I’m watching the documentary and I am so glad relic did well with AOE IV. While there are graphical complaints that we can always ask for, they did not do this to the franchise.
Oh my god, so thankful.
Please relic bring in all the graphical improvements in the DLC and you’ll have a very content player base lol
But DoW III took such a wild turn, I feel so sorry for the fans of the franchise
this is not sarcasm for anyone thinking it is
One thing though, how bloody amazing was the DoW III trailer. If only Relic did that good trailer for AOE IV
I do not claim that incessant negativity on the part of a few people in this forum is going to bring this game down, I think its going to do well. I’m saying that to others who actually liked the game seeing the same people create the same threads and the same polls over and over again, it seems like they would rather the game fail than admit anyone could like this game. I’m not really sure what “feelz” have to do with any of that?
Ah gotcha, I misunderstood then. Yes, a game was designed the way the developer wanted it to be designed.
Fair enough, all I meant was that when you have a very vocal subset of a community, very often you develop direct opposition. And in a passionate area such as this, polarization.
And a lot of them.
Correct, I’m not obligated to do any of that, but I like to because I feel that there are counterarguments to be made, as was said earlier, this is a place for discussion. I personally dont think anyone here is actually trying to bring the game down, I said thats what it feels like to many. And I think there are some people here who would rather see the game fail in its current state because they dont like the direction the devs took, than to admit there is anyone but
AoE zealots who liked the game.
I think its probably more likely that the people who are negative about the games outcome gravitate here bc its a negative atmosphere, and the opposite has happened at reddit.
No I think its useless because there hasnt been any new criticisms here at all. The other day a discussion was had about how someone liked the look of castle age houses and almost immediately a comical poll was made “Are metal roofs good for the game” or something ridiculous like that. This place is not helpful anymore from a devs perspective.
Readability and gameplay are sometimes preferred by players over graphical fidelity. That doesnt mean its the correct answer, its just a difference in priorities and preferences among different types of players. I dont see how this is any different than the “mobile game” crowd. As for the total war crowd there does seem to be a strange push to make RTS games more like Total War games which seems unfitting to me, but again, opinions.
Fully agree, and Ive said this many times. My point is not that criticisms should not be made, both positive and negative feedback are very important for a development team. But theres very little coming from this forum in the way of new constructive criticism, and even less in the form of new positive feedback. Reddit actually seems to theorycraft a bit, which actually is useful for the balance team, however I would bet theres very little useful feedback coming out of there anymore either.
“Readability is important” and “Everything from the lack of details, to the excessive use of player color, can be justified by readability” are totally different arguments.
Nobody is going to argue whether “readability is important”. Just like nobody is going to argue whether “gameplay is important”. What people actually disagree is what is GOOD readability, and to what degree you can sacrifice some of it for something else (which may not be a problem at all). The thing is whenever a criticism is made, READABILITY is immediately tossed out as the holy grail and the justification of everything.
When someone makes a criticism about details and graphics, he is not naturally negating readability or suggesting sacrificing readability entirely just for the details.
Unfortunately that’s how the “readability” crowd seem to react to those kind of criticisms: “You want something? You are sacrificing readability for your personal taste! Go play total war!”
Ah I see, and that totally justifies pushing whoever wants a little more details to go and play total war. Because there is a lurking total war party who tries to undermine the game it is totally fine to purge the slightest attempt.
I get that, but they don’t have an unlimited supply of time and money to do everything to perfection. Unless you think they should maybe start a Kickstarter phase of production where things get reworked and more finely polished for 6 to 12 months through crowd-funding?
In terms of graphical fidelity, animations, and the like, I bet they have high-res stuff on their dev machines but decided to scale some things back for a worldwide release on many forms of computers. If they were developing solely for the Playstation 5 or Xbox Series X, surely the game would look a little different and less time would’ve been spent scaling things back?
