Hello. Some of the suggestions people have had on these forums seem reasonable, like having units have individual health bars for easy selection. Other suggestions like limiting only one villager to building a house at a time are not. AoE IV is a new game. Please stop trying to implement Starcraft elements that are very different from other Age games. I’m fine with new ideas to some extent, but I do think that AoE IV should be catering to players of the other Age games, before anything else. I’ve seen a lot of people on the forums who seem to be trying to make AoE IV into a variant of Starcraft. I’ve personally never played any of the Starcraft games, but if you prefer these kinds of gameplay mechanics over what the Age series has to offer, there is nothing stopping other people from playing it. Please try and keep AoE IV its own game, unless of course the change is basic quality of life, that almost everyone would agree with. What do people think?
lots of SC2 players are looking for something new to play
even if you dislike the starcraft gameplay, there are still lots of things the software did well that can be copied, mainly related to the quality and polish of the experience
for example, microsoft’s rating and matchmaking system for the age of empires games is a sad joke. those are the kinds of things that can be copied from other games (not just starcraft) because the industry has made some advances in that area while microsoft has come up with something whose experience is worse than zone.com from 25 years ago
and there are lots of things like that which would keep the age of empires gameplay alone, but still improve the experience by borrowing from what other games have done
ill give you a very quick lesson on economics
find starcraft, find age of empires… connect the dots… its not totally unreasonable to want to take elements from THE most popular strategy game of all time, and incorporate it into other games
Explain to me than why did they pull the plug on the franchise if it did such good numbers?
Have you seen the dumpster fire that is Blizzard right now?
That is fine but don’t come here and try to change it so it is SC2 medieval.
Most popular doesn’t make it the best. And sales doesn’t make a game the most popular. Cyberpunk 2077 had really nice sales but I bet you can ask anyone and ask whether the game is popular. It was way overhyped
some outdated data. Gate (Bill) reported me that they sold 25 mln copies for all franchise.
Second, why Battlefield dont copy features from CoD?
Let’s be reasonable, some features are good. Others (as example in the topic) building house with one vil - total delusion.
but 4x4 dont exist in SC2.
Nobody is trying to turn AoE into Starcraft. Starcraft is too fast and punishing for a lot of players, and I think the pacing of AoE4 is a breath of fresh air. The problem competitive people have with it, be it SC2, AoE2, or other popular RTS games, is that it needs to cater to competitive players as much as it does to casual players, and atm the lack of micro, oversimplified UI, hidden mechanics, are all signs they’re disregarding competitive players, in an attempt to not scare off newcomers.
I personally don’t like accusations such as “AoE2 fanatics want this”, or “SC2 players want that”. We are all gamers and we all want AoE4 to be the best game it can be. (Who knows when we will get another AAA RTS, maybe in another 10 years.) Some people enjoy having a high skill ceiling, others enjoy fooling around in Skirmish vs AI, playing campaigns or games with friends. I think there’s room for everyone to enjoy the game, but just as newcomers are concerned with graphical details that they can contemplate while playing, competitive players don’t want a stale game mechanically. Problems like being able to train units after the game let you know you are supply blocked, in the context where building a house is faster than training a unit, is not a welcomed change for competitive players. Regardless of the weird solutions they propose, the problem is the same.
TLDR We should refrain from putting people into little boxes and accept we enjoy different things in an RTS game.
good design should be learned.
Age of Empires 4 is also trying to reach new audiences, and that’s not really new.
It’s healthy for the Age ecosystem on top of that because they are not directly competing with their own playerbases in other Age games.
Every single Age is so different from one another, and that’s a good thing.
While some people just want to have a modernized take of their favourite AoE, which was already covered by definitive editions, AoE4 is a seperate game trying to adress old players, but most importantly, new players that aren’t into the franchise alike.
Trying to take ideas and strong inspirations from other popular games such as SC2 doesn’t sound bad to me with that in mind.
Tho I haven’t really seen any big discussion of any “close to SC2” here ever.
I disagree, not only did Microsoft create the Elo system, which is considered the best rating system for 1v1 style games and used in countless other games today, but their rating system is incredibly good at creating even match ups, even to the point of comical mirror strategies at lower elos.
The matchmaking, however, I agree with. It’s pretty vain to bunch players into “Bronze,” “Gold,” “Diamond,” etc, and I think it promotes some bad ideas about what Elo really means about a player. BUT I’ll be damned if it isn’t flashy and makes you wanna rank up and play more 
The current matchmaking in older Age titles is better than it used to be, but it is pretty boring.
Sc2 match making is based on Microsoft algorithms.
People want all kinds of things.
There was a loud crowd that was crying about them not making a WW1 game here at one point.
I think the developers know who they make the game for and they wont add Starcraft mechanics just because a small minority wants them.
lol no
it’s not based on age of empires matchmaking at all
age of empires matchmaking isn’t even based on microsoft algorithms. it’s actually not based on any research or science. it’s just nonsense
go have a look: AoE2.net
I think SC 2 is more nimble, more fit to RTS
If AOE 4 seems to be slow, dull and not enough AI
I misspoke, Microsoft created the TrueSkill system, which was an improvement on Elo. Regardless, TrueSkill is used in countless other games as I said before.
You’re referring to Team Games, which is just simply not what the Elo system was designed for. There’s a post from a while ago where the devs explained that they had switched the Elo calculations in team games from using the top player on each team, to using the average elo of all players on a team instead.
Also, it’s pretty clear that they are using TrueSkill in their matchmaking, because it takes into account uncertainty, which vanilla Elo does not. Starcraft 2 does something similar, but theirs is based on “bonus points” for new players to keep them playing, and isn’t quite the same.
Coz SC2 maybe the most successful RTS in Ten years
Trueskill works just fine for team games.
Sc2 is trueskill plus junk. The junk ruins it. Blizzard mm is notoriously bad, especially when population is low.
Indeed Age of Empires, needs to stay Age of Empires.
This why I loved the Game and still do.
Nothing for me needs to be changing, I like it the way as it is.
“Age is age” is just not true.
The only concepts age games have in common are:
- preselecting a culture that ages through the game with techstages
- collect ressources and build your base freely
- production and controlling of individual units
Even SC2 shares 2 of these 3 traits.
So yep… Age 1 is so different from 2.
Not everyone that enjoys 2 is a fan of 3 and man Mythology is such a different take on ressources, units, town halls paired with unit cap.