Why is the interface so ugly?

[Beszedits]

This game was release in 2019. Why the interface looks so 90's? The minimap is horrible i can'r see anything.
And why I can only select 60 units at a time?

How do you even manage army properly here. Age 3 is so much better in this aspect.

[DMg Halt]

Are you just here to complain and promote Age3? Because the vast majority of players have no issue with the UI.

[JoshSA]

Some of the UI might seem a little dated, but this was a remaster not a remake. You will be excited to hear that AGE IV is in development and that is set in the same period as AOE II. So that can be considered a remake / reboot of the series.

[Emperor Sougamoto Magazaki]

Originally posted by JoshSA:

Some of the UI might seem a little dated, but this was a remaster not a remake. You will be excited to hear that AGE IV is in development and that is set in the same period as AOE II. So that can be considered a remake / reboot of the series.

I was excited for aoe 4 until i saw their trailer. It honestly looked so cartoonish , like these free to play mobile game ads i get sometimes. Dont want to judge it too early but i can definitely say that the trailer failed to deliver the atmosphere previous aoe games have or keep me hyped so to say.

[Elliott]

I love AoE3 but you can only select 50 units at a time in that game so its actually worse!

[Retrolicious]

+ Totally agree

Shocked that you can only have 60 units at once. Having army of 100/200/300+ units feels very awkward to split between control groups 1-9 etc
I don't want to know how chaotic with control groups and army sizes of 600 it gets xD
9x60 = 540, so you can't even control group a 100% military pop max

After 1 week you get used to the chaotic & tiny option / UI / minimap. Just try to ignore most icons / graphical buttons. Instead try to learn the game via hotkeys & keyboard memorization.
Try to control as less as possible with icons, clicks, eye / hand sight. At least when you enter competitive MP etc

Or if you wanna learn / train the chaotic UI, first spectate FFA or 4v4 black forest matches online. As spectator you can hover over tooltips and check out the ugly tech tree for each civ without panic of rush or block of doom

Personally ( bear with me just speculation ) i think the UI and options menue look so outdated, because the actual developer FE started as a modding crew for old classic AoE2.
Rumor has it they got famous towards microsoft cause they modded 5 quality civs + campaign scenarios for AoE2 classic or HD!

So it is understandable when you start as a free time modder that you don't learn / care about proper UI / menue designs. They probably took some run of the mill middleware to reduce developement time / costs and focus on more important stuff like campaign story writing & balancing of 35 (sic!) civs!

You can see that menue is autdated tech, since the automatic reading tooltips audio uses robotic voices from pre 2002- era lol.
This certainly is not state of the art AI voice software. Even recent cheap open-source ebook readers have better text to speech sounding voices & accents nowadays lol

[Redwood]

Your pc's central processor is not advanced enough to control the fighting of more than 60 troops at once. Think about it. Your pc is already doing much more than is currently possible.

[JoshSA]

Originally posted by Emperor Katakouzinos:

I was excited for aoe 4 until i saw their trailer. It honestly looked so cartoonish , like these free to play mobile game ads i get sometimes. Dont want to judge it too early but i can definitely say that the trailer failed to deliver the atmosphere previous aoe games have or keep me hyped so to say.

I've only seen the early release trailer, so I'm basing my thoughts on that. I liked the graphics, I feel like that are copying the art style of AOE II quite well, with maybe a brighter, more saturated color pallet. That's probably because of the transition to a 3D engine and they will hopefully tune it down slightly to make it more rough. I'm sure a mod will do this if they don't.

But the actual models and proportions looked good, as well as full sized cities with walls! So I'm still cautiously optimistic that it's gonna be great.

[Retrolicious]

Originally posted by JoshSA:

Originally posted by Emperor Katakouzinos:

I was excited for aoe 4 until i saw their trailer. It honestly looked so cartoonish , like these free to play mobile game ads i get sometimes. Dont want to judge it too early but i can definitely say that the trailer failed to deliver the atmosphere previous aoe games have or keep me hyped so to say.

I've only seen the early release trailer, so I'm basing my thoughts on that. I liked the graphics, I feel like that are copying the art style of AOE II quite well, with maybe a brighter, more saturated color pallet. That's probably because of the transition to a 3D engine and they will hopefully tune it down slightly to make it more rough. I'm sure a mod will do this if they don't.

But the actual models and proportions looked good, as well as full sized cities with walls! So I'm still cautiously optimistic that it's gonna be great.

I have to strongly disagree, provided i'm now AoE2 classic nostalgic. But AoE4 looks much more mature than for example recent AoE2 DE.

AoE2 DE looks like plastic, no dynamic and too much looping animation, for example the killer gull swarm over fishing huts. The lightning is not dynamic and all the shadows looked like glued hard coded to the flooring. The jungle mappack looks neat i have to say that, cute elephants.

But already the tiny trailer of AoE4 does satify a nice "epic" looking 3D RTS ! Finally something with modern graphics. TBH i get tried by all those tiny rose tinted 2D 4k remasters.

