This is how things are balanced. You set the min spec to the minimum hardware that can handle the game at minimum settings. This means the min spec should be able to play the game with the graphics turned down, not that the min spec is set super low and then restrictions are placed based on that.
Not only that, but performance is only one reason to limit the zoom level. The game is balanced around how much you can see and control at once, not some arbitrary zoom level while letting people use whatever they want.
In a world where making the play experience fair is important to people.
Because I don’t think that the zoom level is arbitrarily set like you seem to, and I understand that the setting actually does matter to how the game plays and is designed.
Since I’m not ignorant of game design and how different mechanics impact user interactions with it, I understand that the setting is part of the game experience and haven’t found it to be OMG THE WORST THING EVER!!!
I can still completely play the game without any problems which means it’s a minor annoyance at worst.
I never said that it is set arbitrarily. I said that it plays aweful in the current setting and is set very low compared to other games and insufficient to support the current gameplay of AOE4.
Going by your logic it is set low because of performance issues for the lowest spec user (highly doubtful btw). That is a stupid idea since (again, and you ignored that point) there are other ways to gain performance.
And maybe, JUST MAYBE…they went too far in their quest for backwards compatibility. Maybe they should not force the specs down to absolute potato if the zoom distance suffers from that.
This has nothing to do with fairness. It is the result of stupid design or inept craftsmanship (or a mix of both), later rebranded as fairness.
Maybe it started out with the honest attempt of including as many specs as possible, but at some point it turned into a stupid idea since they started sacrificing something major like the zoom level and didn’t change their path.
Just because you don’t need it doesn’t make it a highly desirable feature for others.
You wanted to allow any setting up to the maximum that a map can allow, that’s pretty arbitrary.
The setting may be low compared to other games but plenty of people somehow manage to play it anyway. It would seem that this is one of those issues that’s more a matter of preference than anything.
Yes, there are but so what? Ensuring everyone can enjoy the game fairly matters and zoom impacts gameplay not just performance. Making sure everyone with their other settings appropriately set for their hardware level can enjoy the game the same.
You also don’t seem to understand at all what I’m saying, min specs are set based on the minimum hardware that can play at target settings; it’s set based on the game. They don’t set the min spec then build the game around it.
No, it’s just not what you want.
Considering that AoE4 has homing missiles, increased zoom is going to mean even more of an advantage as micro will be less important and having a huge zoom will massively change how people play when they can just attack-move everywhere.
Just because some people want it doesn’t mean that it it’s widely desirable, nor does it mean that it wouldn’t have an impact on gameplay.
Maybe the zoom level will be changed, maybe not. But it will change how people play if it changes because it does, in fact, impact gameplay.
Personally I cant stand the position of the resources,
I just prefer them at the top of the screen - obviously this is a learned behaviour - but its just so much more comfortable to have it at the top.
( I would settle for having it at the top of command bar, but the import part is below)
I hate vertically stacked resources, if it was at the top and vertically stacked I’d hate it. It needs to be long, to minimise its screen usage and so that when you’re looking for which resource to look at, the number is by itself. You don’t have to parse up or down in the table to make sure your on the same place.
To explain better, all the numbers for all resources are within the same tiny square - which hurts readibility, having distance between them makes checking gold vs checking food a different part of the screen , which sounds unintuituve and like poor UI but in practice is actually superior because its easier to read the resource you actually care about. It separates the check in your mind and muscle memory.
Compare this to a table where its very hard to pinpoint aspects of the vertical stacked table, and you always end up reading it from top down (albeit fastly, it feels awkward)… You kinda “identify the position of resource table” in your mind, and then you have to do a second “identify position of gold specifically” by reading down the table. Its hard work yo.
No, it is not. I clearly state that the maximum is a technical given. A sensible one at that… not the the rabbit hole of ensuring “fair” (as in: no loss in performance on zoom) support for absolute low end specs, which we went down after.
Yeah, I heard enough arrogant talk and we are going in circles at this point. The lame old “it’s just what you want” intensifies as well… just check out any (countless yt channels, reddit, aoezone, steam, …) source of information about AOE4, and you will constantly stumble over that complaint. Absolutely not limited to this forum and certainly not only voiced by me. It’s just your highly disingenuous way of trying to shut down the argument and discredit me.
The fact that you won’t acknowledge that the devs could’ve handled the issue of low specs having performance issues when zooming out differently on a technical level, shows that you have no clue about the importance of the zoom feature for this genre in general, and AOE’s playstlye in particular.
