Profile of Rosbone

Why doesn't this game have more 2v2+ tournaments? Balance issues? Maps suck?

I would agree with GBpirate, a 1v1 tourney is probably much easier to organize and fund. 1v1 is also considered the main game mode. The 2v2 map pool is also a little underwhelming right now (may change when the patch hits).

With that said, the last 1v1 tourney was a snoozer because of the meta commander choices. So right now a 2v2 tourney would be great since we could possibly see 4-8 different meta commanders as opposed to 2 meta commanders.

Sadly there are probably alternatives that no one has decided will work or havent thought to try. I partially blame the players for the same picks over and over.

If AOE4 is released on Microsoft Store only, I will never buy it. Simple as that. MS has a long history of trying to dip their toes into an established sector and failing. And after they fail they just abandon it screwing their customers royally. I would fear some system of not being able to play it unless MS store servers are running which they wont be when MS pulls the plug.

<Cough><Cough> Ahem. Mixer. <Cough><Cough>

Since there is not an official video tutorial, here are a couple videos that may help some people out with running the program.

English


German

One thing I forgot to address in the snow discussion is getting a bugsplat.

ASSUMPTIONS
Since people tend to get more bugsplats and see thru pink buildings after snow maps, I assume that the terrain adjustments are the issue. Totally a guess.

People who play 1v1 seem to get fewer bugsplats than people who play 4v4.

THEORY
Long 4v4 games and snow maps share this thing in common: a lot of real-time terrain adjustments.

Every time an ordinate explodes on the ground the terrain height is adjusted. So the longer a game goes the more terrain adjustments are being made.

Every time a unit or vehicle moves across the snow covered terrain the terrain model is adjusted. Since the snow terrain uses a lot more triangles than the normal terrain it amplifies the problem. And you are much more likely to get a bugsplat after a snow map is played.

I am guessing there is an issue with the code (Relic,Driver, etc) that is not handling these real time 3D model adjustments correctly leading to a memory leak. Perhaps an array/model is being allocated and never being disposed/deleted.

ALTERNATE THEORY
Long 4v4 games and snow maps share this thing in common: a lot of real-time texture adjustments.

Every time a shot lands a texture splat is added to the terrain where the explosion hit. We can handle this in two ways:

1) Add the splat to a growing list of splats that need drawn. The more action the larger this list gets and the slower your FPS will be. Depending on how the splat is drawn we could be creating new 3D models after each hit.

2) If the terrain is all cut up into 32mx32m chunks then an existing texture needs to be modified in real time. The overall FPS is unchanged since we are still drawing the same amount of textures/terrain. But there is a chance for bad code creating a memory leak here.

SUGGESTION
I am probably way off in left field on all of this and it does not matter to us as players. But it may help you decide how many games to play before a restart.

After several short 1v1 matches you should restart.

After a long match or a snow map you should restart.

Of course the 64-bit patch may fix the real issue and this will all be moot.