Oh yeah some of those mechanics are really strange. No idea how that happened.
But they “should” be easy to fix. I still wonder how that happened.
Like you can’t rebind the camera rotation hotkey in the UI but you can rebind it in the config file. So it perfectly works they just intentionally block you from doing so.
Especially stupid since this button has a different function in AoE2+3 so a lot of people will press is instinctively.
We’ll see.
People just need to reset their expectations from “Fix the game NOW” to the many years that I think the developers are seeing it taking. At first I was frustrated by the slow pace of development, but now I’ve accepted that it’s a game I’ll just dip into and play a bit if I feel like it, otherwise I won’t, and that’s no problem. I’ll look at what is new in each patch, and if it makes me want to play, I’ll play, otherwise I’ll wait for the next patch and play other games.
This is not what devs do. Devs are given their deadlines by the investors. If you want to point finger somewhere then point it towards ppl who are responsible for money.
No point of blaming relic aka devs because the reason why games get released in unfinished state is because investors want their money and more money.
Agreed, OP is targeting the wrong company (for a second time). Relic have no control over when aoe4 was released, it is Microsoft (the publisher) that OP should be directing the post towards.
Interestingly, whilst I know many of the team at relic are passionate from seeing their streams, and some of the team at world’s edge play and stream aoe4.
I dont know the name of anyone from Microsoft involved with publishing aoe4, whilst I can’t comment on their passion towards the game as I don’t know them, it certainly doesn’t seem to be as publically perceived as the other companies involved in the making of.
It’s hard to blame anyone in there.
Both Relic and Microsoft are known to do things differently with other games.
You can’t say X didn’t happen because Microsoft doesn’t allow them if X happened with a different Microsoft game at the same time.
Nor can you say Y didn’t happen because Relic doesn’t want to do it when they are doing it with their other game CoH3.
I’d love to know why things are the way they are.
Maybe it’s because Worlds Edge is inbetween everything? But that would apply to AoE2/3DE too.
I can’t believe you’re actually okay with this after already waiting over ten years.
Totally agree this is obviously a result of rushed production to please investors/executives.
If you were waiting for over 10 years you were stupid.
AoE was pretty much dead. No one seriously believed in it’s revival.
AoE4 only was a thing since 2017 and that was 10 years after the last “real” AoE game content was released with the last Expansion of AoE3.
Yeah idk how much I agree with this
Age of Empires is one of the largest and most well known franchises of RTS history, it would’ve been beyond dumb for Microsoft to not continue the series, from a business perspective.
From a fan perspective, of course I’m gonna have hope my favorite RTS has a new release, just like I still hope Empire Earth will make a comeback although I know damn well it never will. I don’t think being hopeful/optimistic makes me dumb (how rude!)
Maybe so but I’ve been able to consistently enjoy age of empires 3 all the way up until now through the use of the wars of liberty mod, which is amazing, adds tons of features and civs, and is free, therefore keeping the age series fresh on my mind.
I actually literally for about 8 years have typed in age of empires 4 in Google every month to see if anything was announced, and when it finally was I was super excited, watched the entire development, got less excited when they showed gameplay (bc I personally hate the cartoonish graphics they chose) and then on release i was extremely disappointed that they would release a game in this state, and not just any game, one of my favorite series’ of all time.
They did Age of Empi es a massive disservice and now they’re just basically telling us to go screw ourselves with these insignificant patches and slow response.
One can dream.
Empire Earth 1 is one of my all time favourite games and nothing got even close to it yet and it’s been over 20 years. It’s really sad.
Imagine how many people are doing that with Half Life 3.
It will probably end up similarly. People expect HL3 to be as revolutionary as 1 and 2 were.
Same with AoE4. It isn’t any more cartoony than AoE2/3 but both where considered “realistic” at their time. Things changed but AoE4 decided to be more like AoE2/3 instead of modern games. Maybe because there isn’t anything like AoE today that they could base their design on.
