With Age of Empires IV’s first ever ranked season ending in a few brief days on June thirtieth, we thought it was nearly time to have a good time! So we come bearing the present of stories – together with an replace on Season Two, first talked about in our publish right here, in addition to a fast overview of what we’ve heard from you in the previous few months and how we plan to motion on what we’ve heard in Season Three, tentatively deliberate for the October/November timeframe!
Before we get began on that, nonetheless, we wished to say a massive thanks to every and each one in every of our gamers who participated in Season One: Festival of Ages over the previous few months. Whether you’ve been battling your method to Conqueror in the ranked ladder, gathering rewards with our Seasonal Events, or crafting mods for your self and others to get pleasure from.
Not solely has our modding group revealed multiple thousand mods because the Season One replace was launched on April 7th, however we’ve additionally had greater than 42,000 rivals make their mark on the ranked season one leaderboard. Keep it up – we respect your ardour and will proceed listening to your suggestions on find out how to additional enhance the Age IV expertise!
Season Two: Just on the Horizon
We shared a little bit about Season Two again in March, and we’re right here right this moment to say that options just like the Map Preference System, Fully Remappable Inputs, and Player Color Picker are on their means in July… together with a few different thrilling adjustments!
Those of you who participated in our current Public Update Preview might have already had the prospect to check a few of these options out (and thanks for the suggestions, by the best way!). Here’s an summary of a few of what you’ll be able to count on:
- Introducing the Player Color Picker! You requested it, and it’s nearly right here. With this new setting, gamers can select a colour or have a colour randomly assigned firstly a match that may floor in-game and on the mini-map in single-player skirmish, multiplayer customized matches, fast matches and ranked matches.
- Based on your suggestions, we’ve continued to refine hotkeysto make sure you’re in a position to customise and play as you want. In Season Two, we’ll be introducing the brand new Fully Remappable Hotkey format, together with making adjustments to how hotkey conflicts work and reorganizing remapping menus so hotkeys are simpler to search out.
- For a while, now we have heard group requests for a method to give gamers a say over the maps they play in Quick Play and Ranked multiplayer matches. With this replace, we’re including our first model of a Map Preference System that gives you affect over the maps that you’ll encounter in ladder play. When the Season Two replace releases, we’ll be sharing FAQs and different particulars additional outlining how the system works!
- Speaking of maps, we’ll be introducing a model new map in Season Two, referred to as The Pit! This map has a aggressive focus with a principally open format.
We’ll have extra to share in the approaching weeks, together with important steadiness adjustments, new Seasonal Event rewards and our Season Two theme!
With all this and extra coming to Age of Empires IV very quickly, it’s the proper time to affix in on the enjoyable! Age IV is featured in the Steam Summer Sale beginning right this moment, June 23rd, and additionally obtainable with PC Game Pass or Ultimate.
Season Three: What’s Still to Come
At the beginning of Season One, we despatched out a participant survey asking a lot of questions on how our gamers felt in regards to the replace and requesting steerage on our subsequent steps. In some circumstances, your responses validated some work we already had underway (such because the Map Preference System), and in different circumstances, your responses helped us change our priorities.
One factor we realized is now we have a lot of gamers who like ranked in principle however would like to get pleasure from with others. As a results of that suggestions, we made it a precedence to introduce our first iteration of Team Ranked in Season Three. We’ll discover another significant adjustments to Ranked primarily based on different learnings ensuing from the survey, and we’ve additionally began early discussions on what we are able to do to supply extra alternatives to permit gamers to get pleasure from Age IV in extra social and much less aggressive methods.
We’ll even be trying to introduce two options you’ve been asking after for a whereas: Taunts and Cheats! While our place to begin with Taunts and Cheats is closely impressed by what you’ve seen and skilled in earlier Age titles, we’ll be trying to develop upon this area as we go. When it involves Cheats, we’ll offer up a few of what you’ve seen in the previous, in addition to some new issues – each purposeful and playful. When it involves distinctive items, we count on we’ll be asking you in your enter as soon as our first providing of Cheats releases so we are able to proceed to entertain.
And in fact, it goes with out saying that that is simply a small peek at what’s to return. There’s a lot extra we count on to share with you as we get nearer to Season Three.
Tell Us How We’re Doing
We’ve been asking in your suggestions constantly since earlier than the launch of Age of Empires IV, and we don’t plan on stopping but! Here’s a fast reminder on how one can assist form our route:
- In the short-term, share your ideas in our official Age boards!
- Our Season Two Public Update Preview (PUP) ended lately, however we’re planning for much more of those! Become an Age Insider to remain up-to-date on when the following PUP is coming.
- If you appreciated the sound of the Season One survey, don’t fear: We did, too! We discovered this to be a highly effective device for listening to from all of you; we realized a lot out of your suggestions and are persevering with to make plans primarily based on what you mentioned, past what we’ve coated in this publish. To guarantee we proceed listening to from you all, we’ll be sending out one other survey shortly after the discharge of the Season Two replace. Make certain you inform us how you are feeling in regards to the new options and content material and what you’d prefer to see extra of in the longer term.