There are outliers like SC2, which perfectly crafted gameplay around a fixed camera angle and limited fov, but this game certainly doesn’t do that.
Do you at all understand how gameplay and different mechanic interact? Or understand how settings are determined?
Because it seems like you’re just making a ton of assumptions based on zero experience in actually making games.
Let me spell it out for you so you can understand:
Devs determine what they want the gameplay experience to be, this includes the zoom level.
Devs determine what the minimum spec is that can run the minimum experience.
Game is balanced around all the game mechanics, including how large a field of view players have.
This is not some thing where they’re restricting the level because some people can’t zoom the map out all the way to the edges due to their hardware.
You’re so focused on the term min spec that you just completely lack any understanding of what’s actually being said/proposed.
No we don’t, and if you can’t understand how missiles that always hit are problematic in a game where people can zoom out and see the whole map, then you need to spend more time educating yourself on game design and less time just playing games and thinking that somehow is the same thing; if it was anyone could be a game designer and all games would be awesome.
Canceling my pre-order was one of the best decisions I have made in a while. I will buy it next year then (probably, probably not buy it until I think the game is ready-state). This game is too busy pleasing “influencers” and “council” members but they have no time to take some fair feedback community has given to them.
This is why a number of us posted screenshots of earlier Age games measuring the relative widths of Town Centers on the viewable screen and similar universal benchmarks. Regardless of these objective comparisons, AoE4 continues to fall short.
I gave my feedback on the zoom and am current dissatisfied with what they left us with. By all means continue to ask the devs to fix something you care about.
But don’t mistake my theorising of why they didn’t do it properly as a defense against a proper implementation of it.
I am also aware you dislike Aoe IV for a myriad of reasons and zoom will definitely not change that.
I really liked AoE4, but the UI is one of the things I have criticisms to do.
When you compare the balance between micro and macro of the AoE franchise with other RTS like Starcraft II or Warcraft, we see that the last two give more emphasis on the micro, on the individual management of the units, this reflects in a closer zoom of the units, because it is easier to handle them. In AoE, its emphasis is much more on the macro, noticeable even in the complexity of managing resources and their randomly generated positions. For me, it doesn’t make sense for a franchise like AoE, which has always been more focused on macro compared to others, to have a zoom so close and with such bad micro tools (UI, for example). So what is the use of a Zoom so close if I have such bad tools for my micro units? Even the hotkey have little and bad customization and I have doubts if they will change that significantly in the future, I wish I was wrong.
When it comes to hotkeys, they said they are going to improve them, but for nopw the game is going to launch like this, without much hotkey customisation. Nevertheless, hotkeys deserve a separated thread on their own.
I also gave my feedback on the zoom in the CB and am satisfied with the improvement in the TST(wow, look, there are people on the other side too).
I feel like the zoom rage quieted down overall from the CB to the TST to now - comparing my memory of how many different people wanted more zoom in CB (i think it was basically the most requested change) to the lesser amount during the TST (siege crew drama and ballistics much more talked about now). Pretty sure no more changes are coming.
Note that there is also always going to be less posting in support of the opinion “meh, it’s fine” than the other side of “it’s ■■■■, fix or else”
Aoe3 was a good game without that , we didn’t have that many competitive players but it’s clearly one of the best RTS I have ever played, also you can micro without unit selection box , just clicking two times a unit you could micro all units of that type. Same with aoe2
But why? Why why why . Why this is a bad thing? Aoe3 was never meant to surpass AoM for example. Aoe4 is just the new game of aoe , nothing more.
Can anyone think of an example of people forwarding a franchise without actually forwarding a franchise? INTENTIONALLY
Can someone give me an example of people making completely new sequels with the intention of still piggy backing off their 20 year old games? I’d like to know
Thank God Assassins Creed didn’t just admit AC1 or 2 as being their God to never surpass. We’d never have attempts like the recent 3 series.
I am not sure that Age of Empires fits neatly into a box. It’s a unique franchise where there’s several existing communities playing several different games, two of which are 15+ years old and still in active development with apparently viable business models for years to come.
This is very different from any number of other franchises I am familiar with where the player base generally moves from one game to the next and to the next.
If I were in charge of this franchise, I would also want to position AoE4 somewhere in that market to both appeal to veteran players and attract new players while also leaving room for the earlier profitable games to continue to thrive. Let’s face it, we Age fans are deeply loyal to our preferred games. The best way to make us all happy may be to cultivate a garden of Age games rather than chop one down and replace it with another.
I see World’s Edge positioning AoE4 into a garden of Age games and working to figure out how to do so profitably. That’s the best move.
