Age of Empires IV: Anniversary Edition News

With Age of Empires IV’s first ever ranked season ending in a few short days on June 30th, we thought it was just about time to celebrate! So we come bearing the gift of news – including an update on Season Two, first mentioned in our post here, as well as a quick overview of what we’ve heard from you in the past few months and how we plan to action on what we’ve heard in Season Three, tentatively planned for the October/November timeframe!

Before we get started on that, however, we wanted to say a big thank you to each and every one of our players who participated in Season One: Festival of Ages over the past few months. Whether you’ve been battling your way to Conqueror in the ranked ladder, collecting rewards with our Seasonal Events, or crafting mods for yourself and others to enjoy.

Not only has our modding community published more than one thousand mods since the Season One update was released on April 7th, but we’ve also had more than 42,000 competitors make their mark on the ranked season one leaderboard. Keep it up – we appreciate your passion and will continue listening to your feedback on how to further improve the Age IV experience!

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We shared a little bit about Season Two back in March, and we’re here today to say that features like the Map Preference System, Fully Remappable Inputs, and Player Color Picker are on their way in July… along with a few other exciting changes!

Those of you who participated in our recent Public Update Preview may have already had the chance to test some of these features out (and thanks for the feedback, by the way!). Here’s an overview of some of what you can expect:

• Introducing the Player Color Picker! You requested it, and it’s almost here. With this new setting, players can choose a color or have a color randomly assigned at the start a match that will surface in-game and on the mini-map in single-player skirmish, multiplayer custom matches, quick matches and ranked matches.
  
• Based on your feedback, we’ve continued to refine hotkeys to ensure you’re able to customize and play as you wish. In Season Two, we’ll be introducing the new Fully Remappable Hotkey layout, along with making changes to how hotkey conflicts work and reorganizing remapping menus so hotkeys are easier to find.
  
• For some time, we have heard community requests for a way to give players a say over the maps they play in Quick Play and Ranked multiplayer matches. With this update, we are adding our first version of a Map Preference System that will give you influence over the maps that you will encounter in ladder play. When the Season Two update releases, we’ll be sharing FAQs and other details further outlining how the system works!
  
• Speaking of maps, we’ll be introducing a brand new map in Season Two, called The Pit! This map has a competitive focus with a mostly open layout.
  

We’ll have more to share in the coming weeks, including significant balance changes, new Seasonal Event rewards and our Season Two theme!

With all this and more coming to Age of Empires IV very soon, it’s the perfect time to join in on the fun! Age IV is featured in the Steam Summer Sale starting today, June 23rd, and also available with PC Game Pass or Ultimate.

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At the start of Season One, we sent out a player survey asking a lot of questions about how our players felt about the update and requesting guidance on our next steps. In some cases, your responses validated some work we already had underway (such as the Map Preference System), and in other cases, your responses helped us change our priorities.

One thing we learned is we have a lot of players who like ranked in theory but would prefer to enjoy with others. As a result of that feedback, we made it a priority to introduce our first iteration of Team Ranked in Season Three. We’ll explore some other meaningful changes to Ranked based on other learnings resulting from the survey, and we’ve also started early discussions on what we can do to provide more opportunities to allow players to enjoy Age IV in more social and less competitive ways.

We’ll also be looking to introduce two features you’ve been asking after for a while: Taunts and Cheats! While our starting point with Taunts and Cheats is heavily inspired by what you’ve seen and experienced in previous Age titles, we’ll be looking to expand upon this space as we go. When it comes to Cheats, we’ll be offering up some of what you’ve seen in the past, as well as some new things – both functional and playful. When it comes to unique units, we expect we’ll be asking you for your input once our first offering of Cheats releases so we can continue to entertain.

And of course, it goes without saying that this is just a small peek at what’s to come. There’s a lot more we expect to share with you as we get closer to Season Three.

