Sultan Ascend worked so well because the new content brought back players who had left AoE 4 after its rough launch. On top of the new content, it came with so many fixes and quality of life improvements that the game felt significantly better. Since then, the game has not received the same level of polish, and it shows.
This is the first time I will not immediately buy a DLC for AoE 4. The game is still missing basic functionality, and I am not going to support a title that keeps pushing new content while the foundation is being neglected.
The in-game report function does nothing. To actually report a cheater or someone harassing you, you have to contact support via email and do your own research just to figure that out.
There is still no option to disable All-Chat, and muting a harassing player mid-game is a painfully awkward experience.
The game crashes, and there is no reconnect feature for tournaments.
Idle food villagers are not flagged as idle.
Hackers are not getting permabanned, which is embarrassing for a franchise positioning itself as part of the esports scene.
The scoreboard is a mess. E.G. Military score only reflects army value at the moment the match ends.
In FFA matches, if one player fails to connect, the entire lobby does not load.
The first variants need a rework in terms of flavor to match newer releases. JD needs a complete rework, Zhu Xi needs a different system than IOs, and Order should have different landmarks than HRE.
How is it possible that hackers can drop-hack you, change your civilization, or switch teams? These are not minor bugs. They are fundamental integrity issues that should spark some ambition to fix.
Team Elo smurfing needs to be addressed. It does not take much effort to check the first ten entries in Team Ranked and take action.
The communication between the playerbase and the developers needs to improve. It feels like content creators have a direct line to the team while the broader community gets two lines in the patch notes. That is not how you build trust.
There is also a lack of clear vision. Releases feel like they are planned around monetization rather than game health. The variant civilization system raises real questions. Why is Jin Dynasty not a variant? Why dont they have e.g. different mills than China/Zhu Xi?
The UI and UX are genuinely bad. The in-game menu is so unresponsive it could be used to explain what lag means to someone who has never experienced it.
There is untapped potential in the details. The custom banner you can edit is tiny compared to the loading screen. Profile pictures are sometimes unrecognizable. The banner should be visible on the Town Center in-game.
The horses and animals tied to buildings have no animation. Get someone to rig the chickens and horses with a simple looping idle animation. It would go a long way.
Mod makers are quitting because the content creation tools lack basic functionality. That is a community the developers should be protecting, not driving away. Battlegrounds has a way larger audience than Crucible.
You cannot neglect the quality of the foundation and expect a game with a long product cycle. The community needs clear communication to have any real trust in AoE 4. You reap what you sow.