AOE4 Trailer Released

[duckzilla]

AoE4 is like Star Wars 7-9. All the nice graphics, but the content is pretty much the same of the beloved original. You feel betrayed going to the cinema, since you expected a creative storyline, maybe some more depth to old characters etc.

[RefluxSemantic]

AoE4 is like Star Wars 7-9. All the nice graphics, but the content is pretty much the same of the beloved original. You feel betrayed going to the cinema, since you expected a creative storyline, maybe some more depth to old characters etc.

Are you from the future or what?

[RefluxSemantic]

I'm so fucking bored of medieval games.
How many medieval games are they going to poop out before everyone gets sick of them lol.

Everyone is playing it so safe today. Marketing and sales deciding what "consumers" want. Bleh. Fuck this predictable shit.

There's no more thirst for exploration, new worlds, new horizons. Same old hackneyed themes, remakes of remakes of same old tested recipes. Brainless content for blank-minded consumers. The nth Terminator instalment, Batman, Batman Returns, Batman Forever, Batman & Robin, Batman Begins, The Dark Knight (hello it's Batman again), The Dark Knight Rises, Batman v Superman, Suicide Squad, Justice League, Joker, Batman with Fries, Batman with Mozzarella, Batman on toast, Batman Microwaved, Batman Sliced in Half Flying Over My House.

Hurrr, raise your swords for emperor Sibelius. Build two pikemen and siege that piece of wall. Fire that trebuchet. My saracens are coming to raid your farms.

You are pretty biased here. A medieval base building rts has been done exactly once, by aoe2. Theres also the stronghold series I guess, but thats very different. For the aoe3 timeline you also have cossacks. Its about even really.

You're just acting like an entitled kid that got a bmw instead of an audi for her 16th birthday.

[Challenger_Marco]

Aoe4 might be disappointing for aoe fans but I'm still hyped....it's probably gonna be like aoe2 de with different mechanics..I am hoping for aoe5.

[Goodspeed]

I'm so fucking bored of medieval games.
How many medieval games are they going to poop out before everyone gets sick of them lol.

Everyone is playing it so safe today. Marketing and sales deciding what "consumers" want. Bleh. Fuck this predictable shit.

There's no more thirst for exploration, new worlds, new horizons. Same old hackneyed themes, remakes of remakes of same old tested recipes. Brainless content for blank-minded consumers. The nth Terminator instalment, Batman, Batman Returns, Batman Forever, Batman & Robin, Batman Begins, The Dark Knight (hello it's Batman again), The Dark Knight Rises, Batman v Superman, Suicide Squad, Justice League, Joker, Batman with Fries, Batman with Mozzarella, Batman on toast, Batman Microwaved, Batman Sliced in Half Flying Over My House.

Hurrr, raise your swords for emperor Sibelius. Build two pikemen and siege that piece of wall. Fire that trebuchet. My saracens are coming to raid your farms.

You can still be innovative without switching time periods. Especially in the genre of RTS, where even with relatively small changes a game can feel completely different.
That said I do agree about the general trend towards playing it safe and how destructive that is. Especially cinema is in a sorry state because of it.

[Amsel_]

I'm so fucking bored of medieval games.
How many medieval games are they going to poop out before everyone gets sick of them lol.

Everyone is playing it so safe today. Marketing and sales deciding what "consumers" want. Bleh. Fuck this predictable shit.

There's no more thirst for exploration, new worlds, new horizons. Same old hackneyed themes, remakes of remakes of same old tested recipes. Brainless content for blank-minded consumers. The nth Terminator instalment, Batman, Batman Returns, Batman Forever, Batman & Robin, Batman Begins, The Dark Knight (hello it's Batman again), The Dark Knight Rises, Batman v Superman, Suicide Squad, Justice League, Joker, Batman with Fries, Batman with Mozzarella, Batman on toast, Batman Microwaved, Batman Sliced in Half Flying Over My House.

Hurrr, raise your swords for emperor Sibelius. Build two pikemen and siege that piece of wall. Fire that trebuchet. My saracens are coming to raid your farms.

I'm a big fan of Medieval/Fantasy settings, but you're right about the staleness of modern media and entertainment. I think the problem is a lack of desire or need to produce new content. Companies have gotten so good at marketing, and are in bed with all the journalists, so even garbage gets hyped enough to be profitable. (The "news" will give free advertising to its friends under the guise of "culture" or "trends" despite that trend being manufactured by the company itself. Companies that haven't matured aren't privy to this, and thus, can rarely go "mainstream.") A good example of this is the recent Star Wars movies, which took a franchise that told good stories and had a massive lore, and turned it into a vehicle for churning out profitable movies. It's so obvious that these media companies are outright hostile towards any creators which want to actually produce things of quality, and instead care almost exclusively about profit.

