That’s because it still isn’t clear what you are actually complaining about. You complained about the grind, which made me think the reset was the issue, because if ratings don’t reset, there’s no grind to reach the same rank as the season before.
Personally, as a casual player with no real interest in ranked PvP, the game lacks a lot of flavor that in other entries has always been there.
It starts with wildlife, weather, AI-personality or even color picker.
The game clearly was developed with e-sports in mind. And I may be naive thinking this, but I think it’s the first entry that was developed with a strong emphasis on being an e-sports title.
So they cut a lot of things that I really enjoyed before.
So I stopped playing mostly because games are always the same, it hardly ever happens that anything surprises me, except for maybe questionable AI behavior.
I enjoyed AoE III a lot, mostly because of the controversial card system, because you could always change each match. I miss hometown customization, I know this isn’t important to the game itself, but it gave me some incentive to play more.
I have no desire to play competitively and have never done so, but I have over 1.000 hrs. in AoE III because it gave me so many things to play for - unlocking new cards or making the hometowns pretty. I just want to say, that for someone solely focusing on PvE and maybe some PvP among friends, there was plenty replayability, which I now don’t see anymore.
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I don’t agree that they’re irrelevant. I think you’ve both made good points. I’m trying to avoid commenting on the general animousity, because it’d just seem like pointless policing of an interesting tangent. Besides, I know it happens all the time on forums.
I mean, none of this relates much to why people aren’t playing AoE IV in its current state. But in terms of how to monetise and support a game, how to structure rewards and ingame events, and so on , , , I don’t see why we have to exclude Rocket League (or any other game). You dislike timed events because of FOMO, and that’s completely valid. But other people will play games (especially nowadays) and enjoy time-gated / seasonal content. That’s valid as well. The implementation is genre-specific, but the general idea because it is genre-agnostic.
To try and explain this better, I don’t think the game needs a thousand Riddler statues hidden across every campaign level. IP issues aside, the suggestion itself is silly. However, it would be interesting (and some people have expressed a desire for) “treasures”, or something like that, that encourage (casual) map exploration. They’re both fundamentally the same thing, but one will work differently in the context of that game compared to the other.
The conflict, in my eyes, is between two people that play the same game for different things. Both of these ways of playing are valid, and shouldn’t be put down. And honestly that’s a big problem for the developer of any franchise, because the longer a franchise has been going, the more people are going to want significantly different-things in order to keep playing a particular game (in the franchise).
That’s why I asked about Overwatch and BL3 previously - just to try and gauge how much wriggle room there is here.
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As you said, it’s just a difference between two types of players.
One wanting access to everything put of the gate, a WC3 experience where pvp was solely competitive and nothing else attached to it.
And another wanting a PvP focused game where not onl do you get a competitive experiance, but you are rewardednfor you dedication to said competition depending upon skill/time investment.
Both are great ways to play games, but not every game has to have everything for everyone. It tends to be best to pick a side to focus on, at first at the very least. Maybe branch out after things have stabilized.
For premium users of gamestar
This game has been very divisive. The ship has gone.
Ready for the next title.
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RIP Aoe4, whens Aoe4DE with better graphics?
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havent played in a while. 
just stopped in here now cause i saw it in my steam library and felt like seeing if there was any positive posts since i last played, finding this same type of thread has solidified my belief that this game has made no progress in being less terrible.
very early on, i hated this game, like probably within the first campaign level, and it only got worse and worse and much much worse from there.
i stuck it out and got the achievements and watched as some game breaking bugs were fixed, and others were created, and more were discovered, and just in general watched the games total and utter failure and so i quit playing after i got bored of creating challenging and interesting scenarios for myself while waiting for a possible change from the dev team that never came.
anyways, i think now this will be the last time that i even check up on it for a couple a of years, good luck to you all and have a good day.
