Ive watched every movie on the net, read every post/comment from the ES guys and saw I think every screenshot out there. Ive just finished watching the movie from gamearena.com.au again and I realized something which is the feeling I now have in my stomach. To me it seems that the game will be great, but perhaps not as great as many of us thought. I mean, when I first saw the movies where units get blown of etc. my eyes went wide open. And I love the HC and its idea. But there are a lot of things that ES simply got rid of that were really important to me. I know this has already been discussed, but I think ES doesn’t take us seriously at this point. Here are some points of what I think my not be one of the pros of the game:
The economy in general seems to be too simple to manage. You don’t have drop points anymore which means that your vills could just go around the entire map and chuck wood here and there and hunt dear here and there without building anything, wasn’t that a huge part of the age series? I dindnt like that in ron and I most certainly wont like it in AoE3. In age1 and 2 there was Stone, whay the hell did they got rid of that? In the “questions and answers” threat they said:
“We didn't include Stone in AOE3 because you have enough to keep track of (both in terms of resource management and points of control on the map) without it. So in terms of complexity, I would phrase it not that we wanted to dumb down the game, but we wanted to keep a complex game from getting even more complex.”
I mean what does that mean? Do they think we are stupid or something? Enough to keep track of? I mean come on, whats there to keep track of compared to aok, its not much more complex if you ask me. You start of with your tc, build vills get them to gather resources which will be 10 times easier than it was before and scout, of course there is more, but I think you get my point. There is not much to keep track of, I think anyways. Making the eco easier for me doesn’t mean its more fun.
And yes, the graphics are awesome and they of course play an important role in the game, but graphics have not much to do with gameplay apart from the havoc effect that you can now blow of things. But after a while you get used to it and at the end you want an awesome gameplay and not just awesome graphics, correct me if Im wrong here.
Now Im not one of those who just say bullshit. Infact I am one of aoe3s biggest fans. I am 100% certain that I will buy it and play it. But recently I got the feeling that I might not play is as long as I thought I might, simply because the game itself sounds a little too easy to me. I want a game that is simple to play, but complex in its gameplay. I would much rather have another resource than fewer.
The reason why I make this post is because I know I am not the only one that has those concerns.
Personally I think ES makes the game easier because that’s what all the big companies do, Blizzard does it with wc3 and they have heaps of players at ant time of the day playing online. But they’ve done that for all their games, ES age of empires series was always more complex and to me more fun. I doubt they will get more people to play the game buy making things easier for the player.
On the other hand I could write a ten times bigger post than this about all the good things in AoE3 but that would take too much time, hehe.
Dont worry, be happy.