none of the realism wanters really bothered to be interested in, because “its ugly” were defending. I did that, yes.I did defend the art choices and the state of the graphics. In length in like 2 posts.I also argued that while metal weapons would be nice, they are by no means a dealbreaker to me. Because its again, its a colorful depiciton of medieval times. But I git the complaint there, because most ppl actually argued about it neutrally.

In all others I simply state my opinion graphics look great (now).

Some ppl infer to know why graphics are like this, many wrongly assuming its to cater to kids, or fortnite audience, or whatever. Of course thats ultra biased as well as wrong. But sure, my neutral explanation cant be right, it has to be this reason.
Elsewhere there was also the argument about cost. Which, from industry insiders, seems to either be around the same for realism/cartoon, or even more for cartoon. so thats also not an argument.

Since “we know exactly why” I would like to know what I missed, or you factually know that I forgot or never learned while studying.

The only reason for me to defend devs is because I myself know how games are made, and decisions done. Which is why I try to argue from their side. Because its my personal view aswell.
If you tell your mechanic you can drive your car, but the mechanic says you shouldnt becaus eits completely done at the bottom,what would ppl do? most here would seemingly go to strangers, tell them about it, show the car and say it looks great, why cant I drive it.
I would then be the one not so fun guy telling you that its pretty rusted and the mechanic was right.

At all costs? no, if my life depended on i, why would I loose it? I simply like some things, and it seems some ppl dont like my “mainstream” or “dev lined” thinking. But its my opinion. If I hated it, I would say it. Just as the beta and general information we get are despised by me because its in MY OPINION the wrong way to market the game. I hate that, and often write that the beta will be useless now.

I said better res doesnt per se make it better readable, and you come with a REMAKE. I dont think thats the point of per se. Play the old games on a huge 4k monitor, you wont see anything.

They did add a multitude of “quality of life” (QOL) features to the DEs, 4k res packs, and more. IF anyone ever wanted realistic scaled weapons, we would have seen them there, even optional. Just like they implemented favored mods like the grid and little trees mod . Now why do you think no “realistic weopn scale mod” was implemented?
I doubt there even is such thing, but maybe I aam wrong there. If it is, you can precisely see how “many” ppl want realisticly scaled weapons. Some, a few. Because most realise how imprtant readability is, especially farther zoomed out.

Immersion is to see yourself as inside the world.
Building a nice city is from the outside, playing and imagining you are jeanne d arc is immmersion.
Playing from the story can be immersive for some (for example after playing you go and tell ppl hey, I just liberated Orleon) but at the same time, story can also be simply enjoyed without immersion (for example afterwards you tell ppl “hey, I beat mission6. Finally, it was so hard.” if you tell the story of your experience, or even “hey, did you know that a girl actually ended the 100 years war” if you see it more of a historical display. All of them are possible, and fun, only the first is immersion though.

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unit nimations are still a bit clunky, as seen on e3. But already much improved upon compared to earlier builds.
Same goes for details of units.
Then there are complaints about materials, which I can understand, but dont have an issue with personally.
Regarding the first 2, since thhre were already fixes to these, its not unfair to assume there will be further ones until 2 months before release.
The latter probably wont be done to still have the painted look. Paintings do of course have reflections in cases, but they are still. Hard to do with active lighting I THINK.
Anothe rissue- dimensions - they may be edited a bit moer. But as long as archers on walls fit the doors there, I am happy. personally. They wont edit it much more because its done for readability, and they are right there. CoH3 Pre Alpha proved that to me. there the dimensions fit, and you can only play this way becaus eyou usually selct units by marker, not per unit. Which Is why I had problems. Also the zoom out there is very limited. If it were more, at some point you wouldnt see the units

So you see, I know of the complaints, but either also know they are working on those, or I see why they dont. And I am happy with what I saw so far. Is that so hard to believe, that I simply like what I saw?

I dont disagree with any game design decision made, indeed. Why? I dont know, I studied the stuff and understand why they did what they did. I also like it.
But until there is a beta, I like it says nothing. Because my focus in game design is on gameplay, and I have to check myself if it still is great, or if it was butchered :wink:

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He’s just the human equivalent of a shillbot ^^.