Some people try very hard to make it out like the community just tries to mis-interpret what is said, or just gets upset if we don’t get our way. I think that’s extremely un-informed and/or dis-ingenuous and I’d like to explain why.
V&V
We were promised “Campaign” focused expansion. V&V has no campaign, at least not by any definition you’d find in any other RTS or FPS. We were promised polished scenarios. V&V had many of the same bugs from the mod versions, no new assets, many scenarios felt even unfinished, they didn’t even update Romano-Britons to Romans from Byzantines. We were promised they were “inspired” by filthydelphia’s scenarios. Maybe four of the new ones, but fetih is a player swap constantine xi, and the rest are all copy paste. Then the moment V&V was announced, all the prepped social media material used the term “single player”. Regardless of if your definition of campaign includes V&V or not, everyone has to agree that “single player” is more vague and expansive term compared to “campaign focused”. Why use the more specific term to TEASE something, and the less specific term when we already know what the content is? Literally I could not find the word “campaign” ANYWHERE on steam, on the social media marketing, on the blog, anywhere. What’s crazier. In the video Filthy recorded for the V&V announcement, he does use the word campaign, but only BEFORE we know what V&V is. The marketing for V&V switched from “Campaign” to “Single player” and “scenario” mid script. think about that, MID SCRIPT. And this said spoken by a guy who’s MADE official campaigns AND the scenarios that are being upcycled.
—Edit—
I’d forgotten that during the new years event in february 2024, they played on a patch of the game that had not yet been announced or released, the update that gave villagers find shelter and drop off resources commands. But because we didn’t know about that patch, and we were watching to see the new V&V content, naturally that gave the wrong impression that the new features we were seeing were part of the paid content that was being marketed to us, NOT a free update we’d later get. And we were told these scenarios would contain exclusive mechanics.
So for those of you out there who are keeping track, that’s
- One statement that AT BEST is un-representative of 97.3% of the single player content in the game. At worst isn’t congruent with the industry standard.
- An AT BEST highly exaggerated statement.
- A statement unrepresentative of 73.6% of the V&V content
- A supposed Colossal co-incidence of when they stopped using the word “campaign”.
- A supposed accidental use of a future patch that showed features which could only reasonably be inferred to be part of V&V
V&V2, we were given two screenshots. importantly showing a Jurchen and Tangut Castle, and their UUs. Not oh we thought they could be for those civs, no go to google, find a history book, look at historical representations, look at ruins of castles, and see how they match perfectly with what is in the screenshot. Then we were told we’d get five new civs as well as Jurchens and Tanguts in “Into China” would have their civs updated, as well as “Kara Khitai” changed in “Crucible” and “Life of Revenge”. Tanguts are a tibeto-burman people, Jurchens are Tungusic. We were shown castles and units that can ONLY be for those civs. Nothing else makes any sense. We weren’t shown anything for khitans (no I don’t recognize the khitangut chimera so awful zhou tucker wouldn’t touch it with a ten foot pole), but if you’re updating the Kara-Khitai, if need to have a khitan civ. Tanguts are tibeto-burman, Jurchens are tungusic, Khitans are para-mongolic. Neither tanguts or jurchens are a better match for khitans than mongols. There is just no alternative rational explanation. They were adding at least Jurchens, Tanguts, and Khitans. Then we learn, somehow besides the mountains of evidence to the contrary, they aren’t adding the tanguts. What’s just more mind boggling for me, is literally the only thing for the “legendarily long patch notes” to be walked back, literally the thing we’ve done numerous times since the forgotten, the tanguts “couldn’t” be updated to khitans do to “technical reasons”. maybe later, def not now tho. The moment we learn there’s no tangut civ, all the other castle changes, bug fixes, animation improvements, no technical difficulties noticed there, but the 50th civ swap is where it got too challenging for now. Furthermore, I understand you don’t want to give away everything for a tease, but showing off the Tanguts and Jurchens is unrepresentative of 60% of the new civs, and 100% of the new campaign content. How is that remotely a good tease? and then lastly the whole we aren’t splitting china statement. This wasn’t made by some random joe shmo. This was made by the lead developer of the DLC that added indians, and the lead developer of the dlc that split the indians. Also Cysion mentioned the reason they were going with 5 civs this time is because it’s what was needed to tell the stories they wanted to tell. Really? Jurchens and Khitans are critical to telling 3K stories? I’ll reserve final judgement once I see the campaigns, but that is seemingly a bizarre rationale.
