It’s functionally completely different than any other faction we have.
That’s all I care about.
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Well, we know of AT LEAST 5 new units and 3 new buildings and 3 new techs and 2 new abilities.
What an odd definition of “dead”.
The units are mostly reskinned existing assets. Some of the buildings do seem new, though not entirely. Either way, it is still a far cry from fully fleshing out a civilization audovisually so we may experience the cultures of the past. In my eyes, it would have been a shame had Japan been a slightly reskinned China, or Delhi been a slightly reskinned Abbasids. That is the line in which I draw variants, and that is why we shouldn’t erode the distinction.
What?
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The thread is about the usage of the word “variant”. It has nothing to do with doomscrolling. What are you talking about?
EDIT: Mhm. You’re copy-pasting comments from a Reddit post. The reddit post itself is someone who has been copy-pasting my comments. Are you behind this?
This is not me. Are you Euphoric-Parking-982?
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I don’t really want to get into an argument, so here’s my perspective on “Variant or not Variant”.
They are Variants. They are labelled and marketed as Variants.
However, the developers (and whatever associated content creators) are doing their best to highlight the effort that has gone into these Variants, above and beyond what we’ve seen previously. This kind of emphasis, and the semantic or linguistic techniques employed, is what seems to be the problem.
For example, I follow a YouTuber who covers a mobile game I’ve spent 10 years playing, nearly (don’t ask, it’s a fun little Marvel thing that I like to waste time on 
). His video titles are often clickbait - the definition of. It’s enough to make me roll my eyes sometimes.
But he explains it (and repeats the explanation every so often, for newcomers / returning viewers, etc). It’s because YouTube as a platform heavily punishes accounts that don’t follow the implicit rules YouTube have set in place to Maximise Engagement™, because for whatever reason Google apparently don’t have enough money yet. So in order for the videos to actually get views, creative liberties (put mildly) are taken with the title and often splashscreen (there’s probably a better word for this - the still image you see when the video frame loads but before you click play).
This makes sense. I dislike it, but it makes sense, and it also explains the nature of these clickbait-y style AoE IV content creator videos.
That is in relation to Youtube, though. From what I am seeing, Variants aren’t being used as a form of clickbait to help viewership, but instead, I keep hearing rants from content creators saying that they shouldn’t have labeled it as such in an attempt to make a change in marketing.
I don’t think they make these rants because it’s going to help viewership for those videos directly, like clickbait would. Instead, the intended hope seems to be to help the game’s image and to help drive sales. I’m not a fan of this exactly because there are those who cares for this distinction, and doing away with the distinction is just not consumer friendly or honest.
An argument Chilly lists, which I quoted, is that, “most people don’t care”. I think this is a silly reasoning considering that if most people don’t care, why would they care about the “variant” label at all? The messaging is just wrong here and I think it’s irresponsible for them to keep asserting that the civilizations in fact, AREN’T variants, which is what Chilly does towards the end of the video, and what many other content creators seem to be expressing.
YouTube clickbait’s illusion quickly fades the second you see that the video isn’t what it was presenting itself as. Our content creators are wanting the community to seemingly not address the civilizations as variants, which is what the developers classified them as. That, I think is wrong.
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If content creators want to believe Variants aren’t actually Variants, then I disagree but see no reason to believe their opinion isn’t honestly held. I’m not sure I agree with “irresponsible”, but I guess content creators cater to their viewership first and foremost (vs. this forum specifically, or reddit, or even all AoE fans).
We all want the game to succeed, but perhaps in different ways. You don’t want more Variants. I want improvements to the modding tools (still marked as beta). Each individual content creator will have their own preferences. It makes it very hard to tease out what they want specifically, en masse (except for the game to succeed).
Personally, I don’t get why Microsoft aren’t giving the devs whatever they want to succeed. I don’t get why they’re not hiring. They have two (formerly three) stable communities willing to pay money for new content. Given that I don’t actually know the cost of the development studios they are using, maybe we’re at parity for ROI on developers already assigned to the franchise. I dunno. This is me getting on yet another tangent anyway. And I’m very thankful for all the substantial Seasonal updates we’ve gotten to date. I’m normally a positive guy, it’s just . . . I know what it’s like for a developer to try their hardest with what they’ve been given, even if what they’ve been given isn’t very much.
Checkout the video above at 40:50 for one example.
Kickstarting of Age of Empires franchise must have been incredibly costly. I don’t want to believe that their goal was to simply reap the benefits of those sales alone like most remakes aim to do, nor does it make sense that they wanted to make the franchise popular again just so they can make money from AoE2 DLCs.
