Why this game feels so fresh and i love it (former sc2/aoe2 player)

Age of Empires IV IV - Discussion
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First of all i want to thank you for this game. I love every single detail about it, even the things that make the game feel different then other rts: And following i want to explain why the seemingly “missing adjustments” give this game its charme.

I completely fell in love wth the game and its absolutely lovely details. The sounds are just cool and i cannot but admire that the respective languages are fitting to the age the player is in.

I also love the documentary style of the campaign and more then anyting else there is nothing better then a very uniqueness in the civs.

Now i want to adress some points that are brought up from the competetive scene, especially SC2, and want to give these a new perspective (my perspective, the silent ?majority? [see steam reviews] that just loves the game as it is):

This game gets quite some critics from the competetive scene. As im from a more competitive background myself (Masterleague SC2), i want to point out why i have another take on the critisism:

  • keybinding
  • slightly imbalanced
  • clunkyness (no units on a bord to select from, u have to use the mouse and the screen)
  • TC target fire unable
    etc. pp.

The people complaining about this always do so in reference that it is “better” in SC2 and AOE2. I do not feel that way, but before you people rage and turn your head when you played competitive, let me explain why that is.

Everytime i played SC2, i already was a bit stressed out. There was so many options, so much to do. You never really could do everything that u wanted to, what the better players could execute. You had more freedom: Customizable keys, no clunkyness, everyting smooth and fast (also always able to targetfire etc.).

Coming to aoe4, i was a bit confused. Nothing worked according to my muscle memory. I couldnt customize all keys, i have a hard time selecting low life unit because you have to click them on screen.

But to my surprise i still loved it. I sat back and relaxed, allowing myself making mistakes. Suddenly the better opponents also have a harder time microing and i can let go of all this detailed stuff like pulling low health units back. Why you ask? Because everyone fcks that up in a battle in aoe4. I can just let it go because no one can do it, giving me space to concentrate on the more fun part of the game. Building walls in support of units. Using priests to heal after my decision to retreat.

The game feels fresh because it is not AOE2, it is not SC2. It is just new and require some new skills (in some parts: less skills). it does make it less stressful, easier to play and enjoyable for me. For that exact reason. Of course i have all this training in other rts and some of my skills are now unusable. I think that thisis a huge part of why it feels so good to play this for me.

I hear some people complain about things and yet they still realize that the game is just fun and relaxing. I just love it and hope that the scene gets as big and enduring as the others (sc2/aoe2), because i absolutely love this game.

I wanted to write this to make 1 thing clear: Eventhough some of the competitive scene dislike this new style (maybe because people hate change in general), there, and im sure of this, there is also alot of players that feel exactly like me. Everyone that likes the style of RTS but is stressed out alot in the very competitive ones: This is a must buy / must try. Give it a shot, i love the relaxing athmosphere and gameplay.

Best regards,

someone of the silent majority that loves the game.

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It’s not the silent majority that loves the game, the majority of the people who are playing it love the game. People confuse criticism with disliking the game.

You don’t have to compare it to any other game. AoE4, all by itself, will be a better game with all those things addressed. You can’t argue against having more options, if people don’t want to rebind their keys they don’t have to, but nothing is gained by not having the option to do so. Balance issues don’t improve the game, chunkiness doesn’t improve the game.

Try hard SC2 players are still going to have an advantage over relaxed players no matter how clunky you make the game or how hard you make it to micro so there is no point in punishing everyone. Players of every skill level will benefit from full key binding, better balance and less chunkiness.

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No you do not understand. most of the time when im managing my army in sc2 i am not watching seeing the unts, i just look at the very bottom and select units that go from yellow to red. in AOE4 i See the fight, boxselect the units while getting a glimpse of the cinematic view because i have to select units in boxes.
I am a competitive player but due to the lack of micromanagement options i can spent my time doing other things (for me more relaxed, planned stuff, instead of managing everything in detail.). It makes the game different, the skills dont translate 1 to 1 from sc2 and aoe2, you need to develop some different skills. If there is the option to micromanagement , i am going to use them to not suffer a competitive disadvantage.
You can have your opinion, i can have mine. And the way the game is set up is more relaxing as sc2 or aoe2. For me, and probably also for some others (have 3 likes so far so i think im probably not all allone).

