Current Situation on Aoe4 and Aoe2

[OctavianAoe]

Is Aoe4 Dynasty over? Is Aoe2 Dynasty over?

There is so much emotions and strong meanings going on right now, though to sort them all.


Lots of People wanted something fresh and have had high hopes and expectations, looking forward to Aoe4.
I want to compare some points of criticism on Aoe2 to Aoe4 – lets not talk about if they are correct/true/justified or not yet.


-Slow Dark Age with no/to less action.
-Often/Everytime the same meta in the games
-Players turtle up with walling and house walls, making the game less aggressive
-No Uniqueness in the Civilizations, almost every civ plays and looks out the same more or less, also the Units are kind of the same for every civ

Thats what i read and people meantioned are the most common points of Criticism in Aoe2


But do Aoe4 doesnt have those Problems like People often say? or does it solve them if it shall replace Aoe2?

What we´ve seen so far i dont think so:


Slow Dark Age: In Aoe4 we have to see its IRL Time, meaning if somebody is up around the 5 minute mark its almost 10 Minutes in Aoe2, where we are in Feudal or almost there. In most games the first aggression is happen then. So in General Aoe4 in this case, is even more passive or slower, but yes the meta isnt close to be 100 % evolved so maybe that changes.

Same Meta: Yes Aoe2 has very clear figured out the best metas and common strategies, and people grind for that. But that is naturally and that is how 95% of the competitive RTS are working (also we see that in every sports), but we also have tons of exciting Players over all elos (Lyx/Hoang/Rubenstock/even Mbl just to mention some high level guys), who are doing different strats. And its up to us players to choose if we want to play full meta every game, or trying new strats or doing off meta things. Also we got new Civs and Units, which are to young and not even close to be figuered out, which strats they can bring to the party.
And Aoe4 already has its own Metas slowly evovlving, with massive changes at the beginning for sure, but it will be ending like every RTS, where people try to grind for the best winning chances. Or didnt we see tons of french knights, infantry building ram pushes, and springalds almost every game?


Walling: Yes Aoe2 has lot walling involved, now we have more open maps but this topic has been discussed a lot in other post. But what we can see, that in aoe4 the abscence of house walling and quick walls, doesnt lead to less walling or more aggression. The Genesis showed lots of games were Players were booming and trying to wall their hearts out.


No Uniqueness: It seems that Aoe4 is a bit more Unique in ways of Civ Mechanics and Optics, but not really when it comes to Units – Castles cant produce any UU, and the number of UU in the game is
way higher in Aoe2, even there you have some special Units which can be build in feudal already.
And when we look at how the civs are played out, it is comming down again to the same unit compositions in most of the games where siege is overwhelming.


Why do i make this Post?

Because i want to stay up for Aoe2


After watching Genesis i am a bit disillusioned. I dont want to criticize the Hosts and of course in no way the Players. But that was the lowest quality high level tournament in Aoe.


The Games have no excitement in it, due to the lack of speed and all going down with one big game ending battle after 30 minutes. Longterm this cant be what competitive Players, Streamers and Viewers want.


The Last thing i want to catch up is. Some Pro Players and Bigger Streamers recently complained about negative commentars and stuff on their stream regarding Aoe4.

For sure they´re free people and can choose whatever they want to play. But what we can expect from them is Professionality, towards their fans as they call them selves Professionals. To make it clear, they should behave like Professionals.

You cant have and benefit from a fanbase cheering for you donating, subbing and so on, and expecting that every one is just happy about you maybe leaving the game. Because first of all most of us are aoe2 Fans, and there we choosed our favourite guy. And if a well known German Player/Streamer is Dunkin on Aoe2, and banning people from chat for literally nothing i call this unprofessional.


And you can expect some kind of sensitivity for an old over plenty of years grown community.
Because ist your Job, and it was the community and viewers which brought lots of sponsors, companys and the possibility to make a living out of it to him.

At the End i hope Aoe2 stand strong can grow further, and Aoe4 will become a good game someday and everybody has Fun Playing.

 

[LeoMontero]

Amen

 

[Uselessaurus Rex]

For me, the counter units in AOE4 are great, and feel so much more viable than AOE2. I think (and I'm hardly the first to ask for this) pikeman and elite skirms techs need to be cheaper and quicker to research (for example elite skirm costs more and takes longer than xbow).

That would give us the chance to see more counter unit play and see a wider variety of units generally. Other than that, the wide variety of strats we saw in genesis was down to the wide variety of maps, as much as anything else. If all maps were the same, no doubt we would have seen even fewer civs and strats (mongols 1TC 100% of the time!).

