All people wanted from Act of Aggression, was a good and honest C&C Generals clone, with better graphics.
What they got was a 3 resource system, weird defense mechanics, lack of Generals Powers, and boring factions too mired in realism and balance.
C&C Generals is still played by millions of casual players to this day, and is one of the most unbalanced and messy games ever. But it IS fun!
A single resource that you can get for infinity with secondary gathering systems (GLA Black Market and Bounty, China Bank Hacking, USA UN Supply Dropzones), OP units and defenses that are brutally unfair most of the time, and synergistic General Powers that just break the game in so many ways.
Yet it was a hit, because the dev focused on FUN, not balance or pseudo-realism. They set out to make a competent GAME, and not a complex and cinematic experience, and they got it right.
Ignore that person, that person is everywhere, this person basically sleeps here, so ignore it. This person loses control if anyone anywhere talks anything negative or criticize AOE 4. This personās identity revolves around a video game made by a monopolistic corporation, just donāt waste your words.
The āshadow councilā did consist of people who were fans of Wargame and Starcraft, supervised by āinvestorsā who wanted to sell as many copies as possible. āRealism Unitsā didnāt fit into the more arcade nature of RTS, so the feeling was odd where you had units that did fire much fare away than you could see, and you could not see the battlefield, because the engine was artificially limited not to zoom out properly to ensure lower PC requirements. It was a game where you could not see what your units are attacking or where the attacks are coming from.
The cherry on the topping was lack of counter units and resources, because they assumed it would be E-Sports. Any average person did run out fast of resources, while people could dig in with impenetrable defenses. While by some of the factions, you had siege units that could fire across half of the map, other factions siege units did so little damage they were basically useless. Some air units that were bombers, were much better Anti Air fighters, that Anti Air fighters. Each unit did feel broken, not balanced. Economy was broken. Zooming controls were broken.
Itās still is amazing how Act of War makerās could deliver such big mess.
It depends on what you do. You can totally replace the Toxin Tractor with a more realistic Armoured Vehicle, but it should still remain recognizable as a brutal yet silly āwar crimesā unit used by an evil faction, and the unit voicelines, and missions involving it, should reflect this.
This is just one example.
Why did the Cartel faction, a criminal-mercenary company bent on creating a military-capitalist super-state, not use Nuke Cannons?
They used stealth and precisionstrikes, just like other videogam bad guy factions (Brotherhood of Nod) but no āI am definitely the bad guy faction, fear my brutality!ā units, taht actually bring charisma to the whole ordeal.
Technical aspects such as these could have been refined into being good, but the Esports design philosophy of balance and Rush-based gameplay, failed the game entirely.
I would much rather have to deal with EMP Patriots (famously OP defense system from C&C Generals) than have to contend with Esports-based āspeed and mechanics over substanceā gameplay.
I do not care for Esports, nor does the VAST MAJORITY OF ANY RTS PLAYERBASE, by observable metrics.
Iām definitely against shadow councils. The way they did it here is much better. We have players of all types given the chances of speak up. I donāt know of any game in the history of ever that included its community that early on.
Itās a big difference to have a forum, to have a beta and
the game actually to reflect what people want and need.
Spellforce 3 team, did in my opinion much better job. First of, you had the beta in Spellforce 3 for like at least 6 months. Age of Empires 4 beta didnāt even start and is supposed to be launched in 3 month.
āBeta in terms you can ask as average person for a key and get it.ā
Also, by Spellforce 3 you did see the feedback to find properly a way into the game.
Spellforce 3 is on itās second expansion, and almost everyone loved the SP stories. It is not a MP hit, but it does have a big playerbase that will just buy any more content to it.
Spellforce 3 enforces my belief that RTS is mostly played in SP mode, and that Esports is the realm of only a few games taht got lucky with it, and not one specifically designed for it.
AoE2 was designed for a SP setting with 75 max pop. Yet it is an Esports game.
This is due to the fact that the game is fun first, balanced second.
Esports cannot be forced, it needs to be a grassroots movement, people play video games for simplistic entertainment. If MS wants to force E-sports itās gonna fail terribly just like DOW3 Same company btw.
I agree.
It cannot be forced, planned for, or even designed towards. Esports happens or it does not.
You should only ever balance your game towards Esports, if it BECAME an Esports game on itās own in the first place.
developers. not talking about pro players of course.
What I mean is if an architect designs something, you may very well not like the style. But if you know nothing about the topic on a profesionnal scale, its hard to just say they are wong.
I just wanted honesty for why they are using this art style and graphics.
The general reason it is used is: itās cheaper and easier to produce. Thatās it. All the games that use simplified or cartoon artstyle is because they donāt have the budget or manpower or skill to design things on a more detailed art style or make realistic graphics. These are very expensive and time consuming.
Do Age of Empires 4 really have lack of funds and manpower? What is the reason for this approach instead of a more detailed and realistic art style like the ones used on Definitive Editions?
Thatās where you are wrong.
It is way way easier to find realistic textures and assets out there.
Itās a lot easier to hire artist to make realistic models and textures too.
If you want a none realistic art style you have to custom make everything because you need to have everything in the same style.
You canāt just hire a guy and tell him to make trees, you have to explain him how you want to trees to look like.
If you make a realistic game you can just base everything on real life objects.
Considering all those āProfessional and Experienced Teamsā failed for years to deliver a successful Product, while amateur teams who never did make an RTS before like Numantian Games = They Are Billions, Shiro Games = Northgard did beat by far all of them, tells a lot.
By the way Grimlore Games = Spellforce 3 is a fresh new studio too, they were founded 2014.
I dont see a contradiction there. its entirely possible to have a good team and not consist of experienced ppl
BUT your example is flawed, according to their website, numantian games were founded by ppl already in the industry.
for example.
And what exactly did they beat? they had a great innovative game design which had no concurrence. tehre was no AAA Studio trying to bring an RTS successor since SC2 afaik (not counting total war here because of other gameplay style)
Yes a game that started out with cartoon graphics that was a hit with people whom love such an art style still is successfull to this day.
But if you take a game created with base realism at its core and then completely change it to cartoon, then it is a bad desighn desision.
If they took Call of duty or the Battlefield franchise and made BF VII look like fortnight, (Because fortnight made money) then Iād say that is a selfish and bad design desision.