Seeing the tight release schedule between these games, they likely decided to do this as a package, remaking every game (even 1!) and making Age of Empires as a whole appealing to a brand new generation.
This makes me believe that maybe they didn’t just have a few of million bucks lying around intending to make returns on each of these individual investments, but instead that they had a high initial budget of tens of millions with the intention of a grander project with a broader aim.
Not expecting to have ongoing direct returns from the games and DLCs sales, but instead hoping that the franchise could serve as a massive shiny IP on the Xbox Game Pass to make it seem like a proper deal, and that the struggling content development simply means that the funding of this revival project is coming to an end. That we’re entering a maintainance period, and that they never expected to make a lot back from the games themselves. If this was the primary intention, then it means that this project has already kind of done its job.
I don’t know, this is just conjecture! But you are right, something doesn’t feel right.
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My assumption is the poor brand engagement it’s had over 4 years. The game has needed to release content for free, the anniversary update, and reduced price on dlc, Sultans Ascend, to help encourage people to stay with the game. On the public side they push the ‘best-selling DLC’ narrative, but it gives the same energy as a television series fighting tooth and nail to get renewed for another season.
They stabilized the player count but it hasn’t had much growth. In order to justify further investment they need to be a profitable brand, and the game has had a lot of triage. 3 1/2 years in and we have the base game and 2 dlc to show for it.
Arguably they are giving their support by not dropping it entirely with Relic out of the picture now. Forgotten Empires has the talent and passion to develop for the game, no doubt, but the transition between teams is indicative of a hiccup internally.
Also, a game without a way to generate ongoing revenue (more than periodic expansions) doesn’t really exist in our modern gaming environment. Everything I play these days has some form of microtransaction, whether that’s skins or a battlepass. AoE is one of very few game series to maintain an expansion based model.
I’ve been curious about how their profit margin looks with a 15 dollar product every year or two.
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I think it is. That reddit account, Euphoric-Parking-982 has also taken quotes from other people here and put them on reddit. Is it a bot or just a weird person?
Just a weird person looking for attention. The quotes they’ve chosen don’t fit in the context to what they’re replying to. They’ll tucker themselves out or keep on going and catch a ban, not worth the trouble worrying about it.
Hmm, I saw another of those accounts (https://www.reddit.com/user/still_no_drink/) that did the same with one of my comments. He also uses the burning colloseum from AoE 1’s Rise of Rome artwork I used to have on this forum, which is why I changed my pfp in first place.
Yea well you couldn’t be more wrong. Frankly, Im surprised on how are you not banned yet. You should not be allowed to take such cheap shots at the world’s best players and in the same time critisizing one of the best games ever made for something you did not even knew yet. I just watched the two NEW civs and they are not variants at all. Not visually not mechanically not in any standard way. Sure some buildings or landmarks are the same but that is intentional to make the historicall conection to their parent civ. Other than that they are compleatly different. The templar knights have so much visually different units if you play them twice with different age ups you will think that you played a new civ. Same goes for the lancaster. Their yawmen or yowmen I forgot the name of the archers have these unique hoodies that are easily distinguishable from other archers. The heavy spearmen with their shield on their backs. I could go on forever but unfortunatelly Im not as high trust lvl as you apparentlly so Im going to finish with this. Stop poluting the forum with your nonsense complaints you are not doing anybody any favors yea Ive read your other posts they are all “Bizarre” as you put it.
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This is bizarre semantics.
They are literally called variant civs in the dlc description.
“Featuring variant civilizations that expand upon the concept, this DLC introduces the Knights Templar and House of Lancaster, which innovate upon the French and English.”
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They are called that because the visual and sound base is the same. But at first glance, there are as many gameplay differences between the Crusaders and France as between the English and the Holy Roman Empire. Much more than there were between the first variants and their original civilization.
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I know but I was responding to a snarky remark with one of my own
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Oh, but I totally agree with you, I find people too harsh with these variants which at first glance seem just as original as new civilizations.
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I didn’t intend to be harsh, I have no problem with the new variants - they look like a big improvement over the previous ones.
I am looking forward to the dlc, I just think this whole debate over what they are called is a bit odd.
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Variants, whether they are more or less asymmetrical, are still variants, that doesn’t mean that I, for example, can’t enjoy them, but things as they are. I think criticism is good as long as it is not disrespectful or just the typical doompost without arguments.
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I am not trying to gaslight the community, but what I am saw about Templars - they are very unique.
Mechanically, they seem to be a new civilisation with own unique mechanics, not adjusted French.
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