Pretty much everyone is saying that the gameloop itself is enjoyable to play and the music/sound is awesome, but the UI, visual clarity, controls, hotkey mapping, attack animations, unfinished game with lack of modding, ladder and content such as gamemodes (regicide) is a big yikes for 60€ in comparison to their own competition that is heavily played, which do alot of things better.
That doesn’t mean the game itself is bad, quite the oposite.
The core seems to be there, but it seems to be that some ppl that worked around it had too less time and had absolutely 0 idea what made past RTSs 2010+ so much better to play than the first 1990s stuff we got and just did randomly something…
I think a lot of these things are arguable. This isn’t the thread for it though - it’s just a problem in claiming “pretty much everyone” and then listing a bunch of things that align with your individual opinion.
It happens, people do it all the time. I’m not here to say “there’s nothing wrong with the game” or “Relic shouldn’t add these things”. I’m just hoping people stop assuming every single one of their opinions are shared by some greater majority. The reception to the game has been pretty positive (which has been really good to see), and I can’t help but feel that some of the forum critics haven’t taken that well.
This is exactly what I’m saying.
For you objectivity doesn’t exist because you refuse to put stuff on a “this is better than that” scale.
If i have unit control keys on
Qwer
Asdf
Or on
Qzpk
Maif
That’s a big difference.
One is consistent with its’ layout, one is not.
One is objectivly harder to make constant use of.
Bring that back to the game.
Having thrown together upgrades without visual clarity or the market that forces hover to check for the tradevalue or the constant need to reposition the camera in a fight old aoe1 style in a siege situation all raise the minimum APM necessary to play the game.
It makes it harder, especially for noobs, cause it raises the bar of input you need to do to play the game compared to more visual clear and better controls designed game.
That’s not relative, certain desing choices have certain consequences, and that’s not subjective and relative.
You’re now focusing on hotkeys, when what I was talking about were things like the UI, visual clarity, etc, et al. That’s why I said “I think a lot of these are arguable”. I didn’t say they all were.
You seem to be making assumptions about me, and I’m not sure why. Objectivity exists. That doesn’t mean we agree on the same subjective things, though.
I hope you notice how disengenouse af it is that you exactly snap the stuff out of the quote “you wanted to talk about” with visual clarity, UI and stuff and still refer to some “subjective stuff in the ether” even tho I went into detail.
(Which again, you conviniently cut out of the quote).
Ah, so now I’m being disingenuous. This really makes me believe you’re reading what I say with a fair and open mind
I didn’t reply to the rest of your post, because I had no interest in arguing with it. Like I’ve already said two or three times - people can have valid criticism about the game. Like I already said - this isn’t the thread for it so I’m not particularly fussed about making it about it. I highlighted the hotkeys as an example of something people understandably want improved. Which is something I wasn’t arguing with.
PM me if you want to straighten out anything we might have misread about the others’ posts. I don’t think it’s worth me dragging this out here any longer.
Implying that everybody is just an idiot that needs handholding is the condescending attitude of designers and decision makers in this industry that I deeply despise.
There is joy in being bad at things and getting better at it. The devs should make the path interesting, not take the goals away.
Relativization.
(There could be competitive players out there that disagree)
Relativization.
(Overall reviews are good, you as a critic just can’t take it ppl liking the game)
Relativization.
(What you wrote are obviously opinions)
I went into detail of points and you were cutting that out of your quote and still refer to “something you said is subjective”, even tho the stuff that you have cut was demonstrating how this stuff is changing the way players play the game in an objective sense.
The review itself did a good job in showing that as well.
This is not a pro vs noob discussion.
This is not an opinion piece.
Nobody is talking about if you rather rate the game 6/10, 4/10 or if 60 bucks are too much or not.
We went into detail why certain design choices are a step backwards in accessability for an RTS game, even tho all of the past AoE Definitive Editions had exactly these quality of life improvements that AoE4 lacks (except for the villager ressource listing).
There is no “projecting opinions on others” here.
Either you can see and recognize stuff on first glans or not cause you have to hover over stuff to get the same information.
Either it increases APM necessary to do the same things than before or not.
Based on that you can judge if the game gets harder to play.
The funny thing is noobs have always played AoE. There’s a huge part of the community that just plays the AI, and someone on this thread even mentioned that they get together with their buddies once a week to play the comp - and that’s awesome.
Not everyone can (nor wants) to climb a competitive ladder and get to master league.
Likewise game designers in my opinion shouldn’t reduce the skill cap or remove options of the overall game to somehow make it ‘more accessible’ to noobs - if the game is good enough, engaging enough and fun enough…they’ll end up trying to get better anyway.
That’s the most snowflake take on competetive play possible. (Watch this post disappear…I think they don’t like that word around here )
They say don’t be political, but try to shoehorn equality of outcome into the game, lul. Or at least thats how some of the fans see it.
[mod hat on] I have gone the full distance with Gorbles on god knows how many issues over the last three years or so, but I have never for a minute had reason to doubt his good faith or sincerity. He’s a good dude.
Focus on the arguments, everyone. An opinion that cannot withstand scrutiny was never worth holding to begin with. Find the weak spots and blast them to pieces.
Not sure if he is a disengenouse person or not, the way he wrote and argued here was and that’s what I called out.
I was making a distant extreme example on hotkey layouts, brought it back to the game and was talking about the UI and visual clarity in detail and his respons was:
He is saying, he wants to talk about it but as soon as I go into detail about why this stuff isn’t just opinion he missquotes and then shuts it diwn as soon as I call out with:
English is not my main language, can you help me with other words but beeing disengenuous here?
Competitive/multiplayer perspective: the game is fun to play, despite of the poor animations and my personal sentiment towards the aesthetics( like proportions or color scheme). Graphics are good too despite not next gen, after a while you start to feel pleased to play an age of empires on such good graphics when you stayed in aoe2 for too long (at least for me). The game seems macro demanding and there are some strategy concepts for the civs too. Based on these i see potencial long term for the game if the feedback (mainly UI and Hotkeys ,maybe zoom) be listened by Relic.
On a campaign/singleplayer perspective: Harsh but unless i am on the mood to explore the game narratives there is no way in 2021 I would feel a glimpse of immersion playing a game with robotic sieges, giant units, toy buildings and machine gun fired hooming arrows. Thankfully this is just personal and not a barrier for you to enjoy the game as it is.
When Age of Empires 2 was made, it had a core design principle.
It was supposed to be easy for anybody casual to pick up and enjoy and it needed have have enough depth (not complexity) so that masters would find it challenging.
They did a phenomenal job of creating one of the largest selling game franchises something that lives on today.
My point is, you don’t need to dumb down a game, i.e. reduce complexity, to attract players to a game. A game can be as simple or as difficult to pickup and that will have no impact on uptake if the game quality is high(see dark souls and the proliferation of soulstype games).
I just don’t think aoe4 meets enough criteria, playing wise, stylewise, graphics to make it and attract enouggh new RTS users, especially at the current price. Especially when you have actual AAA Tier games such as total war 3 which will retail for similar or less.
In conclusion, AOEIV imo will fail to attract new users. It will split existing aoe2 playerbase. Don’t get me wrong, as an aoe2 player, I would love nothing more than to love and migrate to aoe4, I was so hyped. I won’t however. It does not look good enough, visually, playwise, technically, costwise for me to move.
all of the stuff he brings up in this review needs to be fixed in the first few patches that come out now that the game has been released. Long term they need to redesign the UI, its garbage for the reasons winter pointed out. Not being able to tell the difference at a glace for upgrades is super annoying. No in depth command card is just why.
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