Been asking this question from day 1.
Game still in Alpha stage or early Beta
Its 50% unfinished and balance changes are bad. Over all worse then AOE3 which is real sad.
Maps in this game are a joke. All maps gears for 1 or 2 Civ and the rest are at a handicaps if they play on them
Maps should be more neutral for all Civ’s and not give huge advantage to 1 civ (aka Blackforest and China)
Over all…
50% undone game
Bad maps
Bad units(or unbalanced)
Still game breaking bugs in game
No Ranked (i know its coming but this should have been in launch)
Hacks galore (drop hack etc)
Slow patches (once a month for a RTS isn’t good guys)
Water units (boats) so bad they had to nerf to the ground and take them out pretty much.
I still want my $60 refund. Im still waiting on steam customer support for it.
This scam is as bad as Hello games did when they released No Mans Sky. Steam gave blanked refunds.
Hopping they do the same here.
I’ve changed my mind. It’s actually a healthier business model to release games half-finished and update it later. Nowadays the gaming industry is very competitive and risky. Investing a lot into an AAA game also means greater risk. If developers and publishers have the concern that they might not generate enough profits for a huge investment, they will not have the courage to do anything at all and gaming industry will not develop, and the consumers miss the possibility of many potential good games.
Not to mention RTS is a niche genre. There are not many good games right now. AOE4 has the duty of reviving RTS. It has to succeed. It cannot take any risk. Otherwise there will be no more RTS and we consumers will be doomed. So please be more tolerant about its current state. You actually benefit from it and you do not know.
In the current model, consumers only need to face the negligible risk of spending $60 for an unfinished product and cross their fingers it will be updated in the longer term, but if it is the otherwise, the big companies will face the risk of not making enough profit! Imagine that!
For the sake of greater good please do not criticize them for doing that.
Replay cannot show players’ actual operation like (Unit selected, Unit/Tech progress queue showing like SC2 do, Number of groups) And you cannot backtrack to previous time unless you restart the whole replay. Which truly waste of time if I miss or want to see more detail on a certain time scale
You cannot watch replay with your friends, I pretty like that in SC2 you could watch replay with your friends and directly play the round in replay for a certain scenes to learn.
Can’t select colour is stupid one.
When unit attack, enemy’s unit should be high priority target to be attack instead of those farms and non military builds.
Overkill (like 10 bombards shot one target) is kinda stupid. Even SC1 has calculating sys to avoid overkill.
Keys unable to setting, really? Do you know how awkward when you use Shift+Ctrl+X too select all military units? Especially for us who from non-English environment. Which we had multiple input system.
Releasing games half finished gives people the fore-sight that games will be released half finished and therefore they withhold their purchase. So what they are doing is risking their reputation and future sales ability on the goodwill of their fans; never a good thing to bet with if the recent games industry examples is to go by. Consumers crossing their fingers isn’t a good way to do business, you want to make them happy, not make them hope things eventually get better. Prove to them the game is good and worth buying and they will do so, especially in Age of Empires. To a consumer with a lot of money, $60 is a negligible risk… Not everyone can drop $60 on a game at the drop of a hat.
AAA developers have the cash if they want to make a game. Age of Empires has Microsoft behind it as well.
Conversely, the gaming industry has to be risky to develop. Most developers these days are playing it safe to ensure profits. Funnily enough, that is just what Age4 has done - it has gone back to updating Age2 and the medieval era which is from the most profitable game in the series. They could have ‘Age-d Up’ and gone further forward in the timeline of history, but played it safe, not risking it.
Oh, by the way, do you know why Age2 has the reputation it has today? Because it was a damn good fully finished game on release… Funny that.
So for the sake of the greater good, games need to be worth the purchase and customers need to be respected.