“Racist” is a code word to manipulate the gullible through guilt-tripping manipulation. I wouldn’t give anyone’s made up word to have power over me.
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This thread is a real bummer to read. Lots of talking past each other. I’m not even going to try to figure out how this ended up being about racism, of all things.
I feel like these conversations would be more productive if framed around psychographic profiles. It’s a concept at the intersection of game design, marketing, and psychology. Basically, people have a variety of motivations for playing games. The Bartle taxonomy is a well-known and generalize-able way of sorting them, but there are others unique to specific games, like the one Magic: The Gathering’s designers use.
There are clearly a bunch of psychographics in the AoE community: competitive tryhards, campaign completionists, esports watchers, history nerds, nostalgia enjoyers, comp-stomp tower defenders, etc. There’s a lot of bickering going on about whether 3k haters or supporters are the majority, but that’s not really the point here. None of the game’s psychographic groups alone is likely to provide enough income to sustain development. The developers’ goal with new content is to include something that targets each of the big ones, without alienating any of them. All these different types of players are playing the same game in the first place because previous content accomplished that.
With that goal in mind, this DLC is a problem. Multiple large psychographics are upset. Does anyone think that the developers want that outcome? If you don’t see what the big deal is because your way of enjoying the game wasn’t affected, then good for you. It is still very bad for the game’s future if a significant part of the paying audience feels ignored and leaves, and you are definitely not going to change any minds by saying that complaints stemming from other ways of enjoying the game are superficial or whiny or stupid.
That whole digression aside, I agree with OP’s entire analysis. My personal problem with 3K is that I like history and I don’t like heroes or magic. It has everything to do with theme and nothing to do with balance. Get the mythology out of my face however you can or I will never buy AoE2 content again.
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They need to add Tanguts as a civ as well as the Tibetans and the Bai who should have been added, plus the missing campaigns for them, Chinese and Koreans. Do East Asia properly for fucksake and move on to other regions.
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I’m bothered by that too. Having Romans to begin with is weird, but if they’re supposed to represent later Romans, why not use something more recent as their wonder?
Given you’re so obsessed with representing ALL Slavic and Baltic people even suggesting to keep current Slavs unchanged so they cover even non-Slavic people, I’m not surprised you’d call anything else “an impossibly high standard”.
This was very well written and accurate. And like you, I am here playing AOE2 for the history.
If Wei gets renamed/retooled to the Xianbei, they will need to receive the Tengri Monastery and Monk, since that was the religion that they followed historically. It would be an interesting shakeup for sure.
Those who don’t mind the Three Kingdoms wouldn’t mind more historical civs either, it’s all the same to them, but history fans do mind, I wish they understood that and saw that if this DLC was handled only “slightly” differently then there would be no controversy. I really don’t see the point behind going to a forum about a videogame and say that it’s silly to complain about the issues of said game lol.
And also it’s true that some sub-groups of the community are upset, and come to think of it this has been the case for the past 2 years, every experiment made at least one psychographic mad, like V&V upsetting campaign players, or BfG upsetting some ranked players because it was a long time since they last got new content. I don’t know how sustainable this DLC model in the long run, but I feel they should change course and go back to the model that didn’t cause any problems.
More like fantasy I’d say, since this is DLC was based on a book… Still, it’s a bizarre decision to add fantasy heroes and countries to a historical game.
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T90 has said multiple times now that the 3k expansion has been a success, and he has insider stuff.
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Only way to solve the three kingdoms is to delete the dlc, refund, and apologize
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Cool, T90 has a vested interest in AOE2 succeeding and literally nothing is stopping him from lying
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As much as I like T90, he seems to simp for the devs way too much.
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Except having his credibility brought into question by people blinded by a month of pre-hate. Imagine how much shit people who hate 3k would give him if he was mistaken, or worse, shilling and turned out to be wrong.
Seems like a dumb hill to die on when he can just do the most obvious thing and just say “we’ll wait and see.”
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I 100% agree, that’d be a very dumb thing to do, obviously anybody in their right mind wouldn’t do that.
And yet we have video of Cysion doing that just, making three false or misleading statements in the course of a couple minutes. Not the argument you think it is.
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Do you happen to have a link to exactly what he said? I’ve basically stopped watching since the DLC dropped.
Looking at the player numbers so far…
…I’m going to guess that it probably sold ok, but not great.
If it turns out that this move was a success - that the new players attracted by the changes outnumber those of us who are disgruntled - then so be it. I’ll eventually drift away from the game and stop haunting the community with my complaints. After all, it’s just a game and I’ve got other things in my life. I maintain that this would be a bad outcome for the game though. I played for almost 20 years without any expectation of new content, and I would have kept buying historical content for another 20 if they kept making it. Will the people replacing me have that kind of brand loyalty? Maybe, but I doubt it. I think that even if this is a success in the short term, they are hollowing out their fanbase.
But we’ll see, I guess. 
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The best strategy would be: 1-2 DLCs per year, each containing 2-3 new Medieval multiplayer civs, with a singleplayer campaign for each civ.
It’s as easy as that.
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I doubt T90 likes the new civs. He said on stream they have too many new abilities and gimmicks.
That the DLC has been financially successful may be true, and if so that’s just stating a fact. It doesn’t mean he likes it.
I strongly disagree with this approach. How often have you apologized for something when someone else demanded an apology? It’s a terrible approach to push someone to an apology, and will often result in the opposite.
Deleting and refunding the DLC will not solve the problem - removing the 3K from ranked play, and giving us Tanguts + 4-5 campaigns (Jurchens, Khitans, Tanguts, Chinese, Koreans) in a new DLC with a discount for those who own this DLC, will.
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But Indians where part of DE release, I can fully expect reworks on these base civs (like persians received) like vikings turning into norse etc… than a new DLC changing anything.
Nothing will change about this DLC, there is zero hope. You can only expect a new Asian DLC to add what was left.
No, they dont need. As they specifically choosed the most famous part of the story where the most famous characters are present. (and where the 3 kingdoms did not even exist yet lmao)
I will. Do people here would really accept God Powers just because they are fun…?
Is this serious…?
If the only purpose of a DLC is to make money, then the devs should go all-in in ridiculous content just like Magic The Gathering is doing.
Magic started to make sets with crossovers with crazy things like Walking Dead, and they have plenty of expansions now with things like Lord of the Rings, Warhammer, Final Fantasy and even Marvel (!!!)
They are THE BEST SELLING EXPANSIONS, the final Fantasy expansion looks like it will be the best selling expansion ever.
If people playing and money are the objective, the devs should go with a Avengers and Thanos faction in the game for the highest profits ever.
And? You pay for both.
There is still hope until all is gone.
Yup. Check their social media posts. Utterly hilarious.
That is actually a very apt comparison.
What’s funny though is how angry plenty of Chinese players (the clear target market) are about this. Which I am not sure is true for the universes beyond stuff.
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Being something from the base game is much easier for players to accept when a new DLC add something and reword this old content.
What they gonna do…? Release a new DLC and retroactively change the content in the 3K DLC…? They cant simple remove them from ranked at this point.
I refuse to believe someone would unirocally say that lol
Magic used the frog boiling strategy.
The traditional magic players where always pissed from the UB sets and feared the slippery slope it would bring the game, but as the UB was exclusive to some mode and had different borders and where ‘not legal’ for tournament formats etc… people always excused it.
But now UB sets will remove the different border and will be legal for everything, effectivelly turning UB into ‘normal magic’ lmao
But it does not matter, as the new casual players make record sales compared to the traditional fans.