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We’ve been asking for your feedback consistently since before the launch of Age of Empires IV, and we don’t plan on stopping yet! Here’s a quick reminder on how you can help shape our direction:

• In the short-term, share your thoughts in our official Age forums!
  
• Our Season Two Public Update Preview (PUP) ended recently, but we’re planning for even more of these! Become an Age Insider to stay up-to-date on when the next PUP is coming.
  
• If you liked the sound of the Season One survey, don’t worry: We did, too! We found this to be a powerful tool for hearing from all of you; we learned a lot from your feedback and are continuing to make plans based on what you said, beyond what we’ve covered in this post. To ensure we continue hearing from you all, we’ll be sending out another survey shortly after the release of the Season Two update. Make sure you tell us how you feel about the new features and content and what you’d like to see more of in the future.
  

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[h2]Buy Now![/h2]
Still haven't picked up your copy of Age of Empires IV? Fret not! For the first time ever, get your copy for 25% off during the Steam Summer Sale!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1466860/Age_of_Empires_IV/

We humbly request your presence for a royal Feast & Hunt! You’re invited to share hearty meal together and to celebrate a successful hunt in the fourth and final Seasonal Event for Age of Empires IV’s Season One!

Show off your royal lineage with the Royal Feast Portrait from Kalka River mission without losing 25 units, and enjoy the amazing Wolf Bust Monument by winning a single Ranked Season Match, plus much more as you earn rewards and revel in all the seasonal fun!

• Unlock new Portraits! 
  
• Unlock new Coats of Arms!
• Unlock a new Monument!
• Show off your earned rewards while celebrating the Festival of Ages! 
  

[h2]Event Rewards[/h2]

From June 15th through 29th, complete in-game tasks within the time limit to unlock exclusive rewards!



[h2]Show it off![/h2]
You can show what you’ve earned by changing your portrait or flashing your sweet coat of arms, so show off your rewards with pride!

We hope you enjoy our fourth and final event of Season One, Feast & Hunt. Don’t forget to keep letting us know what you’d like to see in upcoming seasons – it excites us too!

Editors Note - June 15th, 2022
The corrections to Rank Points noted below are now complete.

With the release of our Season One update and the launch of our first ever ranked ladder, it’s been an exciting couple of months for Age of Empires IV! We’ve enjoyed watching you all climb the ladders, and we’ve appreciated all your ideas about how we can continue to evolve the Seasons and ranked ladder experience.

Recently, you’ve told us that something feels off with the number of Rank Points assigned following victories and losses. We realize you haven’t heard back from us specifically on this topic just yet, and that as we enter the final weeks of Ranked Season One, understanding how the Rank Point calculations are working (and whether they’re working as expected) becomes increasingly important. While we’ve been quiet, the team has been looking into the issue and developing a plan forward.

In short, our investigations revealed that there is a bug impacting how Rank Points are assigned following Ranked matches; specifically, we’ve found that both the ranges and average number of Rank Points awarded or deducted for a win or loss don’t match our design intentions. Ultimately, this bug has resulted in a lower number of awarded Rank Points and a lower total Rank for participants. You can find some of the math provided by the team below.



Thankfully, this is something we can fix, and we plan to do so starting tomorrow, June 15th. We’ll not only be issuing a change that ensures the possible number of Rank Points received or deducted for a win or loss mirrors the intended design for ranked Season One, but we’ll be retroactively updating calculations from ranked Season One.

So what does this mean for your Rank? Starting tomorrow, you may notice a higher Tier or Rank than you have today. We’ll note that in some cases, this change could be slight – so individuals may not climb the ladder multiple tiers as a result of this change, or jump from Silver to Conqueror. We expect this will see more ranked players in Silver or higher.

Not only will Ranks be corrected tomorrow, but calculations should no longer fall out of sync through the remainder of Ranked Season One, set to end on June 30th. We’ll also be sure this bug fix carries over to future ranked seasons, and while we can’t share any information just yet on other ways Rank Point calculations may change in the future, we’ll be sure to follow up with any major changes coming in Ranked Season Two.