But you need to look at the current state of RTS games to understand why Microsoft would "play it safe" by going back to the popular medieval setting. There is a very small market for RTS games these days. The most profitable games are FPS and dumbed down RPGs. Because of this, I'm very grateful that Microsoft is even willing to take the risk of producing an RTS game at all. You'd expect these Harvard MBA "geniuses" to just churn out pay-to-win mobile phone games under the Age of Empires IP for eternity. So if Microsoft wants to use nostalgia to market its game, or it doesn't want to rock the boat by using a new, non-medieval setting, I'm okay with that.

[RefluxSemantic]

What time era would be new and fresh then? I guess we need a caveman rts..

[duckzilla]

There is a lot of potential to make AoE4 quite different from AoE2, even though the eras are comparable. The comments by Isgreen and other indicate that they introduce good concepts from AoE3 into AoE4, such as explorers(/heros) and civilizations with more unique tech trees/units. This alone should lead to a different gameplay.

[Goodspeed]

I'm so fucking bored of medieval games.
How many medieval games are they going to poop out before everyone gets sick of them lol.

Everyone is playing it so safe today. Marketing and sales deciding what "consumers" want. Bleh. Fuck this predictable shit.

There's no more thirst for exploration, new worlds, new horizons. Same old hackneyed themes, remakes of remakes of same old tested recipes. Brainless content for blank-minded consumers. The nth Terminator instalment, Batman, Batman Returns, Batman Forever, Batman & Robin, Batman Begins, The Dark Knight (hello it's Batman again), The Dark Knight Rises, Batman v Superman, Suicide Squad, Justice League, Joker, Batman with Fries, Batman with Mozzarella, Batman on toast, Batman Microwaved, Batman Sliced in Half Flying Over My House.

Hurrr, raise your swords for emperor Sibelius. Build two pikemen and siege that piece of wall. Fire that trebuchet. My saracens are coming to raid your farms.

I'm a big fan of Medieval/Fantasy settings, but you're right about the staleness of modern media and entertainment. I think the problem is a lack of desire or need to produce new content. Companies have gotten so good at marketing, and are in bed with all the journalists, so even garbage gets hyped enough to be profitable. (The "news" will give free advertising to its friends under the guise of "culture" or "trends" despite that trend being manufactured by the company itself. Companies that haven't matured aren't privy to this, and thus, can rarely go "mainstream.") A good example of this is the recent Star Wars movies, which took a franchise that told good stories and had a massive lore, and turned it into a vehicle for churning out profitable movies. It's so obvious that these media companies are outright hostile towards any creators which want to actually produce things of quality, and instead care almost exclusively about profit.

The popularity of all that marvel crap is particularly depressing. If only people had taste.
Yeah, I'm talking to you, person who could only talk about endgame for the entire week surrounding its release.

[lejend]

I'm actually pretty glad it's not set in the modern era.

[Thrar]

I'm a big fan of Medieval/Fantasy settings, but you're right about the staleness of modern media and entertainment.

I don't think that's even modern entertainment, but just entertainment in general. Look at how many Frankenstein or Dracula spin-offs there were in the 1920s to 1940s, how many westerns a few decades later, or even how many different dramas set in some king's court Shakespeare alone has written.
For each of these there are a few standout classics and then many more that faded into obscurity because they didn't bring anything truly different to the table. I expect that if you look at the output of ancient Greek theater playwrights, 19th century novelists, or any other narrative art form, you'll see very similar patterns.

When addressing a global market, there is a limited number of settings that are accessible to the audience. If you make it too obscure or too distant, people without the relevant background will find it difficult to relate. Being tied to historical, non-fiction settings further limits that pool of possibilities.

I don't think there is anything fundamentally wrong with revisiting a setting. It's practically impossible to avoid anyway, and there is still plenty of space to innovate or look at it through a different lens. The trailer doesn't tell us much about what the creators have in mind, but I'm sure it will be a different take on the period from ES's 20 years ago.

[BrookG]

Ι am with Thrar. I suggest looking up the documentary Everything is a Remix. There is no parthenogenesis in creation.

