Why I will switch to Age of Empires 4

Why are you pretending not to understand the OP? He said SC2 is not supported atm, and he’s right. As a matter of fact there is a league bug that’s been there for months now, with no fix in sight. Activision has given up on SC2.

8 Likes

Not on a level of “invisible unit can’t be detected and freedmges everything” level, but you bet that snowballing and tight plays / or deathballs like chinese nest of bees + lategame, is going to be a thing.

The fact that this game looks (so gives you the illusion) of beeing more forgiving is that it is at a slower and steadier pace while having no destinct ranked play and meta developed yet.

Heck, it’s not even released yet.
How can you make definitive statements that this game is forgiving more mistakes in a competitive sense then?

This was literally part of my post that you quoted…
Idk what you try to add here.

Because the actual gameplay is built in a way that their is always a clear counter that does not require pro level mechanics to execute.

There are probably things that are too strong. But the gameplay itself does not support “got ya” balance like DTs, mine drop or disruptor shots.

3 Likes

It doesn’t have microheavy fights when it comes to spellcasting that’s right.

Units just auto attack themselfs here so it’s more streamlined and you have less outplay potential when it comes to individual units.
It’s more about how much you bring to the table rather than how you play it out.

For you it’s aparently a positive?
It’s less threatening for players that don’t like to do alot of stuff for sure.
But I can guarantee you that this outplay potential in micro is one of the biggest factor why SC2 is so competitively loved and has such a big esports appeal.

Yeah SC2 may be more suitable for e-sport. But I rather play a game that feels fair than a game that is fair only if I am top pro player.

2 Likes

AoE is neither more, nor less of a game than SC.

It just targets more casual audiences.

That’s more appealing to some, and less appealing for others.

SC2 is quite balanced across the board, not just for super top pros.

This high impact “outplay” spellcasting is not just for giga pros, it’s another layer of making the game interesting and making it less repetitive.
It’s a big focus on how you play rather than what you have on the board.

It’s generally healthy for a competitive environment and also for ppl to enjoy watching the game.
Even in Age2 rn the biggest “epic” moments you have is not just a slight eco lead and 20-30 minutes “holy sht he macros more than him” downplay followup, it’s about epic mangonel play turnarounds and deto ships turning the battle cause great reaction on high impact units.

This is what makes the game fun to look at as well.
It brings tension to the situation and can narrow game down on big plays or missplays from time to time.

But lets not get deeper into this, there are multiple topics in which the active forumposters here talked about this exact same thing already.

Overall AoE seems to have a more steady gamepace and seems less threatening to get into than SC that’s correct.
But it’s less threatening cause overall it doesn’t have the same level of depth/you can do less, which is not appealing for a competitive environment, esports or watching the game compared to a game that is more “intimidating to play” such as SC.
Games that have less micro potential overall feel more on rails and with more predictable outcomes, but are therefore more accessable for more casual approaches.

The dude said

Age of Empires games are better supported.

This is factually not correct. Most of them have been abandoned for a decade and people moved to a 3rd party service just to be able to play them at an acceptable state.

I have no problem with people saying, “hey, SC2 has evolved for 10 years, it’s not going to evolve any longer, I would like to play something that is going to change over the next year or two.” That’s fine. It even makes sense, the question is if you want things to change just so it wont be stale or do you want things to change to achieve balance? AoE4 isn’t going to be half as balanced as SC2 no matter how long Microsoft is going to support it, so I am not buying that AoE4 is the future of RTS or that it’s going to replace SC2 in any meaningful way.

Especially since it doesn’t even presumes to want to to it. The creative director said one of the first things they did was have pictures of Cosmos and Top Gear on a board so they can think about what might be the best way to teach history to kids. People who genuinely believe this is the game that is going to pull away the high maintenance, highly competitive crowd of SC2 are mistaken.

1 Like

Only time will tell if Age gets good balance treatment, but the fact that it’s not that asyncronous makes it definitely harder to flipp up on core parts of the balance process.

That beeing said, coming from SC2, a game that got 10+ years of balance patch treatment, with the reason that “Age4 is better cause it’s more balanced” which 3 of his arguments point at is wishful thinking at best…

Did you miss this part by accident?

So I think a lot of the disagreement stems from this sentence.
Historically, SC2 received more updates and support from Blizzard.
Whilst Aoe support has been on and off throughout the years. Some Aoe games getting little to no updates even now. (we can only say Aoe 2 and Aoe 3 get support rn)

However considering that Blizzard doesn’t plan for major updates now, things do have a risk of going stale in SC2.
It is fair to say that Aoe IV will probably receive better support than the older aoe games (considering it isn’t a remake and is said to be their “flagship” title).