This is the reason why i didn't by the recent C&C remaster 4k collection. That 2d graphic style doesn't work anymore, even if you knew the sc1 classic , aoe1 classic or C&C tiberium dawn classic.

Look at the Starcraft reforged, this one also looks ugly. Warcraft3 reforge looks decent, but their new battle.net system is terrible and they forced old retro players from classic wc3 towards new mumbojumbo sadly :c

Anyway MS is such a big studio they provide both worlds for 1 franchise with seemingly same mechanics. So i guess in the end both players will be happy. Nostalgic pink glasses people can stay with voobly or AoE2 DE edition.

And the next gen "PC master" race graphic additcs gonna switch to AoE4 once it drops.

Win win for both sides

[Emperor Sougamoto Magazaki]

Dont get too excited buddy, time will show

[Vonklyce]

OP says that AoE 2 DE has an ugly UI and AoE 3 is better... while one of the biggest issues of AoE 3 is exactly that horrible UI taking up to 30% of precious in-game view, and combined with that zoomed-in camera, gives you poor visibility of the battefield and even worse management of your units.

I actually don't mind those 2006 graphics, but i only want AoE 3 DE because they probably are going to make a clean UI like AoE 2 DE has, and hopefully a further camera.

[Retrolicious]

Originally posted by Vonklyce:

OP says that AoE 2 DE has an ugly UI and AoE 3 is better... while one of the biggest issues of AoE 3 is exactly that horrible UI taking up to 30% of precious in-game view, and combined with that zoomed-in camera, gives you poor visibility of the battefield and even worse management of your units.

I actually don't mind those 2006 graphics, but i only want AoE 3 DE because they probably are going to make a clean UI like AoE 2 DE has, and hopefully a further camera.

The zoom in AoE2 DE even with 4k UHD map feels equally weak.
Compare that zoom ability of other building game like "Surviving marts". It is sci-fi genre, but it is nevertheless eco heavy, build heavy game, and the zoom there is mindblowing crazy

Reference:
https://www.gog.com/game/surviving_mars_green_planet

There you can zoom from planet view straight into the tiny kitchen of colonists! Speaking of crazy details lol ...

But i'm pretty confidet that at least AoE4 will have decent zoom levels with several layouts from surface view, to castle view, to ground frog view etc. If they don't include decent zoom levels than all the details in modelling & buildings wouldn't make sense at all, if you couldn't appreciate all the tiny details !

In games like C&C remaster or even SC reforged the zooms don't really matter that much, since either way, if you zoom near or far even the 4k 2D graphics will still look ugly sadly :c

But for remaster games like AoE2 DE an far bird eye zoom would greatly help with armies of 600+ pop including strategic kiting, formations and what not.

[Beszedits]

Originally posted by Elliott:

I love AoE3 but you can only select 50 units at a time in that game so its actually worse!

You can select all units of same type in Aoe3 for easy control groups.

[Beszedits]

Originally posted by Vonklyce:

OP says that AoE 2 DE has an ugly UI and AoE 3 is better... while one of the biggest issues of AoE 3 is exactly that horrible UI taking up to 30% of precious in-game view, and combined with that zoomed-in camera, gives you poor visibility of the battefield and even worse management of your units.

I actually don't mind those 2006 graphics, but i only want AoE 3 DE because they probably are going to make a clean UI like AoE 2 DE has, and hopefully a further camera.

You think AoE II has a clean UI? Wow my mind is completely blown.
Man this UI looks like it was taken from a chat program (like mIRC) from the 90's.
And take a look at that minimap please. U call that clean? Jesus.
Some people have no idea what user experience means.

[_WALT_]

You are not understanding.
If there is a drastic change in the UI, the existing user base is at a loss. They will reject it, completely. For a UI designer its very easy to change the look and feel to something new, like a rounded minimap GTA style, but they did not make that decision for the good. Its a very small but critical thing that people don't give heeds to.

So they changed things on top of what was existing.

[Retrolicious]

Originally posted by _Walt_:

You are not understanding.
If there is a drastic change in the UI, the existing user base is at a loss. They will reject it, completely. For a UI designer its very easy to change the look and feel to something new, like a rounded minimap GTA style, but they did not make that decision for the good. Its a very small but critical thing that people don't give heeds to.

So they changed things on top of what was existing.

Why would nostalgic old school players reject a more clean , userfiendly & modern UI though where the whole player base can be both happy with?
Sounds more like a win win situation to me ...

I'm pretty sure RTS & controls can evolve and get more smooth over the decades of design & research!

Imagine a really nice pizza you ate in the 20. century it had nice toppings, but somehow you felt it was always missing something, sure it had cheese, tomatoes and nice olives, but something rough was missing. 2 decades later you see the same pizza, but with some bacon & eggs. Your GF is tasting it and mindblown by the fantastic taste. She tries to give you a slice of that "new" old school pizza, but you would refuse cause "it was never meant to be like this". Why settle with an mediocre experience, when there could be so much better tastes in future!

Culinary culture needed centuries to perfect recipes for pizza, foccacias etc. There was a reason mastering, seasoning & toppings needed so much time to mature.

Nostalgia is a trap & hinders evolution in design :p