Change Jeanne D'Arc - This is not ok

Age of Empires IV IV - Discussion
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You know, there has been multiple polls. Multiple threads. Multiple comments.

You even acknowledged it.

At the top of all of these, there was one thing almost everyone, who had issues with these names, agreed on. And it was Jeanne D’Arc. The others got complaints as well, but none as much as this one.

And hey, I get it. You spilled the beans on how you messed up and made a civilization that focuses on one individual rather than a civilization, differing from how AoE has always focused on civilizations and not people.

So you showed your hand. You told us, “hey, actually, we’ll change the names, but this one can’t be changed because of how we designed the civilization.”

NO.

This should still be changed. It is the thing everyone complained about. The fact that you’ve effectively pretended to have listened to us, yet refused to change the one thing we all asked about, shows how utterly pointless it is to communicate here sometimes.

Change this name. It is not OK.

I want to add that the developers themselves have not actually ever addressed this, actually. In their recent post, the only way they seem to even suggest at the outrage, is not directed at Jeanne D’Arc but Empire of Jade. From their post;

“Some members of our community raised concerns that a few of our names were needlessly vague and needlessly exoticizing.”

They effectively avoided the actual topic of discussion all together. Do not miss this fact.

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They can make it duchy of orleans and at the tech tree it says they have jeanne d’arc a hero.Because i think there is a jeanne fan amongst the dev and he wanted to seen by all

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They won’t change it.
It’s too focused on her.
I already gave up.
Looking at her “civilization” page, It’s not Age of Empires anymore.

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Haven’t really heard any good alternatives. Naming it after the Duchy of Orlean would also feel pretty weird since the civ is fully designed around Jeanne. I doubt they will call it Army of Jeanne or Followers of Jeanne after how much flak the Sultan’s Army civ name received.

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Yeah, couldn’t disagree more. Unless you want to claim all the questionable political arguments people made in the name of “ideology”, and I don’t think you do.

Empire of Jade easily got the most comments on here, from what I read.

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Go ahead. I’m inviting you to selectively pick out every single person who did so and let us compare numbers. I’m assuming you are going off a gut feeling, and so am I. From what I saw, there were a handful of sexist idiots, no doubt. Compared to the amount of discussion there has been, from my gut feeling, it has been a very minor portion of it all.

So unless you want to make stats here, it really is just two people “feeling” like there is some numerical thing going on. Which I’m pretty sure neither you or I actually know. Why even rely on this argument?

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Because we don’t know, but you’re the one saying we do. So, it’s kinda the same question? Why rely on that claim?

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Empire of Jade easily got the most comments on here, from what I read.

You might be right Jade empire had more complaints, but not by much - it was roughly equal between Jade and Jeanne. Both were very unpopular indeed so it is strange that after announcing that they have listened to community feedback devs only changed one of them.

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Empire of Jade has a lot of comments because it is too vague.

Jeanne does not need a lot of comments because we all know it breaks naming conventions.
It is Age of Empires, not Age of Characters after all.

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My guess - and this is completely, 100%, just a guess - is that the reasoning broke down across various reasons. Some people dislike Jeanne for the faction’s design. Some dislike it for the name. Some dislike it for historical accuracy. (some dislike it for other reasons)

The Empire of Jade was pretty clearly heavily lacking in historical support, and has no relevance beyond that. So the criticism was pretty much a single, united thing.

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That isn’t quite right. My neutral statement never mentioned anything about sexists. You however wanted to make a point on that. In my rebuttal, I invited you to prove that to be the case. I even told you what would be the conclusion; that we both don’t know what is the case.

IMO, I think you know as well as I that if you legitimately were to try, you would likely fail. I don’t disagree that these individuals exist, but this was a community wide discussion and from all of that activity, there were only maybe a handful of those trying to invoke any form of misogyny from what I could tell.

This does not reduce the actual topic at hand, from the sheer magnitude of people who actually voiced their opinion on the matter. If it does in your eyes from those handful of individuals, then I think you have the wrong image of what happened.

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Yep, this is the bigger issue to me. Looks like I will have to go back to AOE2.

Funny I recall Beasty made that list of changes for AOE4 for AOE2 players anticipating an influx.

I can see the hero civ mechanics attracting new players, but for long time lovers of the AOE franchise an exit from AOE4 to AOE2 seems more likely now.

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It is bitter. I don’t necessarily want to go back to AoE2. AoE4 was meant to be the future, but they keep making decisions that just hurt the Age of Empires fan in me. I do not understand, and it is why I have already fallen to conclude that they do not understand the franchise, or even worse, care to appeal to it.

It is unfortunate that it is in their hands. Everytime they reveal their cards, it seemingly is bad news.

