The 2 main complaints from the community are:
Let’s wait, see the analyzes, reviews, gameplays and then we will have a concrete opinion. For now, we are just speculating. We have pertinent concerns, but perhaps the developers have already addressed and resolved them.
As for the names, you don’t need to wait to see that two of them aren’t faction names and will be inconsistent.
Balance wise yeah no one has a clue.
People thing the game is turning into Warcraft 3 now but we have no idea if the new hero(s) are even going to be more powerful then the Khan.
And also even if the civs release with stupid names they can still be changed later.
It’s important the the community voices it’s opinion in a civilised manor.
Yes, you have to wait for it to come out first and then we do all the analysis and complaints that arise. Obviously AoE 4 will try to put AoE 3 mechanics into the game, but more slowly and better implemented so that there is some connection between both games…
Totally agree. I’m ok with criticism about the names but gameplay criticism has literally no merit before you see the civ. There are so many people here who are just making bad faith arguments out of spite. These same people who complained that devs were ‘lazy and copy pasting civs for variants’ are now saying “OMG Jeanne d’Arc civ is WC3 or DOTA, we don’t want these completely new, unique mechanics in our game, we want copy pasted European civs with Crusader skins”.
AoE IV is about evolving the franchise. And purists have a hard time facing that.
Maybe they forgot, maybe they don’t care at all and just want some kind of more the same AoE2 in 3D but more historically accurate. Damn, I’d love it myself… But it’s not this project.
Sometimes it’s hard to stay rational. But irrational reactions are just going to be ignored. There’s no real need to change anybody’s mind.
Why should I wait to see those names in action?
It’s bad!
It shouldn’t be about a person.
It should be about an empire!
Also, it shouldn’t be about a real person, if they wanna a hero unit. At least be abstract.
Like Khan instead of Genghis Khan
King instead of Henry IV or any other name
Maid of Orleans, or any other name like, it’s better than her.
About the Heroes break the game balance.
It’s gonna change the core of the gameplay.
It is change just for this civilization.
If you are playing her or against. You’re gonna play totally different.
I don’t like that.
I don’t feel this game should be around heroes in multiplayer. In campaign is fine.
And the last thing:
Why they are so attached to her? Jeanne
WTF
She is the cover of the game, the biggest face.
She is the cover of the French,
Any marketing material she is there.
She is in the campaign.
She is now a civilization.
She is the hero in her own civilization.
She is a hero, that levels up, summon units, can heal, can deal damage, and even has 2 ultimate ability.
If you open the game right now, you can see a banner/popup for her that redirects you to her civ website page. But we didn’t see this banner/popup for Japanese or Byzantines.
Sorry, I am waiting, but i am very pessimistic about it.
I don’t like the direction of AoE4 is going.
Watching Jeanne D’Ark fighting is just not historical at all.
She was an inspirational myth, not a warrior.
She never fought and killed anyone.
And I also saw her using a bow on horseback.
Lol, that is too much for me to consume.
I want an option to remove Jeanne D’ark and Zhu’xi civs from my DLC and I will be happier.
How do you know that?
We have no numbers at all.
How much HP does she have? How long does he take to respawn.
How many of those elite troops can you have, how strong are they, how much stronger are they next to her compared to when they are far away from her?
How strong are her abilities?
Right now she could theoretically be weaker then the Khan, that also has abilities to boost nearby troops btw.
I do 100% agree this this though.
Calling her Maid of Orleans would be the perfect solution.
It is directly referring to her but there could theoretically be more then one Maid of Orleans so it’s not completely stupid to have her fight herself in a mirror match.
I wouldn’t be so confident about that. In the end you still get the core French and the hero is a unit like any other, with (mostly) the usual counters. We have to test to see how much she impacts strategies.
With a discount I hope 
Other than that, it doesn’t make sense because it would only affect your ability to play the variants, not other players going up against you.
Some content creator that signed the NDA said that:
if you’re playing her, you wanna level up as fast as possible
and if you’re playing against her. You wanna deny her exp and kill her, chase her.
It’s not like Khan or King (English)
it’s a very centered hero in a civilization.
ok so someone kinda broke the NDA?
I don’t know what the NDA says so I can’t tell if they did.
For me personally one of the main issues is that her progress is independent of the Ages.
If she would just get to the next stage with each Age she would be less annoying to play or to deal with.
I wouldn’t say broke the NDA.
They said what is already public.
Beasty, for example. Said that you always have to build your landmark with Jeanne (she a villager at level 1), so she gets a lot of exp and level up faster this way.
That’s not breaking the NDA, I think xD
I really thought her level was attached to the Age as well. But it seems it is not like that.
I also would prefer that.
It seems like getting her to stage 2 might be only really possible by letting her build the landmark.
I wonder if she gets more XP when she builds it alone. That would generate some interesting decisions, do you want to level her or do you want to age up fast.
Her Guards are trained at the Keep so she doesn’t really get the benefit from being Stage 3 until you reach Castle Age.
So maybe the Stages are kinda soft locked to Ages.
Why are people just starting to complain about this. She has always fought in the AoE serie.
She was in the french campaign for AoE2 and also in AoE4 french campaign and always presented as a leader/warrior.
There have been heroes in multiplayer in the saga since AoM… it’s nothing new, the only thing that makes them more prevalent now…
That is exactly why I don’t like it.
I didn’t play Joan’s campaign till the end when I saw her stats and attack animation.
She must be a total weakling with little hp and attack damage, but should only inspire soldiers.
I get your point, but totally disagree.
Heroes in AoM have a passive skill, active automatically after the cooldown.
Jeanne is gonna have MANY active skills and even an ultimate ability.
She also levels up and summons other units.
If the hero was like AoM, that would be totally fine
No thanks.
First, I’m fundamentally against the devs passing off recycled content as new content. I thought their whole aim with AOE4 was that unlike AOE2, they were going to make fewer civs that were different and each felt unique to play. Semi knock offs that borrow content from existing civs are just a cheap way for them to pretend they are making new content.
Second, the civ names are absurd. It is age of empires not age of characters. The order of the Dragon was founded in the 15th century and Joan of Arc died like 3 years after becoming relevant and yet these are being passed off as civs from dark age through imperial age.
Third, the hero mechanic looks awful, hard to balance and is simply borrowed from other games. Looks like an attempt to bring in players from other games that will likely just result in alienating their current ones.
Truthfully, these variants should just be campaigns and not a part of the ranked map pool. I think most players would have been perfectly happy with the 2 new civs we are getting in Japanese and Byzantines but it is being overshadowed by them adding knock off civs with weird mechanics that just inflate the civ roster.
Yes, that’s true…maybe it could be like the explorers in AoE 3 (that is, heroes with relatively decent skills, but not broken)…
Of course, for that they would have focused on making another civ more like the Byzantines and Japanese, instead of putting in these broken pseudo civs…