Great if they really did.
I wouldn’t expect them to get rid of the hero concept anytime soon though. It’s been a part of AoE since at least 3, if not the entire time with unique units in campaigns. A re-work of JD would probably be more around UU or how leveling and skills work. She’s been at the center of their marketing since at least AoE 2, the JD campaign had a lot of engagement, and her face is their current profile picture. She’s practically a national icon and legend in her own right.
Only one more week until Gamescom 2025, hopefully we’ll see the direction that they want to take the series in then.
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AOE3 heroes are scouts and buffers not super combatants, and their concepts fit their roles: explorers are scouts, war chiefs are buffers, warrior monks have better combat skills etc
AOM heroes are a central part of their counter system. And even in AOM, pharaohs and priests don’t swing hammers and have high base damage
Jeanne d’arc was never a fighting personnel. Let alone using big handgun on horseback. She should at least remain a buffer.
Khan is effectively a hero. If khan can remain a buffer, I don’t know why Jeanne has to be a super soldier
Which used Franks/French, not a special civ called Jeanne d’arc
And that is the biggest problem of the design. There is nothing special enough to justify itself, unlike Lancaster or Ayyubids. You add the basic French civ with a hero, you get almost the exact same outcome.
If I swap the Lancaster with base English in the Agincourt scenario, or vice versa in the Norman campaign, there is a big difference. If I swap the French civ with Jeanne d’Arc in the related scenarios as the center of marketing (all two of them, with zero character building), you won’t even notice.
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I see people getting caught up on the dissonance between Jeanne d’Arc the historical figure and Jeanne d’Arc the legend a lot. Also on the variants needing to be fully and completely grounded in history.
I don’t agree with the complaints that you guys have with variants. I can’t really empathize with you on why the variants as they currently are is ineffective and requires improvement. I personally think they are fine as they are, and what I would like personally is more related to gameplay than it is to thematic changes to the identity of the faction. The main reason for this is because this is exactly how they planned on implementing it, and it’s exactly what they were trying to accomplish:
The Sultans Ascend: Variant Civilizations Deep Dive
Why are Variant Civilizations being introduced?
First and foremost, all civilizations in Age of Empires (be they classics or variants) are there to deliver excellent and engaging experiences to our players. The classic civilizations are there to capture the history of civilizations over several centuries, capturing the evolution of whole cultures and expressing them as broad gameplay themes supported by art, music, speech, and much more. Variant civilizations take an element of that broad historical sweep and build a fresh game experience around it.
The variant civilizations are also a great opportunity for us to explore gameplay mechanics that push the envelope. The Jeanne d’Arc Variant Civilization, for example, is entirely focused on a hero unit who gains levels and transforms throughout the match. This is not something we have seen in Age of Empires IV before, and variants allow us to really lean into these mechanics.
The two main things I took away from reading this 2 year old statement stands firm even in the new DLC that was released this year. Additions that maintain an engaging experience that captures moments in history (but is not designed to be a 1:1 recreation), and variant civilizations that bend this further to create unique experiences that aren’t found in AoE 4 (maybe in the entire series).
They are by function meant to be unique to the series, and they are also meant to bend and twist history, stretching singular moments or ideological concepts to create unique gameplay experiences. A lot of the complaints here are with the concept itself.
None of this is to say that any of you are invalid for wanting what you want or desiring an improvement on what is there. And they are listening! The two new variants were designed with feedback from the entire fanbase, and it shows.
Hours of writing wasted. I am not paid to write here and I cannot get compensation
I already said long ago that variants like ZXL achieved none of their advertisements
ZXL:
- Not focused or a “moment” in history: sprawled as much as the basic Chinese
- Not fresh: unlike JDA that at least has a somewhat different gameplay, this is just another regular civ with a little different pacing
OOTD:
- Not focused. Just HRE with a reskin
- Not a moment in history. It was a small group of leaders with twenty-ish people in Hungary yet it featured giant versions of generic HRE soldiers and a landmark in Aachen
And stop preaching to people everything the corporate said is true
Good good I was just wondering why this strawman is missing
Find a single place where I asked for 1:1 recreation, or apologize and get lost.
