People are leaving the game because they are tired of waiting for the devs to take the game seriously. The problem is the fans here are passionate, Relic is not. If they were, they would not have had released a game with so many missing pieces, so many bugs, and so many aspirations and ideas that either missed the mark, or totally misunderstood what this whole thing was about. Unfortunately, this a organizational issue. Age 2 has survived for two decades because it had a incredible team behind it, followed by a dedicated player base that would never let the things Relic has (or hasn’t done) slide when WE (the players) took up the reigns to ensure its continuity. There’s no reason for us to think that things will change in Age 4, and frankly, the things that make Age 2 great simply don’t exist in this lackluster attempt. That’s why we are leaving, and after waiting sixteen years for a new rendition to a game that inspired so much of our lives, that is why we are so mad.
Not sure what this post is trying to accomplish other than just ranting at a dev that isn’t even associated with the game. This forum sometimes makes reddit look like a harmonious place and people wonder why devs don’t respond in threads.
Although my point still stands, I appreciate you pointing that out because I just finished using that platform and obviously still had it on my mind.
It may be a random rant but I mean,
He not wrong tho
It took them an entire year to fix an exploit in AoE2 after release.
Before the first Expansion playing the Teutones was basically a free win and they were banned on every lobby.
AoE2 is over 20 years old now. Don’t compare the balance of a game that has been out for over two decades with one that has been out for a few months. Also AoE2 changed the development team, none of the people that made the original game still work on it.
Even AoE2HD is been out for nearly 9 years now and got regular balance patches since then (If you include AoE2DE).
AoE4 has been out for 3 months.
Why? This is so wrong lmao.
Relic doesn’t have any to do without being “passionate” stuff , devs of relic like Eliot for example are really passionate .
The thing is that relic doesn’t have nothing to do with the release , Microsoft release the game , and Microsoft almost never delays their games , there were so many bugs not discovered in the betas , like the relic bug for example.
Oh I forgot the mention that Starcraft 2 had 6 months of beta before release.
It was technically a closed beta but it was relatively easy to get into it.
AoE4 got 2 weeks of beta.
The release version is basically a beta in my opinion.
Yeah I would have preferred a longer beta instead of an early release but that’s what we got now. Still better then just having to wait another 3 months to be able to play the game at all.
Yeah I wouldn’t put the blame on the devs but more on management and executive decisions, at the end of the day the devs have to do what those people tell them their “vision” for the game is.
I disagree here.
A botched launch has a lot of repercussions not neccisarily as simple as “well at least we get to play after waiting over ten years” for example, what about the people who were so disappointed, they likely won’t return? Or the ones who are so frustrated that they’re considering changing franchises or will jump ship as soon as a worthy competitor comes along (and trust me there’s a few in the works)
It sours the opinions of long term fans, and demolishes relics reputation at the same time. I can only hope it doesn’t have long term consequences on the entire series in the same effect empire Earth 3 did to that series. If you’re not familiar take some time to compare empire Earth 2 gameplay to 3 gameplay and you’ll see what I mean.
You keep forgetting that AoE4 is actually popular.
Many people like it and have fun with it.
It got overall good reviews.
Yes a bad launch can have long term negative consequences but AoE4 didn’t start of that bad.
Empire Earth 2 was a lot worse and a lot less popular than the original Empire Earth and also already made by a different team. But it was ok.
Empire Earth 3 was even worse and threw away so man things that made both previous games good. Not just a bad launch.
I would obviously preferred a 6 month long beta before the release instead of having a release without an Editor and some other core AoE features.
But still better then not being able to play it at all I’d say.
And if it was just delayed by 6 months without a lot of beta testing most of the balance issues and exploits wouldn’t have been found.
It took players a while to discover them.
This would be fine, it just sits wrong with me how the consumers are basically the beta testers now bc they wanted to push out the game for Christmas
This was kinda my point, Aoe4 has thrown away tons of features from both 3 and 2
Do you have any real evidence from the devs themselves saying they are not passionate about what they do? I would just assume that considering people work their whole lives to get to the position their employees are in, they really are psyched to be working on this project.
It’s a huge undertaking though. Sure they have done an RTS before but they have to make a game that feels like a few other games yet isn’t the same game, with the best graphics that can work on potatoes too, and it needs to be balanced (with 8 different civs) and have no bugs. There have been tons of games released recently with a smaller scope that have had as many issues. Maybe they didn’t matter as much because they weren’t RTS games where everything needs to work perfectly and balance is top priority.
AoE4 is very close to AoE2 in many ways.
I think AoE4 is the closest to AoE2 of all games I have played.
The main missing things are either promised like an Editor or small things like colour or population selection in the lobby.
