Totally agree with you.
From Aoe2 Steam community
People Simply think graphic and animation are bad.
4 Likes
If only they had looked out for feedback in the early stages of development… if only… I see the same complaints from everyone.
- Graphics
- Animations
- Blood
These are so basic stuff! The most basic to please your core fanbase. And again, those are to attract the players in the game, at the moment we can only make assumptions of how good or bad the gameplay is or is not.
Instead they opted for a tiny elitist circle of esport players…
Yeah，I admit that gameplay is also important. However, must game developers have to make a choose between picture quality and gameplay? Many RTS do well in both.
Maybe instant turning rate truely raised the micro limit of AoE II. But, it’s 2021 now. Do we still have to follow the mode of a game 20 years ago? Relic has the ability to improve the micro feel without sacrificing graphic, or optimize turning animation at least. So far, I don’t think they’re doing well enough.
Those new players may easily lose interest to the game, just because of those terrible animaitions. That’s what I’m worried about.
1 Like
=> elephant attack animation looks really bad. it doesn’t looks like it is attacking someing but dancing instead. it should maybe have a unique attack animation when attacking a building:
Ohttps://youtu.be/TTaCrP_U4ao?t=218
Ohttps://youtu.be/TTaCrP_U4ao?t=228 (EDIT: in this particular sequence i also realised that the horse archer unit do not release the string of the bow but draw the string to fire the arrow and undraw it back instead which does look very odd)
=> i believe units should have a different animation depending on if they attack a building or a unit overall. tis would prevent this wired loooking attack animation of a torch holder hitting a wall or tower from so far away.
Ohttps://youtu.be/TTaCrP_U4ao?t=212
=> some archers attack animation is not in sync with arrow firing:
Ohttps://youtu.be/TTaCrP_U4ao?t=172
Ohttps://youtu.be/TTaCrP_U4ao?t=185
=> some infantry attack animation has animation cancel:
Ohttps://youtu.be/TTaCrP_U4ao?t=315
=> walls falling down make rumble appear too soon under the falling wall (and too large?):
Ohttps://youtu.be/TTaCrP_U4ao?t=327
=> units instant rotation looks awefull for a 3D game. make it super fast rotation instead please:
Ohttps://youtu.be/TTaCrP_U4ao?t=82
=> the charge animation of units looks really cool (tho elephants seemed to not have one?) but the smoke coming off cavalry charges feels off. i understand the reason behind it but maybe would it be better if it had a shockwave effect instead of this puff of smoke which cover the visibility of the unit. puff of smokes are for gunpowder weapons. don’t make it more confusing by also giving the same effect to unit which have nothing to do with gunpowder:
Ohttps://youtu.be/TTaCrP_U4ao?t=173
(delet the O before each link. did this because of the number of link limitation for new users)
6 Likes
Agree, and in 2021 one would expect a little more complex/immersive animations by now (They always show us how they use fancy suits to capture movement just to make the same animations we’ve got since 2000 or worst in this case)
Another thing that would be coold to add is some kind of takedown in the animations, when an enemy is 1 hit per example the next unit to hit for example could do some sort of “special movement” to finish it of (Just something nice to have graphically, not really a buffed attack or anything like that), this could be awesome and it can be exploited in many ways if you do a bunch of takedowns specifically for each of the 8 Civs.
takedowns would have been a super nice additional touch. (just like the nice charging animation)
but they better fix the current animations problems instead of adding new ones.
1 Like
Yeah, of course, just throwing ideas around 
Perhaps we get lucky and they do both.
The council consists of casual AND pro players from aoe 1, 2 and 3. So it’s not catering only to pro players. I never said that things shouldn’t be improved visually or that it should cater only to pro’s and that vipers word is king. I said that council had some feedback on speed of the game and that it was improved and could be the reason that it now looks goofy. And I said that keeping turning rates as they are now will mean that some sacrifices on visuals should be made (although it can for sure look better then it is now) or the other way around. And the question is to what extent do we want this. Personally I like responsive units and would be willing tomsacrifice a bit of visuals in order to achieve this.
3 Likes
Yeah I’m also worried a bit at the moment, some people say polishing is done in the last 6 months. To be honest it would be nice to know from relic whether this is true and whether some of our criticism was in their pipeline already (so they accounted for it) or whether they theirselves were really content with some of the points mentioned and believed them to be finished.