Basically, AOE4 is a good game, and there's been a few lessons learnt that could be gently integrated into AOE2 imho

 

[Huehuecoyotl22]

Basically, AOE4 is a good game, and there's been a few lessons learnt that could be gently integrated into AOE2 imho

I don't think AoE 4 balance and unit stats should affect AoE 2 balance, but some backward inspiration would be ideal.
I could also see an AoE 2 mod or a tournament building up on some AoE 4 aspects.
Just as an example: specific effects, when specific units are garrisoned in specific places, like effects on technologies or the ability to garrison siege in towers. A map where something like the sacred sites triggers a win countdown (basically King of the Hill, but with 3 monumnents to be controlled).
I do like the "stealth forests", which as far as I have seen is one of very few terrain differences, but in AoE 2, speed and LOS are as far as I know only tied to units, so it would not be possible to implemented.
Some of the Mongol aspects are clearly what AoE 2 developers first had planned, and although it would be possible in AoE 2, I agree that those big differences of being a mobile raider civilisation can't be implemented into AoE now.

 

[Elvaenor]

The Last thing i want to catch up is. Some Pro Players and Bigger Streamers recently complained about negative commentars and stuff on their stream regarding Aoe4.

For sure they´re free people and can choose whatever they want to play. But what we can expect from them is Professionality, towards their fans as they call them selves Professionals. To make it clear, they should behave like Professionals.

You cant have and benefit from a fanbase cheering for you donating, subbing and so on, and expecting that every one is just happy about you maybe leaving the game. Because first of all most of us are aoe2 Fans, and there we choosed our favourite guy. And if a well known German Player/Streamer is Dunkin on Aoe2, and banning people from chat for literally nothing i call this unprofessional.


And you can expect some kind of sensitivity for an old over plenty of years grown community.
Because ist your Job, and it was the community and viewers which brought lots of sponsors, companys and the possibility to make a living out of it to him.

I don't really agree with this part. A few individuals complaining can of course happen, but from what I've seen so far on a few streams a very big part of the chatters are people coming from aoe2 complaining about how absolutely atrocious aoe4 is. This can create very negative vibes in a chat for streamers. If you want to present yourself in a certain way as a streamer, your chat should reflect that. Therefore it's professional behaviour in my opinion to ban people who do not behave the way you'd like as you don't want to associate them with your brand.
As for the community part, in my opinion this goes both ways. Someone streams and his community makes it possible for him by donating/subbing, and in return he gives people free content to enjoy (unless they actively want to support by subbing). This doesn't mean the streamer owes you anything at all. If you don't like his career choices you can voice your opinion by just not subbing or watching anymore. If enough people don't like his new content he'll lose support and be forced to either return to his old content or get a new job. If people still continue to support him it means he's entertaining enough for enough people to do what he does.

 

[Sticky Ice Cream]

Age of Empires IV is a chore to watch. The cartoony units against the realistic buildings and backgrounds is jarring. And the realistic buildings and backgrounds look like they blend together and make it difficult to instantly recognize buildings and map features, unlike AoE II.

 

[Progeusz]

Age of Empires IV is a chore to watch. The cartoony units against the realistic buildings and backgrounds is jarring. And the realistic buildings and backgrounds look like they blend together and make it difficult to instantly recognize buildings and map features, unlike AoE II.

Yeah, later on the whole city "looks kinda nice" but it's also a muddied mess where you don't really know what is where. See all the streamers looking for specific buildings late game and scrolling past them multiple times because everything just blends in together. Many such cases.

AoE 4 promotes diverse armies and I think it has strong advantage over AoE 2 in this regard which often has armies of only two units but the issue is, in AoE 4 it's hard to distinguish the units when they are clumped up together. I had no idea if specif blobs had more spearmen, men at arms or archers which led to very common problem of having no idea which player has advantage in the battles, basically just waiting until stuff dies and be "oh, he had better army after all".

 

[marco47]

I don't really agree with this part. A few individuals complaining can of course happen, but from what I've seen so far on a few streams a very big part of the chatters are people coming from aoe2 complaining about how absolutely atrocious aoe4 is.

Completely agree with this. Watching Hera right now and half the comments are still trashing AOEIV, if you really enjoy AOE2 so much, why aren't you enjoying his stream instead of complaining about AOEIV the whole time? I can't blame streamers for getting tired of that dynamic in their chats.

