AoE4 biggest mistake

[Mouttie]

The camera angle.

 

[IYIyTh]

Trolling aside, what are the pro's and con's of going with this type of camera angle in AoE 4?

Pros: Appeals to younger audience. To appeal to wider audience, looks cartoonish. Attracts more casual players.

Cons: See pro's.

 

[Progeusz]

Trolling aside, what are the pro's and con's of going with this type of camera angle in AoE 4?

Pros:
It looks more modern and modern is better according to corporation heads and brainless casuals who eat up corporation ads.

Cons:
It makes things harder to see when the only job of camera angle is to show things to the viewer.
To break it down:
Trees/buildings can cover units so you don't see them. Outlines/highlights are meant to circumvent that but a) it's very hard to recognize units from that in aoe4 and b) they don't always work
Camera angle is cone shaped which means you have limited vision to the right and left of what you're focusing at, what's closer to you and it's harder to plan tactical maneuvers. You have wide view of things further away but only if they are far and tiny which means you can't really control the battlefield properly.
What is at the top of your screen is too far away and too tiny to see clearly, what is at the bottom is too close so you lack information around it. You end up with sensible look only in a small part of the screen.
Camera is extremely sensitive to height, any terrain elevation distorts the view and the experience becomes inconsistent mess as you scroll across the map, as long as it isn't completely flat.

Personal opinion: honestly, AoE 4 looks like all those forced attempts at 3D from 2003-2006 era and not even a decent one.

Edit: forgot to mention the last point, on top of default max zoom being underwhelming, aoe4 lacks an option to do a bigger zoom out for strategic overview of the map. With minimap being a cluttered unreadable mess full of pointless oversized icons and lacking any sort of customizability, that's something desperately needed in this game. Its lack can't be as easily forgiven as in many other RTS who have better camera angles and way better minimaps.

 

[The Bloodless]

Pros:
It looks more modern and modern is better according to corporation heads and brainless casuals who eat up corporation ads.

Cons:
It makes things harder to see when the only job of camera angle is to show things to the viewer.
To break it down:
Trees/buildings can cover units so you don't see them. Outlines/highlights are meant to circumvent that but a) it's very hard to recognize units from that in aoe4 and b) they don't always work
Camera angle is cone shaped which means you have limited vision to the right and left of what you're focusing at, what's closer to you and it's harder to plan tactical maneuvers. You have wide view of things further away but only if they are far and tiny which means you can't really control the battlefield properly.
What is at the top of your screen is too far away and too tiny to see clearly, what is at the bottom is too close so you lack information around it. You end up with sensible look only in a small part of the screen.
Camera is extremely sensitive to height, any terrain elevation distorts the view and the experience becomes inconsistent mess as you scroll across the map, as long as it isn't completely flat.

Personal opinion: honestly, AoE 4 looks like all those forced attempts at 3D from 2003-2006 era and not even a decent one.

Edit: forgot to mention the last point, on top of default max zoom being underwhelming, aoe4 lacks an option to do a bigger zoom out for strategic overview of the map. With minimap being a cluttered unreadable mess full of pointless oversized icons and lacking any sort of customizability, that's something desperately needed in this game. Its lack can't be as easily forgiven as in many other RTS who have better camera angles and way better minimaps.

I have to say, I don't see why the angle had to be quite so "fish-eye", as if showing the curvature of the earth. I don't mind the idea of going 3d but the execution is off. If it was more zoomed out aka flatter, it would be fine

 

[lecracheursagacite]

Personal opinion: honestly, AoE 4 looks like all those forced attempts at 3D from 2003-2006 era and not even a decent one.

Yeah I remember when AoE3 was first released feeling like it was painfully difficult to see things and this 15+ years later is no better. It is 2021 and to have a fully 3D strategy/management game that does not allow the player a wide range of zoom and the ability to adjust all of camera rotation, angle, and elevation is to me inexcusable.