I am on the community council. A number of us are competitive Age players, but a number of us are not. Some of us are there for our general knowledge/enthusiasm/expertise. I am not a competitive player. Some of us are from AoE2 and others of us are from the other games, such as Age of Empires Online, AoM, AoE3, and AoE1. I have played the crap out of all of them over the years. I can assure you that you don’t need a bunch of AoE2 tournament wins to know the game was too slow.
1 Like
That’s interesting. If I asked your personal preference however would you say slow or fast? 
I ask because I know you are a big AoEO fan and you’ve stated
somewhere in the past that you like them fast more.
So please tell us the common folks since you have played the game when you say too slow was it much slower than AoE2 and what’s its current state? Is it closer to AoE2 or AoE3 or…?
How much of an esport is the game right now and do the devs actually intent to give more weight on the competitive part of the game? Because there are many people who are concerned by the impact of esports on both gameplay and graphics.
And what’s the issue with it being slow? AOEII was fine being slow. Do you think a 20 year old game has remained this popular because people wanted it to be different? There have been a myriad other faster paced strategy games ever since.
You can appreciate the little things in a slower strategy game, like city/base building, the feeling of accomplishment when moving through the ages, not just for the sake of unlocking new units and techs. Like I said in another thread, the stronger units and techs should be a consequence of your historical progress and success, not simply a way to defeat your opponent faster. True, this is in the end a military game and not Civilization VI, but there are way better games for the competitive folk out there. AOE has always struck a good balance between a city building strategy game and something super fast paced like StarCraft.
AOE III was far less popular because it tried to speed up the base building and resource collection aspects with the home cities and such.
Comments such as this are basically materializing my biggest fears about AOE IV
1 Like
I am not comfortable describing how aoe4 felt any more than others have already done so. I’ve played it since 2017, but I understand that the terms of my NDA prohibit me from discussing the substantive game publicly. I saw some council members make some substantive comments about the game speed (which surprised me), but apparently that is now out of the bag.
I think as an AoE2 player you may be relieved to hear that other AoE2 players also found the game too slow.
3 Likes
If you want blood that bad I’m sure someone will make a mod for blood, that is easily done. The animations could use some tweaking and the graphics are fine imo
That’s fair and if that’s what the majority wants then ok, but being a long time AOE II player I always thought the pace was fine. I agree that after the first couple of min or so after all sheep are found and you’re simply waiting to amass enough resources to advance it was a bit of a drag, but all a new AOE game needed was some new ideas to keep you busy/entertained in the meantime. The dark ages can be way more interesting and varied. You can have bonuses for the placement of certain buildings so you have to spend time thinking about city layout and don’t throw houses as walls. There can be mini-games within each match, especially in the early stages where it should be kind of a survival mini game because your technology is so limited. I feel like that was the intention with wolves (etc) in AOE II but it was oversimplified probably because the code/engine back then didn’t allow for much else. To be fair, Civilization also did a poor job with barbarians in a similar way.
The first time I heard AOE IV was going back to medieval ages I idealized my perfect AOE II evolution with a modern game engine, physics and mechanics, but keeping the core AOE II pacing and feel intact. I guess this won’t be that.
to be fair, with millions of players, it is impossible for any game to ever be the perfect game for any of us. but I am confident it is possible to get pretty close for many players
7 Likes
For nearly all games in general it’s really not a bad idea at all to make some compromises in animation quality if it means you are better able to obtain the “feel” that you want from a game. Its an easier decision to make as well when you consider the constraints of time and budget. I would very much hate to waste an animators time by telling him to animate a heavy Calvary unit to turn at a certain speed when their talents are far better spent in other areas.
We are talking about turn rates here and unit responsiveness. Actually aoe2 has very fast (almost instant) turn rates which doesn’t look weird in an old 2d game, but it does when going 3d and thus some extra animation is needed to make it look better. I feel like you are talking about overall pace of the game which indeed is on the slower side for aoe2.
1 Like
Ah! My bad. The title makes sense now 
Yeah, 3D models “skipping” movement frames look weird. If you look closely at the gameplay trailers, Relic/Microsoft try very hard to avoid showing units changing direction. I think they know.
It’s especially bad when the elephants end up facing the wall and have to turn:
8 Likes