I know strategic games aren’t the fans #1 type of game, but a lot of people did/are playing AoE4, so maybe the market is still pretty healthy. I would like to think that all games are played more now than in generations before us, etc.
Optimistically, I’d like to think RTS games are still prominent features in the gaming world. Even chess is still played tremendously. So who knows.
Sounds unpopular,but I also think there is a rts market, but the overall quality of the games lets people not really interested in playing,so people end playing only a few of them and then really old titles.
RTS should be improved and updated to modern times.Sticking to the old formula is playing safe and that way no rts will be extremely popular and only will be played by some old people thanks to the nostalgia factor.
we’ll see in 2-6 months how well it catches on.
from a stream came the statement it feels a bit like Wol, slow start.
But how does the unit control feel? it looks a bit clunky.
Unit control does feel a bit meh, but at the same time much better than most RTS games with armies and small improvements could do a lot.
Both SC2 and AOE4 have a major tournament going on right now.
The difference is that AOE4 has twice as many viewers.
Not bad for game that was not even made for e-sports.
what twitch channel(s)?
Not bad that a game that is more than 11 years old having half the viewers of a recently released game.
I don’t understand how the random generator works on maps.
So there are a specific map set, but each map has random resource spawns AND the landmarks and land heights, etc. also are randomized?
Yes everything is random but for every type of map there are many rules about the approximate distribution of resources, trade post, water, height etc.
So every Arabia map will look overall similar to another Arabia map.
The caveat is there are no guarantees on where “your” resources spawn; so your necessary stone/gold can easily spawn well outside of anywhere you can reasonably wall/protect in the early-mid game meaning there’s a solid chance you spawn in an unwinnable position because of RNG, even in a tournament. It’s what has always kept AoE from overtaking StarCraft in the past.
Imagine if in SC2 there was a chance your main’s vespene gas geisers could just spawn at your third instead. That’s AoE 2 and 4.
A single match may be more unfair in AOE4 due to different resource spawn.
But it will even out over time, and the advantage is that the player that are better at adapting to the map will come out on top.
Basically in AOE4 you need to adapt not only to your opponent but to the map as well. So it reward intelligence more than just being able to execute a build order.
In a BO3, if one map gives you a bad spawn then that’s enough to immediately cost a series.
In a BO5, that’s 20% of the games that could potentially be played determined by RNG. Imagine going into the semi-finals and being put down a point because you got a bad spawn. It’s substantially easier to win 2 games than it is to win 3 on even footing. It essentially means you’re still playing a BO5 but your opponent only needs to win a BO3. It’s literally an entire bracket advantage.
There’s also no guarantee that it does even out over time even in a BO7 or BO9. You could literally get 3 games in a row with bad spawns. Is it likely? No. Is it possible? Very.
I literally cannot imagine trying to be a professional in an RTS, playing in the grandfinals for a large cash sum, and having that risk in the back of my head as always a possibility when there’s the option of playing another RTS where that simply can’t happen.
To make it worse, as I’ve pointed out before, this is such an easily fixed problem that it’s almost insulting to the devs that it’s not. Literally: Define a starting area size and guarantee a fixed amount of resources will always spawn in that area. The rest of the map can be RNG as hell, but at least guarantee 1 Gold patch, 1 Stone patch, some forest wall, and some food. It has no negative impact on the game to make sure everyone can start on an even foot and procedure based generation has been doing this for a looooooooooong time.
100k+ viewers for AOE4!
I have not seen viewer number like this for a RTS since SC2 in 2012. Awesome that AOE4 is doing this well.
hopefully it stays that way. Perhaps Blizzard / Activision notices that RTS is still present.
Many new games exceed even League of Legends in numbers of viewers on first days or month then drops rapidly. Will c, im waiting for Frost Giant to do something but when players from both wc3 and sc2 go to aoe4 you know they need a rts-shelter till something new comes. as support for the 2 blizz game is like no more
According to twitch stats sc2 had a peak of 90k this year,probably katowice,and the “all time peak” was in 2018 with 150k. Over the course of sc2 the game had many times that amount,it was said that early MLG could have up to 800k viewers.
As rocmeu says, its better to wait some months to see some trend,it is the first tournament for the game since the release and numbers will change over the time,they always do.At first most games will have the bigger numbers.
AoE4 just announced a tremendous amount of future patches incoming. One of them including hotkeys that aren’t grid based.
Also, they are buffing spearmen, crossbowmen, and a couple other units against cavalry.
So it’s definitely trying to uphold a spot in Esports.
to hold a spot you need to pour money,you can’t sustain a decent sized e-sport without money.And tbh, I do not see how are they going to do to make the game more appealing visually,which is a big part of e-sports,even a perfectly balanced game needs to be visual and I don’t think aoe 4 is visual at all,even aoe 2 feels more visual.
TBEH, the vibe I get from AoE4 is more that people are interested in it because it’s one of the last hopes of RTS and/or because they had their hearts broken by Blizzard with SC2. I don’t feel that most of the people playing would ever think it’s as good game if they had the above context removed.