It does feel and play a lot like Age of Empires. For the AAA part, I’ll reserve comment until it actually releases and we see the final game looks like and plays like, and see how much depth there is to it. And also hopefully they will share their roadmap for some future updates/enhancements, as I don’t get the feeling they will just leave it alone once it launches. So the AAA pricing could help fund post-launch endeavors, too, bringing more value to the game
Right, this IS the argument. And also why calling them the readability crowd isnt helpful, bc not everyone who favors readability thinks the same things help readability.
Again you generalize too much. I agree that suggesting a graphical change doesnt automatically hurt readability, but people will disagree on each instance of proposed changes, youd have to bring examples.
I dont think the Total War disagreements are usually on graphics discussions, theyre generally on single vs groups of units, world campaign map, etc.
I’d like to see the game fail because it is another milestone of the AAA downward trend which only the loss of money can stop.
But I also want the game to find its niche for the people who like it. And I mean actually like it, not the ones fanboying over it for the sake of fanboying.
You can now put me in the box of your choosing : P
Lol, you have not been on reddit much, eh? : D
It thrives on a primitive mindhive mentality.
It is still not the obligation of a critic to present a solution for a problem. That’s the dev’s job afterall. Having everybody say that something “sucks because of X” is fully valid critique. Making your own excel table and balancing all units for the devs is cool, but they honestly don’t deserve that.
All that is left is hammering on the same issues over and over again to make them hear it (while getting new video footage containing the same issues as before and a complete lack of comments from their side).
Pointing out specific problems or things they find as problems in the game as incessant negativity is basically saying “because you have a negative opinion of the game, it’s incessant.” Games go into the tiniest detail when making games. Like THE tiniest detail. Hence people being critical of the tiniest detail is not nitpicking. It’s basically the level of critical detail you see in every game in 2021. The more little details focused on, the better quality in a game artistic. It shows how much the devs thought about each thing.
Although I do agree we did not need 3 threads of the same thing. That was and is highly unnecessary.
That’s on both sides. I think many people who came to this thread all are passionate about AOE in some way. Which is why the arguments are passionate. You see more “who cares, it’s a game” replies in social media while this thread will argue the tiniest details. Because every single person in this thread cares about AOE.
Arguments happen when people don’t acknowledge that there are different priorities in this game due to the various formats this game has traditionally allowed. It’s a very narrow minded argument, especially when people claim “competitiveness saved the franchise therefore it should get all the priority”.
By all means make that counter argument. But with the mindset that your argument is as equal and valid as the person you are countering.
There’s a lot of arrogant counters that just aim at invalidating a person or their argument, or collection of arguments. By categorising their concerns and play experiences into a small box, label it as unnecessary and then shove it into a corner and say it deserves to be locked away. It’s utter disrespect. If someone complains that the grass texture looks off, and they make a thread on it, I say go for it. If it’s truly unnecessary then it won’t be implemented. If it’s unpopular then no one will comment. If you disagree that the texture is off then by all means argue. It’s much welcomed.
Why is it not helpful? Because you did just as I said previously and turn everyone’s arguments as unnecessary? When these arguments possibly dictate how much people enjoy a game? And you think the devs shouldn’t listen to anyone?
I think the arguments about the game are all necessary, positive or negative, the arguments about arguments are the unnecessary parts of anything.
It’s just as you said. It’s different priorities due to different formats of the game. Most of the people making the graphical arguments are from single player and campaigns, where gameplay isn’t as important as the graphical fidelity. Because story telling is important. And people playing 6 hour games in single player also make graphics very important.
And the comparisons with total war isn’t to make AOE into TW. It’s comparing a currently successful game in GRAPHICAL department. That TW has armour that looks like armour. But AOE has armour that looks like plastic. It’s the closest comparison you can make to get your point across.
If you argue using previous AOE games, people argue that it’s 20 years old. So you try to use a modern game to make a comparison.
Reddit basically is designed in a strange way. When someone makes a negative post, the zealots downvote it like insane that it just gets hidden. So it makes all the posts seem positive.
But when someone makes the same post as a comment on someone’s popular post, that post gets a tonne of upvotes. Because people actually got to see it.