—Edit—
Also for some reason the fire archer was shown with SEA UI. Which is reasonably congruent with Dali and very congruent with tai, and incongruent with 3k. If it were a mistake then it should have been just as likely to use meso ui, western europe ui, central asian ui. But nope, it was wrong but apparently in just the right way to be congruent with all the other “mis-communications”
So those of you out there that are keeping track
- Screenshots showing civs unrepresentative of AT BEST 60% of the civs and 100% of the single player content.
- An AT BEST extremely questionable assertion china wasn’t getting split, when we now have civs for when ethnically han china was literally politically split
- An incomprehensible co-incidence that the only thing to be walked back from the patch note, is also the only thing they’ve done oodles of times before but it was too hard this time, which also happened to be a linchpin piece of evidence.
- An AT BEST bizarre statement that Jurchens and Khitans, civs of whose height was 1000ish ad time frame, are needed to tell 3k, which took place in the 200s ad.
- A 1 in 10 chance of using just the right but also wrong regional ui for Fire archers.
And to be crystal clear, this is not just “I didn’t get what I wanted”. BfG is not what I wanted. Didn’t have a problem with that. RoR isn’t what I wanted. Didn’t have a problem with that. I was in the minority of the fanbase relatively uninterested in the Caucusus. I didn’t have a problem with TMR. And it’s not, oh the devs did one thing that tricked me or I theorized in a wrong direction, therefore they lied. There was the qizilbash in screenshots for TMR. some people assumed persians would get SL and CA architecture. that didn’t happen. It was a scenario/campaign only unit. ok, that can be congruent with what was shown. Adam Isgreen made a statement during development of RoR, months and month before release, that all the campaigns were being ported over. Ok, maybe he mis-spoke, maybe plans changed. maybe he flat out lied. But It’s not part of a wider pattern. I didn’t have a problem with RoR.
This however is incontrovertibly incomparable. V&V and V&V2 each had NUMEROUS communications bafflingly incongruous with what was announced and released, most mere weeks before announcement. People try to defend some of these statements like “they didn’t know that’s how they’d be interpreted by the community”. These people are paid to work on a game, communicate information about that game not just to the fans, but other co-workers to effectuate the release of new content and patches. How is it they can presumably be good enough at communicating aoe2 to each other to get stuff done, but so terrible simultaneously that a majority of the community has the complete wrong idea about so much of what they communicate to us.
And if those mind boggling repeated “co-incidences” and “mis-communications” weren’t enough, all of this falls into an even greater pattern which further demonstrates their deceitful intent.
Get ready for this. This, somehow, only happens when the content itself is going to be very controversial.
BfG. Absolutely nothing until the announcement, well received.
TMR. a roadmap vaguely hinting in the direction of DoI a year prior, and a “elephant in the room” comment on a patch a few months before release. TMR is the worst of the medieval DLCs IMO, but not by a wide margin. It’s decent.
RoR. It’s a thing guys. Its aoe1 in aoe2. Not sure what that means, but feel free to be excited. Eh IDK who this was for but whatevs.
V&V. Campaign Focused expansion with polished scenarios inspired by filthydelphia’s custom scenarios. Insert last jedi meme bout how every word of that sentence was wrong. worst received DLC.
V&V2. Five civs guys, the most exciting dlc, new castles skins, new UU skins, monastery and monk skins, attack animation. You’re getting Jurchens, you’re getting tangus, Khitan civ is changing so you’re also getting khitans cause changing them to jurchens or tanguts makes no sense, no china split, BE THE ABSOLUTE MOST HYPEDEST EVVUR. antiquity 3K china split, mobile game heroes added, destroy the concept of what an aoe2 civ even is, nothing for medieval content beside Jurchens civ and a disappointing non-sense khitangut chimera civ.
So I am to believe, by those who’d like to give those “communicating” to us the benefit of the doubt, that not only are they just the unluckiest people in the universe, but only when they’re talking to us, with both their circumstances and their choice of words, but somehow that incomprehensible unluckiness is also directly, but still coincidentally, correlated to the controversiality of the content of dlc in question.
Oh my god miss me with this “it was just a mis-understanding” stuff.
When they know they have a lemon on their hands, they just hope if they hype us enough, the member berries will make us consume. And if it means lying to the fan base to get us requisitely hyped, by god do they have a bridge to sell us.
—EDIT I’d rather not splice into numerous places—
Also all of the “mis-communications” are congruent with each other. If this was just random mis-communication, you’d expect mis-communication 1 to be contradictory to mis-communication 2, and each not particularly congruent with mis-communication 3, etc.
Nope. Everything points very neatly in one direction. Just a little more mind-boggling coincidence for your consideration.