I dont say i would absolutely hate when these mechanics come back and drop the game. But i wanna say that i really dont miss all these functions, not a bit. Because if u read in these forums you get tons of complaints. My point is that probably plenty of people do not give a damn, or: even like it this way.

I also want to add: People in WC3 loved footman, towerdefence etc. These gamemodes missed some functions. In footmen you didnt really macro and in towerdefence u didnt need to micro. With a lack of freedom there is coming a sense of simplicity, wich can take stress from a player.

So it is the design of the game that matters, and that u think that these options would be an factual improvement of the game is shortsightet, although i accept that this is ur perspective.

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No you do not understand. most of the time when im managing my army in sc2 i am not watching seeing the unts, i just look at the very bottom and select units that go from yellow to red. in AOE4 i See the fight, boxselect the units while getting a glimpse of the cinematic view because i have to select units in boxes.
I am a competitive player but due to the lack of micromanagement options i can spent my time doing other things (for me more relaxed, planned stuff, instead of managing everything in detail.). It makes the game different, the skills dont translate 1 to 1 from sc2 and aoe2, you need to develop some different skills. If there is the option to micromanagement , i am going to use them to not suffer a competitive disadvantage.
You can have your opinion, i can have mine. And the way the game is set up is more relaxing as sc2 or aoe2. For me, and probably also for some others (have 3 likes so far so i think im probably not all allone).

I dont say i would absolutely hate when these mechanics come back and drop the game. But i wanna say that i really dont miss all these functions, not a bit. Because if u read in these forums you get tons of complaints. My point is that probably plenty of people do not give a damn, or: even like it this way.

I also want to add: People in WC3 loved footman, towerdefence etc. These gamemodes missed some functions. In footmen you didnt really macro and in towerdefence u didnt need to micro. With a lack of freedom there is coming a sense of simplicity, wich can take stress from a player.

So it is the design of the game that matters, and that u think that these options would be an factual improvement of the game is shortsightet, although i accept that this is ur perspective.

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These are 2 different things, lesser focus on micro due to actual game design (like having less active abilities on units) is fine. Missing UI elements, no option to rebind keys, lack of balance and chunkiness are not part of the game design, it’s just how games launch until they get fixed.

What you are missing is that try hards who don’t have all selected units shown on the UI aren’t going to just give up on microing and simply A move their army into yours and enjoy the scenery, they will still micro, they will just have a harder time doing it, you can then choose between not microing and losing or doing other relaxed things (which they will also be doing) and losing. You’ve gained nothing by making it harder on everyone to micro.

Same with balance and rebinding. There is no level of player that benefits from having his picked civilization be automatically worse than his opponent’s civ. There is no level of player that benefits from using the current key binding system to using their own. It’s not called being shortsighted, it’s called living in reality.

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Of course you now claim your reality as THE reality. Gl with that, i stop arguing, i tried to explain but if u dont want to get it u just dont need to. Have a good day.

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I’ll wait for someone else to explain how a lack of balance is good, since you were unable to. Have a good day as well.

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I agree 100% with OP. I love that the game focus more on macro, strategy and tactics and less on micro. The micro requirement of SC2 made the game better for e-sports but much more stressful to play.

I disliked that in SC2 if you did everything right but made the single micro mistake you lost the entire game. That is simply too punishing for normal competitive players.

AOE4 is simply much more fun and relaxing to play.

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Ok i never said that imbalance is a good thing per say, i just wanted to summarize the main complaints existing. Though a slight imbalance can make the game more exciting.

