Depends on what the other bugs consist of. The Rus relic issue should have been included in this patch, and this patch should have come sooner. Part of what people are arguing here is that this patch should not have come nearly 3 weeks after launch, given their severity. People aren’t wrong that other games have knocked out serious bugs far quicker. That’s the thing about gaming. Many people in the AoE community have been to this rodeo before, so they know what to expect. I’m not even a big gamer or anything and I’ve played games that launched with much quicker support than this, and those games weren’t even commanding $60 for purchase either. Also, while I’m actually not that familiar with Relic’s history of patching with other games, I’ve read that slow updates are fairly standard with them.
I think that is actually a major issue here. If we were talking about a $30 game or something like that, people probably wouldn’t be as perturbed. But this is a $60 game that is selling well. If their team isn’t big or good enough to do better, they should have the money to bring on more, or better, talent.
Last thing I’ll sale is that while I don’t work in the gaming industry, I have worked on greenfield product launches and I’ve personally been able to fix more bugs than this, and more complicated than, let me see, “game localization issues” (so a few wrong translations?). And it doesn’t even seem like the Mongol TC issue was actually given a real fix, just a static tile limit from the opponent. So they’re going to have to address that again anyway. The only complicated fix here seems to be the camera panning performance issue. I get what you’re saying, and there are plenty of cases where it’s a reasonable assessment but this I think is just not it. It’s not like they are working on 20+ year old legacy code that they had no involvement in prior.
Like I said before, other games regularly do and have done better than this, and since they want to charge top dollar, they ought to do better themselves. The critic reviews might be positive but from my browsing of AoE community forums, this slow walking of critical bug fixes is not being taken well at all by actual players. For the sake of the game, I’d hope they find a way to pick up the pace.
I disagree with you on it being a major issue, but I completely understand where you’re coming from.
For me, I come from Relic’s games first and foremost. I have played more than a bit of AoE, but back in the AoE 1 / 2 days. Their patch speed is variable, depends on the game really. They have an old (read as: very old) reputation on being slow on patches, but they turned this around with various titles (like DoW II: Retribution, as they were able to break out from GfWL and the certification that came with that framework). But perceptions last. CoH 2 was impacted by them moving from THQ to SEGA, but that has received years of support at this point (with amazing support from the community, of course). But still, perceptions last.
Much like your talk of the AoE community, which I think is entirely reasonable. I share your hopes as I obviously want the game to do well as well. The last Relic game I played was DoW III, which I don’t really need to re-tread here, but it got a (sizeable) day 0 / 1 patch. Months later people were still repeating things about the game that that patch had addressed. So it’s hard for me to look at noise and see it, sometimes, as anything but noise.
The proof will be in the pudding, is the phrase I think. It certainly feels like we’re a long way out from release, but the general reception of the game isn’t decided yet. I do think that what they do next will be critical to the longevity of the title. But we’re early enough for me to still be optimistic (which is in large part why I am, Council badge or no Council badge. This is how I always am, and have been for close to two decades of being online like this, hah).
Do we know how long it takes something to be published on the GamePass? Maybe that is holding them back, the steamdb is showing other versions for quite a while now.
Also them fixing an engine specific performance issue first could also implicate that it was blocking anything else, since when working on the base you should not change anything above that.
As I said, the main problem stems from them not telling us since the closed beta what their plans are. Back then they announced that they would tell us about the things they learned from the closed beta, which is still missing. Then they talked about an E-Mail reaching us about the insider customization items in the game and how to unlock them, which is still missing. In latest streams they are now mentioning a roadmap for November, which is half over
I have no idea, sorry. All we have is what’s recorded in SteamDB, but that’s only one half of the equation obviously. From a quick Google there are some comments that say GamePass titles are bound to console verification processes, but I have no idea how accurate that is (especially as console certification is faster these days than it used to be, some years ago).
Man its always funny when people come on here thinking they should receive no resistance whenever they “give criticism”.
It’s a damn forum and we will disagree on things. Either accept that what you say will be scrutinized or just never post.
Moment someone gives a possible reason why Relic might be doing what they’re doing we go straight to calling people fanboys? What is this hysteria?
Let’s just focus on discussing the actual topic rather than trying to completely dismiss people’s arguments based on your prejudice.
I think we have grown accustomed to day-one patches. To say they are unprofessional based on this is mildly unreasonable. Worlds Edge is in charge of AoE4’s patches IIRC as well as some people from Microsoft. I don’t think I, you, or anyone really except for them can speak on their process to come to the conclusion that they are unprofessional. If we were to look at that process, we may have a different opinion on it.
Which isn’t exactly a new game. That game was released in 2005-- and has been molded since then, AoE3DE is certainly part of that molding process and could overall be more familiar to update and work out problems
I think this would be a good idea for ranked. Probably not for normals or quick match.
I think we’ve grown accustomed to games requiring day-one patches, which is unfortunate in and of itself. Hopefully we never get accustomed to games both requiring them and not getting them.
