I completely agree. Good thing I didn’t say that, then.
I agree with this as well.
I agree with this too. The thing for me is that if people can accept wololo-chanting healing monks (slash priests) that can convert enemies to permanently fight to the death for their own side, that’s quite some wiggle room to apply to a bunch of things.
It’s not a slippery slope to use this to defend new ahistorical things. There is accepted wiggle room, and that wiggle room must continue to exist. We shouldn’t reject things just because we’re not used to them. Everything is new once.
Is this a reason to change everything? Not at all. But that’s as much of a fallacy as your disagreement with slippery slopes (wherever you see them).
It’s the same argument you often hear when anyone critiques the way lore or character is handled in a fantasy show.
Critique: “What? This isn’t part of the universe… that character wouldn’t act that way… the magic works this way ect.”
Response: “Who cares cause… dragons.”
I think this is a valid point, but only if the “wiggle room” applies itself in a way that isn’t jarring and overstepping a line where it starts to feel weird. For example, that “wiggle room” was previously used to illustrate obscure concepts like religious conversion to the wololo. Other than minor things like, “oh guns actually showed up 80 years later for this civ” there aren’t really a ton of suspend your disbelief moments thematically. Again, the game was always marketed as a historical RTS that had some lighthearted “gamified” elements. The civs I’m mentioning in this post do not play ball with the “wiggle room” utilized by all the other civs. Some civs bring new mechanics, some bring out-of-pocket units nobody expected, these two either turn a historical figure utterly ahistorical (just adding crazy shit for no reason) or make the game feel a bit closer to Age of Mythology (due to oddly proportioned golden units) than Age of Empires.
Agreed, most people are rejecting them cause they suck, not because they’re new. None of the other new civs were ever critiqued to this degree.
I would say that most people that are rejecting them are part of an extremely small outspoken group. 99% of AOE4 players are fine with the civs (excluding current balance/gameplay issues). You don’t see reddit or streams exploding with OMG Jeanne unrealistic/OOTD units to big. There’s no huge outrage in steam reviews about it or playerbase dropoff, there’s just a handful of people on a forum which tends to attract niche complaints like Ottoman/Persian fanboys or Jeanne haters.
In fact Jeanne is a very popular civ (though possibly partly attributed to power level). The DLC was nearly topping steam charts and has only a handful of negative reviews (that largely are about campaign).
Now current balance issues or feel playing against Jeanne right now are popular because she is so strong in feudal atm and some civs (including Jeanne) are overtuned, but that is a seperate issue.
Other than the fact I think your perception of how the civs are being received is off, this isn’t a “separate issue.” Yes I think thematically Jeanne and OOTD are pretty dumb, but my main complaint was the the fact they feel terrible to play against. Forget them being overtuned or broken atm, the act of trading with them and playing against them is just genuinely unfun. I can’t really say this about the other civs. Also, of course the DLC is topping the charts. It has 2 new civs, which are really well made and fun to play, as well as 4 variant civs that have mixed appeal. I still bought the DLC, I’m still enjoying the game (for the most part), but I really dislike Jeanne and OOTD. My guess is many people feel the same way and aren’t review bombing the game for it (just like I didn’t).
It’s possible other people feel this way and aren’t talking, but in general people are more likely to post about complaints than they are about things they like. Jeanne is a fairly popular civ atm and it’s hard to take any complaints on the forums too seriously because the AOE4 forums are flush with complaints about random things (like the obsession over Ottoman landmarks and lack of horse archers). The fact that the complaints are not making their way to ANY other place of community feedback implies that it is a pretty small group.
There’s also the fact that people on the forum have an odd fixation on Jeanne and completely ignore other equally unrealistic or odd mechanics of the game like mobile springalds, flamethrower rams and to an extent olive oil.
I mean that’s just not true though. There may not be as high a percentage of dissatisfaction as in the forums, but I’ve encountered multiple people IN GAME that have complained about Jeanne specifically. I’ve also seen a fair amount of negative comments on Reddit and YouTube comments about them as well (again mainly with Jeanne but OOTD as well). Yeah it’s not half of the comments, but it’s definitely a sentiment that’s out there. I never really saw that with other civs.
Perhaps, but again I usually find those complaints to be about her being too strong or unfun to play against which imo is pretty on point atm (she definitely needs some balance changes).
At this point though, there is nothing Relic can/will do about Jeanne other than balance. Just removing a civ from the game isn’t really an option, especially with how many people enjoy playing her.
OOTD there is a very small chance they could adjust model size of the units (though I suspect the larger models might actually be a gameplay balance thing to have larger hitboxes)
Agreed, she’s here to stay for better or for worse.
I would be willing to bet a lot of money they never change either. For whatever reason these kinds of changes just never get addressed by devs, even if a huge amount of people complain. I’m thinking chaos steed sizes in Total War Warhammer, took them over 5 years to fix and all they had to do was scale the horse size up.
How do we define this line? Can we? Is your line the same as mine?
I have a greater tolerance for fantasy elements. I know folks IRL who take a big issue with the firearm availability you described as a “minor thing”. You can’t assume I and them share the same tolerances, just like you can’t assume we’re annoyed by the same things.
I don’t see much rejection, but we probably need more ladder stats to be conclusive there.
It’s difficult to say though. I’ve already seen “the variants are so strong nobody will use the vanilla factions anymore”. But if they’re not strong, a lack of uptake will be seen by other (different) posters as a lack of support for said variants.
How do we measure this? Genuine question. I don’t see how we can.
Personally I heavily disagree with this. Only Jeanne feels like a civ that can be played as a replacement for the old one. OOTD doesn’t play anything like the HRE - it’s not focused on MAA but on horseman/ranged untis, it’s not an eco FC powerhouse, doesn’t really have relic focus. Zhu Xi lacks all of the things you play China for (other than Zhuge Nu), Ayyubids imo won’t really replace Abbasids in anything once they receive nerfs.
I’m not saying everyone is rejecting them. I’m just saying, of the people that do, they’re doing so because they genuinely don’t like the way they are implemented, not because they’re new. Every other new civ in the game has received almost no push back from my impression, they’ve all been welcomed with open arms. I’d say the only way to actually gauge would be polls (which have already been done here and there and show pretty sizable dissatisfaction relative to satisfaction).
You could go out and say “well that’s just the forums” but even if the dissatisfaction across the board was half that in the forums it’d still be sizable. You have to remember that people very rarely react negatively to additional content, more content is almost never critiqued heavily because it’s something on top of what you already like. For bonus content to be actively disliked or called to be removed means it really rubbed people the wrong way, which is rare.
I’m not talking about people we can’t ask about opinions I don’t know they hold. I was originally talking about historical / franchise precedents for ahistorical or even fantastical gameplay.
For gameplay comparisons / criticisms, I have a take over here you may or may not agree with.
So you are saying that a variant civilization that is based around a real historical figure is less historical accurate than a priest or a monk making wololo noise and magically converting units to his side is tolerant because its “iconic”?
What’s to say that Jeanne won’t be iconic later down the road just like wololo is now for the age franchise? If you are willing to accept this, surely you can accept a variant civilization that is based around a historical person? Are we suddenly to pick and choose whats okay and not okay when it comes to fantasy elements?
Ah yes, the “historical Jeanne” that rides around with a hand cannon blasting people and swinging around a greatsword waylaying dozens of foes (totally like she did in real life).