 

[ProudObuch]

Aoe2 is not fixable in that sense. genie engine sucks.

why they didn't make a new Engine for AoE II DE? or improve it so the game is less hardcoded

 

[z3us]

why they didn't make a new Engine for AoE II DE? or improve it so the game is less hardcoded

Why design new engine for an old game when you can design new engine for a new game??

 

[IamJeo]

Yeah I remember when AoE3 was first released feeling like it was painfully difficult to see things and this 15+ years later is no better. It is 2021 and to have a fully 3D strategy/management game that does not allow the player a wide range of zoom and the ability to adjust all of camera rotation, angle, and elevation is to me inexcusable.

I like to compare this fiasko of a camera to that of cnc3 tiberium wars: https://youtu.be/EDjWNgOad5o you can see like almost 1/16 of the whole 1v1 map, I wholly imagined similar level of overview, but age4 camera barely manages to show 2buildings and couple of knights.

Funny how something EA and old is so far ahead of MS.

 

[Rustyiesty]

Why design new engine for an old game when you can design new engine for a new game??

Or, why design a new engine for a new game when you can use an old engine for a new game?

On the zoom, what concerned me was when Adam Isgreen said on video shortly before release that they will not increase it any further despite all of the feedback they received on it.

 

[lecracheursagacite]

@Rustyiesty Did he say why?

I like to compare this fiasko of a camera to that of cnc3 tiberium wars: https://youtu.be/EDjWNgOad5o you can see like almost 1/16 of the whole 1v1 map, I wholly imagined similar level of overview, but age4 camera barely manages to show 2buildings and couple of knights.

Funny how something EA and old is so far ahead of MS.

I would not say it is perfect but it is clearly much better. This is how I remembered CNC3 compared to contemporary 3D RTS (the camera not being painful) so it is good to know my memory is still strong

 

[Rustyiesty]

@Rustyiesty Did he say why?

I couldn't find the video, so must have watched it in incognito or Discord etc., but someone could probably find it if they looked hard enough

 

[XDDXOXO]

There is Bonjwa (German cast) with 8.6k viewers currently. Did they ever cast AoE2 tournaments recently? Can't remember, but Honor (one of them) really likes AoE4. Considering Genesis alone they definitively make up for a lot of viewers lost by Viper and T90 and there might be others on othere platforms, too. Will be interesting though if they will stick to it and for how long.

 

[longinator]

There is Bonjwa (German cast) with 8.6k viewers currently. Did they ever cast AoE2 tournaments recently? Can't remember, but Honor (one of them) really likes AoE4. Considering Genesis alone they definitively make up for a lot of viewers lost by Viper and T90 and there might be others on othere platforms, too. Will be interesting though if they will stick to it and for how long.

He did organize an AoE2 event in Feb 2020: https://liquipedia.net/ageofempires/Bonjwa_Fight_Night_Club

 

[wincher01]

The naval fights. The constant spinning looks ridiculous and seems very luck-based (the Viper-Lucifron fight comes to mind).

 

[Tempires]

The naval fights. The constant spinning looks ridiculous and seems very luck-based (the Viper-Lucifron fight comes to mind).

it's still better than fire galley fights

 

[Dkastro]

The first patch.

 

[lecracheursagacite]

it's still better than fire galley fights

It still seems like uninspired copying of AoE2's water combat.

 

[oozkan]

Does anyone have the cross-platform total viewer numbers of Genesis? Then we can say it was a mistake or not, an unknown channel like Genesis was able to reach 20K is quite a success for the game. I still hate the game though, but can't avoid the fact.

 

[Lord_patito]

Does anyone have the cross-platform total viewer numbers of Genesis? Then we can say it was a mistake or not, an unknown channel like Genesis was able to reach 20K is quite a success for the game. I still hate the game though, but can't avoid the fact.

Can't give you the final amount, but I'm 100% sure we reached at least 55K

 

[_187_]

 

[ponciliano]

My biggest disappointment with aoe4 is that they didn't fix water combat. It's even more dogshit than aoe2's.