Just signed up. I expected to find a well organized forum with a few distinctive topics, which would each focus on a different thing.
Unfortunately, this forum consists of too many topics with non-specific and repetitive content. Furthermore, too many people express their personal opinion and argue with others on how AoE4 should be. Thus, the replies in each topic are too many to keep up with and uninteresting as well.
I would be really surprised if a developer or anyone with influence on the making of AoE4 used this forum for advice.
ā¦Iām not entirely sure what you expected to find on the forums for a game thatās been teased, but that little info is available for? Of course people are going to speculate and trade ideas, thatās sort of the point of having a community forum.
Iāll grant that a lot of topics have been repeated, though againā¦ that will happen when no real news has come in, but we get the occasional new member.
Truth is Iāve not made my point quite clear.
Itās perfectly alright for AoE fans to discuss, share their views and argue over things regarding the upcoming AoE4.
I believe though, if we want to have a chance that the developers take into account the things said here, we should somehow make it easy for them to understand the general opinions that we fans share among different aspects of the game. I read the first 10-15 topics and all the replies in them and I canāt say I have an idea about something general that the majority of fans would like to see in AoE4. Just some scattered opinions here and there, which may not reflect the things that the majority wants.
I read the topic regarding the reddit survey, in which only 1200 people took part in. The fanbase, I believe, is much larger than that. Maybe we could somehow do something similar with many more people in it? Just to point out some main guidelines about how we would like AoE4 to be.
Iām not sure weāre going to get more than 1,200 replies here on the forum unless there is a lot of promotion.
There are many more than 1,200 Age of Empires Insiders, which seems to me like the best group to send such a survey to, however the results would likely not be public.
Surely there is enough info in the Reddit survey that could be used to gleam what the people want.
That survey was super unscientific and pretty much as predictable as could be. There simply is no specific cohesive opinion across the AoE community. Some want a Classical Era. Some want the Middle Ages. Some thoughtless monsters want tanks and laser guns.
Some want a competitive, streamable eSports PvP scene. Some donāt care. Some only want a deep campaign. Some want an offline encyclopedia. Some want the game to feel like a natural update with some new features. Others want nothing added and their childhood memories to be celebrated and left unthreatened. And even that opinion varies wildly depending on which of the five titles a player cherishes the most. AoE2 is super different from AoM, which is super different in other ways from AoE3, which is nothing like AoEO. And all are combined mutations/evolutions off of the 1997 original.
Nobody can agree on everything, and no matter what choices the Devs make, a huge segment of the population will raise pitchforks and burn the forum down.
This forum continues as it always has to be a sounding board of whatās on our minds and helps kick up counterpoints to everything. But a forum of a barely announced game is naturally going to have some serious selection bias problems. We are going to attract far more old school, die hard fans than the average AoE4 player. All of us represent that demographic and none of us represent a huge segment of who needs to buy the game: people who have a passing interest in AoE and/or have never heard of it before. AoE4 needs to sell to those guys, too, and we arenāt necessarily the best to know how to do that.
This forum is still hugely helpful to the Devs, should they read it. But at this point the only way we are going to talk about ideas is exactly as we have been: in unpredictable, stream of conscious threads as people speak up.
This. Itās probably in Microsoftās and Relicās best interest to cater to different tastes as much as possible so as not to make some players feel like they have been left behind in a next generation Age game.
You ordered the fire extinguishers and water tanks right?
Iām just hoping for a game that is alliance based and the devās listen to what the players want after it gets going. Hmmmm does that sound like an old game we played long ago?
East, the greatest part of castle siege is its alliances, and every single player of the other Age games should pay attention to it. AoECS gets clowned around here as itās not an RTS, but holy heck did its alliance feature make it stand out. I hope you and I can be rivals for years to come.
I know thereās some old CS Devs from SGI now at Relic, so hopefully they can carry that flame to the new game.
In the meanwhile the announcement section looks pretty dead, with the last update being about the āSeptember winnersā. Even the Age Up episodes are dead. Maybe that could mean that something is coming up soon or am i too positive?
Is it the silence before the storm?
I agree that the makers should look at gamers as their primary concern. They should try to find out what people expect from aoe4 etc.
One of the best examples i know about is albion online. They let gamers play their game from the early stages of the alpha. They changed the game according to what most players where talking about on the forums. They even have a āround tableā, inwhich the top guild leaders would talk directly with the developers. And they listened.
Aoe4 on the other handā¦ I am afraid that they will make a game that suits the expectations of only a few people who work on it at Relic. And that is not even the entire team. Some former employees posted a review on the internet about Relic and that even the employees have absolutely nothing to say about the game and how it will be like. Maybe 1 or 2 people will decide how the game will be like.
An alternative could be that they try to make a game that has a lot of things in common with age of empires 2. Unfortunately aoe2 isnāt that great of a game anymore in my opinion. There are also a lot of new things to think about.
