I just will have the variant civs I don’t like banned in any games I play. I will also stop playing ranked and quick match.
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Ah yes, the eternity of 2 years and only 2 civilizations. Yes, we’ve had too much of that already, haven’t we?
Honestly, why even ask this? You’ve made it clear that you don’t intend on actually having a discussion as per your way of ignoring every point I make, and to instead only declare your own. I’ve not seen you participate here before and you’re suddenly only discussing this topic with the intention of propping up the idea that you like what they’re doing.
So, despite the fact that you will reply with a rebuttal that misses the point again, and despite the fact that there are multiple comments and threads (like this one) that already answers your question, here again;
Because it is what we have come to like about AoE. This is an old franchise. You’re confused that people don’t want something that strays from the norm? Why? This isn’t some experimental zone, but a well understood franchise with players who have been purchasing multiple of their games and expansions since.
I like AoE because of their exploration of empires and history. I liked playing “civilizations” and building their cities, experiencing some gamified interpretation of what they’d be like. Variant civilizations throw all of that aside simply to experience the mechanical part of the game.
If you couldn’t see effects, models nor music, playing mongols would be meaninglessly different to Rus in my eyes. You’re just clicking buttons on a PC. That immersion is entirely necessary to not remind me that games are inherently a systematic waste of time, for it brings attention to something I deeply care about: History.
Now, basing a civilization on an individual just makes it all worse. Because AoE specifically has never made that the focus, as with the name, it has always been about Empires. And that is what I want to see, not individual people who you play as. These games are meant to feature time periods of hundreds of years, landmarks and changing structures to demonstrate the passing of time, and the advancement of technology and units to showcase that you’re moving from Dark Age to Feudal, Castle and Imperial. All of this makes no more sense with this absurd set up that is Jeanne D’Arc.
And even if it did; I wouldn’t care to see it. I want to see something bigger than a person.
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Again with the churlish insults. Frankly I don’t respond to every point you make because 1) your messages tend to be long and I don’t feel like spending 20 minutes typing out a response to everything you say, I have things to do. And 2) because I don’t need to. Also, I haven’t been here in a long time, and now I am. You’re absolutely right about that, and it amounts to nothing.
Sure, anyone who likes AoE likes the formula because it’s all we’ve ever gotten. That’s not a difficult determination to make. The idea that the majority of players never want anything different is, I think, fallacious. A vocal group of even several dozen is not a good measurement of the whole community. But I haven’t seen unbiased data to tell the whole story, so time will tell.
Overall, I just see a lot of “I don’t like it, I want something different.” Which is fine, you don’t have to like it. But saying “this is literally ruining the game” just seems like exaggeration.
It is different. Different is not inherently bad. You’ll have 10 fully fleshed-out standard civs to seemingly fit the thing you want. I think it would do a lot to help if the devs implemented the ability to exclude variant civs from matches, but we haven’t seen much info about the actual expansion yet, so time will tell. But that’s an actual proposal for a thing to do, not just “I don’t like this thing.”
And given what the vision is for Jeanne’s faction, I have yet to see a compelling argument for why it needs to be named a different way. “That’s the way it’s always been” will never convince me.
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How is this not Age of Empires anymore?
One thing I want to draw attention to is the mention of cognitive load in the recent Jeanne D’Arc post. They’re clearly aware that they’re alienating a portion of the market share by requiring the game’s players to have good micromanagement to be competitive. My guess is that they’re offering these variant civilizations to allow some players an alternative way to experience the game thus promoting additional avenues of gameplay and thereby attracting more players. People who are saying “I’m going back to AOE2 because of this” are simply malding heavily. Nobody is forcing you to play the variant civilizations. The meta will still include traditional AOE4 strategies.
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They need to names of a country, culture, or people, because Age of Empires, at its core, is about building an economy, army, and empire, all to defeat your opponent.