[kami_ryu]

The setting is semi-irrelevant. The gameplay needs to be good. The dev support needs to be good.


imo

[fightinfrenchman]

@Goodspeed @Amsel_ this isn't really on topic but acting like all modern media is bad because you don't like what's most popular is just silly. There's more things being created now than at any other point in history! Do you really think it's all bland?

[Goodspeed]

Most of it

[howlingwolfpaw]

I have a feeling with this one they are focusing on the game play just as much as with graphics. I think with recent AOE series flops they really want to get it right. There are going to be new dynamics that will change the way this RTS feels vs aoe2. And that being in how the game changed its relationship with walls. That seems much more relevant, does height change units attributes? and upgradeable? possibly? I do hope there are a couple different ,battlment, bastilla or wall tower options. And the height of them, will units no longer have LOS or range to hit units behind them? Its really going to have to get players to learn to play a full out siege warfare rather than a mass of weak units. Which I hope to see, if one has reached the wall stage. There will also be new dynamics in how units interact, some look like they have running and walking speeds. or special abilities? so that will require ways to be masterfully skillful at the game. Aoe is a game so known it will be an easy game to play but a tough game to master, like a new chess with many dynamic ways to take advantages

[fightinfrenchman]

What a depressing outlook on life

[RefluxSemantic]

I have a feeling with this one they are focusing on the game play just as much as with graphics. I think with recent AOE series flops they really want to get it right. There are going to be new dynamics that will change the way this RTS feels vs aoe2. And that being in how the game changed its relationship with walls. That seems much more relevant, does height change units attributes? and upgradeable? possibly? I do hope there are a couple different ,battlment, bastilla or wall tower options. And the height of them, will units no longer have LOS or range to hit units behind them? Its really going to have to get players to learn to play a full out siege warfare rather than a mass of weak units. Which I hope to see, if one has reached the wall stage. There will also be new dynamics in how units interact, some look like they have running and walking speeds. or special abilities? so that will require ways to be masterfully skillful at the game. Aoe is a game so known it will be an easy game to play but a tough game to master, like a new chess with many dynamic ways to take advantages

In an interview they stated that currently elevation will affect the amount of damage ranged units do. So elevation might indeed play a much bigger role in gameplay than in any RTS we know to date. It looked really smooth in the trailer so I think that's very promising. Also, they confirmed that civilizations will have hero units which will have some special abilities. Also, in the trailer we can clearly see siege towers, which would presumably be used to make your infantry scale up the walls. All very promising. I hope that units cant just stand behind walls and fire (like they can in aoe2 and aoe3). It's not very realistic and I don't think that's a good thing for the gameplay. I hope you really have to mount your archers on top of the walls (or in front, sure) for them to be effective.

Btw, judging from your post: If you have never played stronghold, you should pick up one of those games. It sounds like you'd love it.

[RefluxSemantic]

Most of it

But there is also more being created than ever before. It might just be that there is more original content out there, but that we've gotten spoiled.

I do agree that much of popular entertainment sources seem aimed at the largest common denominator and it doesn't feel like I am part of this common denominator at all. But there are still masterpieces out there for sure. I played Outer Wilds half a year ago. That game was so creative and amazing. While there may be a lot of remakes (or 60 euro reskins in the case of the call of duty series) there are also still very creative games out there and similarly there are always a few movies each year that I absolutely love and there's always a few tv series that are something special.

It's not always good, but there is always something that is good.

[Dolan]

Ι am with Thrar. I suggest looking up the documentary Everything is a Remix. There is no parthenogenesis in creation.

There's a clear difference between finding inspiration in other works and creating something new based on that -- and pathetically putting out yet another instalment in a long series of cheap, commercial remakes.

It's basically like the difference between Tarantino making movies inspired by spaghetti westerns from the 1960s and Asian cult movies, but creating something new that has its own meta charm, and Hollywood making yet another Batman movie every few years, this time with a slightly different plot twist but updated gfx.

[RefluxSemantic]

Aoe4 doesn't really sound like a cheap, commercial remake at all though. Just read for example this bit:

"When Age of Empires 4 was announced at gamescom 2017, it was already fully playable in the studio, albeit still far away from the desired functionality. "We had a playable version almost from the first day of development," explains Adam Isgreen. Even though Relic Entertainment was able to adapt the technology of its previous real-time strategy games, it was still largely rewritten. The goal:
"Age of Empires 4 should be playable on as many PC configurations as possible."
Despite large maps, many units and dynamic destruction of walls and buildings: Age of Empires 4 must reach a broad target group - both in terms of hardware equipment and player types. In return, the World's Edge team promises a wealth of settings: Not only the graphic details can be adjusted down or up, but also many control options and comfort functions can be adjusted at will."