Rarely do games require day 1 patches for them to boot. Technically they could release the game in it’s closed beta state and just grey out everything not included, like they did with ranked play. AoE4 required a day 1 patch and still requires a day 18 patch by any reasonable measure, whether it’s for missing features, clear balance issues (will any dev tell you that you shouldn’t alt-f4 on a water map right now with a straight face?), technical issues and bugs.
In my opinion people are demanding things of the developers that simply isn’t reasonable. I understand most of the issues talked about here in the forums and I too want to see those issues addressed in a future patch.
But I don’t just understand how people can say that the developers are lazy or unprofessional because they don’t meet your own expectations? Sorry the one to blame is “us” the players who demand things so fast without thinking of all the reasons WHY it isn’t fixed or addressed yet.
Right now we can only speculate and no matter how much someone knows about development, if you aren’t a part of the Relic team who is working on this game NONE of us know their process, how they prioritise and what’s already being worked on and other things such as their deadline on when to have a patch ready for release.
I get you we all want the issues addressed and fixed but please have patience and keep sending them feedback that’s all we can do and hope they address it as soon as possible. And by the way I don’t think that this game is in no way as bad as some people make it out to be, but this is my personal opinion and I respect yours even if I disagree.
Well-- there are investors, publishers-- etc pushing things too. Devs do a lot of the work and I am sure they don’t like crunch-- and would rather delay a game than rush it. Also they are not really obligated to just spill the beans to us. We just expect it.
It’s really sad that it got to a point where paying customers think it’s unreasonable to get a functional product and they instead need to come up with the reasons themselves why it didn’t and couldn’t be fixed yet.
Imagine you bought a car, and the windshield wipers weren’t working. How much effort would you spend on thinking about all the reasons why it isn’t working? Would you, like others here, demand people get a degree in automotive engineering before they complain about issues in the car they paid good money for?
The developers who write code, are overworked and end of fixing these issues are not even the problem so gatekeeping criticism by requiring computer science degrees and at least 5 years of experience isn’t even relevant. The problem is that, as usual, releasing games in this state maximizes profit and that’s the only thing that matters. We who rush to buy an early access title for $60, and those that pay an extra $20 for an artwork compilation that includes a single PNG guarantee that this practice won’t change any time soon.
I am aware of that and was because of that prepared to see any closed beta/stress test feedback implemented post-launch.
What really makes this tiresome is them promising communication since the beginning and not delivering.
This alone is very informative for me as a time traveller from 2000s. Now I finally know the current practice is that game developers give away games for free or even pay “us” players to play their games, as part of the charity.
It may surprise you but back in our times we actually had to spend money on games, and were called “consumers”.
We all have different opinions on what “unfinished” means it seems, and therefore it’s pointless to try and argue with someone who doesn’t agree with you or have another opinion.
I didn’t buy a half car, I bought and got exactly what I was told and I knew beforehand that things like mod support will come sometime 2022. Do I like that they do this and split up the content? No not really but it’s what it is and today this is sadly how the gaming industry works but that has probably more to do with the men I suits who decide this and the developers normally don’t have much say in the matter.
Again let me be clear the game is FAR from perfect and it has many things still need to be addressed/changed to become better, but I simply disagree that the game is in an “unplayable” state but that doesn’t mean I don’t have issues with the game, I do and I want to see it fixed/addressed.
But at the same time I can’t sit here and say that the developers are lazy and unprofessional without proper proof that they are indeed working in a unprofessional way. We right now make assumptions and speculate because we are unhappy that certain things haven’t gotten fixed yet and I agree it sucks but it’s not as bad as it sounds. The game is still very fun to play and has great potential.
Don’t get me started on the deluxe edition, it’s simply waste of money and the bonus content you get is not worth that extra price.
I 100% agree, not long ago there was whistleblowing of just how horrible it is to work in the games industry. Staying at work for 24hours, working on holidays, and fears of being laid-off. All for meeting a crazy quota to please fans and shareholders.
This game is a job, could you imagine if you where at work and an entire group of people who you don’t know personally are just bashing you nonstop online because of your job performance.
Im not saying people shouldn’t be criticized, by all means if it is a let down it is a let down. However the harshness could be toned back a bit. Deeming the game as the worst thing in the history of everything ever, is honestly unfair.
Is it possible that they might see communication differently than you do? I see and understand their communication. Their bug tracking tells me that, when I post on the forums and get a response from Microsoft, it tells me that.
What you consider lack of communication seems like it could be you’re not getting the specific answers to what you consider to be the biggest problems. especially when they may have a different perspective on bigger problems.
While it’s frustrating and tiresome to not hear what you want from them, I also find it mildly unreasonable. Relic for example is only 250 people or so and that doesn’t speak to how many of those worked on AoE4, could have been 15 or 30, where as red dead 2 had 1600 people working on it.
Starcraft 2 had 40 people working on it in 2008. NONE of this even speaks on if they have someone doing public relations in communicating with users or how well they do it.
I’m fine with how AoE4 is being handled, I think it is professional, and I think the future of AoE is in good hands with Microsoft, relic, world’s edge and so on.
AoE4 will be around for a long time. The game will have room to grow and be successful. Even when AoE3 was considered a poor release-- it was still a good game with an active community with people that love that game.
