I honestly have a feeling you know something we all don’t 
I’ve been reading your replies for many things in many posts.
It’s gone from “I also don’t know why you would do this”
To
“Hang tight, good things are coming”
I Defs got a feeling you got an ear on some insight that’s made you so positive 
if he does, then aoe 4 did wrong even with the marketing, why would you show unfinished work 1 week before release?
At some point somebody put the “this is fine” stamp onto every feature you see in this game. Thats the act we mock. Not individual skills.
Imagine this would be some indie studio and the game would not have AOE in the name. Praise be, best luck to them. But no, it sees and presents itself as AAA, it sells like AAA and it (should) be funded and lead like AAA.
It should yeah 
20 characters.
Firstly, none of that justifies personally attacking the devs.
The “this is fine” stamp on everything started happening around the time you got the 25th “siege needs engineers” thread. At some point the complaints just start to sound like not only broken records, but actually attempting to bring the game down, and then the people who actually liked the game but had complaints won’t voice their complaints, and become full time defenders. This is classic polarization. This forum has been completely useless as a feedback hub since about a week after the stress test.
I actually think it would have been better for the game to not have AoE in the name. Because the truth is, most people that have played it think its really fun, many people said it just feels like an Age of Empires game, many have said that they love the asymmetry, the sound design and environments are almost unanimously praised. And the best thing you could do is to get this game separated from everyone’s preconceptions about what the next Age game should be like, and people might stop assigning malicious intent to the developers every chance they get.
No, I mean the literal process of designing and implementing something and then approving it as sufficient. That happened long before this forum got their hands on a build of the game.
It’s very naive of you (and many here) to think that anything said around this forum could actually hurt someone’s feeble feelZ enough to make a whole product fail.
That’s a twisted reality often used in the last years to cope when a game actually dies after release. “It’s the toxic fan’s fault!!!”. Lol, other games work perfectly fine and prosper with a ton of highly toxic fans, verbally beating each others skulls in on a daily basis (mobas, CSGO, battle royales).
I fully agree. Maybe that would’ve helped them internally to push some unique ideas forward instead of playing it save. Again the decision makers’ fault though to try and appeal to and please everybody.
Can we avoid this tedious blame game war. Everyone knows this is just going to go down a rabbit hole.
First of all, people who don’t like something in the game or don’t want something in a game make their own threads. You are NOT obligated to go onto that thread and comment. You choose to do it. And you choose to read it. Nobody on this forum is trying to bring the game down. It’s just this conspiracy theory of people who cannot comprehend that so many people dislike this game.
And who asked people to take it up upon themselves to be full time defenders. This forum is about discussion. Discuss. No one asked you to defend the game just because of some moral obligation to defend it. It’s the same broken records of jumping into every thread that criticises the game and acting like the anti-Christ.
Just like the way reddit is this garbage where people needlessly praise the game because they know the devs are watching. And it’s always the same people that I’ve ended up memorising their usernames. While official forums contains only people who are passionate about AOE and who just want to voice their opinions and feelings about the franchise or game.
But you think it’s useless because it has people who disagree with you. Atleast I admit that reddit is useless to me because I disagree with most of them.
Yes it would have been better not to push your own games under titles of established franchises. What was the biggest problem with DoW III? It wasn’t that it was an ugly game or anything. And there are people who defend that game. The biggest problem is that Relic tried to push their own game under the DoW franchise. Maybe you can complain that the DoW players had all these biases and were too conservative to let go of previous ideas and accept a new change. But when you tap into an established franchise, that is a massive risk you agree to take upon. Always. Especially a 20 year old established one which has so much sentimental value attached. Way beyond gameplay.
Or there is one other vErY uNlIkElY scenario (which of course did not happen and I made it up): whenever you criticizes about one single detail about the game, the “readability” crowd, the “gameplay is king” crowd, the “go play total war” crowd, the “you just want another AOE2/3” crowd, the “AOE2 did the same so it’s great” crowd (who miraculously rarely fought with the previous one) would swarm in and accuse you for attempting to bring down the game.
Over time, those people with general positive opinions but have one or two minor criticisms became active critics on this forum.
BTW, if people criticize something then the devs would consider improving it.
I can write posts praising the landmark system, civ-specific unit skins, more emphasis on gunpowder, and several other aspects I’m actually positive of, and make this forum very “cOnStRuCtIvE aNd UsEfUl”. But would the devs consider improving the animations, like those mentioned in this thread, after reading those praises?
The game should be called AOE because it is by all means an AOE, and probably the safest, most old-school and most AOE-y game you can find, introducing almost nothing new to the franchise like all its predecessors (golden ghost maybe?)
And if it is not called AOE you would not have so many people played it in beta in the first place.
I don’t really agree. I think the biggest problem of DoW3 was that it just wasn’t a good game. It wasn’t a good RTS, it wasn’t a good Warhammer game and it also wasn’t a good DoW game as a result. There were some high level design decisions that were wrong and the game didn’t work because of them.
If the game was great, just different, yeah there would definitely still be voices initially saying it’s not DoW, but they would be soon eclipsed by the voices saying that it’s a great game.
Well it seems that the biggest complaint was the deviation from the lore and the transition into MOBA style. Which people weren’t comfortable about.
“The RTS / MOBA hybrid launched in April 2017 and struggled to find an audience, with long-standing Dawn of War fans put off by the game’s art style and MOBA elements. Conversely, the game’s MOBA elements failed to attract fans of the genre.”
I mean, look at this steam thread. It is literally a replica of a back and forward thread here in AOE IV.
But you know what’s funny. The people defending DoW III are some of the same names I see defending AOE IV in this thread. That was the funniest find today.
Even this reddit thread people mention how Relic tried to push their own game onto the franchise.
Lmao, this is too much fun at this point
Haha nice. Guess thats part of their nature… a white knight always finds another rightous battle to fight 
You know that DoW 1 and 2 also were also Relic games, right? Not sure if that makes it better or worse though ^^
Oh then I don’t know what people are talking about when they say Relic pushed their own version of DoW.
You do realize that Relic was responsible for DoW1 and 2, right? And that DoW2 had the exact same issue with fan outcry when it radically changed the entire way the game played, before enough fans eventually came around to it to keep it going?
Dawn of War 3 didn’t fail because it tried something new - it failed because the core gameplay design just didn’t work well. It was a weird attempt to marry DoW1’s more traditional RTS with DoW2’s more hero-centered focus (along with some MOBA elements which didn’t really work) and ended up satisfying none of these camps.
Yeah I probably got confused by the comments that all imply that Relic changed the franchise. And tried to turn it into more of the competitive scene. But the fact they did that to their own game.
And the most common complaints of the game are all art style and MOBA bits. Based on the articles and threads.
I also never played DoW 3 myself and didn’t want to die uninformed back then : P
→ 2 Part video about the topic which seems to cover it quite well.
Also things like replacing actual cover system with some bubble gimmick.
There’s a lot in that game that was wrong and plain bad.
I basically went through the threads and game articles to see what everyone was saying.
I didn’t expect Relic to do that to their own game lol. It’s like Ensemble Studios coming to AOE and reversing their own progress. So I assumed that Relic didn’t handle 1 and 2.
It’s so weird how a game company can decide to shoot themselves in the foot like that.
Just your friendly pikemen summoning a wall from beyond.
Such a great “FOCUS ON READABILITY” example there.
Beyond lazy.
That’s why M$ got the best of the best for that job xD
Edit: Thats just mean talk btw. While DoW3 is a red flag, I believe that new team members and projects can completely 180 things. There are enough studios that did crappy movie license games and all of a sudden made an instant classic outside their genre.