EDIT: oh, and when i do check up in the future, please have plenty of custom games ready for me to play with you all 
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Yo por mi parte seré sincero… no he jugado el age of empires 4 no me mal interpreten, en el pais en el que estoy el juego sale caro y encima no me encuentro en situación económica para gastar dinero a lo loco, y gastarse un montón de dinero en un juego que trae mucho menos que age of empires 3 y 2 no me parece muy rentable, yo soy de jugar más de jugar age of empires 3 (el hijo bastardo de la saga) por que por un precio menor me dio facciones mas únicas mapas grandiosos y modos de jugar diferentes en cada partida, no se ustedes pero dentro de poco el age of empires 3 tendrá su siguiente DLC Knights of the mediterranean, y podre jugar con malteses y italianos, así que bueno… oh y 30 mapas europeos nuevos con civs menores que son representadas con casas europeas… Joder podre hacer a los húsares alados polacos! pero bueno les veo luego chicos (cuando al age 4 le agreguen a los bizantinos y otomanos quizás piense en pilármelo peor ahora… solo puedo decir no)
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played a lot in the beta
Stopped playing a week after release when I realized they weren’t going to fix the ZOOM
Still isn’t fixed.
I simply can’t enjoy the game with the current zoom level so I’ll continue to play aoe2 which has a level of zoom I enjoy playing at. simple as.
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Of course this game favors early aggression. The defensive structures are by far too weak. Usually the first one rushing and raiding wins the game.
The game mainly focus on rushers and has not much to offer to defensive oriented players. This is especially sad because one of the few new features of AOE4, placing units on walls, is rarely used because stone walls are very weak.
@Eightnon I feel exactly the same as you wrote I think one of the main reasons why AOE4 is so unpopular is because of the high orientation towards e-sports.
@jimmy19846071 Interesting article. I also saw it. Unfortunately I’m not a premium user. But I could read that they didn’t change score of the game because they didn’t do enough for that 
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I’ve been playing this game since I discovered it and rediscovered my addiction for RTS games after 20 years away while I was isolation for Omicron over Christmas. I still play it daily but there are some things that do annoy me and have made me wonder if AOE2 is any different. Late game seige battles can get tiring. Once the opponent builds keeps and stone walls I feel like even if I bring a bunch of Trebs and Springalds to the fight somehow my Springalds just get destroyed or the opponent just keeps repairing Keeps over and over until I get bored and quit.
I’m still playing but I’ve been eyeing AOE2 lately but I’m afraid to try it since people have been plaing it for over 20 years and there’s no hope for me matching that skill level. If it has a more balanced late game and less focus on siege I might though…
This is a small complaint but ranking is too slow once you get to bronze 3. It was over 100 points to get up to silver and you get punished so much more for losing that it feels impossible to rank up any higher and I just feel discouraged and lthat I"m going to be stuck between bronze 2 and 3 forever like everyone else.
I am aware. But what you did say was that AoE4 should look at Rocket League for an example. They shouldn’t. Rocket League is an entirely irrelevant game and the only reason you think they should look at it is because you like the game. They looked at RTS games to build this, as they should, not a F2P vehicular soccer game. Again, all you are doing is repping Rocket League. There is nothing to learn from Rocket League for this game.
Nonsense. It is nothing at all like that. The Elo system is a broad thing, Rocket League is a specific thing with a few superfluous similarities, the Elo system can be applied to literally every zero-sum game, that is why it is used everywhere, including in AoE2.
Ranked seasons still encourage grinding even if there is no reset, and are a superfluous addition to the game. Specifically because the goals are predefined instead of being relative. If everyone in AoE4 sucked, getting 1000 Elo would be an achievement. Elo is adaptable, it ensures good people are put with good people, it morphs and is constant. Ranked seasons are just a worthless additional layer with 0 benefit. The reset is not the issue, it is a symptom of the cause, I am certain I have already said this. If there is no reset, they are still shit. I have been extremely clear about my problems with ranked seasons, you just haven’t read them.
