I actually like the game right now, it is pretty fun especially with friends.
However, these are the top reasons I cannot recommend anyone else to get this game unless they have serious patience or money to (potentially) waste:
Cannot rejoin games. Someone can drop for many reasons - crashes, power spike/failure, internet issue. At the moment the player just immediately dies and the team is left with a broken game.
A player can surrender without any word from allies. Most team games have some kind of vote system, you are a team, why would you let one person decide to end the game without any consensus.
Dodging maps (I guess the new map veto thing in next patch may address this). Means you spend 5 minutes waiting for people to get into a lobby and then the game ends.
De-sync mid game. Whether this is an exploit or a game bug, having a game just stop mid way is utterly annoying. I can imagine most people just close the game immediately and play something else out of sheer frustration.
I forget this - matches starting when a player has already dropped. If a player drops before the game even starts the game should not start. Starting a literally broken match is annoying as the broken team now has to surrender or quit the match.
All of these issues prevent a player from actually playing the game, regardless of balance etc.
I hope these issues are the only blockers for your dev team right now and everything else falls at most critical (unless there are other play preventing or exploits I am unaware of).
I would love to start recommending this game, but I will not tell someone to spend ā¬60 on a game where they constantly come up against these issues. I really hope these get patched soon.
This is mostly aimed at the AOE4 internal community team, so they can process the feedback.
I do welcome any suggestions though, or additional blockers being listed, but comments like ādonāt play it thenā or other useless discussions I will ignore ;).
I agree that they should add a rejoin option to the game but donāt know how complicated it is to do that for an RTS game so I leave that to the developers to tell.
This is a player created problem and can and should only be fixed by the community. Stop leaving team games just like that, and donāt join one unless you are 100% sure you have time and will to play it through to completion. A vote system will not help address this player behavior issue.
This is coming with the Season 2 patch so itās already been addressed so no point in bringing it up.
Iāve yet to experience a De-sync problem in a match but if the developers can do anything about it, they should focus on addressing it.
If a player drops out before the countdown has ended doesnāt it stop the countdown or is it still joining the game? Never experienced this so if itās true that it doesnāt stop, they need to fix that by making it stop if a change occurs in the lobby for example a player leaving the lobby.
With Season 2 patch around the corner, I really feel like the game is finally in a stage were it should had been at launch, and Iām super happy about it that we are there now. Looking forward for new civs now and the game will be even more fun to play
This are also serious issues that should be fixed.
I can not recommend the game because it has less features than previous AOE titles. Besides the only new feature is placing units on walls which is kind of useless because stone walls are so weak. Furthermore the game has little content.
The development speed is too slow, the communication not good and the orientation on e-sport is bad.
Thanks for the engagement, I understand your experience is a bit different than mine it seems ;).
Regarding point 2 I respectfully disagree as there are things the developers can implement to mitigate this option (voting system, yeah they can quit, but then they should get some cool-down or other scaling punishment).
People will do what the game allows them, and if there is no checks or balances then you might as well say you agree with that behavior. People will not fix their own behavior without encouragement. I wish this werenāt the case but time and time again it is proven to be true.
Regarding point 5, this happens when a player drops after the timer, during the loading screen, before you enter the game.
Everything can be done, it just depends how much work it would be to implement. These things ideally need to be designed with the core user experiences and the architecture of their game setup would then allow it, at least to be implemented reasonably without rewriting major parts of their code base. I hope they at least thought of these things and that is the case, otherwise yeah it probably will never happen which would be a major shame.
Perhaps not encountering some issues is a culture/region thing? Iām in europe (living in germany), and I get at a de sync probably 1/10 games, people leaving maybe 1/3 games (crash or w/e, before or during a game).
Obviously the game is incomplete without cooperative rankeds, only recently the game has a good balance. The value of wonders remains pending; In addition, the nerf to the siege is for the benefit of the ranked teams
Thanks BdelloidBore5, good point about 2v2.
Same I think your argument stands for 4v4?
I think there needs to be a majority vote or consensus.
The issue this would attempt to mitigate is the culture in this game to leave as soon as you think it is unwinnable.
It hasnāt happened often where we win after a player surrenders in a team game but it has happened.
In a 1v1 this is fine because you are the only person affected.
As I mention if there is maybe some other mechanism that could help curb this behavior that would be great, but all my monkey brain think of is a majority vote and punishment for leaving (ofc, with the rejoin mechanic or that isnāt fair).
Nope because in 4v4 you can make majority vote wins so 3 wants to surrender then its over. Sure it can become situation where 2 doesnāt want to and 2 wants to but its not similar to 2v2 where you have to have 2 votes.
And this is why I think ranked TGās is bad idea because there is plenty of times when ppl leave for no reasons whats so ever. āoh I lost my first scout to TC that had 5 sheeps on itā well game is cucked cant win lets leave.
Also even if player canāt just press surrender or quit game they just use alt f4 to shut the game down and move on when they feel that game is already over.
Most effective way to deal with this in TGās is to manually ban those individuals from the game, but theyāre not going to do it because it costs too much money to have someone go through replays
fluid unit movement. The point that some untis gets stuck when you move a group of them is hilarous. Not even in aoe 2 og release. (remenber that this game used to have formations which was important imo to prevetn mob fights that we have in today aoe 4)
tech tree civ design. the current one are boring. I understand they wanted aoe 2 player to get used to the new game but dear god the amount of copy paste were done there. specially when you considere that some civ could have better units or concepts but constrained by the civ design layout. steppe lancer are basically the same as paladin but differetn colour, etcā¦
Lack of new modes. Previusly we got king of the hill or treaty or any other that aoe have.
Graph polish. Already said this but aoe 4 specs are meant to do more. That is demostrated with noob video that shows the ilumination that are toggled on night maps which shows the potential that the game could have.
Lack of clans feature
age up mechanic is boring. most of them are basically an extra military production or tc/castle and the ones that breaks are inferior or not worth touching. Aom did it better years ago
I have to disagree that 2v2 and 4v4 is not similar when you have a split vote, still half the team in each case. I do see your point that you can have a 3 to 1 vote, but even so, for a split vote it seems like the same case to me.
It is a different game, but CS:GO has this mechanic and it works, people wonāt F4 because they get cooldowns, and the more they do it the longer the cooldown which means they cannot play. It also works when there are only 4 people on the team instead of 5.
I think this would be a valid approach to this problem instead of outright bans, people do get frustrated sometimes and banning out right will erode the player base.
I guess we both have valid points for and against this measure, however it seems we both agree that this is indeed a problem that should be addressed in some way.
I agree with most of your points, however are these points that would prevent you from recommending the game to a friend? I mean to ask as I feel issues that prevent a player from starting, playing or finishing a game to be the most important issues overall.
Iād be interested to hear a counter to that if you disagree :).
all scenarios that you said. even after trying the beta which I did. Forgor to add this one but
A better mod tools. The current ones feels like devs just give up their tools to make us do the actual job. itās not an exageration but even youtubers agree that this mod tool is too complicated to use that you need actual dev skills to use it properly which slow down the modes and campaign that the communitty can do.
I not have dev skills but I think thereās more points to uncover