This does NOT change with Jeanne d’Arc, even though many other aspects of her design are novel. While the civilization may revolve around Jeanne d’Arc, it is not a civilization of JUST Jeanne d’Arc. There is still villagers, buildings, military units outside of Jeanne d’Arc, etc. So for all intents and purposes, she is still part of a civilization, one that builds it’s economies with villagers, builds military buildings, builds town centers, builds an army, and uses Jeanne d’Arc as their central unit, but not their ONLY unit.
This is why it’s perfectly fine to have Jeanne d’Arc in the name, but it would be BETTER to have it actually reference an entire group, as Army of Jeanne d’Arc. Because then it makes clear that her civilization includes many units beyond just her. And it isn’t sure some MOBA character.
Many people are getting mad saying Jeanne D’Arc is a MOBA character, many others are trying to correct them saying Jeanne d’Arc is still “Age of Empires”! I believe the people saying this civilization is still a civilization, but this problem arises precisely because of the naming.
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Do we need another pool for this one?
You know, after reading the blog post about why they decided to design variant civs I think she is pretty well implemented and I like that they are actually acknowledging her history in the gameplay. She goes from a villager in Age 1 (reflecting her peasant ancestry) to a person leading, buffing, and healing troops in Age 4 (reflecting her military acts and motivational influence for the French army). I think that it’s a cool concept, though admittedly kind of out of place with regards to the way Age of Empires has always been played and enjoyed. If they add more, and it becomes a standard form of play with like 10 or so famous people to choose from I think that’d be cool. But I totally understand if people dislike it, it breaks the formula. I’ll still enjoy and play the hero civs in the game (except the French ones cause fuck the French), even if it wasn’t what I preferred. BUT IT’S TOTALLY VALID TO DISLIKE OR BE FRUSTRATED BY THIS CHANGE. Don’t let people gaslight you into thinking your opinion isn’t valid or there isn’t a reasonable basis for the way you feel.
The fact that they make Jeanne d’Arc as a civ, means she should’ve gather her own resources, make her own armor, wield her own weapon, & fight on her own. No, peasants, no army, & ultimately no age ups because the civ name is Jeanne d’Arc & she only lived up to 19 years old. I’m sure even Jeanne herself is rolling on her grave right now on how stupid these “experts” are.
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Where are her banner devs? Even a japanese gacha game can make a more accurate model of her
If you guys love her THAT much, at least make her right
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Somebody said on YouTube that when you play AoE and you get a mirror match, you can at least imagine a faction off the same civ rebelled and that’s why you have 2 Ottoman teams playing against each other.
But with two identical Jeanne D’Arc heroes on the field?
I’m happy the devs not only reacted, but acknowledged the community (which is something that rarely happens - we usually get changes by surprise), but completely ignoring the French variant was a bit tone deaf.
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I believe that we can maintain split into 2 categories:
- the ones that don’t like a civ based on heros, which is a weak argument as we still cannot judge the meccanics of the civ.
- the ones that rightfully argued that we already have french, so having another french civ is quite disappointing, especially when the game hasn’t even scratch the surface of the potential cultures and civs that can be introduced.
It’s not just for historical accuracy, it’s all about the nonsense of introducing another french civ around a single historical figure. An important one by all means, but still it’s unconventional for how they introduced the game until now.
And let’s not even talk about how it’s wasn’t the head of the state but just a simbol…
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I’m personally not against variants or hero civs, but I agree that the Joan civ presents major problems for me.
- the variant is a French civ, it’s like adding the same civ, based on the same period and region a second time:
If they used the variants to introduce similar cultures to the original one, like burgundians, franks, the kingdom of Jerusalem for france, then I would accept it.
I would still preferred completely new civs, but I could see the logic in it, on focusing on a different time period, or a smaller state.
- going for a specific historical figure instead of a generic one:
that’s the other major problem. If they wanted to have a civ heavily based around a hero, a civ like the aztecs with sacred warriors would have been fantastic, and a fan favorite of the community.
If they wanted to go for a more european civ, they could have gone for an emperor, or a general, or they could have given the standard bearers to the french if they really want to.