You simply don’t add samurai to a Chinese civ, make Mongols weak in cavalry, or add an Attack on Titans faction to a historical game. Simple as it is. Go and apologize to your middle school history teacher if you think that means 1:1 recreation.
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Oh shoot. We’re so back.
I mean, I wouldn’t hold your breath. They just said it was something they’re looking into.
Spread the word brother, fly like the wind.
I support them 100% if they moved the Jeanne d’Arc the mounted hand cannoneer and the giant gilded HRE clones into cheat code
Wololos were exclusively in AOE1. FYI
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Okay, your opinion has been noted. It’s probably incorrect, but it doesn’t really matter. Most attempts at making it about another poster tend not to matter in the end.
I disagree. It fits with the hero theme ethos as an abstraction of an ideal (which is exactly what she was: a symbol).
You’re trying to justify emotion. You don’t need to. Your opinion is valid.
Neither is wololo, to me. I accept it for what it is, that the franchise has always bent the “rules” for the sake of something cool or mechanically-interesting. You’re just being selective based on your preference, instead of applying things evenly.
And yet some still found it tonally-dissonant. Their opinions are valid, even if you have a different one.
You’re confusing your opinion for some kind of objective thing that can be defined. It can’t. There is no detailed convention that says Jeanne is too far, but wololo is not. You even tell me to not blame folks for their expectations. I don’t. I never have.
But you really need to work on this difference of opinion thing. Just my 2 cents. I’m out again for a bit, but this has been fruitful as usual. Thanks 
I think it is dissonant too. But at least that is rectified by being a separate mode that you can totally skip.
I don’t want to manually select civs or restart games at any random game.
There is no detailed convention of almost anything. Yet some products have 80%+ positivity and some below 50%. Go and tell all the people on steam there is no detailed convention of what a good game is.
Heck, there is even no detailed convention that the Earth is a globe
I never said that.
Yet you always resort to gaslighting when it had been very clearly about my opinion and why I think it is bad. I just don’t need to declare it every time.
“Everyone can have a different opinion” is a non-argument and conversation stopper. Because argument is exactly about why my opinion is different from yours. But you shrink back to that shell whenever there is argument (not in favor of WE).
I recommend you repeat those nonsense too at every WE bootlicking posts. Preach to them repeatedly that everyone has a different opinion and theirs is not objective. They’ll appreciate it.
Whenever people use the “perfect realism” strawman, they refuse to answer this question:
The cobra car is cool. It’s fun. It’s already in the game.
Why did they make it a cheat code not a trainable unit?
There is no way why wololo can exist yet a modern car shooting bullets cannot.
We are not denying the FACT that they need to compromise (what, you think that’s your exclusive take of how the world works?) We are EXACTLY talking about why (I think) some compromises are good and some are bad.
Also, I 100% support WE take out “history” from their taglines.
Then why was she made as the exact OPPOSITE of a symbol but a front like combatant very specifically swinging hand cannons on the horseback?
I’d call it a nice try if she used a sword or a flag or sth
I mean, a cheat car is by definition a cheat. What do you want people to say?
It seems you want people to agree with you over somethkng that is inherently subjective. That won’t work.
Well, when you’re not misrepresenting what folks are saying. There is no “perfect realism” argument that I’m making. Nor a strawman. The game is not and shouldn’t be perfectly realistic. Nor do I think many want that.
Like I said way up there, more realistic variants seems to be the way to go to make them as attractive as possible for the playerbase of this game. I don’t think you disagree with that, so I don’t understand this longstanding attempt at creating friction where there doesn’t need to be any.
I understand why you think some compromises are bad. I don’t think you understand why others think they might be good. It’s an opinion. I don’t say this to invalidate them. We’re here to share them, not score points with them.
You still didn’t answer why they didn’t put the cobra car model in the barracks or sth.
You can have a very tuned down version of the unit of the same function. Fast. Multiple bullets. High damage. Not necessarily a cheat. But they’d make it a horse archer not a car. Simple as it is.
There is no hard convention. There is a range that most people would accept. And that number diminishes as you reach the boundary.
And it is very objective that the backlash of adding a cobra car >>>> adding a horse archdr to the trainable unir roster. That’s called probability theory
Since WE enjoys sitting on that border so much recently, you cannot blame anyone but them (but that’s your job I understand) for greater backlash
I could agree with that until someone hops in and said it had been fine from the very beginning
The thing I think is being missed here is that people bring up perfect realism because that’s what the criticism is about.