It’s such a deceptive forum. While with AOE forum, it is what it is. If there’s lots of positive people, you’ll see lots of positive things.
You should say this to whoever throws out the big word “READABILITY!” in those arguments then.
Well of course they do not exist. I made it up.
Right next door. Discussion about siege crews, which started with “siege crews are NOT important if you want them go play total war”.
Funny enough though recently there were actually more “siege crews are NOT important or go play total war” threads than those who want them.
Back in time there was someone who wrote a long post suggesting the devs to improve their communication and interaction with the community. And someone else who “does not defend everything about the dev or the game but always bases on facts only” wrote an equally long reply on “Who do you think you are? How do you think your suggestions are important? If you’re so brilliant why aren’t the devs hiring you?”
Well of course that did not happen. Historians say it was the malicious critics trying to bring down the game or convert it to total war who drove the friendly, benign and innocent fans on this forum to extreme.
They had all the things to achieve perfection: 4 years of dev time, M$ money, Relic’s established engine and expertise, fanbases to draw willing buyers, competetive scenes and content creators from.
Can you think of anything to add for a better head-start?
I doubt that would help (if it really was 4 years of dev time, which I doubt, how would another 6-12 months change anything?). Early access with (drastically) reduced entry price? I’d be all for that.
Fair enough. The problem is that you have to put down the money first to see that. Good luck exploring an RTS within the 2 hours you can return it ^^
I don’t know how long you have been in this forum, but had you been here earlier, the moment this thread came into being, I know a few people who don’t post much anymore at all, would have jumped on this thread and argued how it’s “art style” and that “if we want more realism we should go play something else” or that “PC’s can’t tolerate that sort of animation” and start incessant arguments. I think that’s where a lot of legativity comes from. Which a lot of new forum posters wouldn’t understand.
Its honestly really hard to have a serious discussion with you when every comment is a serious generalization.
The siege argument is generally not made with regards to total war, ive been in many of those threads, and it always comes down to preferences on fidelity vs readability.
Again with a generalization based on one or a few people with no actual specifics on the comment. I don’t doubt that there were those types of comments, but I also know there was a lot of “devs dont care” “devs know nothing about RTS/AoE” “devs just care about making money as easy as possible” etc. The constant sarcasm doesnt do you any favors here when you pretend that none of my points are valid.
I joined at the lead up to the closed beta I believe, or maybe it was something coming up in AoE2, either way I know the comments youre referencing. It doesnt seem to be much different now, theres just a very different balance of opinion now.
Tbh I think there’s more logical arguments. If just we could get rid of the “devs are lazy” or “arguments are irrelevant” etc.
For example, the fact that soldiers don’t pick up a hammer when building something isn’t Dev lazy because the weapons change into torches when they are attacking. And for some units, the weapons change entirely. So they definitely aren’t lazy.
It’s just something that needs to be put forward because it doesn’t look right that these people wave something to existence.
Which I add means nothing to competitive players but everything to single player and campaigns
Don’t need people telling OP that his PC can’t handle it or that it’s the “art style”
I guess thats generalization? Theres a paper trail of this happening, plenty of people who used to give valid criticism are in threads defending constantly now. Ive gone that way, though I try to take the rosy glasses off every once in a while as well. I just tend to give the developers the benefit of the doubt rather than assume theyre malicious or uncaring or stupid. I have a lot of optimism for this game even though theres some things to fix.
If you don’t have the list of the people (like the kind you ask from me when I’m saying the opposite), this IS generalization.
Let me tell you a fun fact: I was actually one of those who were actively defending some of the design choices.
Well of course that does not count because iT iS gEnErAlIzAtIoN.
What is more heartbreaking than “seeing people debating with little logic” is “seeing people who really know logic but only use it in their own favor”.
Are you aware most RTS games, in fact most multiplayer games in general, do not have a pause function for online MP? Why the hell would that be a feature? The last thing I want when playing pvp is to have the opponent just suddenly pause the game for me…