And simply based on the fact it is new will mean there will be a lot of potential for content and updates.

1 Like

I don’t know if you are just pretending to be silly or if you are genuinely silly.

Age of Empires 1 and 3 are not more supported than SC2 is, even right now. Age of Empires 2, we don’t know if it’s going to get any new content so we don’t know if it’s more supported than SC2, even right now.

4 isn’t out yet so we don’t know if it’s going to be supported or if it’s going to be abandoned like DoW3. We are 11 days from release and there is 0 concrete announcements regarding future DLC, it’s all just “ah, we would like to make everything for every type of player!”

So no matter which way you want to look at it, whether its the historical support of Age of Empires games, the current support of Age of Empires games or the potential future support of Age of Empires 4, there is no way that saying “Age of Empire games are better supported” is not wrong.

Just my 2 cents, but I think we should keep in mind that more support does not always mean its better.

People I think are also missing that Brood War didn’t receive any major updates since 1998, that didn’t mean it ran the risk of turning stale or that there was a chance for AoE3 to take over for it in 2005.

Similarly I doubt if the DLC for AoE2/3 boosted interest in these games but you have the charts that can answer that one better than me.

I’ve never subscribed to the idea of Aoe games “taking over” SC.

I am however illustrating the feelings players might feel after knowing there won’t be major updates.
It is a pretty well known fact that if you run out of content, your game has a limited lifespan ahead of it.
There are modifiers that will definitely keep player retention up (such as modders and a competitive ladder like SC2 has) but the decline does happen regardless.

We can see this illustrated in Dota 2, which is an extremely popular multiplayer game, but whenever a content patch lasts for a little too long there is a drop in player numbers.

I sincerely hope AoE4 is a success and is continually supported. A lot of that is due to how games are viewed now as part of the Netflix model. No longer are games just a single game - they are part of a company’s stable of “content.” DLCs, support, seasons, etc. are all meant to keep a player engaged (and paying) for years to come. Xbox GamePass is a long-term strategy for Microsoft, and AoE4 is hopefully going to be an important part of that.

4 Likes

Yeah maybe. But in AOE4 there are clear counters. In SC2 there are things that only have a counter if you detect it immediately and respond correctly immediate.

Build the turret 2 second too late against DT? Game over. Scouted the air transition 20 seconds too late? Game over. Reacted half a second too late against a mine drop? Game over. Basically the unforgiveness of SC2 is absurd. It may be good for e-sports but it is bad for normal players.

I wonder if the assumption that this isn’t going to be the case for AoE4 is actually correct.

It might be that AoE4 also contains these things. The only difference is that in AoE4 these things aren’t recognised as such, because the game is very new.

Because its official that SC2 is only maintained nowadays. Not sure if they are still doing balance changes at all, maybe a few small ones? We used to have a huge balance patch right after blizzcon which added huge changes and always aimed at improving the game and making all units worth playing.

No idea how good the balance patches or how frequent they are going to be for Aoe4. But having some balance patches is certainly better than almost none.

1 Like

In AOE4 these things are solvable since they just require tweaking unit stats. Are Knights too strong? Remove 25 hitpoints.

SC2 problems are design problems that are harder to adjust. Nerf the distruptor so that it becomes balanced for ladder players? Suddenly Disruptors become completely useless on pro level.

Micro can make a unit that is weak for normal player become completely broken OP at top pro level in SC2. In AOE4 micro has less impact which is a good thing. You will still get an advantage from microing your knights but the difference between normal micro and top micro is maybe 25% instead of 200% like in SC2.

Which is why AOE4 will be much easier to balance. If something is broken it will be easier to adjust without breaking something else.

6 Likes

First of all they didn’t completely rule out balance patches but more importantly you people refuse to understand that the game has been balanced for. 10. years. The point of balance patches is to reach balance, or as close to balance as humanly possible and then stop changing the game. SC2 has reached that point.

If you want to say AoE4 is different, its fresh, and it will change over the next 1-2 years, sure, that’s half way reasonable. Moving for balance patches? That’s plain crazy. Especially moving to a game with history of a lack of prolonged support and developers who have made it clear esports is not a greater focus than making documentaries.

Yeah, and since AoE2 is even much easier to balance than AoE4, since it is almost completely symmetrical, it is now perfectly balanced and there are clearly no superior civs.

Oh wait.