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[IbizaPocholo]

Age of Empires 4 Reveals 2022 Roadmap

Relic Entertainment reveals a roadmap for Age of Empires 4 and shares details on the new features coming in the first half of 2022.

gamerant.com

Relic Entertainment had confirmed that it will add Ranked Ladders to Age of Empires 4 in the spring, and the developer has now revealed a roadmap for the first half of 2022.

The post states that the spring update for Age of Empires 4 will now be called Season 1, and it will finally add a content editor, in-house mods, and Ranked Ladder for 1v1 matches. Ranked Ladder in Age of Empires 4 will consist of 6 divisions with 3 tiers each, and fans will be able to earn exclusive rewards at the end of the season. Season 1 also comes with several improvements to the hotkey system, and quality-of-life features such as a Global Build Queue and full post-match map reveal. The section on Season 1 then confirms that more balance changes are on the way for Abbasid Dynasty, Chinese, and Holy Roman Empire civilizations.

The post then shares details on Season 2, which will come with fully remappable inputs and the option to pick a player’s color in matches. Many Age of Empires 4 players want more control over which maps are available in ranked matches, and Season 2 will finally add a Map Vote System. Some civilizations have certain advantages on specific maps, and players would sometimes quit matches before the start of the game depending upon the map type selected. Additionally, Relic Entertainment will remove the Boulder Bay, Confluence, and Black Forest maps from the 1v1 Quick Match pool in an upcoming update.

Finally, the post lists some other features that are being considered for the future, including waypoint indicators and cheats. While many of these features should have been there at launch, it’s great to see detailed information on the future of Age of Empires 4. As these updates are only for the first half of 2022, fans can hope that the developers continue to add new features throughout the year.

 

[SeraphJan]

Fully remappable hotkey should be day one, wtf

 

[sendit]

The game was released in a bare bones state.

 

[Tams]

So, looking at the Steam Charts (not the whole picture, but pretty accurate), as I type this, AoE IV is sitting at 100th place with 8,443 concurrent players. With a 24hr peak around the same.

Not sure what to think of that. RTSes aren't the most popular genre, but for a game that's supposed got a large multiplayer element to it... it doesn't look good. And AoE II: DE is sat at 66th with 15,324 concurrent players, which isn't a good look for AoE IV.

Anyway, it came out as badly as I thought it would after those interviews, and seems to be in a bit of a state. Glad I didn't give them my money.

 

[Hendrick's]

Hot Keys!

 

[SeraphJan]

So, looking at the Steam Charts (not the whole picture, but pretty accurate), as I type this, AoE IV is sitting at 100th place with 8,443 concurrent players. With a 24hr peak around the same.

Not sure what to think of that. RTSes aren't the most popular genre, but for a game that's supposed got a large multiplayer element to it... it doesn't look good. And AoE II: DE is sat at 66th with 15,324 concurrent players, which isn't a good look for AoE IV.

Anyway, it came out as badly as I thought it would after those interviews, and seems to be in a bit of a state. Glad I didn't give them my money.

I missed the RTS genre, it was the bread and butter genre in the 90s, so many nostalgic moment.

 

[Saucy Papi]

So, looking at the Steam Charts (not the whole picture, but pretty accurate), as I type this, AoE IV is sitting at 100th place with 8,443 concurrent players. With a 24hr peak around the same.

Not sure what to think of that. RTSes aren't the most popular genre, but for a game that's supposed got a large multiplayer element to it... it doesn't look good. And AoE II: DE is sat at 66th with 15,324 concurrent players, which isn't a good look for AoE IV.

Anyway, it came out as badly as I thought it would after those interviews, and seems to be in a bit of a state. Glad I didn't give them my money.

It may be because this was also released via gamepass. At least that's how I intend to play it since I'm already subscribed.

 

[VN1X]

Fully remappable hotkey should be day one, wtf

It's 2022 DONTCHAKNOW?

Games release piecemeal these days.

 

[Pedro Motta]

GaaS of the Empires.

 

[Kenpachii]

Quited it a month in, microsoft picked the worst devs.

 

[ebevan91]

Quited it a month in, microsoft picked the worst devs.

I played through the campaigns which I thought were decent and haven’t touched it since.

 

[Futaleufu]

Another medieval game with less features than the most popular entry in the franchise that already had 2 remasters. Incredibly stupid decision.