 

[LowEloNobody]

4/10 Drama

 

[IRC_tomate]

TL;DR? I don't have time, busy playing AoE4

 

[i_no_english]

I have played over 100 games of aoe4 and I like it a lot:

Pros:
- It's new and there is still a lot to explore for me personally (this will not last forever of course). A nice change from the 'brainless' m@a into 1 range archers, walls, kill vills with xbow timing, drop 2 tc boom and finish off in imperial age.
- Unit compositions are much more diverse than in aoe2. I am constantly forced to switch between units and my army composition often consists of 3-4 different type of units.
- I feel like the game is more difficult to play in terms of macro, which is a pro for me personally. One reason is because of the point mentioned above. Managing a spear/arch/cav combo well from 3 different buildings is much more difficult than 2 range and 1 big ball of xbow. Managing your food source is also more difficult in this game.
- The game has a good balance between the strength of defensive and offensive. TC's are strong and have good range. Gold is however often exposed and can be harassed and more importantly, players will have to go out of their safe TC area to collect food sources. Outposts are a nice way of securing certain areas. Useful buildings but not too strong. TC's in feudal adds a nice dynamic too the game and don't feel neither OP nor UP. Walls have a good use in the game, and are not mandatory like in aoe2.
- I like the inclusion of rams in feudal age that can be built by units. Gives a nice extra dynamic to feudal age compared to aoe2 feudal age.

Bad things:
- The small hitboxes and response feedback is awful. I still often missclick sheep. It's hard to snipe a spear in a group of spear/arch.
- Hotkeys customization obviously. I also miss my 'go to' hotkeys.
- UI is really bad.
- Don't like the closed maps and water maps in the map pool.
- Balance is forever going to be a problem with these diversity in civs. There will be certain maps in the map pool where you will see 1-2 civs only. Not especially looking forward to those. Also, some matchups might be GG from the start.
- Siege dynamic at the moment. Springalds is way too strong. They need a big nerf (speed, range, damage and should be an anti-siege unit solely).

 

To be fair and nothing personal against the OP of this thread:

I really just can't read this stuff anymore. AoE2 vs AoE4 ... blah blah blah. Twitch chat is full of this stuff, Aoezone, Reddit, official forums. People just destroy their own community here. Trolls in Twitch chat pit people against each other, put streamers in corners to make them decide for one thing instead of enjoying their streams. It's pretty annoying overall. :/

 

[Bowserlord]

what a stupid waste of time

 

[kalcium]

To be fair and nothing personal against the OP of this thread:

I really just can't read this stuff anymore. AoE2 vs AoE4 ... blah blah blah. Twitch chat is full of this stuff, Aoezone, Reddit, official forums. People just destroy their own community here. Trolls in Twitch chat pit people against each other, put streamers in corners to make them decide for one thing instead of enjoying their streams. It's pretty annoying overall. :/

Exactly. That’s giga annoying. Most of the time I just watch trackmania on twitch instead of aoe coz aoe channel chat is so obnoxious and toxic.

 

[lecracheursagacite]

realistic buildings

Except for the walls.

 

[ltm]

To be fair and nothing personal against the OP of this thread:

I really just can't read this stuff anymore. AoE2 vs AoE4 ... blah blah blah. Twitch chat is full of this stuff, Aoezone, Reddit, official forums. People just destroy their own community here. Trolls in Twitch chat pit people against each other, put streamers in corners to make them decide for one thing instead of enjoying their streams. It's pretty annoying overall. :/

I guess a lot of it just comes down to many people being so used to having AOE2 and the respective players/casters as part of their daily life/entertainment that they feel like AOE4 takes something away from them on a personal level.

Since AOE4 release my experience was basically: go on twitch when im bored, see Memb, Nili etc online, see they are streaming AOE4...close twitch and do something else instead. But it seems not everyone takes it that lightly.

Nothing new or exclusive to AOE2/twitch though. People online get easily riled up about all kind of stuff, be it tv shows being canceled or changing directions, players/coaches in sports etc basically all forms of entertainment are filled with debate and a certain level of toxicity. The AOE2 bubble was just pretty tame up until now besides the occasional drama and thx DE memes.

At the end of the day AOE4 is the sole reason AOE2 get's less attention now, less streams, less tournaments. Without it all streamers would still be playing AOE2 all the time and all focus would be on KOTD right now. So i guess these comments are inevitable as long as AOE4 is still new.

 

[Fall]

Age of Empires IV is a chore to watch. The cartoony units against the realistic buildings and backgrounds is jarring. And the realistic buildings and backgrounds look like they blend together and make it difficult to instantly recognize buildings and map features, unlike AoE II.

Exactly, I can't have an AOE4 stream on another tab or use it as 'light-viewing', I need to really focus to identify what is happening. That's not my usecase for Twitch, personally.

 

[MaSmOrRa]

Exactly, I can't have an AOE4 stream on another tab or use it as 'light-viewing', I need to really focus to identify what is happening. That's not my usecase for Twitch, personally.

This happens to me too, but how confident are you that this isn't just us not knowing the game well enough as opposed to the game actually being too convoluted and looking like a giant mess?

The answer probably lies somewhere in the middle as always, but I wouldn't be too quick to negatively judge AoE4 on that particular aspect without giving it a few weeks/months.

 

[Rorarimbo]

This happens to me too, but how confident are you that this isn't just us not knowing the game well enough as opposed to the game actually being too convoluted and looking like a giant mess?