Our Public Update Previews (PUPs) not only present a sneak peek to owners of the game but also provide an opportunity for passionate players to step up, give feedback, and help us squash potential issues ahead of our major updates. PUP builds will generally contain new features, content, or bug fixes. Take a step behind the curtain and preview everything that’s coming to the game in the weeks leading up to a major update!

Owners of Age of Empires IV on Steam are invited to join us for a public preview of this upcoming update. During the timeframes listed below, you can access a preview branch of the game, and provide feedback and bug reports here on the Steam forums.

Starting with this PUP session, when launching the preview, you will receive a pop-up confirming if you want to launch the preview version of either the main game OR the Content Editor (trying to access the Content Editor outside this path will always take you to the LIVE version).

For this preview, please concentrate your feedback on expected functionality, including major bugs, notable crashes and more. Players should submit bug and balance concerns in the Steam forums, as well as prepare to complete a survey regarding the experimental camera angle/zoom introduced in this PUP—survey coming soon!

Along with our standard Bug Fixes and Balance Changes, Season Two will introduce a handful of New Features which the community has been asking for:

• Customizable Player Colors
• Refined Hotkey options
  
• A Map Preference System for multiplayer
  
• And more!
  

A detailed list of changes can be found on our Release Notes, and a deeper look at the Map Preference System is below.

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[h2]When[/h2]
START - Tuesday, June 7th @ 1:00 pm PT (2100 UTC)
END - Monday, June 20th @ 10:00 am PT (1700 UTC)
FORUMS CLOSE - Tuesday, June 21st @ 10:00 am PT (1700 UTC)

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[h2]Map Preference System[/h2]
For some time, we have heard community requests for a way to give players a say over the maps they play in Quick Play and Ranked multiplayer matches. With this update, we are adding our first version of a Map Preference system that will give you influence over the maps that you will encounter in ladder play.

Each queue (Quick Play and Ranked) will provide players with a set of Downvotes that they can apply to maps that appear in the respective queues. In Quick Play, you will have up to 5 downvotes you can choose to apply; while in Ranked, you will have up to 3. Your downvote choices can be made in the search preference screen before you start your match search.

The map that ends up being chosen for the match will be selected from the subset of maps that receives the lowest collective number of downvotes amongst players in the match. Due to how many votes can be present in larger Team Games (up to 40 votes in a 4v4!), you may sometimes still load into a map that you individually downvoted, since that map could be tied for lowest number of overall downvotes in the lobby.

For example, in 1v1 Quickplay, if Player 1 decides they do not want to play any choke point maps during their play session, they can downvote maps like Black Forest, Mountain Pass, Confluence, Mongolian Heights and French Pass to be left with a selection of more open or hybrid maps. If Player 2 decides to downvote only water and hybrid maps, the two players will be left with open maps having received no downvotes, and the final map selection will be chosen from those maps only.

In order to help players quickly find maps that fit into various playstyles, we have added filter tabs to the Map Preference window. These will allow you to quickly see things like all naval maps in your queue. Categories showing a blue dot indicate that a map within that category has been downvoted, for quick at-a-glance reference.

If playing in a group for Team Games, the Map Preference selections of the group host will be used for the group search.

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[h2]More Info[/h2]

• How To Access Preview
• Support FAQ
• Release Notes, Known Issues, & New Features
• How To Report a Bug

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From all of us on the Age of Empires Team, we thank you for being a passionate member of the Age community. Together, we can build a better Age!

-The Age of Empires Team

And then there were four! Check out the final weekend of the Age of Empires IV Golden League, hosted by Elite Gaming Channel TV.

See Puppypaw, BeastyQT, TheViper, and Marinelord compete for the crown and their share of the $125,000 prize. Tune in 8:00 AM PST / 15 GMT Saturday and Sunday to see who will emerge victorious.

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