They did, but: modern Entertainment industry kind of did develop a fail loop-
There have been very interesting interviews with legendary game designers like Cliff Bleszinski “Unreal Tournament” about Battle-Royale games or Michael Morhaime “Starcraft” on MOBAs like Heroes of the Storm.
1 The thing is, while they missed the time frame to create an online cash cow,
they won’t get funds to make something that isn’t an online cash cow.
2 Developers are forced by Publishers into make games, where gamers have no interest into.
3 That’s why we see something like Crucible from Amazon, that was made for 900 million dollar, to be launched 4 years after Overwatch and flop in 3 month. Everybody did know the project will fail, but you need bills to pay, people need to work, so they rather let a fail project cook on slow fire till management looses their cool.
ummm, what? The entire gaming industry isn’t worth 120 bil.
I’ve actually never heard of Crucible until now, but I see they did they right thing that AoE4 should have done… they pulled their flopping game off the shelves and un-released it back into a closed beta. While it might look bad, they made the executive decision to acknowledge their mistakes and take it back to try better. The only thing I can’t forgive AoE for is that they just left this shit game to rot in the open air while collecting everyone’s money. At least Crucible was F2P.
@Heftydogg
1 you right = typo 900 million dollar
2 AoE4 has it flaws, still its one of best RTS we had in past 10 years.
I think it does tell a lot how badly RTS genre was handled.
3 AoE4 got after time some very decent mods, for camera height and unit limit.
Of course, in fact that was good, since there were too many very good games and the time between 1992 and 2007 I consider the golden age of RTS…after this came the Mobas and the RTS began to decline by wanting to emulate the success of the first, I see you DoW2 and CNC4…
As much as I love AoE4 over starcraft, i think it’s in for a rough ride. The foundation of the game is shaky, with a 150-300ms delay. That’s 10x the sc2 delay. At the same time, Stormgate has aimed to beat sc2’s golden standard by letting actions happen imediately in the client to then ajust to possible server differences. It seems to me that Stormgate optimizes for RTS quality that Relic isn’t even aware of. There’s just so many bugs on and after release that I can’t believe would’ve happened if there was a decent RTS veteran on the team with the authority to stop issues before they were implemented.
AoE4 can still compete for players by getting better at what it does well, but I fear the competitive RTS scene will go for Stormgate. It’s probably as my sc2 masters friends say: “AoE4 is the waiting lobby for Stormgate”
Yes, or AoE 4 improves on everything or else Stormgate is going to wear it with players and everything … I see myself playing more SG than AoE 4 in the future, although the civs of AoE 4 could become very good…of 10 civs that AoE 4 has I only like 3 (Mongols, Ottomans and Malians and stop counting)…
3vs3 mode for casuals - aoe4 is just making the same old vs mode thats been in rts games for 30years. Think aoe4 should still have its core age of empires game play, but add more game modes. Just adding nomad is nothing really. Where’s the quickmatch ranking, rewards, skins, heroes, ideas to get new people interested in playing aoe4. Make it more interesting then just make custom game play nomad.
Free to play games are more complete than full price games. Devs have to put in more effort making it a complete game to make money back. Aoe4 buy the game at $60us and we will lowly update the game.
And this older video about why rts fail. Its like devs dont understand how to improve rts games and just remake the same mistakes
I don’t limit myself in terms of innovating, I liked it when they mentioned that the cost of the wonder would depend on the number of players, I would like to see the marivalla again at 3 thousand for 1v1. There have been threads about more pop and after the 2v2 tournament the conclusions were that those games were very fast (with a population of 400 for each team)
So I proposed that the population amount depend on the number of players (not simply multiply the 1v1 population by each player number 200 x #) with a population of 220 for 1v1, maybe I exaggerated when I proposed 160 pop in 4v4, but the important thing is get the idea. But the game must be balanced or there is no point if the added population is used only to produce more villagers
I think they are just not payed enough to care. Relic has no stake in making right by the AOE franchise, the best bet is hoping they did as much as they could to fulfill their side of the contract. The question is, is Microsoft content with AOE4 just being an enticing looking game from afar for the gamepass? It is very likely that yes, they are content with AOE4 never reaching the heights we wanted it to. That it was always just meant to be a trophy game sitting on that franchise shelf that is their gamepass–looks nice from afar, but getting closer, you can see the mold’s seams.
After almost 2 years of post development, this is the type of realization we need to start having. It just doesn’t seem that he inherent traits of the game that so many of us dislike will actually ever change; what we see is what we have gotten, and that is an extended beta test with 1 “free” DLC. Not to be too negative, but we’re closing in on a year since that content patch, they will likely announce new civilizations in Season 5, then release in S6.
So that is the content loop we are looking at. Nothing meaningful will be fixed and we’ll just get 2 civs every year.
Thats how im starting to feel. ive played over 2000 1vs1 quickmatch - rank games. Playing mostly nomad megarandom now and starting to see aoe4 is just another game to put on xbox gamepass. Microsoft is more for aoe2 and Relic for coh3 so whats the point of supporting Age of empires IV as a customer
What Microsoft is doing to Age of empires Iv is like EA games putting the world cup update in FIFA 22 not FIFA 23
I’ve been saying for years that the triple A RTS, apart from having the casual and competitive characteristics that this genre should have, failed in:
They have a learning curve (in my country it is said in this way) quite hard. Ideally, it should be somewhat easier to play, more difficult to master.
It is a game set in 1vs1 and little social in many cases. A competitive team game at the level of 1v1 would given the game many more community.
Not F2P. At least, in ranked. I was heavily criticized because I had to pay for the game at launch and all the DLCs or I didn’t have access to the civs. That produces an unfinished game, with late fixes and problems in the casual and competitive world.
Tempest Rising looks like the only possible competition, if they listen to feedback.
Maybe Beyond All Reason .
The problem I see right now, all RTS developers make their games generic.
It’s either entirely awful designed or a too bland copy.
It’s only designed on Metrics and PvP player feedback. Like.
The Settlers: New Allies, The Valiant, Crossfire: Legion, Stronghold: Warlords, A Year of Rain
Dawn of War 3, Grey Goo, Act of Aggression, Empires Apart, BANNERMEN, Forged Battalion.
Just think of it, Developers did spend several years designing and developing a game, where the very first response from players is, that their game is too boring and deliver a very clear analysis why its so bad, but publishers just can’t figure out it out.
Yes, people don’t like small rush arena maps, with dumbed down gameplay,
but somehow the entire game industry is too brainwashed to make anything else.
To all of you who have no problem seeing more than 150 villagers, 70 farms, and endless, stagnant games. Manor Lords is surely your ideal game, and it also has demanding graphics that only 10% of steam players can handle… etc, as I have noticed that you guys love it
Yes, that’s very sad… Years doing RTS to stick it …
Yes, it’s like a modern version of Command and Conquer, it happens in the 90s, but instead of fighting for a resource from a meteorite, they fight for resources 30 years after the missile crisis became hot…
of course! “That’s why in tournaments closed maps have been chosen, especially in the recent one a mod was made to make stone walls from the dark ages, and I remember when it was the longest bo5 in the history of the game (before it was nerfed the siege) they decided to change from bo7 to bo9 so that people enjoy it more”
as i pointed out just days ago, for aoe4 imo there’s no point whatsoever to build over 95 vills even, let alone 120, i don’t usually think capping unit count is good but here capping vills to 100 or 120 wouldn’t be that dumb
