What a disappointment that they overuse the variant civs, no new civs per year, nor do they fix the crashes, reconnection system, replays to be able to go back or save, updated and improved campaigns, campaigns for the missing civs, variant masteries, all the AOE have different animals and do not give anything new just literally reheated food.
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At least AoE IV community is not gaslighted, lied, and betrayed as III community is
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No. They never promised anything big. It’s entirely your fault expecting too much. Poor WE is cracking under the burden of player expectations. /s
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That much is true. People assumed anyway.
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If the wait is longer and the price is higher then it is fully legit to expect more.
Or they just come out and say “we’re really off handed” or “we spent most of our time in the past two years working on other stuff”. But I dare them.
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Aren’t they the same communities? I thought the age of empires fandom was under one big tent?
No. Not at all
WE is just a AoE II fan club that hate their other games and its communities
In the future AoE IV will be dropped as III
Mark my words!
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Does WE even know this?
It’s all over their gamescom booth, so I think they are somewhat aware.
Guess which games were not part of it?
4 variants are more than 2 civ variants, so I suppose, yeah, it’s the biggest DLC of this year.
The new single-player mode is similar to another RTS Conquest Campaign mode, like Northgard Conquest Mode, and I like this mode in that game, so it would be a good addition.
As I said in another post, I have my own theory as to why they’re only releasing variants. Until things calm down a bit, I was thinking of keeping it to myself, but the summary is as follows:
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Relic, in 2023, had originally planned to release full variants for 2024, and they wanted to launch with the first four in Sultan Ascends.
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But, a lot of things went wrong:
– 1.) The first four variants were very frowned upon, except for Ayyubid. People bought the DLC for the campaign, maps, biomes, Japanese, and Byzantine, but were unaware of the variants.
– 2) The mass layoffs of 2024. Although the DLC sold well, Sega tried to squeeze all its companies due to poor investments by its top management, and they forced Relic to lay off people.
– 3) Microsoft had to intervene, and here we can only imagine what they did (financial arrangements), because afterward, Sega simply gave up on Relic, and it became independent, with another company, Enola Capital, producing it.
– 4) The contract to make more civs for AoEIV with Microsoft was pending. -
Considering this, they had two options:
– A) They made original civs, in a short time, without following their original variant plan.
– B) They carried out the original variant plan, even though they would be poorly received. -
Seeing what happened with AoE3’s DLC for creating civs “outside their creative plan”, and their DLC cancellation, I suppose they opted for option B.
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However, having just escaped from Sega, with a new headquarters and pending renovations, they needed help. That’s where Forgotten Studios came in, helping with the creation of Templars and Lancaster.
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The result: The Templars were well-received, as was Lancaster, although the latter were somewhat unbalanced, but better than the first four variants.
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As a result, they realized that historicity was important, and continued the plan to better demodel their remaining variant ideas, if not replace them with more historically accurate ones.
That’s why we now have variants of 7 of 8 of the base civs, and even those in Sultan Ascend have variants. Only Rus and the civs of the Anniversary Collection are missing in variants.
An for that:
- Just like what happened with Sultan Ascend, and the calls for improved historicity, we could do polls asking for “More Original Civs”.
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I think it’s pretty obvious since this year screams “budget cut” and “impeding deadlines”
I’m totally fine with it if they turned to cheaper production. As long as they communicate honestly and price the DLCs in accordance with their value.
That’s what I wish people were understanding more about this. A lot of us are disappointed, but they are trying to make something within the confines of what is possible while taking feedback.
One of the new civs is vikings for goodness sake.
Fellas, feedback works, keep on giving it. Just keep in mind when we tear down the community we do damage long term to each other… not the devs or the game.
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Meh!
Kind of
Macedonian Dynasty should have been Vikings/Scandinavians/Danes/Kalmar Union instead and delivered as a FULL UNIQUE CIV not a variant of Byzantines that have more Viking units besides Varangian Guards
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