Yeah but they completely threw out any improvements 3 made, especially around siege. (And graphics, I absolutely hate the move towards cartoony graphics, but not everyone would agree here, to each their own I know this can’t be changed now)
Edit: also for me this is part of the problem, I honestly feel like I’m just playing a graphically updated aoe2 most of the time, which is great, but I see it as the dev studio playing it extremely safe with something they’re not comfortable with.
Age 4 is a bunch of wasted potential imo
Are you comparing something that happend more than 20 years ago with the present?
No learning, no upgrade in tech, no productivity enhance?
And the frequent patches for AoE2… that’s a good thing!
They should have applied all experience to this game.
Anyway, it is what it is.
I think the potential is still there.
Future Expansions/DLCs can add so much to the game.
You can’t just “copy” something you learned about balancing if you don’t copy the complete game.
Balancing is a complex topic.
They didn’t repeat the balance problems of AoE2 nor AoE3 but created their own new balance problems.
There is nothing like the springlad in any other AoE nor did any other AoE have animation cancelling.
And it took player months to figure out animation cancelling.
But I have to agree. Patches should be more frequent. Adding small balance changes and bug fixes more often should be a priority.
AoE3DE had weekly patches in the first few months after release.
Culverins in age of empires 3
Not true, they’ve know about animation cancelling since the beta.
100% this is really all we want. If they’re gonna release a broken game at least give us more than one patch a month.
And yeah absolutely but I’m afraid they missed out on a lot of core things that could only feasibly be done while In development and can’t be fixed now that it’s released.
No.
Culverins were never good against cavalry.
Springlads originally had no bonus damage against siege (you can still see that in the campaign) and their description makes it sound like they have the same effect as the scorpions in AoE2, damaging multiple units in a line.
Now they changed them to be basically like Culverines but that’s only after the December patch.
I saw no one complain about it until recently.
Not sure what you see as missed opportunities but those things might have been things that a lot of people didn’t want to see. Like basically anything that was added in AoE3. Many AoE2 fans just have anything AoE3 without thinking about it.
I’ll give you that, I just meant their obvious vision for springalds was similar to culverins from age 3 and now that they’re (kinda) fixed they fill a similar role.
Go back to around November/December in bug reporting, multiple reports of animation cancelling.
While this is true I think we can all agree siegeplay felt so much better in age 3, the graphics( I know a personal preference but still, lots of other people were disappointed with the choice to go cartoonish)
The unique units actually feeling unique, unit stat cards with detailed info and histories of the units
Walls not being made out of paper
To name a few.
Also this just completely disregards the age of empires 3 players, a lot of use genuinely loved age 3
I loved age 2 as well but I enjoyed age 3 more and am disappointed the series basically went backward.
Honestly I would’ve preferred a new time period, roman period, world war one, two, or even ages spanning through all periods similar to how empire Earth epochs worked.
Like yeah cool we basically got a new age of empires 2 with new age graphics and AI, and a cool campaign, I won’t deny the campaign was nicely done, but overall I was disappointed already when they revealed they’d be returning to the middle ages
Now I realize a LOT of these things are personal opinion, but I feel like a lot of these things play either subliminally or literally into people’s opinions of 4
I agree with you on balance. Im talking about mechanics, UI, etc.
Examples:
_ Select all mechanics. - Why include land and water in select all military? Makes it useless in water/hybrid maps.
Why include docks in select all mil buildings?
How is that there is no key to disable unit production so you can use that mechanic to produce and rally from only your foward buildings…?
_ Why not dedicated hotkey for building types?
Ok. No one uses that mechanic. Control groups are the way to go.
So… what’s the point in eliminating one mechanic to use a new one that is incomplete and no one uses?
Also, control groups… aaaaaaaaaaaannnnoooooyyyyyyyyyyyiiiiiiiiiiiiiinnnnnnng
WHY NO OPTION to use clasic mechanic for groups?
And many more, many stuff about unit selection that was solved for 20 years and now isn’t (like been able to select/unselect specific units when selecting a group (panel or/and hotkeys)… blah blah blah…
Anyway, I can’t take the zoom anymore (that was also solved in previous games).
Zoom out patch?
Zoom out mod? (to be used in the ladder)
Meanwhile… That’s it for me. GG
This is a known bug and they’re working on it
Agreed, and it neccisarily isn’t even about the mechanic, which works decently well, but more it’s the lack of being able to rekey or set hotkeys for specific things.
This game has one of the saddest excuses for a control group mechanic I’ve ever seen in an RTS
100%
Zoom is highly restrictive and their silence on the matter is greatly annoying
Same with population cap at 200 - we should have a drop down menu to choose higher populations.