While I do get that they want to go slow on a couple of bugs/issues. I believe that the amount of things fixed for the number of weeks we have been playing is unprofessional from them. they might surprise us in the future, though current bugs are just unplayable.
As I’ve been playing AOE for a long time and I’ve seen how they have handled AOE3DE which is where I have most of my experience. I can say that there are still Bugs that were found in the early beginnings and they haven’t been able to fix them yet.
I suggest that for any game-breaking bug or irregularity related to a civ or a unit [ unit wise might be harder ] That they Disable the civ or the unit until they find a fix. This is something currently seen in current popular games where an object or a skin or a character is disabled as they find a solution. It is not a good experience having to find the same bug over and over because the developer team behind AOE4 hasn’t been able to fix the bug or has taken them 4 months to release a patch. For this reason, I truly believe that disabling anything that is causing trouble and adding it back later after a fix has been implemented could be a good way to go for AOE4.
A small patch is a small patch. There is a high probability that a bigger patch on the way, with balance issues, gameplay fixes, tool tip fixes etc… Some of the issues needs time to grow, balancing is one of them, gathering data on how the game responds to players strategies over time is needed. Otherwise they risk having work redone.
This was a smaller hotfix for some issues. It isn’t the patch to fix everything, so they’d probably rather spend time on the first big patch, which will include a lot more.
It isn’t unprofessional, it is how game dev works and things take time. The game have barely been out for 2 weeks, it is unreasonable to expect a big patch right away.
It really is how EVERY software development works. It’s probably all planned out already and to assure good quality it needs to be probably reviewed and tested so obviously it takes a lot of time. You guys’ impatience resembles that of the people in the movie Idiocracy.
Yes, this patch was underwhelming and I wasn’t even expecting much. I guess it’s normal for most of the team to get some vacation time right after a game launches though, so might be part of the reason. They have been tracking numerous bugs though so the next update should be a much bigger one.
Would you prefer they not give us a handful of small fixes and hold them back until a bigger patch can be ready, just so you aren’t disappointed with the “size” of the patch?
There are plenty of legitimate things to complain about. This isn’t one of them.
But the second you called the devs “unprofessional” because they disappointed your expectations, we all knew not to take your post seriously.
Agree, people are only human! But I I would be so much more happier as a consumer if they announced “hey, we just released a big game we’ve worked tirelessly on for months, were gonna be on holiday for the next 6 weeks and any bugs are unlikely to be fixed, but after that we’ll be back!” Communication goes a long way!
This is a AAA title. The game has a bug that causes one of the 8 civlizations to be unplayable competitively. The game has a bug that causes one of the 8 civilizations to dupe relics in Team Games and get infinite resources.
Whenever i go into a team game and there is a Rus on either team I consider leaving as I am afraid I wil just waste 15 minutes to find out its a cheater.
No it’s not unreasonable to expect a lot of the things that have been commented on. Some of them are just very small changes in the code. Or they could have fixed the tooltip for speed upgrade to show accurate. Most game developers are way quicker to adress small game breaking problems
He comes from AOE3DE as well And he has the same experience This is where my post is based off entirely.
AOE4 has much more resources than a remake for AOE3DE and seeing a patch this small for bugs that have been clear since the get go is truly unprofessional for the Entire AOE4. Relic/MS/AOEteam whoever is handling the balance/marketing or how information is given out.
Also while that year of AOE3DE happened. Communication was close to nonexistent. I love the game and I want AOE4 to succeed, however given how they have released the 1st patch of 10GB by the way I expect close to no communication and very little effort on patches
I cannot describe the treatment of the game in the past months as anything but lazy.
Same bugs (prelates glitch out, imperial officials ignoring supervise order, pathfinding/attack move issues, loading screen/profile issues, match history pointing to different games, ghost groups when someone in your group leaves during lobbyscreen) as in stresstest with 0 qol improvement or polishing even tho all the feedback from beta 6+ months ago (no map vetos, displayed animals in buildings such as TC or stable are not animated, some attackanimations are not properly looped and look off, hotkeys are not all rebindable, statdescription of upgrades such as the twohanded upgrade for HRE MAA are wrong, horrible hotkeylayout with 4 unnecessary submenus and double binding (“Y” for line formation or entering building submenu with infantery after blacksmith tech)).
The game just feels unfinished with the lack of gamemodes/mods/ranked with a sterile unpolished feeling…
I really expected from such a giant franchise with financial support by microsoft to get quick patches, at least for absolute gamebreaking bugs such as relic printing, khan printing.
Heck even funny ones like trading with enemy docks…
There was and still is soooo much feedback and they barely seem to take note.
Changes made to drastically reduce performance drops when panning the camera across the map.
This alone makes the patch worth it, assuming people can verify the improvements.
Anyone who calls developers lazy is very likely to not have an understanding of what it requires to be a developer. Everyone’s free to an opinion, but if you want your opinion to be considered, saying the developers are “unprofessional” or “lazy” just because they fixed less than you wanted them to is . . . not really the way to go.
EDIT
Yeesh, that reddit thread is a mess. People literally saying they’d rather not have the panning improvements because they want other things fixed first.
Performance is important, y’all. Performance is difficult, too. I’m glad they prioritised it, because it’s something that a lot of people noticed a lot of the time. It was a more obvious problem than any specific exploit or MP balance issue. This isn’t to say the other problems don’t need fixing. But in terms of making the game less frustrating, fixing something that seemed to impact the entire game - SP and MP - is a sensible decision.
Im guessing these are just different people with the lack of proper management, and this elliot guy is trying harder than the others to do his job. And elliots responsibility is more decided to be reddit while others are here?
He is probably also limited in what he can and can not say due to some higher management.