The answer probably lies somewhere in the middle as always, but I wouldn't be too quick to negatively judge AoE4 on that particular aspect without giving it a few weeks/months.

Its just the models an the animation of the units. I dont know much more about SC2 or C&C3 but I have no such problems there. Even if ion C&C3 some units come in squads.

 

[lecracheursagacite]

Its just the models an the animation of the units. I dont know much more about SC2 or C&C3 but I have no such problems there. Even if ion C&C3 some units come in squads.

Yeah it is just hard on the eyes in a way those two games aren't.

 

[shm0wt]

Currently watching Hera's AoE2 stream, and it's kinda horrifying honestly. His chat is like 50% people trashing him for playing AoE4, 50% people asking when he'll be streaming AoE4 next. He's visibly regretting deciding to practice for KotD on stream, and talking about how he's going straight back to AoE4 after the tournament.

Kind of hard to see why anyone would stream AoE2 at the moment since a) AoE4 gets more viewers and b) AoE2 streams are overwhelmed with trolls whinging about how their favourite pro players have betrayed them by streaming a different game for 2 weeks. Not sure what people are trying to achieve with this nonsense, but if the goal is to keep AoE2 alive, it seems counterproductive to say the least.

 

[theHand]

To be fair and nothing personal against the OP of this thread:

I really just can't read this stuff anymore. AoE2 vs AoE4 ... blah blah blah. Twitch chat is full of this stuff, Aoezone, Reddit, official forums. People just destroy their own community here. Trolls in Twitch chat pit people against each other, put streamers in corners to make them decide for one thing instead of enjoying their streams. It's pretty annoying overall. :/

Group narcissism probably explains some of the more extreme reactions and instant dismissal of both games...

What Collective Narcissism Does to Society

In everyday settings, it can keep people from listening to one another. At its worst, it might fuel violence.

www.theatlantic.com

 

[Rorarimbo]

Currently watching Hera's AoE2 stream, and it's kinda horrifying honestly. His chat is like 50% people trashing him for playing AoE4, 50% people asking when he'll be streaming AoE4 next. He's visibly regretting deciding to practice for KotD on stream, and talking about how he's going straight back to AoE4 after the tournament.

Kind of hard to see why anyone would stream AoE2 at the moment since a) AoE4 gets more viewers and b) AoE2 streams are overwhelmed with trolls whinging about how their favourite pro players have betrayed them by streaming a different game for 2 weeks. Not sure what people are trying to achieve with this nonsense, but if the goal is to keep AoE2 alive, it seems counterproductive to say the least.

I understand your PoV but I think part of the reason is some streams kept 100% AoE4 content for several weeks. This frustrated certain ppl and built certain expectations in others. Also the "excuse" to not stream AoE2 was often preparation for Genesis. Now this is reverse and KotD4 is 4 weeks long. Streamers who were streaming both games don`t seem to be having such problems.

 

[Faraday]

Aoe4 is a very good game, but for now I just want to use my own hot keys

 

[Progeusz]

Currently watching Hera's AoE2 stream, and it's kinda horrifying honestly. His chat is like 50% people trashing him for playing AoE4, 50% people asking when he'll be streaming AoE4 next. He's visibly regretting deciding to practice for KotD on stream, and talking about how he's going straight back to AoE4 after the tournament.

Kind of hard to see why anyone would stream AoE2 at the moment since a) AoE4 gets more viewers and b) AoE2 streams are overwhelmed with trolls whinging about how their favourite pro players have betrayed them by streaming a different game for 2 weeks. Not sure what people are trying to achieve with this nonsense, but if the goal is to keep AoE2 alive, it seems counterproductive to say the least.

Watching right now and people just talk about the games. Idk, maybe it was worse earlier.
Yesterday aoe2 vs aoe4 dominated Hera's stream but most of people were talking about it calmly.
The trolling by minorities was happening from both sides.

There's something I'd like to say to people who see toxicity tho. Are you sure it isn't confirmation bias? You heard about one group being toxic and now pay more attention to it. What I noticed is lots of people are very prone to seeking negativity where there is none. Please remember twitch chat doesn't promote well thought out long sentences which makes many messages more crude than intended. There's language barrier too, majority of aoe community has English as second/third language.
Many people go "toxic aoe2 fans hating aoe4" upon merely seeing someone say they dislike how aoe4 looks. And then they circlejerk each other how superior they are and how sad anyone preferring aoe2 is. Overreacting like that is even worse than people complaining about one game or another imo. Such attitude only makes the division stronger. Ridiculing people for being unhappy can result in stronger retaliation and nobody gains anything from that in the end. Quite often there's several times more people complaining about "toxicity" than people being actually toxic, assuming any are present at all. It's a weird situation but surprisingly common one, noticed it countless times outside of aoe too.