Content attracts new players and content usually translates to complexity.
So you need good tutorials, good sp campaigns to encourage people to explore as much as the game offers. AOE3 ironically did the direct opposite: it had the richest civ designs, and the most barebone sp contents to guide you. You were playing trimmed versions of a small portion of the civs you have in the actual game. Then all that’s left for you is skirmish or pvp which is vastly different.
And they haven’t even tried improving that since 2005. Too early for self-denial. I’ve seen far more complicated games getting far bigger audiences,
This is just my opinion, but for me the problem is not the system, the problem is that the original developers implemented it wrong, and it’s too late to fix the error without redoing the whole game.
I think it’s a combined effect of the original upgrade system AND the lack of campaigns (compared to civ diversity of course).
There are traces of a conquest mode (world map) and that’s probably what the upgrade system was meant for. Then they scrapped it.
And that leads to the problem. Guidance and encouragement is important. You cannot just throw everything in front of players and let them figure out by themselves.
Maybe they were thinking the whole “grinding to get new cards” is some sort of meta-campaign but it is not. A true meta-campaign needs meta-objectives that are encouraging. I need to have stronger motivations to do that. It can either be a storyline or a conquest map where I have clear objectives, but NOT just your random skirmish. It does not make players stick longer. It makes players drop far before they have explored the game. In short:
Finishing a campaign scenario or capturing a territory and gain a new card - Yay.
Need to play another random skirmish to gain a new card - Nope.
Not to mention most civs are next to unplayable without all cards. The vanilla 8 civs had already far more diversity and contents than any other AOE, even more than the 8 in AOE4 if you consider cards. But you get 3 short campaigns where you’re playing trimmed Spanish, not-Germans and not-British.
Games like Total War had far more complicated military and eco but they are received well and have a large audience. Why? Capturing an actual region on the actual world map where I can see my nation grow and benefit from it later on is far more encouraging than “I won another random skirmish”.
That makes a bigger difference than it seems.
Mmmm maybe the could copy the Aom system in which every god has its powers and units and every shipment you could choose between 4 really powerful cards? Depending on which politician you use to age up, similar to Aom but without the 25 cards, it’s just an idea
This might be controversial considering where it’s coming from but one thing that could come over from AoEIV is masteries. Masteries incentivize players to explore all that a civ has to offer and act like a 2nd batch of achievements within the game itself. I think something like that could be helpful to new players.
I don’t think it’s controversial…I think the game really needs something like that.
It could even do better than AOE4. Maybe incorporate something like a short scenario or a narrator with personality. AOE4 kinda traps itself in some “documentary style” which does not make it more appealing.
Look we human beings are just that shallow.
British and French and Spanish are more interesting than “boom civ” “cavalry civ” “faster shipment civ”.
Campaign maps and stories are more interesting than a cold panel of progression trees.
Winning a gold medal on your list of missions for gaining some “mastery” is more interesting than “congratulations you become 5% better as a player. Now grind another 10 games to figure out what to improve next”.
I agree, but it also seems to me that the shipping mechanics are poorly integrated into the game, there are shipments that are absurd or useless, I think that if the original developers had done things right from the beginning, perhaps the game would have been more popular. A global conquest map would have made perfect sense with a better integrated shipping system.
It would be more similar to the American and African civilizations, each age would give you 2 cards and the metropolis cards would all have to be competitive, for example, the shipments of units that the Incas have, these cards give you a choice between a good amount of unit or less units, but with an extra improvement.
With the above change, the units should be the same but gain differences based on which cards you sent, for example, Spain would have the conquistador as a replacement for the dragon, but it would work exactly the same as a normal dragon. with one card you could get 5 conqistares plus a 15% improvement to life points and then another that gives you 10 conquerors and increases their shooting distance. Those changes alone would give them a huge advantage against other dragon units, but those advantages wouldn’t be big enough to break the game.
Obviously these changes would require redoing the game practically from scratch and the change would be so big that it would make more sense to make a new game. In addition, it does not make sense to make this change, because what for many is the fun of the game would be lost.
It pains me to say it, but the game is destined to remain with the design flaws that it carries from its original creation, we can only accept them and have fun with the positive parts of the game.
According to the wiki they are called Federal Americans or Post Colonial Nations…
They are not going to remove the card deck system (the whole game is focused on this system for the experience resource)…if people want to play without decks they can do it, but the system is not going to be removed…
They do not vary too much since the powers of the gods and the cards (except the infinite ones) are for a single use…
We agree on that…
Or just as AoEO…
I agree with that…
It is that the exclusive bonuses of the civs come with the cards (for example, the church card)… then you have the basic bonuses of each civ…
That’s true… if you had more campaigns, tutorials (really, not the one we have in the game) and game modes, people could learn the complexity of the game… I’ve been in the game for over 1107 hours ( plus dozens of hours in the legacy) and I’ve barely dug into the game (I’ve mained with British, American, Mexican, Ethiopian and now Italian)…
For that you make yourself a deck of 16 very good cards and that’s it…
It seems good to me, I finished the AoE 4 campaigns and if it weren’t for the masteries I wouldn’t even play the game…
That’s true…
Yes, the devs wanted to innovate too much (it’s okay not to stay in a comfort zone), but maybe they paid for sinners… AoE 3 was hit by having fictional historical campaigns and having to unlock all the cards, in addition to not having AoE 2 classics maps in Europe (like Black Forest or Scandinavia)…If AoE 3 had come out as it is now in 2005 it would have hit it spectacularly…now it must live in the shadow of AoE 2 and AoE 4…
Honestly, I think the real problem with the original game was a combination of not knowing how to implement the card system to all civs and deviating from the core theme of the game right at the end.
I don’t think AOE3DE has to live in the shadow of other games in the series, it just needs the developers to focus on completing the continents they already have to avoid making the game feel incomplete. Also what I want to get to with all the conversation is that the game is not going to change and we should accept it.
Obviously the game has room for improvement, but we don’t gain anything by proposing things that will never come true.
Sí se puede ver…cuando te metes en la pestaña de diplomacia y clickeas en las banderas al lado de los nombres de los jugadores,ves las barajas y las metropolis de los demás jugadores…
Sí,yo lo hacía cuando era chico y jugaba con la IA para ver sus barajas y metrópolis nomás xd…muchos en el multi se burlan de mis barajas,pero la idea es jugar con una baraja propia con la que te sientas comodo,no vas a ser mejor por usar la baraja de un pro random…
No hay por qué reírse de la baraja de uno, la idea de este juego es crear tu estrategia para ganarle al contrincante. A mis amigos que son nuevos les aconsejo qué envíos poner en sus barajas, pero si pueden personalizar su mazo mejor. Jugar siempre con la estrategia agena es aburrido.
Todavia hay muchos errores en el juego, tanto en multijugador como en contenido de un solo jugador.
Por ejemplo sobre las desconexiones hasta el dia de hoy, errores con los contenidos descargables de nuevos modelos para los heroes y exploradores, errores visuales en escenarios y cinematicas de campañas y asi la lista sigue y sigue.
