The problem is not lack of love, its lack of creativity. Maybe if they have played many more strategy games, they could be inspired to try something that people get along… but even this is not a complain, i see a lot of references inside many of the mechanics.
It’s up to us to give the feedback and explain exactly what we or the “first time player of the game” would expect.
I know many people that have a nostalgia about the franchise but they get along other genres… i know the feeling, i am a casual at psychological terror, hack n slash, fps…
I hope the devs get the time and the feeling that the game will need the merchandise to every big feature and so…
RTS are niche and I see many indie developers giving all the labors and consideration they can to someone buy their game. Sci-fi games, slightly mythological or alien, ancient stuff… If the game thrives like Aoe3DE seemed most unlikely after the release [look how the game advanced and is becoming more unique and a milestone]
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The problem with AoEIIIDE when it was released had nothing to do with the game itself since it was just a remaster but with performance issues. AoEIV has lackluster mechanics, civ design, campaigns, and uninspired gameplay. A game can recover from performance issues but not with fundamental game design.
Seige spam is a problem caused by bad gameplay design, and it’ll be interesting to see how Relic tries to put a band-aid on it because so far all attempts have failed.
Relic has enough experience with developing RTS but just not with AoE. AoEIV is missing basic features all prior AoE games have had upon release. This is incomprehensible. I gave them a pass on some things because like everyone knows this is their first foray into the AoE sphere but for others, I will not. Relic are veterans in this genre of games.
AoEIV is the Frankenstein of the AoE franchise as it takes gameplay mechanics from previous games while adding very little on its own, but this version of Frankenstein isn’t greater than the sum of its parts. If one wants to play an RTS set in the medieval era there’s AoEIIDE, AoEIIIDE has innovation, deep mechanics, and stellar artillery, AoM is just a joy to play with wacky god powers and units.
What does AoEIV bring to the table that the other games come up short in? What does AoEIV do better? Sure, you can put units on walls but the only reason why the older games never had that is that it really wasn’t needed. Selecting a biome is cool but should have been better with different flora and fauna for each biome. Where are the birds?
AoEIV tries to be a jack-of-all-trades to entice players both old and new to the franchise. It tries to do too much with much too little. Esports players are frustrated due to balance and single players are bored with meh campaigns and poor AI.
This got more ranty than I liked. I’m critical of the game not because I hate it but the fact I love the AoE franchise. I want Word’s Edge to do better. We all do.
What can be done to salvage AoEIV? I don’t know. I doubt I’ll be playing it again for quite a while and I have no interest in future DLC unless it incorporates drastic changes. The bones of the game itself is what I have issues with. That is hard to fix.
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Don’t forget people who like co-op against AI. I can’t remember whether it was the source video, or WinterStarcraft’s analysis of it, about why the next big RTS will fail, but it was said that co-op against AI is the most popular way that people play RTS games. I’ve been playing some myself, queueing mainly for any of 2v2, 3v3 or 4v4 against Hard AI, and have generally found a game within a minute or two, even though I’ve been playing at times with quite low player count. Judging by the size of the list of people I’ve recently played with, it has mostly been different players every time, so there seem to be significant numbers of people doing this. The human team has won every single game I’ve played, and the other players have almost always seemed like solid players by my standard. We’re not playing against the hardest AI anyway, so the poor AI doesn’t seem to matter to me or the other people playing. I’m personally just looking for a nice relaxing stomping of the AI. Balance doesn’t seem to matter much to people either, a huge proportion of people play English or French, virtually nobody has played Delhi or Mongols.
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Sync kills aren’t physics at all, would be why 
There are no “sync kills” in AoE3. It seems you are confused, just watch the AoE3 video posted above.
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They were using sync kills from Dawn of War: Soulstorm to put down physics in Age IV.
I was just pointing out sync kills aren’t physics.
game from 2005 = AoE3
You’re right “sync kills” aren’t really physics, but he isn’t talking about Dawn of War in the first place, that’s where the confusion happened.
Anyway, for me the complete lack of ragdoll physics in AoE4 compared to AoE3 was the first glaring issue I noticed. Initially, in fact I assumed there is some kind of bug preventing the physics from happening, but at this point it’s become clear there isn’t an intention to implement such physics in AoE4 whatsoever. I think that’s an unfortunate decision.