 

[lh032]

Real time strategy game is over.
Move on.

 

[Darryl]

i played a ton of it for like a month. the game had really strong fundamentals (game engine) despite bugs, but it lacked content. there aren't enough civs and units. games don't play out in ways that are refreshing or fun to watch. you don't even get glorious losses. it's a complete mald fest.

 

[Rei dos Vermes]

The game have awful frame pacing/stutter when panning the camera since the beta and they aren't doing sh*t to fix this problem. Sad...

 

[Hari Seldon]

I thought the single player was excellent. I’m not really an AoE player for multi though. I’ll wait for CoH3 before I go deep in an RTS again.

 

[Tams]

Is this game dead yet?

 

[Jibran#one]

Bring this to Xbox plz

 

[DukeNukem00]

Bring this to Xbox plz

It's a competitive RTS. How would you play it on xbox ? Mind control ? Some genres and games can't be translated to a controller without destroying the game. This is one of them.

 

[randywatson81]

It's a competitive RTS. How would you play it on xbox ? Mind control ? Some genres and games can't be translated to a controller without destroying the game. This is one of them.

XBox has had keyboard + mouse support for years.

 

[Bernkastel]

 

[sendit]

The fact that their development milestones after launch includes:

• hot key improvements (season 1)
  
• fully remappable hot keys (season 2)

I mean, come on.....That should have been a milestone 1 thing before launch. This studio absolutely killed the Age of Empires franchise.

 

[Bernkastel]

The fact that their development milestones after launch includes:

• hot key improvements (season 1)
  
• fully remappable hot keys (season 2)

I mean, come on.....That should have been a milestone 1 thing before launch. This studio absolutely killed the Age of Empires franchise.

Its already in Season 3 though

 

[Banjo64]

It's a competitive RTS. How would you play it on xbox ? Mind control ? Some genres and games can't be translated to a controller without destroying the game. This is one of them.

Aged well.

 

[TheSHEEEP]

My personal favourite is the color selection.
Praised as some great technical achievement... "coming in season 02".

Standard feature that every RTS known to man released with in the last 30 years of RTS gaming.
You can't make that shit up

I did actually enjoy AoE4 for a while.
But as a single player gamer, that game is so lacking in content it's not even funny.
Just gimme some freeform repeatable conquest campaign with some decision-making - is that so hard?
Instead we got those pseudo-documentaries that make it impossible to get invested in. And not even for all the nations. Yay...

 

[Tams]

This was so obviously an underinvested, half-arsed (in some ways, from the interviews they seem passionate about it) attempt.

I don't think they really understood what they were making, and then of course they injected some woke bullshit too. Like, Joan of Arc is a pretty epic tale (if very short and also incredibly messed-up with everyone involved). I don't see why it had to be made into a 'strong wuman' thing (especially when Joan was utterly fucked in the head in real life).

But really what put me off was them choosing to essentially remake Age of Empires II. I was still excited, but they offered overall less features and graphics that aren't as good as you'd expect given it's been over two decades.

 

[Helghan]

I don't think they really understood what they were making, and then of course they injected some woke bullshit too. Like, Joan of Arc is a pretty epic tale (if very short and also incredibly messed-up with everyone involved). I don't see why it had to be made into a 'strong wuman' thing (especially when Joan was utterly fucked in the head in real life).

Joan of Arc has always been put on as a strong woman in the entertainment industry. There are multiple movies, miniseries, etc. This has nothing to do with woke bullshit.

 

[TheSHEEEP]

This was so obviously an underinvested, half-arsed (in some ways, from the interviews they seem passionate about it) attempt.

The thing is, I actually believe the budget for this game was tremendous.

Those documentaries, for example, are very high quality stuff.
They cannot have been cheap in the slightest - but what a waste of resources, something nobody asked for.

I think those in charge were just woefully unaware of what people actually wanted.

 

[Bernkastel]

Aged well.

It already happened once though.

Also, regarding his point on "competitive RTS", by default cross play is turned off for controller players.

 

[Tams]

Joan of Arc has always been put on as a strong woman in the entertainment industry. There are multiple movies, miniseries, etc. This has nothing to do with woke bullshit.

To be honest, there's not really that much out there about her in the entertainment industry. I think because most people really don't care about it.

But the promo videos they did very much did lean in on the woke bullshit.