Those 2 arguments might seem childish, but to me, they actually ruin the immersion. If they wanted to introduce some out of the ordinary civs, they should have tested in the pup first.
Personally, I appreciated the post of the devs, because even if they didn’t changed the Joan civ, they proved that they read the fan feedbacks. Maybe they’ll change the civ variants (not a fan of the dragon order either…) maybe not, probably it’s too late for this DLC, but still it’s something.
The only pity is that I was super hyped for this DLC and the 2 actually new civs, and hoped that this was the one DLC that brought me back to the game, but now I’m not so sure, I guess we’ll see…
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Naming a hero (and even a civilisation) after a real person has some issues.
- You gotta be authentic with that character
- That character did not live 500 years
- That character did not fight a clone of themselves
The issues in this case:
- Is what they got very wrong. The historic person did not use any weapons and she did not fight herself. She rode into battle with a banner.
- This is probably impossible to fix unless she gets unlocked in Imperial Age which would completely remove the point of the civilisation.
- That could be solved by giving her a more generic name “Maid of Orléans” would be directly referring to her but still make it somehow possible for there to be 2.
I generally like the gameplay concept of her though.
She starts as a villager then turns into a foot soldier, after that into a horseman but at the end she uses a cannon? That’s a little too much.
btw. that’s not the first time named heroes appear in a random match in the AoE series.
AoE3 had the Japanese Daimyos and the Shogun which are named after real people (they are technically not hero units because they can die and are not tagged as heroes).
Also two different revolts that give you Bolivar that is technically the only named hero in the AoE series so far that can appear in a random match.
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Naming a whole civ behind the name of a single person is beyond stupid. I cringe so much as a French every time I read this name, despite the gameplay looks fine and all.
Why did they change the Chinese to make it more accurate, meanwhile keeping in French “Jeanne d’Arc representing a whole civ” makes not sense? What did Relic meant by this?
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You must love Jeanne D’Arc!
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This pic is now canon, she uses a handcannon while mounted, when she never used weapons (owned swords) but only inspired troops…
I din’t think about mirror matches that might feel a bit weird. Normally civ mirror matches can still make sense contextually as a civil war or rebellion even with the ‘Hero’ characters in the game already like two Khan’s fighting each other or two English Kings.
Two Jeannes though? Or a team game with Jeannes running all over the place lol.
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I don’t understand how any of you ppl support a guy this obtuse?!
Anyways each variant is NOT a new civ; again each variant is NOT; NOT; NOT a new civ; And this is partly to blame Beastyqt!! Which on his stream flaming a guy for speaking the fucking truth. Mechanically, each variant will play differently from its parent BUTTTT; each variant IS INDEED the same freaking empire???
So we have
- French 1
- French 2
- Abbasid 1
- Abbasid 2
- HRE 1
- HRE 2
- China 1
- China 2
The design conundrum is: how do you design a “French 2” without it displacing French 1?? The ONLYYYYY WAYYY around having French 1 NOT be displaced by French 2 (or vice versa) ; is to have them designed fundamentally differently (Apples and Oranges).
MY REAL CONCERN??? How will you balance the gameplay between a hero faction and a standard faction?? I “live” on this forum preaching BALANCE ALL DAY EVERYDAY, and I’m very very afraid of the balance moving forward; we can’t get it right enough when everyone has the same basis of gameplay; now we’re introducing a new gameplay? Case and point: Mongols is the closest we currently have to a hero faction; And there hasn’t been a season or patch where Mongols hasn’t been THE BEST CIV or near the best civ in ladder and in most tournaments??? NOW we’re getting 4 more Mongol Premiums?!
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When I say something a little bit have, I immediately get mods talking: “watch your language!”. This dude making silly argument ad personam against very series concern from a huge part of players and no one see problem… f@cin double standard’s…
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@Jergosurb you just have to flag it then mods will read it and response with actions as necessary. The forum has been lively these past few weeks so its likely mods are very very busy.