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They just want this game to “look like” the cLaSsIc AOE2…that’s the reason.
BUT in the meantime you are not allowed to compare it to AOE2 on this forum.
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For God’s sake, nothing will save the game.
If you think so, you are naive.
I played the game for about 1 month and then I uninstalled it …
The game is terribly weird … These are either siege war games or the walls themselves all over the map. And the worst are maps where he says in the middle and battleships run along the river.
Really funny.
I am waiting for the announcement of a new strategy from Frost Giant.
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Ah right, I got my dates mixed up. My bad!
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@PreciousSprout very good suggestion with the in-game awards. It would be much more interesting to collect these if those things would also be available in-game.
An important part to salvage AOE4 is for me also a more “lively” AI. I made a post some time ago about this topic. Please give AI more life
Basically the AI should be more like in AOE3 where you play against someone, for example Napoleon. Even better like in the medieval game Stronghold. This would be a huge plus for casual players. It would make playing against the AI much more fun. This is also important when taunts get introduced. The AI should of course answer to a taunt. When you not play against someone like Napoleon who answers to the taunt? The whole civilization you play against?
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yeah saving aoe 4 means to re work the entire core game and civ design. Its hard to say but to save aoe 4 we have to put aoe 4 down.
A bunch of sadge AOE3 players on the AOE4 forum complaining… how about yall figure a way to recruit more players to your favored game?
AOE3 is one dimensional at the decent to high level, what creative about it? semi FF gg, same 2 players meet at each finals for a billion years.
Yeah and that definitely means “men falling to their knees when hit by a cannonball from an automatic cannon” in AOE4 is a much better physics than that in AOE3 because player number blahblahblah and semi FF blahblahblah and finals blahblahblah.
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Lets be smart and not give the poor attention seeker the attention he wants so much
if not for microsoft money, its safe to say this game would be much much lower than it is now, given how painfully slow the improvement rate is
Number one they aren’t all a bunch of sad aoe 3 players. Number 2 by your comments you obviously don’t play AoE 3.
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@Shneider177 I don’t play aoe3 but I don’t play aoe4 either and I have definitely played more of aoe4 than aoe3. As someone who doesn’t play both anymore I can see crystal clear aspects such as physics and details that are far superior in aoe3(2005) than aoe4(2021), and it’s simple unbelievable to think that an AAA of 2021 is unable to beat the pre sequel made in 2005 in these aspects. Out of curiosity , aoe1 was released in 1997, aoe3 was released in 2005 a gap of 8 years. Compare the diferences between those games(aoe3-aoe1), now think of aoe3(2005) and aoe4(2021) a gap of 16 years , 2x the time gap of the first age of empires to the third age of empires , do you think the quality diference gap of aoe4-aoe3 is even remotely close to the difference of aoe1-aoe3 even though we had twice the time gap of technological advancement in the gaming industry? And people wonder why the game is struggling to reach new publics, the franchise who has the brand and the fund to resurrect the dead genre not only didn’t improve the game but actually worsen the game in certain aspects (arguably the most important ones to show game quality), these are decisions beyond my comprehension.
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at this point after sooo many months and promises, almost nothing. i honestly cant believe how they cant change simple things such as for example: MAPS in short time periods! they are building expectations??? with the update that we all know is still incomplete?? if you know the game is dying RELEASE IT!!! is it so hard to understand??? lure players back into the game!! they want balance, give them balance, they want civs, bring them civs NOW. honestly, how do they expect to make good progess if they release content at this pace???.. its absurd…
Some people seem not to have the ability to understand the reason why one prefers some aspect of AOE2/3 over 4 is not because he/she is a malicious AOE2/3 player who wants to sabotage AOE4, but because he/she prefers this aspect of AOE2/3 over 4.
Even our most unbiased guy on this forum who does not want to entrench different communities would immediately accuse you as a “holy AOE2” player if you think some aspect of AOE2 is better than that of 4, even though there is a slight possibility that one just simply thinks this very single aspect of AOE2 is better than that of 4
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what can be done?
scrap it and start making AOE5 and in a few years we might have a decent RTS game
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