It is not a net negative when not everything in a game revolves arround being balanced. In SC2 for instance, all 3 races are pretty balanced, so there are basically no favorable matchups. (At least as good as possible this is tried to be achieved).

In Aoe4 there is more openes to sacrifice some balancing to get a greater variety of Specialiced Civs. Some matchups are slightly favorable deriving from the different playstyles, strengths and weaknesses that the civ offer. And as long as it is not unplayable (hence op) but just unfavorable, i actually find this more exciting.

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The game feels fresh to me mostly because of how different the Civs feel. Yeah, you basically have the same units, some for powerful than others and a couple of unique units. There’s something far more interesting to me than 39 different Civs that have minor tweaks for economy and military.

I still don’t like that half the population tends to be villagers yet that’s an aspect of AOE2 that most players enjoy.

One thing though. I’m surprised that players expect things to be perfect right from the get-go for any RTS out there. Each one that I recall had patches and Balance changes like crazy in the first year. This one is no different. The closed BETA does not have the same #s out there for data like there is now.

Barring some suggested/Required additions, this has potential. Especially when more Civs are eventually added.

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This.
Chunkyness and lack of balance paired with lack of features auch as poor hotkeys/controls is just raising the basic apm/micro skilllevel, which makes it harder for noobs to fight with armies overall.

AoE was never Starcraft.
It was never pulling units back/blink out/quick pickup and turn with boost.
It always had a macro over micro approach to it (doesn’t mean that micro doesn’t exists, just pointing out that the franchise itself was never around these high impact/spellcast/blinkstalker level of saving single units).

Overall rn the game itself due to controls and hotkeys plays really bad.
It’s not good because “competitive players can’t do it right either” but because it makes it harder to control for everyone.
100 apm in this game is like 30-40 apm in starcraft, due to the excessive camera movement necessary, double/triple hotkey submenus and constant building canceling/villager blocking themself into idle, army circling around range blob on a+leftclick cause they get prior to a centered unit forcing you to babysit everything.

I think you (op) confuse this entire scenario with the fact that the game is brand new.
This means that meta and good players still have to develope.
1v1 is completely broken now due to the fact that 45% you run into Mongol TC rush, tho winable making the gameflow giga cancer, or 45% against french which are so overbloated with benefits that you can hardly call it balanced.

This lack of balance is not good for the game and not good for the players.
I personally am a 1v1 only RTS player, was top 20 with all factions in CoH2 1v1 and 2v2 for about 6 weeks a few years ago and was also middle master in SC2 before I jumped here and I don’t want to play 1v1s in this game at all anymore after a week.

The game fights you really hard with the controls, the balance is really poor once you get into it, and the pathfinding/autotargetting of units makes me feel like I have to babysit every single unit I have AoE1:DE release style.

I am really glad you like the game, so do I, but I think you’d lie to yourself if you keep telling yourself that the technical issues this game has is somehow contributing to your positive view of the game.

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I never said i enjoy the technical shortcoming when it comes to unit-ai, i have no idea how you can think that this is the part of the game i like. Quite the opposite, there is nothing that i find less enjoyable then stupid ai of my workers and military. When i build a building somewheree and something stands in its way for a moment and it gets cancelled, its driving me nuts. When bombards block them because they cant stack and i amoved, it annoys me. When i play AOE2 this is the worset. Sometimes my villgers are not able to figure out a way past each other. I have never said that i like that. I would even love if i would not have to redistribute my eco all the time because my villies go idle, id like there to be a function even that would make them go to the next best spot automatically so they diobnt go idle. Idle villies during a fight are just not enjoyable for anyone ever. But like i said, im all for more ai in my units, but AOE4 compared to other games does a good job there still. (Thats why i dont get this kind of critisism. AOE2 Unit-AI was always on a level to need a babysitter).

The TC-rush thing i dont know, i barely ever run into it (and im Top 500). So i really dont know where your numbers are coming from.