Age of Wonders 4

[Raghar]

The eye hurting map started with Planetfall. Like I tried Planetfal, but I had to change few graphics settings because something on the strategic map was seriously hurting my eyes. Then they nerfed leaders to oblivion, and I deleted the install directory.

AoW developers were never smartest cookies, but since they started work for Paradox, their games are horrible.

 

[chuft]

In AOW Planetfall they started making very detailed cluttered maps especially the tactical maps. I think their graphics engine can't handle the level of detail they are trying to put in. They started locking the camera angle so you can't swing it up to see the distant background and the sky in the background like you can in say AOW3. Planetfall did not have the pernicious mist/fog problem that AOW4 has though but it did have the locked camera that always has to point down. AOW4 is a huge downgrade even from Planetfall with its mist. But I think this is the core of the issue, their engine can't handle what they are trying to do, so they use mist/fog and locked camera angles to reduce the number of objects being rendered, or hide the poor rendering.

They also are going for (and I linked above to a blog post by them about AOW4's graphics design decisions), ironically, a "clear" interface compared to previous games. To them this means making the unit flags very bright colors, the empires are neon colored on the strategic map, etc. Like a crappy simplistic web style where a page has very few buttons or controls and they are all huge and bright colors. The phone app aesthetic has taken over their games. All subtlety and color gradation is lost in favor of neon signposts. Looks like garbage.

The people praising the game are Paradox fanboys I think, coming from games like Stellaris. I doubt most of them have even seen a previous Age of Wonders game. They like the generic races where any look can be applied to any type of unit. This is a big feature of Stellaris, where the traits of an empire or "race" have nothing to do with its appearance. You can make your mushroom people aggressive democracy xenophobes or passive monarchy xenophiles and it has nothing to do with their looks. Some people really dig this, but it totally sucks the flavor out of fantasy games. Running into orcs in AOW4 tells you nothing about what you are up against or what kind of units or capabilities they have.

Interestingly another game that suffered from this overambitious 3D rendering problem with fog as the cure is Age of Empires 3 (and 4 too apparently). There are tons of threads complaining about it. It seems related to wanting to sell the game on consoles. Here is a quote from another forum where someone was complaining about mist/fog.

Often when it comes to things like that it is about trivial stuff like mentioned performance. That’s the reason why players on PC are annoyed when playing FPP games that originate on consoles and/or are not properly ported to PC - narrow field of view puts less stress on the hardware = weaker system can maintain target resolution and/or framerate with relative stability.
Same with height of the camera- more terrain and models to render = bigger CPU, GPU and RAM usage.

So maybe the underlying problem is they are now making these games for consoles, whereas in the past, they made them for PCs and could use more demanding graphics because PCs can handle them.

 

[Nekron]

I posted about it in several Steam threads and Triumph locked them all.

WTF no wonder nobody say anything ----> because they just bann every1 ?!?! jajajaja fucking pendejos

AoW developers were never smartest cookies, but since they started work for Paradox, their games are horrible.

yes game is SHIT and look all the FUCK DLC WTF
FUCK these loser shitbags

They also are going for (and I linked above to a blog post by them about AOW4's graphics design decisions), ironically, a "clear" interface compared to previous games. To them this means making the unit flags very bright colors, the empires are neon colored on the strategic map, etc. Like a crappy simplistic web style where a page has very few buttons or controls and they are all huge and bright colors. The phone app aesthetic has taken over their games. All subtlety and color gradation is lost in favor of neon signposts. Looks like garbage.

omg yes this was HORRIBLE unit flags are SHIT
modern devs can LICK MY NUTS!!!

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

Fwiw I think tactical maps in PF looked fine and were fairly varied. The strategic map though is exactly where the big problems started, not only ugly in itself, but is just generated large swathes of flat terrain dotted with completely random pois. Zero excitement or giddiness to explore. And then the big revelation: it's all rmg now and you cannot even try yourself to make something actually decent looking anymore.

 

[adddeed]

Its why i keep going to games like Age of Wonders 1 or Anno 1602 and so on. THey are pretty basic comapred to their successfor, but man are they somuch easier on the eyes.

 

[Oreshnik Missile]

AoW1 isn't even that basic, every hero can roam the map casting strategic spells in its vicinity, one of a few such fundamental features cut from later games.