Age of Empires IV Open Beta Test Weekend (17th-20th)

[Adico]

Just announced: https://twitter.com/AgeOfEmpires/status/1437886032326889483

NDA free meaning streams, vods, and more to come :D

 

Why would you want the consumer to decide between watching one of the biggest tournaments in a decade (RBW5) and playing an open beta of your new release?

Probably would have made some trailers for the open beta for the following weekend and play it often during RBW5 or so.

 

[SouFire]

They need massive input, they don't want aoe2 MM issues on the aoe4 release, simply as that, but it is good for us, relic will have to improve the MP after that.

 

[Funito]

It's open for streaming? I would like to play/show it a bit if i have time

 

[HelloWorld]

Oh wow, they said they have fixed zoom! Amazing!

 

[The_Philos]

Why would you want the consumer to decide between watching one of the biggest tournaments in a decade (RBW5) and playing an open beta of your new release?

Probably would have made some trailers for the open beta for the following weekend and play it often during RBW5 or so.

If some random people on a forum can come up with better marketing strategies than a studio that works for a multi-billion dollar company, then you know that their marketing team must be doing a poor job. Again a short notice on the Open Beta (same with the closed Beta), no gameplay footage despite having people playtest since last year and underwhelming presentation in several occasions, the last would be at GC, not to speak of the confusing interview from a dev, leaking crucial new information.
At some point you start to wonder, if they don't want to promote their product because they have no trust in it or they are afraid of over-hyping it.. At least now everyone can see the actual game, since it's not restricted by NDA.

 

If some random people on a forum can come up with better marketing strategies than a studio that works for a multi-billion dollar company, then you know that their marketing team must be doing a poor job. Again a short notice on the Open Beta (same with the closed Beta), no gameplay footage despite having people playtest since last year and underwhelming presentation in several occasions, the last would be at GC, not to speak of the confusing interview from a dev, leaking crucial new information.
At some point you start to wonder, if they don't want to promote their product because they have no trust in it or they are afraid of over-hyping it.. At least now everyone can see the actual game, since it's not restricted by NDA.

I mean one explanation could be as well for this case, that they assume that the target audience is not overlapping as much with AoE2 viewers/gamers. I personally think though it's a wild mix between AoE2 and AoE3 and other RTS mechanics so not really sure if that assumption by them is really the case.

 

[MuscleChamp]

For everyone wondering what hardware is needed, here is a german article from today, source will be steam I guess (?):

Golem.de: IT-News für Profis

roughly translated:

minimum: i5 6300U or AMD Ryzen 5 2400G and Intel HD 520 pr AMD Radeon RX Vega 11 graphics card, plus 8GB RAM

optimal i5 3.6GHz with six cores or Ryzen 5 1600 with Geforce 970 or Radeon RX 570 both with 4GB VRAM

always win 10 and 50gb ssd/hdd needed


regarding overlap with rbw:
maybe they dont want a stresstest THAT big for their servers

 

[hoyohoyo9]

Wish we could just talk about the game instead of its marketing.

Sure, they're doing a terrible job, but it doesn't need to be brought up every two posts

 

[IRC_tomate]

Is AVX instructions CPU needed?

Edit: Yeah, it is, RIP pentium and celeron

 

[Giuseppe551]

"This game already needs a definitive edition"- some guy in Lidakor's chat after seeing less than 5 minutes of gameplay. He's not wrong 11

 

[CravesZ]

Upcoming steam reviews:

"Not worth pirating"

"Most likely to be 75% off during the 2022 Steam Summer sale"

"Dozens of Age 3 players will love this long awaited update"

 

[rbase96]

Anyone already got access through steam? It's not up for me yet

 

[Dingsey]

yep just got it now

 

[aceace]

God damn DING DING DING DING!!!!

Do they play their own game? Its extremely annoying!

 

[Lord_patito]

If some random people on a forum can come up with better marketing strategies than a studio that works for a multi-billion dollar company, then you know that their marketing team must be doing a poor job. Again a short notice on the Open Beta (same with the closed Beta), no gameplay footage despite having people playtest since last year and underwhelming presentation in several occasions, the last would be at GC, not to speak of the confusing interview from a dev, leaking crucial new information.
At some point you start to wonder, if they don't want to promote their product because they have no trust in it or they are afraid of over-hyping it.. At least now everyone can see the actual game, since it's not restricted by NDA.

Maybe it's not a bad marketing strategy.

Some people like the game but don't watch tournaments. So if you put the biggest AOE II tournament ever at the same time of the AOE IV open beta, then you get lot's more of people talking about AOE at the same time.

 

[Biz]

some highlights:

• xbows actually have a counter
• there is no boar-stealing
• people weren't turning every map into arena, and there was skirmishing in every age (after dark)
• you need an actual invsetment for defense instead of just using building foundations

game may or may not end up being good, but at least it has some use for 1v1 that 2DE's shitty ranked ladder maps do not provide

maybe people will eventually learn how to wall perfectly and make every game boring/monotonous, but the early stages seemed promising at whatever elo i played games at

 

[p0wnerto]

The zoom level still does not go far enough imo. Barely an improvement compared to the closed beta

 

[IRC_tomate]

Game is pretty fun casually, dunno how the competitive scene is going to evolve, but looks pretty promising, my biggest concern is with us so used to play aoe 2 there is a leap to jump regarding the invested play time to get comfortable. Give it a (big) try guys, I think it's worth it.

 

[HelloWorld]

I don't like it that much, maybe it's just early morning sleepiness, but I feel like graphics are looking downgraded even with high quality. Units are looking like lego boxes...

So annoying that it looks like we have gone back to poor graphics than closed beta.

Also, zoom is not fixed at all. They just randomly make up things like our previous devs, zoom is incredibly horrible to play with again.. I am not very impressed by the first looks of the game.

 

[d20random]

I liked some of the strategic and tech tree considerations, but its art, graphics and field-of-view are so bad it's pretty much unplayable.

 

[damdres]

Welcome AOE IV and long live to AOE II lol

 

[Hunyadi_]

It doesn't look too bad actually. But at that price, oof I think I'll hold out for a bit.

 

[aceace]

I tried for 5 hours... My impressions.

- Start walling at dark age. Walls are extremely cheap. And I'm not sure about that but I guess archers cannot shoot over walls. I maybe wrong. Not sure. (If you don't wall Teutons are soo weak)
- DİNG DİNG!!
- Graphics are meh. Not good. Not bad. Passable.
- Foxs also say DİNG DİNG DİNG!
- Balancing gonna be pain due to semisymetrical game design. Also I don't think we gonna see more then 15 maaaybe 20 civs.
- Oh... You touch my tralala.. My DİNG DİNG DONG!
- Defensive structures have sooo long range. Raiding is a pain.
- Who remembers the DİNG DİNG song from Crazy Frog? That was a big hit in 90's
- Unit design is atrocious. Especially Brit longbows and villagers are confusing. They both carry bows.. Also Saracen camels are so similar.
- And of course

DING DING DING MOTHERFUCKER

ez ti6

www.youtube.com

!!!!!!!!!!

 

[Huehuecoyotl22]

I won't be able to test it, but I have some questions about general, non-civ specific things:

• Does every unit take up 1 population space?
• Is there micro/ballistics?
• Are there ships that can garrison units or both fight and fish?
• Is there hill bonus?
• How is unit pathing compared to AoE 2?
• Are map sizes and movement speeds similar to in AoE 2 or smaller/faster like in some other games?
• Are trade and sending resources like in AoE 2?