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I posted this thought in another thread, but I’m fine with keeping the name Jeanne d’Arc. For one, it’s very clear about what you’re getting, so there’s no potential for misunderstanding what it is. For another, since it is structured so differently from every other civ, I’m actually fine with it being named differently from every other civ. It isn’t consistent with the other civ names because it isn’t consistent with the other civs, something I’m personally fine with. It is very different in pretty much every way; at that point, trying to bring it in line with other civs through name alone doesn’t seem like much value added.

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You misread me. You said “let’s compare numbers” after I objected to you invoking a majority opinion you have no way of proving. Just like I have no way of proving things beyond anecdotal links. And that’s before we get onto the fact we’re discussing this one, single forum.

I agree neither of us have the answers to the numbers. But that’s exactly what cuts both ways, and you’re relying on it as a part of the evidence to demand Jeanne be changed.

I mean, I’d understand more if the name was your only problem with the faction. There are plenty of threads where people (including me) are discussing the name and the name alone at length. But you’ve been pretty clear (and I understand why) that isn’t the case. So you made an appeal to a majority here, and I didn’t think that was a fair assumption you could make.

I refer you to my answer to sermount2557, above.

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No, it isn’t though. The point of contestion was never “how many sexists dislike this”, it was how many community members dislike it. That has been proven.

Whether some of them are sexist is what you and I disagree on. My hunch is that it is a very small portion. You seem to believe there is a significantly bigger degree.

And here is the unfortunate part. Neither stance really change anything. If the entire fanbase was made up of sexists making demands, it’d probably cause them to react too; that is just the nature of companies listening to backlash.

Anyhow, I don’t think this is the case of the people complaining, and if you want to make the affirmative statement tha# it is, so you can invalidate their opinion on the situation, you need to back it up with data, not me. Assuming that they mean nothing bad is the inherently neutral stance, not what you are doing.

I do disagree with the name, as well as the civilization itself. I also disagree with some of the other names, like the replacement for Empire of Jade. As per my post, they aren’t actually addressing concern properly, or, are doing so at a very surface level.

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It hasn’t though. We literally don’t have the numbers!

We know people do disagree, but like I said to sermount, the reasons attributed to Jeanne are far more varied, and some are more or less arguable than others.

I certainly think you need that demographic to push the number up over the amount of “empire of jade, how about the empire of cheese” posts I saw. I’m not knocking those, for the record. People felt the name was ridiculous, in my eyes moreso than any of the other choices.

Again, unprovable. But so’s trying to play the “my complaints have the biggest pile” angle as well. No argument rooted in “this many people think this way” is going to work here.

The difference to me is that the fact that criticism to Jeanne is strongly fragmented (across a few different reasons) matters for any theoretical resolution. Its also why I suspect the devs felt that leading with the French variant blog post alongside the general explanation about variant civs was the choice to make.

Would you play the faction if the name were changed? I’m sorry for speaking for you, I know you don’t like that, but I feel pretty safe in saying: no you won’t. I’m sure you’d be happier, but for you the dealbreaker seems to be the fundamental design of the variant itself.

The name isn’t the dealbreaker for anyone critical of the general design. The name isn’t the dealbreaker for the ones I’m happy to stop talking about. And even amongst those who want a new name, the validity and nomenclature of a new name differs (mostly between two camps, as far as I can tell). That’s three for four different dealbreakers (ignoring cross-pollination, because generally speaking most people have one bugbear that outstrips the rest).

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I completely agree to this.

At first i was apprehensive to the name of her Civ.
But after setting the details of it, or makes perfect sense. It is heavily centered around her, where she is the landmark itself.
And have funky things she can do.

So for the variant name its fine. Although i would prefer Maid of Orleans as it just sound better. And its shortening is MoO.
Lol

So for me after getting the details of this variant gets a ok in my book for is name.

As long as making hero based variants not becoming a main trend in the game. Im looking foreward to try out this french waifu.

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A better suitable names would be

Jeanne d Arc’s Army
Army of Jeanne d Arc
Fleur de Lis Army
Jeanne d Arc Champions

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I bring this up in another thread, but serious question: why does the name need to fit that convention? Does it bring a concrete benefit to the game? Is there a compelling reason that every civ needs to be named in the framework of a culture, country, or people? “That’s the way it’s always been” is just not a compelling argument to me, and I can’t really come up with another reasonable argument as to why it needs to conform in that way. I don’t pick a civ based on its name, for example. And the name has no bearing on gameplay whatsoever.

I didn’t expect a new civ like this, nor would I have suggested it as a player. The reason for both of those statements is that my expectations for new AoE content were to get more of the same for all eternity, because it’s all we’ve ever gotten. But now that we’ve been presented with something new, I’m looking forward to it tbh. It has me really interested.

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