"For Shannon Loftis, it was important that the technology was 100 percent up and running before gameplay concepts were finally approved. And Adam Isgreen talks about the "tech debt" you wanted to avoid - the dragging along of old bottlenecks in the engine that you have to program around. This is one reason why Age of Empires 4 has no release date yet - it's not even known if it will be released in 2020. At the moment I'd rather guess 2021, but that's just my gut feeling."

[howlingwolfpaw]

I have a feeling with this one they are focusing on the game play just as much as with graphics. I think with recent AOE series flops they really want to get it right. There are going to be new dynamics that will change the way this RTS feels vs aoe2. And that being in how the game changed its relationship with walls. That seems much more relevant, does height change units attributes? and upgradeable? possibly? I do hope there are a couple different ,battlment, bastilla or wall tower options. And the height of them, will units no longer have LOS or range to hit units behind them? Its really going to have to get players to learn to play a full out siege warfare rather than a mass of weak units. Which I hope to see, if one has reached the wall stage. There will also be new dynamics in how units interact, some look like they have running and walking speeds. or special abilities? so that will require ways to be masterfully skillful at the game. Aoe is a game so known it will be an easy game to play but a tough game to master, like a new chess with many dynamic ways to take advantages

In an interview they stated that currently elevation will affect the amount of damage ranged units do. So elevation might indeed play a much bigger role in gameplay than in any RTS we know to date. It looked really smooth in the trailer so I think that's very promising. Also, they confirmed that civilizations will have hero units which will have some special abilities. Also, in the trailer we can clearly see siege towers, which would presumably be used to make your infantry scale up the walls. All very promising. I hope that units cant just stand behind walls and fire (like they can in aoe2 and aoe3). It's not very realistic and I don't think that's a good thing for the gameplay. I hope you really have to mount your archers on top of the walls (or in front, sure) for them to be effective.

Btw, judging from your post: If you have never played stronghold, you should pick up one of those games. It sounds like you'd love it.

I might have played strong hold in an alternate universe but this one I pretty much stuck to AOE series. I am glad they are going this route as terrain and LOS should be factors. Walls like this will now have a purpose and not be abusive like how they have becomes in this game. So many ways to expand upon this like slight unit buffs to units that gain in skill mastery every so many kills. (nothing OP but just there like a 5, 10 15% tier for silver gold bronze level unit skill rating)

[howlingwolfpaw]

about towers one thing I noticed in the trailer was when the one corner of a gate was destroyed the wall behind it remained intact. so Its likely a modular deconstruction that requires precise seige to make large holes.

[_RDX_]

They shouldn't have let us wait this long tho....to reveal this. This was released 814 days after the Announcement trailer. The last line from the Announcement trailer said "A new age is upon is." and the visuals were portrayed like a 'sequel' is coming to AoE 3, like a game that is set after the colonial era, somewhere set around WW 1 or WW 2 period. This 'gameplay' trailer seems completely deceptive. It feels like they were actually making a game on modern history initially and then they dropped the idea and then they started to make this. That could explain the time they took to reveal this but on the other hand, RTS games take even longer time to make. Imo, i'm not satisfied with the era that it is set in but the audio is sick, The graphics look lit and new developer for the franchise as well, something that i would really like to try out but not exactly what i expected.

[howlingwolfpaw]

They shouldn't have let us wait this long tho....to reveal this. This was released 814 days after the Announcement trailer. The last line from the Announcement trailer said "A new age is upon is." and the visuals were portrayed like a 'sequel' is coming to AoE 3, like a game that is set after the colonial era, somewhere set around WW 1 or WW 2 period. This 'gameplay' trailer seems completely deceptive. It feels like they were actually making a game on modern history initially and then they dropped the idea and then they started to make this. That could explain the time they took to reveal this but on the other hand, RTS games take even longer time to make. Imo, i'm not satisfied with the era that it is set in but the audio is sick, The graphics look lit and new developer for the franchise as well, something that i would really like to try out but not exactly what i expected.

I can agree that the original titles suggested a step forward, but I am really glad they are going back to an ancient/ medieval era. If they entruly did change their mind I think it was because they saw what fans wanted. It really needs a modern playing style to a medieval game to revamp the franchise to be able to move forward as a timeless legacy brand. Going too modern would have strayed too from that leaving its roots so old to be relevant to newer generations.