When you suggest that they completely remove the “history” tagline from the game because of a few compromises with historical record, that’s where it’s being identified that your position is that the game must have complete and total historical accuracy. Because otherwise you believe it is not deserving of a historical tagline.
I must also note here that I find that a bit absurd, because the game is based around historical events to some degree. I would be right there with you demanding changes if the campaign modules were a-historical… but even then, some of the fun parts about the campaigns is that we are meant to defy history and have an alternate outcome.
We’ve been talking about Jeanne d’Arc with a cannon on horseback, and I think that really captures the discussion really well. What this is meant to accomplish is not an alternate telling of history, but a gameplay device used to convey purpose and ability using visual language. The hero unit is at its peak and has the ability to deal massive damage with each strike.
There are a lot of options here, but making her a ‘gunpowder monarch’ is much more grounded than giving her a handheld springald, a massive club or magic sword. It’s meant to convey that she has the ability to deal massive damage with each of her strikes. It also matches the theme of imperial age having access to gunpowder. You can immediately tell that someone has reached the end of the tech tree because you’ll hear hand cannons and bombards firing, this is in line with that.
I like what people have suggested with JD having a change up to a different kind of role, being more focused on supporting the army. However, this issue is inevitable. It isn’t unreasonable to see more hero like features in the future, and with that would be a re-emergence of this deified super hero like figure on the battlefield, wielding a cannon or using ‘magic’ abilities.
If you removed the cannon or rifle from her set and left it with a sword and bow, how would you then convey the increase in power? Would it have the same impact visually and audibly? Would the player get the same kind of feedback from using a hero unit and having it actually feel like it’s at its most powerful state?
If you removed the combat abilities from JD how does that then affect the balance of the variant? How much of the variant needs to be redesigned because of it?
Moreover, why not save these kinds of things for the addition of another hero focused civ/variant?
I’m all for it if it can maintain a sense of balance and feel nice to play.
The problem I currently have is that it already feels balanced and already feels decently nice to play as is. The faction gets less traction with the player base because it requires a great level of skill to play successfully. It’s extremely punishing to lose JD in a fight, and it’s difficult to manage active abilities actively. I’ve been playing games for over 20 years now, and I have yet to see arbitrary balance changes to something that functions perfectly fine be well received by people.
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Tell me how requiring Jeanne d’Arc to NOT be a mounted handgunner is perfect realism
Then tell me how expecting ZXL and OOTD to be factions with their own identity is even related to historical realism
I say they could remove that tagline from the game if they chose to follow you guys’ mindsets (aka bootlick everything they do afterwards)
Find one single sentence I said that or get lost.
It is also more grounded than making her an android.
What is even the argument?
It isn’t unreasonable either to see more sci-fi elements in the future. So we had better stop that at the top of the slippery slope.
Don’t you know the game already has two civs with “hero” units that are not super soldiers?
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I don’t particularly enjoy being told what to do and being demanded to answer questions that you invent on the spot.
The only thing I was trying to say directly to you was to help explain what was happening, you seemed confused. The rest was really just some observations on JD and why it is the way it is.
It’s really okay if we don’t agree, there’s no need for hostility.
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There is no need for dodging questions, gaslighting and repeating corporate PR either
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Probability is by definition . . . not a surefire thing. You’re describing a trend, but you’re still not relating it back to AoE IV.
Maybe you think Jeanne is as unfitting to IV as a Cobra is as a trainable unit in II. I don’t know because you’re not actually making that argument. Or any argument, really.
“people like things in games set in history less the less historical they are” isn’t exactly an amazing insight. Yes, and? So what? Jeanne existed in history. This whole thing still comes back to “cannon not history”. Neither’s wololo. Both serve gameplay purposes. They are the same kind of thing. One just turned up when you were 20 years younger, and had a different impact on you because of that fact.
You’re still allowed to like one and not like the other. Preference doesn’t have to be rational. My wife doesn’t like caramel but will eat a Twix. People are full of idiosyncrasies.
Once again, tediously unnecessary, hah. It doesn’t achieve whatever you want it to achieve.