You can clearly see how the design of shooters changed over the last 20 years but there were no relevant RTS in the last 10 years with Starcraft 2 releasing in 2010.
People were mounting up expectations over the last 10+ years but there was 0 development. You can’t expect one developer to do 10+ years of development in a genre. And if they would have tired a lot of people would have complained that that’s not AoE anymore.
That’s why there can’t be a new “Empire Earth” yet. But AoE4 increased the likelihood of that to happen.
It doesn’t have to have the original license. That name is burned with EE2 and especially EE3 anyway.
Ee2 was actually my favorite 
But I mean there were some developments in RTS, star wars empire at war had a great UI and campaign map, empire total war, while not exactly the same genre, introduced lots of new iterations, hell even a lot of things from age of empires 3 they left out, it’s not that I was expecting them to redesign the genre as much as I was expecting them to continue from where they left off instead of going back to aoe2.1
And I disagree about aoe2 and especially 3s graphics being anywhere near cartoony. Aoe2 and 3 both still feel and look more realistic than 4 imo
The original AoE2 did run in 256 colours mode but it tried to be as colourful as possible with this limitation. The DE doesn’t have this limitation but it tried to not be more colourful than the original.
Also AoE2 has a lot of very cartoony units like the Throwing Axeman and it the fact that it uses sprite based animations with no transitions makes it look cartoony/anime (Expensive cartoons have good transitions but cheap ones usually don’t).
Also AoE2 buildings are “cartoony” instead of large eyes and stuff like that they have unrealistically large windows and doors. If you consider the size of the doors a lot of rooms in AoE2 buildings are super small.
AoE3(DE) is the most colourful AoE game. And the scale of buildings is also not correct. The proportions of the buildings are better then AoE2 but the scale is more off compared to units.
AoE4 is less colourful then AoE2(DE) and AoE3(DE) and the buildings are a lot closer to real buildings. Yes the scale is wrong but a correct scale wouldn’t work in a game with a population limit of 200.
I mean a castle or cathedral easily has enough room for over 200 people, having multiple such buildings when you only have 100 villagers would look stupid.
Yes AOE4 might be a bit more exaggerated and have a bit more colourful units in some cases but that’s cherry picking.
In the end it’s obviously down to taste but I’m pretty sure most people measure AoE4 at a different standard then AoE2/3DE because they are remasters. They imagine a 10 year progress in RTS development that didn’t happen and then complain that AoE4 is just a few “years” ahead of AoE2/3DE.
I don’t hate EE2, it added a lot of new things. But it just didn’t feel right.
Like the counter system treated catapults the same way as anti tank guns and cavalry the same way as tanks. The counter system made little sense and if felt like all ages are just reskins.
In EE1 the counter system in pre gunpowder, gunpowder and then modern age was very different.
EE2 had a lot of systems that sounded good on paper but the core gameplay just felt less impactful.
The most important part of an RTS is making it feel good having your units fight the enemies units and EE1 was really good at that.
EE1 was unfinished though with big balance issues and a awful AI that just worked by cheating.
You mad a lot of good points, totally agree
And yeah this absolutely, it just wasn’t the graphics I was expecting.
Also idk maybe it’s just me but the colors and everything worked better in 2/3, that really isn’t even my problem tho I just feel like the overall graphics feel more like clash of clans than age of empire.
Edit: after reviewing footage and this screenshot I believe a large part of it is the scale is even worse in age 4 and there doesn’t appear to be flora and fauna and other smaller details like in 3
I think all AI back then in RTS games chested heavily.
But yeah empire Earth wasn’t perfect but it had a lot of cool ideas, the tech tree was also v nice
I’ll agree the counters were weird but in practice a trebuchet can’t fight an artillery piece and win
I also play it heavily modded so my memory of base ee2 is hazy at best, I also never played empire Earth multiplayer, that’s my city building game.