I haven’t seen any good points they have made. Their argument even on my old thread specifically about my problems with ranked seasons was “Just don’t worry about it Rocket League does it” and not understanding what I am saying.
I hate to sound typical but I blame them for constantly using Rocket League as a supporting argument. But I have made clear that I think ranked seasons are a detriment to the game and are a symptom of this game’s far greater focus on e-sports than casual players. The reason I ask them to not talk about Rocket League is because it distracts from the central thesis that ranked seasons are an anti-player system.
I can understand the appeal for seasonal content provided at the bare minium it returns like AoE2:DE’s events. It’s more than just “I have FOMO”, to which I said in my OG thread but I couldn’t give much of a shit about the statue even if I kinda want it. It is the fact that seasonal content is designed to elicit FOMO and encourage people to begin grinding to get the rewards. It is a design choice that is designed to make people panic and play the game more. Nobody enjoys grinding for season content in the same way nobody enjoys hunting for shinies or grinding levels, they just think the reward is worth it. You show me one person who enjoys grinding and I’ll show you one liar, emphasis on grinding, because playing ranked for ages isn’t inherently grinding.
It’s not that I don’t think rewarding competitive people is a bad thing, although yes I vastly prefer the WC3 experience, and it clearly worked. It’s that the rewards for said competitive experience aren’t being used as rewards, they are being used as enticements to get you to start the grind. This rewards 14 hour a day streamers, not everyone else. AoE4 is haemorrhaging players and I genuinely think the ranked seasons are part of it, because again, they reward hardcore players, which isn’t most of us.
Also, this is my last reply of the thread. I have elaborated more than enough and explained my arguments and supporting reasoning very well, so I have no more intention to argue about why Rocket League is irrelevant to this game and thread. Respond if you want, but I will have already left the building.
Hmm, mostly working on other stuff, but also cause I recently purchased both a series x and ps5. Elden Ring opened up an entire list of games that I haven’t played, so I’m also grinding through all those. I’ll probably be back to AoE4 when a new civ comes out.
If it’s up to you, we’re going to have average 1v1 matches of 45 minutes. No, it does not favor the early game if you react correctly and do not play Farming Simulator.
Those pros are having fun because they are making a much higher amount of money from tournaments again and again. The game is shit and they know it. They just playing the game to make money and suck yours too. In the end, players are left without any content that is focused on them. This is not a healthy approach to AOEIV. As the main losers are the casual players or players who do not care about 1vs1 and Pros.
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If a DE means that Forgotten Empires gets to work on the game instead of Relic, then we need the DE ASAP. Like, right now.
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Yes, this game only sees patches and gameplay fixes that are targeted towards pros.
I want to know what the plan from Relic/MS is? Do they not realize that they can’t keep throwing money at tournaments indefinitely? At some point they will have to close the tap, and the pros will drop the game like a hot potato.
Or maybe the case is that MS intends to keep funding tournaments indefinitely. But that just makes this game the equivalent of “A weekend at Bernie’s”. They’d just be artificially propping up a corpse and pretending that it’s alive and well.
The playerbase for any AoE game is built from the casuals. This game is not designed for the causals, so no wonder that the playerbase is barely greater than that of AoE2’s.
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Microsoft thinks that if people see pros playing age IV they will think the game is awesome but reality is that many don’t even care, the same think happened with sc2 they put a lot of money into eSports then they realized none was playing their game, and then they started releasing casual/single player and co-op content but it was to late… I love playing ranked in RTS but I hate when a game most interesting features and mechanics are removed to pleases 0.5% of the player base, they also used the so called"clarity" excuse, and now we have an age game that looks it was release before age lll with a disturbing lack of graphics detail.
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The most successful RTS in history had the best E-Sports presence in RTS history.
Although the content for casuals is important, an RTS without an E-Sports scene (perhaps team games will be included in another game in the future) is DOOMED to absolute failure in the medium/long term.
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